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National Review
ESAs Are
Changing the Game
By Lindsey M. Burke
October 6, 2014
‘A blind student in Arizona gets about $21,000 a year,” says Marc
Ashton, whose son, Max, is legally blind. That $21,000 represents what
Arizona spends to educate a student such as Max in the public-school
system.
“We took our 90 percent of that, paid for Max to get the best education
in Arizona, plus all of his Braille, all of his technology, and then
there was still money left over to put toward his college education,”
Marc explains. “So he is going to be able to go on to Loyola Marymount
University, because we were able to save money, even while sending him
to the best school in Arizona, out of what the state would normally pay
for him.”
How did the Ashtons do it? Thanks to Arizona’s innovative education
savings account (ESA) option, they were able to take 90 percent of the
funds the state would have spent on Max in the local public school, and
instead create a customized education plan for him. In Arizona, those
eligible for an ESA include children in underperforming schools, foster
children, children of active-duty military families, and children with
special needs and their siblings.
Parents receive a debit card loaded with their child’s education
funding — just the state portion, no local or federal education dollars
— and can then use that money to pay for a variety of education-related
services and products.
That flexibility is why education savings accounts represent the next
generation of school choice.
Distributions to ESAs are made quarterly, with each quarter’s
allocation being deposited after the family has submitted receipts for
the previous quarter’s education expenses to the state Department of
Education. In the event there was a misuse of funds, the subsequent
quarter’s payment can be withheld and used to rectify the issue.
The amount of money distributed into a family’s ESA depends on
student-specific factors. In Arizona, as of 2012, children in foster
care, in active-duty military families, or assigned to an
underperforming public school received approximately $2,800 per year
(90 percent of the state per-pupil allocation of approximately $3,100).
An expansion in 2013 increased the average award to roughly $5,300.
Children with special needs receive significantly larger distributions
according to their disability. In the Ashtons’ case, as we saw, this
meant about $21,000 per year, although, on average, students with
special needs in Arizona are awarded approximately $13,500.
ESAs operate on the philosophy that parents are best equipped to make
the important decisions about their child’s education. For their part,
parents who choose to participate in the ESA option sign a contract
agreeing to ensure that their children receive an education in the core
academic subjects.
While the Ashtons used the bulk of their ESA to pay for tuition at a
private school, they were also able to direct dollars toward Max’s
assistive technology to facilitate his learning, along with his Braille
textbooks and talking computer. And as Marc mentioned, they still had
money left over at the end of each year to roll into a college savings
account, which Max will put toward his tuition at Loyola Marymount this
fall.
That is just one of the helpful features of ESAs: Unused funds can be
rolled over each year into a college savings account. Any ESA
dollars that are still unused return to the state after college
graduation or four years after the child graduates from high school.
Since families know they can save unused funds, they’re motivated to
consider whether they’re getting the best education possible for the
money they’re expending from their ESA. That consideration holds the
promise of putting significant downward pressure on tuition costs as
the ESA option becomes more widespread.
In addition to paying private-school tuition and rolling over funds for
college, parents can use their ESA to pay for private tutoring, online
learning, special-education services and therapies, textbooks,
curricula, and a host of other education-related expenses.
Arizona and, now, Florida have done what economist Milton Friedman
first advocated in 1955: They’ve separated the financing of education
from the delivery of services. These states have recognized that public
financing of education does not have to mean that education is
delivered in government schools.
As forward-thinking as Friedman was about school choice, he was perhaps
even more innovative than many education-reform advocates realize. The
father of the school-choice movement was also the father of education
savings accounts.
“Why is it sensible for a child to get all his or her schooling in one
brick building?” Friedman pondered in a 2003 interview with Columbia
Teachers College professor Pearl Rock Kane. “Why not have partial
vouchers? Why not let [parents] spend part of a voucher for math in one
place and English or science somewhere else?”
Why not, indeed? Such flexibility becomes even more important as online
learning proliferates, offering, among other things, course choice and
innovative “micro schools.” It is becoming critical that education
financing is restructured in a way that enables parents to direct every
dollar allotted for their child’s education to their choice of
services, products, and providers.
Fewer than two-thirds of high schools across the country offer physics,
and just half offer calculus, according to Michael Horn, an
education-innovation guru. As school choice advances and becomes even
more granular, new and refined financing mechanisms such as ESAs offer
a promising path forward for ensuring that students have access to a
wide-open world of content.
That’s the heart of the philosophy that undergirds the move to
education savings accounts. ESAs enable education funding to be
student-centered, not institutional. ESAs continue the tradition of
publicly financing education, but allow those dollars to harness the
power of a market that has improved outcomes in nearly every other
aspect of American life.
Although the Ashtons are among the roughly 66 percent of Arizona
families with ESAs who are using them in a way similar to a
private-school voucher, some families are eschewing brick-and-mortar
schools altogether and are completely tailoring their own children’s
education using their ESAs.
“We’ve done a schooling-at-home program now for two years with the
teacher,” explains Kathy Visser, mom to Jordon, a ten-year-old ESA
participant who has cerebral palsy. “She’s got the visual knowledge to
work with his vision, and she’s a special-ed teacher.
“Workbooks, and mathematics, and manipulatives. We are developing his
curriculum based on his needs. That is a huge advantage for us,” says
Jordan’s father, Christo.
School choice has been proliferating like never before over the past
few years. Forty-one private-school choice programs are now serving
more than 300,000 students in 24 states and the District of Columbia.
ESAs build on this momentum, and offer the option of complete
educational customization.
Over 70 percent of participants in the ESA program are satisfied with
it, according to a recent survey by the Friedman Foundation for
Educational Choice. A principal reason is that they feel they aren’t
locked in to what their local public-school district does, but can
finally direct their children’s education.
“I am seeing children [who] are blossoming that were not in the
traditional system,” Kathy Visser says. “And to me, that’s
accountability.”
— Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow for Education Policy in
the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at the Heritage
Foundation.
Read this and other articles at the National Review
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