Tennessee families experienced a bottleneck earlier this year as they waited to submit applications for the state’s new program. In July, 166 parents that they had received a scholarship, only to alert them a few days later that the notification was a mistake. 

“It wasn’t the most ideal user experience,” said Heide Nesset, a senior fellow for the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a right-leaning think tank. But there was a “tight runway,” about three months, to get the program off the ground. 

With state leaders hoping to serve up to 70,000 students next year, they’re now . Proposals are due Friday.

But the rough start in Tennessee wasn’t an anomaly. All states with education savings accounts have struggled to some extent with ensuring smooth transactions for families, whether that’s paying a school on time or ordering a homeschool curriculum. Some say the solution lies in picking more than one company to handle the increasing demand and improve customer service.

“If it’s one contract, I think the vendor is inherently trying to ensure that the state department has a really fantastic experience,” said Nesset, who is also the vice president of

implementation at the Yes. Every Kid. Foundation, a school choice advocacy organization. “If you have more than one [vendor], then they start competing, and families have the opportunity to make choices.”

Tennessee’s current vendor is Student First Technologies, which won to run a smaller ESA program in three counties. Earlier this year, the state with the Indiana-based company to manage the new statewide program, despite its problems in other states. 

In West Virginia, where Student First still operates the Hope Scholarship program, an ESA, homeschool families complain that they can’t access the platform on their phones and that approvals and denials for purchases are inconsistent. Arkansas canceled its contract with Student First last fall after it failed to deliver a “fully operational” system on time. The company paid the state . 

‘Get what they need’

Eighteen states now have at least one ESA program. With a new federal tax credit scholarship system beginning in 2027, the demand for organizations to manage them will surely grow. The trick is delivering a system that runs smoothly for families while ensuring that they’re using the money the way the state intended. 

In a , Michael Horn, cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, a think tank, talked with Jamie Rosenberg, the founder of ClassWallet. Still the biggest player in the market, the Florida-based company manages nine ESA programs. 

Prior to platforms like his, states had two options, he explained. They either issued debit cards, which made it hard to ensure parents spent the money on allowable purchases, or expected them to pay up front and request reimbursement — a significant obstacle for families on a tight budget.

ESA vendors, he said, give families the “agency to get what they need but also the ease of knowing that what they’re doing and what they’re buying [complies with] program rules.”

Adding more than one vendor to the mix could make the companies work harder to reach lower-income and minority families who are less likely to use the programs, said Lisa Snell, a senior fellow at Stand Together Trust, which funds school choice initiatives.

“Family outreach and satisfaction become the goal rather than the government as the customer to one vendor,” she said.

Texas had the option to choose multiple vendors for its new ESA program, which launches next fall. allows the comptroller’s office to contract with up to five companies. But officials opted against it and awarded a two-year, $26 million contract to New York-based Odyssey, which currently runs programs in four other states. 

Joe Connor, Odyssey’s CEO declined to comment on the state’s decision and referred ����Ӱ�� to the state comptroller’s office. The office did not respond, but Amar Kumar, CEO of KaiPod Learning, a large national network of microschools, said the state likely felt multiple vendors would further complicate the process.

“There was this huge question of the complexity of doing that,” he said. “How do you tell families which portal to go to or how will they decide who manages which part of the program?”

‘Send a quarterly check’

The vendor platforms include built-in tools to prevent misuse. Student First Technologies has an AI feature, , that reviews each expense, “assigns a confidence score” and flags anything that’s new or that the state hasn’t approved in the past. 

But Katie Switzer, a West Virginia parent using the state’s Hope Scholarship to homeschool her children, said it’s unreliable, sometimes approving purchases for some families and rejecting the same items for others. She thinks states should focus more on monitoring students’ academic progress than tracking every purchase. 

“It’s stupid in my opinion to micromanage down to like the $20 workbook level,” she said. “Honestly, I think it would be more cost effective to send a quarterly check to families.”

That’s unlikely with such programs constantly under the microscope, and critics, especially in Arizona, pointing to high-end purchases, like , as examples of misuse. The state education department says it takes steps to prevent fraud and has to the attorney general’s office that have . 

West Virginia officials said they’re pleased with Student First’s progress since October, when that delayed orders caused students to fall behind on lessons. Orders are now “generally” processed within two business days, said Assistant Treasurer Carrie Hodousek, and the company has added and trained staff to prepare for peak order times.

Providers like Kaipod have their own concerns. School founders in the network have sometimes gone to the brink of eviction from their leased space because of late tuition payments, said CEO Kumar. 

“There should be a predictable schedule, but sometimes it can take weeks extra to get paid,” he said. “If you’re running a small business and you owe rent, you owe payroll and your state payment is delayed, that creates a huge amount of stress for founders.”

For now, rebidding contracts for vendors is the strongest form of accountability, he said.

“They ought to not feel safe once they’ve won a contract,” he said.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��. 

Now, a new analysis, exclusive to ����Ӱ��, sheds light on why he’s had so much trouble. While it’s common knowledge that in the state House have been standing in his way, homeschool parents opposed to education savings accounts have also been part of the resistance. 

Leslie Finger, a political science professor at the University of North Texas, analyzed roll call votes on 13 private school choice bills that reached the floor of either the state House or the Senate between 2013 and 2023. She found that lawmakers were more likely to vote against private school choice not only if they represented a rural area, but also if they had more homeschoolers in their districts.

“We specifically opted out of this system,” Faith Howe, president of Texans for Homeschool Freedom, said about public schools. While proponents of the voucher plan say it will be optional for families, that doesn’t satisfy Howe. “I don’t think they’re going to have a problem coming back and saying ‘Well we need more regulations on these homeschoolers.’”

Texas voters ousted the Republican holdouts in last year’s primary election after Abbott campaigned against them. He is counting on their replacements to deliver a victory this session. But even if that happens, Finger’s results point to a segment of parents who have been getting louder in recent years as ESAs, which parents can spend on tuition or homeschooling costs, have spread across red states. Many traditional homeschoolers fought for the right to educate their children at home and fear that ESA laws could erode some of those protections — even if they don’t take the funds. 

While voucher advocates dismiss many of the homeschoolers’ concerns, Finger said her findings should serve as a warning.

“The presence of big homeschooling communities could make selling private school choice challenging,” Finger said.

‘Government control’

That was certainly the case in Colorado, one of three states last November where voters defeated school choice ballot measures. 

“Government money comes with government control,” said Carolyn Martin, who monitors state legislation for Christian Home Educators of Colorado. Her group viewed the measure as a potential infringement on parents’ rights to educate their children as they see fit.  

Two issues raised red flags for them. The measure said all children should be able to “access a quality education,” which they interpreted as an opportunity for the government to define quality for homeschoolers. It also gave students, as well as parents, the right to school choice. That could spell trouble if kids and parents aren’t on the same page when it comes to education, Martin said.

“At some point the state would probably have to step in and arbitrate between the parent and the child,” she said. “That is not our worldview.”

Other homeschoolers say ESAs contradict conservative values, such as smaller government and less regulation. Gary Humble, executive director of Tennessee Stands, a Christian organization, called the state’s recently passed voucher bill “wealth redistribution.”

“This is another Tennessee entitlement program,” he said. “It’s expensive. It’s irresponsible.” 

The state is expected to spend $1 billion on the program over the next five years. While opponents weren’t able to stop the Republicans from passing the law, Humble tells homeschoolers that if they participate, they could be giving up the freedom to educate their children the way they choose.

“All they hear from special interest groups is that they get seven grand and there are no strings attached,” he said. “They’re not policy wonks, so they don’t understand the trap doors that are laid out ahead of them.”  

ESA programs often require homeschooling families to reapply for funding every year, to take annual standardized tests and to only buy approved items from specific vendors. Homeschooling families who don’t participate want to ensure such restrictions don’t eventually extend to them. 

But those worries fall under what Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement for the Texas Homeschool Coalition, calls “free-floating anxiety.” 

“They’re concerned somebody is going to do something, sometime, but they’re not sure who or when or what,” he said. 

His organization is strongly in favor of passing a voucher bill in Texas, saying that tax-paying homeschoolers should have just as much access to state education funds as parents who send their kids to public school.

He points to on “regulatory creep” from Angela Watson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and an expert on . She found that publicly funded school choice programs, like ESAs, don’t contribute to more government overreach. 

Not ‘a monolith’

But the fact that some homeschoolers are so opposed to them proves a point, Watson said. 

“The mistake that everyone makes when they talk about homeschooling is that they continue to think of it as a monolith,” she said. “Homeschooling is just so varied.”

Nationally, of the nation’s students are homeschooled, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Traditional homeschoolers often chose that path for ideological or religious reasons. 

But many new converts, who left public schools during the pandemic, show support for what former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls “” — allowing parents to spend education dollars on any type of schooling they choose. It’s a policy that polled high in a from the National Parents Union, with 71% of parents favoring such a system. 

The split among homeschoolers over ESAs, Watson said, has created some “interesting bedfellows” — conservative parents aligning with liberal teachers unions to oppose school choice ballot measures. That’s what happened, not only in Colorado, but also in , where two-thirds of voters rejected such a proposition last year.  

Howe in Texas has heard the criticism. “We’re being accused of being leftist, Marxist and supporting the teachers unions,” she said. 

Newman, with the Texas coalition, said his group is watching out for homeschoolers’ interests. Leaders maintain a “strong presence” at the state capitol in Austin to ensure legislation doesn’t interfere with homeschoolers’ freedom to choose their own curriculum and teaching methods, he said. 

Homeschooled himself as a child, Newman sympathizes with those who recall when it was to educate children at home and not unusual for child protective services to a family when a neighbor reported children not being in school.

But Howe notes that it was a state regulation in Texas — not legislation — that treated homeschooled students as truant. After a lengthy legal fight, the state that parents who homeschool are essentially small private schools.

In Idaho, it’s the state tax commission that will be writing some of the rules for a new that Gov. Brad Little signed into law last month, despite from the public. The state also has an existing grant program targeted toward lower-income families.

Audra Talley, a board member of Homeschool Idaho, said Republican lawmakers have assured her that as long as they control the legislature and the governor’s office, homeschoolers don’t have to worry about rules encroaching on their parental rights. But that’s what she finds disturbing.

“It’s an admission that the potential exists,” she said. “Now we are relying on a certain party or a certain group of individuals to keep those regulations from coming at some future date.”

‘Don’t want to go back’

She’s not exaggerating that some Democrats would prefer to increase monitoring of families who homeschool.

A , for example, would require families to notify their local school district if they intend to homeschool. Families would have to submit teaching materials and their children’s work if authorities are concerned about their education. Hundreds of at the state capitol against the bill earlier this month.

Under another , Michigan homeschoolers would have to register with the state. Superintendent Michael Rice argues that officials should have a count of students in all types of schooling — public, private, parochial and home. and neglect involving homeschool families led to his proposal for more oversight. 

Homeschoolers opposed to ESAs often point to West Virginia — a Republican-led state — as an example of how lawmakers sometimes forget that not everyone wants the government’s money.

The state passed its Hope Scholarship ESA program in 2021, which requires homeschooled students receiving the scholarship to take annual or have their work reviewed each year by a certified teacher.  The law specifically exempted homeschoolers not in the program from the requirements, but a 2023 bill would have erased what advocates call a “carve out” if they hadn’t stepped in. 

ESA proponents use the same example to say the homeschoolers’ fears were overblown and no harm was done. Colleen Hroncich, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, thinks the division among homeschoolers over school choice will fade over time.

“As we get further past the generation of homeschoolers that fought for the right to homeschool, it seems like most homeschoolers support funding programs,” she said. “Hopefully the bigger numbers also help push back on additional regulations down the road.”

WASHINGTON — During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he was reluctant to speak boldly about school choice.

That’s according to Kellyanne Conway, an aide to the president back then, and one of his former campaign managers. “He would say ‘Aren’t we the ones who say it [education] is local? Why would the president of the United States bigfoot all that?’”

Expect that reticence to be a thing of the past, Conway told the audience  devoted to promoting the benefits of school choice — from  in the style of programs in West Virginia and Arizona to charter schools and . On the campaign trail, Trump already has been vocal about his embrace of parental choice. “We want federal education dollars to follow the student, rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,”  at a rally in Wisconsin last month.

(To be sure, Trump did  near the end of his first term offering states the opportunity to use federal money to create school choice programs. When I looked into it a few years ago, I couldn’t find any state that had taken him up on the offer.)

Conway urged participants at the post-Election Day gathering to speak a certain way in their advocacy to lawmakers going forward. “Lead with solutions not problems. The problems can be the second part of the sentence, or maybe the second paragraph.” The panelists — including the founder of a group of charter schools for students with autism in Arizona, the leader of a private school for boys in Alabama and the head of a foundation that supports microschools — were all winners of , fueled by  and run by the Center for Education Reform.

She also urged the crowd not to make school choice about teachers unions, “which is fun to do, especially this week but it doesn’t educate another child.” (The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, generally has opposed private school vouchers and has been celebrating the . “The decisive defeat of vouchers on the ballot across multiple states speaks loudly and clearly: The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.) 

Lawmakers who need convincing aren’t holding out just because of union pressure, Conway said. In Texas, for instance, rural lawmakers worried about the effect of vouchers on their schools  or torpedoed plans in that state that would allow parents to use public money for private school tuition. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott helped elect enough new members in place of those rural holdouts, however, that .

The school choice event at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C. was notable for the range of people it featured, including parents and pastors, people who are white, Black and Latino, and several Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Pennsylvania. Some of the speakers told stories about opening their own charter schools and private schools. They urged the president-elect to take action on choice, including allowing  for children in low-income families to follow those kids to private schools or other settings outside public schools.

In Congress, with Republicans taking hold of the Senate and expected to retain control of the House, lawmakers already have proposed legislation that has, until now, mostly been a nonstarter. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is likely to become chair of the committee that oversees education in his chamber, introduced  this session that would give families and corporations tax credits if they contribute to groups that give scholarships to students to attend private or parochial schools. It would target students whose families earn no more than 300 percent of the area median gross income. Cassidy’s wife, Laura, runs a charter school for children with dyslexia in Baton Rouge.

“I think that there’s going to be a real opportunity to promote innovation in school choice,” Cassidy said. “There is great promise in this administration, and I am looking forward to working with them.”

This story about  was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for .

As the Wyoming Department of Education prepares to roll out a new , school-choice advocates are again asking lawmakers to expand the non-public-school assistance program to more families. 

That comes among warnings that expansion could jeopardize its already challenged constitutionality.

It’s the latest twist for a measure that was transformed, killed, revived, amended scores of times, passed by the Legislature, then partially vetoed by Gov. Mark Gordon in March before finally becoming law. The tug-of-war reflected the different outcomes advocates hoped the bill would achieve: early childhood education for some, universal access to non-public-school choice for others.

As it stands, the law creates a program to give income-qualified families state funds to offset private, pre-K tuition and homeschool education costs. Families who earn up to 150% of the federal poverty level — $48,800 for a family of four — can qualify for up to $6,000 to pay for school expenses for a child aged 4 up to 12th grade. Allowed uses include school supplies, tuition or tutors.

Gordon narrowed the income eligibility standards by removing families on the wealthier end of the spectrum when he vetoed parts of the bill before allowing it to pass into law. Gordon’s changes were , he noted, pointing explicitly to the Wyoming Constitution’s prohibition on the state giving money to individuals “except for the necessary support of the poor.” 

His vetoed version might not mark the end of the saga; school-choice advocates voiced interest during a Wednesday Joint Education Committee meeting in tweaking the bill again to broaden eligibility. 

“Should we tweak this legislation in the next session?” Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) asked. “Because we clearly had a different idea of what we were trying to do with this bill then maybe the governor’s veto reflects.”

A rocky path 

The education savings account law has roots in a pair of bills introduced during the 2023 legislature session. They would have given families $6,000 per K-12 student for tuition at any non-governmental school or related educational expenses. Those measures failed, but a new proposal that would also extend the money to early childhood education costs emerged between the 2023 and 2024 sessions. Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale), who helped block one of those 2023 bills, touted the legislation as a compromise for those clamoring for more early childhood funding and those who want to support parental choice for options like private school or homeschooling.

Questions of constitutionality have swirled around the measure since those interim discussions. Along with the “support of the poor” concern, critics have pushed back on the legitimacy of effectively transferring state funds to religious schools.

The measure traveled a rocky path through the session before arriving at Gordon’s desk. After passing the House relatively unscathed, Senate lawmakers stripped it of income qualifications and pre-K eligibility. The House declined to accept that version, sending the legislation into a negotiation process that resulted in the final iteration.  

The version that landed on Gordon’s desk had a tiered income-qualification system based on the percentage of the federal income poverty level — $6,000 for families earning 150% or below; $4,800 for families earning 150%-200%; $3,600 for families earning 200%-250%; all the way down to $400 for families earning 450%-500%. For a family of four, 500% of the federal poverty level is an annual income of $156,000. 

Gordon eliminated eligibility for all but families at or below 150%. “While the intent to support education and parent choice is commendable, my analysis revealed practical and constitutional complications within the bill’s provisions,” the governor wrote in a letter explaining his vetoes.

Building the program

Wyoming allocated $20 million to seed the account, along with nearly $1 million for contracting and administration costs. Two positions will be created to help administer the ESA program. In anticipation of the Jan. 1 program launch, the education department has established an  to prepare the public for the application process. 

“We know we’ve got to get a lot done prior to [Jan. 1],” Wyoming Department of Education Chief of Staff Dicky Shanor told the committee. A big task is staffing the positions: an educational expert to oversee the academic requirements of the program and a financial expert to manage the financial requirements. The department will also put out a request for proposals for a vendor to partner on setting up some kind of online marketplace, he said. 

In addition, the department also needs to draft and finalize rules for administering the program, which will entail public comment, according to the education department. Those rules will dictate what kind of expenses are allowed, among other things. 

Rep. Ken Clouston (R-Gillette), who co-sponsored the education savings account bill that became law, asked Shanor about state programs that give money to people who earn up to 250% of the federal poverty level. Steinmetz followed with her question about tweaking the act and if that would affect the Jan. 1 rollout. 

Shanor didn’t know exactly how it would affect the timelines, “But I can say that Superintendent [of Public Instruction Megan] Degenfelder has supported the concept of this being as universally available as possible.”

Court test?

“One of the purposes of this bill is to have the opportunity for a court test and contest over what we really can do … in the K-12 system for private and other non-public schools,” Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) said to Tania Hytrek of the Legislative Service Office Wednesday. “Even with the veto, this bill provides the opportunity for that kind of a court test … does it not?”

Hytrek confirmed that. “To my knowledge a challenge to the bill has not been filed. But certainly the issues that were pointed out last year a number of times through LSO memos still exist even with the governor’s veto.”

Scott wondered if the program would have to get up and running before a court challenge would come. Hytrek said a court challenge could come either way, but noted that “it would take someone, an interested party, filing a challenge to the legislation which has not happened to date.”

The one individual to give public comment, former representative and current state director of Americans for Prosperity Tyler Lindholm, said his organization supports an effort to restore broader eligibility.

“I hope that you’ll move forward with legislation this year” and rework the process, Lindholm said. “I think the message that was sent by the Legislature with the passage of this legislation is that school choice and parents’ decisions matter. And I think the message sent from the governor’s office was somewhere along the lines of ‘you’re not necessarily poor enough.’ And that’s a rough message.”

The West Virginia mom paid the operator a $2,200 advance from her — an education savings account that gives families state funds for tuition or homeschooling expenses.

But events at The Hive Learning Academy quickly unraveled. Instead of structured meal times, children just grabbed lunch from the refrigerator when they got hungry. Her son “would come home starving because he was too shy to just go into someone else’s fridge,” Romanishan said. 

Kathy Dailey, who enrolled her 13-year-old son there, had a similar experience. When she visited the school in the eastern panhandle town of Martinsburg, students were just “hanging out,” buried in their phones. 

An exasperated Romanishan said she “soon realized that The Hive was actually just a glorified babysitter.”

By Christmas, they’d joined several parents demanding their money back and scrambling to find other arrangements — inquiries that prompted Republican state Treasurer Riley Moore to include the school in an “ongoing audit and investigation,” an official said. 

The probe is believed to be the first government investigation anywhere into a self-identified microschool, providing an awkward milestone for a movement that mushroomed during the pandemic and now includes 125,000 schools nationwide, according to the .

Hailed by Republicans, and fueled by the spread of ESAs, microschools operate out of homes, storefronts and churches with a degree of freedom from government oversight. But the West Virginia episode shows that managing that freedom while maintaining public accountability can be a tricky balancing act, even for the movement’s fiercest advocates.

“We’re in a transitional market,” said Jamie Buckland, who runs , a nonprofit that advises both parents and vendors in the sector. She thinks states with ESAs should do a better job preparing school founders and helping families navigate their options. 

“If we don’t want the government to provide the guardrails and the parameters,” she asked, “what is our movement doing to provide our own guardrails?”

Acknowledging they’d received “allegations of specific Hope Scholarship violations,” the treasurer’s office, which runs the ESA program, would not comment on the scope of the investigation or when it would be completed. In a November email shared with ����Ӱ��, an assistant treasurer told Romanishan the office was considering the “potential involvement of law enforcement if appropriate,” but has yet to bring charges.

In an interview with ����Ӱ��, Hive founder Kaela Zimmerman explained that she lacked the cash flow to make the venture work and struggled to get answers from the state when the program collapsed. She said she has since repaid the state over $15,000 in Hope funds.

Romanishan called the experience “not only painful, but disruptive.” 

“It makes it hard to trust anyone else, which is sad because the area needs a good microschool,” she said.

‘We tried our best’

Zimmerman thought so, too. The homeschooling mother opened The Hive with co-founder Kristin Volpe to give her own three children more opportunities to make friends. She rented the space, hung maps on the walls and culled curriculum materials from her favorite homeschooling programs. 

When 30 families registered last summer, she had high expectations. To help get started, she asked parents in August to pay the bulk of their tuition up front  — roughly $2,000 to $4,000 per student. But she had to dip into her own money to pay for furniture and supplies, and when fall came, only eight students showed up. 

She said she and Volpe never intended to “avoid our responsibilities.” With far less revenue than expected, they didn’t have enough to cover costs and pay themselves. To save money, Zimmerman moved out of the home she was renting and into the second floor of the microschool location. She and Volpe took jobs at a Macy’s warehouse to pay bills and Zimmerman began bartending a few nights a week.

But juggling multiple jobs made for a “hit or miss schedule” for students, Dailey said. 

“It was a fun environment,” she added. “But there wasn’t any homework or a set curriculum.” 

The state doesn’t ask potential vendors to submit a business or education plan up front. Anyone who wants to be an authorized Hope “service provider,” including a microschool, must sign a contract agreeing to get criminal background checks on staff working with students and to notify districts when they enroll. To receive funds, vendors need only submit a W-9, a tax form for an independent contractor, and document the Hope funds they receive from parents. 

Their downfall, Zimmerman said, was a lack of startup cash. She applied for a grant from the , a foundation-funded initiative that has helped launch and expand microschools and other alternative education programs. But they turned her down, saying that they had received more applications than they could fund. 

When she realized she couldn’t keep the program going, Zimmerman said she asked state officials how to return the ESA funds, but didn’t receive a lot of guidance. That’s why a November certified letter threatening criminal charges caught her off guard. She said she has since returned over $15,000, covering all of the scholarship funds she received minus payment for days students attended.

“It was very stressful and upsetting for us,” she said. “We are just two working class mothers with a great idea, but no means to make it happen. We tried our best.” 

But it takes more than good intentions to run a quality program, said Rachelle Noble, founder of Microschool Solutions, an Arizona-based consulting firm that advises aspiring school leaders. 

Formerly with Prenda, a microschool network, Noble was in charge of the model’s growth. Two years ago, she made what she describes as a tough decision to close two programs that operated with a Kansas school district’s virtual program. Both schools served families in low-income neighborhoods near Wichita.

“We did it way too late,” she said. The environment wasn’t dangerous, she said, but “it got to the point where it was clear that it was educational neglect.” The schools, she said, lacked an “emphasis on academics.” 

The reality is that many new microschools don’t last beyond the first year, said Amar Kumar, CEO of KaiPod Learning, another microschool network. Before he accepts prospective founders into the organization’s “catalyst” program, he ensures they have a solid financial plan. 

“It’s the same as with any small business or startup — the chances of failure are very high,” he said. “Even with the best of intentions, if your microschool can’t make ends meet, then you’ll end up disappointing families, and no one wants that.”

The involvement of public money in the form of ESAs raises the stakes. While most microschools don’t take ESA funds, Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center, said his group’s upcoming report will show that 32% of microschools now accept , up from 18% . 

After The Hive ordeal, Zimmerman said she still loves the concept of microschools. But she doubts she’ll try to open another one.

“They require more resources and business knowledge than most regular working class people [and] parents have,” she said.

Doing ‘due diligence’

That’s why don’t think public funds should support them. 

Chris Stewart, CEO of Brightbeam, an education advocacy network, once considered himself an ESA “evangelist,” and hoped they’d provide better educational options for marginalized children. But now he thinks the laws lack accountability and create potential for and “a huckster market of vultures who see ESAs as a business opportunity.”

Last year, for example, a grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, accused of fraud and theft of over $87,000 in connection with that state’s ESA program. 

While it’s unclear if any of their businesses operated as microschools, the women allegedly created educational receipts and claimed reimbursements for “bogus services,” according to a prosecution report. Investigators’ examination of one woman’s account showed she used ESA funds for “day-to-day living at retail stores and restaurants” and spent money at Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.

For many in the movement, the attitude toward bad actors is, “Let the buyer beware.” They say it’s up to parents to do their homework before choosing a school.

“Some parents do an inordinate amount of due diligence,” said Noble, with Microschool Solutions. But others, she said, “sign kids up and haven’t even seen the space.” 

Advocates believe the market will eventually fraud and low-quality options.

But that’s no consolation for parents like Romanishan, who eventually received a $1,340 refund for the days her son didn’t attend. While waiting for scholarship refunds to appear in her account, she subscribed to an and enrolled her son in a cooking class. In the meantime, she said, he lost his friends and had to adjust to a new routine. 

“I feel like I failed my son,” Romanishan said. “I should have seen the red flags.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to and ����Ӱ��.

With amounts ranging from $3,200 to $7,500 per child, depending on family income, the program is expected to be the second largest in the nation, after Florida’s. The budget that included the plan passed 26 to 17 in the Senate and 70 to 40 in the House, with five Democrats crossing the aisle. 

The bill’s passage was the culmination of years of work for Marcus Brandon, a former Democratic state representative who considered himself a progressive and once thought vouchers were “evil.”

“My constituents are the ones that led me here. They’re the ones that talked about the lack of educational opportunities,” said Brandon, who represented the Greensboro area until  2015. He’s now executive director of NorthCarolinaCAN, part of the 50CAN network, which advocates for school choice nationwide. 

With the vote, North Carolina becomes the ninth state with a universal school choice program in a year of unprecedented expansion. Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Utah and West Virginia now have ESA programs open to all. Oklahoma has a universal tax credit program. Ohio has a universal voucher program and in Indiana, the family income ceiling for a voucher is set so high that it’s . Opponents argue that universal ESAs hurt funding for public schools and largely go to families whose children never attended the public system rather than those seeking to escape failing schools. 

“If this funding was instead allocated to our public schools, the budget could more than double teacher raises” for the next two years, said Mary Ann Wolf, president and executive director of Public School Forum, an advocacy group that . “Half of our teachers do not make a livable wage.”

But advocates say the programs are giving families the freedom they need to personalize learning for their children.

“We’ve seen incredible wins for students over the past two years, and we expect to see school choice continue to grow and benefit families across the country in the coming years,” Patricia Levesque, CEO of ExcelinEd, a school reform organization, said in an email.

North Carolina has had that provides between $9,000 and $17,000 annually for students with disabilities since the 2018-19 school year. A separate voucher program supports low-income students attending private schools. Both programs have seen over the past year as the state expanded eligibility. Those programs will now be combined under the new universal ESA, which will go into effect in the 2024-25 school year. 

“The real breakthrough with this new legislation is the universality,” said Marc Porter Magee, founder and CEO of 50CAN. “We know that parents are hungry for an education system that recognizes the uniqueness of their children and ultimately, ESAs enable families to craft the education that’s right for them.” 

Brandon expects roughly 80% of the 126,000 students in the state’s private schools to take advantage of the ESA. For comparison, almost 67,000 students are using Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account, including homeschooling families. While homeschoolers won’t be eligible in North Carolina, it would be relatively easy, Brandon said, for families in pods or microschools to qualify for an ESA. He thinks current homeschooling families would choose that route. 

“All it takes is a fire and health inspection,” he said.  

He thinks 70% of students in public schools and 30% using choice programs is a “healthy split.”

Similar to opponents of vouchers in other states, Wolf is concerned that the plan will especially hurt schools in rural areas.

“Eighty of our 100 counties are rural,” she said. “Our schools are the hub of so many of our communities.”

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, who declared over the voucher issue and with the Republican-dominated legislature over education issues, announced that the budget would become law without his signature. it a “bad budget that seriously shortchanges our schools.” But it also includes a he wants.

Opponents want greater guardrails on how families spend the money and say students using ESAs should be required to take the same assessments as students in public schools. 

The bill would require the state superintendent to recommend a standardized test for students on vouchers in private schools. But Wolf said her concerns go beyond academic performance.

“Should our public dollars be going to private schools that can discriminate, that don’t have to be accredited, that are held only to minimal transparency?” she asked. 

Brandon said he leans toward as few restrictions as possible.

“I do not ever want to compromise the flexibility and the uniqueness of what private means,” he said. “ can spend $40,000 for his kid and understand that that is a quality education. All parents are just like him. They are able to recognize a school that’s working or is not working for their child.”

Idaho’s Senate Education Committee introduced a bill modeled after Arizona’s universal education savings account program on Tuesday, with a stated price tag of $20 million in state funds, according to from legislators.

Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, is a member of the education committee and the bill’s sponsor. The legislation, titled “Freedom in Education Savings Accounts,” would establish savings accounts using public funds equivalent to 80% of the most recent student funding allocation as calculated by the state.

Committee Chairman Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls, did not allow discussion on the bill before Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, motioned to print it. The bill could be granted a full hearing before the Senate committee in the coming weeks of the legislative session.

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Unlike 529 education savings accounts, which are investment accounts with tax benefits meant to be used for postsecondary education such as college or trade school, education savings accounts typically take the per-pupil spending allocated by a state’s student funding formula and distribute that money to parents for use at a private school or for homeschooling. The bill does not specify if religiously affiliated schools would be included as eligible institutions, but Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, introduced a bill Monday that would repeal Idaho’s , which prohibits the Legislature and all other public entities from using public funds to support religious organizations.

Under the current calculation, that amount for Idaho students would be $5,950.

“Idaho has limited school choice, but that is not enough,” Nichols told the committee, saying some children face discrimination in education simply because of where they live, their family’s income, disability or race. She then went on to describe other reasons families might want to find a different option.

“Declining test scores, overcrowding, students not meeting grade level benchmarks, bullying, staffing shortages, curriculum issues, indoctrinization (sic), and the list goes on, are contributing to numerous frustrations with the status quo,” Nichols said.

The funds, according to the legislation, could be used for:

• Tuition or fees at a private school or online program approved by the Idaho State Department of Education
• Required textbooks
• Educational therapies from a licensed or accredited provider, curricula and supplementary materials
• Educational and psychological evaluations, assistive technology rentals and braille translation
• Tutoring and tuition for approved vocational and life skills classes
• Fees for standardized tests or college entrance exams, textbooks required by an eligible postsecondary institution
• Fees to manage the education savings account
• Classes and extracurricular programs offered by a public school
• School uniforms and transportation
• Computer hardware and devices primarily used for educational purposes

Savings account would empower parents ‘rather than the unions,’ Middleton senator says

Nichols said 26 states have introduced education savings account bills this year, including Utah, Iowa, Washington and Wyoming. While the policy’s proponents say it is beneficial for students, families and schools, opponents have pointed to states like Wisconsin, where costs have than original estimates and caused property taxes to increase.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that drafts and disseminates model legislation geared toward conservative policies, was in establishing Arizona’s education savings account program, including providing model legislation language.

“The goal is that through an ESA, parents will be the ones we empower rather than the unions and education bureaucracies that have dominated school governance and the learning and higher standards that students need,” Nichols said. “We can no longer ignore the facts and must change business as usual.”

According to a release from the Idaho Freedom Caucus, which includes Nichols, individual accounts would be randomly audited on a quarterly and annual basis to prevent misuse of public funds. The bill would also establish a parent review commission as well to review the implementation of policies and procedures for the program, parental concerns and any work to address complaints about the program. The commission would consist of six members who are parents of students participating in the program and would be appointed by leadership of the House and Senate majority and minority leaders and two would be appointed by the governor.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com. Follow Idaho Capital Sun on and .

The tumult caused when the pandemic forced classes to go online made the idea of education savings accounts much more acceptable than before, said Michelle Exstrom, program director at the National Conference of State Legislatures. As options such as homeschooling and learning pods gained popularity, parents and legislators “opened their eyes to different choices.”

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“Some states that have been working at this for a while made some headway” in 2021, said Exstrom. “It’s definitely a priority for Republican policymakers.”

“It was a happy convergence of factors,” said Patrick Wolf, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas. “There was an opportunity to press forward in states where they’ve fallen short” of passing legislation in the past.

Of the seven states that passed school choice bills for the first time this year — Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, , Arkansas and Ohio — five created education savings accounts, in which parents receive state money or tax credits to use for private school tuition, tutoring, counseling, transportation or other educational needs.

Tax-credit scholarships are the most common form of private school choice programs, operating in 21 states. With this year’s legislation, 10 states now have ESAs, eight funded by direct government appropriation and two funded by tax credits. “ESAs are the future of private school choice,” said Wolf. “It’s the model that provides the maximum amount of customization.”

Missouri lawmakers had tried to pass legislation allowing ESAs for 15 years. Even though the state is solidly Republican, with wide majorities in both the House and Senate, proposals never advanced, held back by objections about spending public money on private schools and the potential impact on the state’s rural areas.

But 2021 was different.

“This past year was difficult for everyone, but especially families with kids in school,” state Sen. Andrew Koenig after the bill passed. “Students were forced to stay home and learn through a computer screen, and their education suffered as a result. Parents and students deserve the opportunity to find the best educational opportunities for their children, regardless of their ability to afford those educational costs.”

Still, it wasn’t easy for state Rep. Phil Christofanelli to push HB349 across the finish line. While Republicans comprise 70 percent of the state House, 29 of those members voted against the bill. Ultimately, Christofanelli and backers agreed to chop the proposed $50 million program to $25 million and to limit participation to communities with populations of 30,000 and above. This excludes students in about 30 percent of the state’s most rural areas. The program could begin accepting applications in August 2022. Up to 4,000 students may be initially eligible to receive ESA vouchers.

Missouri donors can contribute to an Empowerment Scholarship Account in exchange for a tax deduction. Those funds will count as a direct tax credit for half of the donor’s state taxes owed, meaning residents who owe $10,000 could designate half of their tax bill for education by donating $5,000 to an ESA rather than paying the full amount to the state’s general coffers. The funds then can be allocated to students’ families, depending on a number of guidelines. Children with special needs will get top priority for these grants — each likely to total about $6,300, or half of the state’s per-pupil funding — followed by students from low-income families.

ESAs typically “start small and narrowly defined, and after people see the success of the program, they almost always become politically popular and expand. I would look at this as just a start,” Christofanelli told earlier this summer. The new law calls for the $25 million cap to expand up to $50 million at the rate of inflation.

Wolf pointed out that Milwaukee’s school choice program began in 1990 with a cap of 500 students. Now, close to 30,000 students in the city use tax credit scholarship vouchers. By making eligibility broad and funding limited, Missouri lawmakers have “mechanisms to create political pressure” to push for expansion, he added.

ESAs’ potential to drain students away from urban schools is a concern in cities where the student population is already shrinking. For instance, St. Louis public schools have seen a steady enrollment decline over the past decade, with the student population decreasing by 9 percent just since the beginning of the pandemic. The district now educates about 18,200 students, , and an additional 11,400 St. Louis students attend charter schools.

To address those concerns, Christofanelli said schools will not lose state financing for at least the program’s first five years, and even if students leave a public school, they will still count in daily attendance numbers — the measure by which the state determines school funding. Also, the program’s funds will come out of the state’s general budget, not school-specific funds.

Missouri School Boards’ Association Executive Director Melissa Randol criticized the program, saying in a statement, “this law further erodes opportunities to fund needed investments in Missouri’s outstanding public schools. Missouri is 49th in the country in average starting teachers’ salaries — we need to invest in Missouri’s high-quality teachers, rather than funnel money to institutions that have no accountability to taxpayers for how they spend taxpayers’ dollars or how they educate our children.”

Overall, 32 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have some form of private school choice, said Wolf. Existing legislation gave new states a blueprint for crafting laws that allow the use of public funds for private schools. “This is the constitutional way to provide a voucher,” Exstrom said.

Wolf said the latest wave of bills shows that ESAs are more popular than programs that offer direct government assistance for school choice. By including homeschooling and learning pods, ESAs offer parents “a lot more flexibility.”