This is National School Choice Week. Families across the country are advocating for more educational freedom. It would be wonderful if all Kindergarten through 12th grade students had broad public and private school choices now, but political reality won’t let that happen any time soon. So, what is possible now, especially in Oregon?
In the upcoming February legislative session, Oregonians can give some of our most vulnerable kids real choices with passage of Senate Bill 1576, the Education Equity Emergency Act (E3). Modeled after a successful Arizona program, it will create Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to help kids with special needs, or in low-income families.
Scholarship recipients can use ninety percent of their state education funding for approved expenses like private schools, tutoring, education therapy, textbooks, online education programs, and community colleges. Unused funds can be rolled over and eventually help students with college costs. And no district must let more than one half of one percent of its students participate.
Whether or not you have children who may qualify for this program, please urge your state legislators to support it. There’s no additional cost to taxpayers. So, even if we can’t get full school choice for all children now, we can get it for some of the most vulnerable ones, including special needs, foster, and low-income kids. It’s the right thing to do.
Steve Buckstein is founder and Senior Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
