ESAs in the NYT

March 28, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The New York Times has a story on the progress of the school choice movement. Money quote on Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program:

The Arizona Legislature last May expanded the eligibility criteria for education savings accounts, which are private bank accounts into which the state deposits public money for certain students to use for private school tuition, books, tutoring and other educational services.       

Open only to special-needs students at first, the program has been expanded to include children in failing schools, those whose parents are in active military duty and those who are being adopted. One in five public school students — roughly 220,000 children — will be eligible in the coming school year.       

Some parents of modest means are surprised to discover that the education savings accounts put private school within reach. When Nydia Salazar first dreamed of attending St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Phoenix, for example, her mother, Maria Salazar, a medical receptionist, figured there was no way she could afford it. The family had always struggled financially, and Nydia, 14, had always attended public school.       

But then Ms. Salazar, 37, a single mother who holds two side jobs to make ends meet, heard of a scholarship fund that would allow her to use public dollars to pay the tuition.       

She is now trying to coax other parents into signing up for similar scholarships. “When I tell them about private school, they say I’m crazy,” she said. “They think that’s only for rich people.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

3 Comments | Education Savings Accounts, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Amid Talk of Gun Control, Don’t Forget School Reform

January 22, 2013

(Guest Post by William Mattox)

Amid all the talk about gun control and mental health reform, one important question begged by last month’s tragedy in Connecticut has gone unasked:  Is there anything we can do about the structure of education that might help lower the risk of another school massacre?  I believe there is – and a poignant story (and some very interesting research data) will help explain why.

Two of my children once attended a small private school in a town where we had just moved.  Early in the fall semester, another new kid at that school – a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who would now be 19 or 20 years old – had several emotional “meltdowns” as he sought to adjust to his new routine.  This unsettling behavior caused some school officials, and a number of concerned parents, to wonder if our school was equipped to handle the challenges presented by this student (whom I’ll call “Bradley”).

Bradley’s teachers rallied to his cause.  They appreciated his keen intellect.  And they were reluctant to give up on him – partly because Bradley had had a rough childhood.  (His condition had been misdiagnosed for years, causing household stress that contributed to his parents’ divorce).  But there was an even greater reason for the teachers’ reluctance: Since this was a Christian school, the teachers felt they had a special responsibility to “go the extra mile” with social outcasts like Bradley.  Even if this was, at times, difficult.

So, Bradley remained a part of our school.  And the teachers who’d had experience working with Asperger’s students helped those who’d had none.  And they all sought to teach their students some important “life lessons” about dealing with people who are different from you.

Apparently, some of these lessons got through.  One day, I chaperoned a dance at the school.  When it came time for the first number, I saw one of the most popular teen girls in the school maneuver into a position where she could be the first girl Bradley asked to dance.  This girl didn’t have a romantic interest in Bradley.  But she did have a heart of compassion – and a maturity beyond her years.  And she recognized that no girl would be apt to dance with Bradley unless someone like her saw past his social awkwardness and validated his worth.  As a human being.  As a child made in the image of God.

After the dance, Bradley got into his mother’s van and made a peculiar announcement.  “Today, I placed my hand on the hip of four different girls,” he said.  These odd words brought tears to his mother’s eyes, for she understood them to mean that her socially-awkward son’s yearning for human connection, for some measure of normal acceptance, had been met in a most meaningful way that day.

Now, I don’t want to insinuate that an episode like this could have only occurred at a Christian school – or that it would have happened at every faith-based private school.  But when I consider how their Christian faith affected the way these teachers and students treated Bradley, I can’t help but affirm the Florida policymakers who created the McKay scholarship program that made it possible for Bradley to attend a private school of his family’s choosing.  Especially since a recent research study suggests that Bradley’s experience at that school was not that unusual.

According to a Manhattan Institute study, 47 percent of McKay scholarship recipients had been picked on often at their local public school – and 25 percent had been victimized physically. At their new schools, chosen for them by their parents, only 5 percent of these special needs students experienced frequent harassment and only 6 percent were physically mistreated.

In view of all this, I think every state ought to adopt programs like Florida’s McKay scholarships (or Arizona’s Educational Savings Accounts) which give families of special needs students the freedom to choose learning options for their children beyond those available at their local public school.  For many Asperger’s children (and other students with special needs) yearn for human connection and social acceptance – and delight when others affirm their worth in the eyes of God.

William Mattox is a resident fellow at the James Madison Institute and a Florida Voices columnist.  His four children have all attended public high schools.

10 Comments | Education Savings Accounts, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Forbes on Education Savings Accounts

October 12, 2012

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Forbes magazine on the ESA update to the voucher concept. I like the iPhone analogy as the first generation of phones were only designed to do one thing, whereas a modern smart phone expands capabilities and options considerably. Likewise, our first generation of choice programs were essentially designed to allow children to transfer into a pre-existing stock of non-profit schools, whereas Education Savings Accounts open many more options.

Meet the new and improved brick!

Take a look- but before any of you conspiracy theorists get started, please note that the financial services fees from similar accounts such as college savings accounts and HSAs went below 1% years ago and have continued to fall. If only the “management fee” for public education were heading in the same direction…

2 Comments | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Hot Off the Press — New Report on ESAs

September 27, 2012

Our very own Matt Ladner has a new report out with the Friedman Foundation on Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).  Here’s the summary:

Education savings accounts are the way of the future. Under such accounts—managed by parents with state supervision to ensure accountability—parents can use their children’s education funding to choose among public and private schools, online education programs, certified private tutors, community colleges, and even universities. Education savings accounts bring Milton Friedman’s original school voucher idea into the 21st century.

Arizona lawmakers were the first to create such a program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs). Through that program, the state of Arizona deposits 90 percent of the funds for a participating child into an account, which can cover multiple educational services through use-restricted debit cards. Parents can choose to use all of their funds on a single method—like private school tuition—or they can employ a customized strategy using multiple methods (e.g., online programs and community college classes). Critically, parents can save some of the money for future higher education expenses through a 529 college savings program. That feature creates an incentive for parents to judge all K-12 service providers not only on quality but also on cost.

A fully realized system of ESAs would create powerful incentives for innovation in schooling practices seeking better outcomes for lower costs. Also, the broader use of funds may help to immunize choice programs against court challenges in some states. Policymakers must fashion their system of accounts to provide reasonable state oversight, fraud prevention, academic transparency, and equity.

If Milton Friedman were alive today, he likely would agree that education savings accounts represent a critical refinement of his school voucher concept. Existing voucher programs create healthy competition between public and private schools, but ESAs can create a much deeper level of systemic improvement. ESAs would allow parents to build a customized education to match the individual needs of every child, thus transforming education for the better.

1 Comment | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Much to Learn About Vouchers Rhee Still Has

April 25, 2012

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Last month Sean Cavanaugh interviewed Michelle Rhee about vouchers over at Ed Week. Overall I’m happy to have Rhee and other “Cool Kids” support parental choice, even if it is on a limited basis. I hope they think deeper on the subject however, as many Cool Kids are far more misguided on vouchers than Rhee. It is easy however to detect shoot-from-the-hip attitudes in the interview. Rhee told Cavanaugh:

“When people talk about universal vouchers, first of all, I’ve never seen an economic model that actually made sense and laid that out in way that’s sustainable,” Rhee said. I haven’t seen any kind of model that makes economic sense. … My support for vouchers is around a specific group of kids.”

“There are a lot of people out there who sort of believe, the free market, let the free market reign, the market will correct itself—give every kid a backpack with their money in it and let them choose wherever they want to go,” she added. “I don’t believe in that model at all.”

I’m still waiting for the day when supporters of means-tested vouchers come out and explain why they don’t support means testing public schools. Bill Gates could move to Milwaukee right now and enroll his children in public schools that cost taxpayers $13,000 per year. No one blinks. If he were to move to Milwaukee and get $6,400 vouchers however some of us want are inclined to view it as a grave injustice. I’ve yet to hear anyone propose that we should have economic cleansing of charter schools either-out with you middle and high-income children and don’t come back!

Don’t get me wrong- I have fought for a number of means-tested programs and continue to support them. I also strongly support an advantage for the poor, but not means-testing. Rhee is discussing the ideal however, and as an ideal, limited programs have some unresolvable problems.

Rhee also seems to be influenced by straw-man arguments. Very few people advocate a complete free market in education, and those that do don’t support vouchers. From Milton Friedman’s original formulation of the voucher concept he argued for public financing of K-12 education rather than financing and provision. Friedman also recognized the need for some level of regulation. The appropriate level of course remains an issue for debate.

As an aside, Rhee goes on to specifically distance herself from Florida governor Rick Scott’s proposal for universal education savings accounts during his transition, on which Rhee served. National Review Online rightly described this as “the most significant, transformative idea ever advanced by an actual elected official with any real power.” Sadly Scott’s proposal activated the hyperbolic anti-choice antibodies of Florida’s newspapers, and Governor Scott stopped pushing the proposal. Testing new ideas with pilot programs can be a agonizingly slow process, but that process has begun in Arizona. Florida’s private choice program continues to expand incrementally through the Step Up for Students program. I remain hopeful that something between Governor Scott’s initial ambition and the current slow pace of bringing funded private choice eligibility to Florida children will be enacted. Zero to sixty to two seconds sometimes wraps a Ferrari around a telephone pole, the price of being aggressive, but it isn’t an argument in favor of indefinite gradualism.

But I digress. Rhee went on:

“It has to be a heavily regulated industry,” she said. “I believe in accountability across the board. If you’re going to be having a publicly funded voucher program, then kids have to be taking standardized tests. We have to be measuring whether kids are academically better off in this private school with this voucher than they would be going to their failing neighborhood school. If they’re not, they shouldn’t get the voucher. … I’m about choice only if it results in better outcomes and opportunities for kids.”

Rhee’s faith in regulation is odd. The public school system is super-heavily regulated with laws and policies streaming down from the federal, state and local levels. Despite all of that, much of the system performs at a tragically poor level.  That of course is not to say that vouchers should have no regulation, but the right level of regulation is not “heavy.”

Rhee also places far too much weight on the results of standardized test and gives far too little deference to the judgment of parents. Parents make decisions about schools for a large variety of reasons- including things like school safety, peer groups and the availability of specialized programs. In addition to missing the whole point about school choices being multifaceted with parents best able to judge all the factors, individual test scores bounce around from year to year, they often take a temporary hit when a child transfers and adjusts to a new school.

The notion of having program administrators looking at the math and reading tests and deciding to cast children back to their ‘failing neighborhood school’ is very problematic. Pity the poor voucher program apparatchiks who have to drag children back to a public school where they had been continually bullied because they had the flu on testing day. Pity the children more. The subject of what to do about poorly performing private schools in a choice system is a complex topic and opinions vary widely. Rhee’s proposed solution however does not begin to capture this complexity.

Rhee wraps up:

The ideal public school system, Rhee argued, will include high-quality traditional public schools and a charter sector, as well as some vouchers.

“But the vast majority of kids are going to be in a high-performing public school environment,” she said, adding: “I’m a believer in public schools. I’m a public school parent. I ran a public school district.”

Public schools will continue to serve as the primary conduits for education regardless of what we do on the choice side of things.We are a long, long way from having high-quality public schools for all children, and choice can play a role in moving us in that direction. Choice improves public schools and we can hardly will the ends without the means.

If however we embrace only tiny choice programs targeted at limited student populations, that positive role will likewise remain limited. In the end, catastrophically under-performing schools do so because they can get away with it. I’m all for efforts to improve the laughably ineffectual quality of our regulation in an effort to curtail this, but choice is the only decentralized system of accountability that allow parents to hold schools accountable for individual results.

We need as much parental choice as we can get.

(Edited for typos and clarity)

13 Comments | Education Savings Accounts, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Jindal Triumphs in Louisiana, Brewer vetoes in Arizona

April 4, 2012

 (Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal got both his tenure reform and his voucher/charter school expansion bills through the Louisiana Senate tonight. The bills will either go to the House for concurrence or to a conference committee, but they are getting close.

On a far more disappointing note, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill expanding Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Program.

Her veto message noted the fact that Arizona public schools get funded on last year’s student count, and raised concerns over first year double counting of students in the transfer year.

Time will tell whether Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature are able to work things out. For now, Governor Jindal is to be congratulated for his strong leadership and courage in taking action to improve Louisiana’s public school system.

UPDATE: The Louisiana House concurred with the Senate 60-42- the choice bill is off to Governor Jindal’s Desk.

 

3 Comments | Education Savings Accounts, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Arizona Passes the First New Private Choice Program of 2012

February 29, 2012

 (Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the first new private choice program of 2012 into law today. The new law will create a new individual tax credit the same size as the current one ($500 for an individual and $1000 per couple) that will operate under the rules of Arizona’s corporate tax credit (i.e. means tested and aimed at students transferring from public schools). Individual taxpayers will be able to make donations under both credits each year. Arizona lawmakers are also considering an expansion of eligibility of the Education Savings Account program to students attending low rated schools.

Governor Jindal is gearing up for what sounds like a broad choice program. Florida lawmakers are considering an increase in their tax credit program, Virginia has a chance to join the ranks of choice states.

After the 2011 blowout, perhaps Greg’s original bet with Jay Mathews would make for a high but obtainable bar for a good year for private choice in 2012. Greg’s bet is to legislative monitoring what the NCAA tournament is the college basketball.

1 Comment | tax-credit scholarships | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Jonathan Butcher debates the Arizona Education Association on ESAs

January 16, 2012

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

GI’s Butcher debated Andrew Morrill, President of the Arizona Education Association on Education Savings Accounts. Check it out.

4 Comments | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Heritage Foundation on Education Savings Accounts

October 5, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Heritage Foundation has published a new web memo on Education Savings Accounts as a vehicle for parental choice. At this point, Arizona has passed an ESA program for special needs students, a proposal is under consideration in Ohio, Florida lawmakers considered a provision last year, and Utah has a whopper of a proposal on the way.

I had the opportunity to speak to Utah legislator John Dougall about his forthcoming proposal.  Rep. Dougall plans to file a bill that would send all education funding into Education Savings Accounts controlled by parents and guardians, but does not intend to make private school tuition a permissable expense for funds in the account. Dougall in essence plans to have a discussion about customized learning rather than a public vs. private school debate.

Being a Longhorn, this of course brings to mind a scene from the master thespian of our era, the great Matthew McConaughey:

McConaughey: Hey man, you got some private school choice in that ESA proposal?

Passenger: No man, not in this proposal.

McConaughey: Well, it would be alot cooler if you did!

Seriously though, Dougall’s proposal is sufficiently mind-blowing that it doesn’t really bother me that he is choosing to leave private schools out of the mix. If ten years from now Utah is funding district and virtual schooling through an ESA system and the private choice options available were going through tax credit and voucher mechanisms, you won’t hear any complaints from me.

1 Comment | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

The Way of the Future: ESA for a la carte

September 20, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Utah state Rep. John Dougall has announced plans to introduce legislation to fund student education through a system of education savings accounts rather than through a system of payments to districts.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

The plan would be unique in the United States and, just like initiatives from the Utah Legislature on public employee pension reform and Medicaid reform, could become a model for other states, its supporters boast.

For example, one parent of a Highland High School student contacted me recently to complain that his straight-A student wanted to take an AP European history class that is not offered by Highland, but is offered by Skyline, which is in a different school district. The request to remain a full-time student in the Salt Lake District’s Highland High but take that one class in the Granite District’s Skyline High was denied, mostly for reasons of state funding of the school districts, although the  Skyline administration said the class was full anyway.

Dougall says his legislation would solve the problem for that student.

He said the student would not be tied to one particular school. He or she could take, say, four classes at Highland, and pay Highland out of the student account for those four classes, then take two at Skyline, paying the money to Skyline from the account, then take a class at applied technology school and pay that school out of the account.  The student could move between school districts while utilizing his or her schedule and could also use the money for charter schools or online instruction.

The plan would put into the student’s account nearly $6,000 a year under the assumption a typical high school class costs a school district about $700. The account would cover up to eight classes per year, with the ability of rolling the money over to the next year if the entire $6,000 was not spent.

Under Dougall’s vision, if the student didn’t spend all the money in the account during his or her four high school years, that student could use the left-over funds toward college.

Educators say that, conceptually, the plan is intriguing, but myriad details would need to be worked out.

Dougall’s proposal would profoundly empower parents, increase parental involvement, require careful consideration of opportunity costs, and spur education innovation. It builds upon previous steps taken to fund digital learning on a per course basis in Utah.

Let’s see how the discussion unfolds-these types of very far-reaching steps represent precisely the conversation and debate that we should be having.

3 Comments | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,744 other followers