InsideSources

A bill establishing Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) for non-public school students has been introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives, and is scheduled to be heard by an education subcommittee later this week.

House Study Bill 651 is the House’s second try at establishing ESAs for non-public school students. Last year, a bill that would add approximately $240 million in costs to the fiscal year 2018 budget was unable to be passed into law. The plan would have made 34,000 Iowa students, who were already in non-public schools, eligible to receive state money for their schooling. According to the new bill, the only students who would be eligible to receive state money for non-public schools would be those who are not currently enrolled in non-public schools, and for new kindergarten students. The grants would not be subject to income tax, and could also be used until a pupil turns 23 years old (if the balance in the account has not run out by the time of graduation from 12th grade).

The bill creates Education Savings Grants (ESG). This establishes individual funding per qualifying student to be used towards tuition at a non-public school. In order to calculate how much each grant is worth, the bill uses a formula that establishes the total funding at 90 percent of the sum of seven factors: the student’s weighted enrollment in the current district they reside in, multiplied by the difference between regular program cost and the average foundation property tax per pupil. The remaining factors are the student’s district’s average supplemental costs for teacher salaries, professional development, early intervention, Area Education Agency supplements, and teacher leadership supplements.

According to the Iowa Department of Education, the cost per pupil across the entire state for the 2017-2018 school year was $6,591. Because each student in the state is weighted differently, creating an exact number for each student would require examining a student’s enrollment factor, as well as examining each district’s cost per pupil. Chair of the House Education Committee Walt Rogers (R-District 30) said that the state’s portion of the total cost per pupil is approximately $5,000. The grant would be 90 percent of the state’s portion, which would be equivalent to approximately $4,500. The funding formula runs similarly to the state’s open enrollment policy, where the district pays another district the money that the student’s home district would have received. This bill is less expensive than last year’s bill because the bill would only assist students who are not already in a non-public school.

In addition to creating ESGs, the bill also amends that process in which charter schools can be commissioned within a particular district, rewriting the requirements going forward after July 2018.

“Basically we wanted to open up more opportunities,” Rogers said. “Presently, the way the rules are currently written, it’s really hard to set up any sort of a charter school. The thinking behind opening that up is just to have more opportunities for specific needs and for specific types of charter schools.”

The new protocol sets up three avenues for establishing charter schools:

Founding group-school board model: the charter school entity gets approval from the district school board to establish a new school building or take over an existing one.

School board-state board model: a school board creates a founding group to seek approval from the state board of education to create a charter school to be part of the district.

Founding group-state board model: a founding group may seek approval from the state board of education to be established outside of a school district.

Such application decisions are final, according to the bill, and cannot be appealed.

“We wanted to free up some of the codes so different entities could start up charter schools,” Rogers said. “Different school boards can decide if they want to have a specific charter school in their district. It’s a little easier for them to do that now. They can use potential entities outside the state to start a charter school. So basically, we just want more opportunity and it seemed, over the past several years, our charter laws have dissuaded entities from coming here and school boards from starting a charter school, and so we just wanted to turn that around.”

According to the bill, all charter schools approved would still have to comply with federal, state, and local guidelines when it comes to race, health, and other regulations such as special education guidelines. A student who enrolls in a charter school within a district would follow a similar process as an open enrollment, in which the school district would pay the cost per pupil rate to the charter school. The bill currently states that parents would have to notify the school district by the March before the ensuing school year of enrollment that their child will be attending a charter school. Rogers said that he’d be open to changing that date if there was desire to.

In New Hampshire, it’s déjà vu all over again. The House Education Committee just voted to retain Senate Bill 193, which would have established a universal education savings account (ESA) program in the state. The “Education Freedom Savings Accounts” would have granted parents of public school and homeschool students access to 90 percent of their child’s state public education funding and up to 50 percent for kindergarten students to spend on educational alternatives, such as private school tuition, homeschool textbooks, tutoring services, and learning therapies.

The Democrats in the New Hampshire House pulled out the tired, old, baseless arguments liberals of the education establishment have been using for years: “Our New Hampshire Constitution is clear that private funds cannot be used for sectarian purposes,” state Rep. Mary Heath (D-Hillsborough) said. “This bill undermines public education.”

“Rep. Tamara Le, D-North Hampton, said she was concerned that the bill could siphon between $75 million and $100 million away from the public school system,” the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire families, representatives of the “Live Free or Die” state would rather watch children’s educations be destroyed under the greedy guidance of the teachers unions who control them than give students access to a variety of educational choices.

The claims made by public-education advocates are no more accurate than their so-called “concern for the children” is believable. State supreme courts have ruled in Arizona and Nevada Blaine amendments—provisions borne out of anti-Catholic bigotry of the late 19th century that prohibit public money from funding “sectarian” institutions—do not make ESAs unconstitutional, because it’s the parents who sometimes choose to spend the money on religious schools, not the state.

EdChoice reports, “Public data show that states and cities typically increase their per-student spending in the years following school choice programs’ inception.” For example, EdChoice found Milwaukee public schools increased per-student funding by more than $5,000 from 1992 to 2011, even though the city instituted a school choice program in 1990 that many supporters of the education status quo said would cripple public education.

Rep. Heath should be aware of the precedent set most recently and dramatically in Nevada, and Rep. Le should know the “school choice drains public school funding” narrative is a myth. These legislators are either shamefully ignorant and/or misinformed or they’re simply choosing to ignore the facts. Either way, lawmakers who deny reality in favor of their special interests are unqualified to tell parents they have no right to customize their child’s education to fit their needs.

New Hampshire had the opportunity to pave the way for the nation, to show what living free in the spirit of the American way truly means. But the power of the teachers unions and the control they have over Democrats (93 percent of the $33.2 million teachers unions gave directly to politicians during the 2016 election went to Democrats) was too much for the legislature this time around, and children in the state will continue to suffer in failing public schools because of it.

The good news is that not everyone is taking the Blaine blame game sitting down. The U.S. Supreme Court is in the midst of hearing arguments in a case that could undermine one of the biggest weapons in the pro-public-school people’s arsenal. Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, alleges its application for a state grant to replace its playground’s gravel surface with scrap tire that’s friendlier to kids’ knees was denied because it’s a religious institution. Trinity Lutheran says the state constitution’s Blaine amendment is standing in the way of a safer playground, and recent reports covering the debates held before the U.S. Supreme Court suggest a majority of the nine justices agree.

It appears there’s momentum to rid the country of the bigoted Blaine amendments at last and move real education choice one step closer to actuality. Let’s hope New Hampshire children don’t have to wait much longer to get access to the educational resources Heath and Le believe they don’t deserve.

The House Education Committee heard testimony on a Senate bill Tuesday that would establish “education freedom savings accounts” for students in the state. Emotions ran high during the crowded hearing in what has been a battle of school choice advocates versus supporters of public schools. Yet, the terms “school vouchers” and “education savings accounts” (ESA) haven often been thrown around synonymously at the New Hampshire State House, resulting in misinformation being spread around about Senate Bill 193.

The bill would allow parents of students between the ages of 5 and 20 to work with an approved scholarship organization to receive 90 percent of the per-pupil state grant funds (approximately $3,500) to be used to cover tuition or other costs at a school of the family’s choice. The family can use the funds to pay for private school tuition — including religious schools — homeschooling expenses, and other academic expenses. The bill passed the Senate on a 14-9 vote in March.

Opponents of the bill claim the ESA would take funding away from public schools that need it most, since students from underfunded or struggling school districts would most likely take advantage of the program. The critics also said the program would unconstitutionally provide taxpayer dollars to religious schools.

Supporters argue the bill would give parents more options for their students, since they know what’s best for their own children. They also claim that by granting parents alternatives to public schools, it would create competition and encourage public schools to increase their performance.

“The American education system has substantially failed to produce what they’re charging for,” said bill sponsor Sen. John Reagan, R-Deerfield, at the hearing.

“It is trying to resolve the problem of having the most expensive education system in the world, and not having the best prepared students in the world,” he added. “The argument we hear is, if we take all this money from our public schools – and this is what our public school administrators tell us – they tell us they won’t know what to do.”

Yet, several opponents of the bill have been using the terms ESA and school vouchers interchangeably to describe what the legislation would do.

The state’s largest teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT-NH), has also been telling its supporters that the ESA bill is code for a school voucher program.

“SB 193 is a voucher bill under the guise of ‘Education Freedom Savings Accounts,'” they wrote on their website.

Voucher programs and education savings accounts are similar, but not identical. However, the distinction between them is often muddled by politically-loaded terms. A state school voucher program grants parents a credit for a certain tuition value that they can use to enroll their child in a private school

ESAs are similar, but offer more flexibility to the parents. When parents get an ESA, they are awarded a yearly sum that can be mixed and matched to suit their children’s educational needs. The funds can be used all for private school tuition, like a voucher, or they can split it among many education opportunities like private tutoring, textbooks, and even saving for college.

The AFT-NH encouraged their supporters to fill out a robo-petition that would be sent to lawmakers encouraging them to vote “no” on SB 193 and creating ESA for students.

“Despite being labeled an ‘Education Freedom Savings Account,’ make no mistake this is a voucher bill which will directly take taxpayer dollars intended for our public schools and divert to private and other institutions,” the petition website states.

House Education Committee Chairman Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, said his panel would likely vote on the bill at the end of the month. The committee has until April 26 to act on this legislation, at which point, it would probably go to the House Finance Committee before reaching the House floor for a vote.

Due to Republicans holding a slight majority in the House, it’s likely the bill will pass committee. What ultimately happens when it comes to a floor vote in the full House is anyone’s guess.

A recent survey from Citizens Count, NH’s Live Free or Die Alliance found 54 percent of respondents were opposed to “granting parents a portion of state funds to pay educational expenses for private or home-schooled students” and 46 percent supported the measure.

The bill has even grabbed the attention of former Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who wrote a Monday op-ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader expressing his support of the ESA bill.

“Empowering parents with the freedom to choose encourages positive change because the right to educate their children no longer can be taken for granted,” Bush wrote. “It must be earned. I commend Sen. John Reagan and Rep. Joseph Pitre for introducing this legislation, and Gov. Chris Sununu, who has been a passionate advocate for school choice.”

There are still some questions to be answered and changes the bill needs before the House votes on it. House Finance Committee Chairman Neal Kurk, R-Weare, said he supports the bill, but the question over funds going to religious schools would need to be addressed. The state constitution expressly forbids taxpayer funds going to religious schools.

Anne Edwards, an attorney with the state’s attorney’s office, warned lawmakers at the Tuesday hearing that if they don’t tweak the bill in regards to the religious school issue, the state could face legal and constitutional challenges.

However, Kate Baker, director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, said legislators shouldn’t let the threat of litigation stop them from passing the bill.

“I believe this will be in the courts, no matter what you do,” she said. “Parents want to go to court and fight for their right to make these choices for their children.”

Follow Kyle on Twitter.

Sign up for NH Journal’s must-read morning political newsletter.

While nothing is official, smart money says that the Trump administration is likely to use tax breaks to try to fund a $20 billion school choice campaign promise.

Which states have the most robust school choice programs? What can those state initiatives tell us about what a prospective federal school choice tax-incentive would look like?

Before digging into case studies, it’s worth distinguishing between tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and old-fashioned vouchers—all programs that are sometimes sloppily jumbled together as school choice.

Josh Cunningham is a senior education policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures, a non-partisan group that tracks state level legislation. He explained the differences between the school choice terms in a telephone interview with InsideSources.

When a state grants parents of a school-aged child a voucher, they give those parents a credit for a certain tuition value that those parents can use to enroll their child in a private school.

An education savings account, or an ESA, is similar, but offers more flexibility to the parents. When parents get an education savings account, they are awarded a yearly sum that can be mixed and matched to address their children’s educational needs. Those funds can be used all at once for private school tuition like a voucher, or a part can be used for private tutoring, another part for online courseware, and the rest saved for a later expense—like college.

A tax credit scholarship is a different animal, though tax credits can be used to fund education savings accounts or vouchers. In states that have a tax credit scholarship system, companies or individuals are given tax-incentives to donate money to nonprofits that award K-12 scholarships to students who meet certain specifications.

The scholarships awarded by those nonprofits can either be used as vouchers or education savings accounts—depending on state law or the nonprofit’s rules—but the critical distinction is that the scholarship money is distributed by nonprofits, rather than through state appropriations.

Among school choice advocates, “the ESA idea is replacing the idea of traditional vouchers” said Cunningham. Proponents of choice like giving parents more flexibility in cobbling together education services for their children.

So far, however, in states where ESAs have been adopted, parents tend to use the accounts in a similar way to how they use vouchers—for private school tuition—said Cunningham. This dynamic has led some school choice opponents, like the teachers unions, to argue that education savings accounts and vouchers are actually one in the same.

Indiana is viewed as an exemplar for those who back traditional voucher programs. First enacted in 2011, the state’s voucher system was expanded to allow access to many in the state’s middle class under former Republican Governor, and current U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

Arizona has long been a pioneer of school choice—the state first allowed public charter schools in 1994. Arizona has both a tax-credit scholarship program that is available to a broad number of students, as well as an education savings account system that has restrictions, such as being limited to at-risk students in low-performing schools, or those who come from military families.

Unlike other state tax-credit scholarship programs, Arizona’s does not limit the total statewide size of the program, but it does cap how much credit individuals and companies can receive for giving to scholarship-awarding nonprofits per year.

Nevada has the largest education savings account program in the country—on paper. Republicans in the legislature had passed a measure that would give every student in the state an ESA worth at least 90 percent of the per pupil funding ordinarily distributed to public schools.

A state Supreme Court decision last year ruled that the way the program was funded violated the state constitution, effectively freezing the program. The ESA’s themselves remain on the books, but Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval faces an uphill climb in getting new appropriations for the program through what is now a Democratic legislature, said Cunningham.

Finally, Florida has one of the nation’s largest tax-credit scholarship systems in the nation. Critically, students who use the scholarships to attend private schools must sit for state assessments or a state approved alternatives to avail themselves of the program. If lawmakers try to take tax-credit scholarships or tax-credit funded ESAs national, expect some private schools and home-schooling advocates to resist similar accountability riders, said Cunningham.

The Sunshine State’s tax credit scholarships came up during Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing. Democrats expressed concerns that students participating in programs like Florida’s tax-credit scholarship have been asked to waive their federal IDEA disability protections. Republicans have called for making IDEA funds “portable” to make it easier for private schools accepting scholarships or vouchers to enroll students with disabilities.

One recipient of Florida’s tax credit scholarships, Denisha Merriweather, has been an outspoken proponent of DeVos’s school choice agenda, and recently authored an op-ed explaining her reasoning.

The topic is likely to come up Tuesday during President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. Merriweather was announced yesterday as one of the President’s special guests.

Cunningham and his team at the National Council of State Legislatures have put together a website where one can see school choice policy in every state.

Follow Leo on Twitter

Subscribe for the Latest From InsideSources Every Morning

Getting federal school choice legislation passed might be easier said than done—especially given the hyper-partisan nature of education policy debates in recent weeks.

During the campaign, President Trump promised a $20 billion school choice voucher program. His pick of an avowed school choice activist to lead the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a sign the President is serious about fulfilling that promise.

As the legislative season rolls toward spring, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are faced with working out the details of the proposal and getting legislation to the White House.

There are two likely formats Republicans could rally behind. In one version, they would create a new federal grant program, similar to Title I for low-income students or IDEA for disabled students. In another proposal, they would borrow the blueprint for a tax-credit voucher program—or “education savings accounts”— from states like Arizona or Nevada.

According to Politico’s reporting, Republicans are likely to push for the latter route—creating a voucher program that would rely on tax incentives to support school choice.

Going in that direction makes sense for a couple strategic reasons. Not only do Republicans need to ensure that a vote to fund vouchers is politically acceptable to the deficit hawks in their caucus, but the Republican-backed voucher proposals also face a set of legal obstacles erected over a hundred years ago by members of their own party.

 

The Political Calculus

When the school choice initiative was announced during the campaign, Trump’s team issued a release that said: “Mr. Trump’s first budget will immediately add an additional federal investment of $20 billion towards school choice. This will be done by reprioritizing existing federal dollars.”

The wording was unclear to federal policy wonks—was the candidate saying that existing federal education programs would be melted down and reauthorized under new rules, or would the $20 billion come from somewhere else in the budget?

The federal government spends over $26 billion in Title I and IDEA funds for K-12 students. While Republicans in Congress have previously introduced legislation that would make those funds “portable” such legislation wouldn’t fit the bill of “an additional federal investment of $20 billion towards school choice.”

Furthermore, while considerable attention was given to the role of teachers unions in the bitter confirmation fight over DeVos’ nomination, parents of children with disabilities also emerged under-the-radar as a single-issue voter bloc to be reckoned with.

Jack Jennings, a longtime former Democratic education committee staffer and the founder of the Center on Education Policy, said he thought Republicans were “taken aback” by the reaction from IDEA parents. “They’ve learned this is a sensitive area.”

Therefore, if funding $20 billion in school choice can’t come from the education department’s budget, any proposal would necessarily add to the deficit. A highly informal survey of this weekend’s gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee revealed just how complex that approach would be. Conservatives are split on whether school choice is important enough to warrant more spending.

“As much as I hate deficits, it’s an objective worth pursuing,” said Michael Neher, who attended the yearly conference. Neher said he hoped lawmakers would be able to find other programs to cut in recompense.

Jeff Stein, another conference attendee, disagreed: “The federal government shouldn’t have any kind of program which would allocate any kind of federal dollars—whether it’s a conservative or liberal cause—in regard to education.”

Instead, the appeal of adopting tax credits to fund the initiative, from a political perspective, is two-fold.

A handful of states, such as Arizona, offer corporations, (or in other cases individuals), tax incentives to donate money to non-profits who then give scholarships or “education savings accounts” to low-income families or students served by failing schools. There are multiple permutations for tax-credit funded education savings accounts. But in most cases, they can then be used as a form of educational voucher, allowing students to use the funds to attend private schools or secure private tutoring services.

So the first political advantage to instituting a federal tax credit would be that it could be sold to members of Congress as a tax break, rather than a spending increase.

The second political advantage, as Politico reported, is that the credits could be included as part of a larger tax reform process. Therefore, the proposal could be enacted through budget reconciliation, which would only require 51 Senate votes.

 

The Little Blaine Amendments

There is another more technical reason why a tax-credit program could be the way to go for Republicans—and it’s rooted in an education policy debate that raged in the late 1800’s.

During Reconstruction, liberal northern Republicans made a push for universal public education—in part to support the advancement of freed slaves. Their opponents, the Democratic Party, represented a coalition of white southerners and immigrants in northern inner cities—many of whom were from Catholic countries.

As Democratic immigrants began putting up Catholic schools, James G. Blaine, a former Republican Speaker of the House from Maine, nearly pushed through a Constitutional amendment that would prohibit public funds from going to private religious organizations—including schools.

While the amendment failed in the Senate, GOP activists of the era took the fight to statehouses, and today, more than two-thirds of states have “Little Blaine Amendments” on the books.

Today’s state-level Republican school choice activists have found themselves “hoisted by their own petard,” said Jennings.

While these “Little Blaine Amendments” do not apply to the federal government, Washington only contributes a total of about 10 percent of educational resources to states and local school districts. Therefore, if GOP leaders truly want to expand choice for all students, they’d likely need to create a framework that would allow states and local districts to back the proposed voucher program with their own financial weight.

The advantage of the tax-credit proposal, from a pro-school choice perspective, is that the money used to fund the vouchers never enters government coffers. A tax-break would allow state-level Republicans to circumvent even the strictest Little Blaine Amendments that bar even indirect appropriations from going to support religious schools.

Douglas Laycock is an expert in religious liberty law at the University of Virginia. He has testified before Congress and argued religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court. He pointed to an Arizona ruling in which the state Supreme Court upheld a tax-credit voucher law, specifically because it wasn’t funded through appropriations.

In an email exchange with InsideSources he wrote that conservative lawyers “may be predicting that there’s a better argument to defend tax credits under Little Blaine Amendments than to defend appropriations.”

Of course, this line of reasoning only applies if “the federal proposals mean to involve the states in some way,” wrote Laycock.

 

Support From Conservative Policy-Shops 

One of the main proponents of a school-choice tax credit is the American Federation for Children, a national school choice advocacy group founded by DeVos before she took office.

The group issued a press release this week backing the initiative at the federal level, along with other school choice priorities. Given its ties to the current education secretary and its presence in numerous states, the AFC is an important bellwether to watch for clues on how a school choice proposal might unfold. The right-leaning Fordham Foundation has also expressed support.

Regardless of what shape an eventual school choice bill takes, one should not expect the proposal to include mandates that states adopt education savings accounts. DeVos repeatedly promised there would be no mandatory voucher program during her confirmation hearings, and top Republicans have publicly celebrated the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which devolved considerable educational policy making authority to states.

Because no plan has been formally unveiled yet, Republican staffers on the Hill did not confirm Politico’s report that a tax-credit plan is in the works. However, one committee spokesman did allude to “significant interest” in exploring various options to increase parent school choice.

Any option the GOP ends up backing will face headwinds from the left. Liberals have widely circulated Friday’s news that new studies show poor results for students in voucher programs, and teachers unions have signaled in the past that any voucher program—including education savings accounts—is a nonstarter.

Connor Wolf contributed to this report

Follow Leo on Twitter

Subscribe for the Latest From InsideSources Every Morning