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

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.

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

News Video on Arizona ESA program

July 29, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

 

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

Clousseau vs. Cato (Institute)

April 22, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So in the old Pink Panther movies, Inspector Clousseau had this butler named Cato. Apparently, at some point, Clousseau had ordered Cato to conduct surprise attacks in order to keep his fighting skills sharp. Cato took to this role with relish, and Clousseau was unable to get him to stop. Clousseau did not seem to think that the value of the practice outweighed having his apartment destroyed on a regular basis, but Cato certainly seems to have thought it to be the case.

So…

My pals at the Cato Institute hold a strong preference for tax credits over vouchers. They have some reasons to do so- tax credits have thus far proven more durable to court challenge, and so far operate with fewer regulations on private schools. We’ve lost voucher programs in the courts in Colorado, Florida and Arizona and no tax credits yet.

Voucher-only supporters (I am not of this camp) usually about now would note their preference for programs that provide a meaningful level of subsidy to low-income people, and then would recite a litany of perceived deficiencies in existing school tax credit programs. The Illinois personal tax credit program, for instance, can certainly be justified given that taxpayers sending their children to private schools are suffering a double payment penalty.  With a maximum subsidy of $500, however, it doesn’t help anyone much and does very little to put private education within reach of the poor. They would also note that there is less to this less regulation business than meets the eye, given recent tax credit programs in Arizona and Florida which (gasp) require students to take a nnr exam.

Personal tax credits cannot address the needs of poor, especially of the poor with multiple children, or children with disabilities. There are two possible fixes- refundable credits, and scholarship credits. Under a refundable credit, the government would provide you a payment for private school expenses even if it exceeds your tax liability. Cato opposes refundable credits, and we don’t have any examples of them in any case. Scholarship credits involve having non-profits pool donations from tax-donors (either personal or corporate donors depending on the program) and giving scholarships to kids.

Arizona lawmakers passed a school voucher program for children with disabilities in 2006. Edu-reactionaries sued against it and killed it with a Blaine Amendment. We passed a corporate tax credit program in an effort to save the kids on the program, but it debuted during a national financial collapse that impacted housing-crazy Arizona especially hard. The program has helped some students, but I don’t think it is unfair to say it underwhelmed, and had a $5m cap in any case. There was zero possibility that this program could grow into something like the fully scalable, elegantly operating McKay program, which funds special needs children on demand.

The Arizona Supreme Court did repeatedly broadly hint that a program with multiple possible uses for funds would not violate the Blaine Amendment. Nick Dranias and I researched the matter carefully and proposed a system of public contributions to ESAs as a solution. School choice champions in the Arizona legislature crafted a bill, which has now been signed into law by Governor Brewer.

Out jumps Cato from behind the leftovers in the fridge to the attack!

I could go into full OCD point by point refutation mode, but I will spare you by making a few brief comments. First, Adam’s discussion about “third-party payers” is odd to say the least, given Cato’s support of scholarship tax credits. Scholarship tax credits don’t just have third-party payers, they also have fourth party payers- donors and scholarship organizations.

Perhaps the Cato Institute only supports personal credits these days, although I doubt it. Such a preference would constitute utter indifference to equity concerns.

I also think Adam should not rush to jump to any conclusions regarding constitutional issues. When an Arizona Supreme Court justice gets a teacher union attorney to admit that a program with multiple uses solves a Blaine problem in open court, I’m willing to bet that ESAs are constitutionally distinct from vouchers in some circumstances. Further, Adam may be premature in concluding that deposits into these accounts remain “public funds.” Payments to individuals under contractual agreements with the government are not considered public funds- otherwise someone could sue to prevent the state from hiring anyone. Some of the money will end up paying for private school tuition, verboten under Blaine! Some of the top Constitutional attorneys in the country contributed to the development of this proposal including the crack team of Dranias and Bolick at the Goldwater Institute and Tim Keller at the Institute for Justice. I’ll take my chances with them in any court.

I encourage my friends at Cato to give equity concerns some serious consideration. Personal use credits are weak tea when dealing with poor children, children in large families, and children with disabilities. Some families are large, poor and have children with disabilities. This is not to say that personal use credits are bad- in fact, I say that they are a good but limited tool. The same applies to scholarship credits- they are good as far as they go.

Nor finally are choice mechanisms mutually exclusive, and we need every tool we can get.

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

The Way of the (Near) Future: Arizona Legislature Passes ESA choice bill

April 8, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Yesterday the Arizona Senate gave the final passage for SB 1553, Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first system of public contributions to education savings accounts as a choice mechanism, 21 to 7.  The bill is now on Governor Brewer’s desk. Designed to replace Arizona’s special needs voucher program lost to our Blaine amendment, the ESA program will allow the parents of a child with a disability to withdraw their child from a public district or charter school, and receive a payment into an education savings account with restricted but multiple uses.  Parents can then use their funds to pay for private school tuition, virtual education programs, private tutoring or saving for future college expenses.

Congratulations and thanks to sponsors Senator Rick Murphy and Represenative Debbie Lesko, my colleagues at the Goldwater Institute especially my coauthor for the ESA paper Nick Dranias. The tireless hard work of Arizona’s school choice coalition resulted in this passage, including but not limited to: A+ Arizona, the Arizona School Tuition Organization Association, the Arizona Catholic Conference, the Center for Arizona Policy, the Goldwater Institute and the Institute for Justice in additional to national partners such the Alliance for School Choice, the Foundation for Educational Choice and the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

This has been quite the week for parental choice in Arizona. First, the United States Supreme Court dispatched a challenge to the tax credit program that had been bouncing around in the 9th circuit for many years. Somehow in the fevered imagination of the ACLU an entirely voluntary program in a state which subsidizes secular options at a much higher rate than the tax credit scholarship compels parents to send their children to religious schools. It would be nice if these guys would follow the lead of the ACLU in Los Angeles and do something useful like suing against tenure policies that really damage the education of children.

Instead, they will probably go straight into court on the ESA program. Sigh. Nick and I followed the lead of very perceptive questioning in the Arizona Supreme Court’s deliberation over special needs voucher programs to make the case for the constitutionality of the ESA concept under the restrictions of the Arizona Constitution. Attorneys on both sides of the case agreed that a program allowing multiple uses of funds would not violate a restriction on providing aid to private or religious schools. Otherwise, we can argue that it is unconstitutional to pay state workers salaries out of the public treasury: some of that money winds up paying private school tuition in religious schools. 

Quelle horreur!

Parents will be using this program for things other than private school tuition, and parents have an incentive to look for education programs which deliver strong results and a low-cost due to the possibility of saving for college expenses. Paging Dr. Technology! As I’ve argued here before, this is a superior design for a parental choice program, and I’ll go further by saying that when we get any kinks worked out, choice supporters should seriously consider converting voucher programs into a system of public contributions to ESAs.

Next the legislature expanded the maximum size of an individual tax credit contribution from $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a married couple filing jointly to $750 for an individual and $1,500 for a couple in addition to the ESA bill.  The legislature also voted to eliminate the statewide cap on the corporate credit.

Great team wins all. Now we need to roll up our sleeves and get these programs to work for the kids who need them.

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

The Way of the Future: ESA over KKK

January 31, 2011

 (Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The United States began as an experiment in freedom, but has at times struggled with intolerance. America’s culture wars surrounding the assimilation of Catholic immigrants represented just such a struggle in the 19th and early 20th Century. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan successfully abolished private schools in Oregon. The KKK, you see, wanted to standardize Oregon Catholics into “real Americans.” If that thought frightens you, and it should, read on. It’s not enough to reject having the KKK standardize children, we need to embrace a customized education for all children.

The KKK aimed to do this in Oregon with a public school curriculum of which they approved and by banning private school attendance. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down this incredibly illiberal measure in 1925. Today we should not only reject discrimination in schooling, but more fundamentally the notion that one size fits all. Americans can embrace customized education for all children and improve our 19th Century factory-like model of public schooling. We can do this by directly funding students through education savings accounts controlled by parents.

Looking past the ugly religious discriminatory intent of the attempt to ban private schools, this effort reflected a broader problem: an intolerant belief in a “one true way” to educate children. The Klan is not alone in having sought to control schools for their own purposes. Today we see groups on both the left and the right engaged in a never-ending battle over school curriculum. From Creationism to environmentalism to “Heather Has Two Mommies,” the struggles never cease. Worse still, American public schools fail to educate far too many of our students to an internationally competitive level.

Milton Friedman proposed a solution to these problems in the 1950s: separating the school finance from the operation of schools. This would allow parents far greater freedom to choose the sort of education they want, and reflects a liberal “to each their own” system. Over the years, advocates of greater parental choice have carried Friedman’s concept forward in the form of school vouchers and tuition tax credits. Vouchers are essentially state funded coupons that parents can redeem at public or private schools. Tax credits provide indirect aid for parents bearing the expense of a private education in addition to paying their public school taxes. The first modern voucher program began in Milwaukee in 1990, and over 26 voucher and tax-credit programs operate around the country.

Empirical research confirms significant benefits to parental choice, including Friedman’s central claim that it can serve as a catalyst for public school improvement. The need for improvement could not be clearer. Although America has a large number of excellent public schools, the recent PISA exam found that Hispanic and Black American 15 year olds score little better in literacy than their peers in Mexico. Mexico spends a mere quarter per pupil of the American average, and has substantially lower average family incomes. Those receiving the least from the status-quo have the most to gain from reform.

Last week,  Nick Dranias and I released a study for the Goldwater Institute proposing public donations to education savings accounts as a strategy for improving education outcomes. Parental choice supporters in multiple states have proposed public contributions to education savings accounts. Education saving accounts can serve as a new and more powerful method for expanding parental freedom and improving public schools. Parents should have full control over the education of their children, down to the penny, and multiple options in seeking the best possible education for their child.

ESA contributions represent a substantial improvement over school vouchers as a parental choice mechanism. Rather than simply choosing between schools, parents should be free to choose from a growing array of education services from a variety of providers. Today, students take classes online, can seek private tutoring, or enroll in community colleges or even universities for coursework.

Accounts for education and health care serve as important precedents upon which to build. Lawmakers must construct strong systems of state financial oversight and provide for the auditing of accounts. Near bankrupt states can save money by fashioning contractual agreements with parents to provide greater flexibility in return for smaller overall per pupil subsidies.

With control over funding, parents could purchase full enrollment at public or private schools. Alternatively, our parents might choose to have their child attend classes at a variety of providers, public, private or virtual. Allowing parents to save funds for later college and university expenses would provide a powerful incentive to consider cost-effectiveness from all types of providers, whether public or private.

Contrary to the demonstrably mistaken fears echoing through the parental choice debate, our existing public schools would grow stronger as a result. Public schools will always be the bedrock of our education system, but might evolve to resemble the course-by-course offerings of our universities, especially at the high-school level.

American parents deserve their own experiment in freedom. The question is not whether we should have public schools, but rather who should be in charge of them, and how many other options should our system provide. I believe the answers to these two questions are “parents” and “as many as possible.” Students all have unique needs and aspirations they are not widgets to be mass-produced. The time has come to let go of our attempts to standardize the educations of children, and instead give parents the liberty to customize them.

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

Education Savings Accounts Duel in Florida

January 20, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Look for the Goldwater Institute study on using Education Savings Accounts as a vehicle for school choice next week. Meanwhile, they are already dueling over the concept in Florida. In this corner, Patricia Levesque from the Foundation for Excellence in Education represents the good guys with Let the Parents Choose.

In the opposing corner, representing the good but misguided faction, Betty Castor with Don’t Endanger Our Schools.

Notice the difference in emphasis regarding students vs. schools.

Those of us who support a fundamental overhaul of our system of schooling have a great deal of work to do to get people to understand that the methods of public schooling are fundamentally at odds with the ideals of public schooling. If you had to start from scratch, who in their right mind would order up the system we have today? Castor is right that Florida public schools have made a great deal of progress, and no one enjoys celebrating it more than me. It bears mentioning however that many of the people working Florida’s public school system fought the changes that produced those gains tooth and nail.

They were **ahem** completely wrong last time, but never mind that, this idea is dangerous so everyone run to your corners and Let’s Do the (2002) Timewarp Again!!!!

A decade ago, Florida’s public school establishment and their many willing accomplices in more than a few Florida newspapers were busily throwing up a firestorm over Governor Jeb Bush’s reforms. We all know how that ended: with Florida’s low-income, Hispanic and Black students outscoring statewide averages on NAEP.  Before we give any credence to the Little-Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf crowd, note that Florida has been offering children with disabilities all of their state money in the form of a voucher since 1999. Last year, 5% of children with disabilities utilized the program. That’s right- only 5% after a decade.

What do we know about the program? Participating parents love it and scores for children with disabilities are way up in Florida in part because of competition from the program. Oh, and it helps curb mislabelling of children into special education.

Ummmm…..where is the apocalypse? The mad rush for the exits? The terrible harm to schools and students?

The magic of the McKay program, and choice more generally, is that you don’t actually have to use it to benefit from it. Parents of children with disabilities now have the ability to walk with their feet if they think their school has served their child poorly, or that another school would do a better. The fact that only 5% of parents have actually pulled the trigger doesn’t matter much because all parents have the potential ability to pull the trigger. There are constraints, of course, most notably the availability of private options, but you get the point.

Nationwide, 2% of children with disabilities attend private schools at school district expense. Generally speaking, they were the kids with parents who had the ability to hire fancy attorneys who specialize in federal disability law. Sometimes these kids have successfully sued the district to get to a private school, sometimes a consensual agreement is reached for a private placement. Sometimes it is consensual, and other times it is “consensual” in the sense that districts are pretty good at figuring out when they would lose a lawsuit and cut their losses.

In any case, McKay gives parents who don’t have fancy lawyers power- the power to leave. McKay children stopped being a largely captive audience and became more like a client- a client you can lose if you fail to satisfy them.

This is what the education savings account concept is about: power for parents. The customer is King, and I want to give parents as close to full sovereignty over the education of their child as possible, down to the penny. This goes well beyond whether I should have choice over whether I send my child to a charter or a district school, or a private or district school. The idea is to allow every parent to customize an education for their child based upon their unique needs and interests from as wide an array of education service providers as possible: whether from public schools, private schools, virtual schools, private tutors, trade schools or colleges and university courses. Parents should be able to judge opportunity costs and cost-effectiveness, and save money over time for university expenses.

Would this spell the end of public schools? Hardly- did McKay end public schooling for children with disabilities? Yes but if McKay gave options beyond private schools, maybe 10% of students may have left instead of 5%!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would it change education savings accounts change the way schools operate? Yes- for the better.

What about equity concerns? Give disadvantaged children greater funding weights than the current public school funding system.  Can anyone seriously justify $1,500 from the feds as making a serious dent in the role poverty plays in education, especially when often only half of it reaches the classroom? Who wants to stand up to defend a system of school funding which covertly gives far more to the children with the most, cleverly disguised in district averages? Can we really go on ignoring the abject failure of state funding equity lawsuits without seriously revamping the broken power structures of urban districts which often absorbed massive amounts of additional funds without producing significant improvement?

We can do much better than this- and putting parents in charge is the right way to do it.

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

National Review Online on Education Savings Accounts

January 12, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

NRO’s Reihan Salam on the revolutionary potential of education savings accounts. Goldwater Institute proposal by yours truly and Nick Dranias coming soon…

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

Next Entries »