Landmark year for school choice chronicled in Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Education Freedom report  

The exploding school choice movement has seen a “banner year,” reports The Heritage Foundation’s hot-off-the-presses 2025 Education Freedom report.

Jonathan Butcher, acting director for Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, praised the ongoing performance of states such as Florida and Arizona, along with others boosting their positions from previous years.

“Florida and Arizona have offered choices like these for decades, providing models for other states,” Butcher said. “With Texas giving its students more opportunities with its ESA program, this is a banner year for education freedom.” 

Heritage’s top 10 states for education freedom are:  

1. Florida 

2. Arizona 

3. Idaho  

4. Arkansas  

5. Louisiana  

6. Tennessee  

7. Texas 

8. Indiana 

9. Alabama  

10. West Virginia 

Notably, all 10 of the highest ranked states offer a universal school choice program. 

Florida and Arizona have held the top two spots for four years in a row, while this was Texas’s first year in the top 10. Other highly ranked states were found in the Bible Belt and Midwest. 

Many of these either created new school choice programs or expanded preexisting programs in 2025. 

The five worst states for education freedom were Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island. 

“Our report card does not reward state lawmakers who ask taxpayers to spend more on assigned schools or who put limits on student options,” Butcher explained. “We have highlighted the states where policymakers empower parents to choose high-quality opportunities for their children.”  

The Heritage Foundation weighed five different factors when ranking states.  

First, it looked at Education Choice, which included the prevalence and quality of private school choice programs, promotion of charter schools, homeschooling and forms of public-school choice such as open enrollment.  

Second, it ranked states according to their Transparency, which included parental rights and empowerment, laws against Critical Race Theory, and heightened accountability for school boards.  

Third, it examined Teacher Freedom, which included barriers to entering the teaching profession, standardized testing requirements, and the likelihood of academic freedom being stifled by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology. 

Fourth, it reviewed Return on Investment such as per-pupil spending, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores per dollar, and the teacher to non-teacher ratio. 

The teacher to non-teacher ratio is important because in recent years public schools have hired school administrators and other support staff at exponentially higher rates than classroom teachers.  

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of public-school administrators rose nearly 88% while the teacher population rose just 9% and student enrollment 8%. 

Lastly, Heritage examined each state’s Civic Education, looking at the number of classical schools, NAEP civics scores, and whether public universities accept the Classic Learning Test. 

“Three years into the new era of universal private choice programs, more remains to do than has been done,” Heritage concluded, “but Americans are finally making progress toward a more humane system of education.”