Posted on 06/26/2022 7:48:33 PM PDT by T Ruth
“This session, let’s expand school choice any way we can,” declared Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in his State of the State address on Jan. 10, “Let’s think big and find more ways to get kids into the school of their parents’ choice. Send me the bills, and I’ll sign them.”
The Arizona Legislature on Friday night answered Ducey’s call, passing a bill to expand eligibility for the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (also known as education savings accounts or ESAs) to all K-12 students.
Once signed into law, Arizona will reclaim its title as the state with the “most expansive ESA” policy in the nation.
Empowerment Scholarship Accounts empower families with the freedom and flexibility to customize their child’s education. Arizona families can currently use ESAs to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curriculums, online courses, educational therapy, and more.
The ESAs are funded with 90% of the state portion of Arizona’s per-pupil funding, including the additional funds for students with special needs.
Currently, about a quarter of elementary and secondary students in Arizona are eligible for an ESA, including students with special needs, students assigned to low-performing district schools, the children of active-duty military personnel, and a few other categories of students.
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The ESAs are extremely popular. According to a Morning Consult survey, 66% of Arizonans and 75% of Arizona parents of K-12 students support the ESA policy.
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Despite doomsday predictions about the effects that education choice would have on student performance, Arizona has led the nation in gains on the National Assessment of Education Progress over the past two decades.
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(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
How?
If I’m forced to “support” government education, at least give me the choice where I send my kids.
Ping
Great. Now parents have a choice for lousy public school curriculum.
Charter schools. Classic American education. Higher academic standards. Strict discipline. Uniforms.
Parents are not forced by economics to send their kids to public schools.
That's exactly what this law does.
In 2018, in Texas, $52.3 billion in state and local money went to 5.4 million students in 1,019 traditional school districts and 171 charter districts.
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Of Texas’s 254 counties, I think 95% of the Public Schools are probably “pretty good schools”. I know mine, just a few miles away, is.
But, the URBAN schools, like Austin, need to be closed, and replaced with privately run schools.
Whatever it takes to get the federal government and LIBERALISM out of schools.
Good for GOV Ducey. Wonder what the teachers & their unions have to say about this.
All good parents should send their daughters and sons to good private schools.
Public schools are leftist indoctrination camps.
Another loss for the commies and Nazis on the left. LOL! I’m lovin’ it!
It’s great news. Hope others follow this lead. The Rs should also strive to voucherize all fed Ed $$
If such a large percentage of funding is coming from government, won’t that give the state power to dictate what is being taught? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of the bill? (I seriously don’t know.)
On the face, if there is true freedom of choice, it does sound wonderful.
Fantastic news.
2nd A
Abortion back to States
>>>School choice?<<<?!!
The pendulum swings heavy.
How does Az do transport for kids out of district? In Ga, kids choosing a school that is not their district find their own transport ... that reduces the number that can choose a different school by some.
I recently moved from a county that had **no** private schools and only one charter school. The government monopoly makes setting up a private school **economically** unsustainable.
Yes, parents are permitted to move but the **economic** impact on the family is enormous.
Because of this legislation that allows "freedom of choice" vis a vis schools, I'll be standing bye to read all the reports and data about how well the Arizona students are performing in school scholastic tests like the ACT and SAT, and how they are doing better then the rest of the "non-choice" schools in the country.
But if there is POSITIVE data, I'm sure it will be ignored by the GDP* and the mainstream media....
* Generally Dumb Public
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