For the past 30 years, America's K-12 education system has experienced an era of expanding educational choice. Although students who participate in private school choice programs and are enrolled in charter schools comprise a small portion of the K-12 population relative to students in district schools, choice is becoming a larger part of the K-12 public education landscape. It will be important for policymakers to begin thinking about how their states can foster a robust public education system where school choice is a feature, not an afterthought. To do this, they should give thought to designing funding systems that fund students directly. In this paper, the authors offer a different lens for policymakers to examine how states fund public K-12 education and propose general guidelines for fostering a robust system of public education. The goal is to explain how states might better organize their funding systems to create a coherent system that allows students to choose among conventional district public schools, public charter schools, private schools, and educational services outside of school walls--universal educational choice. Such a system of universal choice would maximize the benefits of education funding to students, educators, and taxpayers.