\n\n“It started with West Virginia in 2021 and Arizona in 2022, and then continued with a flood this year \u2014 Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Indiana. More may follow.”
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“The reform sweeping red America is slightly different from a voucher \u2014 it\u2019s called an education savings account, or an ESA. In a voucher system, public funds go directly to schools. With ESAs, parents who opt out of the public school system get several thousand dollars in an account that they can use for private school tuition, homeschooling, or other education-related expenses.”
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“Critics of these changes argue they amount to a wealth transfer to families with kids in private schools, and they fear it will result in the weakening or even the eventual privatization of public school systems. They also voice concern over the separation of church and state, since many ESA funds will go toward sending children to religious education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For many supporters, those are features, not bugs. They characterize the new ESA laws as letting parents take \u201ctheir money\u201d \u2014 the dollars that would have been used to educate their kids \u2014 out of public schools they have no interest in using. They call this \u201cfunding students instead of systems.\u201d Their critics say it\u2019s the destruction of the common good.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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“\u201cIn the short term, mostly it\u2019s just going to be a funding giveaway to families that were already sending their kids to private schools,\u201d said Douglas Harris, an economist at Tulane University who studies education policy. \u201cIn the long run, there\u2019s potentially a much bigger story here.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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“What is the money producing? Again, the answer is unclear. The Goldwater Institute bragged in 2022<\/a> that Arizona\u2019s ESA bill \u201cdoes not have any testing requirements.\u201d (Iowa legislators, in contrast, did include some<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics fear state money will go to low-quality private schools that don\u2019t actually educate children well \u2014 and that, without transparent testing requirements, we\u2019ll never find that out for sure. \u201cThese policies being passed now are almost being evidence-proofed,\u201d said Polikoff. \u201cYou won\u2019t be able to say, \u2018This isn\u2019t working, we need to do something different,\u2019 because there won\u2019t be the data. The data will just be, \u2018Look at all these people who\u2019ve enrolled their kids.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n