The Empire Strikes Back in 2014

April 18, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Score another 2014 win for the bad guys, who defeated an attempt to expand the Arizona ESA program to high-poverty areas of the state yesterday.

The debate on the floor revealed that we choice advocates have a lot of work to do. A pernicious and false idea that came up is one that we are guilty of helping to spread- that we “already have school choice in Arizona.”  Arizona scores relatively well on choice when compared to most other states. We have inter-and intradistrict choice, one of the strongest charter school laws, tuition tax credits and the ESA program.  Arizona is parental choice nirvana, right?

Wrong.

A few years ago I tried to help a woman who lived in south Phoenix find a different school for her children, two of whom had been sent to the hospital as the result of brutal attacks by fellow students.  I put her in touch with a person who has helped parents in her situation for many years.  It was an eye-opening experience.

Let’s start with open enrollment.  This mother found the doors shut in her face.  Let’s just say that it seemed that the fancier districts were not overly interested in kids from south Phoenix and leave it at that.

What about charter schools?  Even South Phoenix charter schools with lousy academics, but where you might hope your daughter might avoid getting a pencil stabbed through the back of her neck, had long waiting lists.  The Great Hearts charter schools alone had a wait list of 10,000 kids last year.

Well you can always apply for a tax credit scholarship.  Except…scholarship groups have thousands more applicants than they can possibly help.

For this mother, it almost may as well been 1993- the year before Arizona passed its charter school law.

The ESA expansion that failed yesterday would have made students living in areas like south Phoenix and south Tucson eligible to participate in the ESA program. The expansion would not have cured the world’s pain nor dried every crying eye, but it could have provided a lifeline to thousands of families like the one described above.

It would be easy to be angry at the people who voted against this expansion, but the truth is that people like me need to look in the mirror and ask how we can do a better job of explaining why this is so important.

 

Leave a Comment » | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

ESA makes a Customized Education Possible for Jordan Visser

April 10, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Watch the above video from the Alliance for School Choice, and mind you, that the customized education that Jordan is receiving is using only state funds which districts have spent decades describing as inadequate. Whatever school district Jordan used to attend, assuming that school finance works the way public school advocates and lobbyists have claimed, would have been making a large shift of their own general education dollars in an attempt to educate Jordan.  The district suffers no harm in losing Jordan, and in fact, one could make the case that they now have more resources to use on their remaining students.

Jordan benefits having an education custom designed to meet his needs.

Sadly a group of the anti-choice usual suspects are in court trying to make use of Blaine language forged by 19th Century Know-Nothing and Ku Klux Klan bigots in an effort to force students like Jordan back into district schools. I hope they will reconsider.

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

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

Next Entries »