Every state’s public education system is a market with supply (i.e., instruction) and demand (i.e., students needing instruction). These markets function as the operating systems for public education. Unfortunately, since the mid-1800s, these markets have been poorly designed and managed. As a result, every state’s public education operating system is deeply flawed.

Just as digital applications fail when their underlying operating systems malfunction, public education programs fail when the market mechanisms beneath them are ineffective. This helps explain why nearly every major reform initiative since "A Nation at Risk" (1983), from site-based decision-making and outcome-based education to teacher empowerment and regulatory accountability, has failed to deliver sustained, systemic improvement.

Public education will not realize sustainable improvement until each state’s public education market becomes more effective and efficient.

The monopoly problem

Public education’s primary problem is that the supply side of each state’s market is dominated by a government monopoly that also controls most demand side funding. A necessary correction is giving families greater control over a significant portion of the public funds allocated for their student’s education. Thanks to decades of advocacy by the education choice movement, families in 18 states may now use public funds to purchase education services and products from government and nongovernment providers.

But family-controlled funding alone is not enough. Every aspect of the design and management of public education markets must be improved, not just their demand side.

In high-performing markets, supply and demand are in sync; transactions are easy, and transactional costs low; information to guide decision making is transparent and accessible; resource allocation is effective and efficient; risks are managed appropriately, and customer satisfaction is consistently high.

Aligning supply and demand

The education choice movement has historically focused on increasing the number of families who control a portion of their students’ education funding while putting less emphasis on ensuring the market’s supply side grows in tandem. This imbalance often causes demand to exceed supply, driving up costs without improving quality and leaving families unable to access the best educational environments for each child. A recent study in Florida found that 41,000 students were awarded education choice scholarships last year but never used them, in part because there was no space in their desired schools.

Policymakers can help by enacting policies that better align supply with demand, ensuring students have access to the options they need.

Minimizing unnecessary transactional friction and costs

During the 2025-26 school year, families nationally will spend about $6.75 billion in public funds customizing their children’s education. Emerging Artificial Intelligence tools are already showing promise in streamlining compliance, verifying transactions in real time, and safeguarding public dollars. By adopting these technologies wisely, states can protect taxpayers while reducing bureaucratic burdens on families and providers.

Improving information access

Families shape public education markets through their purchasing decisions. When those decisions are well-informed, they drive higher quality and better prices. Yet in every state, families lack easy access to reliable information about provider performance and pricing. To support better choices, states should create user-friendly tools that provide transparent, trustworthy information. Without this transparency, families are navigating markets in the dark.

Managing risk and resource allocation

Every market decision carries risks and consumes resources. For example, when states implement policies that drive high demand without growing supply, costs rise, and families lose access to the best options for their children. Effective markets require careful regulation and risk management to balance innovation with accountability while ensuring resources are allocated efficiently.

Market optimization and customer delight

States are responsible for the design, implementation, and ongoing management of public education markets. Their goal should be market optimization, with family satisfaction as the ultimate indicator of success. An optimized market is one where all components function well together, and widespread family satisfaction suggests that children’s needs are consistently being met.

Managing market ecosystems

Public education markets are interdependent ecosystems and must be managed as such. When states align supply and demand, reduce friction, expand transparency, and manage risk wisely, they create conditions where every family can access instruction tailored to their child’s needs.

Lasting improvement will not come from the next reform fad. It will come from building healthy markets that empower families and unlock the full potential of every student.

Choice opponents have been known to throw contradictory arguments out against private choice programs. One moment they will claim that the majority of kids using universal choice programs were already going to private schools. A few moments later they will claim such programs are draining district schools of students and money. The irony of these mutually exclusive claims will often escape the person making them, and you can see hints of both in this New York Times podcast titled Why So Many Parents are Opting Out of Public Schools.

Sigh

Choice opponents make all kinds of claims, but not many can withstand even a modicum of scrutiny. Let’s take for instance a widely repeated fable- that Arizona’s universal ESA program has “busted” the state budget.

If you actually examine state reports like this one for district and charter funding and also this one for ESA funding, you wind up with:

Arizona districts have exclusive access to local funding among other things and are by far the most generously funded K-12 system in the state. Districts, charters and ESAs all use the state’s weighted student funding formula, and ESAs get the lowest average funding despite having a higher percentage of students with disabilities participating than either the district or charter sector.

If you track the percentage of students served by the district, charter and ESA sectors respectively, and the funding used by each as a percentage of the total, you get:

So, there you have it; supposedly the sector educating 6% of Arizona students for 4% of the total K-12 funding is “bankrupting” the state of Arizona. Meanwhile the system, which generated an average of $321,700 for a classroom of 20 ($16,085*20), is “underfunded.”

A group of 20 ESA students receiving the average scholarship amount receive $123,780 less funding, but they are (somehow) “busting the budget.” The fact that a growing number of Arizona students opt for a below $10k ESA rather than an above $16k district education tells us something about how poorly districts utilize their resources. So does the NAEP.

There is a school sector weighing heavily upon Arizona taxpayers, but it is not the ESA program.

 

John E. Coons was ahead of his time.  

Decades before the term “education savings account” became an integral part of the education choice movement, the law professor at the

University of California, Berkeley, and his former student, Stephen Sugarman, were talking about the concept. In their 1978 book, “Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control,” the two civil rights icons envisioned a model drastically different from the traditional one-size-fits-all, ZIP code-based school system inspired by the industrial revolution: 

“To us, a more attractive idea is matching up a child and a series of individual instructors who operate independently from one another. Studying reading in the morning at Ms. Kay’s house, spending two afternoons a week learning a foreign language in Mr. Buxbaum’s electronic laboratory, and going on nature walks and playing tennis the other afternoons under the direction of Mr. Phillips could be a rich package for a ten-year-old. Aside from the educational broker or clearing house which, for a small fee (payable out of the grant to the family), would link these teachers and children, Kay, Buxbaum, and Phillips need have no organizational ties with one another. Nor would all children studying with Kay need to spend time with Buxbaum and Phillips; instead, some would do math with Mr. Feller or animal care with Mr. Vetter.” 

Coons and Sugarman also predicted charter schools, microschools, learning pods and education navigators, although they called them by different names. 

Fast forward to Florida today, where the Personalized Education Program, or PEP, allows parents to direct education savings accounts of about $8,000 per student to customize their children’s learning. Parents can use the funds for part-time public or private school tuition, curriculum, a la carte providers, and other approved educational expenses. PEP, which the legislature passed in 2023 as part of House Bill 1, is the state’s second education savings account program; the first was the Gardiner Scholarship, now called the Florida Family Empowerment Scholarship for students with Unique Abilities, which was passed in 2014. 

Coons, who turned 96 on Aug. 23, has been a regular contributor to Step Up For Students' policy blogs over the years. Shortly after the release of his 2021 book, “School Choice and Human Good,” he was featured in a podcastED interview hosted by Doug Tuthill, chief vision officer and past president of Step Up For Students. 

“It is wrong to fight against (choice) on the grounds that it is a right-wing conspiracy,” said Coons, a lifelong Catholic whom some education observers describe as “voucher left.”  “It’s a conspiracy to help ordinary poor people to live their lives with respect.” 

In 2018, Coons marked the 40th anniversary of “Education by Choice” by reflecting on it and his other writings for NextSteps blog. 

 He said he hopes his work will “broaden the conversation” about the nature and meaning of the authority of all parents to direct their children’s education, regardless of income. 

“Steve (Sugarman) and I recognized all parents – not just the rich – as manifestly the most humane and efficient locus of power,” he wrote. “The state has long chosen to respect that reality for those who can afford to choose for their child. ‘Education by Choice’ provided practical models for recognizing that hallowed principle in practice for the education of all children. It has, I think, been a useful instrument for widening and informing the audience and the gladiators in the coming seasons of political combat.”

Nothing can stop Denise Lever. Not a raging wildfire and certainly not a state fire marshal’s effort to shut down her tutoring center by trying to impose regulations that could have forced her to spend $70,000 on building upgrades.

As one of the nation’s few female wildland firefighters in the late 1980s, Lever survived the hazing that came with being a woman in a male-dominated profession by proving herself and never backing down.

For example, take this story: Lever’s team had been dispatched to a California fire. Roads were closed, and the crew had to climb up a cliff to get into position. Loaded down with their gear, they pulled together and worked through the night.

“It was absolutely brutal,” Lever recalled. “It was hot. It was windy. Our hands were cut up from moving brush, and we lost gloves in the middle of the night, and we couldn’t find them on the fire line because of the debris.

As morning broke and a cold Pacific Ocean breeze stung their faces, the team huddled together in space blankets and reflected on their victory.

“The camaraderie and the sense of accomplishment, they’re irreplaceable,” Lever said.

Lever’s days of battling blazes ended when she got married and became a homeschool mom to three kids, but her trailblazing spirit stayed with her when she became an education entrepreneur.

In 2020, she opened Baker Creek Academy, a tutoring center/microschool to support homeschool families in Eagar, Arizona, just west of the New Mexico state line. The center operates four days a week for five hours per day and serves about 50 students, who attend on different days at various times. Baker Creek provides a host of supplemental services, primarily to homeschooled students, from one-on-one tutoring to limited classroom instruction and group projects to field trips. Students and parents can customize the services that best fit their needs. Baker Creek doesn’t keep attendance records because, Lever said, parents are the ones in charge.

After completing her city’s approval process, Baker Creek began operating in a historic commercial building once occupied by a church, shared with three other independent microschools.

One day, out of the blue, an official at the Arizona Office of the State Fire Marshal left Lever a voice mail message. He wanted to inspect her “school.”

“And I said, ‘No, not really, because we're not a school,’” she said.

As an experienced firefighter, Lever recognized a school designation for what it was: the potential kiss of death for her tutoring center.

Being labeled a school triggers a list of code restrictions intended for campuses that serve hundreds or sometimes thousands of students and often include sports fields, playgrounds, auditoriums, cafeterias, gymnasiums, classrooms, and offices.

On the line are often tens of thousands of dollars in mandated building changes, which are not required for other commercial buildings, such as dance studios and karate dojos.

Levers wasted no time. She contacted the Stand Together Edupreneur Resource Center, which offers guidance, but not legal advice, about regulatory issues. The representative encouraged Lever to contact the Institute for Justice, a national public interest law firm that specializes in education choice litigation and zoning issues.

IJ Senior Attorney Erica Smith Ewing sent a letter to the state’s fire inspector questioning the basis for the inspection.

“Ms. Lever successfully completed a local fire safety inspection in 2023 and has been operating successfully with no problems,” the letter said. “Your request to inspect her property was unexpected. Could you please explain why you wish to inspect her property? We do not currently represent Ms. Lever, and we hope that formal representation will be unnecessary.”

Lever said she faced the possibility of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars upgrading doors and electrical systems. Because the building was smaller than 10,000 square feet, she avoided the order to install a sprinkler system, which can cost $100,000.

However, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

“If the state was going to require some of these upgrades, that was just not going to be possible for (our landlord) to renew our lease,” she said, adding that she used the building to host summer programs and annual meetings for other microschool leaders who use her consulting services.

Lever also wondered why similar businesses weren’t targeted -- for example, a dance studio across the street that taught school-age students and operated similar hours to Baker Creek.

“Because she offered dance instead of math tutoring, her program was considered a trade, and our program was going to be shut down and treated like an education facility simply because we offered more of an academic program,” Lever said.

State officials performed the inspection, but finally backed down, offering only that the situation was a result of “confusion” and the Lever’s business wasn’t under their jurisdiction.

“Forcing Denise to follow regulations designed for sprawling, traditional schools would be both arbitrary and unconstitutional,” Ewing said. “More and more, we are seeing state and local governments hampering small, innovative microschools by forcing them into fire, zoning, and building regulations that never anticipated microschools and that make no sense being applied to what microschools do.”

In Georgia, local officials tried to force a microschool to comply with unnecessary inspections and building upgrades, in violation of state law protecting microschools. They backed down after a letter from IJ. And in Sarasota, Florida, Alison Rini, founder of Star Lab, nearly closed her doors this spring when the city interpreted the fire code to require she install a $100,000 fire sprinkler system, despite operating from a one-room building with multiple exits. Only after a donor provided a generous gift was she able to stay open.

“Teachers shouldn’t need lawyers to teach,” said IJ Attorney Mike Greenberg. “Bureaucrats shouldn’t use outdated and ill-fitting regulations to stifle parents and students from choosing the innovative education options that best suit their needs.”

Lever said the state’s decision to back off sets a precedent that will help other microschools across Arizona.

“I was definitely willing to go forth with the lawsuit,” she said. “At this point, though, we’re going to take our win. We’re going to publicize it so the other microschools will know what their options are.”

 

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the latest court ruling granting an injunction to block the release of funds to families while the lawsuit is pending.

Travis and Nikki Leck were thrilled to find a private school that challenged their sons academically and were looking forward to using a newly expanded Wyoming education choice scholarship to help pay for it. Now, a judge's ruling has left them and thousands of other families in limbo as the new school year approaches.

 “We would have never considered a private school. It just isn't something most people in this part of the world do,” said Travis, a petroleum engineer who grew up in Montana.

When the time came, the two public school graduates looked for a public school best suited to the needs of their oldest sons, Mason and Tanner. They found a gem: Fort Caspar Academy, a classical public school focused on high academic standards, high time on task, high expectations for behavior, strong parental involvement, logical thinking, and character development.

The school offered evidence-based reading instruction that included phonics, and math instruction grounded in a solid foundation of math facts, everything the Lecks expected.

Then came third grade. The family had the opportunity to move back to Cody, where they had lived off and on over the years. It's the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Named after its founder, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, it boasts a population of 10,305. The 2025 graduating class at Cody High School totaled 145.

Cody has one McDonald’s, one grocery store, and a Walmart. Elementary school options were about as limited as the retail offerings. Cody had five public elementary school options, two more than 20 miles out of town, compared with Casper’s 20. The Lecks tried the Cody public school for the twins and their youngest son, Carter, who had started kindergarten.

After a year and 11 days into the next school year, the Lecks realized that they preferred the classical approach to teaching and learning.

“I never thought we would be at a private school, especially in Wyoming. However, being pro-classical education, especially in Cody, definitely makes me pro-school choice. We have exactly one chance to get our kids’ educational foundation right, and it matters.”

The Lecks decided to look elsewhere for the rigor they wanted for their kids, advanced math learners who are now 12 and 9. They found it at Veritas Academy, a private classical school that used the same standards, curricula, and methods as Fort Caspar Academy. Tuition for the upcoming year will be $8,000 per student.

So, they pulled back on discretionary spending to make Veritas Academy possible. Nikki also returned to her job in marketing full time.

In March, the family got hope for financial relief when the Wyoming Legislature passed the Wyoming Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act. The education savings account program offers families $7,000 annually for income-eligible students in pre-kindergarten, with universal eligibility for students in K-12. Parents can direct the funds for tuition, tutoring, and other approved educational expenses.

The Lecks were among more than 4,000 families approved for scholarships.

Two weeks before the state was set to begin distributing funds, the Wyoming Education Association and nine parents sued the state to halt the program, arguing that it is precluded by the state’s constitutional commitment to district schools and that it violates a constitutional ban on appropriations to private entities, even though money is appropriated only to the state Department of Education and administered by the state superintendent of public instruction, according to the legislation. The state’s attorney, Mackenzie Williams of the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office, said during a recent court hearing that school funds are not used to finance the ESA program.

Travis and Nikki, who have advocated for parent-directed education in emails to lawmakers, joined forces with EdChoice Legal Advocates and the Institute for Justice as one of two families intervening to defend and protect the program.

On June 27, a district judge granted what he called a “narrowly tailored” injunction that barred any money from going to families while he decided whether to pause the program until the lawsuit was decided. On Tuesday, he issued a written order granting the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction blocking the release of any funds to families until he rules on the case. However, he allowed other operations to continue until he decides whether to issue a preliminary injunction that would pause the whole program while the lawsuit is resolved. Wyoming State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said her office is working with the state attorney general to look for options to challenge the injunction. Attorneys for the intervening families said Wednesday they plan to do the same.

"The court's decision to limit educational opportunity for Wyoming families is contrary to the Wyoming Constitution," said Thomas M. Fisher, executive vice president and director of litigation for EdChoice Legal Advocates. "We will seek to stay the injunction and appeal it as soon as possible."

The Lecks say they will find a way despite the latest ruling to keep their kids at Veritas Academy, though it won’t be easy.

However, they worry about those who aren’t as fortunate.

“I know there are a lot of other families that would like to go to Veritas this fall that it will probably hurt if funding is blocked,” Nikki said.

The Lecks said they do not oppose public schools. They graduated from their local public high schools and believe they received a good education. They never gave private school much thought until it became clear their kids needed something different from what that particular public school district offered.

They just think all families should have the right to choose what’s best for their children, whether that looks like a public school, private school, homeschool, or a combination of many options. Larger Wyoming communities like Casper, Cheyenne, and Laramie have publicly funded public and charter school classical school options that aren’t available in smaller communities.

Nikki hopes that the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship program, if it survives the legal challenge, will create an environment for entrepreneurs to provide more types of education. More is particularly important in rural areas like Cody, where choices are scarce and where families have little recourse if existing options are not the best fit.

“Really, a person’s only option if you don’t like what the public school is doing is to take them out and put them somewhere else,” Nikki said. “Wyoming’s scholarship program,” she said, “is one option to make that less financially challenging for anyone, regardless of location or income.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — The whiplash of uncertainty has buffeted the nation’s charter school movement during the past five years. First, COVID-19 disrupted learning for millions of students . That was, followed by restrictions on federal grant money. Then came a lawsuit challenging the public status of charter schools. 

The leader of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools empathized as the movement’s annual conference kicked off on Monday. 

“Starting, running and teaching at a charter school has never been easy,” the alliance’s CEO Starlee Coleman said during her keynote speech to more than 4,000 charter school representatives. She said plenty of changes lie ahead. 

 “Some of the changes you’re going to like, and some will be hard.”  

But charter school supporters also had plenty to celebrate, including the sector’s growth alongside private school choice, students who outperformed district peers on national tests, and state laws that require charters to receive a share of capital funding. The U.S. Department of Education also infused an additional $60 million into the fund for charter schools, bringing the total to $500 million to support charter school expansion.  

Leaders also hailed the opportunities created by the rise of private school education savings accounts, or ESAs, which have skyrocketed in popularity in states that have passed them.  

“Choice is working. Choice is here to stay,” said Hanna Skandera, CEO of the Daniels Fund and a former secretary of education in New Mexico. Skandera was one of a four-member panel that discussed the future of charter schools.  

Leaders in Texas and Florida discussed how to seize those opportunities by offering a la carte courses to students with ESAs. Florida, where in 2023 lawmakers made all K-12 scholarship programs into ESAs that are universally available  and created the Personal Education Program for students not enrolled full-time in a public or private school, has already recruited school districts and charter schools to provide access to part-time classes.  The latest to sign on is Charter Schools USA, which announced a collaboration with Step Up For Students earlier this week to expand options for students.  

"This is the future, and it's great to see,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN and who serves on several charter school boards. “These sorts of collaborations are what happen when families are in the driver's seat, and they have real resources to direct the education of their children. I hope more states and providers follow them on the path to educational pluralism." 

Texas won’t start offering its ESA program until 2026, but in preparation a coalition of charter school leaders has already started a pilot program for private-pay students at four schools. They offer a la carte classes online and in person, including some after school.  

“We think this is an opportunity, not as a threat,” said Raphael Gang, K-12 education director at Stand Together Trust.  

The panel advised those considering offering part-time services to capitalize on their strengths when deciding what to offer, start small and educate parents on how to access the programs.  

In Florida, where education choice scholarship programs have been in place since 1999, representatives shared the history leading up to the state’s 2023 passage of House Bill 1, which converted all choice scholarships into ESAs and made them available to all K-12 students.  That law also established a new ESA, the Personalized Education Program, for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. PEP allows parents to use $8,000 per student to create a customized education for their children. 

“It has been a game-changer,” said Keith Jacobs, assistant director of provider development at Step Up For Students. Jacobs, a former charter school leader, works to recruit and onboard charter schools and school districts as providers of part-time services for ESA students. 

Jacobs said school choice used to exist only for families who could afford private school tuition or buy a home in a certain ZIP code, but ESAs have taken choice to a new level. 

“We have placed the funds in the hands of the parents,” he said.  

What does that look like?  

It might be a virtual class in the morning, band at a public school in the afternoon, and a session with a private tutor.  

“Or it might be ‘My child needs an AP bio class and the charter school down the street has a good bio teacher,’” he said. 

 Charter Schools USA Florida Superintendent Dr. Eddie Ruiz said the decision to offer courses to part-time students was easy given the demand for flexibility. 

 “Charter Schools USA believes in innovation,” Ruiz said.  “It’s given parents the flexibility to really design their student’s education.” 

He said when he approached his principals about the idea, they wondered how it could be done. Ruiz compared it to Amazon.  

“Parents can just pick and choose,” he said. “Whatever it may be, they design their educational experience.” 

The implementation will look different for each state based on the laws, but in Florida, approved providers can list their offerings and prices on an online platform, where parents can purchase the services with their ESA funds.  

Charter schools set their prices based on local costs, said Adam Emerson, executive director of the Office of School Choice for the Florida Department of Education. In calculating those, leaders should not overlook operational costs, such as putting the students in the school information system.  

Emerson said serving ESA families is a financial win for charters, but also the chance to make a positive difference for students in their communities. 

“Yes, it’s a revenue stream, but it’s also a calling,” he said. 

 

 

EdChoice has an interesting survey question comparing what sort of school parents would prefer (district, charter, private or home) and comparing the results to actual enrollment patterns. In 2024 it looked like this:

There is a lot happening in that chart, starting with the apparent desire of approximately 50% of the parents of district students to have their students somewhere else. Of course, a great many legal and practical constraints stand between preference and reality, which is why we have an education freedom movement and why we find so much opposition from the insecure K-12 reactionary community. Taking the surveyed demand as a part of a thought experiment around “what would it take to give families what they want?” can be illuminating. Of course, in the real world, these things change only gradually. Arizona has the highest percentage of students in charter schools at 21% or so, but it took three decades to get there for all kinds of reasons, including the need to have school space, which involved a great deal of construction and debt. We live in a world of charter and private school scarcity relative to demand, and keeping up the previous (inadequate) pace of construction may prove difficult.

Using my advanced skills acquired in the Texas public school system between 1972 and 1986, I have used this surveyed demand to calculate an implied demand for an additional 1.1 million charter school spaces. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them. It took almost three and a half decades to reach 3.7 million, and if you’ll now take a look at the first chart above, you’ll see that most of that three-and-a-half-decade period involved relatively low and almost continually declining long term interest rates between 1991 and 2021.

After 2021, both interest and building costs went up for charter school construction. Interest rates of course could go down, but they could also (gulp) go further up. A slowdown in the rate of new charter openings happened before the increase in interest and construction costs:

The little green force mystic taught us “always uncertain the future is,” but it appears to me that circumstances will require the rise of different school models that create seats sans debt. The old expression holds that God doesn’t close a door without opening a window, and the recent rise in interest rates happened almost simultaneously with the rise of pandemic pods and a la carte learning.

 

Longtime NextSteps readers know that your humble author has been holding forth on the Baptist and Bootlegger problem that helped throttle the growth of the charter school movement. The term “Baptists and Bootleggers” comes from economics and references prohibition, which Baptists supported out of religious conviction, and bootleggers supported to limit competition in their manufacture and sale of alcohol. In the context of charter schools, it describes how elements of the charter school movement, in this case large charter management organizations, or CMOs, partnered with the anti-charter usual suspects to limit competition through 900-page applications and charter laws hewing closely to sponsored “model” bills that mysteriously produced few charter schools. This, of course, was not the only problem to afflict the charter movement in recent years; see Robert Pondiscio’s recent account for example.

In 2024, I sounded the alarm that the private school choice movement was far from immune to this danger. Alas, Bootleggers’ tactics have indeed appeared in recent school choice legislation. For example, Iowa’s “ESA” law requires students who choose to spend their funds on private school to attend an accredited one. The new Texas legislation makes only accredited private schools eligible, and in a late amendment, a provision was added that requires private schools to have been operating for two years before becoming eligible to participate. Competition is apparently good for Texas public schools, but not terribly desirable for established private schools in Texas. Sigh. Stay on the lookout; accredited Texas private schools that have been operating for more than two years might just start selling some illicit liquid products at their bake sales...

 

There are other examples, but you get the point. Why does this matter? Well, if you stimulate demand for a product but restrict the supply of new entrants, you hang a sign on your back that says:

Luckily, this does not need to be the case, but the devil is in the details of bill design. Some make the mistake of assuming any choice program will automatically lead to cost inflation, but this is not the case if supply can rise to meet expanded demand. EdChoice has a new study out on the supply side of school choice, in which they examined the purchasing data from Arizona’s ESA program for years one and two of universal eligibility. Arizona’s ESA program had a very large increase in participation during these years. Without a corresponding increase in schools and vendors, cost inflation could get underway.

Fortunately, Arizona’s program saw a healthy increase in the supply of new schools to accompany expanded eligibility:

Not only did the number of participating schools increase from 510 to 661, but Arizona also saw broad increases in the types of schools accessed by families, including large increases in private religious schools, non-religious private schools, special education focused schools, co-ops and post-secondary schools. Baptist and bootlegger anti-competitive provisions would have prevented this flourishing, but fortunately, Arizona lawmakers wisely avoided it. When the Goldwater Institute examined private school tuition trends after the universal expansion, they found no evidence of a demand induced inflationary spiral.

Arizona vendors other than schools also increased their participation in the program, increasing competition.

Don't look now, but dance and art studios, dojos and a whole lot more have entered the Arizona ESA chat:

Choice supporters with a vision beyond trying to fill a limited supply of empty seats and/or creating a tuition inflation spiral must create bills allowing supply to increase with demand.

Student achievement has fallen to its worst levels in two decades. Throughout public education, we see blaring sirens that our students deserve better. 

At the same time, states across the country – most recently Idaho and Texas – are embracing increasingly expansive policies to give parents direct control of public education funding. 

This latter trend has the potential to turn around the former.  

The reason is simple, but it cuts against the conventional wisdom about school improvement. 

Systemic improvements are the key to better results. The legendary management guru, W. Edwards Deming, estimated that 94% of organizational productivity is determined by the systems within which people work. Hiring better people will not improve productivity if workplace systems do not also improve.  

Imagine the world’s best NASCAR driver enters the Daytona 500 driving a car with a top speed of 90 miles per hour. Despite being the best driver on the track, this driver will lose. The system, in this case the car, is not designed to give the driver any chance to succeed.  

Our low-performing systems in public education undermine the productivity of our teachers and students. The question is: how can we build higher-performing systems? 

Four decades of improvement efforts led to public education’s third era 

The idea that public education needs systemic improvements is not new. The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, led to several decades of education reform initiatives. But as the most recent NAEP scores indicate, these efforts have generated mixed results.  

Performance improved during the decade from 2003 to 2013, when the nation’s average fourth-grade math scores increased by seven points.  

This period roughly coincides with the implementation of No Child Left Behind, perhaps the most ambitious top-down education improvement initiative in our country’s history.  

But that improvement proved politically and practically unsustainable. Observers like Tim Daly argue that since the high-water mark of 2013, students and teachers have been living through an “education depression.” 

I’m optimistic about a new generation of efforts to improve public education. They have a higher probability of being successful and sustainable, in part because they are rooted in larger societal changes, such as the rise of digital networks, mobile computing, and artificial intelligence.  

These changes are transforming all aspects of our lives, including where and how we work, communicate, consume media, and educate our children.  

These larger societal changes are pushing public education into what I call its third major era.  

Shifting power to parents and educators 

In this emerging third era, public education aspires to provide every child with an effective, customized education through an efficient public education market. This requires redistributing power from government to families and educators. 

Money is power. A growing number of states equip families with flexible spending accounts, commonly called education savings accounts (ESAs), that enable families to use some of their children’s public education dollars to buy the materials and services they need to customize each student’s education.  

In Florida, the families of over 500,000 public education students are spending more than $3.3 billion this school year to meet their students’ educational needs. This level of spending is giving Florida families power they have never had.  

It is also empowering Florida’s educators to create innovative learning environments such as microschools, hybrid schools, virtual schools, tutoring programs, and homeschool co-ops, because families, including lower-income families, are now able to pay for them. School districts and charter schools are also strengthening Florida’s public education market, expanding options for students and even providing classes and other learning opportunities to ESA families.   

This virtuous cycle between supply and demand has never existed in public education markets because the system’s primary customers — families — have never controlled public education dollars.  

The rise of public education markets 

Across the country, 21 states have created some form of ESAs or robust individual tax credits that allow families to participate in their states’ increasingly robust public education markets.  

Many of these newly created programs differ from the earlier voucher programs in two important ways. First, they are open to all families, not just small, targeted groups, such as low-income families or students attending underperforming public schools.  

Second, they allow participating educators to create a wide range of diverse learning opportunities for students, some of which look nothing like conventional schools.  

An earlier generation of voucher programs largely served as an extension of top-down school accountability. They provided states with an extra “stick” to punish low-performing public schools, giving unsatisfied parents an opportunity to choose private schools instead.  

Charles Barone and other critics are right to point out that those policies are unlikely to produce transformational improvements in public education.  

Those earlier voucher programs did not work because they were too limited to produce a functioning market for education services. Families had limited flexibility in how to spend the money. They could select only conventional private schools, so educators were limited in their ability to offer new, different or better learning options. And only a small number of families were eligible, so there wasn’t enough demand to unleash the virtuous cycle of the market. 

Creating state public education markets in which families are free to choose from a variety of learning options and educators are free to create new ones increases the chances that more educators will design the educational equivalent of new racecars with higher top speeds.  

These systemic improvements are more likely to be sustainable because market-driven innovations do not require top-down coercion.  

When NAEP scores rise again — and they will — the increased productivity enabled by well-functioning public education markets will be the primary reason. 

 

SARASOTA, Fla. – Alison Rini thought her destiny was to be the principal at a traditional public school. She had been the principal at a charter school, the assistant principal at a Title I district school, and the assistant principal at a magnet school for gifted students. 

But in the wake of Covid, Rini began to feel “adrift.” The system, in her view, proved incapable of helping students, particularly low-income students, overcome the academic and behavioral deficits left by distance learning. Some students were being promoted, even though they weren’t ready. Others were being labelled disabled, even though they weren’t. 

“My path wasn’t leading to where I thought it would,” Rini said. “It felt like they just wanted me to grease the wheels to keep them turning. And people were getting chopped up in the gears.” 

“I just felt there’s got to be a better way.” 

In 2023, Rini took a leap of faith, one that is becoming common for public school teachers in school-choice-rich states like Florida. 

She decided to start her own school. 

For other recent examples, see here, here, here, here, and here. 

With help from The Drexel Fund, a philanthropy that helps promising new private schools start and/or grow, Rini took a year to plan. She visited successful schools across the country; acquired deeper knowledge about the business side of running a school; and mapped out exactly what she wanted to create. Her vision was based on 20-plus years of learning the best approaches from teaching in all types of schools, from New York City to the Virgin Islands to the Gulf Coast of Florida. 

The result is Star Lab, a private microschool that opened last fall with a handful of kindergartners and is now set to expand. It’s housed in the recreation center of an oak-graced public housing complex in Newtown, a historic Black neighborhood in Sarasota. 

Watching students walk up on the first day of school in their Star Lab shirts was “an out of body experience,” Rini said.  

“It was just such a dream come true,” she said. “And this year has been such a joy, to behold the power of just tailoring something around kids – not around adults, not around the system.” 

Star Lab is a rich blend of philosophies and practices that reflect Rini’s background in education and neuroscience. (Rini earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior, and master’s degrees in elementary education and education leadership, all from Columbia.) 

Star Lab’s approach to reading instruction is grounded in “science of reading” research. It employes hands-on Montessori materials to help students better grasp some academic concepts at their own pace. It embraces the Finnish approach to student movement, which sees frequent play breaks as optimal for learning. It also emphasizes individualized lessons, mastery learning, lots of direct instruction, and progress monitoring via a custom-built dashboard. 

“We're not just educating,” the school website says, “we're preparing future leaders, innovators, and global citizens who are as healthy and mindful as they are intellectually empowered.” 

Every morning at Star Lab starts with 25 minutes of exercise and five minutes of “mindfulness” activities. Monday through Thursday, the students are immersed in core academics. Fridays are for group activities like drama, field trips, and guest speakers.   

Rini guarantees parents that Star Lab students will perform at or above grade level in reading and math. Most of the students in the neighborhood are not at that level, which is why Rini chose to be here. According to the most recent state stats, 38% of Black students in Sarasota County are reading at grade level, compared to 68% of White students. 

“I just felt drawn to it,” Rini said of Newtown. “Super wealthy people already have school choice.” But all families deserve the ability to choose, Rini continued. 

Every student at Star Lab uses a state choice scholarship and there are no other fees. 

Rini could be a poster child for the wave of education entrepreneurs who are rising in Florida and other choice-rich states – both for the promise they represent, and the pitfalls they continue to face. 

Due to fire-code complications, Star Lab could only serve five students this year. Rini didn’t learn about the snag until two weeks before school opened, and the remedy – a $97,000 sprinkler system – wasn’t financially possible. A local philanthropy recently stepped forward to help the housing authority pay for the sprinkler system. But Rini’s case isn’t an isolated one, as stories like this one and reports like this one highlight. 

With the stars finally lined up at Star Lab, 14 students have already enrolled for this fall, and more are expected. 

The draws are many. 

For families who live in the complex, the school couldn’t be more convenient. The individual attention is tough to match. (Besides Rini, there’s another teacher and an assistant.) And it’s clear the school is enmeshed in the community. 

Last month, the school hosted a “design lab” with local college professors and more than a dozen parents in the neighborhood, so the parents could discuss the educational needs of their children and how they could be better met. A few days later, Star Lab students built a float for the Newtown Easter Parade. In early May, the school hosted an international food festival for the neighborhood, so the students, their families, and their neighbors could, in Rini’s words, “travel the world through their taste buds.” 

It’s not just families who are benefiting from the emergence of distinctive new schools like Star Lab. 

“If you are not happy at your job, I would say don’t accept that as your fate,” Rini said, referring to other educators. “There are options, and some of them are already out there. And some of them don’t exist yet, but they might be in your head or in your heart.” 

With choice, they don’t have to stay there.