By Kathryn Hickok
It’s official: More than half of America’s K-12 students are now eligible to participate in a school choice program.
Last Saturday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, making the Lone Star State the latest to enact a universal Education Savings Account program. According to the American Federation for Children, the one-billion-dollar Texas legislation will be the largest new school choice program in history. Individual ESA accounts, which will be valued at $10,000 or more, can be used for private school tuition, tutoring, transportation, special needs therapies, and other education-related expenses.
The program will begin serving 90,000 children and expand as needed. If initial demand exceeds available spaces, priority will be given to low-to-middle-income students and students with disabilities.
This year, Tennessee, Idaho, Wyoming, and now Texas have given parents greater access to the learning environments that will best help their children through educational choice. With school choice laws on the books in more than two-thirds of U.S. states, fifty-five percent of American children now have a chance to get the educational opportunities they deserve. Let’s bring school choice to Oregon soon.
Kathryn Hickok is Executive Vice President at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization, and Director of Cascade’s Children’s Scholarship Fund-Oregon program.
Did you like this article? Contribute to Oregon’s premier public policy research organization online at CascadePolicy.org. Donations to Cascade Policy Institute are tax-deductible to the extent of the law.
The post School choice is bigger in Texas first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Cascade Policy Institute
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://oregoncatalyst.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
