Some states are taking school choice a step further, replacing vouchers with state-funded education savings accounts. With ESAs, parents of qualified children get full control of the money, which they can use to pay for private or parochial schools, home-schooling or tutoring services, or even invest in college-savings plans. In Arizona, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed a revolutionary law creating “Arizona empowerment accounts” for special-needs children. And in Florida, the state Senate approved legislation this month championed by new Republican Gov. Rick Scott that will create ESAs worth about $3,100 for all Florida students.
This is not to say that school-choice opponents are giving up. In New Jersey, for example, they are fighting Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed the Opportunity Scholarship Act which would offer vouchers to as many as 40,000 low-income public school students. Unlike many of his fellow Republican governors, Christie must get the bill though a Democratic-controlled legislature, where teachers unions are lobbying tirelessly to kill it. But in states where voters have given Republicans greater control, school choice is making a comeback that was unimaginable just a few months ago. Says Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, these “governors and legislatures are actually getting to the hard work of education reform that was previously stalled by special interests and apathy.”
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