EDITORIAL: Provide education savings accounts for families

It can’t be said enough: Money alone will not improve K-12 education in Nevada or anywhere else. Reforms to public education systems have to be part of any plan to raise student achievement and better train future generations of workers. And no reform is more important or effective than promoting educational competition through school choice.

Today marks the start of National School Choice Week, and the timing couldn’t be better. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval laid out his education reform and school choice agenda in his Jan. 15 State of the State address, and the Nevada Legislature convenes next week to consider that agenda and other proposals. These bills are a critical part of improving student achievement. The more the state promotes educational options for families, the more opportunity for success the state’s children will have.

Nevada is well behind other states in embracing school choice, but the Silver State is catching up. One of the worst charter school climates in America has been greatly improved by giving charters access to state bonds to fund campus construction, and through the creation of the State Public Charter School Authority. (Charter schools are public schools that receive roughly the same amount of per-student funding from the state as traditional neighborhood public schools, but charter schools have the freedom to innovate, operate under a different educational focus and not be micromanaged by a vast central bureaucracy.) And the Clark County School District is expanding magnet programs, which convert neighborhood schools into campuses that draw students from across the valley with specialized curricula.

But the waiting lists for charter schools and magnet schools total thousands of Southern Nevada families who can’t afford private school tuition. These households are actively looking for alternatives to their neighborhood schools. How many more families would embark on such a search if they had more choices and more resources? The idea that each public school is the best educational option for every single child within its attendance zone is absurd. Children have different interests, different abilities and different learning styles.

Adding even more charter and magnet schools will help. But to create the most educational opportunities, Nevada needs a school choice policy that creates nearly unlimited possibilities. The Review-Journal’s 18th of 25 policy recommendations to Gov. Sandoval and the Legislature in 25 days: education savings accounts.

Education savings accounts, or ESAs, are not vouchers. School vouchers amount to direct state payments to private schools, a practice that runs afoul of constitutional restrictions on public support of religious institutions when parents want vouchers applied to parochial schools. ESAs give parents control of the state funding that would have supported their child’s education in a public school. Parents can use that money to pay private school tuition, hire private tutors to support homeschooling, purchase technology, take online courses or pay for other educational expenses. And parents have an incentive to spend that money efficiently: unused ESA money can be rolled into a college savings plan.

This is not a new idea awaiting its first trial. ESAs were introduced in Arizona in 2011, and last year Florida became the second state to offer them.

Public school funding isn’t simply handed over to parents. Families receive 90 percent of Arizona’s per-student allocation. The funds are dispersed quarterly, and eligibility is limited. First-time applicants must have attended a public school for at least 100 days the previous school year, and those students must be in foster care, have special needs or have attended underperforming schools. ESAs are not subsidies for wealthy families who already pay steep private school bills. They are lifelines to children stuck in schools that are holding back their academic growth.

ESAs are just one part of a strong school choice agenda. The world and the economy are rapidly changing, but this country’s public education system is not evolving nearly as quickly. Yes, public schools serve many millions of families exceptionally well. But the more states empower parents to choose their children’s schools, the more entrepreneurs will deliver customized educational models. Put families, not government institutions, in charge of making education decisions for children. The Legislature should bring education savings accounts to Nevada.