Study reveals how Arizona parents use education savings accounts

According to a news release from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, "parents enrolled in Arizona’s one-of-a-kind education savings accounts (ESA) program used their children’s portion of state funds to purchase a variety of educational services outside public schools, according to a new report that is the first to analyze ESA data from the Arizona Department of Education."

Participating parents also saved one-third of their children’s K-12 schooling funds, likely in anticipation of future education expenses.

Arizona’s ESA program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, served 153 enrollees following its creation in 2011, growing to more than 300 students in the 2012-13 school year. Data on 316 ESA recipients were provided by the Arizona Department of Education to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and author Lindsey Burke, who found nearly 66 percent used ESA dollars for one service (private schooling) whereas some 34 percent utilized multiple education options. Of the nearly $2.9 million in ESA funds distributed from the 2011-12 school year to the first quarter of the 2012-13 school year, more than $1 million went unspent by parents. Those funds can be deposited into college savings plans.

Parents receive ESA funds via restricted-use debit cards loaded with approximately 90 percent of what the state reserved for their children in the public school system. ESA parents must submit to the Arizona Department of Revenue receipts for their preceding quarter expenditures to obtain funds for the coming quarter. Burke found that outside of private school tuition, families used ESA funds for online learning courses, curricula, private tutoring, and education therapies, all approved by the Arizona Department of Education.

“Children’s learning opportunities shouldn’t be restricted to just a traditional classroom, particularly if students’ needs could be served better outside those walls,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation, said. “And when parents are empowered to meet their children’s needs, they do so in a more financially meticulous way than well-intentioned bureaucrats.”

Data in “The Education Debit Card: What Arizona Parents Purchase with Education Savings Accounts” also reveal to what extent parents took advantage of the ESA program’s unique roll-over option. In the 2011-12 school year, 43 percent of distributed ESA funds were saved by families; in the first quarter of the 2012-13 school year, that number was around 26 percent. Burke said that shows education savings accounts encourage parents and schools to be cost-conscious.

“Once parents have the freedom to shop around based on their own cost-benefit analysis, they make decisions that take into account both financial considerations and educational quality,” said Burke, who also serves as the Will Skillman Fellow in Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. “The traditional public school system does not allow for the type of customization from which so many children would benefit.”

In the 2013-14 school year, ESA eligibility expanded to include students from low-income families attending public schools graded D and F under the state’s accountability system, those from active military families, and foster children—more than 220,000 students. This past legislative session, Arizona state lawmakers increased eligibility again by allowing incoming kindergartners to qualify for the ESA program. Parent testimonials in “The Education Debit Card” report indicate ESA participants are satisfied with the program.

“We gear (our child’s) education around his needs and abilities; it is all personalized to what he can do, how he learns, what his interests are,” one ESA parent said. “Everything we do is personalized to his needs and learning style. The ESA has made (that) financially possible.”

“The Education Debit Card: What Arizona Parents Purchase with Education Savings Accounts” is available at edchoice.org/EdDebitCard.

Police-state mindset

In America's public schools.

Common Core undermines school choice

"If the SAT and ACT are aligned to Common Core," Jason Bedrick explains, "then private schools will have little choice but to align as well."

Free to choose

Former Gov. Brad Henry, state Rep. Jason Nelson, and state school board member Bill Price

Oklahoma's special-needs students now have a choice.

Former Oklahoma teacher sentenced

A former Putnam City teacher has been sentenced to four years in prison for having sex with a student, The Oklahoman reports.

#NarrativeFail

Private schools produce more tolerant schools than public schools, Jay Greene reminds us.

Oh, you mean you expect them to read?

Over at the OCPA blog, I point out the silliness of demanding that we "fund the reforms."

Henry Scholarships are changing lives

Are charter schools a step in the right direction?

"Here are two things that everyone interested in education should know: some of the top performing schools in the country are charter schools, and, on average, charters do not perform significantly better than traditional public schools," Andrew J. Coulson writes.

Charter schools "might still be considered a step in the direction of educational freedom because they are modestly more free than traditional public schools," Coulson continues.

Might be, but perhaps shouldn’t be. The long term problem with charters is two-fold: first, they are cannibalizing the enrollment of the genuinely independent school sector; and second, they are likely to be re-regulated over time.

No system of government-funded elementary or secondary schooling in the history of the world has ever remained independent in the long term. Controls on who can teach and what must be taught are typical. For-profit operation is usually prohibited. Indeed, this was the history of America’s own public schools. In the late 1800s, public schools were generally more autonomous than charter schools are today. But, over time, the officials overseeing them sought and obtained ever more power at ever-higher levels of government. There is no reason to expect the trajectory of charter schools to differ appreciably from this pattern. So, a few generations hence, they should be expected to have subsumed most of the existing private schools and regulated them in much the same way as regular public schools are regulated today. They will, in other words, move us from a 90 percent government education monopoly to a 99 or 100 percent government education monopoly. Not an improvement.

Advocates of educational freedom would be well advised to look for alternative policies that can ensure universal access to the educational marketplace without using government dollars and without suffocating the independent education sector.

'Couple says Tulsa Public Schools lost their 7-year-old for hours'

The Tulsa World has the story.

Are Coburn and Inhofe 'spreading lies'?

A blogger for Stand for Children Oklahoma, a group which strongly supports the Common Core State Standards, recently claimed that certain conspiracy theorists are guilty of fear-mongering and spreading lies about Common Core. Just exactly who these conspiracy theorists are (Heritage? Cato? RNC? HSLDA?) I have thus far been unable to determine. One can only hope Stand for Children Oklahoma is not accusing Oklahoma's two U.S. senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, of "spreading lies."

  

'Common Core hurts school choice'

Greg Forster, a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, makes the case here.

Scholars with sippy cups

Credit: ChoiceMedia.tv

I've noted before how liberals matter-of-factly acknowledge that public schools "provide not just education, but basic child care" and are "a reliable source of child care." Oklahoma's largest newspaper, in an April 29, 2012 "Education & careers" supplement, averred that Oklahoma is "the leader in early childcare education." And career-advice counselor Penelope Trunk has argued that "the U.S. school system is really just the biggest babysitting institution in the world."

Now the good folks over at Choice Media are out with a new segment asking the question: "Is State-Funded Preschool Actually Daycare?"