State Policy – Education Next

An Unwavering Focus on Student Achievement

Frederick Hess — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 09:08:16 +0000

Penny Schwinn served as commissioner of the Tennessee education department from January 2019 to last month, when she stepped down. As she wrapped up her tenure as one of the nation’s more heralded and outspoken state chiefs, I thought it’d be a good time to ask her to reflect on her tenure and lessons learned leading through the pandemic. Penny started as a classroom teacher with Teach For America almost 20 years ago, served as an assistant supe in Sacramento, Calif., and served in senior roles in the Delaware education department and the Texas Education Agency before assuming her role in Tennessee. Here’s what she had to say.

Rick Hess: You’ve recently stepped down after serving four and a half years as Tennessee’s education commissioner. Looking back on your tenure, what would you regard as your biggest success? Was there anything that surprised you?

Penny Schwinn: Creating opportunities for more students to thrive—and having the data to back it up—will always be our biggest successes, and I have been surprised at how quickly change can happen at scale. In just four years in Tennessee, we’ve achieved the highest ELA scores since the standards were reset; we’ve made it financially viable to become a teacher; we’ve implemented the largest state tutoring program in the country; we’ve permanently funded summer programming for incoming kindergarten through 9th grade students; we’ve made 14 Advanced Placement courses free for every student in the state; we’ve made computer science a requirement for all K–12 students; we’ve invested $500M to redesign middle and high school; and we have a new school funding formula to increase transparency and hold ourselves accountable to outcomes for all students, which has increased state funding to public schools by over 22 percent—with accountability and return on investment structures in place. I would be proud of any of these, but for all of them to happen in one term and amid a global crisis is a case study of what happens when different groups of people work together with an unwavering focus on kids.

Hess: What about your biggest frustration?

Penny Schwinn

Schwinn: As a parent and an educator, I remain frustrated that approximately only 1 in 3 students in this country are proficient readers—and I truly believe this can be different. Ensuring our children are able to read on grade level must be a nonnegotiable goal we set for every single student in this country. The ability to change course is rooted in the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This requires strong and aligned training in our colleges of education, high-quality instructional materials, exceptional professional development and ongoing supports for teachers, and additional hours of targeted acceleration opportunities for students. I believe every educator wants to teach reading at the highest possible level, but not every educator has been given the tools, resources, and incentives to do so. I am proud of the work we’ve done in Tennessee through Reading 360 to raise our 3rd grade ELA proficiency by 8 points in two years, to have a 97 percent satisfaction rate from our teachers on professional development, and to support our educator-preparation providers in developing innovative courses aligned to the science of reading.

Hess: This is a time of pretty intense culture clashes. You referenced these when you announced you were stepping down. Can you say a bit more about your thinking?

Schwinn: We are at a time in education—and in our country—where there are a significant number of divisive issues. I have growing concerns about the lack of civility and common decency between neighbors and the inability of groups to have productive, difficult conversations. We do not have to agree, and, in fact, the foundations of our country demand that we do not. However, political and social grandstanding and a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of how our government works means that many education leaders are spending too much time explaining the basics and not on making the important decisions for kids. One of the many exceptional things about our country is that we were founded on the belief that healthy debate is instrumental in forming a more perfect union. In education, those debates are rooted in that which is the most precious to us—children. That is always going to be personal and emotional; however, we must find a way to engage in hard conversations without taking them personally. Let’s make sure our children are educated, safe, healthy, and immersed in school communities that reflect the values of our country and maintain an unwavering focus on opportunities and achievement for every student.

Hess: What did you see as your role in this kind of environment?

Schwinn: As educators, our ultimate responsibility is to ensure that we remain unwaveringly focused on making decisions in the best interest of students. One of the most challenging and important approaches I’ve used in this role is to ensure that I maintained a true North Star. My job was to make strategic decisions to improve and accelerate student achievement and to do so in one of the largest set of crises our country and my state has faced: a global pandemic, politics invading the classroom, floods, tornadoes, school shootings, bus accidents, fatigue. While the pandemic certainly slowed progress, it did not change our momentum. Tennessee’s rebound in the data and what I expect to see on NAEP in 2024 reflect our commitment to improving education.

Hess: You were a Republican state chief at a time of unprecedented action on school choice. What do you think explains this surge in enthusiasm? And what potential concerns do you have?

Schwinn: We have to come to a point where we don’t just concede—but actually believe—that families have a right to be a meaningful part of their child’s education. Coming out of the pandemic and school closures, we expected to see an increase in the demand for school choice based on what we had consistently heard from families. School was no longer the thing that happened outside of the home—it was in our homes, and that made it more personal. Some of the school choice surge reflects that paradigm shift. With that, implementation is always a significant stumbling block. For school choice to work, there needs to be understandable, accurate, and accessible information for parents. It requires exceptional customer service for families and tooling that streamlines the process. Fiscal accountability needs to be clear and enforced. Well-defined benchmarks for quality and outcomes must be publicly stated and honestly reported. Whether you are someone who advocates for choice for choice’s sake or for choice specifically to ensure better opportunities for students and families, the surest way to see the work fail is to believe that passing the law is the finish line.

Hess: What advice do you have for Lizette Reynolds, your successor, or for other state chiefs?

Schwinn: Being a state chief requires student-centered content expertise; a tough skin; a strategic mind; a warm heart; and an unapologetic, unwavering focus on doing what’s best for students. Tennessee has been blessed with consistent gubernatorial leadership that values education, a General Assembly that continues to prioritize education, district and school staff that work tirelessly every day on behalf of their students, incredible parent organizations, and dedicated community organizations and advocates. The legacy of consistency, hard work, and grit that embodies the Volunteer spirit is so special to Tennessee, and I am excited for Commissioner Reynolds to carry that legacy forward. That same approach can be shared in any state and the power of a strong and unwavering commitment to service—as I was so proud to have under Gov. Bill Lee’s leadership—is the best formula for success. And as always, it must be about kids—all kids, and at all times.

Hess: You’ve received attention for your efforts regarding teacher recruitment and retention. Could you say a bit about these efforts?

Schwinn: It should be a universal expectation in this country that every child is taught by a highly qualified teacher and that we remove as many barriers as possible to becoming an educator. If we believe that a strong education is one of the best ways to maintain a thriving economy, then we must ensure that we have the educator workforce to produce the outcomes we need and expect. During my time as state chief, Tennessee launched and significantly expanded a program called Grow Your Own, GYO, and the apprenticeship portion of that program allows the state to use U.S. Department of Labor dollars to pay for teachers to earn their bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as their professional credentials. This work expanded opportunities to meet critical shortages in the teaching profession, including paying for existing teachers to earn endorsements in high-need areas and to rethink educator preparation. Tennessee also passed legislation to increase the minimum teacher salary to $50,000 per year by 2026. To help retain the educators entering these pipelines, we must compensate and treat our teachers like the professionals they are and we should expect them to be.

Hess: How does the Grow Your Own program seek to expand opportunities for prospective teachers?

Schwinn: As the nation’s first state to have a federally recognized teaching apprenticeship, Tennessee now has nine educator-preparation providers offering apprentice seats through 19 educator pathways for degree or certification, adding 600 new teachers annually. In May 2022, the Tennessee department of education announced a $20M investment in the University of Tennessee system to create the Tennessee Grow Your Own Center to operate as the one-stop shop for programmatic support and technical assistance. The Tennessee department also supported grants with existing educator-preparation programs to continue offering no-cost endorsements to existing teachers to fill critical vacancies in the state like secondary math, ESL, and special education. Additionally, the state created the Diverse Leaders Network, which funds diverse candidates to earn their administrative credentials and master’s degrees. Finally, the Aspiring Assistant Principals Network launched a fourth cohort to provide existing educators the opportunity to earn their administrative credentials and master’s degrees at no cost, providing articulated pathways for teachers in their careers.

Hess: What’s next for you?

Schwinn: Anything I do moving forward will be in support of students and creating more opportunities for them to thrive. I started a new role in June with a more formal announcement later this summer, but I am looking forward to a few additional projects to support up-and-coming and current education leaders. I will also be advising education companies on how to strengthen their existing products, services, and strategies to improve the outcomes they intend to deliver for students and schools. Ultimately, the country continues to talk about “innovation” and “redesign,” but we are moving too slowly, and the proposed solutions are still rooted in traditional structures. I am excited to think more deeply about creating an education system that remains competitive, is aligned with current and future economic needs and conditions, and truly supports all students.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

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Passing Universal Education Savings Accounts Is the Base Camp. Don’t Mistake It for the Peak.

Garrett Ballengee — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 09:00:10 +0000

There is a common misconception among education reform advocates that passing universal choice legislation is akin to summiting Mount Everest. Upon universal choice’s enactment into law, it is done. Time to exhale and pop the champagne, for the mountain has been scaled.

Not so fast. What has actually been achieved, in mountaineering terms, is that a base camp has been established. When the governor puts pen to paper, planning must begin anew to ensure post-passage success.

West Virginia passed its path-to-universal education choice bill in March of 2021. At the time, it was the broadest education choice program in the country. It was subsequently held up in the courts for several months while its constitutionality was confirmed. If your state passes a universal Education Savings Account bill, it too, will almost certainly be challenged in the courts and will likely find itself in front of your state’s highest court.

Since then, in West Virginia, implementation has been challenging in some obvious, and not-so-obvious, ways that can be grouped into five main categories: 1) supply/demand considerations, 2) evolving coalitions, 3) outreach, 4) public relations, and 5) case management.

Supply and Demand

Upon passage, demand for choice will likely surge for a bit, temper, then steadily increase as families become aware of the program and hear from neighbors, fellow church attendees, and other connections about their new options. Education reformers who advocated for the legislation’s passage can play a key role in shaping the demand. How should the program be advertised and to whom? Where will deliver the most bang for each marketing buck? How will public awareness be generated?

There must be someone willing to build awareness around the new program. Many choice programs languish with public awareness levels that would make most reform advocates blush. Failure for an education choice program does not often come in the form of mistakes, fraud, or incompetence. More frequently, the problems are apathy and ignorance.

The flip side of demand is supply, built by expanding existing capacity, attracting providers from elsewhere, and cultivating new supply from within. Consider how your organization or coalition can engage on this level.

Shrewd advocates will begin working on solving the lack-of-supply problem before it becomes a problem. Make sure local private schools are aware of the legislation—believe it or not, many of them won’t be. Help them sign up. Identify successful programs or schools across the country and reach out and let them know about new opportunities catalyzed by your new program. Be on the lookout for the edupreneurs in your state. Who’s leading a successful education program? Who is building a new microschool? Who are the connectors within the nontraditional education ecosystem? Who simply needs a bit of help or encouragement to start something new? They are out there. Find ways to find them.

Coalitions, Outreach, Public Relations

A post-passage choice coalition will be different than what is required for pre-passage. Begin thinking about who needs to be involved and what role they can play. You won’t have control over this entire process. Coalitions will naturally and spontaneously evolve, but it doesn’t hurt to start thinking about whose role should now be expanded, who should take a back seat, and who should be welcomed into the effort.

What about outreach? The nexus of a successful choice program will shift somewhat from legislative considerations, lobbying, and bill design towards family outreach and relationship cultivation, specific government agency relationships, and broad marketing campaigns.

Let’s face it, your newly enacted program will have bumps, bruises, and will proceed with some fits and starts. Perfection is not of this world. Setbacks are to be expected with anything new, let alone something of the size and scope of a universal choice program. Not everyone in the world is as happy as you that universal choice is now a reality. There are legions of entities, from the public education establishment to unions and union-friendly media, looking for any anecdote or half-truth to besmirch the new program.

Take a deep breath and begin planning for this reality.

Gather stories about successes—big and small—and cultivate relationships with storytellers who see the world you do. Be ready to tell the story many people not only don’t want to read themselves, but also do not want others to read: education choice is good and a moral necessity.

Case Management

Finally, one last push up Reform Everest.

You have to figure out how – not if – to help the families about to embark on this journey for the first time. Families are the reason you started out to base camp in the first place, so now is not the time to abandon them to the crevasses of uncertainty. You must figure out how to manage each “case” not only for the sake of the family and child but also for the overall health of the program.

There will be grandparents who have never used a computer now asked to upload a birth certificate on their grandchild’s behalf. There will be parents with limited education who know only one thing when it comes to navigating this fresh bureaucratic concoction: “my child needs something different.” Be sympathetic, but, more importantly, develop competence.

Learn the law and accompanying statutes backwards and forwards or find someone who does. You must have a path or contact for families to use. “I don’t know the answer, but I know someone who might” will become one of the most useful phrases in your reform handbook.

Set boundaries for engagement with families. Parents and legal guardians will, understandably, want an answer at all hours of the day, but be cautious, for this is where burnout lies. Be intentional about when, where, and how questions will be answered. Reasonable limits will ensure a process in which all parties are satisfied or put on the path to satisfaction.

Though the last few steps up the mountain are the steepest and most difficult, they are also closest to what we are looking for when we embark on our journey: helping children find their own path to their own personal summit.

Garrett Ballengee is executive director of the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.

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What Is an Education Savings Account, and Why Does It Matter?

Frederick Hess — Thu, 11 May 2023 08:50:12 +0000

Eleven states now have ESA programs on the books.

I occasionally take up reader queries. If you’d like to send one along, just send it to me, care of Caitlyn Aversman, at caitlyn.aversman@aei.org.

Dear Rick,

I’ve been seeing a lot about education savings accounts in the past six months. I understand that several states have passed laws, and Republicans here are talking about them. Maybe I’m behind the times, but I don’t quite get what they are. Is this another name for a school voucher? Is this something totally different? I’ve seen you mention them a few different times and I’m hoping you can shed some light.

Sincerely,

A Little Bit Puzzled

Dear Puzzled,

Fear not, you’re in good company. I’ve encountered savvy reporters who aren’t quite clear on what education savings accounts (ESAs) are. Heck, there are Republican lawmakers who support them yet aren’t real clear on the difference between an ESA and a voucher. So, it’s a timely question. I’ll do my best to help clear things up.

I’ll offer a short, practical answer first. Then, I’ll talk more fully about why ESAs could be really significant and close by acknowledging that their practical significance is very much up in the air.

In theory, ESAs are very different from more familiar forms of school choice like school vouchers or charter schooling, which give parents a mechanism to move their child from one school to another. ESAs, on the other hand, entail states depositing a student’s education funds into a dedicated account. Families are then able to use those dollars to mix-and-match education goods and services from schools and other providers. This works the same way as health savings accounts, with which many readers may be familiar. ESAs seek to shift us from a system of “school” choice to one of “educational” choice, opening the door to a less school-centric system of education and blurring the lines between traditional schooling, home schooling, and online learning. Of course, how the laws get written, how these programs will actually work, and whether families will want to take advantage of this flexibility are open questions.

OK, now the longer answer. While some regard this kind of shift as disconcerting, the truth is that parents routinely make complicated decisions on behalf of their kids. Heck, we take for granted that families will choose child-care providers, pediatricians, dentists, babysitters, and summer programs. Many of these choices involve parents making decisions that are subsidized or covered by public funds. And all of them have big implications for a child’s health, well-being, and upbringing. In other words, there’s nothing remarkable about families making publicly subsidized decisions about how to raise their kids.

In a field like health care, even passionate advocates of universal, publicly funded coverage (like Bernie Sanders) still think people should get to choose their own doctor. And even the most ardent champions of public housing want families to have more freedom to choose where they live. There’s just no debate about whether we should seek to give families more agency when it comes to such high-stakes decisions in health care or housing.

And there’s more. The promise of publicly provided health care is not just that you can choose whether to use hospital A or hospital B; it’s that you can choose individual practitioners. If you like your pediatrician but need a specialist, your doctor will provide a recommendation, but you can choose to go elsewhere. While many patients defer to their doctors, there are all sorts of reasons for wanting the right to mix-and-match. The weird thing is that the cutting edge in education has been a fight about whether it’s OK for families to leave school A for school B. I mean, what’s remarkable is that the proponents of socialized medicine have offered a more robust vision of publicly funded choice than have school choice advocates!

ESAs are, in large part, a response to the limits of school choice. School choice isn’t really a good solution for parents who like their schools but have more specific concerns. And given that the lion’s share of parents say they like their kid’s school, this means that school choice isn’t much help for many students or families. After all, parents can like their school and still want better speech therapy, math instruction, behavioral coaching, tutoring, or whatnot. Telling those families, “You can change schools,” isn’t all that helpful, especially if it means arranging transport to a less convenient school, away from the student’s friends.

The result is that school choice primarily serves those families who view their schools as unsafe, academically inept, or fundamentally misdirected—it doesn’t do much to help make an OK (or good) education better. ESAs can potentially remedy that by allowing those families to swap out a school’s math class or speech therapy for an online option or other alternative. This could be good for students, schools, and parent-school relations—and this kind of mix-and-match dynamic might even encourage parents to be more aware of cost and quality.

The distinction between ESAs and school vouchers (or charter schools) is clear in theory. In practice? Not as much. Eleven states now have ESA programs on the books, and, given that, it’s natural to think that these are, you know, full-blown ESAs. In truth, though, the ESAs created by these laws frequently work a lot like lump-sum voucher programs, with families quite limited in their ability to mix-and-match. Add the fact that these programs frequently require parents to pull their children from public schools to be eligible for the ESA, are subject to a variety of restrictions, depend mightily on execution, and may be available to only a limited number of families, and we’re a long way from the kind of radical evolution that supporters seek and critics fear.

As I’ve so often noted, theory is swell, but practice is what matters. And, when it comes to ESAs, there is a big difference between theory and practice today. Whether ESAs deliver on their potential will ultimately be a function of how laws are written, implemented, and managed, and whether families choose to make use of them.

For good or ill, ESAs may prove to be a very big deal. But we’re not there yet.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

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Rewrite Attendance Laws to Promote Learning, Not Seat Time

Chester E. Finn, Jr. — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 15:03:37 +0000

Two depressing developments of the past couple years have given birth to a radical idea: Let’s rethink state “compulsory attendance” laws so that they’re phrased in terms of kids learning rather than years in school.

The first development is evidence that lots of students are not availing themselves of high-dose tutoring when it’s available, no matter how much they need and would benefit from it, and they’re not signing up for summer school, either.

Reasons abound. Too often, schools aren’t offering these learning boosts or aren’t offering them at times and in places that work for families, especially the low-income families whose children are most in need of additional learning. Sometimes they’re offered but parents don’t recognize how serious are their children’s learning gaps, maybe because they’re inattentive, but more likely because teacher grades and school comments mask the problem.

The upshot is that the surest cure for Covid learning loss—and other achievement woes—namely additional instruction, isn’t reaching hundreds of thousands of kids, or isn’t being taken advantage of by them, at least not with sufficient intensity to make a real difference.

The second depressing development is the growing number of districts and schools that are moving to four-day weeks, ostensibly to deal with budget woes and teacher shortages, ease burn-out, and forestall quitting. They may lengthen the remaining days to comply with state rules about instructional hours, but there are limits to how much an eight-year-old can pay attention in a day and to how much a teacher can be expected to deliver. The net effect of shorter weeks is to shrink effective learning time just when millions of U.S. students would benefit from having it extended—which, after all, is what summer school does.

Under today’s rules, however, that widening deficit won’t interfere with promotion to the next grade, with graduation from high school, or with satisfying the state’s compulsory attendance law—because all those things are framed in terms of years spent or courses completed, not skills and knowledge acquired. So the deficit will accumulate from year to year, akin to compound interest.

That U.S. students don’t spend as much of their lives learning as their peers in other lands has been known for decades, as has the fact that they need to learn more—and would if they spent more time studying. Maybe, finally, today we’ve reached an inflection point where, with the help of better assessments, lots of 24/7 technology, and much greater concern with “readiness,” we should ease off the focus on time and refocus instead on mastery.

We’ve seen much discussion of schools getting away from “Carnegie units” and instead using demonstrations of mastery to determine when a student is ready for the next lesson, the next unit, the next course, the next grade—or graduation itself. It’s a powerfully good idea that would individualize pupil progress through school (thus better serving everyone, including gifted learners and youngsters with disabilities) and result in graduates who are actually prepared for what follows.

Nor is it completely far-fetched. A few states require demonstrated mastery of core subjects in order to graduate from high school, and half the states have enacted some version of third-grade “reading guarantees,” such that kids aren’t supposed to start fourth grade until they’ve acquired basic literacy.

Yet most of American K–12 schooling is still based on age attained and time spent. State “compulsory attendance” laws are invariably framed in terms of birthdays. They start as young as age five and go as high as nineteen, requiring from as little as ten to as much as thirteen years of compulsory schooling. Save for the exceptions mentioned above, however, they’re silent about learning. They don’t require that one master the three R’s before exiting school, much less become proficient in STEM or the nation’s history or its civic arrangements. Leading one reasonably to wonder what exactly is the point of “compulsory attendance”? Is it just to keep kids off the streets so they don’t get into trouble or compete with adults for jobs or (alternatively) get exploited by adults wanting them to work instead of attend school?

Isn’t it time to consider rethinking “compulsory attendance” in terms of achievement rather than time spent? On the up side, this is how to thaw our frozen system into individualized progress whereby kids move at their own speed and move on when they’ve learned something, not when they’ve put in a certainly amount of time. It would do great things for most kids. But I can already hear the yelps, not just because of the enormous disruption that it would require of our rigid school organizations and the associated dollar costs, but also alarums about forcing young people to drop out rather than waste away in classrooms as they get older and older because they haven’t yet mastered chemistry or poetry.

So let me not suggest that kids be required to stay in school longer than age sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, but also that they not receive diplomas until they’ve reached mastery in relation to state standards for core subjects. Work backward from that and mastery becomes the key to promotion at every level—and “school days” and “school years” flex with kids’ academic needs, which is to say attending summer school—or “after school” tutoring—can be required for those who need it. At the very least, the additional instruction can be presented to parents as a precondition for promotion.

Let’s finally face the truth: Since kids move at different speeds, the amount of instruction that student Q needs in pursuit of mastery of a lesson, a unit, a “grade level,” etc. will differ from the amount that student R needs, which means that, yes, they’ll face different quantities of schooling. That’s the alternative to the batch-processing of today’s age-based attendance-and-promotion systems. It means treating kids differently.

Is America ready for that? If not, we’re stuck with a lot of learning gaps and learning losses that will never close.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

This post originally appeared on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.

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Education Choice Means Accountability to Families

Jason Bedrick — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 08:58:22 +0000

As education choice policies sweep the nation, critics are raising concerns about the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet a closer look reveals that these policies offer a model for accountability.

A dozen states now have K-12 education savings account, or ESA, policies that allow families to use a portion of state education funds to customize their children’s education. Families can use money drawn from an ESA to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, special needs therapy, and more. In five states, every K-12 student has or will soon have access to ESAs or ESA-like programs.

The flexibility over how education dollars may be spent have raised questions about whether families will spend ESA funds responsibly. Opponents allege that ESA policies, like Arizona’s, have “few legal guardrails” and “loopholes the size of the Grand Canyon.” Yet independent audits and the agencies charged with providing oversight tell a very different story.

The most recent review of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program by the Arizona Auditor General found an improper payment rate of almost zero. A prior review in 2018 had found “[m]ore than 900 successful [ESA] transactions at unapproved merchants totaling more than $700,000.” Opponents of the school choice blasted the program for its supposed lack of accountability, but they failed to mention that this accounted for only about one percent of ESA spending.

Moreover, as Matthew Beienburg of the Goldwater Institute has documented, much of the misspending was the result of innocent mistakes, not fraud. For example, the grandmother whose had purchased “educational games and supplies for her special-needs grandson that weren’t explicitly required by his at-home curriculum and thus not approved under the program.” Other parents found their accounts flagged for purchasing things like pens, pencils, notebooks, and other consumable supplies that are not eligible expenses. Innocent misspending must be reimbursed. The rare instances of intentional fraud are subject to prosecution.

Since the 2018 auditor general’s report, the program has improved financial accountability significantly. The Auditor General reports that “concerns with debit card administration have largely been addressed.” The ESA program has also begun shifting to an online platform called ClassWallet. Under the new system, the latest auditor general’s “review of all 168,020 approved transactions identified in the Department’s Program account transaction data” over the prior fiscal year had “found only 1 successful transaction at an unapproved merchant totaling $30.”

In other words, the rate of improper payments to unapproved merchants has fallen to 0.001 percent.

Indeed, education savings accounts have proven far more financially accountable than other government programs. According to a 2021 analysis by the federal Office of Management and Budget, the government-wide improper payment rate is 7.2 percent. Federal school meals programs are among the worst offenders. A 2019 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that “the school meals programs have reported high improper payment error rates, as high as almost 16 percent for the National School Lunch Program and almost 23 percent for the School Breakfast Program over the past 4 years.”

There is always room for improvement, but policymakers should keep things in perspective. Spending on Arizona’s universal ESA constitutes only two percent of the state’s education budget and improper ESA payments are nearly zero.

Of course, for the opponents of school choice, the real scandal is what ESA families are permitted to purchase. For example, a recent article in The 74 breathlessly reported that ESA families were buying “items like kayaks and trampolines,” as well as chicken coops, and “tickets to entertainment venues like SeaWorld.”

Yet as Michael Goldstein, a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research, pointed out, public schools “are already—and appropriately—doing all of these things.”

Indeed, Arizona’s former Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman, a Democrat, allocated $14 million to fund projects in public school classrooms. The public funds went to buy things like hula hoops, color-coded piano keyboards, comfortable seating for reading, folklórico shoes for special dance lessons, K’Nex kits, VR headsets, gardening supplies, and more.

It is not uncommon for public schools to have kayaks or trampolines for physical education or their athletic programs. Chicken coops are a feature in many schools, particularly in rural areas. Washington, D.C.’s Department of Health even published a guide to raising chickens in district school gardens. And what do you think all those public-school buses are doing outside of SeaWorld? Has The 74 never heard of educational field trips?

What salacious media accounts tend to miss is the context in which these purchases are made. ESA parents had to receive approval from the Arizona Department of Education for each purchase. In many cases, parents making unusual requests even reached out to the department’s helpdesk for preapproval, at which point they explained the context of their purchase.

One family recently explained why they used ESA funds to purchase a trampoline for their son, who has autism. Their son struggled to interact with other children and refused to engage in any physical activities. After following numerous suggestions from therapists, they had a breakthrough: a trampoline. In a letter to the department describing the educational value of the trampoline, the parents wrote:

We can’t believe how great it has worked for him! He excitedly goes and exercises by doing fun jumps, runs, and different workout activities on the trampoline that he views as just fun! He told me just the other week, “Mom! I’m not tired all the time anymore!! Before I would pick up one thing and want to go sit and rest on the couch. Now I can do it all!”

He has also opened up with social situations when they play a game on the trampoline with him and his brother (also an ESA student with ADHD that the trampoline could greatly benefit). [Our son’s] occupational therapist has consistently requested that they do many therapies on the trampoline for him and expressed how much he has improved since using it. We are truly so incredibly grateful for this as we couldn’t have done it without ESA, and it educates my son in a way that public school hadn’t been able to.

Likewise, ESA opponents scoff at children receiving horseback riding lessons. But what would they say to the mother of a child with cerebral palsy who describes her “tears of joy” watching as therapeutic horseback riding lessons helped her son develop the balance and muscle control needed to walk, run, and play on the playground?

States have a compelling interest in ensuring that every child has access to a quality education that meets his or her learning needs. Lawmakers and public officials also have a solemn duty to ensure that taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars are spent only for their intended purposes. Education savings account policies like Arizona’s have demonstrated their capacity to empower families with greater educational opportunities while maintaining a high degree of financial accountability.

Jason Bedrick is a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.

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A Few Reflections on the AP African American History Clash

Frederick Hess — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:58:05 +0000

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

The final framework of the new Advanced Placement African American Studies course, recently announced by the College Board, was widely viewed as a victory for the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. Back in early January, the Florida Department of Education informed the College Board that the pilot framework ran afoul of Florida law banning critical race theory and indoctrination in public schools—due primarily to its final, more contemporary section (“Movements and Debates”) which featured one-sided takes on topics like reparations, Black Lives Matter, and intersectionality.

Critics accused DeSantis of trying to “block” public schools from teaching African American history and seeking to “erase” the experiences of black Americans. For his part, DeSantis noted that Florida law actually mandates that African American history be taught in schools and said the issue wasn’t a matter of history but of ideological agendas: “When you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons—that’s a political agenda.”

In the revised framework released by the College Board after weeks of controversy, the stuff that troubled DeSantis is, quite sensibly, almost wholly gone. The framework properly downsizes most of the contemporary agendas, ditches the agitprop in favor of more emphasis on primary sources, and focuses more intently on under-explored history (the geography of African empires, the role of faith in the African American community, the art of the Harlem Renaissance, and so forth). This seems a good and healthy resolution.

Looking beyond the specific resolution, though, a few reflections seem in order.

History triumphed over academic fashion. As a long-ago social studies teacher, I’d argue that the College Board ended up in a fruitful, intellectually serious place. It trimmed ideologically flavored units on things like “Intersectionality and Activism,” “‘Post-Racial’ Racism and Colorblindness,” and “The Reparations Movement,” while adding new coverage of “Black Political Gains,” “Demographic and Religious Diversity in the Black Community,” and “Black Achievement in Science, Medicine and Technology.” The final framework focuses on providing a rich look at the varied dimensions of the African American experience—social, economic, religious, political, geographical, artistic, and such—while doing in a way that seeks to respect the distinction between history and the ideological agendas that currently predominate in the academy. This is a distinction that can too easily get lost (and too often has been). But, especially in K-12 schooling, grounding students in the stuff of the past—and then letting them make the arguments—is a time-tested way to create dynamic, intellectually empowering environments.

What the heck was the College Board doing? The College Board came out in a sensible place, but I was struck throughout the clash that it seemed intent on replicating the mistakes of the AP U.S. History fight from a decade ago. Back then, readers may recall, the draft framework drew fire for being laughably political and agenda-driven. The most emblematic example may have been the effusive treatment of FDR and LBJ, on the one hand, and the dismissive jabs at Ronald Reagan (the most significant Republican president of the 20th century), on the other. The College Board went back, radically overhauled the framework in sensible ways, and yielded a historically serious course that found prominent champions on the left and right. In the aftermath, AP head Trevor Packer suggested the problem was that college faculty tend to share a worldview and participating high school teachers were hesitant to push back, all of which had yielded an accidental tilt. Well, it seems like the College Board just hit repeat. We’d all benefit if they can hit on a formula for addressing obvious ideological bias before sparking a national furor.

DeSantis’s critics essentially conceded his point. A wave of progressive advocacy groups responded to the announcement by angrily denouncing the College Board for caving to right-wing extremists and censoring black history. The problem with such claims is that—in furiously denouncing revisions which trimmed out advocacy-based introductions to Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Black Lives Matter, and reparations—they give lie to previous attacks on DeSantis for mounting (as the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin put it) a “full-blown white supremacist” attack on “fact-based history.” It turns out that he was right to criticize the course for commingling history and advocacy; his critics are now conceding that was the point. The Human Rights Campaign lamented the exclusion of the “names of major black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory.” Indeed, where DeSantis’s critics previously said, “All that talk of Critical Race Theory and progressive agendas is just dog-whistling by DeSantis,” now they’re saying, “By taking out the CRT and progressive agendas they gutted the course!”

The change may be less about DeSantis than it seems. DeSantis has been quick to take credit for the College Board’s move and his many fans have been quick to give it to him. His many critics have been equally quick to blame him, treating the College Board’s move as a cave-in. But things may be more complicated than that. After all, the AP program is governed by a big, slow-moving bureaucracy. Checker Finn, who wrote the book on Advanced Placement, has noted that the process for revising an AP framework is “slow and argumentative” and likened it to “turning an aircraft carrier.” There’s a good chance that the College Board is being straight when it says that most (or even all) of these changes were in the hopper before DeSantis put this on the radar a few weeks ago. If that’s the case, the fact that the College Board and DeSantis wound up in pretty much the same place—rich African American history, yes; radical academic fashion, no—should prompt plenty of reflection.

Ultimately, it’s fair to say, the Florida clash wasn’t really about whether to offer AP African American history but to what degree historical instruction should be explicitly political, and whether students should be allowed to encounter skeptics, competing voices, or conservative perspectives. That discussion can be necessary and, at best, constructive.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

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Education Advice for Incoming Governors

Kevin Huffman — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 10:00:12 +0000

Dear Governor,

Congratulations on your big win. Whether you breezed to re-election, stormed in on a mandate for change, or squeaked it out over a flawed opponent, the seat is yours. The question, now, is what are you going to do with it?

No doubt, you are aware of the significant decline in student outcomes over the past three years. In fact, whoever you are, we can say with certainty that students in your state moved backwards in reading and math; and that the lowest performing students regressed more than the top performing students. Before, it was hard to run a state education system; today, it is harder and the stakes are higher.

What should you do? First — make the clear moral commitment to catch kids up. Announce it, put numbers behind it, and commit to having it at the top of your agenda during your time in office. Pick the most important metrics for your state’s future, and fix them. For example, if 20% of students in your state are scoring at the bottom level of your state’s 3rd grade reading assessment — a measure of functional literacy — commit to cut the illiteracy rate in half. If 8th grade Algebra scores have fallen significantly since 2019, commit to ensuring that the scores return to the previous levels and grow from there.

Second, measure and share the results, rinse and repeat. Commit to the parents of your state that they will know how their children are performing — no spin, real facts in real time. Talk about what the numbers show wherever you go. Highlight the places that are making the most progress. Call out the places that are not catching kids up. You have the bully pulpit — use it to talk about student achievement, not to foment the culture wars.

Third, invest in strategies that are proven to work. Ensure that every school in your state has the resources and training to teach literacy via the science of reading. Use the levers of state funding to incentivize districts and schools to adopt core curriculum that meets a high bar of evidence using Ed Reports or other tools.

Fourth, intervene quickly and aggressively for students who are behind. Tutoring—the focus of my nonprofit—has a strong body of evidence, but is difficult to implement effectively at scale. Narrow the focus, pick a couple of key academic areas and flood the zone with tutoring support using proven strategies. Extending the school day or the school year can also work, with strong academic focus and planning. Those approaches are expensive, but you have resources to spend—spend them on more time and better tools for students in need.

Finally, manage this like your students’ futures depend on it, because they do. Demand to see the numbers— attendance, interim benchmark assessments, end of year tests, spending on effective interventions. Ask questions. I hate to say it, but everyone is incentivized to tell you things are going swimmingly. Trust but verify—the stakes are high.

There is a temptation when faced with a daunting challenge in education to either look for a silver bullet, or to simply put more money into the system as it exists today. Unfortunately, neither of these will solve the challenges in front of you.

However, with clear and measurable goals, a commitment to tracking and management, smart strategies and resource allocation, and a long-term determination to keep going until the job is done, you have a profound opportunity to make a difference in the lives of kids and families. And after all—isn’t that why you ran in the first place?

Kevin Huffman, a former education commissioner of Tennessee, is CEO of Accelerate, a new national nonprofit organization that works to advance educational and economic opportunity.

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In Race for Governor of Maine, It’s “Parents Bill of Rights” Versus “Historic Investment”

Libby Palanza — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 19:33:57 +0000

As Maine voters decide to either re-elect Governor Janet Mills or replace her with Paul LePage, who served from 2011 to 2019, education policy is a key issue.

The first television ad in the race, from the Maine Republican Party, criticized Mills, a Democrat, for spending “nearly $2.8 million” on “radical school lessons” to teach kindergarteners about being transgender. “Is this really what our kids should be learning in kindergarten instead of math, science, and reading?” the ad asked.

Curriculum content is just one of the issues attracting voter attention. The candidates have also clashed over student test scores, and both have stressed the need to focus on career and technical education. Mills has emphasized her role in increasing state funding for public schools.

A Pan-Atlantic Research poll of voting-age Mainers conducted during October 2022 asked what were the top three most important issues facing the State of Maine. Nearly a quarter of respondents named “education/schools” as one of the top three, with only “cost of living” and “inflation” rating higher.

This emphasis on education in Maine is reflective of nationwide trends this election cycle. Although economic concerns have largely taken center stage, education has quietly remained a top priority. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted during August 2022, approximately 58% of registered voters expressed that education-related issues were to be a “very important” factor in deciding their Congressional votes this election cycle. That ranked higher than abortion, immigration, or climate change.

And in terms of governors races, the contest in Virginia in 2021 gained national attention for the way in which it placed education front and center (See “How “Mama Bears” Won a Court Victory—and Helped Elect a Governor—in Virginia,” features, Fall 2022). Following Youngkin’s electoral victory, it was forecast that “every Republican in the country is going to run on education in 2022 because of what happened in Virginia tonight.” It seems as though there may have been some truth to that prediction, particularly in the State of Maine.

Comparing the Candidates’ Approaches

Governor Janet Mills

While education policy has found a place in both Mills’ and LePage’s campaigns, the candidates have mostly emphasized different issues. Mills has placed at the heart of her education platform the fact that her administration fully funded public education to the statutorily-obligated 55% of the total cost. The Maine Education Association, a teachers union, endorsed Mills, accusing LePage of having “consistently shortchanged funding for schools.” Mills further highlights how she enacted “a budget that puts Maine on track for universal pre-K to two years of free community college to pandemic-impacted students.” Her education platform also speaks to investing in career and technical education in response to workforce shortages and mentions that she enacted a minimum teacher salary of $40,000.

LePage’s education platform is centered on a “Parents Bill of Rights,” consisting of policies focused on transparency, parental engagement, and school choice. Also stressed is the need to expand access to career and technical education, specifically by identifying “students who have the ability to work with their hands earlier” and introducing vocational opportunities as early as middle school. His platform also includes policies that would prioritize “education dollars to provide for after-care programs, in our schools, until 5:00 PM” and “provide teachers stipends to incentivize them to participate in formal tutoring programs, after-school, to aid children who fell behind during the pandemic.”

The candidates differ not just in terms of specific proposals, but in terms of tone and focus. The only noticeable point of overlap concerns career and technical education, although even then the candidates each work to stake claim to the issue in unique ways. LePage frames his platform with reference to parents and students, while Mills takes a more institutional approach, focusing on teachers and funding.

“Parents Bill of Rights”

Former Governor Paul LePage

LePage’s “Parents Bill of Rights” has garnered a great deal of attention since its announcement in late September of this year, perhaps because its overarching philosophy is reminiscent of the conversation happening nationally surrounding curriculum and parental involvement. Mills has repeatedly criticized this slate of proposals during debates on the grounds that they would violate Maine’s tradition of local control over curriculum decisions. It’s unclear how effective that criticism will be, though, because none of the policies put forth in LePage’s “Parents Bill of Rights” actually would increase state control over curricular content.

A professor of political science at the University of Maine, Robert Glover, said he viewed LePage’s “Parents Bill of Rights” as an attempt to “capitalize on people’s passionate sentiments that something is going fundamentally wrong in their local schools.” Glover also noted that, “the reason that this has filtered up…in the state and around the country is because there is this sense, for some folks, that the curriculum is out of control and parents need to exert more control over those decisions…and that the state needs to step up.”

The State House correspondent for Maine Public Radio, Kevin Miller, said LePage’s “Parents Bill of Rights” is perhaps, to some extent, the result of replicating a national phenomenon. “Glenn Youngkin in Virginia got a lot of attention for campaigning on these issues, and it seemed to be a successful strategy there,” he said.

Miller also said the state’s tradition of local control could mean that curricular concerns could resonate less in Maine than they would elsewhere. Therefore, it makes sense that LePage’s “Parents Bill of Rights” appears to address the same fundamental concerns that have been raised in other states in a way that preserves the autonomy of local school boards. According to Miller, “LePage basically said that he’s not looking to put in place any state policies…and is still saying it’s a local issue….his administration would make sure schools are more transparent about what’s being taught and would give parents more information so they can figure out what’s going on in their children’s schools.” With this approach, LePage has been able to offer parents who may be worried about the content their children are being exposed to a solution that would empower them without implying that he, as governor, would railroad local school boards.

School Choice

Although school choice has not featured prominently in either campaign’s messaging this election season, it has been present in the background. In LePage’s case, he included as the final tenet of his Parents Bill of Rights that “the money should follow the student,” specifically advocating that “parents should be able to decide whether a public school, private school, charter school, or parochial school best fits their students’ needs.” Despite its inclusion in his signature slate of policies, LePage seems to have spoken little about his position regarding school choice on the campaign trail. The practice in the state of paying for private or public schooling in districts that don’t operate their own public schools, known as town tuitioning was the subject of a 2022 Supreme Court decision, Carson v. Makin.

As far as Mills is concerned, the issue of school choice has essentially been absent. That said, language often used by advocates for educational freedom has appeared in her education platform. The platform states that “she believes that all children deserve equal access to the same opportunity to attend quality schools, regardless of where they live in Maine.” Mills has also repeated this phrasing during gubernatorial debates. Her solution to the problem of unequal educational opportunities is funding rather than choice, and she frequently mentions achieving the 55% threshold for public school funding.

Career and Technical Education

Although Mills and LePage both stress the importance of expanding access to career and technical education in Maine, they approach the problem in slightly different ways, each attempting to claim the issue as their own. Mills’ campaign website asserts that: “Janet knows that our Career and Technical Education Centers (CTE) are an invaluable resource in solving Maine’s workforce challenges.”

Similarly, LePage states on his campaign website that: “Introducing vocational and technical education to students in high school is TOO LATE. We must introduce vocational and technical education to children in middle school. We need to identify students who have the ability to work with their hands earlier, and provide them with good-paying career opportunities they can pursue into high school.”

The inherent connection between the focus on career and technical education and workforce shortages was made apparent during the gubernatorial debates. When asked how he would address workforce shortages should he be elected, LePage incorporated his stance on career and technical education into his set of proposed solutions.

Maine’s governor in 2023—whether LePage or Mills—will have to address the state’s longstanding education issues along with the newer challenges of pandemic learning recovery and intense conflicts over curriculum. The fact that these issues were so salient in the election campaign will mean that whichever politician emerges as the victor will have some claim to a mandate in moving to improve the state’s schools along the lines proposed in the campaign.

Libby Palanza, a Maine native, is an undergraduate at Harvard College studying government.

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Teachers Pay to Mail Falsehoods to Massachusetts Voters

Ira Stoll — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 09:01:50 +0000

The teachers unions are paying to mislead voters about a Massachusetts ballot question that would raise taxes to pay for education and transportation.

Two mailings received by a registered voter in the state make false claims about the initiative while disclosing in small print that they are paid for by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of Teachers Solidarity Fund, and American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts. All five of the “top donors” listed on the mailings that include the factually inaccurate claims are teacher unions or related entities. When we last checked, the unions had put $15.8 million into the tax-increase campaign.

One mailing claims, “The Fair Share Amendment only taxes 4 cents on every dollar earned OVER $1 million a year. For the 1% who make that much money, the first million is free.” It’s not accurate that the first million is “free.” The first million dollars in income is already subject to state and federal taxes. Someone who earns $1 million in 2023 would be subject to 37 percent federal income tax on all income above $578,125 for a single filer, along with an additional 3.8 percent ObamaCare tax on investment income and a 5 percent state income tax. These million dollar earners, in other words, are already facing a marginal tax rate of more than 40 percent.

The same mailing claims “The Fair Share Amendment will raise $2 billion a year—every year.” That’s based on the assumption—proven false in other states—that no earners will move or change their behavior to avoid the tax. A study by the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts found, “Building on the latest economic research, and examining how similar taxes have affected other states ….Factoring in expected behavioral changes by high earners, the Massachusetts millionaires tax would raise about $1.3 billion in 2023.”

The mailing includes an infographic asking recipients, “Do you make more than $1 million a year?” Under “yes,” the mailing advises voters, “you will pay 4 cents on each dollar earned above $1 million.” That misleadingly understates the tax obligation. The federal taxes also apply. And at the state level, the new 4 percent tax the teachers are pushing would come on top of the 5 percent that is already in place, bringing the total to 9 percent. The two rates would add up, so the million dollar earners would owe the state nine cents on each dollar, not “4 cents.” Together with the federal taxes, a nine percent state rate means the government would take nearly half of each additional dollar earned.

A second mailing also misleadingly repeats the “$2 billion a year” and “only four cents on every dollar they earn over $1 million a year” claims. That mailing includes photographs of three individuals that the teachers union-funded campaign say “Will Pay More Taxes” if the initiative passes. The first is Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity Investments. But the Johnson family reportedly moved its family office in 2010 to Salem, New Hampshire, from Boston. New Hampshire has no state income tax. When Johnson’s father died, it was reportedly “at his home in Florida,” another state with no state income tax.

The second individual pictured on the union-funded mailing, New Balance chairman James Davis, also has Florida ties—he recently donated $100,000 to a political action committee supporting the reelection of Governor Ron DeSantis.

It’s possible that Johnson and Davis “will pay more taxes” if this initiative passes. But it’s not a sure thing; it’s also possible that they will reorganize their affairs to avoid it. The super-wealthy have excellent access to lawyers and accountants who specialize in minimizing taxes; someone less famous whose house or small business sells in one year for more than $1 million may be less well advised.

Similarly, the mailing asks people how much money they “make,” while then predicting what they “will not pay” in taxes. That is a mismatch between current income and future tax obligations. It’s telling voters that the screenplay or novel they’ve been working on at nights or on the weekend will never be a hit; that the business idea they’ve been nursing or made a small investment in will never succeed; that their neighborhood will never improve to the point where they can sell their house for much more than they originally paid. It denies the possibility of upward income mobility. This isn’t as clear-cut a falsehood as some of the others, but it’s nonetheless a kind of grim denial of what many consider to be, and at least some have personally experienced as, the American Dream of upward mobility.

The mailings say the money will provide “funding for public education and transportation,” but even that could turn out to be less than fully accurate. Money is fungible, and whether this tax money winds up being additive will be at the discretion of state lawmakers, who could wind up deciding to increase spending in other areas instead.

People of goodwill may differ on whether raising rates on a small minority of high earners is good public policy, or whether the money raised will make an appreciable impact on education or transportation outcomes. But at the very least, the voters of Massachusetts should be able to make their choices on Question One based on accurate information—not on false information spread by teachers.

One of the arguments for increased spending on public education is that a well-educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of democracy. It’d sure be ironic if, rather than helping voters with the skills needed to participate, the teachers in this election are fooling them by spreading falsehoods. Perhaps the teachers are afraid that if voters had the real facts, they’d vote down the tax increase.

Ira Stoll is managing editor of Education Next.

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How to Garner Rural Republican Support of School Choice

Aaron Smith — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 09:00:30 +0000

A study found nearly 7-in-10 rural families have access to one or more private schools within 10 miles of their home.

With RealClear Opinion research finding that 82% of Republican voters now favor school choice policies such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships, school choice legislation in Republican-dominated state legislatures seems like it should have an easy path to the governor’s desk. But this wasn’t the case in 2022 , when red states such as Georgia, Iowa, and Utah failed to usher school choice bills across the finish line.

In Oklahoma, where House Republicans outnumbered Democrats 82-19 during the 2022 session, Republican House Speaker Charles McCall refused to give a hearing to a school choice bill backed by both the state’s governor and Senate leader. According to McCall: “I’m a rural Oklahoman. We see things through the lens of our individual districts.”

While rural Republican opposition to school choice is long-simmering, it’s more apparent now that funding families instead of systems is enshrined in the GOP’s platform and quickly becoming a litmus-test issue for right-leaning voters. Rural Republican policymakers are the main reason Texas, a reliably red state, is in the minority of states that don’t have private-school choice programs on the books despite years of legislative efforts to change that.

Although this rural voting bloc has proved to be a roadblock for school choice advocates, creative approaches to K-12 funding might be able to win them over. Offering rural school districts a financial cushion for any students they lose to a school choice program could be the way to finally get rural legislators on board–and it would be far cheaper than strategies used in Arizona and Florida that involved massive statewide public school funding boosts to make school choice expansion politically viable.

The Role of Rural Superintendents in School Choice Battles

Why are Republican legislators so willing to buck their party and side with teachers’ unions when it comes to school choice? In The Progressive magazine earlier this year, public school advocate Jessica Levin claimed, “Republicans representing rural areas know vouchers won’t benefit their constituents because of the lack of private schools in these areas and because public schools often are important for jobs and community-building.”

But research by the Brookings Institution casts doubt on the first part of Levin’s explanation, finding nearly 7-in-10 rural families have access to one or more private schools within 10 miles of their home. It seems more likely that rural Republicans’ opposition comes down to how the expansion of alternative education options could affect public school jobs and the broader community.

Back in 2005, the Texas Tribune editorial staff explained the important role that superintendents play as employers: “In many parts of rural Texas, where schools and prisons are the only economic engines, the school superintendent is one of the most powerful people in the county.” This is the reality in many parts of the U.S.

Rural superintendents reasonably don’t want to deal with the fallout of shrinking budgets that can come if there is an exodus of public school students to private options. Such a prospect is especially challenging given the school districts’ diseconomies of scale. Losing funds could lead to layoffs and potential negative effects on local culture. While these concerns are valid, they shouldn’t outweigh the benefits of giving families agency over their K-12 education, including positive effects on parent satisfaction, participant test scores, and long-term outcomes.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers are reluctant to go against their influential superintendents on the issue of choice. In 2006, Clint Bolick—then president of the Alliance for School Choice and now a justice on the Arizona State Supreme Court— remarked that “rural superintendents have been the bane of our existence.”

School choice advocates have recently started to push back against some lawmakers’ loyalty to their superintendents. In Iowa, Kentucky, and Texas, Republican officeholders backed by teachers’ unions lost their primary elections this year over their opposition to school choice.

This approach may help choice programs advance in these states, but advocates should also consider other strategies for expanding educational opportunities for students if efforts at the ballot box don’t prevail.

The Way Forward

In 2022, Arizona passed the most expansive school choice program in the country. The bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Benjamin Toma, credited the win to $1 billion in new funding for public education, writing “We were able to make that investment knowing it was buying radical reform.”

Arizona certainly isn’t alone in appropriating more money for public schools, with many states—including Georgia, Iowa, and Utah—using large budget surpluses to boost K-12 funding for the 2022-23 school year. However, Arizona was alone in using new dollars to secure a historic school choice victory that fundamentally changes public education in the state. But there might be a cheaper pathway to neutralizing rural Republican opposition to school choice: Holding rural school districts harmless.

Admittedly, hold harmless policies are frequently criticized by advocates of fair school funding—including these authors—and with good reason. Hold harmless policies fund schools based on outdated enrollment counts or revenue levels. These policies divert funding away from schools attracting new students and create unfair funding patterns if left in place for years.

However, the political realities of K-12 education finance make it so that even a school choice bulwark like Arizona must put a billion dollars on the table to entice enough Republican legislators to support school choice expansion. Holding rural school districts harmless is a far less expensive option and it could be entirely offset by the fiscal savings that a universal school choice program accrues.

A Test Case: Oklahoma

As a test case, consider the failure of Oklahoma policymakers in the 2022 legislative session to pass S.B. 1647, which would have created an education savings account program. The bill failed in the state senate with a vote of 22 to 24. Remarkably, 18 of the 24 “nay” votes were Republicans. As expected, these 18 Republicans represented the jurisdictions containing about three-quarters of the state’s small, rural districts. For the sake of simplicity, we are assuming small districts of fewer than 750 students can be counted as rural districts.

How much would it have cost Oklahoma’s choice-supporting policymakers to offer financial assurances to the rural districts largely represented by these 18 “nay” Republicans?

Consider a scenario where all Oklahoma school districts with fewer than 750 students would be held harmless for any students they lose to an education savings account program. Such a remedy would extend beyond the state’s existing one-year declining enrollment hold harmless policy. Excluding charter schools, this would include about 70 percent of the state’s school districts. Next, assume that each of these districts loses 5 percent of their students to the ESA program. Based on state school finance data from the 2020-2021 school year, we estimate it would cost the state roughly $30 million each year to continue funding these small districts as if they hadn’t lost any students.

For context, the Oklahoma legislature appropriated $3.164 billion for K-12 education in FY 2022—a $171.7 million increase from the previous year. It’s also worth emphasizing that the Sooner State, like many other states, already has special funding allotments for small and isolated school districts, so targeting additional dollars to rural districts is nothing new.

To be sure, there are multiple ways to construct a policy that would assuage rural districts’ fears of losing money to school choice programs. It would also be wise for legislators to cap any program like this to prevent small districts from relying too heavily on hold harmless funding. But even with a generous cap, holding rural districts harmless for any enrollment losses to school choice programs appears relatively cheap and could be an effective way to get rural Republicans on board with school choice. It’s also a policy that could pay for itself given the fact that school choice programs can provide savings for state education budgets.

After years of resistance from rural Republicans, school choice advocates are rightfully frustrated. Recent efforts at the ballot box seem encouraging for choice supporters, but this coalition should consider an approach to policy making that recognizes the concerns of rural superintendents while securing universal school choice for families. This path could provide much-needed changes to K-12 education and save taxpayers money in the long run.

Aaron Smith is the director of education policy at Reason Foundation. Christian Barnard is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation.

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