Over the last six years, school choice has exploded—with eighteen states total now having launched Education Savings Account programs including a growing bloc offering universal eligibility, meaning every child qualifies regardless of income or prior public-school attendance. Momentum belongs decisively to ESAs, the most flexible model for students and families.
Yet, while Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia race ahead, enrolling students by the tens of thousands, most South Carolina families remain largely trapped by zip code. In the Palmetto State, the affluent have a genuine choice, but far too many families remain locked into their local district school.
Every South Carolinian, endowed by his Creator with dignity and potential, deserves the freedom to flourish.
Palmetto Promise Institute has been the intellectual and strategic engine behind most of South Carolina’s freedom-expanding policy, including the Education Scholarship Trust Fund—the state’s first true ESA program. The program, which now provides eligible families $7,634 per child for tuition, tutoring, therapies, curriculum, and transportation, suffered a setback when, in 2024, South Carolina’s Supreme Court struck down the original statute weeks into the school year, leaving thousands of students uncertain if they’d have to withdraw from their new schools.
PPI’s policy team leapt into action, using the court’s decision to restructure the funding to comply with the state constitution while preserving parental choice. The revised program was enacted in 2025, and in May 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear a second challenge. Enrollment is now climbing from 10,000 to 15,000 seats, with eligibility expanding even further in years to come.
Key to PPI’s success has been a less adversarial narrative that highlights how a well-designed universal school choice approach can support and strengthen all sectors of education. Public schools may benefit, for example, from increased innovation and responsiveness to family needs. Public charter schools can experience greater flexibility and improved access. Independent and faith-based schools may become more accessible to a broader range of families while maintaining their distinct missions. Homeschool families may gain expanded access to educational resources and services.
Palmetto Promise operates from a settled conviction: every South Carolinian, endowed by his Creator with dignity and potential, deserves the freedom to flourish. That principle drives research across five policy areas—education, healthcare, energy, tax and budget, and quality of life—but education is the tip of the spear, the reform most likely to reshape a generation.
In its efforts to secure true freedom of education, PPI has built a series of complimentary initiatives. The Artis Ware Center for Education Opportunity produces the district-level data and research that arms legislators, journalists, and parents with the truth about school performance. Palmetto NavigatEd, PPI’s school choice hub for parents, provides guidance on ESTF applications, private and charter options, homeschool pathways, and inter-district transfers—turning policy wins into kitchen-table reality. The newly launched South Carolina Universal School Choice Coalition unites allies behind the next and most important goal: ensuring that parental choice in education is not only available but easy to access for every family, regardless of income.
PPI’s near-term goals include defending ESTF families against the same legal attacks that have slowed progress in other states, expanding the cap well beyond 15,000 seats, broadening eligible expenses, and moving South Carolina to full universal choice.
Parental choice in education has been a foundational concern for the Bradley Impact Fund community. And as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, and other states, the enemies of freedom know that education is vital to America’s future, so they will fight tooth and nail, regardless of what parents want. Palmetto Promise is leading a growing movement to restore parental choice in education and strengthen the broader American cause of liberty. It’s a privilege to partner with and support PPI’s mission.