Nevada recently passed a bill for “education savings accounts,” which parents can use for vouchers or home schooling.
The original bill said that vouchers were available only to students who had attended public school previously for at least 100 days, but parents with children in private schools say that is unfair. They want their tuition at religious and private schools paid by the state.
The ESA will also be available for those who decide to teach their kids at home. They will be called “opt in,” because they opting into home schooling. For some reason, they will be viewed as different from “traditional home schoolers under state law.” Whatever the reason, Nevada is not doing anything to raise the level of education but is diverting public funds for those who choose not to go to school at all. This will not turn out well.
More than 1,200 families have applied for ESAs, and school choice supporters are hoping that new private schools start opening up in the state. Otherwise, reports the Las Vegas Sun Times, Nevada may not have enough private schools to support a wave of new students, especially in inner cities and rural areas. More from the Sun Times:
“Nobody knows exactly how many seats are currently available, mostly because the state education department doesn’t keep those statistics. An informal survey by the Treasurer’s Office and the Friedman Foundation estimated there were around 6,000 empty seats statewide.
… Six thousand seats should be more than enough, but it could all come down to how many families end up applying for the program. A thousand applications have been submitted in the last week and a half, and the enrollment period lasts through November.”
However, the Treasurer’s Office believes a sizable chunk of ESA applicants will opt instead to home school—a group the department is calling ‘opt ins’ (and will be considered separate from traditional home schoolers under state law). That could ease the pressure on private schools.
“I think we’re going to get more than 6,000 people who are interested in education savings accounts this year,” says Grant Hewitt at the Treasurers’ Office. “But they will be a mixture of private school and opt-in students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am just hypothesizing here, but it could be that Nevada (like many other states) is seeing an increase in homeschooling. If a homeschool family “opts-in”, I bet that here are strings attached–meaning parents have to teach CC and students have to participate in the assessments. It is a way to increase the numbers and collect data. Getting away from CCSS is why so many of us are choosing to homeschool now.
You know? I’m not sure why these states don’t just fold up their public schools. Because if the voucher/choice system actually held water then a state’s obligation to provide education to it’s children would end with the handing over of a fat wad of cash to each child’s parents. And i think this philosophy could be applied to infrastructure/roadwork too. If you want a bridge built, then after you get your allotted road money, you can use it to build your own bridge.
Ooops- its
Education savings accounts, just as bad and phony as health savings accounts. Great for the wealthy but a bad idea for ordinary working class Americans and the poor.
Did lawmakers or lobbyists or policy makers in Nevada do anything for the majority of kids in that state who attend existing public schools, or were they completely ignored again? Why aren’t children who attend public schools ever considered in any of these schemes? Do they have a single advocate in government?
I guess I’m not clear why public school parents are paying a huge group of public employees to eliminate our schools.
My thoughts exactly. Is this what Nevada wanted?
Maybe most of the 2.8+ million citizens in Nevada would not want this if they knew what it was, but that doesn’t matter. This is what the FOUR Waltons want and they are spending HUGE sums of money to make sure they get it.
They were not completely ignored. The politicians did increase funding for schools with a lot of ELL students. (I haven’t looked into the details to see where that funding is going.)
However, it seems clear that this is a step toward privatization.
Is an “education savings account” like a health savings account? Because the latter is basically your own money stashed in a bank account for whenever you need it, and when you do need it, you have it until the account is depleted. The only government contribution is that it’s tax-free money. The idea (in theory at least) is that you open one when you start working in your early 20s and by the time you start to fall apart in middle and later life, it’s earned quite a bit of interest (again, theoretically) and there’s a good pile of money to draw from. Of course, the theory doesn’t account for those who start such an account later in life, those who have early-adulthood accidents or illnesses which require dipping into the account, those who have kids, or those who simply can’t afford any money to stash in an account, whether tax-free or not.
If an “education savings account” is (or, ultimately will be) like an HSA, it’s a even more of a problem because the time from when you have the kid to the time you’d need to dip into the account isn’t long enough for it to build up any interest. People would likely find their ESA depleted before their kid got out of first grade.
“All parents of public school students in Nevada will soon be allowed to use state funding earmarked for their children, which the state will place in education savings accounts, or ESAs, for tuition or other approved education-related expenses.”
It;s not like an HSA. I bet they purposely named it so people would assume it is similar to an HSA and not make a fuss about it.
Is it also a way to avoid serving undocumented minors?
This is going to turn out to be another copycat of welfare/Medicare/Social Security fraud where people apply for ESA who don’t even have children but claim they do, and there will be little or no money to fund investigations.
it’s stunning what the Obama education initiatives have done to public education.
Why would you send a kid to school if the state sends you a check for a few thousand to keep them at home? Sounds like economics 101 to me.
A few thousand to tell your kid, “here, read a book”. Nice work if you can get it.
I’m wondering if this “opt-in” homeschooling really means virtual school? I think traditional homeschoolers know that with govt. $ comes mandated curricula and tests. The parents in private and religious schools should consider that before they go begging and then find their elite schools suddenly have to follow CCSS and take the tests.
No need to wonder what the ESA’s are or where they came from.
Neveda does not need elected officials who might have to know anything about anything. All the legislators have to do i check the “model” legislation offered by the corporate-friendly ALEC, then fill in the name of the state and state sponsors of it. This is how you can do away with public education See more at:
Education Savings Account Act – ALEC – American Legislative …
http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/education-savings-account-act-2/
Jan 9, 2014 … The Education Savings Account Act allows parents to use the funds that would have been allocated to their child at their resident school district …
Ultimately it is the easily fooled voters that elect politicians that pass legislation against their voter’s interests.
Great title! Stupid in Nevada is right.
I just wrote a long post, and it disappeared. (Is there a limit?)
I must make it shorter this time:
– It is the Las Vegas Sun, not the Sun Times. All you have to do is click on the link to see the name of the publication. And there is also a non-related correction in the article. This does not speak well for the veracity of Education Week.
– Something needs to be done about chronic disruption by students, and do not blame teachers. Being a teacher who actually has experience in this, as do my good colleagues, I can understand why parents want to escape their children. Our hands are tied. We lose instruction time to these students day after day. And stop blaming us; this is a systemic problem. Every teacher I know in a low-income school is concerned about these issues.
Instead of dealing with them realistically and with common sense, administrators, the public, and those who don’t actually live it dump the issue on us. People would be shocked to see what kids get away with. Some know; that’s why they want their kids out. I don’t blame them.
Just a teacher,
I never received your previous comment
This issue is why a charter system exsists at all. Has anyone researched this? I sense that it became the issue when court ruled education was a right not a priviledge. Although I understand the historical implications for the ruling, it is the unintended consequences that rule the day.
Vouchers are religious schools trying to get the tax money for the service they perform. Also, they lost consumers when charters opened. Now any private school wants the tax money.
I wouldn’t want to be too dependent on the money if politicians start talking very low taxes instead of choice. Funding any school might become impossible, let alone an independent charter!
Students in the ESA program won’t have to follow CC standards–or any standards–but they will need to take some kind of state-approved test at the end of the year. But, unlike the kids in public school, it’s only one test and they get to choose it.
Of course, there seems to be no real plan about what to do if the kid fails the test–it’s not like they have to go back to public school or change approaches or anything. They have a plan if, say, a online school or private school has a bunch of fails–just pull them from the list of approved vendors. But if a parent takes that five grand and just lets their kid watch TV all day… they seem to have no plan to do anything about that.
More info, if anyone’s interested…. http://vegasseven.com/2015/08/13/nevada-school-voucher-5000-question/
Perhaps this is yet another way to ensure that kids don’t get an education at all.