Is Florida Planning on Universal ESAs in the Time of Covid?

Recent podcasts by voucher aficionados suggest that they, once again, believe this will be the year for Florida to expand Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Universal ESAs has been the primary goal of so-called “ed-reformers” (really privatizers) like Richard Corcoran and Jeb Bush for years. In April, Senate Education Chair, Manny Diaz Jr., enthusiastically discussed how the Covid pandemic could be used to “accelerate” Florida down the path to ESAs. This week, Step Up for Students’ CEO Doug Tuthill and SUFS Founder, John Kirtley, suggested that the hiring of home tutors and creation of learning pods by more affluent families in response to the Covid pandemic suggests that parents want to be able to customize their child’s education – something all families could do if we just had Universal ESA Vouchers.

For the record, the hiring of private tutors and the creation of learning pods by more affluent families could also reflect legitimate concerns regarding the safety of attending chronically underfunded, brick and mortar schools during a pandemic. There is no reason to believe that families, whose children have been sequestered into covid-safe bubbles, won’t want them to go back and experience all that brick and mortar schools have to offer when the pandemic is over. In fact, there are parents (and students) across the county counting the days until things can “go back to normal” and they can return to “normal” school.

Public schools remain the predominant choice for Florida families (serving 2.7 millions students) but, in Florida, what the general public  wants has little to do with what ed-reformers in the legislature have planned for us. Will this be the year for Universal ESAs in Florida?

We have written several time before about ESAs (read here and here). In the past, we have described them “as a fiscally irresponsible tsunami headed to destroy our local public schools.” If you are not familiar with ESAs, now is a good time to learn about them.

What is an ESA?

Rather than a simple voucher system that allows students to use state money to attend private schools, ESAs allow parents to use state funding for a “customized” education for their children, paying for a wide array of educational services: tutoring, exam fees, online programs, in addition to tuition.  Imagine receiving a debit card loaded with your child’s annual allotment of education funding. You choose how to spend it: math tutor? art class? tennis lessons? school supplies? Unused ESA funds can even be saved to pay for college. ESAs will expand the publicly funded education realm, creating (in theory) a marketplace of education products for parents to choose from and allow public funding of those choices with little to no true accountability. ESAs will usher in what education reformers refer to as the “post-facility” education system, where children learn from an electronic device, instead of in brick and mortar classrooms.

These ESAs should not be confused with the Cloverdell Education Saving Account or the “Education IRA” which was introduced in 2002 as a means of saving for college and other education expenses. Cloverdell ESA allow a tax free investment vehicle for personal investments for education while this new reference to ESAs involves using public education tax dollars to fund an array of (mostly private) education options or “customizations.”

Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship is an ESA

Florida already has an ESA program specifically for children with disabilities, called the Gardiner Scholarship. This blog is not questioning that current program, which may be an appropriate way to provide special services to children in need, but we do have fiscal and accountability concerns regarding the perpetually rumored plans to expand the current ESA to an Universal program for all students.

Who supports ESAs?

ESAs are supported by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), Betsy DeVos and her American Federation for Children, John Kirtley and his Step Up for Students and Florida Federation for Children, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), to name a few. They are the end goal of the privatizers – give families the money and let them forage for their child’s education.

Accountability and ESAs

ESA advocates love them because, in a free marketplace of education options, ESA recipients will “vote with their feet” and simply not purchase products, hire tutors or attend schools that are not serving their children’s needs. No state created assessments or accountability metrics required.

Assuring the accountable use of ESA funds has been shown to be problematic in the past. (Read about it here.) If an ESA recipient misuses funds, they (really their parents) can be held responsible by removal from the program, reclaiming the money or  conviction of fraud. But, beyond “parents choose” there is little to verify the academic quality of the programs themselves and little to hold the creators of such programs accountable for academic outcomes. ESAs, essentially, allow lawmakers to shirk their paramount duty of providing for “a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education” by placing the burden of choice on time and cash strapped families.

The lack of academic accountability standards associated with ESAs, similar to Florida’s means tested vouchers, stands in stark contrast to the onerous accountability measures placed on Florida’s public schools. As we wrote before:

When states create programs that give public education funds to private individuals, allowing them to spend as they please, with few regulations, and, at the same time, expect students and certified teachers in traditional public schools to submit to an onerous, test and punish accountability system, that is accountabaloney: It is not fair, it is not fiscally responsible and, by allowing parents free range to spend tax generated education dollars, it eliminates local control and fails to hold private, public and home schoolers to the same accountability standards, placing the bulk of the accountability burden on those who chose public schools.

Like much of their current privatization agenda, ESAs are designed to further disrupt and defund our public schools. Public education advocates must remain vigilant or, better yet, vote out the privatizers and vote in candidates in support of public education.