Unlocking the Potential of Private-School Choice: Avoiding and Overcoming Obstacles to Successful Implementation

In order to realize all the benefits of parental-choice programs, advocates, policymakers, and participating schools have to pay more attention to implementation challenges, both when designing parental-choice policies and after new programs are enacted. This report discusses both categories of implementation challenges. The first category--challenges that result from policy design--includes features of many programs that make them difficult to implement, such as limits on the tax benefits available in scholarship tax-credit programs, low scholarship amounts, and eligibility restrictions. The second category--challenges that occur after programs are enacted--result from advocates' and participating schools' failure to take steps that would increase the likelihood of programmatic success, such as prioritizing academic improvement among program participants, better informing parents about the choices available to them, and encouraging the development of more and better schools and school networks. This report focuses on "private-school-choice" programs--that is, programs that enable students to use public resources for private-school tuition. To the extent that education savings account (ESA) funds are used to enable participants to attend private schools, as they will be in many, if not most, cases, the report addresses implementation issues affecting ESAs. While the policy landscape is shifting rapidly, and more states undoubtedly will enact universal ESAs in the months and years to come--the vast majority of parental-choice programs are, and will continue to be, limited in scope and eligibility, necessitating continued attention to the issues addressed in this report critical to their success.