A record number of states enacted universal school choice programs in 2023, and advocates are eyeing opportunities to rack up even more legislative victories in Republican-controlled states in 2024.
Fresh off the 2022 midterm elections, GOP lawmakers in numerous states with unified party control made universal school choice a major policy priority.
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“2023 was the year of universal school choice,” American Federation for Children senior fellow Corey DeAngelis told the Washington Examiner. “We’ve had the biggest wins the school choice movement has ever witnessed. A universal school choice revolution has ignited.”
The “year of universal school choice” began in Iowa, where newly reelected Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) signed the first universal school choice bill of 2023. The new law was a crowning achievement for Reynolds, who took the extraordinary step of endorsing primary challengers against Republican state lawmakers who opposed school choice in 2022.
From there, the momentum grew. After a tense negotiation with Republicans in the Utah legislature, Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) signed a bill creating universal school choice. Newly inaugurated Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) made universal school choice her foremost priority, and a Republican supermajority in North Carolina overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D-NC) veto of a school choice measure.
Other states that enacted programs included Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma.
“Red states are now going all-in on school choice, empowering every single family with the opportunity to take their children’s education dollars to the education providers of their choosing,” DeAngelis said. “No more picking winners and losers. We’re seeing the laboratories of democracy working right before our very eyes, at least in red states. The GOP has emerged as the Parents Party, with leaders engaging in friendly competition to empower all families with education freedom.”
But while 2023 was full of “friendly competition” among red states, DeAngelis sees more victories and opportunities on the horizon as the calendar turns to 2024 and new legislative sessions begin.
“Twenty-two states have GOP trifectas, where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s office,” he said. “If all legislators with ‘Rs’ next to their names voted like Republicans and listened to their constituents, we’d have at least twice as many states with universal school choice.”
Indeed, Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) announced this month that he intends to push through a universal school choice bill for the Volunteer State in the new year. The bill has support from the state legislature’s Republican leadership.
But other states may not have the same easy road. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) spent a significant portion of 2023 warring with Republican lawmakers in his state’s legislature who refused to back his universal school choice efforts. Abbott has since taken a page out of the playbook of Iowa’s Reynolds and backed primary challengers against the GOP lawmakers who opposed his bill.
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“Voters are going to ensure Texas gets a new House, and Texas parents will finally get universal school choice,” DeAngelis said.
“Conservatives have woken up to the leftist capture of too many government schools,” he added. “Republicans now have a very easy choice: Side with parents and their own party platform or [American Federation of Teachers President] Randi Weingarten and the Democrats.”
