The Mounting Trouble with Education Savings Accounts

Key Takeaway: As more states adopt universal ESAs, questions grow about accountability, equity, public school funding, and civic life.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (April 17, 2025) - Since 2021, 12 states have authorized Education Savings Accounts as universal or near-universal vouchers to cover either tuition at minimally regulated private schools or pods (mini schools with children of like-minded parents); or costs associated with homeschooling, from books and online curricula to field trips and ancillary goods and services deemed essential. These ESAs make nearly all students eligible, regardless of family income.

In NEPC's new policy brief, The Mounting Trouble with Education Savings Accounts , author Samuel E. Abrams, the director of NEPC's International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization, examines this surge in universal ESAs. Abrams describes their origins, rapid growth, and implications for accountability, equity, public school funding, and civic life.

Advocates view this transformation as a breakthrough for market-driven reform and a long-overdue benefit for parents with children in private school who feel double-taxed, Abrams writes. But he sees grim consequences. State agencies are struggling to monitor spending across a wide range of goods and services. Public subsidies are generating tuition hikes at private schools and new taxpayer obligations. These subsidies are also supporting many private schools with significant barriers to enrollment, ranging from faith and sexual orientation to affordability. Exclusion based on faith and sexual orientation apply to employment, as well. Meanwhile, public schools are facing funding cuts as students leave for private schools, pods, or homeschooling. Such student attrition often leads to school closures. In rural areas, the impact can be severe. School closures in small towns mean not only significant travel for students to neighboring districts but also forfeiture of much local community activity, as schools in these towns function as hubs for substantial intergenerational engagement.

Abrams calls on policymakers to rein in ESAs in states where they exist and to block their authorization in states considering their implementation. While state education departments may never fully keep pace with ESA oversight, Abrams recommends stronger tracking policies and transparency requirements, such as fuller public reporting on school outcomes and accessibility. Local officials, advocates, journalists, and researchers all have a role to play in informing the public and holding policymakers accountable.

Find The Mounting Trouble with Education Savings Accounts , by Samuel E. Abrams, at:

https://www.greatlakescenter.org/

This policy brief was made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice ( greatlakescenter.org ).

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Our mission is to provide high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence and support a multiracial society that is inclusive, kind, and just. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Samuel E. Abrams

samuel.abrams@utu.fi