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Thank you!

-Harry

I am writing you to share my son’s progress over the last two months. It has been nothing short of miraculous and has changed our family. Nathan attends a private school for children with developmental delays and is one of five in his class. With one teacher and two aids he receives a lot of one on one attention. He has prospered in his new loving and supportive environment at school. Since he began school, we have seen more progress in the last two months than he had in two years of public school. Nathan is starting to speak in small sentences and ask questions, something he has never done. We are finally being able to communicate with our son, he understands us and we can understand him, something that a lot of parents of typical children can take for granted.

Donations from people like you can change the lives of children like my son Nathan and their families. My son has been given an amazing opportunity and gift and I will never be able to say thank-you enough.

Despite a tight turnaround time for applications, Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) law has proven highly popular among Arizona families and, in its first year, will provide more than 100 families with the opportunity to send their children to the schools of their choice. In fact, 167 families and their children with special needs were awarded an ESA by the Arizona Department of Education for the Fall 2011 school semester.

The American Federation for Children, a leading school choice advocacy organization, praised the innovative new program–the only of its kind in the nation. Sponsored by State Senator Rick Murphy and House Majority Whip Debbie Lesko as SB 1553 and signed by Governor Jan Brewer in the last legislative session, ESAs allow parents of children with special needs to receive an account that the parents can use to choose the best educational services and environment for their children.

The Arizona School Boards Association sent a letter asking Attorney General Horne to nullify the law. A deadline for the Attorney General to respond to their letter has passed. That means that the law will stand barring a lawsuit.

“The law was only able to go into effect on July 20th,” said House Majority Whip Debbie Lesko. “One hundred and sixty-seven families signed up and were approved for ESAs by the August 1st deadline for the start of this school semester. That was a very short window. That indicates the demand for ESAs from families whose children have special needs.”

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are accounts established to provide an education for qualified students that must include reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies and science. In order to qualify students must be an Arizona resident and identified as having a disability and either attended a public school for the first one hundred days of the previous school year or received a School Tuition Organization scholarship. Accounts are awarded an amount determined by calculating 90 percent of each student’s funding level as determined by the school funding formula.

Along with the Individual and Corporate School Tuition Organization Tax Credit programs and the state’s Lexie’s Law program, Arizona is one of only two states nationally that is home to four private school choice programs. The four programs serve more than 32,000 students nationwide.

The American Federation for Children, along with the Alliance for School Choice, seek to improve our nation’s K-12 education by advancing systemic and sustainable public policy that empowers parents, particularly those in low income families, to choose the education they determine is best for their children.

SOURCE American Federation for Children

No fewer than 13 states have enacted school choice legislation in 2011, and 28 states have legislation pending. Last month alone, Louisiana enhanced its state income tax break for private school tuition; Ohio tripled the number of students eligible for school vouchers; and North Carolina passed a law letting parents of students with special needs claim a tax credit for expenses related to private school tuition and other educational services.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made headlines this year for taking on government unions. Less well known is that last month he signed a bill that removes the cap of 22,500 on the number of kids who can participate in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, the nation’s oldest voucher program, and creates a new school choice initiative for families in Racine County. “We now have 13 programs new or expanded this year alone” in the state, says Susan Meyers of the Wisconsin-based Foundation for Educational Choice.

School choice proponents may have had their biggest success in Indiana, where Republican Governor Mitch Daniels signed legislation that removes the charter cap, allows all universities to be charter authorizers, and creates a voucher program that enables about half the state’s students to attend public or private schools.

Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma have created or expanded tuition tax credit programs. North Carolina and Tennessee eliminated caps on the number of charter schools. Maine passed its first charter law. Colorado created a voucher program in Douglas County that will provide scholarships for private schools. In Utah, lawmakers passed the Statewide Online Education Program, which allows high school students to access course work on the Internet from public or private schools anywhere in the state.

Even in the nation’s capital, and thanks largely to House Speaker John Boehner, Congress revived the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program for poor families that the Obama Administration had wanted to kill at the behest of teachers unions.

One notable exception is Pennsylvania, where Governor Tom Corbett and the Republican state legislature bungled passage of a state-wide voucher bill. Mr. Corbett promised during his election campaign last year that he’d make the reform a priority. Instead, Republican legislative leaders dithered for most of the spring, and Mr. Corbett got engaged very late. The session ended last week without passage of the voucher bill and several other school choice measures, including an increase in charter school authorizers. The Pennsylvania State Education Association is no doubt delighted by the failure.

Choice by itself won’t lift U.S. K-12 education to where it needs to be. Eliminating teacher tenure and measuring teachers against student performance are also critical. Standards must behigher than they are.

But choice is essential to driving reform because it erodes the union-dominated monopoly that assigns children to schools based on where they live. Unions defend the monopoly to protect jobs for their members, but education should above all serve students and the larger goal of a society in which everyone has an opportunity to prosper.

This year’s choice gains are a major step forward, and they are due in large part to Republican gains in last fall’s elections combined with growing recognition by many Democrats that the unions are a reactionary force that is denying opportunity to millions. The ultimate goal should be to let the money follow the children to whatever school their parents want them to attend.

Washington, D.C. (June 16, 2011

If these bills pass, millions of children would have the opportunity to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice, demonstrating historic momentum for the popular educational choice movement.

Fifty-four bills create or expand voucher programs and 42 bills create or expand tax credit scholarship programs. Many bills often target disadvantaged children, including 27 bills for special needs children, two bills for military children, and two bills for children in foster care, according to AFC analyst Michelle Gininger, who conducted the research.

Since the beginning of the year, 12 bills have been enacted in nine states that will create, expand, and restore highly accountable and effective school choice programs.

For example, Arizona created the nation’s first-ever Education Savings Account program for children with special needs. The Arizona Empowerment Account Program will allow participating families to receive 90 percent of the per-pupil funding to use on a variety of educational options, including: tutoring, online education, testing fees, college courses, and textbooks. Any unused funds after high school graduation can be used for college tuition.

In Washington, D.C., Congress reauthorized the highly successful and popular D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for five years. Funded at $20 million per year, this reauthorization will provide scholarships to thousands of low-income students and revive one of the nation’s most recognizable school voucher programs.

Indiana’s legislature, with the backing of Governor Mitch Daniels, created the Choice Scholarship Program, the broadest voucher program in the country. This legislation, which creates a highly accountable program that provides scholarships to low- and middle-income students to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice, is set to benefit 15,000 by the program’s second year.

As many as 19 bills have been introduced to expand existing programs to increase student enrollment caps, expand student eligibility, and create stronger accountability measures.  Wisconsin, for example, is on track to expand its highly successful voucher program to include even more students in Milwaukee, as well as to expand it to Racine.  Governor Kasich in Ohio is working with leaders in the legislature to expand the Educational Choice Scholarship Program to 60,000 students by 2013.

The American Federation for Children (www.FederationForChildren.org) praised the growing trend towards passage of school choice legislation as a vital step toward providing educational options to all children.

AFC will release a summary of the legislation this week.

# # #

Media Contact:
Andrew Campanella, acampanella@federationforchildren.org, 202-276-1303

In a rare effort to blunt the governor’s veto, the Legislature passed a scaled-back bill early Wednesday to further expand private-school tuition 

An amendment to Senate Bill 1186 would still increase the donation limits for individuals and married couples by 50 percent, but it would do so by allowing them to contribute all the extra funds to a similar program set up for corporations.

Lawmakers abandoned several provisions of the vetoed bill, including one that would have allowed unlimited dollar-for-dollar tax credits for corporations.

The changes dropped the estimated price tag from $16.8 million to about $9 million, according to the nonpartisan Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

The number of students who must use the tax-credit scholarships for it to become cost-neutral also fell, from 3,300 under the original bill to 1,700 under the new one.

“She’s going to be looking at that bill closely in the days ahead, but she doesn’t have a determination on it just yet,” said Matthew Benson, a spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer. It is just one of the 168 bills she must weigh by May 2.

“This governor has a very strong record on school choice,” Benson said. “At the same time, she has been adamant that we not do things that throw the budget out of balance.”

Brewer seemed primarily worried about the original bill’s cost.

Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, guided the revised plan through the Legislature.

He tacked it on to a lengthy bill adjusting tax language affecting several programs, including the jobs program Brewer signed into law earlier this year.

“We went through (the veto letter) with a fine-tooth comb,” said Yarbrough, who also operates the state’s largest school-tuition organization, which distributes tax-credit donations from individuals to private-school scholarships.

“We’re hopeful she’ll sign (the new bill).”

Brewer’s veto of House Bill 2581 was seen by some as a surprise snub to school-choice advocates, who only days earlier had celebrated a 5-4 victory in the U.S. Supreme Court that made it harder to legally challenge the tax-credit program.

Brewer’s veto sparked a one-sided outcry last week.

The tax-credit legislation generated 337 messages to her in favor of signing HB 2581, and only four against it, a spokeswoman said. Yarbrough said he had no role in that response.

The corporate tax-credit program has several key differences from the more-popular program for individual taxpayers.

Scholarship recipients must be switching from public to private schools, and donors cannot recommend recipients.

Also, scholarships must go to students with family incomes within 185 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. For a family of four, that’s about $41,348 this year.

Under the new bill, an individual could contribute $750 between the two programs; a married couple filing jointly could contribute $1,500.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/04/21/20110421arizona-lawmakers-tuition-tax-credit-bill.html#ixzz1KBDeTJmy

Read the full article here.

Phoenix, Arizona (April 15, 2011) – State and national school choice organizations today called on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to reverse her opposition to legislation that would allow thousands of children from poor and working-class families to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice.
 
On Tuesday, Brewer vetoed legislation that would have expanded the state’s two scholarship tax credit programs while saving tax dollars and stimulating the economy.
 
The organizations — including the American Federation for Children,  the Alliance for School Choice, the Foundation for Educational Choice, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and the Education Breakthrough Network — called on Brewer to reach an agreement with state legislators to expand the state’s highly popular Corporate and Individual School Tuition Organization Tax Credit Programs. Brewer vetoed legislation that would have lifted the donation cap on the corporate program and expanded its base of funding. The vetoed legislation would have also benefited Arizona taxpayers by increasing the amount of their tax credit for STO contributions in the individual program.
 
“We are deeply disappointed that a leader who has consistently championed school choice would now deny scholarships to thousands of children,” said John Schilling, the Chief Operating Officer of the American Federation for Children and a former Associate Superintendent of Public Instruction at the Arizona Department of Education. 
 
The organizations praised Brewer’s decision to sign into law an Education Savings Account bill for children with special needs — but said that her veto of scholarship tax credit program expansion legislation ignores the growing demand for school choice in the state.
 
“School Tuition Organizations across the state have waiting lists that number thousands of students,” said Schilling. “The futures of children in Arizona require that Governor Brewer reconsider her decision and work with the legislature to continue the positive trajectory of education reform in the state.”
 
As of this school year, 3,636 children benefit from the Corporate School Tuition Organization Tax Credit Program, and 27,476 children benefit from the Individual School Tuition Organization Tax 

INDIANAPOLIS – The Foundation for Educational Choice today called Gov. Jan Brewer’s veto of the expansion of an education tax credit program a “sad travesty” and urged the governor to rethink her veto immediately.

“Gov. Brewer has been a friend of school choice, but her veto flies in the face of her past support and is a tragedy for the thousands of children who need greater educational options,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of the Foundation.

“Everyone knows that when states expand tax credit programs, it saves state budgets money since it costs less to educate children with a tax credit scholarship,” added Enlow. “That’s why Gov. Brewer’s veto makes no sense.”

The proposal adopted by the Arizona Legislature and vetoed this week would have increased the amount of tax credit that taxpayers would have earned if they donated to Arizona’s School Tuition Organizations. The legislation would have lifted the cap on the amount of money that could have been donated under the state’s corporate program and expanded its base of funding.

“Arizona students are waiting in line for scholarships yet Gov. Brewer chose to veto a vehicle that would have given children more choice,” Enlow said.

In 2009, there were 27,582 students who earned scholarships averaging $1,889 under the Arizona Corporate School Tuition Organization Tax Credit Program and the Individual School Tuition Organization Tax Credit Program.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona’s tax credit program was constitutional. It said that the program passed constitutional muster because those that challenged the program – especially the American Civil Liberties Union – didn’t have standing to bring suit to the court and those that contributed to scholarship organizations did so on a voluntary basis.

Last week may have been the school-choice movement’s best effort in a long time, with Arizona leading the way for systemic education reform and expanded opportunities.

Monday the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the latest challenge to Arizona’s tuition scholarship tax-credit program, which provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits for contributions to private school scholarships. Following the reasoning of the Arizona Supreme Court, the high court ruled that because tax credits leave money in the hands of taxpayers, they never become public funds. As a result, under federal law, taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the program.

Later in the week, the Arizona Legislature increased the amount of the tax credit for the scholarship program from $1,000 to $1,500 per couple.

Then on Thursday, the Arizona Legislature became the first in the country to approve education savings accounts, an idea born at the Goldwater Institute. When eligible students leave public schools, the state will fund an account with a portion of the dollars that would have been spent on their public education. Money in an ESA can be used for many educational purposes, from distance learning to private school tuition, curriculum software, or tutoring. Any money left over can be used for college after a student graduates from high school. ESAs reduce taxpayer costs while increasing schooling options.

The initial pilot is limited to children with disabilities, who lost their voucher program in 2009 when the Arizona Supreme Court struck it down under the state constitution. This program is designed to comply with the Court’s ruling in that case.

ESAs have the potential to create a truly 21st century system of public education, in which every child is empowered to pursue the best possible schooling without stifling and costly bureaucracy and special-interest pressures. The bill creating the pilot program now awaits action from Governor Jan Brewer.

Finally, amidst the contentious federal budget deal just before midnight D.C.-time, Congress reauthorized the District of Columbia school voucher program, whose expansion congressional Democrats had previously halted. Now the Obamas will no longer be the only people in D.C. who live in public housing who get to send their kids to private school.

The Goldwater Institute will continue to pioneer such student-centered education reforms, while celebrating unprecedented success.

Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

Learn More:

Goldwater Institute: Education Savings Accounts: Giving Parents Control of Their Children’s Education

Goldwater Institute: New Harvard report on tuition tax credit debunks myths

Washington Post: Budget deal includes D.C. abortion rider, money for school vouchers

Arizona Legislature: Senate Bill 1553 authorizing education savings accounts