Thousands of families in Utah and Arkansas are looking forward to this upcoming school year. For many, it marks the first time they can afford to give their children what matters most: a good education. 

The turning tide with K–12 education nationally fueled the reforms in both states. By enacting education savings accounts (ESA), lawmakers delivered a lifeline that empowers families to access educational options that meet their children’s needs. As in the dozen states with existing ESA programs on the books, children in Utah and Arkansas now have the means to leave underperforming public schools for learning environments that work. The ESA programs in both states make myriad educational options affordable, including private school tuition, home school curricula, therapies, tutoring, and more.

How popular are ESAs? Very. Over 27,000 Utah families applied for the first 10,000 ESAs available under the Utah Fits All Scholarship program. IJ clients Maria Ruiz and Tiffany Brown will rely on their ESAs to afford private school tuition for the 2024–25 academic year. As Tiffany put it, “not every child learns the same way and some families, like mine, have children with special needs, so it is important that parents can afford educational options that best address a child’s needs.” Utah funds each ESA with nearly $8,000 annually, and every student is eligible.

In Arkansas, the Education Freedom Account program served close to 5,000 students during the 2023–24 academic year, with 44% of ESAs awarded to children with disabilities. For IJ clients Erika Lara, Katie Parrish, and Nikita Glendenning, ESAs are a game changer. The accounts are funded with nearly $7,000 to help students with a disability, those experiencing homelessness, and current or former foster care children, among others. And in the 2025–26 school year, every student in Arkansas will become eligible.

But entrenched public school interests are not happy about ESAs. They seek to deny these options to the thousands of families who need them. To preserve a K–12 education monopoly, Utah’s largest teachers’ union sued in May 2024 to stop the state’s ESA program. The union president claims that families with ESAs “harm public school students and educators.” Two weeks later, choice opponents in Arkansas filed a similar suit to stop ESAs there. The legal attack aims to take these funds away from families—and even force private schools that have received tuition payments from parents using the program to give that money to the state.

To defend both ESA programs, the Partnership for Educational Choice—a joint project of the Institute for Justice and EdChoice—moved to intervene in the Utah and Arkansas lawsuits within days. These are the first two cases for the Partnership, under which IJ and EdChoice have joined forces to provide legislative counseling and legal defense of choice programs nationally. The newly founded EdChoice Legal Advocates will eventually take over those responsibilities from IJ as we continue to advance cutting-edge constitutional arguments (as on page 8) and begin to defend innovative alternatives to the education status quo, such as microschools and learning pods.

IJ was founded at the beginning of a new era of school choice programs. Today, more than 30 years later, choice programs are wildly popular and broadly available because IJ has successfully defended program after program. The Partnership for Educational Choice will continue that legacy in Utah and Arkansas—and beyond.

Arif Panju is managing attorney of IJ’s Texas office.