Editor's note: This article appeared Tuesday on illinoispolicy.org.

Manuel Rodriguez’ advertising business lost income during the pandemic, so his family had to cut back. They refused to give up their children’s private education, and it cost them a car.

“In 2020, unfortunately, we didn’t receive Invest In Kids scholarships for either of our children. It affected us a lot because there wasn’t a lot of work, either. We had to reduce our expenses, and even still we fought hard to keep both our kids in private school. We had to sell a car in order to stay afloat financially,” Rodriguez said.

Along with the Rodriguez children, 7,600 low-income students in Illinois rely on Invest in Kids tax credit scholarships to maintain that stability in their education. Whether for personal values, educations that better fit their learning needs, safety or financial reasons, over four times that number want help to attend a qualified, non-public school.

Over 32,000 are on the Empower Illinois waitlist alone.

“The scholarships help us a lot because I am self-employed, and I don’t always have a fixed income. On my own, it would be very difficult to afford the tuition and fees at our local private school. The scholarship has helped me to keep my kids in a good school,” Rodriguez said.

Empower Illinois reported the average annual household income of participants is $38,000, and 49% of participating students are Black or Hispanic.

For the Rodriguez family, the switch to private school came out of fear for their son’s safety at their local public school.

To continue reading, click here.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Jonathan Butcher, Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation and a reimaginED guest blogger, appeared Wednesday in the Washington Times.

A wide performance gap between white students and black students has persisted in D.C. public schools for generations. Lawmakers can help close this gap today, and at the same time, erase any remaining vestiges of a problem created by their brethren decades ago.

The gap should also be called an “opportunity” gap, not just a performance gap, and federal officials must be part of the solution in the District.

The nation’s capital is one of many urban areas for which federal bureaucrats drew “red lines” on maps in the early 20th century, denoting less-desirable places to live. The federal Home Owners Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Administration based these decisions on poverty levels and, yes, racial makeup.

(This was during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, an era when racial segregation still plagued American life.) Real estate developers, bankers and HOLC would not build in redlined areas or lend to families who moved there.

Americans have resoundingly rejected segregation both legally and culturally since then, and America is not systemically racist today. But the effects of redlining still affect families’ education opportunities.

At the FHA, it was more than an article of faith; it was a policy that neighborhoods would be undesirable destinations for homebuyers if their schools drew students from disadvantaged backgrounds, a concept that contained more than a hint of racial prejudice. The FHA’s underwriting manual from 1938 explicitly stated that if students from low-income homes are concentrated in certain schools, “the neighborhood under consideration will prove far less stable and desirable.”

Jude Schwalbach’s report for The Heritage Foundation explains that the similarity between the FHA’s map from the 1930s that ranked District neighborhoods and the boundaries of failing public schools is unmistakable — and sad.

To continue reading, click here.

Stephen Dwight Sugarman died the day after Christmas, interrupting almost 60 years of our friendship and collaboration on this planet. His unique character, personality, and family life I will save for another occasion. Here, I will briefly remember his impact on school choice, law school – and myself.

We met in his senior year at Northwestern, academic year 1963-64. I’d like to imagine that I helped lure him to the law school in downtown Chicago. Northwestern had developed a then unique program in law and social services. In any case, he came, and both he and the program prospered.

So did I, as both Steve and classmate Bill Clune, long a Wisconsin professor, spent too much of their second and third years assembling the picture of public school finance systems that led eventually to our persuading the California Supreme Court to hold its state system unconstitutional (Serrano v. Priest, 1971, 1977).

By that time, both Steve and I were on the U.C. Berkeley law faculty where we remained (I in semi-retirement) until his recent higher calling.

Gradually, through the late sixties, we had come to realize that “public” school is anything but what that name implies. The Institute for Governmental Studies published our model for state systems of subsidized parental choice in book form – “Family Choice in Education: A Model for State Voucher Systems.”

In a dozen joint essays thereafter, Steve and I kept trying to explain the catastrophic civil and social effects of a state’s conscription of the un-monied family. In 1978, we put our full message in the volume, “Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control.”

In that year, at the encouragement of Democratic Congressman Leo Ryan, we prepared an amendment to the California Constitution aiming for a popular vote. It was focused upon liberating families of lower incomes.

That year, Leo was murdered in Guiana.

Steve and I – in spite of our political naivete – decided to try it alone. We had expected help from Milton Friedman; instead, the great marketeer inspired a competing, unregulated form that ensured that neither proposition could succeed.

Steve and I tried several times in the early eighties and later and managed to assemble a sufficient coalition of right and center. In his later days, Steve was happy to see the positive relevance of these early failures to most of the “choice” movements of the last few years.

Finally, for the moment: Even in his latter difficult and suffering years, Steve never wavered from his professional role in the academy. He was a much-beloved teacher and a prominent figure in the reform of law of torts, with his own widely praised casebook and many an article striving to make our laws treat the ordinary consumer with fairness and dignity.

Steve finished the fall semester, teaching his last class, a few days before he died. In a very un-Sugarmanic finale, he passed before he could grade his students’ exams. My guess: At higher levels, it had been decided that he deserved a break.

On this episode, Tuthill and Bush look back at the 20-year history of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and the education revolution that was launched with Bush’s A+ Plan, signed into law in June 1999 with the goal of toughening standards for teachers, students and schools.

The most controversial provision of Bush’s plan allowed students in failing public schools to obtain vouchers that would pay tuition and fees at participating private schools, including nonsectarian and religious institutions, which set off a firestorm of controversy.

Fast forwarding to 2022, when education choice has become normalized in Florida, Tuthill and Bush discuss their shared belief that the future of education choice lies in expansion of choice options for families, namely creation and availability of education savings accounts.

"We're transitioning, and the future [will look] very different from where we are today. Where we are today is dramatically different from 20 years ago. These transitions are not easy ... We can always do better, but we are way better off than we were 20 years ago."

EPISODE DETAILS:

• How Bush sought to balance education choice and regulations when implementing his A+ Plan in the late 1990s
• A template for building new infrastructure and accountability measures in a world of diverse choice where families are using multiple service providers
• The means for providing feedback to families to help them make good choices while managing privacy
• Opportunities for virtual reality education to equalize opportunities for students with fewer financial resources
• Entrepreneurship opportunities communities can reap from expanding education savings account programs

A public school district in the Hoosier State that is seeking to expand education opportunities to its youngest learners has drawn inspiration from a privately funded program in Florida that has changed its community for the better.

Fort Wayne Community Schools recently sent a team of six to visit the Tangelo Park Program in Orlando, Florida. Created in 1993 by hotelier and philanthropist Harris Rosen, the program offers free preschool for children ages 2 through 4 living in the Tangelo Park area. It is funded through Rosen’s nonprofit organization, Rosen Foundation.

The nonprofit also provides resources for parents and full scholarships to college or vocational school to all of the area’s high school graduates.

Fort Wayne Superintendent Mark Daniel described the Orlando program as delivering “unbelievable results” during a recent school board meeting, according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Before the program began, Tangelo Park, a community near International Drive in the shadow of the area’s theme parks and resorts, was plagued by overt drug dealing and use, poor school attendance, declining test scores and dropout rates of about 25%. Most of neighborhood’s 2,500 residents came from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Rosen, who owns eight hotels and resorts in the Orlando area, was looking for a way to give back to his community when an Orange County commissioner told him about Tangelo Park. He began meeting with community groups whose members were also seeking to improve the neighborhood.

The result was the three-fold program that includes free, mostly home-based preschools for small groups of children as well a resource center that offered training to parents, along with the scholarship program that covers tuition, fees, textbooks, and housing for neighborhood students who earn high school diplomas and go on to college or vocational school.

The program also allows middle and high school students access to resources that aid in navigating public schools and college admissions.

Since its inception, Rosen has donated more than $12 million to the program, which also has received support from many Orlando groups including the Orlando Magic and the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation.

As a result of those investments and the work of community partners such as the Tangelo Park YMCA, Tangelo Park Elementary School, Tangelo Baptist Church and the Tangelo Park Civic Association, Tangelo Park experienced a dramatic turnaround.

Today, virtually 100% of the Tangelo students graduate with a regular diploma – 98% since the program’s inception. Grade point averages have steadily increased and are predicted to exceed 3.0 in the coming years. The program has produced more than 160 college graduates since it began.

Property values have risen from an average of $45,000 to $150,000. Rosen’s program also has made the neighborhood desirable to parents who want the educational benefits for their children.

In 2010, University of Western Ontario economics professor Lance Lochner conducted a study on the program and determined that crime had been reduced by 63% and drug dealing has been essentially eradiated. He calculated that every dollar invested by the Rosen Foundation in Tangelo Park results in a return of $7 to society.

“We have a lot of students who grew up in the community, and they’re returning,” said JuaNita Reed, a retired guidance counselor at Dr. Phillips High School, who now oversees the college scholarship program for the Rosen Foundation. “They now have families, and they want their families to take advantage of this program.”

(You can listen to a podcast featuring Rosen, Reed and program statistics coordinator Chuck Dziuban of the foundation here.)

Rosen says the foundation has become more of a safety net as more students excel in school and earn scholarships on their own. He has begun encouraging other communities to replicate the program, which was expanded in 2017 to the Parramore community near downtown Orlando.

For Fort Wayne, the biggest challenge will be funding. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Fort Wayne has more than 18,000 children younger than 5. With 908 students, the school system has the largest pre-K class statewide this academic year.

The Hoosier State relies on federal Title I funds which are limited to schools that serve children living in high poverty areas, as well On My Way Pre-K, a state program for students who meet income guidelines. But Stockman said the money is designed to help students attend established programs, not start new ones.

The district also offers preschool at two magnet schools, a Montessori school and an early childhood center, and funds those programs through the district budget. Officials say access to those programs is limited.

Fort Wayne officials hope to find their community’s own version of Harris Rosen.

“We are identifying and meeting with potential partners, including neighborhood associations,” district spokeswoman Krista Stockman said.

Editor’s note: reimaginED welcomes its newest guest blogger, Garion Frankel, with this post on a viable education choice alternative for rural families.

The past two years have seen an unprecedented string of victories for parental choice advocates. After the events of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than two dozen states now offer some form of voucher program.

But amid this expansion of school choice, the concerns of rural Americans are often overshadowed. Millions of American students attend a rural school, and many families interpret vouchers of any kind as a threat to their way of life. This resentment often influences policy.

For example, the Texas House of Representatives, based on the support of rural Republicans, added an amendment banning the use of vouchers to the state budget, which will be in effect until 2023.

"The reality is we have plenty of options and choice within our public schools,” said state Rep. Dan Huberty, a Republican who has long opposed voucher-driven school choice.

Rural concerns are valid. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Friday Night Lights knows what the local public schools can mean to a rural community. Rural schools can employ half a town, and the other half will pack the bleachers for a high school football game.

These are institutions that can’t simply be overlooked. Furthermore, it’s true, at least historically, that rural access to voucher programs has been poor.

But there is now an option that can adequately serve both a single mother from Baltimore and a family with deep roots in rural Wyoming. Education savings accounts can satisfy the needs of all Americans, and arguably strengthen rural schools in the process.

Like traditional vouchers, ESAs enable parents to withdraw from their traditional public school and receive a deposit of public funds into a state-authorized savings account. Families can usually access this account via a debit card, and the money may be used for limited, but varied uses, such as private school tuition and supplemental instruction.

The difference, however, comes in the breadth of ESAs. They are not really vouchers. Instead of being specifically directed towards private schools, ESAs allow families to effectively design an educational program from scratch. In some cases, as with West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship Program, some students can use ESAs to support their public education.

In addition, ESAs can actually increase public school per-student spending. When families elect to participate in an ESA program, they receive only the state-allotted portion of their education. Sure, the public school district wouldn’t receive that portion of their funding, but it would be able to keep the locally sourced revenue that would normally have gone toward serving that student. As such, school districts can increase their per-student spending when ESAs are available.

For rural school districts, this extra spending would be particularly important. Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, rural schools struggled to provide adequate internet services as well as the technology to access them. ESAs could open the door for higher-quality internet or laptops for students to use during class.

On the other hand, those rural families who do want something different would be able to pursue other options without feeling like they are destroying a pillar of their community. Nobody should feel guilty for doing what they think is best for their child’s future, and with ESAs, that choice could ever enhance their community.

There is no time like the present to implement school choice measures, and with ESAs, rural communities could comfortably join the broad, nationwide coalition of parental choice advocates.

There are no more excuses for blocking school choice efforts. Standing against ESAs is neither conservative nor acting in the interest of preserving communities; it is merely selfish and narrow-minded.

Rural communities arguably are the heart and soul of American culture and identity. That should apply to school choice too.

Editor’s note: This opinion piece from the editorial board of the Washington Post appeared Thursday on the online edition of that publication.

For 17 years, a federally funded K-12 scholarship program has given thousands of poor children in D.C. the opportunity to attend private schools and the chance to go on to college. And for many of those 17 years, the program has been in the crosshairs of unions and other opponents of private school vouchers. Their relentless efforts unfortunately may now finally succeed with House Democrats and the Biden administration quietly laying the groundwork to kill off this worthy program.

In its report approving the D.C. spending bill for fiscal 2022, the House Appropriations Committee said it expects the administration to phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — allowing current students to continue but not allowing new students to enroll. The measure is likely to pass the House, setting up a potential fight in the Senate where bipartisan support for the program has helped to stave off past efforts to abolish it, including by the Obama administration.

The cost of the program is modest and well-spent: $17.5 million per year. That is part of a federal funding deal that also directs money to the District’s traditional and charter public schools. Nearly 11,000 scholarships have been awarded since the program was founded in 2004, and at least 91 percent of the graduates are accepted to two- or four-year colleges or universities.

That compares with 39 percent of D.C public high school students. Most of the recipients — 92 percent — are African American or Hispanic, and the average annual income for families participating in the program in the 2020-2021 school year was $23,668.

To continue reading, click here.

Families who attend faith-based schools in Maine received good news today when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a potentially landmark case that could settle the issue of whether families can be barred from using education choice scholarships to send their children to religious schools that conduct religious activities.

The case, Carson v. Makin, involves a town tuition program that grants school choice scholarships to families who live in towns where no district high schools are located. The state, however, will not allow families to choose religious schools that teach religion or conduct religious activities.

The case has been moving through the court system for three years, with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1^st Circuit siding with the state in October. A three-judge panel said that the program’s limited scope separated it from other programs in which courts ruled that those bans were unconstitutional.

Maine’s ban, they said, was based on the schools’ use of state aid for religious activities, not merely the school’s status. The U.S. Supreme Court settled the status question last year when it ruled in Espinoza v. Montana that a school could not be barred from participating in a state scholarship program simply for being a religious school.

(For an analysis of each case, see here and here.)

Attorneys for the plaintiffs praised the court’s decision to hear the case.

“By singling out religion—and only religion—for exclusion from its tuition assistance program, Maine violates the U.S. Constitution,” said Senior Attorney Michael Bindas of the Institute for Justice, which is representing the Carson family and other plaintiffs. “The state flatly bans parents from choosing schools that offer religious instruction. That is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to hold that such religious ‘use’ discrimination in student-aid programs is just as unconstitutional as the religious ‘status’ discrimination it held unconstitutional in Espinoza.”

“In student-aid programs like Maine’s, parents—not the government—choose the schools their children will attend,” said IJ Managing Attorney Arif Panju. “If parents believe a school that aligns with their faith is best for their child, the state should not be allowed to deny them that choice.”

“The Court’s decision to hear this appeal is a tremendously important development not only for Maine families, but for all families who simply want access to the schools that will best serve their children’s needs,” added Bindas. “If a family believes that a school that provides religious instruction is the best option for their child, they should be permitted to choose it, just as they should be permitted to choose a school with a strong STEM curriculum, language immersion classes or a robust arts program.”

A lawsuit filed last week in Kentucky challenging the constitutionality of legislation that would give low-income families the financial means to choose the educational tools they need for their children could derail that opportunity before it gets off the ground.

Filed on behalf of public school boards and a group of Kentucky parents, the suit claims that House Bill 563, set to become law at the end of this month, is a scheme to move state revenue through a private grant program, impermissibly funding private schools.

The legislation provides an incentive in the form of a state tax credit to individuals and businesses that make donations to organizations that disperse funds to qualifying students for educational services. The tax credit is capped at $25 million annually.

Qualifying families may earn up to 175% of the federal income threshold for reduced-price lunch, but priority must be given to those most in need, initially those whose income does not exceed the threshold for reduced-price lunch.

The accounts can be used by public and non-public school children for services such as special-needs therapies, tutoring, summer programs, dual college credit courses and other educational services. In counties where the population exceeds 90,000, students also can use the funding for tuition assistance to attend non-public schools.

In response to the lawsuit, the Institute for Justice, a non-profit firm that has defended school choice laws around the country and before the U.S. Supreme Court, has filed a motion to intervene on behalf of parents who support the law.

“The lawsuit’s arguments echo arguments made in many other unsuccessful legal challenges to school choice programs throughout the country,” according to an Institute for Justice news release.

Andrew Vandiver, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, said that Kentucky families from both public and non-public schools will be adversely affected if the law is delayed.

“There are parents right now trying to plan their children’s education and now they’re looking at this lawsuit,” Vandiver said. “The stakes are high. There are thousands of students who may not get the help they need next year.”

See! A disenchanted nation

Spring like day from desolation;

To Truth its state is dedicate,

And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound”

Shelley got it right; truth and freedom are inseparable. And, when it comes to schooling, the two join in the long-established freedom of parents to decide the specific medium of truth for their own child.

And yet, it is the national reality that we have imposed the unchosen medium – the specific “public” school – upon the lower-income family; such parents have no voice in the matter. Billy’s school will be assigned to him by a completely impersonal system, one that lacks any plausible, or even intelligible, justification beside the welfare and power of the union chiefs who profit from it.

Will the empowerment of non-rich parents ever become a reality? Will these mothers and fathers one day be offered the dignity of making that fateful decision for their own child – that power and freedom that the rest of us so cherish?

Given his very specific and humbled submission to the teachers union by our most plausible next president, the federal government seems an unlikely champion of the poor for the near future. Yet, today, in a number of states, we watch politicians adjusting to signs of an awakening civic conscience; of course, it helps that the polls show a mounting preference for choice among all parents, the comfortable as well as the poor. The subsidized mother and father have become a spreading vision among our people.

When and if choice comes to be in a sustainable way, it will most likely do so in a variety of legal and economic forms from state to state. Vouchers that would subsidize and empower lower-income parents to exercise their legal right by paying tuition are merely the most simple and obvious remedy.

And, of course, we have already created the harbinger of parental empowerment in our well-functioning and very popular charters. Aside from their superior test scores, we can be confident that they work simply by watching the frantic (and too often successful) effort of union chiefs to minimize their numbers and/or to shrink the operating liberty of these precious quasi-public latecomers in our history.

Tuition vouchers for ordinary and poor families will be the simplest form for the subsidizing of choice. Imagine the real freedom for families that need financial help to decide for themselves if both vouchers and charters were to become available to them.

That will depend entirely upon the prudence and resilience of their current union overseers to transform themselves and, for the first time, rise to meet the competition in a free market.

In short, they would have to become worth choosing. Is that too much to ask?