In January 2025, Center of the American Experiment partnered with Opportunity for All Kids (OAK) to raise awareness and support for legislation to create a $7,000 Education Savings Account (ESA) for kids and families tired of the status quo of Minnesota’s failing public schools. This two-year campaign was not targeted at Gov. Tim Walz or Democratic members of the legislature. The teachers’ union will never allow Democrats to support real school choice. The campaign was (and remains) targeted at Republican legislators who say they support school choice but never do anything about it.
For two years, our school choice coalition asked House Republicans for a hearing on HF 19, a bill to create Education Savings Accounts. In the 2025, session, we were told adding a hearing for the bill would be difficult because of the delicate power-sharing agreement with the Democrats. Fair enough. Next year will be easier, they said.
The $7k for Kids campaign turned our attention to building support in the grassroots for school choice and ESAs. We spent thousands on advertising, sponsored a 7k fun-run, talked to Minnesotans at the State Fair and launched an effort to strengthen both party platforms around school choice.
Our platform resolution passed in over 1000 Republican precincts on caucus night, passed in all eight Congressional districts and is recommended to pass this weekend at the Minnesota Republican Convention in Duluth. The resolution even passed in one DFL precinct caucus.
The grassroots support school choice.
The February 2025 Thinking Minnesota Poll showed widespread and sustaining support for school choice. Despite persistent attacks from the teachers’ union and the rest of the education cartel, 69 percent of Minnesotans support the right of parents to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send them to the public or private school that best serves their needs. Support is essentially unchanged from the last time the issue was polled in 2023.
The concept of school choice found majority support among Republicans (90 percent), Independents (66 percent), and even Democrats (51 percent). Similar results were found on the more specific $7k for Kids proposal. Education Savings Accounts were supported by 56 percent of Minnesotans, including a majority of Republicans (64 percent) and Independents (54 percent) and a plurality of Democrats (49 percent).
Minnesotans support school choice because they are frustrated with the state of our schools. In the December 2025 Thinking MinnesotaPoll, we asked poll respondents to give public schools in Minnesota a letter grade (A, B, C, D, F). The number of respondents who gave public schools an A or B dropped 10 percent since the last time we asked the question (May 2022), and those who gave schools an F tripled from three percent to 10 percent. Fifty-four percent of Minnesotans now give public schools a C, D, or F for performance, the highest percentage those grades have ever received. At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, only 33 percent of Minnesotans gave schools a C, D, or F grade.
Despite this overwhelming support for school choice in Minnesota, House Republicans remain afraid of the issue. During a February meeting with the Chairman of the House Education Finance Committee, we were promised a hearing for HF 19 on April 14, 2026, before the final committee deadline. We thanked him and told his team we would arrange testifiers and plan and execute a school choice rally at the Capitol that day. Momentum!
The week before the hearing, with rally planning in full swing, House staff told us the agenda had changed from a 90-minute hearing on HF 19 to a 30-minute generic discussion of school choice. The school choice discussion would happen after the committee spent 90 minutes discussing a school safety bill. As it turned out, House Republicans changed the entire focus of the hearing and their media strategy for the day to school safety. While the school choice coalition was busy welcoming school kids and supporters to the rally on the first floor of the capitol, House Republicans were holding a press conference on school safety in the basement. Members looked surprised when they walked through the gauntlet of school choice supporters wearing green t-shirts chanting “School choice now!” It was awkward, to say the least.
After a long discussion, the school safety bill failed to move forward on a tie vote. Then the Chairman announced, “Members, that concludes our business. And now we’re going to move on to talking about other ideas.” After two years of grassroots work, Education Savings Accounts were relegated to an “other idea” and given a rushed 15-minute hearing, leaving no time for three of the testifiers we had lined up.
House Republicans worked with school choice supporters to set up a hearing and rally only to pull the plug at the last minute because they don’t believe it is a good issue for them with voters. Despite positive poll numbers, grassroots support and national momentum (ESAs have passed in 18 other states), Republicans here are still afraid of the K-12 education cartel led by the teachers’ union. They believe the union will demonize ESAs as “vouchers” and use it against their candidates, especially in the suburbs.
The $7K for Kids campaign was targeted toward Republican legislators from the beginning because we knew they were not committed to passing real school choice in Minnesota. How choice was treated during the 2026 session confirmed that was the right strategy all along. We will continue building grassroots support for ESAs and expect stronger support for the bill from the next legislature in January 2027.
