NevadaSix years ago, I called on the Silver State to copy Florida. This year, Nevada saw Florida's tax credit scholarship program for low-income students and passed its own version. It then raised the stakes this week by passing an education savings account program that, in the Reno Gazette Journal's words, gives parents, unprecedented school choice."
Reno, NV
Many are crowning the program the nation's first universal private school choice program ("near-universal" if you're a real stickler for details).
Unlike other education savings accounts (including Florida's), Nevada's program won't be limited to children with specific special needs. The only limitation is a requirement that students attend public school for at least 100 day before they accept a scholarship account. Lower-income and special-needs students will receive 100 percent of state support available to public schools (about $5,700). Other students will receive 90 percent of that amount.
Nevada is now the state to watch. Policy debates are sure to erupt, even among school choice supporters. But those will be debates some have wanted to have for years.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board supports vouchers for low-income students in Milwaukee, but opposes expanding the program statewide.
The editorial board is worried vouchers would create a "shadow" education system, and that the school choice program would divert funding away from public schools. It seems the editorial board forgot private schools have always existed, and that vouchers would simply help lower-income parents afford tuition.
Those parents, however, seem to be absent in the newspaper's reasoning. If none choose to participate, no funds would be diverted, and any concern about the impact on public schools would be moot. We'd encourage the newspaper to talk with parents, or to recognize the program can help save money that can be reinvested in public education.
Judge Edith Jones
Private school vouchers give some children "the first real chance to succeed educationally in the Louisiana system," U.S. Appeals Court Judge Edith Jones said during a recent court hearing. The program faces a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department, which wants to oversee the program using a 40-year-old desegregation order.
Jones, part of the three-judge panel that will decide the appeal, said the Justice Department was seeking to keep a "self-destruct button," that would allow the department to stop scholarships if "the state didn't provide the department with every 'tittle and jot' of information."
Jones found irony in the Justice Department's lawsuit, noting it attempts to block scholarships that allow mostly black students to enroll in private schools.
