The CHOOSE Act, which gives Alabama families public money to pay for private education, will expand next year, when the income cap for eligible families is lifted.
The current school year is the second one for the CHOOSE Act. The number of participating students increased by almost 50% this year, and participation could double or triple next school year. Gov. Kay Ivey predicted this ramp up back in 2024, after she signed the CHOOSE Act into law.
“The number of applications will only grow in the next two years as program eligibility becomes fully universal,” Ivey said. “Clearly, tax-paying Alabama families want school choice.”
Through the CHOOSE Act, families receive funds to pay for tuition, fees and other education-related expenses for children in kindergarten through 12th grade. They get up to $7,000 per year for each student enrolled in a participating school, and up to $2,000 per year for each homeschooled child, with a $4,000-per-family cap.
Stephanie Smith, president and CEO of the Alabama Policy Institute, which helped write the CHOOSE Act, said parents should be able to choose where their children go to school and shouldn't be restrained by where they can afford to live.
“There are parents that are opting out of the larger public system in order to get a tailored education that makes sense for their child,” she said.
Public data compiled by the Associated Press and WBHM show who is using CHOOSE Act dollars through the first two years of the program.
Most awards go to students in private or home schools
Both school years, the vast majority of students using the funds were already attending private or home schools.
That’s fueled criticism that public funds are mainly going to families that could already afford private education versus to the low-income families the act purports to prioritize.
“We're really subsidizing kids who would otherwise still be in that private school,” said Carol Gundlach, a policy advocate with Alabama Arise.
While public schools can participate in the program, they can only charge tuition for students who live outside their attendance districts. Only 179 of the 34,332 students using CHOOSE Act funds this school year are attending public schools. And only 10 public school systems have opted into the program versus about 300 private schools. Smith said the Alabama Policy Institute is encouraging more public schools to participate.
The data also reveals students who were already attending private or home schools were significantly more likely to be awarded CHOOSE Act funds.
For kids who were enrolled in public schools when they applied, about half were awarded funds this school year. But for kids already in private schools or being educated at home, about 70% and 80%, respectively, received funding. The reason for this difference is unclear since the state should approve applications for all students who meet the eligibility requirements.
The governor's office didn't address the award gap between public and private school applicants, but Mike Lewis, deputy communications director, said the most common reasons the state could deem a student ineligible include a family’s income exceeding the current cap, the family not residing in Alabama, an incomplete application and the student already receiving funding through a similar program.
Smith said the application process doesn’t restrict public school students.
“We want it to just be whoever wants to utilize the program, whether or not they're currently homeschooling, currently in private school, not even in school because their kid’s coming into kindergarten,” Smith said.
She said parents of students attending public schools might be applying for them to attend neighboring public schools that don’t participate in the CHOOSE Act program.
Gundlach said she suspects families of public school students are less likely to complete the application because they become aware, during the application process, of barriers to private school entry.
For kids whose applications are approved, gaps exist among which types of students end up using the funds they were awarded. To use the funds, a family has to activate a child’s account by uploading proof of enrollment in a participating school.
This year, 96% of those already attending private schools used the funds, compared with 65% of students who had been attending public schools. And 84% of white students accessed the money during the 2025-2026 school year, compared with 65% of Black students. That gap did narrow this school year, with about 95% of white students accessing the funds they were awarded versus 82% of Black students.
Gundlach said obstacles involving admissions requirements, transportation and costs exceeding CHOOSE Act awards could have prevented families from enrolling children.
“Parents may want to put their child in a private school, but they may not be able to find one they can access or afford,” she said. “And of course, at some point, the private schools are full.”
A spokesperson for the Alabama Revenue Department, which administers the CHOOSE Act, said most reasons families didn’t use the funds could center on parental choice. He suggested parents might decide to leave their kids in public school, choose a nonparticipating school or relocate.
What will happen next school year?
No one disagrees that the number of students using CHOOSE Act funds will increase next year, when an income cap of 300% of the poverty rate for families will phase out. But the extent of the expansion and its implications aren’t known.
Smith said private schools up to this point have had enough slots for students using CHOOSE Act funds, but she thinks that will change.
“The capacity problem, I think, is going to be an issue, especially in certain areas, which is part of a project that we're working on to help churches and synagogues and community centers who have space to help them start schools in the space in the community,” she said.
Gundlach said the expansion could siphon significant funds from state coffers, because there isn’t a limit on the amount of funding the Legislature could allocate to the CHOOSE Act. Less than half of students in private schools this year are using CHOOSE Act funds, she said, and all of them should be eligible next school year.
“Frankly, I would expect what would happen is children who are not in public schools, and maybe have never been in public schools, would simply get more taxpayer dollars to pay for their education in private schools,” she said.
Ongoing debate
Gundlach said whether tax dollars should be given to individuals to spend as they choose or directed toward the public good is a philosophical question. The CHOOSE Act and similar laws in other states have sparked debate over this question, and that conversation continues.
When a family moves a child out of an Alabama public school using CHOOSE Act funds, that school loses about $7,000 per year in state funding.
Gundlach said that means less money to pay teachers, nurses and bus drivers and to provide other services.
“If classroom sizes go up, if children have more trouble getting to school, if they don't get to see a school nurse or a school counselor, then we're disinvesting our future,” she said.
Smith doesn’t see public schools being affected in this way. She said those schools retain local funding when a student leaves, and the CHOOSE Act hasn’t significantly reduced public-school funding so far. She also argues it could encourage public schools to improve.
“They adapt and they innovate and they try to do different things to retain their students,” she said. “And so it's more of a introducing the free market to the system. And what that does is it elevates everyone.”
Smith said that for individual students, the benefits of school choice can include more personalized settings for students with special needs or anxiety or who have been bullied. She said it also can mean access to specialized career-training programs, and it gives parents who aren’t happy with public-school curricula other options.
“Some people, when looking over their child's shoulder during COVID, did not like the curriculum, didn't like some of the information that their kids were receiving, and want a more tailored education for their student,” she said.
Many of these same things raise concerns for Gundlach.
Private schools don’t have state curriculum requirements. They aren’t required to serve students with disabilities. And school performance isn’t tracked under the same standards used for public schools, she said.
“Public schools are compared to each other and compared to national standards and are very carefully evaluated for what the kids are learning,” she said.
Private schools test and evaluate students based on many different standards, Gundlach said. One option for annual testing that the state gives schools participating in the CHOOSE Act is “a standardized assessment aligned with the school’s curriculum.” And there’s no requirement for the state to analyze or publish scores.
“So we really can't tell whether or not they're getting an equivalent education to what children in public schools are getting,” Gundlach said.
The charts in this story were generated using Google Gemini based on data obtained by the Associated Press and WBHM. The images have been reviewed by
newsroom staff for accuracy.
