The Associated Press reports Friday morning that Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed “a major school voucher expansion bill.” In reality, the bill didn’t expand school vouchers (which are unconstitutional in Arizona), but it did expand education savings accounts, an even bigger leap forward for school choice.
Education savings accounts give families even more flexibility than school vouchers do. With vouchers, a family simply takes their government-issued voucher and can only use it for private school tuition. With education savings accounts, families get a special education bank account (kind of like an education version of a health savings account). They can use the account for expenses including private school tuition, tutoring, educational therapy and textbooks.
The accounts would have at least 90 percent of the student’s per-pupil funding distributed into it. Parents have the freedom to spend those dollars on any educational expenses, and can roll the funds over from year-to-year (although the Arizona accounts now can’t be rolled-over into college savings accounts).
Four other states have education savings accounts, but only for students with special needs, or for low-income students assigned to failing public schools. The new Arizona bill, however, expands eligibility to all 1.1 million schoolchildren (although there’s a cap on how many can actually participate).
United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praised Ducey and education savings accounts late on Thursday.
A big win for students & parents in Arizona tonight with the passage of ed savings accts. I applaud Gov. @DougDucey for putting kids first.
— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) April 7, 2017
Do education savings accounts work? Just look at the story of Lanna Beard, a student with severe disabilities who used an education savings account in Mississippi to get a better education.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
