They said it can’t be done. I showed you it’s already happening.
“It” is paying for a private k-12 education for the same amount of money the state spends per pupil in public schools. The reason we’re talking about “it” is a proposal, still very much alive in Georgia, to create Education Savings Accounts.
Conceived in Arizona, and having now spread to Florida and Nevada, ESAs give students and their families flexibility to spend the public education dollars in the way that best accommodates their individual needs. School-choice opponents despise such flexibility: The Georgia head of the American Federation of Teachers union recently likened school choice to murder. She failed to identify the “victims,” who certainly aren’t the students.
An ESA can be used to pay for home-schooling materials, fees for tutors, SAT or ACT prep courses, or even college tuition if families are frugal and have some money left over. But the most common use would be private-school tuition.
That’s where the “can’t be done” refrain comes in. The people who believe all children can succeed at the school of their ZIP code, against all evidence to the contrary, want you to think ESAs would only be useful to “the rich” who can already afford private school.
But while students were completing their fall semester, I highlighted in this space just four of the schools that provide quality, innovative educations to students at or near the estimated value of an ESA in Georgia ($3,500 to $5,000 per year).
There’s Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School, our local piece of a fast-growing national network of highly successful high schools. Cristo Rey students each spend five days a month working off-campus at some of Atlanta’s finest companies, which in turn help subsidize their tuition. But their families still have to contribute as much as $2,500 per year. Because the school only accepts students from low-income families, that’s a real burden that an ESA would alleviate.
Turning the notion of school on its head is Johnson Ferry Christian Academy, one of the growing number of “non-traditional education centers” in our state. Students only come to the East Cobb campus two or three days a week; the rest of the time they study elsewhere or take courses at local colleges. The school’s tuition fits right in the ESA’s range.
Not all of the schools are parochial — or open. Coming next fall will be a local franchise of the Texas-based Acton Academy network. Acton innovates by incorporating some concepts from the past, from the one-room schoolhouse to year-long apprenticeships. The metro Atlanta campus (location TBD) might charge more than an ESA would provide, but an ESA would put it within reach of many more families.
Nor are all of the schools in the metro region. Downtown Academy is opening doors for students in some of Athens’ poorest neighborhoods. These are families that struggle to pay $130 per year in tuition; imagine the opportunities their children would have with an ESA that covered their tuition, tutoring and some college savings.
I’ve heard about other schools that an ESA would pay for, and one thing we know about other fields is that many more providers would emerge once a lower price point was set. Far from being a tool for “the rich,” an ESA would be a major help to many Georgians.
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