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Heritage Foundation
These Lucky
Parents Get To Control Their Kids’ State Education Money
Two states are pioneering the next generation of education innovation,
with parents in the driver’s seat.
By Brittany Corona
September 9, 2014
As kids head back to school this fall, parents in Arizona and Florida
are able to customize their experience thanks to an innovative tool:
education savings accounts. After decades of government centralization
of education, parent-controlled ESAs are ushering in a new era of
choice and accountability in education.
In an effort to improve education outcomes and narrow achievement gaps,
the federal government has progressively centralized education through
$2 trillion in federal education spending, dozens of grant programs,
and thousands of regulations. But that effort has largely failed to
deliver on the promise to “bridge the gap between helplessness and
hope,” as President Lyndon B. Johnson put it when he signed the 1965
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). No Child Left Behind,
ESEA’s seventh iteration, further bureaucratized this effort.
Student achievement in math and reading is no better than it was in the
1970s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP). American students are still performing in the middle of the
pack compared to their international peers on the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA). Recent NAEP data from the U.S.
Department of Education show that nearly one in three fourth-graders
cannot read at a basic level, only 26 percent of high-school seniors
are proficient in math, and just 38 percent are proficient in reading.
Children Start With Parents
While it has failed to improve education outcomes, centralizing
education has accomplished one thing: It has placed a chasm between
those closest to the student—parents and teachers—and decisions about
local school policy. Decision-making by far-away bureaucrats in
Washington through efforts such as Common Core national standards has
exacerbated the problem.
Centralizing education has placed a chasm between those closest to the
student—parents and teachers—and decisions about local school policy.
As Providence College Professor Anthony Esolen writes, the family, by
nature, has the primary responsibility for a child’s education. They
then delegate some of that authority to a school teacher. The school is
“a deputy of the family.” According to Esolen, a school “has no
authority of its own apart from what the employers, the parents,
delegate to it.”
By extension, accountability in education should begin with parents and
then, at their direction, move to teachers and other education service
providers.
The school-choice movement, which began in earnest in the early 1990s,
building on the conceptual foundation economist Milton Friedman
established in 1955, seeks to restore education decision-making back to
parents. It is a movement driven by the conviction that every child is
unique and has unique learning needs.
The Education Debit Card
Private school-choice options operate in states as vouchers, tuition
tax credits, and now, education savings account (ESAs). ESAs, hatched
in Arizona in 2011, are perhaps the most innovative of existing
school-choice programs. A refinement of Friedman’s original school
voucher idea, ESAs empower parents with the ability to direct 90
percent of what the state would have spent on their child in public
school toward a variety of education options, fully customizing their
child’s education. In Arizona, for non-special needs children, the
average amount deposited is approximately $3,000 per child per year.
For special-needs children, the account size ranges from $10,400 to
$26,000, depending on the severity of the child’s disability.
ESAs shift education decision-making back to the students’ primary
providers: the parents.
ESAs represent “School Choice 2.0”—the next generation of school
choice. ESA funds, which are distributed to accounts quarterly, are
loaded onto a restricted-use “debit card,” allowing parents to direct
funds deposited into their child’s account toward any combination of
approved education services and products. These include private
tuition, tutoring, curricula, textbooks, individual public-school
courses, online learning, and education therapies. Parents can even
roll unused funds into a college savings account.
ESAs better target resources, empower parents, and tailor a student’s
learning specifically to his needs—while enabling families to save for
college. ESAs restore accountability to its proper place by shifting
responsibility in education decision-making back to the students’
primary providers: the parents.
Two Pioneering States
In Arizona, the accounts are known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
And they are true to their name: they empower parents with the freedom
to fully customize their child’s education.
Arizona’s program is so popular that eligibility has been expanded
three times since 2011. Now incoming kindergarteners and children with
special needs, from underperforming schools, from active-duty military
families, in foster care, and of fallen soldiers are eligible for the
accounts.
And other states are noticing.
‘There is nobody that is going to be more accountable to that child
than the parent.’
This June, Florida became the second state to enact an ESA, which
Floridians call Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts (PLSAs). Just
two months into operation, Florida’s PLSA program has more than 3,000
applicants and has distributed 641 scholarships.
Ten-year-old Jordan Visser is an ESA recipient in Arizona. Jordan’s
parents, Kathy and Christo, spent years fighting within the public
school system, trying to get Jordan, who has cerebral palsy, the care
he needs. They even hired a legal advocate to fight battles over the
school district to provide what Jordan was supposed to receive by law.
As Kathy recounts, the family was spending the money that could have
been used toward Jordan’s therapy on legal expenses instead.
But that changed with the ESA.
Now Kathy and Christo can use Jordan’s savings account to pay for
physical and occupational therapies, curricula, and private tutoring.
Jordan is flourishing with his new schooling environment, and it’s all
because his parents are now empowered to direct his education funds
toward the best learning options for him.
“I’m seeing children that are blossoming, that were not learning in the
traditional system, and to me that’s accountability,” says Kathy. “We
need to look at ways to show that accountability. There is nobody that
is going to be more accountable to that child than the parent.”
Small, But Growing, Innovation
Like vouchers, ESAs beckon a new competitive marketplace of education
options, placing the needs of the consumer—the student—first. Because
of its flexible financing model, which enables customized learning,
ESAs are fitting twenty-first-century innovations in education.
ESAs beckon a new competitive marketplace of education options, placing
the needs of the consumer—the student—first.
The school choice movement is booming. As of 2014, there are 41 private
school-choice programs in 24 states and the District of Columbia. More
than 300,000 students currently benefit from private school-choice
options. According to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice’s
2014 Schooling in America Survey, a “solid majority” of Americans
support education savings accounts.
In just its first year of operation, 34 percent of Arizona families
chose to use their ESA funds to customize their child’s education,
using it for a variety of education expenses. (The others mostly used
the funds for private tuition.) This suggests that when parents are
given the ability to tailor their child’s education to their child’s
individual needs, they take the opportunity. In 2012, 71 percent of
families using ESAs in Arizona reported being “very satisfied” with
their savings account.
America has reached a crossroads in education. One path continues the
last half-century of centralization, which has not improved education
outcomes and has distanced those nearest students. The other path,
however, provides options and holds the potential to dramatically
increase opportunities for students. The path paved by school choice,
and in particular education savings accounts, restores parent direction
of education and enables families to access more nimble, responsive
education options.
Children across America are gathering their pencils and books, putting
on their backpacks, and preparing from a new school year. This time of
year is always filled with a sense of opportunity and new beginnings.
That’s particularly true now in Arizona and Florida, where children can
expand their educational opportunities, thanks to ESAs. Their parents
are in the driver’s seat—where they belong.
Read this and other articles from The Heritage Foundation
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