Eliminating the Voucher Enrollment Cap

January 21st, 2026

Bill Watch:

On Thursday, the Senate Education Finance Committee will hear SB 581 (Sen. Sullivan), which would eliminate the Education Freedom Account enrollment cap. 

A quick reminder of where we are now, and how we got here: The Education Freedom Account program, which provides a voucher equal to a student’s adequacy aid (roughly $5,000) for use on nonpublic school educational expenses (private and religious school tuition, homeschooling expenses, educational supplies, transportation, tutoring, or other expenses approved by the scholarship organization), was initially pitched as a way to help low-income families access private school options that were otherwise cost prohibitive. But like many states in the country, New Hampshire’s lawmakers gradually expanded eligibility for the program until, in 2025, they removed the income cap entirely, allowing any family, regardless of need, to apply for a voucher. Last year, the legislature initially considered legislation to offer an EFA voucher to anyone who applied, but ultimately decided to institute an enrollment cap because of concerns about the rising and unpredictable costs. 

The enrollment cap worked like this: in the first year without income restrictions (2025-26), enrollment would be capped at 10,000 students, but students in priority groups (students with disabilities, those from families with low incomes, those already in the program, and those with siblings in the program) would be guaranteed a voucher, even if it put the program over the cap. As a result, there were 10,510 students enrolled in the EFA program at the start of the year, according to Department of Education data. The legislation that passed last year included a mechanism to automatically increase the cap based on demand. As a result, the cap for next year would be 12,500 students, unless SB 581 passes, in which case there would be no cap, and anyone applying for a voucher would receive one, provided they live in NH and do not attend public school more than 50% of the time. 

We don’t know exactly what will happen if the enrollment cap is removed, but we do know a few things about what happened this year, the first year without income restrictions.

Fewer voucher students are from families with low incomes.

The chart below comes from our earlier analysis, but put simply, the program is no longer serving the families it was originally supposed to serve. 

Students didn’t leave public schools for the voucher program.

Only 343 students left their public school for the voucher program, a marginal increase over the previous year’s public school departure rate.

The cost of the program exceeded expectations.

Based on a December 2 headcount, the program is expected to cost $52 million this year. Much of this is new spending, adding strain to the Education Trust Fund, the account the state relies on for its share of public school funding.

Removing the cap could have short and long-term implications. 

Because of data limitations and the unpredictability of behavior, it’s impossible to predict exactly how many families will take a voucher in an unrestricted program. In a hearing Wednesday on HB 1834 (Rep. Weinstein), which would extend the 10,000 student cap for another year, Matt Southerton, Director of Policy and Compliance for the Children’s Scholarship Fund-NH, noted that there were 874 students on the EFA waitlist this year. That puts the total number of voucher applications around 11,400. 

If the number of applications represents true demand – remember, everyone was eligible this year, the state just restricted the number of vouchers it gave out – it means that removing the cap may not have much immediate impact, as all of these students would qualify under the higher 12,500 cap currently in statute. But research shows that universal availability can reshape the schooling market in the longer run. 

In Arizona, which introduced universal voucher eligibility in 2022, researchers found that the number of private schools increased from 451 in 2022 to 515 in 2025. Similarly, the number of vendors on the state’s online education savings account marketplace grew from 1,339 in 2021 to 6,091 in 2024.  

Looking at 11 states with voucher programs, including New Hampshire, researchers from Tulane found that universal school vouchers increased tuition in voucher states by 5-10 percent and increased private school enrollment by 3-4 percent. Other research has found similar tuition impacts. As in New Hampshire, researchers found that enrollment patterns in the short-term didn’t tend to change much, because families tend not to want to switch schools mid-stream, or tend to wait for other families to switch before doing so themselves. But as information about vouchers proliferates, researchers expect to see more private schools open in universal voucher states, and a shift in enrollment as students begin their journeys in nonpublic schools. Ultimately, public dollars will be funding more students who have never set foot in a public school, with little accountability.

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