This is the Cator Daily Podcast for Friday, December 22nd,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Educational Freedom advanced significantly this year,

making this year yet another year of school choice

with numerous states joining the ranks of those offering robust school choice to

all kids. Cato adjunct scholar Jason Bedrick has assembled an educational freedom report card for

states on behalf of the Heritage Foundation. We discussed what he found.

2023 has been hailed, perhaps by you, definitely by others as a year of universal school choice, of states adopting many states, adopting very broad programs that apply to in

like the case of West Virginia, hundreds of thousands of young people,

although they adopted their program a couple years ago, but very broad applicability

to educational freedom opportunities for young people.

What do we know about sort of which states have done the most,

which states have done the least,

who are the biggest gainers and losers in terms of educational freedom across the U.S.

Sure, yeah, 2023, certainly a banner year, biggest year that the education choice movement

has ever had, which is something that I've said several years in a row now and I've been

correct every year that that is the case we just keep

breaking records just to give you a sense three years ago there was not a

single state that had a universal education choice program.

And two years ago, West Virginia was the first one with their Hope Scholarship, followed last year by Arizona, which

expanded the education savings account program and it had for a decade, expanded eligibility to all students. This year we got up to nine

states with universal eligibility or that are on their path to universal eligibility that are phasing in over a few years.

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