Education

More than one-third of Oklahoma students attend schools of choice, survey finds

September 23, 2026

Ray Carter

Oklahoma is a national leader when it comes to offering robust school choice options to families, including everything from private-school choice programs to homeschooling to public-school choice through either open transfer or public charter schools.

A recent survey indicates more than one in three Oklahoma students now exercise school choice in some form, and the vast majority of Oklahoma parents support private-school choice programs.

“The State of Educational Opportunity in America: A 50-State Survey of 23,000 Parents” report provides the results of a nationwide survey of 23,104 U.S. parents and guardians of school-aged children (K-12th grade), breaking down the results both nationwide and by state.

The poll’s Oklahoma-specific results showed that 36 percent of parents in the state send their child to a school of choice, meaning their child does not attend a geographically assigned public school and instead receives an education in another setting. Schools of choice can include other public schools through either open transfer or charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling.

When asked for their opinion on Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which were described as a “government savings account where parents can use the funds for multiple educational purposes like tutoring, textbooks, therapy, tuition, etc.,” the poll found 77 percent of Oklahoma parents support ESAs.

When asked about school vouchers, which were described as “a system that gives parents a ‘voucher’ to pay for partial or full tuition at the school of their choice, whether that school is public, private, religious, etc.,” 68 percent of Oklahoma parents expressed support.

Among Oklahoma parents who are Republicans, 85 percent favor ESAs and 75 percent support vouchers.

Only 1 percent of Republican parents in Oklahoma expressed opposition to ESAs and only 4 percent expressed opposition to vouchers.

Those figures may be especially notable for Republican lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in the Oklahoma Legislature and often have more reason to be concerned about the Republican primary election than the general election.

In this year’s June primary elections, school-choice supporters prevailed over school-choice opponents in Oklahoma Republican primaries.

But school choice also appears to be a winning issue in November general elections, based on the survey’s results.

Even among Oklahoma parents who are Democrats, 78 percent support ESAs and 62 percent support vouchers, according to the survey.

Among Oklahoma parents with income of $50,000 or less, 74 percent support ESAs and 67 percent support vouchers. Among those with income between $50,000 and $100,000, the poll found 79 percent of Oklahoma parents support ESAs and 71 percent support vouchers.

The Oklahoma results were similar to national figures generated by the survey. Nationwide, 77 percent of parents support ESAs and 69 percent support school vouchers.

Nationally, the share of Democrats and the share of Republicans who strongly supported ESAs and vouchers were very similar, with only a few percentage points of difference.

The national survey results also showed that 75 percent of parents who work as teachers support ESAs and 55 percent support vouchers. (The sample size of Oklahoma teachers participating in the survey was too small to produce valid statistical state-level results.)

When Oklahoma parents were asked how much the state spends per pupil in public schools, 47 percent said they were not sure. Thirty-five percent said $10,000 or less, with 27 percent believing the state spends less than $5,000 per student. Another 10 percent said per-pupil funding is between $10,000 and $15,000 per student. The remainder said more than $15,000.

An NEA Research report found that Oklahoma public schools had $15,111 in revenue receipts per student, based on average daily attendance, during the 2024-2025 school year. That was an increase of 55 percent since the 2017-2018 school year, when a prior edition of the NEA report found Oklahoma public schools had revenue receipts per student of $9,724.

Total Oklahoma public-school revenue from all sources—local, state and federal—has surged more than $3 billion since 2018, rising from $6.3 billion to $9.5 billion.

In response to a separate school-funding question that included the state’s per-pupil funding amount, 45 percent of Oklahoma parents said the state spends the “right amount” or “too much” per student in public schools. Just 34 percent of Oklahoma parents said the state spends “too little” per pupil, while 20 percent said they were “not sure.”

The poll was conducted by Edge Research and 50CAN, an education advocacy organization. Edge Research conducted the nationwide survey of 23,104 U.S. parents and guardians of school-aged children, including 414 Oklahoma parents, from Sept. 30, 2025, to Dec. 1, 2025.