School choice brings higher grades for public schools, new data finds

Public schools perform better when they face competition from private schools in their district, EdChoice said Tuesday in its annual 123s of School Choice report.

“What we’re trying to do with the 123s is give you a general sense of what the research looks like,” EdChoice Senior Research Analyst John Kristof said in a webinar about the report’s release. “We’re trying to give you a whole history of school choice research and give a holistic perspective on what school choice success looks like.”

The report’s eighth edition compiles three decades of research from roughly 200 studies on private school education. It aims to help families and lawmakers better understand the data surrounding school choice, especially on issues such as parental satisfaction, graduation rates, financial impact and test scores.

School choice gives parents public funding to use at the school that best fits their child, including private and religious schools. More than 1.5 million students use school choice programs nationwide across 35 states.

This year, EdChoice added three new studies examining the financial benefits and costs of school choice scholarships in Arkansas and Arizona. According to the report, Arkansas’ Education Freedom Accounts saved the state 18% during the 2024-25 school year, while another study found Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts cost the state $358 million, although EdChoice questioned that study’s accuracy.

During the webinar, Kristof pushed back on several common arguments against educational freedom.

Some critics argue school choice hurts children “left behind” in public schools, he said. But students in public schools facing private-school competition were more likely to earn higher test scores, graduate from high school, enroll in college and complete college than students without that competition, Kristof said, citing the report’s data.

“We received overwhelming results suggesting not just null but positive impacts on public school students,” he said.

Kristof also rejected claims that school choice increases racial segregation, again citing the report.

“School choice leads to much more integrated and much more diverse classrooms,” he said, adding that Ohio private schools have reported some improvement in diversity.

Kristof said private schools also tend to be safer. Concerns such as bullying and crime play a major role in parents’ decisions to move their children to private schools, he said, and multiple studies found those schools are safer than public schools.

Test scores are not parents’ top priority when deciding where to send their children, Kristof said, and they are not the best measure of success. Instead, parents are more interested in whether students finish high school, pursue higher education and graduate from college.

“All three measurements have substantial and significant improvements for students who are using private school choice programs,” he said. “They specifically say this shows that the test score is not a good indicator of how well a program is working.”