Chapter 8: School Choice by the Numbers

Educational vouchers continue to stimulate political debate and spawn research and advocacy papers from think tanks, despite their limited nature in public elementary and secondary education in the United States. A recent report by Susan Aud, published by the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation, indicates that since 1999-2000 there has been relatively large growth nationally in the use of publicly financed vouchers, with enrollments increasing from around 10,000 to more than 100,000 by 2005-06.¹ While this is a ten-fold increase, the overall number is very small; 100,000 students represents a paltry 0.2% of 2005 U.S. public school and enrollment (over 48 million) and just 1.58% of estimated private school enrollment.²