BOULDER, CO (September 5, 2024) – The school-choice landscape in the United States is undergoing a rapid transformation, as states increasingly enact a new form of vouchers called Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Unlike earlier voucher programs, which generally allowed taxpayer subsidies only for private school tuition, ESAs represent a radically expansive—and potentially very costly—vision for the private use of public funds. ESA participants receive public monies via direct deposit and can use them for various expenses, including but also well beyond private school tuition and fees. Many states, in fact, allow these funds to be used for nearly any purportedly educational expense. ESA funds are thus widely dispersed among participants and private providers but, to date, require little or no oversight or accountability.
In a new NEPC policy brief, Strengthening Oversight of Education Savings Account (ESA) Funding for Private and At-Home Schooling, Luis A. Huerta and Trevor Baisden of Teachers College, Columbia University explore the evolution of these ESA programs, with attention to the policy characteristics that shape this large transfer of unrestricted public subsidies for private and at-home education.
The authors describe how ESA programs have eschewed the aim of earlier vouchers to serve low-income families and are instead trending toward universal or near-universal participant eligibility. Unsurprisingly, then, these new public subsidies appear to be disproportionately used by affluent families who had already been paying for private education, according to initial evaluations of the programs. These are often students who had never enrolled in the public system, meaning that taxpayers are taking on new financial obligations for private education, imposing a significant burden on state education budgets. Yet, despite the growing use of public monies, ESA programs fail to provide robust programmatic oversight of this spending or meaningful accountability for the quality of education purchased with these funds.
Interestingly, many homeschooling families who are skeptical of any governmental involvement in their children’s education, have appeared hesitant to accept ESA funds. Similarly, many (though not all) state and national homeschool networks and advocacy organizations have actively opposed state ESA expansion, fearing that extending public subsidies to home school families will lead to public attention—and accountability—and ultimately impose limitations on absolute parental control.
The broader private and at-home education landscape also presents more complicated dynamics surrounding ESAs than might be expected. At least some alternative-education providers, including a growing wave of microschools emerging post-COVID, share the skepticism of traditional homeschoolers. In contrast, many larger for-profit providers (having experienced profitable initial growth coupled with weak or no accountability for the use of public funds or for student learning outcomes) welcome the new taxpayer subsidy. They appear to recognize the revenue-generating potential of unrestricted ESA funds and seem poised to create a new, largely unregulated market of for-profit virtual, micro, and alternative schools propped up by taxpayers.
One concern given this complicated landscape is that pro-ESA lawmakers will loosen already-lax governance of ESAs in an effort to overcome opposition to ESA expansion from some potential recipients and private providers, a move that would further undermine already-weak public oversight and accountability for taxpayer monies. Again, ESAs are already the least-regulated approach in the highly deregulated world of vouchers, where fiscal scandals have prompted calls for greater accountability in the existing school choice system.
Given these problems as well as the dreadful academic outcomes of earlier vouchers on students’ performance, particularly in mathematics, lawmakers might do well to make their highest priority tightening—if not abandoning—ESA expansion. The research evidence about the fiscal and educational impacts of previous voucher programs is extremely negative.
But if, given the current political context, new expansions are inevitable, lawmakers must instead reject calls to weaken public authority over public funds and strengthen oversight and accountability over ESA programs. The authors’ concluding recommendations detail how policymakers can ensure equitable access to a new landscape of providers for all students, increase fiscal oversight over taxpayer money, and develop robust governance and accountability structures to ensure public funds are actually supporting high-quality education.
Find Strengthening Oversight of Education Savings Account (ESA) Funding for Private and At-Home Schooling, by Luis A. Huerta and Trevor Baisden, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/esa-vouchers