AP Investigation: Private School Choice Boom Leaves Behind Many Public School Students

A sweeping investigation by the Associated Press has found that the rapid expansion of private school choice programs across the United States is creating a deepening divide in American education, with the benefits flowing overwhelmingly to families whose children are already enrolled in private or home schools rather than to students in underfunded public schools.

The private school choice movement has reached $10.5 billion annually, and soon half of all American schoolchildren will be able to apply for state money to finance a private education — including those from high-income families, according to the AP News investigation published Tuesday by reporters Bianca Vázquez Toness and Sharon Lurye.

The Texas Experiment

At the center of the investigation is Texas, which launched the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program — a $1 billion initiative offering each participating student $10,474 per year through education savings accounts. The program, fast-tracked by Gov. Greg Abbott with assistance from President Donald Trump, who personally called GOP lawmakers to urge passage, represents the latest and most ambitious expansion of school choice in a state that had resisted voucher programs for years.

“School choice doesn’t take a penny from public schools. It’s funded separately like roads and water,” Abbott has said, defending the program against criticism that it diverts funds from public education, as reported by the Houston Chronicle.

Yet the AP’s data analysis tells a different story. Of approximately 95,000 Freedom Accounts awarded as of May 2026, only 43% recently attended public school. The majority went to students already in private or home school.

Who Really Benefits?

The pattern extends well beyond Texas. In Alabama, only 13% of participants in a new education savings account program were former public school students. Fewer than half of public schoolers who were offered scholarships used them, compared to 94% of kids already in private schools.

Racial and economic disparities are stark. In Alabama, white children were more likely to benefit than Black children. In Texas, while more than half of public school students are Latino, only a little over a quarter of voucher recipients are Latino. In Arizona, participation in high-income ZIP codes is nearly three times higher than in low-income neighborhoods, according to ProPublica, which found that the poorer the ZIP code, the less often vouchers are being used.

Research from the Brookings Institution confirms that voucher use is concentrated among wealthier families and warns that the new federal program — the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy while underserving rural America.

A Family’s Struggle

The investigation follows Maria Contreras, a Fort Worth mother of four whose 7-year-old son Ian has ADHD and struggles in public school. She learned about Texas’ voucher program at church and toured Saint Rita Catholic School, where Principal Kindra Johnston offered reassurance: “Sometimes a kid would rather be seen as active than not understanding. I can teach him how to regulate himself. How to have purpose.”

But Contreras soon discovered the obstacles. Her family earns around $70,000 a year — too much for priority status but not enough to afford $7,000 in private school tuition without help. By the time the school district tested Ian for his disability, the voucher application deadline had passed. He was placed on the waitlist.

Special Education Concerns

Texas law prioritizes students with documented disabilities and their siblings, then lower-income children. But private schools are not legally required to admit students with special needs or offer disability services, unlike public schools. Despite decades of research on school choice, academic scholarship on how students with disabilities fare in private schools through voucher programs “hasn’t kept pace” with the rapid expansion, the AP found.

Of the roughly 95,000 Freedom Accounts awarded, 28% went to students with disabilities — double the share in the public school system. Yet advocates warn that without legal protections, these families are taking significant risks.

Federal Expansion on the Horizon

The trends identified by the AP are likely to accelerate. In July 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) — the first-ever federal tax credit scholarship program for private and religious schools, providing $10 billion annually starting in 2027.

As the Hechinger Report notes, the program allows donors to receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations, which then distribute money to families. Critics, including teachers unions and education experts, have raised alarms that the program functions as a tax shelter for the wealthy while draining resources from public schools.

Historical Roots

School vouchers have a controversial history in the United States. Following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated school desegregation, several Southern states implemented voucher programs specifically to allow white families to send their children to segregated private schools. The NAACP and civil rights organizations have long warned that modern voucher programs perpetuate racial and economic segregation.

What’s Next

As the federal ECCA program prepares to launch in 2027, states face a complex decision: opt in and access new scholarship funding, or opt out and forgo the resources. Rural communities, where private schools are scarce, may be disproportionately disadvantaged. The AP investigation raises fundamental questions about whether the rapid privatization of American education is fulfilling its promise of expanding opportunity — or simply creating a two-tier system where the most vulnerable students are left behind.

For families like the Contreras family, the answer remains uncertain. Ian’s group has been placed on the waitlist. “It’s possible Ian could benefit from leaving his public school and attending Saint Rita this fall,” the AP reports. “Chances are, he won’t receive any financial help from the state to do it.”