Angie Sullivan teaches K-2 in Nevada. She follows state policies closely and asks questions.
She is a prolific writer. I wish she would run for the Legislature but then the kids would lose a good teacher.
She sent the following to her large email list (that includes legislators and journalists):
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nevada-places-a-bet-on-school-choice-1434319588
My main points of concern are:
Who is an approved vendor to provide the receipts for obtaining the $5K?
For instance – can a school teacher get a business license and have a private school in their home with ten students and make $50K a year?
The ninety day attendance rule – does this happen every year or once you have attend in your days do your 90 days – can you receive the money every year for the next 13 years?
Fraud – we poorly regulate our charters and schoolers already. This has the potential to create all sorts of scamming education business much like the for profit colleges that already riddle the Vegas Valley.
Could someone potentially move here for 90 days with their children and then go back to Virginia and receive their $15K check for the rest of the children’s careers?
Who decides who is an approved educational service? The Charter Authority does not even list a portion of the failing charters. Will we have huge lists of approved vendors coming and going? Does the regulating body have to follow the open meeting laws or any of the transparency rules?
This has the potential to become the biggest disaster and waste of tax payer money in America. Not to mention siphon every cent from the public schools essentially wiping then out.
We could become the state where parents visit Nevada for 90 days and take their kids home to Connecticut collect their check. The zone variance system in Vegas already shows that parents will game whatever system is in place to attend wherever they want whenever they like.
Any other teachers want to chime in here?
Angie
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Having seen it all from the reformsters, I nevertheless find this astounding, that a system that seems deliberately structured to promote wage, fraud, and abuse at a monumental scale, light years ahead of what would be needed to simply burden authentic public schools will be put in place. It seems that Katrina is the model for this legislative atrocity, that they so fear any parent voice, any resistance whatsoever that they are willing to just nuke their entire system with what amounts to a suicide bomb policy so that nothing will remain but scorched earth. Obviously, the severe collateral damage that will affect every child and taxpayer in the state is an acceptable price to pay.
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I too have a million concerns and questions about this. What if the student is asked to leave the private school but the $5k is spent. Does the public school have to accept this student? That is what happens now with charter students who return to public schools after Oct. Why are charter schools seen as a panacea when they also appeared on the school “failures” list?
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Regina, as a teacher in rural Nevada, we take in charter push outs all year long, yes, we have to accept those thrown out of private schools. This year we had students come in during the last month of the year, and no, we do not get any additional funding for them.
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Remember how we were told it was about “improving public schools”?
“Nevada recently became the fifth state to enact the nation’s most systemic K-12 funding reform: education savings accounts. ESAs allow parents to pull their children out of public schools and put the allotted tax dollars toward an education they prefer. This makes the phrase “school choice” a reality.”
Well, wait and see. Vouchers were a big flop in Ohio. Turns out the public supports public schools much more than lobbyists and their politicians do.
Your public schools will be weaker, but they’re pretty resilient. Ours have survived 17 years of federal and state efforts to get rid of them.
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