In states with universal programs, Wolf at Arkansas foresees a gradual increase in the number of students who participate, eventually attracting 15% to 20% of all students in a state. That wouldn’t be the end of public schools, but it would mark a significant increase in the number of students who choose their own educational path with the support of the state.

A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education. 

Eight states – including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia – have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. 

What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or ESAs. They give families much more freedom than traditional tuition vouchers, depositing state funds into private accounts to spend on virtually anything related to learning, from homeschooling and online classes to therapy and supplies. 

The universal laws amount to a bracing change in school choice. Such programs have existed for decades but until now have been limited to a narrow set of students, such as those from low-income families, or in poor performing public schools, or in need of special education. 

By making all students eligible, regardless of their ability to pay for a private education, universal programs in the eight states expand the pool of possible participants by about 4 million students, according to an estimate by EdChoice, an advocacy group. That’s a 40% increase in eligibility since 2021, bringing the total to 13.6 million students after the programs start in the next few years. 

School choice advocates – led by grassroots conservative Christian groups, big money political lobbies like American Federation for Children, and education nonprofits like EdChoice – call the universal programs a major milestone in their long and contentious battle for parental rights. They argue that parents, not the government, are best suited to direct the education of their children and should receive taxpayer support to do so as a competitive check on public schools they also pay for but consider failing or inadequate. 

But over the years, school choice has suffered from a low participation rate, with fewer than 1 million students partaking in state programs today, mostly to attend religous schools, in a nation with about 50 million public school students. The big question is whether universal laws, paired with the flexibility of ESAs to customized learning, will spur a major exodus to private schooling. 

“Universal choice is really a significant move beyond the existing programs we have now,” says Professor Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas, who has studied school choice for 25 years. “In terms of regulating education providers, this is a much stronger move into the free-market provision of K-12.” 

Why Now? 

This sudden success reflects both long-term trends and recent events. Americans’ satisfaction in public education has slowly eroded over the last two decades. And during the pandemic, student test scores in math and English plummeted as a result of ineffective remote learning, with satisfaction dropping sharply from a majority before COVID to a mere 42% last year, according to Gallup. 

Advocates in Republican-controlled states seized the opportunity created by COVID, when teachers unions blocked the reopening of schools, spurring parents to search for educational options, including homeschooling, to keep their kids from falling behind. 

“Parents saw there were many ways to educate kids,” says Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice. “It opened up a world of possibilities for them.” 

At the same time, the spread of a woke curriculum following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 provided some parents with another reason to seek alternatives to public schools. In cities from Seattle to Buffalo, students have been taught a version of history casting white Americans as privileged oppressors and blacks and Latinos as powerless victims of structural racism. 

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made these two related educational crusades ‒ curbing political correctness and passing universal choice ‒ his own in the runup to his campaign for president. In 2022 he spearheaded a Florida ban on teaching that America is racist at its core, and also won restrictions on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – prohibitions embraced by several other states as well. Then earlier this year, DeSantis won legislative approval of a universal law, making Florida the largest state to adopt school choice for all. 

But just as progressives have embraced a race- and transgender-conscious agenda that has spurred a backlash in many states, the universal choice program pushed by conservatives is stirring much controversy, too. In addition to solid opposition from Democrats, who fear a flight of students and funding from public schools, some Republicans, particularly in rural areas, also object to the costs of giving taxpayer dollars to wealthy families to pay for private schooling. 

Although Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah have joined the four other red states in approving universal choice, Republicans in Texas have joined Democrats in blocking efforts to pass it, suggesting the program may have limited room to run nationwide. 

Universal choice is also untested. Parents looking to control their kids’ education could find themselves in the dark because there’s little publicly available information about the quality of private and religious education. Homeschools and various types of private instruction are mostly unregulated and don’t require teacher credentialing or student testing in many states, leaving parents without objective ways to evaluate them. At public schools, at least parents have an inkling, based on public test score data, of what to expect. 

Academic research can only hint at the value of universal choice programs, which have never been studied. The exhaustive research on restricted school choice has shown neutral to negative effects on test scores in statewide programs, which include middle-income students. But the programs have had clear positive benefits on scores for low-income students in particular and have improved high school graduation and college admission rates for some students. 

“Universal choice is a great leap into the unknown,” says Professor Wolf. “Parents are experts on their child’s needs, but parents are not experts on private educational providers. They need accurate and complete information about them.” 

The Godfather of Universal Choice 

Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, is considered the first prominent proponent of universal choice, bringing his theory of efficient competitive markets to education in a 1955 paper. He and his wife Rose later started a foundation for educational choice in their names that morphed in 2016 into EdChoice. 

“Friedman said you can’t create opportunity and access for people unless you give everyone choices in a marketplace,” says Enlow of EdChoice. “If you really had a competitive marketplace that included public, private, charter, and other school options, many new schools would spring up and it would have a positive impact on education.” 

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Margherita couldn’t have imagined that, 447 years after her death, her letters would be discovered and studied. And she couldn’t have imagined that, about 150 years after that, readers could sympathize with her challenges and draw from her wisdom.

Church history books are beginning to devote more space to women. Treatments of Medieval Christian women, however, is usually limited to a few queens and nuns – those who could express themselves at a time when most women’s voices were dismissed.
Recently, scholars have turned their attention to the correspondence, discovered in 1870 behind a staircase, of an Italian merchant and his wife – a collection comprising over 150,000 letters and 500 account books.
To historians, this is a rich documentation of how both trade and daily lives were conducted in fourteenth-century Italy. The wife’s letters in particular (over 250) afford the unique opportunity to hear the voice of an ordinary Medieval businesswoman and wife. To Christians, they represent an interesting account on how she met her daily challenges with faith.
Becoming a Merchant’s Wife
Margherita was born in 1360 to the noble Bandini family, who had moved from Florence to Avignon, France, following political exile (both Margherita’s father and her mother’s family had been accused of plotting against the republic). By that time, the papacy had also moved to Avignon, bringing further prosperity to the city.
In 1376, at age 16, Margherita was given in marriage to Francesco Datini, a wealthy merchant from Prato, Italy, who was 25 year her senior. Taking advantage of the papal move, Francesco was thriving in the new papal seat by selling luxury goods and art to cardinals and other clerics who lived there.
The age difference between Margherita and Francesco was not uncommon. In reality, Francesco had been so absorbed by his business that he would have gladly avoided marriage altogether. He had lovers, and had even fathered a son in 1374.
But it was his Prato neighbor Niccolozzo Binducchi, a father figure after Francesco’s parents died of the plague, who insisted that he should marry. A marriage, Niccolozzo expected, would produce legitimate children who could take over Francesco’s business and benefit from his work. As happy as Niccolozzo and his wife Piera had been about the birth of Francesco’s son, “having a legitimate son will bring you more honor before God and the world,”[1] Niccolozzo reminded him. Sadly, Margherita proved to be unable to conceive – a source of great sorrow for the couple.
In 1383, Francesco and Margherita moved back to Prato, where he traded in clothes, weapons, iron and salt, extending his business to other Italian and even Spanish cities and dealing in international commerce. In later years, he dabbled in the banking and insurance business. In reality, charging interest was still forbidden by canon law, but Francesco eased his conscience by saying he would leave his money to the poor when he died.
Francesco’s work caused him to travel for long periods of time, but he stayed in touch with his wife to receive news from home and reports about his business. He also sent her seemingly incessant instructions and reminders, to the point of becoming annoying.
From 1384 till his death in 1410, they corresponded about every two or three days. At first, Margherita, who had only learned to read (mostly her prayer books, typically written with the Gothic alphabet) had to dictate her letters. In her late thirties, she surprised Francesco by learning to read and write in the current “commercial” alphabet. This new ability allowed her to write whenever needed (without having to look for a scribe) and to be more honest in her letters.
Daily Challenges
As most women at that time, Margherita suffered from her husband’s repeated absences, which left her alone with her servants. Apparently, after marriage Francesco continued to be as work-driven as he had always been, so much that Niccolozzo had to exhort him, “You are rich enough, thanks be to God. Don’t want it all, don’t want it all, don’t want it all.”[2]
She was also distressed by Francesco’s extramarital affairs, which he carried on as usual. The birth of her husband’s second son with a sixteen-year-old servant troubled Margherita so deeply that she became seriously ill. Francesco found a husband for the girl, but the baby died after a few months.
Francesco was not irreligious. He often worried about his sins, interpreted contrarieties as God’s punishment, and kept promising to become “a new Francesco.” He never mentioned any sin in particular, and adultery and infidelity might have been low in his concerns, since they were not considered as serious in men as they were in women – something most wives had learned to accept.
While accepting the traditional position of submission to her husband, Margherita felt free to advise (and even reprove) him when it came to religion and morals. This was included, at that time, in the wife’s duties toward her husband, and was encouraged by preachers.
And Margherita had many pearls of wisdom to share – most likely, pearls she had gathered as she juggled the many responsibilities Francesco had placed on her shoulders, and as she persevered in spite of her loneliness, infertility, and chronic illness (which caused her debilitating pain with each menstruation).
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Bring your questions and your grief to him. Your doubts and confusion. Your weariness and loneliness. Amazingly, God himself gives us words in Scripture to do just that. Ask him that the comfort of Christ might be given to you just as you are sharing in Christ’s sufferings (2 Cor 1:5). And if it takes too much energy to form words right now, know that the Spirit himself is interceding for you “with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).

My dear friend,
My heart breaks for you regarding the burden you shared with me last evening. I have known you for a long time and have witnessed how you have persevered through many trials. But this one—oh, how deeply grievous it is. I know your head is spinning and your emotions are all over the place. Surprise, grief, fear, confusion, anger, doubt—and yes, shaky hope, were all intermingled as you poured out your heart to me. I was thankful for the opportunity to pray with you briefly, but I wanted to follow up today with a few words that I hope God might use to bring comfort and lift your weary head just a bit. (I realize that silence and simple presence are often the best gifts to offer someone in the midst of suffering, but I know you well enough to take the risk of saying more!)
I think what I want to communicate most is that you’re not alone. Jesus, the Suffering Servant, walked a path of grief and anguish ahead of you and for you. And now, he is with you by his Spirit. We often think of Jesus’ suffering primarily in the context of his crucifixion and death. This is true, but in another sense, the whole of Jesus’ life comprised suffering. Paul captures this in Philippians 2:5–8. The incarnation itself was a down escalator to the basement of fallen human misery. Jesus suffered his entire life by setting aside his glory and rightful splendor. He faced the toils and trials and heartaches every human being faces in a broken and sin-laden world.
What does this mean for you and for me?
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