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 education 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 the 2015 Texas legislative session, SB 1178 outlined a proposed ESA program that may be modeled in subsequent proposals, although it ultimately failed failed to pass in the House 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.
ESAs share several programmatic characteristics with schools vouchers programschool voucher program. The primary distinction is that vouchers can only be used for tuition, while ESAs can be used for a variety of educational expenses. Another distinction is that vouchers transfer tuition from the government to the student's chosen school, while ESA funds are controlled by parents through a government-funded debit card. Consequently, many of those that support the school voucher concept support ESA initiatives as well. Those that oppose such voucher proposals are also likely to reject ESA programs.
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While no ESA program currently exists in Texas, SB 1178 - a failed proposal from the 2015 Texas Legislative Session - elaborates upon some of the programmatic infrastructure the 2015 bill SB 1178 describes several program features that may be included in subsequent later bills.
Parents who elect to register in for the proposed program would receive a debit card with funds that may be applied to educational expenses. The office of the Texas Commissioner would be in charge of establishing and managing funds to be distributed for approved educational-related expenses for eligible students. The allotted amount will be would equal to 80-100% of the annual funding per student in that student’s specific district. Refer to the Amount Per Student section below for financial eligibility.
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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).