American test scores have kept sliding even as per-pupil spending has hit an all-time high.
The Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC) doesn’t ask taxpayers to spend more on a system that isn’t delivering. It gives them a new way to direct charitable dollars they’re already planning to give, putting the choice back in families’ hands nationwide for the first time.
More Spending Hasn’t Solved the Problem
Across the country, student proficiency in core subjects has been stalling, even as per-student spending keeps climbing.
Nationally, per-pupil public school spending hit an all-time high of $17,619 in FY 2024 — up 8.6% in real terms since FY 2020 — even as eighth-grade math scores fell to their lowest level since 2005 and reading scores declined across every grade since 2019.
In fact, the United States spends among the most per student of any country in the world and the pattern shows up at the state level, too.
Many states have significantly increased education spending over the past decade while test scores in core subjects have continued to decline over that same period.
Unfortunately, more money alone hasn’t been the fix. For millions of students, the deeper issue is that they’re in a school that isn’t working for them, with no real way to leave it because the school a child attends is chosen by zip code, not by their parents.
That’s not a knock on teachers or school leaders, most of whom are working hard inside systems they didn’t design. It’s a structural problem: when a school’s funding and enrollment aren’t tied to whether it’s actually working for a given child, there’s less pressure, and less room, to change course.
The EFTC doesn’t ask any school to do more with less. It gives families another option when the assigned option isn’t working.
Why Families Want a Different Model
That’s part of why a strong majority of Americans across every demographic, every party, and every state support school choice.
In fact, 73% of Americans support it, including 80% of Republicans, 69% of Independents, and 66% of Democrats.
Today, a majority of states have enacted some form of school choice program, but access is uneven: some programs cap enrollment, others cap income eligibility, and many families still live in states with no program at all.
Be the First to Know
Get notified when the Education Freedom Tax Credit launches so you don’t miss the opportunity to support K–12 students while benefiting from a federal tax credit.
What the Research Says
Support for school choice isn’t just wide. It holds up against the kind of rigorous, long-term research that policy debates are usually short on. Most high-quality studies on scholarship and choice programs point in a similar direction: when families gain a real option to leave a school that isn’t serving their child, outcomes tend to improve for the students who leave, and for the students who stay behind.
Why This Isn’t New Government Spending
It’s worth underscoring what the EFTC does not do, because it’s easy to conflate a federal tax credit with a federal program. There’s no new appropriation, no new agency, and no new bureaucracy administering scholarships.
The federal government isn’t deciding which schools qualify or which students receive funding. Nonprofit Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) handle that, the same way they already do in the more than 30 states with their own scholarship tax credit programs.
What changes is simpler: taxpayers get a new option for dollars they were often already planning to give away. That’s a meaningful shift for the roughly 73% of Americans who tell pollsters they support school choice, but who may not have lived in a state with a program, or may not have known how to direct a gift toward it.
A National Answer and Not a New Bureaucracy
The EFTC helps change that math nationally for the first time.
It doesn’t increase government spending, create a new federal bureaucracy, or raise anyone’s taxes.
Here’s how it works: a taxpayer makes a charitable contribution to a qualified SGO, which directs funds to scholarships for eligible students. In return, the donor receives a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 when they file.
Where the AFC Scholarship Fund Fits
The fund is preparing to serve donors and families in participating states when the program begins on January 1, 2027. Certification decisions belong to the states and to Treasury, not to us.
If you want to follow what your state does this fall, sign up for updates and find out more. The rules are still being written, and we will explain them as they arrive.
No. It works through charitable contributions and a federal tax credit — it does not create new government spending or a new federal program to administer schools.
Over 30 states have enacted a school choice program of some kind, though eligibility and program size vary widely by state.
It's the first federal, nationwide credit of its kind — available to donors regardless of whether their home state already runs its own program.
No. It runs alongside them. States that already have their own scholarship tax credit programs keep them; the EFTC adds a federal option that any eligible taxpayer can use regardless of what their state already offers.
Nonprofit scholarship granting organizations, not the federal government, manage contributions and distribute scholarships to eligible students based on their own published criteria.
