BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama’s CHOOSE Act program is much larger in its second year, with nearly 49,000 students applying for education savings accounts and more than 31,000 already using them – but the makeup of the program has changed less than its size.
Most applicants still come from private schools or home education, and those students remain far more likely than former public school students to activate their awards, according to new Alabama Department of Revenue data shared Tuesday with Alabama Daily News.
About 71% of this year’s 48,927 applicants reported attending private school or being home educated last year, versus 66% of last year’s 36,873 applicants.
It’s one thing to be awarded an education savings account and another to actually use it. And this year, a higher share of students who received awards are using them – what ALDOR calls “activating” an ESA.
A higher share of awarded ESAs have been activated this year: 92.1% so far, compared with 86.3% by the end of last year. Last year, 19,613 of 22,714 awarded ESAs were activated. So far this year, 31,079 of 33,760 awards have been activated. The remaining awards for this year can be activated after families upload proof of enrollment.
One thing that is new this year is that public schools are also enrolling students using CHOOSE Act funding. So far this year, 179 students are using ESAs in participating public schools. Of those 179, 156 attended public school last year, while 23 came from private school, home education or another educational setting.
But, as was the case last year, the majority of the students who have activated their ESAs are using them at participating private schools.
Of those who have activated their ESAs so far this year, about 61% are using them at participating private schools, 38% for home education and less than 1% at participating public schools. Those proportions are similar to last year, when about 63% of activated ESAs were used at private schools and 37% for home education.
Also of note is that the number of CHOOSE Act applicants who reported attending public school the previous year declined. There were 10,287 applicants from public schools in the first year of the program, compared with 8,963 this year, a decline of about 13%.
Renewals
The number of renewal applications suggests that a large number of students who used ESAs last year came back for a second year.
Last year, a total of 19,613 students used their ESAs. This year, 18,941 renewal applications were submitted – only 672 fewer than the entire number of students who participated last year. Of those renewal applicants, 17,702 have already activated ESAs and another 550 received ESAs but have not yet activated them.
That means 18,252 of 18,941 renewal applicants – 96.4% – have either activated an ESA or are eligible for one.
The number of first-time applicants fell from the program’s first year. All 36,873 applicants in 2025, the program’s first year, were new to the program. This year, 29,986 new applications were submitted, a decline of 6,887, or about 19%.
This year’s actual numbers
The chart below compares applicants by where they attended school during the 2025-26 school year – public school, private school, home education or other – and shows whether their ESA was activated and, if so, where it is being used.
“Other” includes students whose prior educational setting was reported differently in the underlying data, including some students from out-of-state schools and students beginning kindergarten.
The numbers here are totals, not broken down by new versus renewal. Click here if you are unable to see the table below.
Last year’s final numbers
Using the same format, let’s look back at the final numbers for last year. Final numbers show that out of 36,873 applications, 22,714 awards were made. Of those awards, 19,613 were activated and 3,101 were not.
Students coming from public schools were the least likely group to activate their awards last year. Of the 4,942 public-school students who received ESAs, 2,455 activated them and 2,487 did not, meaning just under half activated their awards and just over half did not.
Private-school and home-education awardees, by contrast, activated nearly all of their awards last year: 97.1% for private-school students and 98.8% for home-education students.