by (in alphabetical order) John Garrett Clawson, Reynaldo de la Garza, Victoria Keller, Sarah Pollock, Laurie Roberts,
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At the present time, legislation passed in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee has been been upheld by each of those states' supreme courts. However, in September 2016, The Nevada Supreme Court struck down the state’s education savings account law, ruling that, while the premise of using taxpayer money for private education was constitutional, the method used to fund the ESA program was not. The court held that the Legislature’s discretion to encourage other methods of education is not limited by the state Constitution. Moreover, the Court indicated that funds placed in education savings accounts belong to parents and are not “public funds,” and that ESAs are thus not in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against using public money for sectarian purposes; this has been hailed as a victory by proponents of the legislation. However, justices said that the Legislature cannot divert money specifically authorized for public schools to private educational programs (like tuition at parochial schools). Thus, the Court held that the use of the Distributive School Account funding for ESAs undermines the Nevada Constitution’s mandate to fund public education. Proponents believe that this constitutional issue can be resolved through legislation revising the flow of money into ESAs. The state’s Republican governor has indicated that he will prioritize the issue of ESA funding in the 2017 Legislature when it convenes in February. (Nevada's ESA program was deemed unconstitutional - the state supreme court found that the law violated the state constitution's provision that all "school money" designated in the state's general fund is required to go to public schools.)
Evidence
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 is given on a separate page.
References
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).
Arizona original bill – http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/1r/bills/sb1553h.pdf
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DeForrest, Mark Edward. "An Overview and Evaluation of State Blaine Amendments: Origins, Scope, and First Amendment Concerns." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 26.2 (2003): 551-626.