On March 9, the Alabama House Education Policy Committee passed a bill that would establish an education savings account (ESA) program for children with special needs, children of active-duty Armed Forces members, children of those killed in combat, and foster children who have been adopted or have legal guardians. Under the proposed legislation, parents of these students would be able to use designated funds to attend a private school or to help pay for other education options that better suit their children’s needs.
The proposal would limit new participants in the program to 1,000 each year. Just over 82,000 Alabama special-needs students qualified for an ESA in 2014, according to the Alabama Department of Education (ADE).
Each student would receive 90 percent of the allocated per-student public funds; the student’s local school district would receive the other 10 percent. Per-student funding is roughly $4,800, according to ADE. The bill estimates the cost to the Education Trust Fund will be about $4.7 million in the first year of the program.
Only 26 percent of Alabama 4th graders and 17 percent of 8th graders tested “proficient” in math on the 2015 National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) test, also known as the Nation’s Report Card. Only 29 percent of 4th graders and 26 percent of 8th graders tested proficient in reading. These results show Alabama’s public school system is failing to educate roughly eight out of 10 4th grade and 8th grade students to a proficient level in reading and mathematics.
Alabama’s sub-standard performance on NAEP underscores the desperate need for the state to expand school choice opportunities far beyond what is currently available. Too many public schools in Alabama are failing to adequately prepare students for productive lives. Parents should be allowed to choose the schools their children attend and should not be penalized financially if that choice is a private religious or secular school.
“ESAs are about empowering parents and improving the range of educational options for children,” Renee Porter, executive director of Choice Matters, told The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News. “All children are different and learn differently. Some children have disabilities that require special attention. Other children are so advanced that their time in the classroom isn’t really benefitting them. It’s unrealistic, and quite frankly unfair, to expect every public school to provide for the exact needs of every student. That’s why it’s important to give parents options like charter schools, private schools, and virtual schools.”
Not only are education choice options good policy, they are also broadly popular. Polling conducted in Alabama by the American Federation for Children in November 2014 shows 65 percent of likely voters support school choice and 67 percent support the tax credit scholarships created in 2013 by the Alabama Accountability Act. Fifty-eight percent said all Alabama children should have access to these programs.
Another important poll, this one surveying 600 black Alabama voters, was conducted by the Black Alliance for Educational Options in August 2015. It found 76 percent of respondents support school choice, 54 percent support charter schools, and 61 percent support school voucher or scholarship programs.
While providing ESAs for students with special needs would be a great step forward for Alabama, the passage of a universal ESA bill would be ideal and go a long way toward remedying Alabama’s dismal record of failing to educate its children. The goal should be to allow every parent to choose, require every school to compete, and give every child an opportunity to attend a quality school.
The following documents provide more information on school choice and education reform.
Ten Principles of School Choice
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/ten-principles-school-choice
Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 school vouchers are constitutional, grassroots activists around the country have been organizing to support the creation of school choice programs. Legislatures passed statewide programs in Colorado and Florida, and other states are expected to follow their lead. At least 35 cities have privately funded voucher programs. This booklet from The Heartland Institute provides policymakers and civic and business leaders with a highly condensed and easy-to-read guide to the debate. It presents the 10 most important principles of the school choice movement, explaining each principle in plain and precise language. It also contains an extensive bibliography for further research, including many links to documents available on the Internet, and a directory of the websites of national organizations that support school choice.
The Legal Landscape of Parental-Choice Policy
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/legal-landscape-parental-choice-policy
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris cleared away the most significant obstacle to the expansion of private school choice programs by ruling the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause does not preclude faith-based schools from participating in private school choice programs. These programs raise other important legal questions, which fall into four categories: the scope of students’ rights to an education and parents’ rights to choose their children’s schools; state constitutional obstacles to private school choice; the effect of laws governing racial integration and the inclusion of disabled students; and the religious liberty implications of faith-based schools participating in such programs. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) writes the lack of clarity on these questions poses challenges, but AEI also says these questions create opportunities for proponents of private school choice to scale up existing programs and expand program options.
The Productivity of Charter Schools
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/productivity-charter-schools
In this study produced by the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, the successes and failures of charter schools are examined. The study’s findings show charter schools are, on average, much more productive than traditional public schools in the same district. The authors conclude, “What we can say, based on our limited exploratory analysis of the [return on investment] for charter and [traditional public schools] sectors, is that the results suggest that the charter sectors in our sample jurisdictions are operating in a more productive manner than the [traditional public schools] sector at the funding and student achievement levels that currently exist.”
The ABCs of School Choice – 2016 Edition
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/abcs-school-choice-2016-edition
Published by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, The ABCs of School Choice is a comprehensive, data-rich guide to every private school choice program in the United States. This publication, which is updated annually, may not reflect developments past January 25, 2016.
Taking Credit for Education: How to Fund Education Savings Accounts through Tax Credits
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/taking-credit-education-how-fund-education-savings-accounts-through-tax-credits
This Cato Institute paper shows how legislators can design an education savings account (ESA) that is privately funded through tax-credit-eligible contributions from taxpayers, similar to tax-credit scholarship programs that already exist in states across the country. Tax-credit-funded ESAs would empower families with more educational options while enhancing accountability and refraining from coercing anyone to financially support ideas they oppose. Because they are funded through voluntary contributions, rather than public funds, tax-credit scholarships have been found by the U.S. Supreme Court and by every state supreme court that has considered the issue to be within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions. In states that have Blaine amendments, which greatly restrict the ability of lawmakers to create some school choice programs, tax-credit ESAs could be a lifeline to families in need.
Issues 2016: Charter Schools Are Better at Retaining Hard-to-Educate Students
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/issues-2016-charter-schools-are-better-retaining-hard-educate-students
This Issue Brief, authored by Marcus A. Winters of the Manhattan Institute, explains how students with disabilities are more likely to remain in charter schools than traditional public schools. The study also found students learning English and students with low test scores are more likely to remain in charter schools than traditional public schools.
Markets vs. Monopolies in Education: A Global Review of the Evidence
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/markets-vs-monopolies-education-global-review-evidence
This paper from the Cato Institute examines the success achieved by school choice programs across the globe. The authors find the efficiency rate (student achievement per dollar spent on education) of private education options was higher compared to the public education efficiency rate in 23 of the studies surveying foreign countries, and only three of those studies found equal or greater efficiency in public schools.
The Fiscal Effects of School Choice Programs on Public School Districts
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/fiscal-effects-school-choice-programs-public-school-districts
In the first-ever study of public school districts’ fixed costs in every state and Washington, DC, Benjamin Scafidi concludes approximately 36 percent of school district spending cannot be quickly reduced when students leave. The remaining 64 percent, or approximately $8,000 per student on average, are variable costs, changing directly with student enrollment. This means a school choice program attaching less than $8,000 to each child who leaves a public school for a private school actually leaves the district with more money to spend on each remaining child. In the long run, Scafidi notes, all local district spending is variable, meaning all funds could be attached to individual children over time without creating fiscal problems for government schools.
A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Vouchers
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/win-win-solution-empirical-evidence-school-vouchers
Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice collected the results of all available empirical studies that use the best available scientific methods to measure how school choice vouchers affect academic outcomes for participants and all available studies on how vouchers affect outcomes in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim vouchers do not benefit participants and that they hurt public schools, the empirical evidence consistently shows vouchers improve outcomes for participants and those who remain in public schools.
How School Choice Programs Can Save Money
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/wm727.cfm
This Heritage Foundation study of the fiscal impact of voucher programs notes Washington, DC vouchers cost only 60 percent of what the city spends per pupil in government schools. The study estimates if the states with the top eight education expenditures per pupil adopted voucher programs similar to the Washington, DC program, they could save a combined $2.6 billion per year.
Fear and Privatization
http://epx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/1/204
Bruce S. Cooper of Fordham University and E. Vance Randall of Brigham Young University examine public attitudes toward school choice models and find much anxiety among both private and public school advocates. The authors make many common mistakes and assumptions about school choice, but they come to an interesting conclusion: School choice advocates are successfully blurring the lines between the public and private school models by instituting a wide range of different choice plans.
Study Finds School Vouchers Boost College Enrollment for African Americans by 24%
https://heartland.org/policy-documents/effects-school-vouchers-college-enrollment
In an experimental study examining the long-term outcomes of school voucher programs, Matthew M. Chingos and Paul E. Peterson found the percentage of African-American students who enrolled part-time or full-time in college by 2011 was 24 percent higher for those who had won a school voucher lottery while in elementary school and used the voucher to attend a private school.
Nothing in this Research & Commentary is intended to influence the passage of legislation, and it does not necessarily represent the views of The Heartland Institute. For further information on this subject, visit School Reform News at http://news.heartland.org/education, The Heartland Institute’s website at http://heartland.org, and PolicyBot, Heartland’s free online research database, at www.policybot.org.
The Heartland Institute can send an expert to your state to testify or brief your caucus; host an event in your state; or send you further information on a topic. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance! If you have any questions or comments, contact Heartland Institute Government Relations Manager Logan Pike at [email protected] or 312/377-4000.
Tim Benson joined The Heartland Institute in September 2015 as a policy analyst in the Government Relations Department.
