School choice – specifically, families able to select private K‑12 schools with publicly connected funding – may seem like a new idea. Public schools have long dominated education, and 70 percent of American children attend assigned public schools. Many people may have also heard that the drive for choice started in response to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that long-standing, forced racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. While some southern states responded by creating programs for families to choose private schools, calls for choice long predate “segregation academies.”
As the timeline shows, private school choice has a long history, both as an idea and in practice.
Inclusion Guidelines
The timeline includes examples of people advocating for equal treatment of private schooling, typically in the form of subsidies directly to schools to make them less expensive, or funding to families to help cover charges. The latter are probably what most people associate with school choice, and take the following forms:
- Vouchers
- Personal-use tax credits or deductions
- Credits or deductions for taxpayers who donate to scholarship funds
- Government-filled education savings accounts
- Credits for taxpayers who donate to fill education savings accounts
The timeline primarily contains developments in the United States, but also some international. The latter do not capture the full extent of choice outside of U.S. borders.
The timeline excludes charter schools, which are public-private hybrids, and state textbook and transportation funds that private schools can sometimes use. The goal of the latter is not choice but to provide specific resources. Rosenwald schools, established for African Americans between 1912 and 1932 via private and public funding, are not included because the undertaking was restricted to erecting buildings, not providing continual choice.
Most individual programs are not listed. There are currently 80 private school choice programs in 30-plus states, but only those that are first of their kind – voucher, education savings account, tax credit – or were subjects of U.S. Supreme Court cases, are included.
The timeline is likely incomplete. Please contact Cato Center for Educational Freedom Director Neal McCluskey with any addition or correction recommendations.
