Cato Webinar on ESA concerns: May 24, 2023, Mike Donnelly, Matt B, Jamie Buckland Part 1

4:01PM May 24, 2023

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Keywords:

homeschoolers

esa

homeschool

families

west virginia

states

arizona

talk

education

traditional

carve

work

mike

create

assessment

homeschooling

community

policy

government

student

Good. So thank you everyone for being here. A little bit about what prompted me to put this together. As a homeschooling mom, I'm very sympathetic to a lot of the concerns that homeschoolers have when it comes to E essays. And I typically have just gone with what I call the Hillsdale College approach, which is, you know, just don't take the money if you don't want the strings that come with it. My daughter's graduated from Hillsdale College. So maybe that's why that's the approach, I call it. But it really wasn't enough to calm fears and a lot of cases. And it was actually last year at the Kennesaw State hybrid school conference that Mike Donnelly who's on our panel told me about the approach that a lot of states have taken where they separate the homeschoolers and traditional homeschoolers from recipients. Esa recipients are educating their kids at home. And that's the only great solution to me. And so I was just kind of figuring that a lot of states would go that way. earlier. This year, I noticed a couple of states were still having those battles with homeschoolers specifically Florida and Georgia. I saw it and it made me realize we need a broader conversation to talk things through and talking about this approach makes sure people are aware of it, you know, how can it be best utilized and then other things that are kind of new in the world that are other ways to alleviate the fears of homeschoolers, while still making sure that families who want to access these funds that are meant for educating their kids that they can use them in a variety of ways. So I'm really happy to be joined today by you know, I think it's gonna be a great panel. We've got as I mentioned, Mike Donnelly, he was formerly Senior Counsel at the Home School Legal Defense Association, and now Vice President at the yes every kid foundation. Matt being berg is Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. Jamie Buckland is a West Virginia homeschooler and founder of West Virginia that Families United for education she has a long history of working on various harmful homeschool issues there. And West Virginia did use this approach and their HOPE Scholarship, ESA, and John England who is a homeschool dad and education policy analyst at the Libertas Institute in Utah, where their recent ESA policy uses his approach. So we're gonna kick it off with Mike who's gonna give us a brief overview of how homeschoolers have viewed school choice in the past and they'll be able to set the stage for us. So, Mike, there you go.

Thanks, Colleen. It's so exciting to be here with everyone. Hope everybody's having a wonderful day and it's been a privilege for me to serve the homeschool community as an HSLDA attorney. And now working at the every kid foundation. We're really seeking to facilitate and support the transformation of education in our country. I think everyone knows that we need to do something differently. And I think that's what's motivating. The ESA is where we've had some amazing momentum. When you look around the country you see, I mean, I think what five or six states have passed PSAs in the last few months, Iowa, Arkansas, Florida expanding and it's creating quite a stir. You know, Brad Cooper, the North Carolina governor yesterday declared a state of emerging emergency. I don't know if he actually declared a state of emergency but he called it an emergency because the legislature is set to pass an ESA and he's saying this is terrible for public education. But we're here to talk about homeschoolers and ESA s and, you know, whether you support them or not, the reality is that the homeschool community has concerns about the education savings account policy. Why is that? You know, serving the homeschool community for many years, I've had a front row seat to that I've been involved in designing policy, advocating for what Colleen and I talked about last year, the Great Compromise. You know, Colleen wanted to call this webinar, the great compromise and I said I don't know is it really a compromise only you know, a compromise usually one side gives up something right or both sides give up something to get something greater and and when we talk about designing policy that meets the homeschoolers concerns. I'm not sure there's much of a compromise here. So let's let's back up a little bit. Why is it that the homeschool community not all but many in the homeschool community oppose education savings accounts? It comes down to something very simple. What the government funds the government controls. Now you may have heard some of the phrases with COVID shekel shekels come government shackles with government coin comes government control. You know, some people, you know, are concerned that the PSAs are I don't I don't believe this but some people are even advancing the idea that PSAs are another way for government to take over education. Well, you know, whether that's intentional or not with the government funds, the government can control. And so the homeschool community most of the homeschool community HSLDA don't want that kind of control. You know, the homeschool community has fought very hard over the last 40 years to realize freedom to exercise what you might say is the ultimate in school choice, which is just saying no, goodbye. We're not going to have anything to do with the schools anymore. We're going to take it ourselves. Most states have pretty reasonable regulations. Although not all, and the homeschool community fought very hard. Over many years. You know, for many years, homeschooling was not a recognized legal exception to compulsory attendance laws and over the 70s 1880s and 90s the homeschool community engaged in some very significant legislative and court battles to realize his freedom. And they believe that you know, with a lot of money coming into the space, that that could create pressure, regulatory pressure and impose additional regulations on homeschool community, you know, it's calling said, well just don't take the money. Is it that simple? If you say, well, homeschoolers can choose whether or not they want to take the money and then no longer, you know, any regulations that might come with the essays. Is that enough? Well, the concerns of this in some places, homeschooling can be easily confused by local government officials. So for example, in West Virginia and Jamie will talk about this a little bit but in West Virginia, homeschoolers notify the local superintendents if they're going to homeschool. Well, if you've got homeschool is getting government money and home schoolers are not getting government money. They can be confused and I can tell you having served on school committee across the country for 20 years. It doesn't take a lot to confuse public school government school officials and education officials when it comes to homeschool. Right. And so it can create problems on the ground for homeschoolers, but even in states where you don't have to notify you know, the state level officials can be confused. And over time, the concern is that, you know, the well you know, these homeschoolers are submitting to these regulations. Why don't we just apply that to everybody? Wouldn't that be fair? Well, we don't think that would be fair, and we homeschool up the private home schoolers who aren't taking the money don't want that kind of pressure building on additional regulations being imposed. So confusion, you know, what kind of homeschool Are you conflation ah, you know, you're all homeschool or some are getting the money some are getting the money over time. This can create regulatory creep. And so, you know, the homeschool HSLDA in the homeschool community was taken along if you were like, look, there's a solution to this problem that doesn't prevent the good out intentions of those who want the assays, which is to help people make more choices and have more options to educate their kids. I mean, you know, having worked at HSLDA for almost 17 years, no one in a facility A wants to prevent parents from leaving the public school system and doing something different. We just want to protect the homeschooling community from regulatory capture. And so the what we did was not we didn't do this actually the school choice community actually came up with this approach. And Matt can talk about that in Arizona. But back in 2016 2017, Robin Lowe and I Robin law school of their choice, talked about this and we said look, if we do this will this work and you know, the HSLDA and he always came up with this idea of look if if we separate homeschoolers out from the ESA is that enough for you to sell the Asus not actively oppose the legislation and that was a we agreed to do that. We said look at we'll take this approach. You create a separate compulsory school attendance option. That's for ESA students. And you say you know if you want to homeschool you can homeschool. If you want to get an ESA you can get an ESA and you keep them separate. that satisfied the concerns of HSLDA in the homeschool community. And so, you know, in West Virginia, New Hampshire, they did that. This past year, a number of states have done that. But as Callie mentioned, a couple of states didn't do that and that sparked the homeschool community to oppose. Why was that? Well, we'll talk about that. I'll just wrap up my comments here with if you want to pass an ESA easily. Seek out the homeschool community in your state. Talk to the HSLDA attorneys are responsible for you know advocating in your state before you actually release language and I know if there's any state legislators listening or if you have influence with state legislators, but you know, if you bring people together beforehand, and I can tell you that, you know, the homeschool community will tell you what will satisfy their concerns. And then we won't have fights over this. I think we'll have fewer fights. I don't I can't say we won't have any but we'll have fewer fights during the legislative season. So I'll just stop there. Look forward to having further conversation.

All right. Thanks, Mike. As Matt as Mike mentioned in Arizona, they have been using this approach longer and although I hadn't heard of it till last year, at VMware, who's our next panelist explained to me that they've actually done it there since 2012. So, Matt, if you want to just give a little bit about the history of that and Arizona and you know how that came about how it's working. That would be great

for Yeah, thank you, Colleen for hosting. Thank you for being here. And like, you know, Echo much of what Mike just said, if not all I think he laid that out really well. And so, um, as Colleen says, So I'm the Education Policy Director of the Goldwater Institute here in Arizona, where we have the honor of saying, you know, we were the state that actually pioneer the first ESA program back in 2011. And so at that point, there was no such thing as an ESA, we call it an empowerment scholarship account here. Obviously, it's you know, different things in different states. But the end of the day, the first ESA program, was essentially a policy idea was an experiment back in 2011. To say, hey, we want to make sure every family has access to an education, they're not constrained to go through the public school system, etc. Or left as so many families have been to say, well, they're going to have to make those sacrifices entirely on their own right. Families who are paying property taxes or their best thing into the system is going to every other family, and yet then they're told well, great, now you get to also pay again for your own your own kids, right. And so just as a simple issue of, of equality and fairness for those families, that says, look, there's no reason we should be essentially making you a second class citizen and penalizing you for saying what the offerings of the public school don't meet the needs of my family, whether it's academically, whether it's culturally religiously, whatever it may be, to say that there is no reason they should be essentially penalized for this. So the Arizona program, which again started back in 2011, initially was just for students with special education that's expanded over the years and obviously, last year opened up to every student but as Colleen mentioned, the second year was the program first started that 2011 2012 school year had 100 kids in it right again, very, very small. This was a kind of a national pilot program. And ever since then, the legislature has been refining and making some changes to it. And in the second year of the program, they went in and exactly to Mike's point said all right, we've now created this program for these kids to recognize and make sure this is something that does not cause that sort of, you know, regulatory creep, etc. As Mike alluded to, we're going to create two tracks. So just as he said Arizona has essentially mandatory compulsory attendance laws. It says every student in the state has to be provided instruction, you know, but we are explicitly going to make a carve out that says for families who want to do homeschool they felt they signed an affidavit essentially written sworn statement saying, I've got my kids taken care of, they're learning what they need to know. You know, leave me alone, essentially, when it comes to you know, kind of government intrusion on here. And that's obviously worked for those families for a long time. With the ESA program. It said okay, now we have an option where we want to not only taxpayer money is going into public schools over here. Families are going to private schools over here. We want to make sure that regardless of the form, whether it's at home education or at a private school, or tutoring, whatever it is, we're going to give that option to all of them. But we are not going to undercut we're not going to undermine or we're not going to muddle this issue of the rights that have been secured for homeschool families. And so it said, you have an option to go to the traditional public school system or you can do signing this affidavit for homeschoolers or as a separate legal category. Now you can sign a contract to join this ESA program where you will be given this funding essentially, your tax dollars coming back to you that you then get to deploy for your your family and for your kids now. The Arizona statute is very clear, right? It says the government the state does not have the authority to alter the curriculum or creed or regulates private or homeschool education is very crystal clear. Right? Cuz this is one of the concerns that comes up a lot. Does this mean that they get to dictate the curriculum or that they can say you're not allowed to use a religiously affiliated textbook? You know, none of that is there. And it's very clear that says this, this is not a stagers does not have the authority to do that. And so there are entities you know, we had Goldwater our policy and also litigation, you know, outfit and so there there is very strong wall there that says this is a program that is for the students and it does not give a green light to the state to come in and start doing that. So, I'm happy to kind of talk a little bit more as we go on this but yeah, I would just you know, echo some of the comments that say this is something that over the now 12 year history of Arizona, we have seen the ESA program be something that's used by families at home education at private school education, and it's something that, you know, to Mike's point about the confusion of, well, our taxpayer dollars allotted to us for this. The way the program works is it says you know, if you get on to it, you're essentially given this account, you know, for a typical student without special needs or not in kindergarten about $7,000 you use those funds for specific things. If you want to spend anything on your student outside of that you still can't right so there's it's not like saying once you sign up for the ESA program, you know, now the government gets to decide everything you spend money on the purchases made with those funds have, you know categories that they can be spent on tutoring curriculum, books, etc. But you're still obviously you don't you don't give up your right to spend out of pocket on anything else that you want, just as a student who chooses not to participate. And then one last thing you know, I think one of the benefits for families as opposed to what you see with federal programs where you know, the we see college right federal handouts and it increases the cost of college with the ESA program. It gives families the funds and says you know what, if you don't use it all, you're not maybe spending all at a private school or you're holding on to it or you're educating your kids. But you're actually incentivized to economize you're incentivized to use the four sources as you need because they roll over a year to year so you don't have it's not just a use it or lose it. Here's $7,000 And it's April now go you know, spend a bunch of money to because might as well know that money is going to carry on to the next year. And families who are doing home education can take that and if they still have funds at the end they can put that toward college so student who's you know, considering a Hillsdale you know, at that point, right. It's again, it's a family who has a dutifully pay their taxes, they have asked nothing of folks in return. They're now being able to be brought into this fold get the funding and do this and so whether family to say you know, no, thank you. I'm happy to stay on just the homeschool definition or yes, I'm interested in doing the ESA is my said I don't see it as a compromise. I do see it as a win win for families who are not wanting to get involved with the traditional public school system.

Thanks, Matt. Yeah, I think that the rollover provision is really crucial part of a good good policy. So next up, we've got Jamie Buckland is going to talk about West Virginia has experience adopting the ESA and I know that she has a lot to say about this. So Jamie,

thank you, Colleen, and for all of you who are on today to learn more about this topic and she's right. This is one of my favorite things in this day and age to talk about because I think that we have a real opportunity in this school choice space to continue to expand school choice options without it being at the expense of traditional homeschooler. So I'm going to make a couple of points. That's kind of my approach is to be extremely reductive. And then we can flush it out. Moving on not necessarily brief, just reductive but I'm going to aim for the brevity as well but we've heard a lot about why this is great. With with Mike and Matt talking about why you would carve them out not in true Janie fashion. I'm going to tell you what also are the cons with that and what we actually create which could be a little chaotic, and by carving out and then how we can address those. So as Mike alluded to, there are really you know, several reasons why traditional homeschoolers want carved out I've reduced those down into three the first one being that traditional homeschoolers in many states, West Virginia has one, they want to continue to expand and protect homeschool freedoms, and they can't necessarily do that if you attach a sidecar to them. So if you attach ESA funded families to traditional homeschool code, now they're going to have this sidecar and that's going to weigh them down, if you will, when it comes time to continue to expand and protect on specific homeschool freedoms because as Mike said, these are families that have fought for decades to basically secede from the government and to say we're not asking anything of you. And so we want to be sure that we keep them protected by carving them out. Secondly, with the government funding, there doesn't need to be some accountability. We could debate to what degree that is but some accountability, some regulation in order to even get these policies passed, right. There has to be some measures provisions that are entered into the policy to ensure that families are responsible with their funding and educating their children. And so one thing to mention on West Virginia the actual distinction, I guess, the notable distinction between traditional homeschoolers of which I am one this is my I'm planning out my 17th year of homeschooling I have two homeschool graduates and 11 year old and my six year old is a hoax scholar. So I get to speak in the first person plural for both groups because I have been traditionally homeschooling and I do have an ESA home schooler but when it comes to the submission of assessments traditional homeschoolers in West Virginia, submit those assessments at the end of the year, in third, fifth and eighth, third, fifth, eighth and 11th grades and for the home scholars that are educating their children using ESA monies under the IEP individualized instructional program. They submit those assessments annually and so when that is the main distinction, and that could sound super simple. It does not I'll talk about that more in a minute, but it does create a lot of chaos and confusion for families and especially for county boards. I spoke with a homeschool mom yesterday who said she was vehemently opposed to the Hope Scholarship until she called just a glimpse of one of my Facebook Lives last year where I said you know what's a thread to you might be a rope to someone else and what is the rope to someone else will be a thread to you when we talk about government funding and strings being attached. Some people are willing to jump through the hoops and submit an assessment every single year. For that $4,300 and I am one of those families. So as a traditional homeschool are unwilling to submit that assessment, portfolio reviews can be accepted. So I'm not submitting myself to standardized testing. So there's been a lot of misinformation from traditional homeschool groups who think that it comes with many more hoops and it actually does so I like to remind people that we can define what hoops we're jumping through and some of them may be feasible for many families. And then lastly, the reason to carve out is to ideally reduce confusion because our traditional homeschool group shouldn't have to be well versed in the New Hope Scholarship code as they are in traditional homeschool code. So ideally, we carve them out to reduce confusion. So then what are the cons? What are the disadvantages to the carve out? Well, the first one is that you created an entirely new student profile you create these unbundled educators that are now using ESI funds to educate at home and who is the OG who is the expert and unbundling education. Traditional homeschoolers, and traditional homeschool groups are saying hey, we serve a distinct community private pay homeschoolers where parents are the facilitators of the education, they're privately paying for it. They may outsource but they make that decision. They use their own money for it. We don't necessarily want to support this new demographic, this new student profile that you're creating that's accepting ESI funding it creates confusion and overwhelm on us. So we've now created these hope scholars using IIP. They have questions about instruction, questions about code, questions about assessment, and they don't actually have any rule that is now addressing those issues. And that is actually why we founded the West Virginia pew Families United for education to step in and support those unbundled errs, who need that expertise and guidance that would come from a traditional homeschooler. Secondly, it creates equal protection issues, or at least it did here in West Virginia. So traditional homeschoolers have fought for diploma protection, sports access, even the right to take to verify your own address at the DMV when your child needs to take their learner's permit. Years ago, I had to make an in person appointment with the attendance director at the county in order to get my form verified so that my son could take his learner's test. And thanks to the school pioneers in West Virginia, we no longer can do that. We can actually verify our own address so that our children can take those DMV tests. But when we look at the hooks scholarship code where they were carved out, those equal protection issues have come up because they don't necessarily have the same specific code mentions that traditional homeschoolers have. Lastly, in the administration of the program, when we look at the treasurer's office, trying to administer this program, it's created a lot of work and overwhelmed for them because they are not experts and unbundling education. They do not know how to walk all of these families through assessments and one thing that I think it's notable since we've already talked about Arizona and even in New Hampshire, I've talked with Kate in New Hampshire who's a powerhouse and does great work there in New Hampshire and I asked her how do you serve your your family so we're using the ESA is at home? And she said that the the code basically is mirrored for their home schoolers and they are ESA families and so they're actually able to direct those families to the traditional homeschool groups. We don't have that in West Virginia. They do have an assessment requirement, but they're able to be supported through the traditional homeschool groups. If you look at Arizona, they don't have that assessment requirement. So right now in West Virginia over this next week and a half, we have hundreds of families trying to put together assessments for the deadline of June 8, and they do not have an organization outside of the West Virginia pew that is solely organized to meet them where they are and help them navigate that assessment piece. that's a real issue. That we created when we carved them out. And so what are the solutions? What could you possibly do this would be more in the weeds and we have time for today but I'm happy to continue the conversation for anyone who wants to reach out but I do think there's a way to carve out the families who are going to use the funds to educate at home without necessarily lumping them into traditional homeschoolers. And that is to make the font the ESA a funding mechanism that can be used with any other exemption other thing under dual home. So it's when you need an alternative cating at home and using ESA funds, but we would make hope a funding mechanism and not necessarily an actual exemption. No one is graduating from the hook scholarship program. And secondly, an answer would be to support organizations like the West Virginia pew love your school in Arizona. Pennsylvania has my friend Sharon leading the calls they are in supporting families so we want to make sure that we're supporting organizations that are rising to the challenge of being able to offer expertise guidance to families who are going to continue to unbundle education using ESA funds. Lastly, and I'll wrap this up is that you would just lead with listening to traditional homeschoolers. I would say this if we truly trust parents, and I've heard these arguments now for nearly two decades, all you need to homeschool is a library card. If you can teach your child to walk and talk surely you can teach them algebra, Algebra if we truly believe that about parents, then we need to trust that parents can navigate compliance issues and they can make decisions for themselves when it comes to choosing an ESA or not. And also to traditional homeschoolers. I would just say that we need to remember there are families who may not be in a position to traditionally homeschool and privately pay and sometimes $4,300 means outsourcing the subjects that they're not comfortable teaching, it may not create the opportunity for a parent to now stay at home and become the full time educator but it may create the opportunity for them to outsource instruction. And I think that that's an important note to mention because many families that are traditionally homeschooling are like this doesn't even really affect anyone. It's just a drop in the bucket. But that's not true. It really does mean the difference in new families being able to educate at home and just some points for choice advocates. Maybe listen and realize that you are creating work for homeschool organizations in 2018 when the cardinal Institute and lawmakers first started talking about E essays in West Virginia. I personally began getting phone calls text messages and emails about the fact that I now call I deserve money to homeschool my children and so we do start to ruffle feathers when we're bringing in ESA legislation that can be used at home. You are creating work for traditional homeschool groups, which are the majority of our working voluntarily no one is earning a single penny to do that work that they're doing for traditional homeschoolers. And so many of them are just saying, Hey, you're coming over here and you're disrupting what we're doing and you're creating extra work for us. And I think school choice advocates could benefit from benefit from listening to traditional homeschoolers, instead of just thinking that they're chasing a phantom. The last thing is that many will say we are chasing a phantom traditional homeschoolers are super cautious or too cautious. Nothing terrible actually happened. But we saw here in West Virginia this year when a hope cleanup bill swiftly moved through both the House Education Committee and the school choice Senate committee that would have made traditional homeschoolers code now except hope scholars and ESA fundings in that same section of code. So to everyone who says nothing has happened that gives HSLDA or homeschoolers any reason to be cautious. That's not true. We saw it happen before but