Private school tuition is lower in states with school choice: Study
Jeremiah Poff
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The tuition rates at private schools are lower in states with school choice programs, a study found.
According to a review of data by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, private school tuition in states with school choice increased by 15% over the past 10 years, while tuition in states that did not have school choice increased by 28%.
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The report, which was written by Heritage Foundation education scholars Lindsey Burke, Jason Bedrick, and Jay Greene, assessed the growth of tuition in states with and without school choice programs over the past 10 years.
“The data show that, overall, the adoption of private school choice policies does not elevate tuition rates,” the authors wrote. “If anything, the estimated effect shows that enacting school choice results in private schools charging lower tuitions than they otherwise would, although that effect is not statistically significant.”
According to the report, states that had school choice in the 2013-2014 school year had an average tuition of $10,101, which increased to $11,657 in 2022-2023. Meanwhile, states without school choice increased from $9,388 to $11,982 in the same time frame.
The report’s authors noted that the findings fly in the face of conventional free market orthodoxy that dictates that higher demand for private education would necessitate an increase in tuition. Critics of school choice have often said that allowing the use of taxpayer funds to pay for private education will inevitably lead to an increase in private school tuition.
But, the authors wrote, the key difference is that school choice is introducing competition against public education, which is already entirely funded by taxpayers. This contrasts significantly with the nation’s higher education system, which has never been fully subsidized but has seen tuition rates soar as the federal government has provided grants and subsidized loans.
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“Nearly nine of 10 K–12 students attend schools that are entirely subsidized and run by the government,” they wrote. “School choice policies introduce competition to a system that is fundamentally uncompetitive. It does not follow, therefore, that subsidies that simultaneously introduce market forces in K–12 education must follow the same pattern as subsidies in higher education.”
A number of states have enacted universal school choice in the last year, including Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Utah, and Arkansas.