School choice works and the country needs more of it.  

Across America, it’s becoming clear that walls preventing families from choosing the best schools for their kids are starting to crack. Could a national school choice plan be enacted this year, opening the door of opportunity to millions of low-income kids?

If the proposal being discussed passes, it will have its roots in a groundbreaking idea launched by a handful of Colorado entrepreneurs 25 years ago.

The Alliance for Choice in Education (ACE) is one of the most important engines for educational opportunity in America. ACE has invested $300 million to provide 100,000 scholarships for low-income kids to attend private K-12 schools and it now operates in 11 states.

In Colorado, ACE reports that 61% of its scholars are proficient in math, outscoring their low-income public-school counterparts by 46 percentage points. In reading, ACE scholars are up 33 percentage points.  Similar results are happening in other states. 

The founders launched ACE after years of seeing bold ideas to disrupt and transform the education system get stiff-armed by the teacher unions and others in the education establishment who fear the competition that comes with empowered parents. 

Yet kids kept falling through the cracks year after year. 

They found an elegant answer. Create an organization to fund individual K-12 scholarships, helping change education one boy or girl at a time. The market was ripe, since many non-public schools had capacity. 

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Despite the wave of generosity that has powered ACE for 25 years, the need for scholarships is greater than ever. The education system’s rock bottom results, particularly for children of color, is a national disgrace. Today, one in four low-income Colorado high school students fail to graduate. The ripple effects of young men and women falling far short of their potential, their dreams dying for lack of an open door to a better future, is a stain on our society. 

Since the ACE model works, why not turbo charge it nationally? 

One option is to encourage contributions to scholarship organizations like ACE which could dramatically expand the number of families helped. A proposal in Congress that’s backed by the Trump administration would create a federal tax credit program to help low-income families in all 50 states.  

After all, harnessing the generosity of Americans is more efficient and effective than creating a government grant program. 

Here’s how it works.

Congress would set aside $10 billion per year, and taxpayers would receive the tax credit on a first-come first served basis for contributions to bona fide scholarship organizations. Each state would receive a quota so that a couple of big states couldn’t consume the entire tax credit allocation overnight. 

The program would be administered by the Treasury Department as other tax credits are, eliminating the ability of education bureaucrats to start adding regulatory red tape. 

The program will help roughly 2 million kids annually. 

Given the track record of ACE and other scholarship programs, the federal tax credit is the deal of the century, costing just 10% of the current budget of the federal Education Department.  

As the debate over this great idea heats up, expect the same tired objections by the same worn-out groups who have been standing in the schoolhouse door for decades to prevent poor kids from escaping failing schools. 

It’s time to cut through the talking points and, at long last, ask one fundamental question.

What is the government’s fundamental interest in underwriting education?

For the defenders of the failed status quo, their rooting interest is where students learn. In their view, that should be in the high cost, low-results, one-size-fits all public school system where they have a stranglehold. 

For everybody else, including employers, the concern is what students learn, and how well they learn it. And, recognizing that students have diverse learning needs and interests, let alone a wide range of future career paths, this means offering families options.  

Providing hope for low-income children, which has been too often denied by the complacent, smug and comfortable adults in charge of the government school system, could be the best story of 2025. And if it becomes a reality, we will owe a debt to Coloradans at ACE who, for 25 years, have set the example for what school choice can and must be.  

Sean Duffy is a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens and Colorado-based strategic communications consultant. He now serves as vice president at a philanthropic foundation. The views expressed here are his own.