Education funding is just the beginning.
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The past few months have seen increased hostility against education laws that provide parents with the freedom to choose their child’s schooling with a portion of the tax dollars allocated for their education funding that choice. Arizona’s governor Katie Hobbs launched an effort within the first days of 2024 to cut the very program that has elevated her state’s education standing in the U.S. Wisconsin’s pioneering voucher program was unsuccessfully challenged in the state supreme court by a teacher union-backed group hoping to capitalize on more union friendly justices. Illinois lawmakers have killed that state’s modest choice program, Invest in Kids, which provided scholarships for approximately 41,000 of the poorest students in Illinois. And Pennsylvania’s public school district allies are maintaining a loose thread on preventing the passage of Lifeline Scholarships.
The backlash comes on the heels of a huge winning streak for education choice in the states, as well as growing popular and tri-partisan sentiment that parents should be the ones to decide how to educate their kids. That remains a powerful argument, as does the data that justifies their cause.
Last year, the U.S. marked the largest decline in test scores in 50 years. “National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic,” the Washington Post reported in July.
As reported by the New York Times, just thirteen percent of eighth-graders (13-year-olds) meet proficiency standards for U.S. history, “meaning they could explain major themes, periods, events, people, ideas and turning points in the country’s history.” Persistent dissatisfaction from pandemic-era schooling and growing dissatisfaction with traditional public education also have led to declining enrollment and widespread absenteeism in public schools. There’s been a 7% growth in private school enrollment and a 51% increase in homeschooling over the past six years, and, according to the Washington Post, “a dramatic rise in homeschooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year.”
Meanwhile, a significant number of students are still unaccounted for in public schools, attrition that is likely due to increased interest in non-traditional options, reflecting parents’ desire for educational choices aligned with their values and needs.
Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom was that a lack of money was to blame for public education’s declining effectiveness, but while achievement has plummeted among students in traditional public schools, spending has soared.
As of September 2023, the total combined spending from federal, state, and local governments was $810 billion, or an average of $16,390 per pupil per year, while most urban communities spend between $20,000 and $35,000 per student. Districts also received an additional $189.5 billion through federal ESSER funding to address pandemic era challenges, yet only 62.2% of these funds have been expended.
Parent Preferences On the Rise
This is the primary reason why parents favor and are more inclined to choose non-traditional education options for their students when they have the ability to do so and that number is rising among minority parents. A recent survey from School Choice Week reports “64.5 percent of Black parents and 64.6 percent of Hispanic parents considered new schools for their children, compared with 46.2 percent of white parents,” and most said that “their community does not offer enough education options for families.”
Support for Education Savings Accounts, which give parents the opportunity to spend education tax dollars on the education of choice, are also on the rise across all political affiliations and communities. A poll by John Zobgy Strategies for Odyssey, as reported by Politico, found that Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) have overwhelming bi-partisan support, even in states without them, and parents report their students are benefitting from the options they provide.
It’s no surprise then that ideas and policies that were only debated for decades in state halls surged in passage in the past two years. Since early 2022, eighteen states have enacted new laws or expanded existing policies giving parents precisely what they want – preferences – by establishing or increasing access to mechanisms that provide for students to attend schools outside of their zoned public school.
Nine states created new education savings account programs. An additional eight increased funds available for existing choice programs, such as tax-credit funded scholarship programs and vouchers. Eleven states improved their charter laws.
Recent activity in U.S. states’ charter school laws and choice programs.
Center for Education Reform
These programs differ vastly, as does funding from state to state, with many compromises on scope and funding made to secure passage. For example, in Oklahoma Governor Stitt assured success of his state’s Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program by refusing to sign legislative priorities into law as well as increasing traditional public school funding as was the case in Arkansas and Iowa. Texas leaders were unsuccessful in getting lawmakers to agree to ESAs despite guaranteeing districts would be held harmless against funding losses when students leave. Such “hold harmless” provisions, which protect districts from any financial impact of students leaving traditional public school districts, are a slippery slope, paying and sometimes increasing district funding for losing students, and in essence funding phantom students.
Why Hold District’s Harmless From Enrollment Fluctuations?
“Hold harmless” is when the state funds districts based on the previous year’s enrollment, regardless of how many students are enrolled at budget time. This practice has been going on for some years entirely unrelated to education choice, but as compensation for declining enrollment. Before Covid, such provisions were in permanent effect in at least 12 states.
Districts argue that they require this because hold harmless agreements enable them to operate without facing a funding deficit. But such arrangements fail to adequately address underlying causes of under-enrollment, which may have everything to do with lagging quality and parental demands for something different and something better.
But in many choice programs, student funding is not only less than the traditional district spends on them, but the district also gains a windfall of dollars from hold-harmless provisions. For example, in Pinellas County, Fla., a student that attends a school like SailFuture, which educates students with high at-risk factors, brings only a $8,100 Empowerment Scholarship to the school, while approximately $11,000 of the full per pupil expenditure per district student is consumed by the district he left. So, in addition to districts being “held harmless” when students depart, and getting reimbursed for the slice of funding they would otherwise lose when students leave, some are holding on to funding that should follow students to their new school.
Money Should Follow The Student
While progress in creating new laws providing parents with some level of education freedom are substantial, the bar needs to be higher. Most education choice programs are historically underfunded, delivering to parents only a percentage of the funds that the state allocates for education, with some but not all federal funding and no local funding. For example, North Carolina’s expanded Opportunity Scholarship provides up to $7,000, with increased funding expected as the program expands. But the average per pupil spending for public school district students is almost $12,000.
Oklahoma’s newly enacted Parental Choice Tax Credit program awards up to $7,500 per student while most districts receive more than $11,000 per student. So while districts are reaping additional funds for educating fewer students, lower funding amounts mean fewer resources available to new and expanding choice schools, which is precisely what opponents want.
The goal of policymakers and imperative for parents is to direct all or a substantial amount of existing funding allocated for students to the education of their choosing, without paying off districts for un-accounted for students. While states are to be celebrated for racing to respond to parental demands and education’s enormous declines with the enactment of expansive education choice programs, educators and innovators should not be underfunded while districts who have been unable to deliver on student needs get rewarded for declining enrollment. The next phase of providing real parent power is for every tax dollar to follow the student to the education of their choice. The doubling of U.S. education spending in just 30 years from $400 billion to $800 billion dollars – without the result of ensuring every student can read and write at grade level – is unsustainable and counterproductive for the nation.
That money belongs to families for their students’ education. Ensuring it reaches them is education’s next frontier.
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