Critics call school choice a zero-sum game. They call it a win for the students who leave, a loss for the students who stay. But real-world data tells a different story.
It’s one of the most common objections school choice faces, and one of the fairest to take seriously: if a public school loses funding when a student leaves for a private or charter option, doesn’t that make things worse for the students who stay? It’s a reasonable question. It’s also one researchers have now had fifteen years of Florida data to actually test, rather than debate in the abstract.
The Zero-Sum Argument
Is school choice a threat to public schools, or a lifeline?
For most families, a zip code still determines where a child goes to school. School choice shifts that balance, putting funding and decision-making power back with families, whether they choose a public, charter, or private school.
Critics argue that if funding follows students to private schools, public schools lose, and the students who stay behind pay the price.
That concern isn’t unreasonable on its face. Public school budgets are often tied to enrollment, so a shrinking student body can mean real cuts. The open question was always whether that funding pressure would actually translate into worse outcomes for the students who remained — or whether something else, like competitive pressure to improve, might offset it. Florida’s long-running scholarship program, in place since the early 2000s, gave researchers an unusually long window to find out.
Here’s What 15 Years of Data Actually Shows
Researchers Figlio, Hart, and Karbownik tracked Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program for fifteen years, from 2003 to 2017, publishing their findings in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy in 2023.
As more families gained the option to leave, researchers found the students who stayed in public schools didn’t fall further behind.
In fact, their outcomes improved, including higher test scores, fewer absences, fewer suspensions.
By the study’s measure, public school students in areas with the most scholarship competition were the equivalent of 120 additional days of learning ahead of students in areas with less competition. That’s nearly two-thirds of a full school year.
Lower-income students saw even larger gains, roughly 140 additional days.
The likely explanation isn’t unique to education.
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It shows that when a school has to earn the students and families it serves, rather than simply inheriting them, it tends to find ways to do better.
The researchers didn’t just compare scholarship students to everyone else. They compared public schools that faced more scholarship competition — more nearby private options a family could realistically choose — to public schools that faced less, while accounting for other differences between school districts. That design is part of why the finding carries weight: it isn’t just that students who left did better, which critics might dismiss as families who could always leave anyway. It’s that the schools those students could have stayed in got measurably better too, and by more, the more competition they faced.
What It Cost
Over that same 15-year period, Florida’s scholarship program cost the state approximately $2.8 billion.
A separate analysis estimates that producing the same academic gains through additional public school spending alone would have cost roughly $31.8 billion, more than 11 times as much for the same measured results in public school outcomes.
Put another way: Florida got a decade and a half of improving public school outcomes, at a fraction of the price tag that would come with trying to buy the same results through additional spending alone. That’s not an argument that funding never matters. It’s an argument that competition and accountability — giving schools a reason to earn their enrollment — did work that money alone hadn’t.
So, Threat or Lifeline?
The evidence points to school choice as one of the more effective ways to improve outcomes for students broadly — public and private alike.
This same model — competition paired with real accountability — is what the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit brings nationwide, for the first time. See how the EFTC works.
Where AFC Scholarship Fund Fits
A wide eligibility ceiling makes outreach easier and selection harder. When nearly everyone qualifies, an SGO’s published priorities, its award process and its financial discipline become the things families and donors should examine most closely.
We are preparing to serve donors and families in participating states when the credit takes effect on January 1, 2027. Between now and then, our job is to explain the rules as they are written, and to say clearly when something is still unresolved.
No — most high-quality research points the other way. When families gain real options, public schools that face more competition for enrollment tend to see outcomes improve, not decline. That's the same dynamic the Education Freedom Tax Credit is designed to create nationwide.
Florida offers some of the most detailed long-term data available, but it isn't an outlier. Most high-quality studies on school choice point in a similar direction, even though results vary by state, program size, and design. That consistency is part of the case for taking the same model national.
The EFTC lets any eligible taxpayer contribute to a qualified scholarship granting organization (SGO) in any state, creating the same kind of scholarship-driven competition seen in Florida — but for the first time as a single, federal credit rather than a patchwork of individual state programs.
No. Florida's is a state program; the EFTC is a new federal tax credit that runs alongside it and every other state program. Donors can use the EFTC regardless of whether their state already has one, and it doesn't replace what Florida or any other state already offers.
