Skip to main content

Educational Choice: A Simple Solution to School Inadequacy


To put it mildly, 2020 has not been the year everyone hoped for. Between the “mostly peaceful” riots, calls for the reduction or abolition of police departments, and the discord over how to handle Covid-19, our institutions are in disarray. Most school districts are a mess. Many were caught with no plan for the fall semester, while others lacked a good plan. For example, Stillwater Public Schools implemented a system that only added to the uncertainty and stress. 

The Stillwater plan was to attempt in-person education, but re-evaluate that decision each Friday based on an arbitrarily defined range of area-reported Covid cases. The Friday after school started, the Stillwater district announced it would have classes the next week. Then, on Sunday afternoon, district administrators made a second announcement suspending in-person learning for the upcoming week, forcing parents to make new plans for their children within a very short window of time. The district has yet to resume in-person classes.

Consequently, parents have the added expense of childcare in a time where money is increasingly tight. In addition, given the unfamiliarity with online platforms and lack of student supervision, there is no guarantee that the public school system will effectively educate children this fall (there is scant evidence that they were doing this anyway). As a result, many parents are considering other options. EPIC Charter School has surpassed Tulsa and OKC in size, becoming the largest school “district” in the state.

For those who have the financial means or spare time, options like private schools, tutoring, or homeschooling are alternatives to the chaos of public schools. Unfortunately, many parents are unable to pursue such options, especially given the increased hardship and job loss created by the pandemic. There are some who are concerned that this will create knowledge gaps, which in turn will widen the disparity between the rich and the poor, perpetuating class differences. Fortunately, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) offer a simple solution. 

The 1889 Institute has proposed a model ESA bill that, were it enacted, directs funding to student education instead of the government school system. It creates flexible funding, ensuring that parents can choose the schools that make the most sense for their children.

An ESA is an account administered by the parents in the student’s name, and acts similar to a health savings account or flex spending account that many are familiar with through their job. Funding is drawn from the state allocation of per-child funds to district schools, and may only be used for qualifying educational expenses such as school tuition, books, technology, tutoring, or testing. Enrollment in the program is predicated on an agreement by the parents not to avail themselves of the public-school system. Parents must have the student tested yearly, though they are free to choose from a list of nationally recognized norm-referenced tests. This provides accountability while also securing a great deal of autonomy for the parents.

At the end of the school year, any unused funds may be rolled over to the subsequent year. In addition, the funds may be used at career or tech schools as well as eligible postsecondary institutions. This creates an incentive for parents to economize, as any unused funds may be used to help pay for college. However, the account does not remain open forever; it is permanently closed on the child’s 25th birthday, and any remaining funds are returned to the state’s general operating fund.

Both the Oklahoma and United States Supreme Courts have legally cleared the way for funds from ESA programs to be used at religious schools. The state court ruled that a similar state scholarship program did not violate the “no aid” clause of the Oklahoma Constitution because the money was given to the parent (not the school) who then made an independent decision, free of state control. The court noted that this independence of choice by the parent breaks the circuit between government and religion. This precedent, as well as a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively surpass any legal obstacles that stand in the way of a universal ESA program.  

The unique circumstances created by the coronavirus pandemic have magnified the need for universal ESAs, the Courts have clarified their legality, and public support is high. If the legislature truly believes in improving educational outcomes in our state, they must not let this opportunity to implement meaningful school choice reform go to waste.

Tyler Williamson is a Research Associate at 1889 institute and can be reached at twilliamson@1889institute.org. The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.

Popular posts from this blog

Present Reforms to Keep the Ghost of State Questions Past from Creating Future Headaches

Oklahoma, like many western states, allows its citizens to directly participate in the democratic process through citizen initiatives and referendums. In a referendum, the legislature directs a question to the people — usually to modify the state constitution, since the legislature can change statutes itself. An initiative requires no legislative involvement, but is initiated by the people via signature gathering, and can be used to modify statute or amend the constitution. Collectively, the initiatives and referendums that make it onto the ballot are known as State Questions.   Recently, there have been calls to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. At least two proposals are being discussed. One would diversify the signature requirement by demanding that a proportional amount of signatures come from each region of the state. The other would require a sixty percent majority to adopt a constitutional amendment rather than the fifty percent plus one currently in place. ...
Read more

Licensing Boards Might Violate Federal Law: Regardless, They Are Terrible Policy

Competition is as American as baseball and apple pie. “May the best man win” is a sentiment so old it doesn’t care about your pronouns. The beneficial effects of competition on economic markets are well documented. So why do we let powerful business interests change the rules of the game when they tire of competing in the free market? Most of the time when an occupational license is enacted, it is the members of the regulated industry who push hardest in favor of the license. Honest competition may be fundamentally American, but thwarting that competition through licensing seems to be fundamentally Oklahoman. Oklahoma doesn’t have the most occupational licenses, but when they do license an occupation, the requirements tend to be more onerous than the same license in other states. But what if, instead of merely breaking the rules of fair play to keep out would-be competition, Oklahoma licensing boards are also breaking the law? Normally a concerted effort to lock out competition would v...
Read more

Protecting Unlicensed Occupations from Government-Sanctioned Cartels

Great care must be taken in repealing occupational licensing laws. No, not care in which licensing regimes are repealed or how quickly we are rid of them. They can all go, post haste (yes, that includes doctors and lawyers). Licensing hurts the economy to the tune of $200 Billion each year. A practitioner in a licensed field can expect to charge an unearned premium of 10-12 percent over his unlicensed peers. And licensing has shown almost no benefits in terms of improving public safety. The small benefits - such as a shorthand indicating which practitioners have received a minimum amount of training - could be better achieved through private certification without the economic harms visited by licensing regimes.   No, the care that must be taken is in the unintended consequences of repealing individual licenses. There are times when groups of practitioners will ask the government to regulate them not because they want those sweet monopoly profits (though surely they reali...
Read more

School Teachers Begging for Basics

What if a hospital’s administrators regularly told surgeons to make do without bandages, with dull scalpels, and little to no anesthetic while claiming tight finances? With all the money hospitals have , there would be questions about the administrators’ competence and possibly audits to look for malfeasance. Something like this needs to happen at Oklahoma City Public Schools. My wife is a teacher working in the Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) system. Last year, she came home telling me how there was no paper available for the notoriously few and regularly broken, undersupplied duplicating machines at her school. What’s more, there was no plan for the district to provide any. In the past, she was told, a parent had donated paper to that particular campus, but that parent had transferred his child to a private school. The school had surplus paper from previous years, but that was gone. There were no plans for the district to provide more. Now, I am well aware that educatio...
Read more