by (in alphabetical order) John Garrett Clawson, Cassie Davis, Reynaldo De La Garza, Katie Floyd , Sarah Pollock

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Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) are a /wiki/spaces/edpolicy/pages/27033626 mechanism that puts state funding for educational expenses in the hands of parents. Funds are calculated based on the amount the state would have spent on a given student in their public school. That money is placed in a debit account, from which parents can access and use the funds for a variety of public and private education services.

In Texas, SB 1178 outlined  outlined a proposed ESA program that may be modeled in subsequent proposals, although it ultimately failed to pass in the Committee on Public Education in the Texas House of Representatives in 2015.  In 2016, the 85th Texas Senate was tasked with investigating the academic success and fiscal impact of similar programs in other states, including Arizona, Mississippi, Nevada, Florida and Tennessee (Patrick, 2016). While these programs have different names from state to state, the fundamental features are essentially the same.

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Once a student is eligible, it is at the discretion of the parent/guardian to decide how the funds will be applied in order to meet the agreed requirements of the program. See below for Eligible Expenses.

Program Size and Fiscal Impact

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ESAs are a new reform, and little direct evaluation of their effects currently exists. Indirect evidence, however, can be gleaned from evaluations of voucher programs. While ESAs often have fewer restrictions on eligible expenditures than do voucher programs (which are typically limited exclusively to tuition), early evidence from Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Program has found that two-thirds of ESA disbursements are being spent on tuition. In a universal ESA program like the one proposed in Texas, it seems likely that an even larger share would be spent on tuition, so that the effects of ESAs would be similar to those of tuition-only vouchers.

A summary of the evidence on vouchers will be given on a forthcoming page page.

References

Arizona. Senate. 2013. reg. sess. Phoenix. SB 1363 Fiscal Note. Schimpp, Steve. 2013.

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“School Choice in America,” EdChoice, last modified Oct. 28, 2016, http://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/school-choice-in-america.

S.B. 1178, Texas 84th Cong. (2015).

S.B. 2695, Mississippi 114th Cong. (2015).

S.B. 302, Nevada 302nd Cong. (2015).

S.B. 431, Tennessee 431st Cong. (2015).

S.N. 850, Florida 116th Cong. (2014).