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

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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 is constitutional, the method used to fund the ESA program is not. The court held that the legislature’s discretion to encourage other methods of education is not limited by the state constitutionconstitution (Rindels 2016; Chereb 2016). Moreover, the Court indicated that funds placed in education savings accounts belong to parents and are not “public funds”; therefore, ESAs are not in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against using public money for sectarian purposes (ibid). This has been hailed as a victory by proponents of the legislation. However, the Nevada decision also stated 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 (ibid). Proponents believe that this constitutional issue can be resolved through legislation revising the flow of money into ESAs. In light of this, 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 (Chereb 2016). 

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 of Texas ESA funds would be spent on tuition, so that the effects of ESAs would be similar to those of tuition-only vouchers.

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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).