Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina have topped an annual ranking of states by how much freedom they give parents to select the best school for their children.
The conservative Center for Education Reform’s “Parent Power! Index” reported this week that recent school choice laws have also improved the standing of other states, including Texas.
“Smart state leaders across the country are listening and working to enact laws that allow for a proliferation of diverse educational options,” said Jeanne Allen, the center’s founding CEO and a former Reagan Education Department official. “When strong education freedom laws reflect parents’ demands for flexibility and innovation, dynamic new school models emerge — and families, students and communities thrive.”
The center said it based 42.5% of each ranking on the extent to which a state’s school vouchers, tax credits and educational savings accounts give parents the same funding for alternative schooling that they’d receive at their public school district.
Another 42.5% was based on whether each state’s public charter school laws “create a healthy, flourishing environment for charter schools to open and deliver great options for students.”
The remaining 15% of each ranking came from evaluations of states’ encouragement of innovations such as “blended or hybrid models, career and technical education, digitally based and/or virtual learning, as well as personalized, mastery or competency-based approaches.”
Overall, more than 100 data points related to how each state spends its education tax dollars and legislates parent access to alternative schooling went into the rankings.
The list comes as the Trump administration and a growing number of GOP-led states have enacted policies redirecting federal and state education tax dollars to parents.
President Trump has pledged to sign tax credit legislation pending in Congress that would let taxpayers deduct up to 10% of their adjusted gross income — and corporations up to 5% of their taxable income — as donations to private K-12 scholarship funds. Twenty-one states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona, allow similar deductions on state tax returns.
Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, a Colorado nonprofit distributing private school scholarships to needy families in 12 states, said the Center for Education Reform rankings offer parents “a critical resource” to navigate changing state and federal school choice policies.
“This report recognizes a critical truth that school choice is not about defunding public schools, but about putting power into the hands of parents who understand the unique learning needs of their children better than bureaucrats,” Mr. Rainey said.
The report bumped up Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas from last year’s rankings due to their passage of school choice legislation.
North Dakota moved into the top 15 after it became the 47th state to authorize charter schools, which are independently managed public campuses. Only Nebraska, South Dakota and Vermont do not allow charters.
Texas jumped from 28th last year to 13th this year after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the nation’s largest school voucher program into law last month, authorizing education savings accounts for parents to spend roughly $10,000 a year of state funds on alternatives to public schooling.
Patrick J. Wolf, a University of Arkansas education reform professor who studies school choice efforts, said a “major strength” of the Parent Power rankings is that they include an evaluation of each state’s educational innovations — something other lists don’t.
“Innovative education providers and support organizations increase the power of parents to influence the education of their children,” Mr. Wolf said.
At the same time, he noted the limitation that the study’s rankings weigh public charter and private education equally, despite more children attending private schools.
“I’d like to see the index weights better reflect the size and scope of the various school choice options,” the professor added.
Roughly 90% of the nation’s K-12 students attend traditional public school districts.
Democrats, teachers’ unions and rural voters without private education options have long accused school choice programs of siphoning vital resources away from struggling public campuses.
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, have condemned the resurgence of school choice legislation under Mr. Trump as a campaign to undermine public education.
Randi Weingarten, AFT president, plans to protest the president’s education policies as part of a nationwide Flag Day rally on Saturday.
“It’s about strong public schools, supporting working families, and our fundamental freedoms,” she posted Tuesday on X. “This day of action is about making our democracy work for all.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.