Arizona

Perla Macias pulled her son, Albiery, out of their local school in Arizona because he was not getting the attention Perla thought he needed to succeed. “It was sad because he didn’t even want to go to school some days,” Perla says.

Perla is like every mom—she wants the best for her children in and out of school. Fortunately for Perla and Albiery, they live in one of five states where lawmakers have allowed students to use education savings accounts to find unique learning experiences that may include online classes, personal tutors, private schools, public school classes, and college savings plans, among other uses, all with the same account.

With an education savings account, the state deposits public funds in a private account that parents use to purchase educational products and services for their child. In 2015, Georgia lawmakers considered legislation that would have allowed state families to use the accounts, but the legislation stalled.

Albiery’s new school has brought out his interests in new subjects, and Perla is excited to use his account to support him with whatever he needs to succeed. “He wants to be an architect, and I’m so happy for that,” Perla says.

In this three-part series, the Georgia Center for Opportunity will explain why Georgia needs to give parents this flexible educational option, how education savings accounts change the way we think about learning, and how the accounts work in states that have already enacted laws: Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada.

Georgia families, like those all over the country, need better learning options. Student achievement scores should trouble Georgia parents. According to researchers, students in 30 developed countries outpace Georgia 15-year-olds in math. Among families where at least one parent finished college, students from 31 nations perform better than Georgia students.

In reading, two-thirds of the state’s fourth graders score below the basic level set by the U.S. Department of Education. By eighth grade, nearly 70 percent read below the basic level.

Yet in a poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution in January 2015, 30 percent of respondents rated Georgia public schools as “excellent” or “good,” while another 38 percent rated them as “fair.” Sixty-eight percent of Georgia schools cannot be doing a fair job or better if almost three-quarters of their students aren’t.

Every child should have access to a school that will challenge him and prepare him for the future. But the labor market is changing quickly. The skills individuals will need to know in order to have a successful career are impossible to predict over the long term.

A recent study by Young Invincibles, a group that researches trends among Millennials, found that the jobs most likely to set Millennials up for success are physician’s assistants, actuaries, statisticians, and biomedical engineers. These careers will require a solid educational background in K-12 and college and even graduate school.

Families can use education savings accounts to save money from year to year, pay for college classes before and during their student’s postsecondary years, and pay for graduate school. This way, students can learn skills before, during, and after college that will help them in their careers.

This feature of the accounts is why families like Perla and Albiery’s can talk about college. And life after college. “I think it has been very good for our family,” Perla says.

Georgia students deserve the same opportunities to find success in school and in life. Education savings accounts can help give this chance to every Georgia child.

Jonathan Butcher is education director at the Goldwater Institute and senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee.

Critics of Educational Savings Accounts often raise the issue of the constitutional challenges of using taxpayer funds to purchase private education.

Recently, Jason Bedrick of the CATO Institute and Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation highlighted this issue in their article published in National Affairs, writing, “While the United States Supreme Court has ruled that publicly funded school vouchers are constitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, most state constitutions contain a version of the so-called ‘Blaine Amendment,’ which bars state aid to parochial schools.”^[1]

The Blaine Amendments owe their name to James G. Blaine, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who proposed a U.S. constitutional amendment in 1875 prohibiting states from funding religious education. The amendment’s original intent was to prevent Catholics from acquiring taxpayer support for their schools. While his proposed amendment failed to become part of the U.S. Constitution, more than two-thirds of the 50 states adopted their own constitutional amendments barring state funding of religious organizations that include schools, which have come to be known as the Blaine Amendments.

To understand how the Blaine Amendments affect ESAs in Georgia, a recent report written by GCO Scholar Dr. Eric Wearne and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation provides important insight on this issue:[2]

In recent decades, these [Blaine] amendments have been interpreted by some to be prohibitions against any use of state funds for any schools other than public schools, and to prevent public funding of other faith-based initiatives, of any kind. Georgia’s Blaine Amendment reads:

…[n]o money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, cult, or religious denomination or of any sectarian institution. Ga. Const. art. I, § II, ¶ VII.

However, Title 20 of the Georgia Constitution also states that,

Educational assistance programs authorized. (a) Pursuant to laws now or hereafter enacted by the General Assembly, public funds may be expended for any of the following purposes:

(1) To provide grants, scholarships, loans, or other assistance to students and to parents of students for educational purposes.[3]

ESAs avoid many of the legal issues that may arise through other programs, such as vouchers and tuition tax credits… Matthew Ladner argues that “It is unlikely that ESAs would ever be less constitutionally robust than vouchers. … Designing programs so that the aid has multiple uses and is clearly under the complete control of parents can only help or be neutral in a constitutional challenge.”[4] Though vouchers have been held to be constitutional under certain conditions by the U.S. Supreme Court,[5] ESAs may avoid even these challenges.”[6]

Bedrick and Burke argue this point even further:

The example of Arizona is encouraging on this point for advocates of ESAs. Despite having previously struck down vouchers, in March 2014 the Arizona Supreme Court declined to review an appeals-court decision upholding the state’s ESA law. The court distinguished the ESAs from vouchers because the latter “set aside state money to allow students to attend private schools” whereas under the ESA law, “the state deposits funds into an account from which parents may draw to purchase a wide range of services” and “none of the ESA funds are pre-ordained for a particular destination.”

Given the precedent set by the Arizona Supreme Court and the authority granted by Title 20 of the Georgia Constitution, supporters of ESAs should not allow themselves to worry too much concerning the constitutionality of this innovative program.

Notes

[1] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-next-step-in-school-choice

[2] https://georgiapolicy.org/ftp_files/ESA_121714.pdf

[3] https://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/Constitution_2013_Final_Printed.pdf

[4] https://www.edchoice.org/Research/Reports/The-Way-of-the-Future–Education-Savings-Accounts-for-Every-American-Family.aspx

[5] https://www.edreform.com/2012/01/legal-summary-zelman-v-simmons-harris/

[6] See, for example, the current challenge to Georgia’s Tax Credit program. https://reason.com/archives/2014/05/07/georgia-school-choice-legal-challenge

There is buzz under the gold dome about the potential for a bill proposing Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for Georgia’s students and parents. ESAs have earned the praise of many as the “next generation of school choice.”

Here is a run down of how they work and their potential advantages: Parents who choose not to enroll their children into public schools full time can receive 100% of what the state would have spent on their children at a public school – a change that is revenue neutral for the State and gives freedom to parents. The Department of Education deposits funds directly into a privately managed bank account, which parents or guardians can access through a restricted-use debit card. Child-specific factors – such as disabilities – may determine the amount of money distributed into a family’s ESA. Parents or guardians can then spend the money on private school tuition, online learning curriculum, special education services and therapies, textbooks, and a number of other qualifying education-related services and providers. Furthermore, parents can save unused funds from year to year and roll the funds into a college savings account.

Parents and students can use ESAs to tailor education to their unique learning needs and interests.

This unbundling of educational services can allow for greater innovation and diversity, since it encourages a supply-side response that puts pressure on all facets of the traditional education system to be far more responsive to student needs, which amounts to a true student-centered education agenda. ESAs promote a more market-based education system, creating incentives for producers and providers to try different ways of meeting the needs of students and parents.

Though Education Savings Accounts are still taxpayer funded, the way they are structured makes for a dynamic closer to the one involved in spending your own money on your own children: Parents still insist on the best quality education but have more incentive to find a bargain. ESAs constitute an improvement on traditional school choice programs for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, parents have a strong incentive to maximize the educational value that their children receive in an ESA, because they are not required to spend it all at one place and in one lump sum.

The best way to enhance accountability and performance is to empower parents to choose the education that works best for their kids.

Two states have already adopted ESA laws – Arizona and Florida – and more are likely to follow in the coming years. These laws hold great potential to expand educational opportunity and improve the entire education system in ways that better and more efficiently meet the needs of children.

courtesy photos-public-domain.com

This week, the Center for Education Reform released its Education Tax Credit Rankings and Scorecard, which evaluates the fourteen tax credit funded scholarship programs across the country.

Georgia’s program, which was created in 2008, received a “B”.

The Georgia program scores well in many of the categories like program design and eligibility requirements. However, we fall out of the top of the rankings because the total program is capped at $58 million annually–which might sound like a lot of money but actually only represents 0.14% of the overall state budget. The program is so popular, the $58 million cap was reached this year in just three weeks. Nearly all of the Student Scholarship Organizations who distribute the scholarships to students have waiting lists.

By contrast, the Florida program, which received an “A”, allocates $286 million in tax credits to fund scholarships that allow almost 60,000 students to attend a school that better meets their individual needs.

Arizona, the other state receiving an “A” grade, does not limit the total dollar value of individual donations and caps corporate donations at $36 million annually. There are more than 42,000 students on tax credit scholarships in Arizona.

Georgia’s program serves about 13,000 students who have moved from a traditional public school to a private school using scholarships funded by individuals and corporations who receive a tax credit for their donations. That represents a mere .007% of Georgia’s 1.7 million public school students.

Because every child is different, we need a variety of options at our disposal when it comes to education. Tax credit scholarships are just one of many ways we can ensure that all Georgia children have access to a quality school. And given our grade in the report card, perhaps we still have more to learn from other states that continue to give even more families the flexibility to meet the educational needs of their children.

To learn more about Georgia’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program and other school choice options in the state, see our 2014 School Choice Handbook.

Arizona

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