By Alexandra DeSanctis
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Arizona could soon become the first state in the nation
to institute a universal school-choice program. And because the state already
has a successful, but more limited, program in place — a funding system that
has been expanded several times over the last few years — there is a solid
foundation on which to build the effort.
The bill to expand the program could land on Arizona
governor Doug Ducey’s desk as early as this week. It has already passed the
education committees in both chambers of the state legislature and, since there
is just a month left in the session, a full vote on the bill is expected
sometime in April. Because Ducey has approved developments to this
school-choice program in past years, it is likely that he will support this
latest expansion.
The Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based think tank, has
been on the front lines of Arizona’s school-choice movement for the last
decade. In 2006, the group introduced the concept of education savings
accounts, and this idea was first enacted across the state in 2011 in a program
for children with special needs. The Empowerment Scholarship Account program
has used this savings-account model and expanded it every year since to include
more students, including those in failing schools or adopted from foster care,
as well as children of military members and children who live on Native American
reservations.
The program now enrolls 3,300 students, and the new bill
would expand access slowly over the course of the next four academic years by
opening the program to students in a few grade levels each year. About half of
the students currently enrolled are children with special needs.
Empowerment Scholarship Accounts function in a similar
way to health savings accounts, which help individuals or families save for
health-care needs and are often partially funded by the government. In the case
of Arizona’s ESAs, the state deposits funding into each account, and a child’s
parents can use the funds for a wide variety of expenses, such as
private-school tuition, college-savings plans, online classes, and tutoring.
For the 2015–16 school year, the accounts received about
$4,600 for K–8th grade students and just under $5,000 for high-school students.
Special-needs students can receive additional funding, the amount of which
varies depending on the services required.
These accounts differ from vouchers in that parents can
use the money to finance several educational needs simultaneously. This
distinction is important. In 2009, the Arizona supreme court ruled that
vouchers violate the state’s constitutional provisions against using public
money for private or religious purposes. But in 2014, the state supreme court
upheld a lower-court ruling determining that ESAs are constitutional because
they are fundamentally different from vouchers.
Though some worry that greater state support for school
choice will detract from the public-school system, the examples of student
success as a result of the ESA program tell a different story. “For those
pleased with their local public school, carry on,” says Jonathan Butcher,
education director at the Goldwater Institute. “But every child is different
and learns at a different pace — so families should have the chance to find the
best educational opportunities if an assigned school isn’t working.”
Consider Max Ashton, who has been blind since birth, but
who nonetheless climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim, and
swam across the San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz Island, all before graduating
from high school. An ESA enabled his parents to afford private-school tuition
and Braille materials, and he earned a scholarship to attend Loyola Marymount
University in California.
Or take Tim and Lynn McMurray, who decided to adopt three
unrelated children, all of whom are of Native American descent, and who have
physical and developmental needs — Alecia suffers from fetal-alcohol syndrome,
while Uriah and Valerie both have mild cerebral palsy. When all three children
encountered serious challenges in the state’s education system, the ESA program
helped the McMurrays finance home-based instruction and educational therapy.
Meanwhile, Nathan Howard struggled in the public-school
system as a child on the autism spectrum, and he barely spoke until he reached
the age of six. Using an ESA, his family moved him to a school that offers
special support for students with autism, and they also hired a one-on-one
tutor for him. “For me, using an education savings account isn’t a form of
protest or an act of defiance against the school system,” Nathan’s mother,
Amanda, wrote in a 2013 column in the Arizona
Republic. “It’s a chance to give Nathan a better future.”
Butcher believes this latest expansion effort will be
worthwhile for the state: “Instead of trying to predict all the problems ESAs
are trying to solve, we should give students the chance to use an account if
their assigned school isn’t a good fit.”
Some Arizonans might protest the continued growth of the
state’s school-choice movement, arguing that it’s somehow harmful to public
schools and under-privileged children. But as the results of the ESA program
have shown thus far, diversity of affordable education options for Arizona’s
youth will nearly always lead to greater success.
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