JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Four years ago, Phil and Cathy Watson were distressed and desperate. Their daughter Mikayla, then 12, was born with a rare genetic condition that led to physical and cognitive delays. With her school situation getting worse by the day, they needed options, now. 

The Watsons were open to private schools. But they couldn’t find a single one near their home in metro D.C. that met Mikayla’s needs. They even looked in neighboring states. Nothing. 

One day, though, Phil varied his keyword search slightly, and something new popped up: 

A school for students with special needs that had low student-to-staff ratios, transition programs to help students live independently, even an equine therapy program.  

The Watsons feared it was too good to be true. Even if it wasn’t, it was 700 miles away. 

A destination for education    

Florida has always been a magnet for transplants. It’s tough to beat sunshine, low taxes, and hundreds of miles of beach. But as Florida has cemented its reputation as the national leader in school choice, the ability to have exactly the school you want for your kids is making Florida a destination, too. 

In South Florida, Jewish families are flocking from states like New York to a Jewish schools sector that has nearly doubled in 15 years. But they’re not alone. Families of students with special needs are making a beeline for specialized schools, too. The one the Watsons stumbled on has 24 students whose families moved from other states – about 10% of total enrollment. 

The common denominator is the most diverse and dynamic private school sector in America, energized by 500,000 students using education choice scholarships. 

According to the most recent federal data, the number of private schools in Maryland shrank by 7% between 2011-12 and 2021-22. In Florida, it grew by 40%. 

“What Florida is offering is just mind blowing compared to Maryland,” Phil said. “If a story like this ran on the national news, people would be beating the door down.” 

‘The kid who never spoke’  

Phil and Cathy Watson have six children, all adopted. They range in age from 1 to 39. All have special challenges. 

“God picked out the six kids we have,” said Cathy, who, like Phil, is the child of a pastor. “We feel very strongly that we were called to do what we do. Our heart says we have love to give and knowledge to share. These kids need that, so it’s a match.” 

Mikayla is their fourth child. She was born with hereditary spastic paraplegia, a condition that causes progressive damage to the nervous system. 

She didn’t begin walking until she was 18 months old. Even then, her gait continued to be heavy-footed, and she was prone to falling. Her speech was also, in Phil’s description, “mushy,” and until she was 12, she didn’t talk much. 

In many ways, Mikayla is a typical teen. She loves steak and sushi and Fuego Takis. Her favorite books are “The Baby-Sitters Club” series, and her favorite movies include “Beauty and the Beast” and “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.” Many of her former classmates, though, probably had no idea. 

In school, Mikayla was “the kid who never spoke.” 

Checking a box 

As Mikayla got older, she and her parents grew increasingly frustrated with what was happening in the classroom. “She was being pushed aside,” Phil said. 

Teachers would tell her to read in a corner. Between the physical pain from her condition and the emotional turmoil of being isolated, she was crushed. Sometimes, Phil said, she’d come home and “unleash this fury on my wife and I.” 

The pandemic made things worse. In sixth grade, Mikayla was online with 65 other students. Then, three days before the start of seventh grade, the district said it no longer had the resources to support her with extra staff. Instead, she could be mainstreamed without the supports; enroll in a private school; or do a “hospital homebound” program. 

The Watsons chose the latter. Three days a week, a district employee sat with Mikayla, going over worksheets that Phil said were “way over her head.” 

“All it was,” he said, “was checking a box.” 

Just in the nick of time, the school search turned up a hit. 

Florida, the land of sunshine and learning options

What surfaced was the North Florida School of Special Education. 

“From just the pictures, I’m thinking, ‘This looks legit,’ “ Phil said. “Both of us are like, ‘Wow.’ “ 

When the Watsons called NFSSE, as it’s called for short, an administrator answered every question in detail. This was not the experience they had with some of the other private schools they called. 

At the time, Phil owned a home building company, and Cathy worked for a counseling ministry. They lived comfortably. But they were also paying tuition for another daughter in college. 

Thankfully, the administrator told them Florida had school choice scholarships. For students with special needs, they provided $10,000 or more a year. 

The Watsons couldn’t believe it. They were familiar with the concept of school choice but didn’t know the details. Maryland does not have a comparable program. 

The administrator also told them NFSSE had a wait list. But the Watsons had heard enough. 

A fortuitous phone call 

A few weeks later, they were touring the school. 

The facilities were stellar. Even better, the administrator leading their tour knew the name of every student they passed in the hallways. “We were blown away,” Phil said. “They truly care. “ 

At some point, the staff ushered Mikayla into a classroom. As her parents watched from behind one-way glass, another student greeted Mikayla with a flower made of LEGO bricks. 

For years, Mikayla had been withdrawn around other students. Not here. The shift was immediate. She and the other students were using tablets to play an interactive academic game, and “you could see her turn and laugh with the kids next to her,” Phil said. 

Minutes later, he and Cathy were in the administrator’s office, “bawling our eyes out.” 

“We said, ‘We’re all in. We have to be here. We’ll be here next week if that’s what we have to do.’” 

Days later, the Watsons were at Disney World when NFSSE called. Unexpectedly, the family of a longtime student was moving. The school had an opening. 

New friends, improved skills and boosted confidence 

Even without the choice scholarship, the Watsons would have moved. At the same time, the scholarship was invaluable. The cost was not sustainable in the long run, Phil said, especially because he had to re-start his business. 

The Watsons rented a long-term Airbnb and then an apartment before buying a house in Jacksonville. They uprooted themselves completely from Maryland, including selling their dream home. 

“That was hard,” Cathy said. “You’re leaving everything you love.” 

Mikayla’s turnaround, though, has made it all worthwhile. 

Mikayla was reading at a first-grade level when she arrived at NFSSE; now she’s at a seventh-grade level. She loves the new graphic design class. She won an award for completing 1,000 math problems. “When she got here, she couldn’t add two plus two,” Phil said. 

Her verbal skills have blossomed. She eventually told her parents something she didn’t have the ability to tell them before: In her prior school, she didn’t talk because other students laughed at her. 

At NFSSE, the “kid who never spoke” speaks quite a bit. 

One day, she served as “teacher for the day” in her personal economics class, delivering a lesson on how to make change. 

Mikayla is kind and quick to smile. She is surrounded by friends and admirers. “Mikayla is my best friend,” said a chatty girl with pigtails who waited by her side in the hallway. 

One boy held the door for Mikayla as she headed to her next class. A second hung her backpack on the back of her wheelchair. A third walked her to P.E. 

Mikayla’s confidence is growing outside of school, too. 

In the past, she wouldn’t say hi or order in a restaurant. But at Walmart the other day, Phil needed a card for a friend’s retirement, so Mikayla went to find a clerk. She came back and told him, “Aisle 9.” 

Mikayla has a bank account and a debit card. She tracks the money she earns from chores. She routinely uses the notes app on her phone to mitigate challenges with short-term memory. 

NFSSE, Cathy said, is constantly reinforcing skills and strategies to foster independence. It “pushes for potential,” just like the families do. 

Mikayla “sees that potential now; she’s excited now,” she said. 

Before NFSSE, the Watsons didn’t think Mikayla could live independently. Now they do.  

The school and the scholarship, Phil said, have “given Mikayla an opportunity for her life that we didn’t know existed.” 

He credited the state of Florida, too, for creating an education system where more schools like NFSSE can thrive. 

If only every state did that. 

The story: After two court victories in the 1990s, Wisconsin, the national birthplace of modern-era school choice, now faces a court challenge that, if successful, could send more than 60,000 students back to the state’s district schools.

This time, a brewery owner, former congressional candidate and super PAC founder is funding a case that argues the state’s four scholarship programs and independent charter schools, which are authorized by organizations other than school districts, are a “cancer” with a funding method that has put school districts into “a death spiral.” The case, brought on behalf of eight Wisconsin residents, is going straight to the state Supreme Court.

School choice supporters say the lawsuit is an attempt to capitalize on this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which gave liberals a 4-3 majority for the first time in 15 years. The high court has not announced whether it will hear the case.

Flashback: In 1990, Wisconsin launched the nation’s first K-12 school choice program, empowering low-income parents to remove their children from failing Milwaukee schools and enroll them in the city’s private schools. The scholarship allowed up to 1,000 students to attend a non-sectarian private school of their families’ choice.

The ink on the bill was barely dry before it ended up in a legal challenge that made it to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Opponents argued that the legislation was a special interest program and that lawmakers approved it improperly. An appeals court struck down the program, but state supreme court upheld it in a 4-3 ruling, saying in the majority opinion that the program’s limited scope “is not an abandonment of the public school system.”

The programs survived a second court challenge in 1998 when the state supreme court ruled that the state’s expansion to let religious schools participate did not violate the federal Establishment Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.

State of play:  Today, four school choice programs serve Wisconsin families, including three for lower-income families and one for students with special needs. The state also  Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a public interest law firm, recently filed a brief outlining why it thinks the court should decline the request to consider the case. The state also offers independent charter schools as another option.

The organization has also filed a motion to represent 22 families as intervenors if the high court agrees to hear the case. WILL attorney Cory Brewer sat down with NextSteps to share some details. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q. The state supreme court has already upheld Wisconsin’s school choice programs twice in the 1990s. Why is this happening now?

A. We think this petition is politically motivated based on the recent shift in the makeup of the court.  A primary backer of the case is Kirk Bangstad, who owns the Minocqua Brewing Company and runs the Minocqua Brewing Super PAC. The Super PAC has a history of supporting liberal candidates and has been telegraphing aspects of this case for weeks on Facebook. The state’s educational establishment is lining up to attack choice and charter schools with this case. The state teachers union has expressed support for the case. One of the petitioners is Julie Underwood, the former dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Q. So, what is the new argument the petitioners are making about the programs’ constitutionality?

A. The lawsuit brings three claims as to why each of those four programs is illegal. Those claims are:

• the programs violate the Wisconsin Constitution’s “public purpose” doctrine;
• The way those programs are funded violates the Wisconsin Constitution’s uniform taxation clause
• Those programs lack sufficient supervision by the superintendent of public instruction.

The fourth claim they raise in the lawsuit challenges “revenue limits” which impose a cap on how much money each school district is allowed to generate per pupil from all sources (this is a way to control property tax expenses, and revenue limits have been in place since the 1990s).

Q. What allows the petitioners to take this directly to the state Supreme and bypass lower courts? 

A. The Wisconsin Constitution provides the Wisconsin Supreme Court with so-called original jurisdiction. This gives the court the power to hear cases that have not first been heard by the lower courts. Sometimes, a quick and definitive answer to a legal question serves the public interest. The court has historically been fairly sparse on original actions over the years, and cases requiring complex and intensive factual development are not appropriate for original action. Normally, when deciding whether to accept a case as an original action, the court errs on the side of caution.

Q. Does the Supreme Court usually agree to hear direct petitions? 

A.  A Marquette professor studied this issue a few years ago. According to him, from the 2003-04 term through the 2020-21 term, there were 103 original action petitions denied and 15 granted, seven of which were in the 2019-20 term. Each year, the court hears about 50 to 60 cases total, so original actions do not constitute a significant part of its workload.

Q. How are the public schools actually doing in Wisconsin? The plaintiffs say in their petition that the scholarship programs have put school districts in a “death spiral” and say that for every scholarship student funded, the district lose the equivalent of funding for five students. What is your response?

A. We don’t believe petitioners’ claims are rational or factually accurate. Public schools continue to receive additional funding every year, and frankly school choice is very popular with the voters of Wisconsin. Also, school districts in Wisconsin are funded through a combination of state and local aid, and the local aid means that public schools get substantially more than the voucher in most every case. Inflation-adjusted spending is far higher today than when school choice began in 1990.

Q. If these petitioners prevail and the programs are shut down, what would that mean for school choice families in Wisconsin? Also, how would it impact district schools that must absorb many of these students? 

A. The stakes could not be higher. Over 60,000 students could see their education options go away if the relief sought by the petitioners were to be granted. We believe this would have a massive negative impact, including on public schools. Not only do public schools benefit from the competition, but we do not believe they have the capacity to absorb all the displaced students. As for practical implications, school choice enrollment (Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Racine Parental Choice Program, Wisconsin Parental Choice Program and the Special Needs Scholarship Program) is 54,949 for the 2023-24 school year. Independent charters enroll another 10,802 students. Demographically, school choice is disproportionately used by students from minority backgrounds. According to data from the state report card, approximately 32% of participating students are African American, 28% are Hispanic, 32% are white, and the remainder are something else.

Perun, the rock star of Australian defense economists doing awesome hour-plus hour PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, recently did two such presentations on “game-changing” weapon systems in the ongoing Ukraine-Russian war. Perun observed:

It seems like every time a new weapon system, be it Russian or Western, is sent to Ukraine, there are always going to be at least some voices in the media that amp this thing up as the next great game-changer, the system that will finally change the dynamics of this long and bloody war. For some systems the hype dies out, whereas for others it builds and builds until eventually the system arrives in Ukraine, and reality and expectations finally collide.

Some get to Ukraine and turn out to be utter disappointments. Others turn out to be solid, useful performers that do the job they were intended to do, but don’t exactly quickly or efficiently move the needle. And others swing in like a damn wrecking ball and on their first day of operations wreck two Russian airfields and deal the Russian aerospace forces their worst single day defeat since they were the Soviet Air Forces during the Second World War.

Inspired by the great Perun, we will here rank policy interventions designed to increase family options in K-12:

Magnet Schools: Introduced in the 1970s in the hopes of reducing racial segregation in public schools. Below is a placement of every magnet school in the nation with data included in the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project on Grades 3-8 academic growth:

 

That’s a lot of schools, but their average rate of academic growth is approximately equal to the nation as a whole (half above and half below the “learned one grade level in one year” line. There are many fantastic magnet schools, but the system suffers from a fatal flaw: the schools are ultimately under the control of elected school boards. Many magnet schools have waitlists of students, but districts, for the most part, do not replicate or scale high-demand schools. Unless someone can demonstrate otherwise, let’s assume that Political Science 101 is controlling here and the people working in other district schools don’t want to scale high-demand magnet schools for the same reason they dislike other forms of choice: they view it as a threat. RANKING: TAME HOUSE PET

Charter Schools Introduced in the early 1990s by Minnesota lawmakers, charter schools eventually overtook magnet schools in numbers of schools, as you can see in the same chart as above for charters nationally:

Charters were the leading form of choice for years after their debut, but more recently, it has become sadly clear that they suffer from a problem not terribly dissimilar from magnet schools: a political veto on their opening. Sometimes this veto is delivered by the same districts that fail to replicate high-demand magnet schools, in other instances, it happens because of Baptist and Bootlegger coalitions controlling state charter boards. What the Baptist and Bootleggers started, higher interest rates, building supply chain issues and the death of bipartisan education reform seems to have finished. RANKING: Varies by state but mostly TAME HOUSE PET

District Open Enrollment: Potentially an immensely powerful form of choice, but one which only realizes that potential if other forms of choice create the necessary incentives to get districts to participate. In most places, it looks far too much like this:

 

 

 

See any fancy suburbs willing to take urban kids in this map? Me neither. RANKING: Varies by state but mostly TAME HOUSE PET, could grow to become much, much more

School Vouchers/Scholarship Tax Credit: The modern private choice movement debuted in Wisconsin in 1990, the year before the first charter school law passed in 1991. Voucher adoption proceeded more slowly than charter school laws, and one of the accomplishments of the voucher movement may indeed have been to make charter schools seem safe by comparison. Scholarship tax credits, first passed in Arizona in 1997, expanded around the country more quickly than vouchers. While lawmakers passed several voucher and scholarship tax credit programs, few of them were sufficiently robust to perform critical tasks such as spurring increased private school supply, which requires either formula funding or regular increases in tax credit funding.

Scholars performed a tremendous amount of research on voucher and tax credit programs, and those programs led directly to the creation of education savings accounts (discussed next). Overall, however, these programs did not in and of themselves move the needle, although at times, the deployment of strong private and charter school programs did move the needle. RANKING: Vital Intermediate Step

 

 

Education Savings Accounts: First passed by Arizona lawmakers in 2011 and going universal only in Arizona and West Virginia in 2022, ESA programs remain a work in progress. The flexibility of accounts contains the prospect of a less supply-constrained form of choice, less dependent upon the creation of one-stop shopping bundles known as “schools.” The largest first-year private choice programs have all been recently passed ESA programs, which seems promising. ESAs, however, have yet to become a teenager, and the technologies necessary to administer them at scale remain an evolving work in progress. RANKING: Promising but To Be Determined

Barely Off the DRAWING BOARD PLATFORM

Personal Use Refundable Tax Credits: Older but tiny programs exist that deliver small amounts of money and accomplish little. Oklahoma passed a more robust program of this type last year, but it remains far too early to draw any conclusions. RANKING: Totally TBD

Homeschooling:

 

 

 

The homeschool movement has grown quickly is sufficiently organized to make lawmakers think long and hard before starting a quarrel with its supporters and has become more accessible with the advent of homeschool co-ops, which provides a measure of custodial care. RANKING: Wrecked two Russian airfields on the first day of deployment, unclear how high the ceiling will reach.

Conclusion: You should be seeking a combined arms operation in your state rather than a panacea-like super-weapon system that will deliver instant victory. You will know you are winning when your fancy, suburban districts start taking open-enrollment students. You will never achieve this with means-tested or geographically restricted private or charter school programs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legislation:  Universal school choice is a top priority of House Speaker Paul Renner and Rep. Ralph Mussullo, chair of the House Education and Employment Committee, supports multiple education bills, including changing high school start time to no earlier than 8 a.m. The 2023 legislative session begins this week. Florida Politics. Sen. Bryan Aliva is backing several new bills this legislative session, including one that would revamp the teacher recertification requirements and cut down the time it takes teachers to complete the process. Florida Politics. A series of proposed laws would transform the state's public K-12 education system. Critics say the state has too much control over the classrooms. Tampa Bay Times. Politico. Washington Post.

Opinions: Paula Montgomery of the League of Women Voters of the Pensacola Bay Area opposes charter schools and school vouchers, claiming that charter schools are not required to employ certified teachers, that private schools accepting vouchers are not required to test students and that public schools must accept everyone. However: Charters schools are required to employ certified teachers unless the school is approved under the "Schools of Hope" law that passed in 2017. Private schools have been reporting scholarship student test scores to state researchers since 2007-08. Finally, public schools can exclude students from attendance through zoning and deny students due to lack of accommodations for children with special needs. Pensacola Daily News Journal.  Could chatbots be part of the future of education? Anne Trumbore, the Chief Digital Learning Officer at the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of Virginia believes that chatbots could be effective and affordable private tutors. The 74. Teacher pay could be higher, says Chester E Finn, Jr. but the teacher unions and parents want smaller classrooms instead. Education Next. Parental backgrounds can have major impacts on their children's educational trajectory. For example, children living in a one-parent household are significantly more likely to be suspended from school or required to repeat a grade. Anna J. Egalite, a professor at North Carolina State University, offers some policy prescriptions to help students overcome these disadvantages. Education Next.

Book bans: Collier and Lee County public schools have banned or restricted 42 books. Naples Daily News published a list of these books. Flager County public schools will hold a hearing today over the request to ban or restrict Patricia McCormick's book "Sold." Flagler Live. Students in Pinellas County Public Schools are pushing back against efforts to ban books in school libraries. WUSF. Alachua County Public Schools says it has catalogued books in the libraries for years and has already established a process for parents to express concerns about books. Gainesville Sun.

Elections: Florida Republicans are looking to oust several school board members in 2023. WPTV.

Sarasota: The Sarasota County School District removed Duane Oakes, the chief of the district's police department from his role late Friday afternoon. No reason for the abrupt departure was given. Herald-Tribune.

Palm Beach: A Lake Worth High School AP math teacher was removed from the classroom after posting pictures of three students and comparing their skin color to shades of coffee. Palm Beach Post.

Polk County: A Lakeland mom wants Spessard L. Holland Elementary School renamed. She says the school is named after a man who supported racial segregation in schools. Bay News 9.

Editor’s note: This analysis from Marty Leuken, director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice, and Michael Castro, a research assistant at EdChoice, shows that Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship flies in the face of claims that vouchers are harmful to public school systems. It appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Education Next.

Critics of education choice claim that introducing and expanding choice programs will lead to a massive exodus of students that will dismantle public-school systems by “defunding” them.

For instance, one critic claims that vouchers “could dramatically destabilize public-school systems and communities.” Legislators in states such as Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia claimed that school-choice bills introduced in their states would destroy public schools.

Such overwrought claims are hard to square with our work and many other analyses of education-choice programs, including a recent study that showed students participating in choice programs, including programs that have been around for multiple decades, represent just 2% of all publicly funded students in the states that operate these programs.

As part of the publication The ABCs of School Choice, we report participation rates, or “take-up rates,” by program for each school year.

This is how we calculate that figure:

Take-up rate = Number of students participating in the program over the number of students eligible for the program.

Trends matter too, though. Existing research doesn’t tell us about how programs might evolve or the extent to which participation increases or decreases over time. The rate in the third year that a program operates is probably going to be different than the rate in the same program’s twenty-third year. Take-up rates over time is what we are interested in understanding.

We decided to look at programs that were introduced in 2010 or later and that were in operation for at least five years. Our sample includes 27 private-education-choice programs in 19 states. These programs consist of four education savings accounts programs, 13 voucher programs, and 10 tax-credit scholarship programs.

Thirteen of these programs exclusively serve students with special needs. All programs in the sample are statewide except one: Wisconsin’s Racine Parental Choice, which is open to students who reside in the Racine Unified School District.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This article appeared March 30 on desmoinesregister.com

The Iowa Senate has passed one of Gov. Kim Reynolds' key education priorities — a bill to give families taxpayer-funded scholarships to pay for private school expenses — in a move that puts pressure on the House to act.

Reynolds, a Republican, has made the issue one of her top legislative priorities for the year. It's also proven one of the most controversial proposals in the Legislature. Democrats are universally opposed and say the measure will harm public schools. Meanwhile, Republicans are divided, particularly in the House, with some of their members expressing similar concerns.

The Senate passed the measure, Senate File 2369, on a 31-18 vote. Every Republican voted in favor except Sen. Annette Sweeney, R-Alden, who joined every Democrat in voting no.

"There is no one size fits all when it comes to student success," said Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, the bill's floor manager. "And only parents — only parents — should be the ones to have the opportunity to determine their child’s educational future."

To continue reading, click here.

Sixty-six percent of voters support reauthorization of one of the founding programs of the school choice movement according to a new poll released by a Maryland-based custom research firm.

Beck Research reports that when respondents were asked Feb. 23-27 via wireless or landline phones or text-to-web, “Based on what you know, would you say that you favor or oppose the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” only 22% said they opposed the program, while 12% were undecided.

When asked the broader question, “Generally speaking, would you favor or oppose school vouchers that allow lower-income families to send their child to any school they deem best?” 65% of respondents said they supported vouchers and 31% said they were opposed.

Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, said the organization was not surprised at the poll results.

“Despite what detractors may suggest, there is strong bipartisan support for school choice and the Opportunity Scholarship Program in D.C. and Congress should listen and support this program with increased funding to meet demand and a permanent authorization,” Schultz said.

The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, launched with bipartisan support in 2003, allows lower-income families to receive funding for their children to attend a participating District of Columbia private school. The only federally funded voucher program in the country, the program was enacted by Congress as part of a three-sector approach to improve educational outcomes in the District of Columbia.

According to the DC Opportunity Scholarship-Serving Our Children website, which provides information about the scholarship, nearly 40,000 District of Columbia children have applied for the Opportunity Scholarship since 2004-05 and more than 10,000 students have been awarded.

Currently, 95% of participating children are African American and Hispanic from families with an average annual income of less than $27,000.

Editor’s note: This article appeared this morning in the daily newsletter of the Energy Institute of Alabama.

Sen. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook, led legislation passed yesterday by the Alabama State Senate amending the Alabama Accountability Act of 2013 to increase the income tax credit claimed by an Alabama taxpayer.

“Since the Accountability Act was passed into law in 2013, it has been a resounding success raising over $176 million from the private sector to provide for educational opportunities that students otherwise could not afford,” said Roberts. “However, private sector funding of Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) has ebbed and flowed over the years for various reasons, including changes in the federal tax code.

“One of the most important elements of this bill is that it allows SGOs to have financial consistency in their budgeting and planning. This means that once a child is accepted into a participating school, the parents will have the peace of mind now in knowing that their child’s scholarship will be there to support them for years to come.

“The Alabama Accountability Act creates life-changing situations for students and their families, enabling an opportunity for school choice and enhancing the quality of life and learning for so many Alabamians. More than 97 percent of students who receive these scholarships renew them annually. That statistic alone is a true testament to the meaningful benefits this program offers to our school children,” Roberts continued.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This commentary from John McClaughry, vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute and former vice chair of the Vermont Senate Education Committee, appeared Tuesday in Vermont’s Bennington Banner.

This year and the ensuing biennium are likely to be landmark years for the future of parental choice in education in Vermont.

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana that if a state offers education tax credits, it must offer them to students choosing sectarian schools as well as public schools. The court said that excluding sectarian schools burdened the plaintiffs’ right to the free exercise of their religion.

That ruling triggered at least three similar cases by Vermont plaintiffs seeking to use state tax dollars to benefit their children in independent and sectarian schools.

The Valente case argues that parents in tuition towns should be able to have their school districts pay their children’s tuition directly to a religious school. Last month, parents filed another suit (Williams) to require Barstow Unified Union District to pay tuition for two children attending the same Roman Catholic school.

Another case from Glover argues that if any student is allowed to take school district tuition funding to a sectarian school, then all students, not just tuition town students, should also enjoy that “common benefit”. Meanwhile, a very similar case (Carson v. Makin) has made its way from Maine to the U.S. Supreme Court, which held oral argument in December.

But the government school lobby is urging the Legislature to put a stop to what could be a costly hemorrhage of students – and money – out of public schools. The four defenders of government schooling are the Vermont School Boards Association, Vermont Superintendents Association, Vermont Principals Association, and the Vermont-NEA teachers’ union.

Their Feb. 23 joint letter to the Senate Education Committee sets out their argument that expanding parental choice brings “a morass of complicated legal and logistical questions.” Their central message comes through loud and clear: Forget funding of children. Fund only public schools.

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Editor’s note: This article appeared Tuesday on Nebraska’s 3newsnow.com. You can listen to a podcast of Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill interviewing Nebraska Sen. Lou Ann Linehan here.

An issue thought to be dead for the 2022 session — providing state tax credits for donations to private school scholarships — has found a rare path to resurrection.

A so-called “Opportunity Scholarship” proposal from State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, which was blocked by a filibuster after it was introduced last year, failed again to advance in early January because of another filibuster from critics who called it a roundabout way to provide public funds to private schools.

Once a bill fails to overcome a filibuster, it is typically considered dead for the year.

But a week after Legislative Bill 364 stalled, Gordon Sen. Tom Brewer introduced his own Opportunity Scholarship proposal, LB 1237. There is no prohibition on a second bill, on virtually the same subject, being debated in the same legislative session. So, lawmakers may debate the idea for the third time in two years.

LB 1237, the new bill, was amended into another measure last week and voted out of the Legislature’s Revenue Committee on a 6-0 vote. The committee made LB 730, which now includes the Opportunity Scholarship proposal, a committee priority bill, which gives it a better chance of being debated.

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