It took state private school choice programs 25 years to make more than half of K-12 students, or approximately 26 million students across the country, eligible for a private school choice program. Those programs across 31 states now enroll more than 1.5 million children. In the 35th year since the first private school choice program passed into law for the students of Milwaukee, the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC) made an estimated 51.7 million eligible for a scholarship in a single act of Congress. Eligibility is not enrollment, but the scale of this new opportunity for both public and private school students is truly incredible when viewed against the decades of small, incremental growth that have led to today.
When I taught in a Catholic school in a working-class suburb of Tampa, the scholarship that paid tuition for a good share of my students was one of only a handful of programs in the country at the time. Florida’s tax-credit scholarship was then still in its early years and exclusively served children from very low-income backgrounds who often previously attended F-rated public schools.
Florida now enrolls more than half a million children across five scholarship programs. It took 25 years, five governors, and a stack of separate bills to get there, and Florida remains a school choice leader that states across the country seek to emulate.
I spent this summer estimating how many children could receive scholarships under the EFTC. The answer, 51.7 million children, is a number I find genuinely staggering. So this piece is an attempt to put that number in contrast to the last quarter century of (sometimes painstaking) state-by-state policy work.
The past 25 years: Three programs to over 70
In 2001, approximately 32,000 children in the United States used a private school choice scholarship across just three programs. That is roughly the enrollment of one mid-sized school district.
By the spring of 2024, the count had grown to nearly a million across seventy-two programs. Today, counting Texas’s first year, it is more than 1.7 million children in seventy-five programs. That is close to a fiftyfold increase.
The funding followed the same enrollment curve. Appropriated funding for private school choice went from $250 million in 2005 to close to $7 billion in 2024, about a twenty-fivefold increase. As of this school year, the value of the scholarships those programs are actually paying out, the sector is approaching $10 billion this school year.
This took decades of policy groundwork and legislative advocacy: three programs in 2001, seventy-two by 2024. Each one of them was a separate bill that had to make it through separate legislative chambers, across separate states, most of which were fought over for years before they passed (not to mention the many unfounded lawsuits routinely filed after passage). Seventeen states now have a program open to all or nearly all students. Much like one’s faint memories of difficult college coursework or the early days of a work-out regimen, the pain and struggle of those early years are easily forgotten in the midst of the opportunities families have access to today.
The same classroom, counted two ways
Picture a classroom of 25 students.
Today, fewer than one of those 25 uses a private school choice scholarship. Nationally the figure is about one child in 36.
Under the EFTC, 23 of those same 35 are eligible to receive a scholarship.
To be clear, the first number is enrollment: children who applied, were accepted, and are attending a private school supported by a publicly funded scholarship. The second is eligibility for the EFTC: children whose family income is at or below 300% of their area’s median gross income, which works out to over $300,000 on average for a family of four nationally. There are 33 eligible children for every one child currently enrolled in a state school choice program.
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Many states are starting from zero
18 states have no private school choice program at all. Not a small one. None. They include California, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. Together they are home to 18.2 million children who are eligible under the federal credit, more than a third of the national total.
Five of those 18 have already opted into the federal credit: Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, New York, and North Dakota. That is 4.6 million eligible children who would have a scholarship option for the first time without their legislature passing a state program at all.
Throughout school choice history, the binding constraint on private school choice was legislative. A family’s options depended on whether their state had passed a bill. The federal credit does not fully remove state-based constraints, because a state still has to opt in, but the path to opportunity is more direct than it has ever been.
What eligibility does not buy
Here’s the fair pushback: a child who is eligible for a scholarship and cannot get one is in the same position she was in before the EFTC. So what does making 51.7 million students eligible really mean?
Three points to consider:
First, the potential is substantial. The credit is only capped by the number of donors, and each taxpayer may claim up to $1,700 for a contribution to a qualifying Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO), like AFC Scholarship Fund, as long as they have federal tax liability. How many scholarships exist in any given year depends on how many people choose to give, and that number depends on how well schools, families, and advocates educate every taxpayer about the existence of this new credit. We anticipate that millions or even tens of millions of scholarships will reach eligible students every year as this tax credit scales and awareness grows.
Second, 31 states have opted in or announced they will so far, which leaves 20 jurisdictions that have not. About 59.8% of eligible children live in states that have signaled yes. The remaining 40.2% are only eligible on paper until opt-in decisions are made. Scholarship organizations in those 20 jurisdictions are stuck in limbo: without assurance that their state has opted in, they can’t fully prepare or scale up their fundraising. By delaying the opt-in decision, governors are effectively curtailing nonprofits in their own state from raising as many donations, and therefore scholarships, as possible.
Third, the rules are not final. Treasury previewed its thinking on June 9, 2026, and proposed regulations are expected by the end of September. However, these are proposed rules, not final rules. Taxpayers will be permitted to rely on them for the 2027 tax year, but the definitional questions, particularly how a home school is treated, remain technically open until the full rules process plays out. The sooner we have clarity on rules, the sooner scholarship organizations can organize constituencies like homeschool families to grow scholarship counts.
The EFTC is a generational opportunity
Millions of students will receive scholarships enabled by the EFTC. The first year will be modest in terms of fundraising as scholarship organizations begin their work, but the key in the early years is creating opportunity for those students who need it most and demonstrating impact. On the family side, demand has never been the constraint for state-level tax credit scholarship programs. Starting in 2027, for the first time, the EFTC will change the game for millions of families who have been locked out of opportunity until now. It only takes an opt-in to further extend that opportunity to millions more.
The full report, Who Can Receive a Scholarship? The Eligible K-12 Student Population Under the New Federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, includes estimates for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Download the full report or download the two-page summary.
No. Eligibility means your family meets the income test and your state's law permits your child's schooling to qualify. Whether a scholarship is available depends on whether your state has opted in and on how much money scholarship granting organizations have raised. These are separate questions and the second one is not settled.
Household income at or below 300% of the area median gross income where you live, adjusted for family size. Because it is local, the dollar figure varies enormously, from an average of $234,000 in Mississippi to nearly $500,000 in the District of Columbia, and around $330,000 nationally for a family of four. About 93% of K-12 children live in households that clear that threshold.
Because of a second test. Some states' laws do not treat home education as a private or religious school, and in those states homeschool expenses likely do not qualify. That removes an estimated 800,000 children and brings the share from 93.1% down to 91.7%.
A taxpayer makes a donation to a qualifying SGO. Later, when filing, that taxpayer claims a credit of up to $1,700 against federal income tax. The organization awards scholarships to eligible students. The donation comes first; the credit comes at filing. It is not a payment to families and not money a family receives directly.
The credit is effective January 1, 2027. It is claimed on taxpayers’ 2027 return, filed in 2028. Governors or their designated officials submit their state's list of qualifying scholarship organizations to Treasury annually by January 1.
31 states have opted in or announced they will, as of July 2026. That covers about 59.8% of eligible children. 20 jurisdictions have not yet, including California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, four of the ten largest states.
The eligibility estimates come from my report for the American Federation for Children, which includes a fact sheet for all fifty states and the District of Columbia along with the full methodology. The participation and funding figures come from an internal AFC private school choice program database that maintains statistics on programs over time.
