“It’s tough to make predictions,” the humorously sagacious Yogi Berra famously observed, “especially about the future.”
But there’s one kind of prediction you can take to the bank so long as you bet against it. I’m talking about predictions of doom and gloom about school-choice programs.
Such predictions were made when Georgia created its Special Needs Scholarship and its tax-credit scholarship nearly two decades ago. And they resurfaced two years ago when lawmakers finally approved the Georgia Promise Scholarship.
In reality, the Promise Scholarship is enjoying a successful first year with 7,744 participating students. Each one gets $6,500 for private school, homeschooling or another non-public educational option.
It’s hard to say for sure, but the Promise Scholarship has probably had the most successful launch of any school choice program in Georgia history. The state did not report student numbers for the tax-credit scholarship program until 2011, three years after it was created. But based on the number of donations received in the first year of the tax-credit scholarship (about $25 million), and average award amounts in the early years for which there was reporting (roughly $3,500), it most likely enrolled fewer students than the Promise Scholarship in its first year.
Since then, of course, the tax-credit scholarship has proved hugely successful with more than 21,000 students in the most recently reported year — a number limited only by the $120 million limit on tax credits available to program donors. That trajectory bodes well for the Promise Scholarship, which may grow to nearly 22,000 students itself when fully subscribed.
But you wouldn’t have anticipated the Promise Scholarship’s success if you only listened to its opponents. Here are a few of their loudest, most dire predictions, and how things look so far:
Claim: The Promise Scholarship will “defund public education.”
Facts: Public school funding continues to rise. Governor Brian Kemp’s final budget calls for fully funding the state’s public schools, marking the eighth time that would be true in the past nine years. Once again, every public school in Georgia will get all the money the state’s funding formula dictates, for every student it enrolls.
Now, you will sometimes hear claims — which Promise Scholarship opponents reiterated several times — that the formula is insufficient even when maxed out. To that point, it’s interesting to see what school districts have done with the funding they do have.
At the end of the last fiscal year on June 30, 2025, the state’s public school districts collectively held $7.3 billion in reserve. For context, that’s almost one-third higher than the state holds in its own “rainy day fund” ($5.6 billion).
More to the point, that $7.3 billion was almost double what districts held in reserve just five years earlier ($3.9 billion).
In the districts with the most Promise Scholarship recipients, the picture is even rosier:
- DeKalb County, which led the state with 742 Promise Scholarship students, has seen its reserves more than quadruple in five years, to $476.3 million.
- Henry County, in second place with 680 recipients, has a reserve fund that’s 2.5 times as large as five years earlier, at $152.7 million.
- Bibb County, in third with 469 students, has just about doubled its reserves, to $67.8 million.
- Richmond County, fourth with 427 students, has also quadrupled its reserves, to $76.9 million.
And so on. To look at the amount of money public school districts have socked away this decade, one concludes they aren’t underfunded but instead have more money than they know how to spend.
Claim: The Promise Scholarship will only serve “the wealthy,” leaving poorer kids behind.
Facts: The opponents had it backward. In fact, the state reports that about 3 in 4 Promise Scholarship recipients come from lower-income households. These are defined as households whose earnings are no more than 400% of the federal poverty level. That’s about $110,000 for a family of three, and it’s a standard used for such other public benefits as health-insurance subsidies under Obamacare.
The Promise Scholarship was not oversubscribed this year, but if that happens in the future then families earning no more than 400% of the federal poverty level will get first priority. That’s hardly how one would design a program intended for “the wealthy.”
Claim: Money distributed to Promise Scholarship recipients will be “unaccountable” and misspent.
Facts: Those who made such claims didn’t understand how the program was to be built, or the constraints the law put on the program.
The Georgia Education Savings Authority, which administers the program, hired a vendor to build a “closed marketplace.” That means Promise Scholarship funds can be spent only on approved goods or services sold by approved vendors. Some 11,300 items are available, making for a vibrant selection, but nothing else can be purchased. Of note, only 410 of those items represent private-school tuition; the rest cover homeschooling materials such as curricula, tutoring services, certain education-related therapies, books, computers and other materials.
It’s always possible someone will find a way to commit fraud with these funds, as happens frequently with other taxpayer-funded benefits. But this program was built to be unforgiving of fraud — if anything, perhaps too restrictive about how the money can be spent. So far, the dog that hasn’t barked is the media headline about “misspent funds.”
The Promise Scholarship isn’t a one-year project. Its benefits will be measured over the long run. But it’s hard to imagine a better start, unless you’re one of those rooting for it to fail.