In the Nitty Gritty of Education Choice
In this episode of the Future of Education, host Michael Horn converses with Patricia Levesque, CEO of Excel, and Ben DeGrow, Senior Policy Director for Education Choice at Excel, about the rapid expansion and nuanced implementation of education choice policies in the United States. They begin by noting a major inflection point: more than 30 states now offer some form of private‑school vouchers, tax‑credit scholarships, or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), and a dozen states provide universal access regardless of income. The discussion moves into the core design questions that states face when crafting choice programs. Patricia outlines a continuum of academic accountability—from light‑touch home schooling to fully regulated public schools—and argues for norm‑referenced assessments, citing Florida’s long‑standing Tax Credit Scholarship program as evidence of strong outcomes, high parental and private‑school participation, and balanced oversight. Ben explains why norm‑referenced tests are preferred for comparability and flexibility, and he adds that ESA policies must also embed fiscal guardrails to manage how families can spend funds on tuition, tutoring, therapy, technology, and other services. They debate who should administer ESAs, concluding that nonprofit administrators often provide mission‑driven flexibility, though state departments of education, treasury, and higher‑ed financing agencies also play roles. Provider eligibility is another focal point: strict accreditation requirements can shrink the market, while broader checklists (background checks, health and safety inspections) can expand supply, including micro‑schools and hybrid models. Funding mechanisms are examined, with examples of Florida’s integrated funding formula versus states that rely on annual legislative line‑items, and the merits of phased roll‑outs versus immediate universal rollout are weighed. The conversation also tackles tuition inflation, noting that in Florida tuition growth tracks general inflation and that public‑school teacher‑pay increases can pressure private schools to raise tuition. They stress the importance of competitive marketplaces to mitigate price gouging. Finally, Ben describes the ESA Administrator Network—a collaborative group of about 20 states that shares contracts, handbooks, implementation guides, and real‑time lessons to help newer programs launch efficiently. Throughout, the participants emphasize the need for balanced, data‑informed policies that give families choice while maintaining accountability and market health.
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Welcome to the Future of Education.
And now, here's your host, Michael Horn.
Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. And you are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through this pressing set of issues today, I'm incredibly excited. We have people I've worked with for many years, looked up to for many years, who are going to lend a lot of insight on the topic of educational choice in particular, but they could talk about so much more. So first, Patricia Levesque, the CEO of Excel, and Ed. Patricia, great to see you. Thanks for joining.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah. And then Ben degraux, the senior policy Director of Education Choice at excel, and Ed, Ben, good to see you as well.
Thanks.
Great to be with you.
Yeah. No, I've been looking forward to this conversation since y' all reached out on the topic of educational choice and the contours of that conversation and the really interesting debates that are going on right now around implementation as so many states dive into this world in a much more meaningful way over the last several years. And before we get into those conversations, maybe let's just like, zoom out. High level. Patricia, let's start with you. And then, Ben, jump in. Look, a lot of states are moving, you know, not just into school choice, educational choice. We see education savings accounts getting a lot of attention, a lot of movements toward universal choice at that. There have been movements, I think, in Tennessee and Texas in recent weeks. There were setbacks at the polls in November. How do you think? What's your current assessment? If you just look high level of where we are in the world of education choice and this movement, broadly speaking, and perhaps maybe a little bit of forecasting, where you think we will be by the end of the year?
Sure. I'll start by saying I think we are in a great position in educational choice and opportunity for families. The best that we've been in my 28 years working on this policy. Right. And Michael, me just start by saying the way you introduce this podcast, the mission of this podcast is like the mission of private school choice or educational choice. It's giving families the ability to find the best education fit for their child. So their child, because we believe kids are individuals, they're very unique, and not one system or one school is the right, best fit for every child. So empowering families with that opportunity is what we. What we like to do with policy. And we're in the best position on that in the country that we've been in and as long as I can remember.
Ben, what would you add in terms of where we are at this moment and maybe give us a sense of like how many states have moved into different, you know, really embracing real choice at this point?
Yeah, I think we're at a real major inflection point. I feel like every year we've been saying this is the year of choice for several years and every year it just seems to be more true than the year before. And I mean at XL Med we, we cover a whole gamut of choice in the public and private space. But we're just going to hone in on private education choice. We're not talking more than 30 states that are offering at least some students either voucher scholarship or tax credit scholarship from usa and we're coming up on just over a dozen states that are offering all students, regardless of income, regardless of background, access to funds. Personally, we dive into the nuances of that. It can be, you know, how much funding is available for how many students and so forth. But with states like Tennessee passing in Texas, we're on the verge of having majority of students in the United States eligible for private school choice, which is something we hardly could have imagined five years ago.
All right, so with that as backdrop, lot of momentum in this direction each year sort of surpassing the previous one as you, as you said. Ben, let's flip to implementation from the outside. I will say there are a surprising number of debates around how to put these various policies into place in the states. Let's maybe start with accountability. Patricia, you wrote what I think remains the most nuanced and thoughtful take about accountability. I use it all the time on the stump with this continuum between sort of district run public schools to public charters to full on educational choice options and how we think about accountability and transparency mechanisms in each. Just take us through your logic on that and how you think about the accountability conversation right now.
Sure. And let me put a finer point and say we're really talking about the academic accountability, right? Not fiscal or health safety, general welfare, things like that. And so we get asked often how can accelined have a position where students in the public school system should have to take a state test and there should be accountability or grading of public schools. Yet in private school choice or education choice, we advocate a more flexible norm referenced assessment model. And the answer to that is that there is a continuum of accountability versus autonomy. And so if you think about the ends of the spectrum, you have at one end a Home education, parent using their own funds to teach their own child. Right. And we would say there should be a very, very light touch of the state in that interaction between that parent and that child. From an academic accountability standpoint, the other end of the continuum you have the traditional public school system, which is the default system. It's the compulsory system. It's the system that is federal, state and local taxpayer funded. It is a system that has taxing authority and sovereign immunity protections. Right. It is the big muscular system that the state needs to ensure learning is going on. Right. That kids are learning how to read and do math because the state or another government entity is compelling you to place your child in that system and telling you which school to go to. Right. And so there's a vested interest in the state ensuring there's some academic accountability in the system. If you move along the spectrum to publicly funded private school choice, and I'd put that right about in the middle of the system, what is the right balance between academic accountability, transparency and autonomy of the, of the school? And so I would point out your listeners to the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It is the program that has been in place the longest of all the statewide school private school choice programs has served more than a million students and for 23 years only served low income students. So you have the largest, longest running program targeted for at risk kids that has had 13 years of solid academic outcomes. So by looking at norm referenced assessments, we can see that the students in that program are learning just as well or better than in many years their low income public school peers. We saw the Urban Institute do one of the longest, largest studies of 85,000 matched kids and saw incredible outcomes post high school college going rates, college completion rates. So if the largest, longest running program has good outcomes, what what does that program doing? How do we know if that program has the right balance? And I would say you look at parental participation, private school participation and outcomes which we just talked about. And if you look at the Tax Credit Scholarship program, it was always oversubscribed. There were always more parents every year that wanted to get into the program. And there was a very good balance of private school participation. So 80 plus percent of private schools in the state of Florida chose to participate in the program. That's very different than in very heavily regulated programs like the one, the Louisiana Scholarship program where barely 30% of the private schools chose to provide participate. Right. So you have strong parental participation, strong private school participation and good outcomes. Those to me give you three green check marks that, that what that program is doing has a good balance. And that program is norm referenced assessment on the students who are participating with the results reported back to the parent so they can see how their own child is doing and data reported back so the state can see how is the program doing as a whole. So we know that the taxpayer funds are being used well, and that's a really good balance.
Ben, if you want to add anything there. I guess the one question I have is, is the reason norm referenced instead of, say, criterion reference or something else? Because we really want to understand the counterfactual. Is that the reason for that? Because we want the comparison?
It definitely helps because while a lot of lawmakers want to see that direct comparison between their scholarship students and their state public school students, what a norm referenced test offers is the ability to compare with a national sample of students so we can have some credible measure. But it also allows schools to choose tests that more closely align with their curriculum. So they are actually offering, you know, genuine options and alternatives for students and inviting participation for these schools into these programs. So it is less of a deterrent than mandating the state test as the sole instrument. I would also add, when we think about accountability, the evolution from the traditional voucher scholarship into the ESA has put an added emphasis also on the need for fiscal accountability. As we think about what kind of guardrails do you need to put in place as families have more flexibility to spend money on things beyond just private school tuition, but also an array of goods and services. And every state, as I set up an ESA program, has to think through these things. And part of the work we do in implementation and our ESA administrator network and areas like that, is to help states which are already, the administrators are already very focused on making sure those guardrails are high, is to help them balance that consideration with the need of families who are driving the creation of these programs. And that's probably an area we can delve into more.
Well, I think that's a perfect launching point, right, because that's one of the big conversations. Maybe let's start like where these ESA programs even live and how you manage them and how you help families access the dollars and their set of choices. We see, you know, step up for students in Florida. We see Odyssey in other states some places. The Department of Ed is trying to do this work directly. How do you all think about where these programs live and who manages them?
It's one of the first and most important decisions to be made when crafting an ESA policy and one that gets easily Overlooked, especially in the early days, state lawmakers, policymakers would think, well, we just obviously put this in the Department of Education, right, because it's an education program within our ESA administrator network, which encompasses about 20 states. And we bring these program managers in to share best practices, to share technical resources with one another, hear the same common issues and concerns that they're dealing with. We have representatives from departments of Education, we have Departments of Treasury, we have agencies that oversee that some states do, the higher ed financing authorities. And we also have nonprofit organizations like you referenced, Step up for Students, Children's Scholarship Fund and most recently ACE Scholarships. We have over time come to see that these nonprofit agencies are probably the preferable option to run them because they're not only mission driven, they get involved in this because they believe in the power of opportunity and choice for kids and families. We also have the flexibility to adapt to the needs as these programs scale up. That includes personnel decisions about contracting out to review expenses or other things along those lines. So flexibility, mission driven. We like to see nonprofits, but we'll work with all agencies and help them work on focusing on that student centered, customer driven approach.
One of the other things that this then raises the window is right, what can you spend on how far afield, right how wide you make the sets of choices. You talked about balancing the desires of parents with the state's concern. I imagine some of what Patricia was talking about in terms of what's the participation of various providers is also an interesting data point. And thinking about getting that balance right, what's your own take around how flexible and how much freedom you give families to spend on whatever they want, that that connects to education. And then my assumption, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, is the further afield you get out from the topics that a norm reference test would measure, the less relevant those sort of external markers become. And it's more about the parent understanding. Did my child make the progress I had hoped for?
I will say we again, we would always want to focus on making sure that we're trying as a lot of our ESA administrators that we work with, their goal is to try to get to yes and help serve parents needs and make sure that they are getting the services, the goods they need, whether it's curriculum, whether it's tutoring, whether it's a therapy for a child with dyslexia or autism, transportation to an education program. Every state has a lot of the same allowable expenses, but every state's a little different in the nuance and what's allowable and what's not. And that starts in the statute and it comes down to the level, how it's interpreted at the agency that's administering. So lots of challenges. We would say do the best you can to get to. Yes, but I recognize that you need clarity for families. So if you're going to set up guardrails, and you should set up guardrails. For example, if a child needs a laptop for educational purposes, how often should they be able to purchase a laptop? Do they really need one? Every year? And an agency could say, well, we'll allow one every three years, for example, to make sure that families are balancing that the vast majority of families are legitimately working to help get goods and services to their child that they need. And so really the agency has to police the boundaries of that small percentage of people who might want to misuse the system. But we want to make sure that all those guardrails are in place. That focuses on helping families get to the.
Yes.
And Michael, I would add to that. I think Ben was focusing on, you know, those kind of discrete expenditures that are, maybe some of them are on the periphery. I would like to point out too, that what private schools are eligible is also, you know, an actual difference of opinion in some states, there are some recent states that decided, well, the way that we're going to ensure that it's a real, for real private school is the schools have to be accredited. And what that essentially does in many states is cut out half of the supply that exists in the state or even the opportunity for some of the newer types of models like micro schools to be able to participate. Whereas what you see in A state like 4, Florida is that there is more of a checklist of. Here are, let's say, the 10 things that we want to see to ensure that you are private school to participate. We want to see background checks on the, the instructional personnel, and we want to see that you've gotten your fire inspection or your health inspection or your radon inspection. There's more of a, a list of health, safety, general welfare, financial, you know, accountability type of provisions, and we do a site inspection and then, yes, you're eligible to participate. When we work with states on policy design, before it even gets to the bill passed and you're implementing, we would encourage states to be broader in the types of entities or institutions that can participate. It'll bring a healthier marketplace place into existence in your state and actually give families more, more opportunities and options. And there's still again, a balance right I think you're going to hear us say that word often. How much do you open up the market? How much do you have to do you narrow the market? So there's quote accountability. I think there's, there's a good healthy balance in all of these things.
So let's actually stay with that Patricia, because what you just raised in thinking about that balance, it suggests that maybe there's another principle as states are starting to look at this, which is, and I want to check myself here, but in the policy itself, start broad, don't over prescribe, but know that when you get into the regulation there's a good deal more work to be done. And, and that's where you know, figuring out where you're assigning the, you know, what, what entity is going to manage this, the guardrails you're going to put up. Striking the balance. Is that, is that how you would think about it? Is like start broad and then sort of hone in on, on the finer details as you get into the specifics of operationalizing. Or is there a better approach as states are looking at these various policies right now in your, in, in both of your view?
I agree. Broad is better for the, especially the places and the institutions and the tutors and the therapists that you start broader so that you have a lot of opportunity out there for families. I think what we would also say is ESAs are not brand new creations anymore. Right. They've been around for a while. You have a program like the state of Florida where there's 500,000 students that have been awarded for next school year either a full ESA or what some people call micro grants. Right. It's just for transportation or just for reading tutoring or, or math tutoring. But that's a lot of information and data over multiple years on what you know, different policy prescriptions make it easier for families to access as well as give whomever is the, you know, administering agency enough guidelines so that they know how to administer the program well and that, that goes to not only just what kind of schools, but what's the window for parents to apply? What is the order like it, I think states that prescribed specific time frames of this student gets eligible on this date before this next group. All of those add administrative challenges to getting a program off the ground or making it parent friendly. Right. Family friendly each year as parents have to enroll or re enroll their child.
I would concur. I mean there's definitely always a temptation to write legislation that can become too prescriptive. But at the Same time using that word balance, you do have to include some level of detail to identify the categories of things families can spend money on to demonstrate legislative intent. And once you get down to that next level, that's as Patricia was suggesting, the administrative challenges pop into place. For those of us who've worked in the field of policy for length of time, we always talk about how there's a gap between what's written on paper and what gets put into practice from the implementation. Now I don't see anywhere where that's more true than ESAs. We created programs that originally were designed to serve students with special needs or learning challenges in Arizona and Florida, the earliest programs really around the principle of giving families the ability to customize, recognizing that each child is unique and has individual needs. And so trying to define exactly what families can spend money on in statute is impossible. And you do the best you can to kind of identify and categorize those things. But as you get down from statute into the program rules and then to the policy handbooks and then the actual day to day decisions as they look, review expenses and things, it has to be a way to find that individual child's needs within clear, consistent, transparent guardrails. And that's. It's an ongoing challenge, but we're seeing states grow in this area and get, and get better at it over time.
Yeah. And so I guess the principles don't sort of cut off the ability to tick and tack and get it right from the get go. Start with some models that are already out there that are pretty proven at this point. One of the pieces that's getting a lot of conversation right now is around the funding piece at the moment. There's, you know, it moves beyond special needs students to universal choice. There's been a lot of conversation about, well, it says universal choice, but a lot of these programs are not funded such that they could serve every single student in the state. Or there's a lot of double funding. Right. Where we continue the funding flow to districts. We have a separate line item in effect around the ESAs that are getting created. How all do you think, you know, a state getting into this should do it? Is there a right way to maybe baby step and then grow into this? Is that an evolution or is is it get it right from the get go? How do you both think about the funding piece of this and how it should be set up?
There's, there's no one perfect script or roadmap for states, but there are some good principles for states to consider as we're going down this path and, and lots of factors are going to help determine it. Even for those who want to make the opportunity available to as many students as possible as soon as possible, we recommend states, you know, step back and think about the fiscal impacts and the administrative challenges. So phasing in a program over multiple years is something several states have tried, and that usually just means phasing in the eligibility. So in year one, you are only including students up to a certain income level or students who previously attended a public school or otherwise limiting, you know, maybe the, the amount or the number of slots available. We don't want that to deter the ultimate goal, which is to create a system that's open to everyone and a system that creates a fair, equitable funding for students regardless of which path their families choose for them, even if it takes three or four years to get there. The other thing we're looking at more and more seriously is helping states think about. And some states are doing this to some degree, but most states have a lot of work to do is serving the students who bring like, low income challenges, learning challenges, and helping to fund them at a rate. That's right. Reflects that to make them more, you know, palatable, to have more options to, to access private schools. But also they may need more services along the lines of tutoring or just support navigating the system. So building that phase and plan, building an equitable system are two of the things we help states think about.
And I would say over the long run, you, you, you need to contemplate where do you want to be 10 years from now? Right. Do you want to. I think Florida is one of the few states where the funding is built into the funding formula. So when the legislature meets, they're basically funding the public school and educational opportunities in one funding formula. And it's based on estimates of, you know, how many students are going to be in, in each of the different systems. And it, it's more of an automatic process where in many states it's a line item that has to be adjusted every single year that you're in a legislative session. And I think those, it's not that those are bad. I mean, I think it's wonderful that that's the way programs have been able to get off the ground. But if you really want to have a system where it's going to grow based on where parents decide and how the systems evolve, it probably needs to be more of an automatic type of formula that's set up what Ben talked about in either system in the public system and in your choice system, students that have higher needs, low income students or special needs students should generate more funding, whether they're going to a public school, a public charter, or taking a scholarship with them to a, to a private opportunity. Those types of things are going to be really important to have built into your, your funding streams and how you think about having the program work.
Yeah, it strikes me that it allows for scale. Right. Organically as demand grows in either sector, I guess in either direction, but particularly in the choice one. It also occurs to me and Patricia, I'd love your take on this, that Florida, because of just the number of years of choice that you all have had. Like if I think back to how Florida Virtual School got started back in the 90s or early 2000s, if I'm, if memory serves, it got written, I think into the state funding formula in like 03 or something like that. But it was still like a hold harmless double funding for like some number of years, I want to say. And so maybe that's like a baby step. And Florida, just because of the experience in years that has been able to really move to that full fledged model that you'd want to see ultimately. Thoughts on that?
I do think started small and slow, you know, very, very small. Right. The first private school choice in the state of Florida, that was called the Opportunity Scholarship Program, only for students in failing schools. I think the first year had 42 students in it. Right. The first in Florida, special needs voucher. The first year only had two students in it because it was, you know, assigned to one county. But then the programs grew, the eligibility grew, or the region grew, or allowing a student to stay in the program if they met initial eligibility requirements, all of those things allowed the program to grow slowly. And so what you see in Florida is a really mature university ecosystem. I think for other states that are going from zero to universal in one or two years, they, they might have more hiccups like normal things like how do you make sure the private schools feel comfortable participating and receiving public funding? How do you communicate? How do parents find out about these programs? Programs? A lot of those things. There, there, there's going to be a lot of really heavy lifting quickly for implementation. And that's what makes, I think the work that Ben does. Having a network of mature ESA administrators and the very young new ones learning and sharing with each other. What are those best practices? What do you have in your handbook? How do you define what we sometimes refer to as gray area expenses? How do you treat them? Arizona versus how do you treat them? Florida and it can really educate a new administrator as they're having to make some of these decisions quite quickly in order to get a new program off the ground.
Ben, maybe just talk a little bit about that work and what it looks like on the ground. Right. And for those unfamiliar with what you're doing with those states and how they're supporting each other, just to give a view of, as Patricia just said, to rapidly. Right. Get these programs off the ground when you know, it passes in legislature and a couple months later you expect to have something up and going for families.
Yeah, it's a venture that takes a lot of humility and cooperation because no state has really mastered this and completely figured this out. But as Patricia is suggesting, some states are more mature in the things they've learned and are able to share those lessons with others. So we work through something called the ESA Administrator Network, which Accelene created back in 2020. And we're now up to 20 states participating in any, any state that's kind of overseeing a complex parent directed spending program. Whether it's a full fledged ESA where families can use their funds for private school tuition and, or these other education expenses, or we have a handful of states that operate micro grants or supplemental essays that are smaller allotments where families can just spend on certain services. There's a lot to learn. So we come together multiple times a year with the group and share our learnings and have them share formal learnings in these settings. And just a lot of conversation. The feedback we get is all the conversations that they have with each other during the off program time is where they get a lot of value out of it. But we also try to keep in touch with them in multiple ways. And then we collect the technical resources and documents and things that it takes to get these programs off the ground. Whether it's contracts with vendors, RFPs to help secure the vendors, whether it's handbooks for parents and providers and marketing materials and half a dozen other things. We collect and share those resources with new states, especially as they're coming on board, and we try to give it to them in small doses to help them think about the next step. We also came up with an ESA implementation guide drawing on the wisdom of our some of our veteran states and leaders. And we use that as well, kind of highlight the steps, all the steps you have to think about to get from we passed the legislation to now we can start a program and there's a lot, a lot to think about and a lot of Lessons that we are continuously learning alongside them.
I'll give you one specific example. I won't name the state. There's a state that had a brand new ESA and the administrator was really concerned and said we're going to need to delay the launch of the ESA because we did an open call for providers, vendors to get signed up. And we, and we only had a handful of vendors signed up. We can't launch the program if we don't have vendors signed up pre approved in the system. And it was really helpful to have another state that had one year of implementation already under their belt to be able to say, don't worry about getting vendors or providers pre approved. The parents will bring you the providers. Right? The parents, once they choose a school or a tutor or wherever they want, they'll make sure their provider gets into your system. So it was really reassuring to have that lived experience of that, you know, one year more mature administrator giving the new one kind of that reassurance. Don't worry about that one. You're, you're fine, you're fine.
It's a great story and I love it also because it shows that, you know, we don't have to have all the answers from the top, the bottom right. The parents, the actual demand can, can bring us the supply if you will, over time as well. Last question, maybe as we wrap up here, there are several other areas I know we could geek out on and work through. The other one that I've heard come up in a few different ways recently is around financial safeguards and specifically like curtailing providers from unreasonably inflating their tuition. And on one side you have folks saying like, hey, and I literally just heard this anecdote about a provider in Florida actually being like, I'm raising my tuition by 7K or whatever, you know, the amount of the ESA because now I can, there's, there's public money. I'd be foolish to just leave that on the table. And then some states that have said, look, if we see a price hike like that, we're going to take action. You're, you're not, you know, that's not okay. And others being like it should work out in the end because if you're talking about an esa, it's effectively a wallet. And so parents, you know, supply, demand can sort of take over over time. And maybe they do that in short term, but over time, right, it should rebalance. How do you guys think about that conversation and, and, and where states ought to land because it, it pertains directly to the ultimate thing around how do we get supply and really participating supply right in, in these marketplaces?
I'll take, I'll take the first crack at it. And I think one of the lessons we take away from is, well, first of all, there might always be isolated operators who will try to do that. If you look at the larger data trends, what we see in Florida, for example, is more correlation between rates of inflation and tuition than we do the advent of scholarship program or no scholarship program or universal access to scholarship programs. There's basically two effects that work, and this is why we push states toward a more open, competitive model. There's, of course, the subsidy effect you talk about. As you give families more access to funds and they have more funds to put in the marketplace, it can encourage providers to raise the price. But there's also competitive effects that can offset that. So if we, if we set up a program like Florida or Arizona or Utah, New Hampshire, a lot, much of these states where families can use the funds not just on a narrow set of private schools, but a broad marketplace that includes private schools of different varieties, as well as micro schools and hybrid options and homeschooling and customized services. The more competition you put into the market, the more it deters individual providers from trying to game the system. So there's never going to be a perfect solution. But an open approach like some of these states are doing is one way we see to really to address that problem.
Yeah, I would agree with Ben and just say that we hear those anecdotal stories, right? There's one school here that's going to immediately raise tuition to eat up the full amount of the esa. But the only state where we have a lot of data over many years is Florida. And so looked at 11 years worth of almost 2000 private schools and looked at their actual tuition increases based on the data, and we looked at the average increase each year and then looked at the prior 12 months of inflation data. And it's exactly what Ben said, is that private schools really, you can see their tuition increases are very much in line with inflation. The other thing that when we talked with private school operators in the state of Florida and asked about what's going on with tuition, this is what we're hearing from lawmakers. And they pointed out something else really interesting, which is in the state of Florida, at the same time lawmakers have been increasing educational opportunities through universal ESAs, they've also been purposefully putting billions of dollars into the public school system to create higher minimum teacher pay in the public school system. And so the private schools have been saying the only way we are, we're losing teachers to the public system because their salaries can be so much more because taxpayers are funding. Right. Greater teacher salaries in the public system. The only way we can be competitive and keep or recruit teachers is to increase tuition because that's primary primarily how we fund teacher pay. So it's really interesting, a lot of the states that are doing ESAs for parents on one hand, are also doing increases in minimum or starting teacher pay, which distorts the market a little bit as well.
It's interesting and it makes me think sort of in the higher ed world also, right. In terms of title $4 federal financial aid, but those can only be spent on colleges and universities. It strikes me that the other thing that's unique about this space is it's not just a private school option, but I could be going to a micro school for two days, tutoring for two days, some menu of services, and sort of the fragmentation of that can actually really be, I would think, a downward price. And then as you said, Patricia, at the same time, sort of competing with, with the public marketplace choices for teachers in terms of where they're teaching. It's a very complicated landscape to almost overthink as a policymaker.
Right. And when you look at, even in that Florida data, even though you're looking at averages and average private school tuition increases each year, you can see also by what percent of private schools didn't raise tuition at all in a given year? Right. And so, and what is the base that their tuition is starting out from? So a, a Catholic school that was only charging $3,500 a year. Right. It looks like a huge tuition increase for them to just do $1,000 increase, but it's still half of what the scholarship amount is or what the average is. I think it, it becomes really risky if policymakers want to put in artificial caps that could have such a different impact based on all the different range of providers and really can't take into account his historical increases or what was the base that you even started from. All of those types of things will only depress the vibrant, the vibrancy or the ability to have a really vibrant market. And we have to recognize that there is still a governor on all of this, and that's the parent. The parent knows how much their scholarship was awarded for. They know what the private school tuition was before the scholarships came into effect. And they're going to be pretty upset at the private school where they thought that they were only going to have, you know, the delta of what they were going to have to cover was only going to be $1,000. And now it's not. You know, there's parents actually are quite vocal on this stuff with policymakers and with their private schools because now they have the power, right, to be vocal on behalf of their child.
A lot of checks and balances built in there. I think that's a good place to leave this conversation. It's been a whirlwind through a lot of issues that get a lot more complex that you all are working on on a daily basis. I know, but just really appreciate it. I think one thing I will also take away from this is not only is there not a one size fits all kid, if you will, there's not one size fits all suppliers. And so to have a one size fits all rule to treat them has some pretty big downsides. And same place on the academic accountability conversation, really understanding the context is very important as we think about putting policies in place. So, Patricia, Ben, really appreciate your time and the work you continue to do. And for all you tuning in, we'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.
Sam.
