Gov. Nathan Deal, in promoting his Opportunity School District, said Georgia has a moral duty to assist children trapped in failing schools. While the Opportunity School District — if passed by voters in 2016 — will assist students in up to 100 failing schools, it will aid at most 50,000 students annually. By some estimates, the state has over 500,000 students attending “D” or “F” schools.
Clearly, given the dismal number of Georgia students receiving a college degree, we’re not preparing all students for post-secondary work. However, recent developments in other states illustrate a possible solution.
Earlier this summer, Nevada approved Education Savings Accounts, making it the first state in the country to offer universal school choice to nearly 500,000 children.
Under Nevada’s plan, poor students will receive 100 percent of the state per-pupil funding, with everyone else getting 90 percent, with the estimated average being $5,000 per student. Nevada’s actions are just the beginning of a groundswell of similar legislation throughout the country. Arizona and Florida already have limited ESAs; Mississippi and Tennessee just passed special needs ESAs. A liberal Democrat, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, is leading a diverse coalition of more than 100 organizations pushing for passage of New York’s version.
ESAs, as well as all forms of school choice, are favored by 70 percent of all Americans, according to most polls, including those conducted by Democrats. ESAs give all parents the ability and responsibility, for the first time, of owning their child’s education. They are motivated to choose the highest-quality education for each child at the lowest possible cost, since any savings roll over to pay for college.
Georgia should pass its own version of ESAs, setting funding at $8,000 for low-income students and $7,000 for everyone else. Assuming the funds only come from the annual state k-12 education budget of $7.5 billion, the state would dedicate up to $4 billion annually to fund ESAs for low-income students and $3.5 billion annually for all other students.
Depending on the demand, the state could create up to 500,000 ESAs of $8,000 each for poor students and up to 500,000 ESAs of $7,000 each for all other students. If ESAs were funded to capacity, it would still leave 700,000 students attending traditional district-run schools with funding, exclusive of federal funds, of $8 billion in local property tax funds, or $11,428 per student.
The Georgia Student Finance Commission could easily administer the ESAs through debit cards restricted to pre-approved spending categories. Currently, the commission administers, among other programs, the HOPE scholarship, with a stated mission of “promoting access to education beyond high school for Georgians.” All Gov. Deal and the General Assembly need to do is delete “beyond high school” from the mission statement to make it applicable to all Georgians from kindergarten through college.
ESAs represent a natural extension of Gov. Deal’s actions in saving HOPE by making “Early Hope” available to students to enable them and their families to choose the best education — public, charter, private and so forth — to prepare and qualify for the HOPE scholarship, as well as to succeed in completing college. According to some estimates, since HOPE was passed more than 20 years ago, more than $15 billion has been provided to 1.5 million students.
Now is the time to provide $7.5 billion annually in “Early Hope” to a million students in the form of ESAs. If we do so, in 20 years, Georgians will rightfully give Gov. Deal the same praise heaped on Zell Miller. Most importantly, Georgia would become the first state in the history of the United States to give all students from kindergarten through college, regardless of race, income or zip code, an equal opportunity to pursue their version of the American dream.
