Iowa Private School Vouchers: Eligibility, Amount, and Accountability

Iowa’s private school vouchers, formally called Education Savings Accounts under the Students First Act, give any Iowa K-12 resident student roughly $7,988 in state money to spend on tuition and other qualified expenses at an accredited nonpublic school. The program became universal in the 2025-26 school year, meaning household income no longer matters. Governor Kim Reynolds signed the law on January 24, 2023, and the state received 45,328 applications for its first universal year.¹

Who Qualifies

Every Iowa resident student in kindergarten through 12th grade is now eligible, regardless of family income.² That wasn’t always true. The program phased in over three years:

In 2023-24, ESAs were open to all incoming kindergarteners, any student transferring out of a public school, and existing private school students in households at or below 300% of the federal poverty level ($83,250 for a family of four).³
In 2024-25, the income ceiling for existing private school students rose to 400% of the federal poverty level ($124,800 for a family of four).²
Starting in 2025-26, all Iowa K-12 students are eligible.²

To use a voucher, the child must enroll full-time — at least 75% of a full-time schedule — at an accredited nonpublic school in Iowa. Accreditation can come from the Iowa Department of Education or from an approved independent accreditor such as Cognia, Christian Schools International, or the National Lutheran School Accreditation.⁴

How Much the Voucher Is Worth

The ESA is tied to the state’s per-pupil funding for public schools. It was $7,598 in the first year, rose to $7,826 in 2024-25, and reached $7,988 for 2025-26.²

Funds must go to tuition and fees first. Anything left over can be spent on other qualified educational expenses, including textbooks, test fees, and technology.²

How to Apply

The program is administered by Odyssey, a New York-based education technology company the state selected in February 2023.⁵ Families apply annually through Odyssey’s digital wallet platform and verify Iowa residency using their state tax return or alternative documentation. Money is released in two installments, half for the fall semester and half for the spring, and is spent through an approved marketplace of vendors.²

What the Program Costs Taxpayers

The governor’s office initially estimated a four-year cost of $918 million.⁶⁷⁸⁹

In June 2026, Iowa Auditor Rob Sand released a report arguing that most ESA spending is subsidizing families who would have paid private tuition anyway. His office compared 2025-26 private school enrollment against the Department of Education’s 2022 projections, found 8,838 more private students than expected, and concluded that 78.5% of ESA users were already expected to be in nonpublic schools without the program. By that math, taxpayers spent about $258.7 million in FY 2026 on tuition that would have been paid privately, roughly $38,000 per genuinely new private school student.⁷

The Iowa Department of Education called the report a “policy advocacy brief” rather than an audit, said Sand’s office never requested departmental data, and noted the report left out $37.9 million in ESA funds that flowed back to students’ residential public school districts in FY 2026, averaging $1,656 per participant.¹⁰ Reynolds called the report “politics, not oversight.” Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor, said taxpayers deserved to understand the cost. A separate February 2026 audit by Sand’s office found “no spending issues or irregularities” in the program itself.⁷

Effect on Public Schools

Iowa’s public school enrollment was declining before ESAs began, and the decline has run faster than the Department of Education projected: 1.9% over five years against a projected 1.2%. A Common Sense Institute analysis attributed between 80% and 97% of nonpublic enrollment growth to the ESA program, with nonpublic enrollment rising an average of 5.66% a year since fiscal 2023 while public enrollment fell 0.38% a year.⁹

Where the ESA students actually come from is telling. In 2024-25, only about 6.8% of ESA participants — 1,905 students — had been in an Iowa public school the previous year. Another 14.2% were kindergarteners entering school for the first time.⁸ Supporters read that as evidence the program isn’t emptying public classrooms. Critics read it as evidence the money is largely subsidizing tuition families were already paying.

Democratic legislative leaders have pointed to 16 public school closures since the program began, many rural, and argue there is a “direct correlation” with the ESA program.¹¹ The governor’s office disputed the characterization, noting some of the cited schools remained open or had closed for other reasons such as consolidation.¹²

Access for Rural Families

The voucher is only useful if there is a private school nearby, and there often isn’t. Of the 36 new private schools that opened in the two years after the program launched, 13 were in the Des Moines metro area and only four were in rural communities, according to House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst.¹¹

A 2025 Brookings Institution analysis of programs in six states, including Iowa, described a “regressive pattern” in which funds flow disproportionately to higher-income communities. Brookings attributed this partly to a “relative dearth” of private schools in lower-income rural areas and to the risk that schools raise tuition once public money is available, creating gaps low-income families cannot bridge.¹³ The Common Sense Institute, meanwhile, estimated that between 4,500 and 5,600 ESA recipients would not have been able to access their chosen school without the program and that about 500 low- and middle-income students already in private school would have been “priced out” without the subsidy.⁹

Students With Disabilities

Families of students with disabilities should look at the voucher carefully before switching schools, because the federal protections that follow a child in a public school do not follow the voucher in the same way. Federal law guarantees a Free and Appropriate Public Education, but that guarantee is delivered by public schools and Iowa’s Area Education Agencies, not by private schools. When a student with an IEP uses an ESA at a nonpublic school, the AEA remains responsible for special education services, but the private school is not required to help deliver them.¹⁴

Private schools are not bound by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and may have admissions criteria that effectively exclude students with disabilities. Religious schools are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act applies to schools that accept federal money, but it requires only reasonable accommodations for general education access, not the full range of supports IDEA requires. Parents also lose the administrative dispute-resolution process available in public schools, which can leave litigation as the only recourse.¹⁴

The AEAs themselves are under strain. A 2024 legislative overhaul moved AEAs to a fee-for-service model and transferred 10% of special education funding to school districts. By the 2024-25 school year the AEA system had 429 fewer employees than the year before, and legislators kept $32.5 million in AEA state aid cuts for FY 2026.¹⁵¹⁶

Religious Schools

Ninety-five percent of Iowa’s 183 certified nonpublic schools are religiously affiliated, so the great majority of voucher dollars go to religious institutions.¹⁷ By fiscal 2027, the program is projected to move more than a third of a billion dollars annually to religious schools.¹⁸

A 2024 article in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal by Professor Allan Walker Vestal argued that ESA payments to religious schools violate the Iowa Constitution’s “compulsion guarantee,” which prohibits compelled support of religious institutions.¹⁸ The research does not indicate any such lawsuit has been filed. Supporters of the program note that ESA money goes to parents, who then choose the school, and point to Carson v. Makin (2022) and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), which held that state aid programs cannot exclude religious schools based on their religious character.¹⁷

Accountability of Participating Schools

The Students First Act did not add transparency or reporting requirements for participating private schools. Nonpublic schools are not required to publish budgets or most outcome data. They file basic enrollment surveys, and if state-accredited, a school improvement plan.⁴

An accreditation shift has followed the program. According to the auditor’s report, 66% of nonpublic schools that existed before the ESA program held state accreditation, but only 2% of schools opened since 2023 do. The rest use independent accreditors, which exempts them from certain state-level reporting and open records requirements. About 22 new nonpublic schools have opened each year on average since 2023, and about six have closed annually; the auditor’s report noted the new schools tend to be smaller and more likely to shut down year to year.⁷ Sand said “we should be asking questions about why so many have moved in that direction.” The Department of Education said families are “empowered to make informed educational decisions,” and program supporters argue that independent accreditors impose rigorous standards through site visits and peer reviews and that parents are the real accountability check.⁴

1
Iowa Association of Christian Schools. ESA Ripple Effect: Iowa School Choice Expansion
2
Iowa Department of Education. Education Savings Accounts
3
Office of the Governor of Iowa. Gov. Reynolds Signs Students First Act Into Law
4
Iowa Christian Schools. Accountability in Iowa’s Private Schools
5
Des Moines Register. Kim Reynolds Hires Odyssey to Run Iowa Education Savings Account Program
6
The 74 Million. Here’s How Iowa Governor’s Budget Pays for Private School Scholarships
7
Iowa Capital Dispatch. Auditor: School Choice Cost Iowans $258 Million
8
Iowa Department of Education. Certified Enrollment 2024-25 Holds Steady, 27,866 Students Participating in ESA Program
9
Common Sense Institute. Are Iowa’s ESAs Working
10
News From the States. Auditor: School Choice Cost Iowans $258 Million
11
Iowa Capital Dispatch. Democrats Blame Rural School Closures on Private School Funding
12
WOWT. Iowa Democrats Use Faulty Data to Pin School Closures on Voucher Program
13
Brookings Institution. Universal School Choice Programs Mostly Benefit the Wealthy Unless Policymakers Act to Prevent It
14
Disability Rights Iowa. School Voucher
15
Iowa Public Radio. With Iowa’s AEA Law Fully in Effect, Small and Large School Districts See Different Impacts
16
Iowa Association of School Boards. 2025 Legislative Summary – Appropriations Funding
17
CSG Midwest. Public Funds for Private School Enrollment
18
William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Tax-Funded Education Savings Account Payments to Religious Schools Violate State Constitution Compulsion Guarantees