Yesterday, Governor Kelly Armstrong announced that North Dakota will officially participate in the new federal education tax credit scholarship program. North Dakota joins a long list of states that have signaled their interest in participating in this groundbreaking initiative, which has the potential to empower millions of families to access diverse learning environments that best fit their children’s needs, including private schools and microschools. This enthusiasm for the new federal program among state leaders and families is a milestone worth pausing to appreciate with National School Choice Week underway.
For me, it’s also personal.
I grew up in a large family in Idaho with a grandmother who was a schoolteacher. From those early roots sprang my lifelong love of learning—and a deep appreciation for the value of education that I’ve carried with me ever since. Over the course of a 40-year career, including two tours at the U.S. Department of Education, I’ve seen firsthand how quality education drives individual opportunity and our collective prosperity.
That’s why, during my time in the Bush administration, I was proud to help expand the federal Charter Schools Program—an effort rooted in a simple belief: families deserve real choices. Since then, the school choice landscape has grown dramatically. Charter schools began with one state—Minnesota—34 years ago. Today, 46 states and the District of Columbia have charter laws, and nearly 4 million students attend charter schools nationwide.
In recent years, we’ve also seen a surge in demand for private options—powered in part by new scholarship and ESA-style programs and, soon, the nation’s first federal education tax credit program. EdChoice reports private school choice participation rose 25% in the last year, from just over 1 million students to about 1.3 million—the largest year-to-year jump since they began tracking these programs. That’s not just a policy trend; it’s families voting for learning environments that fit their children.
I’ve seen what that can look like when it’s done at scale. In Florida, where Building Hope has worked with leaders to expand choice options for over a decade, more than half of K–12 students are now enrolled in a school option of choice rather than their assigned neighborhood school. And back home in Idaho, the state is taking steps to broaden access through new choice policies that can help families afford alternatives and customize learning.
As we observe National School Choice Week this year, it’s important to celebrate the progress that we’ve made as a nation and appreciate the hard work that still remains to be done.
Even states with mature choice sectors still have numerous “choice deserts”—communities that offer no realistic school choice options to families. And parental demand for those choice options remains high: a 2024 survey from EdChoice found that 60% of families would choose a private, homeschool or charter school option if given the chance.
While there are a number of reasons for this—rural geography and long drive times, facility and financing barriers, limited authorizing capacity, and the time it takes strong operators to expand—it’s a reminder that expanding choice isn’t just about passing laws. It’s about tackling the practical constraints that determine whether families in every community can access a real menu of high-quality schools. (Raphael Gang from Stand Together and I recently talked about these practical constraints and the challenges microschool founders face on Michael Horn’s Future of Education podcast, which you can find here.)
The next chapter of school choice must be about supply as much as access: making it easier for great new schools—charter, private, microschool, and faith-based—to open, grow, and serve families wherever they live.
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