The Reporting Gap in School Choice

Over the last decade and change, the push to give students and families access to educational options that better fit their needs has grown from a once-marginal reform effort into a defining issue in education policy. 

Year after year, in state after state, lawmakers are creating new school choice programs and families are filling up waitlists to participate. Some states have made eligibility universal and removed caps limiting the number of participating students in response to their popularity. In those states, the political fight has shifted from whether such a program should exist to how it should be maintained and expanded.

We hear a lot about how the supply of options in states like Georgia is not meeting demand. Demand for school choice and universal eligibility is obviously an important signal that families value the flexibility that such programs offer. However, demand is only the first indicator, and it does not demonstrate success on its own. A popular program should still be able to demonstrate measurable outcomes, student success and competent administration.

Relatively speaking, education scholarship accounts (ESAs) and similar programs are still new, so it’s understandable that data are sometimes scarce and inconsistently collected across the country. Voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs can offer useful evidence as well, especially when they have existed long enough to produce longer-term results. So, ideally, what outcomes should be tracked?

States should want to know whether students are progressing in their learning over time, whether they remain in the program and whether participation is translating into longer-run attainment such as college enrollment or persistence.

For one, states should report as many metrics of student learning as possible, including nationally norm-referenced tests that allow for comparisons between students using school choice options and students in traditional public schools..

The Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES) is an example of a large program that tracks such data. It reports reading and math performance and notes that participating students generally maintained their relative national standing, while also advising caution because public school and FES students often take different tests. This is a challenge, but not an excuse for opacity. States can still report these findings and strengthen their utility by linking them to other, long-run outcomes.

Long-run achievement, including college enrollment, college persistence, graduation and SAT/ACT performance, is indeed a more valuable and durable reporting opportunity. These metrics avoid some of the comparison issues that come with mixed school sectors. Florida also offers some evidence in this category through another of its school choice options. An Urban Institute study of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship found that participating students were more likely to enroll in and graduate from college than comparable public-school peers and found that this effect grew with additional years of scholarship participation. A 2024 study by the RAND corporation noted that Florida and Arizona have built large enough programs to support research into these kinds of outcomes.

Another metric worth tracking is whether students are staying in their program year after year. Arkansas’s recent annual report is useful here because it reports both student performance snapshots and a continuation rate into the next year.This metric is closer in concept to demand than academic impact, but it does show whether families believe a given option is working for them after they’ve already had experience with it.

Beyond comparing students across school choice options and traditional public schools, states should report outcomes on subgroups, and whether outcomes differ for low-income students, students with disabilities, prior public-school students and students already in private education before joining.

If school choice advocates want these programs to last, they should demand better outcome reporting. The current state of scattered outcome reporting across the country is not sufficient to judge the success of universal eligibility, but there are a number of valuable pieces already available.

Universal eligibility is becoming more common because families clearly want more educational options. But popularity alone is not enough to sustain a reform over time. If these programs are going to remain politically durable and continue expanding, states need to show more than high demand or long waitlists. They need to show that students are learning, that families are finding better fits and that longer-run outcomes are improving. Some states are beginning to point the way, but as more outcomes data become available, the standard of reporting must rise nationwide.