It’s after 6 p.m. by the time Angela Johnson hurries home from work. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is at their house outside of Pensacola, Florida, with a nurse trained to care for medically fragile children. Amelia, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly, has endured many surgeries and requires a brain shunt and a feeding tube.

The nurse starts caring for Amelia as soon as a bus from the public school drops her off. Johnson loves much about the school. But as a physical therapist, she also recognizes its limitations. The district’s physical and occupational therapists have to travel from school to school. The classroom teacher can become overburdened.

For all of Amelia’s life, Johnson has had to fight for the education and the school resources her daughter is entitled to receive under federal law. It has exhausted her.

Two years ago, she thought she’d found a better option for Amelia when she learned Florida has a state-funded voucher program for children with disabilities. She jumped at the promise of “school choice.” The program, the largest of its kind in the country, channels taxpayer dollars into accounts that parents can use to pay for private school tuition and other education expenses.

Johnson envisioned a private school with smaller classes and more one-on-one time with trained staff, a place where she didn’t have to battle for every minute of therapy her child required. She imagined Amelia learning to cut a straight line and to write her name.

In 2024, Amelia was awarded about $10,500 from the program. Thrilled, Johnson embarked on a weekslong hunt for a private school.

She began scouring school websites, most of which said nothing about services for children with disabilities. She started calling schools, first an upscale Christian one nearby with a strong reputation. It had no nurse trained to care for medically fragile children, so she reached out to several other schools. At first, some said they could help — until Johnson explained that her daughter had a feeding tube, that she couldn’t yet hold a pencil correctly and needed assistance toileting. Then they all said no.

Johnson couldn’t find a single one that provided nurses equipped to care for her daughter’s medical needs. Or teachers trained to educate nonverbal children. Or even a bus ride home.

Therein lies the catch in “school choice” for children like Amelia. Unlike public schools, private ones generally aren’t required to educate students with disabilities. And they often don’t.

The choice wasn’t hers, Johnson realized. It was the schools’. The vouchers “are basically designed to make you go to private school,” Johnson said, “but my kid can’t access private school.”

Johnson returned the money to the state, along with a very stern email.

Voucher programs and the private schools they increasingly fund have proliferated across the country. Yet those schools often reject children with disabilities — the very kids who were used to help sell early voucher programs to lawmakers and the public — for having needs that are too costly, complex or disruptive. That leaves those children with few options beyond the public schools. And as public schools lose enrollment as a result of more and more voucher use, they lose resources that would benefit children who remain, including those with disabilities.

About 3 million school-age children with disabilities live in states with universal voucher eligibility. Florida, one of those states, illustrates how the promise of school choice can be empty for these children.

When children are approved for education savings accounts, a voucher-style program like the one Florida uses, states often put public money into accounts parents can use to pay expenses like tuition. If families can’t find a private school and don’t use the money, it may roll over to another year or, depending on the state, get returned.

About 8% of the $1.7 billion Florida distributed last year through its voucher program for disabled children was returned because recipients — kids like Amelia — were enrolled in public school instead, according to data from the nonprofit that disburses most of the funds. By comparison, just 1% of money in the state’s program open to all students was returned for the same reason.

Florida is one of three states where ProPublica obtained data allowing us to make such comparisons.

Louisiana, which launched an education savings account program in the 2025-26 school year, delivered $43.1 million to parent-controlled accounts. Overall, 6% was returned because the families didn’t spend the money, state data shows. But among students with disabilities, that rate was far higher at 30%.

In Texas, data is still coming in for the first year of its $1 billion voucher program. But so far, students with disabilities are opting out of using the money at slightly higher rates than all other students.

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