Mississippi is poised to become the third state, behind Arizona and Florida, to enact an education savings account (ESA) law. Yesterday, the Mississippi Senate voted to concur with the state House’s version of the bill, which would provide ESAs for students with special needs to cover numerous education expenses, including private school tuition and fees, tutoring, textbooks, educational therapy, assistive technology, and higher education expenses. Gov. Phil Bryant has indicated that he will sign the legislation.
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice provides a useful breakdown of the ESA legislation. While about 63,000 Magnolia State students would be eligible for an ESA next year, “this opportunity is limited to 500 students in year one, with an additional 500 students added to the program each year during a ‘pilot’ period of five years.”
The state will fund the ESAs at $6,500 annually in the form of reimbursements for eligible expenses. The reimbursement model may make it difficult for lower-income families to participate—something policymakers should monitor and address if necessary. Arizona provides ESA parents with restricted-use debit cards that allow parents to conveniently access ESA funds while minimizing the potential for fraud.
In a 2013 survey, parents of students with special needs in Arizona overwhelmingly reported being satisfied with the education they purchased for their children with ESAs. ESAs empower parents to completely customize their child’s education based on his or her unique learning needs. As Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation and I explained in a recent article:
Parents can also save unused funds from year to year and roll the funds into a college savings account. These two features of ESAs—the ability of parents to completely customize their child’s education and save for future educational expenses—make them distinct from and improvements upon traditional school vouchers. ESAs empower parents with the ability to maximize the value their children get from their education services. And because they control how and when the money is spent, parents also have a greater incentive to control costs.
Whether or not 2015 ends up being the Year of Educational Choice, Mississippi has taken an important step toward educational freedom.