(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Jason Riley weighs in on ESAs, federalism and parental choice in his Wall Street Journal column today:
After years of federal overreach through No Child Left Behind, Common Core and Obama administration “guidance” on lavatory usage, the states—where Republicans now occupy 33 of the 50 governors’ offices—are not only reasserting local control of K-12 education but reimagining it.
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In addition to this charter progress, education reformers see prospects for more private school choice in the form of education savings accounts, or ESAs, which they describe as the next step in school choice. Under an ESA system, money that would otherwise go to funding a child’s public-school education is instead placed into a restricted-use bank account, from which the family can withdraw to spend on a variety of education-related services. Like vouchers, ESAs allow the money to follow the child. But ESAs don’t limit education options in the way that vouchers do. Instead, families can use money in the account for tuition, textbooks, tutoring, test preparation, transportation, Advanced Placement courses, online learning and even college savings accounts.
Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst at the research organization EdChoice, told me that along with allowing families to tailor spending to the education needs of their children, ESAs can control costs. “Moving from a coupon or voucher model to a bank-account model helps guard against tuition inflation like we’ve seen in Pell Grants,” he said. With ESAs, “there’s no price floor. If you’ve got a $5,000 voucher, no school is going to charge less than $5,000. With an ESA, there’s a lot more competition because private schools are not just competing against each other and against public schools but also competing against other sorts of education opportunities.” In other words, a parent with an ESA has the ability to hold both public and private schools accountable.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Congrats to Jason, and to Matt and EdChoice (also cited).
I especially appreciated this Mattlicious quote: “The federal government is the source of about 8% of K-12 funding and about 60% or more of the red tape.” Will be using that in the future!
Let’s keep the school choice fight in the states where it belongs!