Ben DeGrow is a Senior Policy Director of Education Choice for ExcelinEd.
It was only two years ago that 2021 earned its designation as the “Year of Educational Choice.” And now, 2023 is clearly shaping up to be The Year of Universal Choice. That’s an explosion of opportunity! Eight states in all, including six this year, have passed laws that fund all (or nearly all) students to choose private educational options, regardless of how much money a family makes. Policy wonks use the term “universal eligibility” to describe these programs.
Most of the programs with universal eligibility are created as education scholarship accounts (ESAs). These are state-funded, state-supervised accounts that parents can use to customize learning for their children. To receive an ESA, parents must opt out of public schooling and agree to provide instruction in core academic subjects. In exchange, families can spend their accounts on educational expenses, including but not restricted to private school tuition. In this way they differ from school vouchers.
Families are lining up to claim the benefit. Since expanding to offer universal eligibility a year ago, Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program has seen participation climb past 64,000 students, nearly 5% of the state’s school-aged population. Florida’s massive, recent expansion of Family Empowerment Scholarships has more than doubled that participation rate, with more than 400,000 awarded and counting.
Newly created programs are attracting tremendous interest as well. In less than eight months, Iowa has gone from adopting choice legislation to granting ESAs to nearly 20,000 students. Demand is high in most of the state’s rural counties, where critics sometimes protest about the limited number of school alternatives.
Granted, some new scholarship recipients in these states were already attending private schools. Many others quickly claimed whatever extra seats were available.
Yet national surveys tell us that traditional, five-days-a-week, in-classroom schooling is not necessarily what many parents of school-aged children want. According to EdChoice’s monthly opinion tracker, nearly half of parents want a blended approach: to send their children to formal schooling one or more days a week while also setting aside days to educate them at home.
This kind of hybrid homeschooling has existed in tiny niches for decades, although more programs of this type have begun to emerge in recent years. When done well, such programs can provide families with a level of service, support and flexibility that meets academic and social needs, accommodates family schedules and gives students a balance of structure and creative time to pursue other opportunities. The tuition price tag for hybrid homeschooling is typically lower than for traditional, full-time private school, enabling more families to save money or use their funds for other educational expenses.
For many families, ESAs could provide the key to accessing this kind of learning model. However, the existence of an ESA program doesn’t automatically make hybrid schooling available to those who desire it. School leaders, teachers and other educational entrepreneurs don’t just emerge overnight to open new hybrid learning centers—or to modify existing schools to accommodate hybrid learners. Working through steps in the regulatory process takes time to make the nontraditional alternatives a reality.
While these concerns are important to address, there are more pressing questions about ESAs and hybrid options to answer first, raised by ExcelinEd’s new policy report, Hybrid Homeschooling and Education Scholarship Accounts:
ExcelinEd’s new report addresses these important topics, covering every ESA nationwide that has passed into law, not just the big universal programs. We’ve found that even the boldest versions of these policies can be enhanced to maximize their impact and deliver on their promise of flexibility. That starts by ensuring ESA funds can be used by families to undertake homeschooling–while also making sure that families who don’t want to accept public funds still have a safe harbor to educate at home.
A broad and forward-looking lens is needed by policymakers to evaluate their state’s current schooling options as well as to ensure there’s room for whatever innovative educators and parents could yet create to help students flourish. To support hybrid learning models, states that currently lack clear paths to fund families’ choices of these models could explore creating a third category of schooling, adding flexibility beyond the fixed categories of private schooling and home education.
When it comes to building a thriving ecosystem of diverse and desirable education options, some ESA states are more advanced than others—at least for now. All states can do better; even the leading states have more work to do to ensure they fulfill their educational promise to students and families. Thoughtful choice policies provide an important path forward and, to better support families’ needs, can give hybrid homeschools a greater chance of making it on the ESA menu.
Explore the evolving hybrid homeschooling landscape, how it differs from traditional
homeschooling and how policymakers can enact ESA legislation that ensures both can thrive and that
educational opportunity can grow for all students.
