{T} he school-choice movement has entered a new phase: defending our victories.

The past two years have seen unprecedented progress toward letting families pick the schools that are best for their children. Most notably, some 13 states have passed Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), with several more potentially following suit this year. ESAs typically give families thousands of dollars to spend on their children’s education, opening the door to more tailored learning options that put them on the best path in life. While these victories should be celebrated, school-choice opponents are already fighting to roll them back. ESAs need to be implemented flawlessly so that it’s much harder to take away families’ newfound freedom.

I say this as someone who’s seen what happens when school-choice programs aren’t implemented well. As CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute in 2017, I supported the creation of the Illinois tax-credit scholarship program, Invest in Kids. While the program is now famous because Democrats recently let it expire, the truth is that school-choice advocates failed to rally Illinoisans around it. The program was complicated, which limited its growth and the number of children who benefited. We needed a simpler policy and a relentless moral argument to make it unassailable.

Blessedly, ESAs are simpler than tax-credit scholarships, and they have the potential to be far more transformative. Yet many parents aren’t aware they exist, much less how to use them. While some states have seen soaring demand — Florida already has more than 400,000 students with ESAs — others are lagging behind. West Virginia’s universal ESA saw only 3,600 applications in its first year and 6,300 applications in its second year. Arkansas initially saw only 5,000 applications, despite having the funds for 1,500 more and no cap starting in 2025.

States need to ensure that every family discovers this option, not least because lower signups fuel opponents’ argument that ESAs are unnecessary. A low take-up rate also fuels opponents’ claim that ESAs are somehow discriminatory — the central claim of a nationwide union-backed campaign that launched Monday. States must heavily invest in marketing campaigns to spread the word, not just for one or two years, but on an ongoing basis. That’s key to informing families who move into a state about their options, as well families with young children reaching school age.

It’s equally important to forcefully defend the broad spending that ESAs allow. Parents, not state bureaucrats or school administrators, best understand their children’s educational strengths and needs, which run the gamut from specific subjects to physical activity to home economics. Yet without a strong public defense of parents’ right to spend ESA funding on a wide range of educational products and services, opponents are more likely to convince voters that parents are wasting state money.

Arizona’s attorney general, a Democrat elected after ESAs passed, has already launched an investigation into the state’s program. Yet the Arizona state auditor general has found only one instance of a “successful transaction at an unapproved merchant,” at a cost of $30. More states need to be prepared to rebut such misleading and ideologically motivated attacks.

Finally, states must make families’ experience seamless by investing in the right technology. Many parents choose ESAs because they want to avoid the bureaucratic, inefficient, and often outdated approach at public schools. They deserve better than paper applications and websites with clip art. As Manhattan Institute scholars wrote last summer, “We fear a program in which 100,000 families want to participate but cannot log in to the payment platform, or cannot track their expenditures, or cannot promptly pay the educational providers helping their children.” The promise of ESAs is that they can make an instant difference in a child’s education, which states must deliver.

Those of us who’ve spent decades promoting school choice should feel the pressure to defend our victories, which were won through enormous hard work. We know ESAs are infinitely superior to the status quo, and polls consistently show that families overwhelmingly support their newfound freedom. Yet opponents will use every missed opportunity and misspent dollar to shift public opinion, with the goal of destroying educational freedom before it can fully take root. The school-choice movement must recognize that our work is far from over. In fact, the hard work of empowering families and uplifting students has only just begun.