The failure of many public schools to reopen during the 2020-2021 school year appears to have created a boom of support for school choice policies nationwide among the general public and elected officials.
As COVID-19 case rates waned over the months and years following the lockdown of spring 2020, many public schools across the country remained closed even as restaurants and businesses reopened their doors and despite repeated assurances from public health officials that schools could safely reopen to in-person instruction.
A June 2021 poll from Real Clear Opinion found a 10 percentage point increase in nationwide support for school choice, rising to 74% — up from 64% in April 2020. As public support increased, so did the number of enacted policies.
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According to data from the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit organization advocating for school choice policies, at least 19 states passed legislation establishing or expanding school choice programs in 2021.
The legislative push has largely been contained to Republican-controlled states — such as Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri — and coincides with a nationwide decline in public school enrollment and the substantial growth of homeschooling.
The U.S. Census Bureau said in 2021 that homeschooling increased from 5% of U.S. households in the spring of 2020 to over 11% that fall. Data on private school enrollment is not as readily available. The National Center for Education Statistics only lists data through 2017 and was last updated in May of 2020, but numerous Catholic school districts nationwide reported substantial increases in interest and enrollment during the pandemic, reversing a decadeslong decline.
Corey DeAngelis, the national director of research for the American Federation for Children, blames the failures of public education on teachers unions, which he said broke public education long before the emergence of COVID-19.
“COVID didn’t break the public school system,” DeAngelis said. “It was already broken. The past two years have simply shined a spotlight on the main problem with K-12 education in America: a massive long-existing power imbalance between the teachers union monopoly and individual families.”
“Private schools were fighting to reopen from the beginning,” he added. “Public school teachers unions were fighting to remain closed. The main difference was one of the incentives: one of these sectors gets your money regardless of whether they open their doors for business.”
A tracking website for DeAngelis’s organization showed that expansion of school choice programs at the state level in 2021 included entirely new programs in eight different states. Among the newcomers was West Virginia, which enacted a sweeping school choice law that provides families close to $5,000 per student annually for school-related expenses, including tuition at private schools, beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.
“2021 was the year of school choice, but we’re just getting started,” DeAngelis said. “There are already at least 26 states with active legislation to fund students instead of systems in 2022.”
Several states with active legislation, including Arizona and Florida, already have school choice programs, but lawmakers are seeking to expand them further. Meanwhile, states such as Virginia and Michigan are proposing programs for the first time.
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While it can take form in many different ways, the most popular school choice models have proved to be tax credit scholarship programs and education savings accounts. Both provide families with the opportunity to use funds to attend a school of their choice or, in the case of the latter, cover educational expenses regardless of where they are needed, including homeschooling programs.
