Education Week - April 26, 2023 - 11

of thousands more students will enroll in the
coming years.
Some ESA programs are far more obscure
than Arizona's, at least for now. Only about
140 students have enrolled in Indiana's ESA
program for students with disabilities since it
was established in 2021, according to Dennis
Costerison, executive director of the Indiana
Association of School Business Officials.
How do ESAs differ from other forms
of state-funded vouchers and tax credits,
like 529 and Coverdell savings accounts?
School choice vouchers and tax credits must
be used for tuition or other expenses at private
schools. By contrast, ESA dollars can go to a
much wider range of expenses, with a much
less tangible link to academics. Proponents say
they offer parents more freedom to structure
their children's education how they see fit.
Whereas existing tax-exempt savings accounts
including 529 plans and Coverdell savings accounts
are managed by states but funded by
individual account holders, ESAs are both sponsored
and funded by the state.
How have ESA policies evolved
since they emerged?
Universal programs have grown in popularity
over the last two years. Seven of the 11
states with ESA laws have passed those policies
since 2021, and four states have passed
laws this year alone, according to FutureEd, a
Georgetown University think tank that tracks
education policy. Six states-Arizona, Arkansas,
Florida, Iowa, Utah, and West Virginia-
have made those policies universal or near
universal.
Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice,
said he and his colleagues developed
the initial concept of ESAs for students with disabilities
after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled
that the state's original voucher program was unconstitutional
in 2009. Arizona passed the first
ESA law in 2011, and later expanded it to apply
to all students in 2021.
The universal versions of the accounts represent
a new development for the school choice
movement, Enlow said.
" [There's] a real serious increase with parents
saying, 'I want something different out of education.
I want something more customizable,' "
Enlow said. " All of a sudden you see in 2021, a real
drive to say, 'Hey, let's make these things really
broad.' "
In Arkansas, where Gov. Sarah Huckabee
Sanders signed the LEARNS Act last month,
any student will be able to access " educational
freedom accounts " starting in the 2024-25
school year. The state government will deposit
90 percent of combined state and local per-pupil
funding to the accounts, which families will
be able to use to pay for private school tuition
and fees, uniforms, school supplies, tutoring
services, transportation costs, and any other
educational expense approved by the state's
education department. The remaining funds
stay with the local school district the student
would have attended.
The only qualification for the Arkansas program?
The student must live in Arkansas.
Why have ESAs gained political
momentum?
Enlow described the idea of the programs as
" funding education through parents, " meaning
that parents, rather than the state or school
districts, should have full control over how perpupil
funds are spent.
That is one of the aspects of the program that
Marshall likes the most.
" I do believe that there are a lot of public
"
Let's allocate more
resources to Arizona
public schools because
we're ranked 49th in the
nation. Maybe those
resources could be better
expended to help
students in high-poverty
areas like myself.
QUINCY NATAY
Superintendent
Chinle Unified School District, Ariz.
dents or much funding to ESAs. But when the
state prioritizes ESA funding, public schools
lose out in the process, he argues.
" Let's allocate more resources to Arizona public
schools because we're ranked 49th in the nation, "
he said. " Maybe those resources could be
better expended to help students in high-poverty
areas like myself. "
Districts in Arizona and most other states
receive fewer dollars overall when their enrollment
drops, even as many costs from teacher
compensation to utilities stand firm or even
grow year over year.
But Arizona schools have been spared significant
financial impacts from ESAs so far because
so many students who use them weren't attending
public schools to begin with, said Chuck
Essigs, director of government relations for the
Arizona Association of School Business Officials.
That could change as the program continues
to grow, though.
The concept of giving parents full control over
public funds doesn't sit right even with some
school choice advocates.
" It's one thing to say parents should be able to
review curriculum and have more say in what
the schools are teaching and what is in the library, "
said Chester Finn Jr., president emeritus
of the Fordham Institute, a conservative educaschools
and public school teachers out there
who truly value the student, but they can only
do so much, " she said. " I can be the expert
on my kid and spend all the time in the world
looking for things that are going to benefit
them the most. "
The ESA programs reflect one part of a
growing parents' rights movement, in which
conservative lawmakers are using parents' bill
of rights policies to justify more scrutiny over
curriculum, classroom materials, and lessons
surrounding race, gender, and sexuality. Lawmakers
in all of the six states with universal
or near-universal ESAs have introduced or
passed bills that establish " parental rights "
following the growing movement out of the
pandemic.
Do ESAs take away money and
resources from public schools?
Some districts say the programs haven't yet
had a direct effect on their enrollment or operations.
But that could easily change.
The Chinle district in rural Arizona, for instance,
is located on a Native American reservation
with few private school options for students.
Quincy Natay, the superintendent, said
his district specifically hasn't lost many stuFinn's
concerns about accountability are
echoed by more vocal opponents of ESAs.
The policies don't require students to participate
in standardized testing and students with
disabilities waive federally mandated protections
when they transfer from public to private
schools.
Kevin Welner, director of the National Education
Policy Center and an education policy professor
at the University of Colorado, described
ESAs and the vouchers that came before them
as a " deregulatory reform. "
" The idea is to be deregulated, " Welner said.
" For advocates of vouchers, transparency is
not a good thing. Protections against discrimination
in private schools is not a good thing.
Oversight and data reporting and data collection,
program evaluations, and accountability
back to the government, none of those things
are good things if you are coming from the perspective
of voucher zealots. "
Welner sees universal ESAs as the next iteration
of what he considers a movement
toward deregulation of schools. Because the
ESAs are so flexible in nature, it's impossible
for the state to track whether the public funds
are actually helping students improve learning,
he said.
" ESA vouchers can be used by families that
are using the money to prepare good little
Nazis for the next generation, " Welner said,
referencing the " Dissident Homeschoolers "
movement to homeschool students in
Nazi principles. The Dissident Homeschoolers
weren't using ESA programs, but Welner
worries the programs could be used that way
without regulation. " That's not a very pleasant
thought in terms of how our tax money is
being used. "
Marshall doesn't see it that way. She likes that
her kids aren't required to take standardized
tests or held to the performance standards determined
by public schools.
" I'm not a big believer that a test is the best
way to show that you've actually learned something
or mastered a concept, " she said.
Marshall also pushes back against criticisms
that the ESA program doesn't hold parents accountable.
She receives a debit card for each
of her six children who use the program. That
card has codes in it that prevent her from using
the money to purchase expenses not related to
education.
For example, the cards would be declined
if Marshall tried to use them to pay for a family
meal, but she is able to use them to pay for
admission to the zoo since that is considered
educational. She also has to provide receipts
and bank statements to the state to ensure
her family is using the money for educational
purposes.
" We have to be able to justify the expense,
what it's for, what it's tied to, " she said.
tion policy think tank, and a former assistant
secretary at the U.S. Department of Education
during the Reagan administration. " It's a different
thing to say parents should actually control
the dollars that are spent on behalf of their
child's education and should be able to decide
where those dollars are going and where that
education is being delivered. "
The universal version of ESAs runs the risk
of neglecting the public side of education,
which ensures taxpayer dollars are responsibly
spent, Finn said. Not every parent is trustworthy,
he said.
" We can't assume that every child is going to
be well educated if the parents are put in charge,
because not every child has parents who can responsibly
take charge, " Finn said.
What kinds of accountability measures
are in place to ensure ESAs aren't
abused?
However, Arizona's education department said
in a February report that it was concerned parents
had not uploaded receipts for more than 17,000
debit card transactions during the last quarter of
2022, meaning the department could not review
those ESA transactions. The department said it
had receipts for another 100,000 transactions
during that period.
What does the future of ESAs look like?
While ESAs have caught on in a big way in
conservative states, their ascendance hasn't
been uninterrupted. Idaho's legislature recently
voted down a proposal for a universal
ESA program, and lawmakers are now considering
a narrower alternative. Both houses of
"
The alternative to ESAs
as well as all forms of
school choice is to invest
responsibly in public
schools so that parents
do not want to exit public
schools in the first place.
SAMUEL ABRAMS
Director of the National Center for the Study
of Privatization in Education at Teachers
College, Columbia University
the Virginia legislature also rejected an ESA
proposal.
The tension between funding ESAs and
funding public schools is likely to persist, with
roughly 20 states considering universal ESA
programs in their current legislative sessions,
according to FutureEd.
The recent surge in universal ESA programs
could foreshadow a more dramatic exodus
from public schools than what's emerged from
the decades-long push for vouchers and charter
schools, said Samuel Abrams, director of
the National Center for the Study of Privatization
in Education at Teachers College, Columbia
University. He envisions rural schools
shutting down and the remaining ones having
to serve entire regions, decimating small
towns in the process.
" Schools perform far more than an academic
function alone for many small towns, " he said.
" They're, in addition, hubs for much community
activity, from football, basketball, volleyball,
and baseball games to fall musicals and spring
dramas. "
" The alternative to ESAs as well as all forms
of school choice is to invest responsibly in public
schools so that parents do not want to exit public
schools in the first place, " Abrams said.
Meanwhile, even though the Nevada Supreme
Court struck down an ESA program in 2019, few
legal challenges to ESA programs have emerged,
and judges in Arizona and Tennessee have ruled
in favor of ESAs on constitutional grounds.
Supporters of ESAs see those legal victories as
fuel for their mission to permanently reshape the
education landscape.
" We are really trying to build a new system
of how we fund education in a more parentfriendly
way, " Enlow said.
DATA: See which states have enacted
private school-choice programs from
1990 to 2023 along with a breakdown
of program types.
> edweek.org
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Education Week - April 26, 2023

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