James_Sept-Oct_2025_web - Flipbook - Page 83
E D UCAT I O N
G EO RG I A P ROMIS E S CHOLARSHIPS
Off to a Great Start
BY K Y L E W I N G F I E L D
all me a super-optimist, but the
early numbers from
Georgia’s Promise
Scholarship have
me thinking that
the proverbial glass is either halffull or . . . half-full.
Why repeat myself? Because the
program is both working well today
and offering reasons to believe it
will only get better from here.
After two enrollment periods
for the new school year, more than
8,500 students were awarded scholarships. That’s more than just a solid first-year showing. It’s 8,500 students whose families believed that
a different educational option, such
as private school or homeschooling,
would be better for them— and who
now will have $6,500 to help them
turn that possibility into a reality.
There are still two more enrollment periods scheduled later
this fall, so that number may grow.
Sometimes a school setting that
worked well for a child one year
isn’t so great the next, or the move
from elementary to middle or
middle to high isn’t a good transi-
tion. The flexibility of the Promise
Scholarship allows families to
apply mid-year rather than having
to wait months in a situation that’s
a bad fit. But those potential applicants aren’t the only avenue for
growing the program, at least not
in the longer term.
That’s because, in addition to
the 8,500 applicants who met the
program’s eligibility criteria, another 6,700 students applied but were
ineligible for one reason or another,
while countless others realized
they didn’t meet the requirements
and chose not to apply.
Because the scholarship has
multiple criteria, there are various
reasons those applicants might not
have made it. Maybe they lived in
the wrong ZIP code— only students who live in the attendance
zone of a bottom 25 percent school
can get the Promise Scholarship.
Or maybe they weren’t previously
enrolled in public school, another
key requirement.
Either way, their families also
believed they needed to be in a different educational setting. And that
should be instructive for lawmakers.
You see, the apparent notion
behind restricting a program like
the Promise Scholarship is that
not all students need or deserve
options. Basing program access on
which schools a child is zoned to
attend would lead one to believe
some schools can’t serve anyone
well, whereas others must be serving everyone well.
Neither is true, and the application data illustrates why.
While 8,500 students chose
to leave those bottom 25 percent
schools, hundreds of thousands
of other students zoned for those
schools stayed where they were.
Maybe their families simply didn’t
know another option existed-- a
problem that should ease as the
program becomes better known to
more people. Or maybe they’re just
in the right place; a school that’s
underperforming overall might be
performing well for certain students. Either way, it’s highly likely
that most students won’t leave
those schools.
At the same time, there are
plenty of students zoned for a
S E PT E M B E R /O C TO BER 2025
83
