By Molly Prince
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation on Thursday that would expand school choice and access to tax-free savings plans.
The Student Empowerment Act further broadens 529 accounts, also known as college savings plans, to include “K-12 elementary and secondary school expenses for public, private, and religious schools, including homeschool students.” These expenses can include things such as tutoring costs, books, fees associated with standardized tests and educational therapies for students with disabilities.
Homeschool families were cynically excluded by Senate Democrats from the Student Opportunity Amendment, leaving homeschoolers ineligible to utilize the expanded usage of 529 savings accounts. #EmpowerOurStudents –> https://t.co/IT9XhVDLDu pic.twitter.com/ZWgpHnoHFg
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 21, 2018
The bill amends the Student Opportunity Amendment, which was signed into law in December 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and expanded 529 accounts to include tuition for the aforementioned institutions.
A 529 account is a versatile tax-free savings plan sponsored by the federal government, states, state agencies, or other educational institutions designed to incentivize savings for forthcoming education costs.
“By investing in the next generation of students and expanding school choice, we’re able to allow more students to have access to an education that truly fits their child’s needs, and to escape the one-size-fits-all approach to education. #EmpowerOurStudents”, Cruz tweeted on the issue.
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The big public education monopoly cares more about union jobs than student outcomes. Big education is actually willing to harm kids in order to preserve and promote greedy union jobs.
All parents should have the right to prequalify their children and enroll them in ACCREDITED private schools best suited for their children.
The money the state and local government would have sent to a public school should automatically, and immediately, and unconditionally, go to that ACCREDITED private school.
If that were done, a much large percentage of Vermont students would be in these private schools and that LARGER percentage would be excelling economically, academically and behaviorally, and that would have a beneficial impact on all of society.
That approach is recognized in the Netherlands, etc., with excellent results, locally and internationally.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-eu-and-international-trade
Instead, the apologists for the dysfunctional US system, ranking about 25th in the world, want to have BAU, which has by now been proven to yield unsatisfactory outcomes AT VERY HIGH COSTS PER STUDENT.
That $1.7 billion for education is a disgrace.
It should be cut by about $500 million to be approaching the US average to match the dismal Vermont education outcomes which are about US average.
The Dems/Progs seem not be able to stop meddling in the education sector, as they do in the healthcare and energy sectors.
The purpose of the meddling is vote getting.
The mantras is: Spread the government benefits and reap the votes.
All this wastefulness is reducing the standard of living of Vermonters.
That is the main reason Vermont has such a low rate of economic growth, and why it is losing population, and why it is not attracting businesses into the state, and why many businesses are leaving.
This all started at least 20 years ago with the rise of a Socialism-style, central government managed Vermont economy.
Burlington’s Socialism is an outlier regarding Vermont.
Such economies have failed and were abandoned in Russia, China and Cuba, etc.
Willem: I didn’t find a reference to the Dutch education system in your wind-task-force link. But its comparison with the U.S. education system should be cited.
“The Dutch fund public and private schools equally, based on student enrollment, and families are free to enroll in the school of their choice.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2017/04/the_netherlands_top_performer_in_motion.html
The evidence in the Netherlands is clear and U.S. education establishment resistance to School Choice can be explained only by the self-serving greed of long established special interest groups that lobby our political officials to line their own pockets. The data certainly doesn’t support the monopoly’s contentions. None the less, the odds of legislative relief are long at best.
In the meantime, readers should do their own research.
“… in addition to facilitating social cohesion, the voucher system in the Netherlands has helped create a really solid education system.”
https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/school-choice/going-dutch-school-choice
“A central provision of the Dutch Constitution is that all schools, public and independent, are funded on an equal basis if they observe statutory regulations.”
http://ncee.org/what-we-do/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/netherlands-overview/netherlands-system-and-school-organization/
“…students appear to prefer schools that are close to their home and schools where many of their former classmates in primary school go to.”
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/EDFP_a_00237?journalCode=edfp
Public schools have sunk to nothing more than cesspools of socialist indoctrination. The U.S. ranks roughly 37 in the world in education. What an embarrassment. Our schools place more emphasis on diversity, inclusion, transgenders, gays, black history, etc. etc. rather than history, English, and math. They are mainly responsible for the decline in patriotism and love of country. They place more importance on kids being little activists (activists for liberalism) and feed our kids garbage like global climate change, all the while ignoring that there are two sides of this equation and focusing on their own liberal bias. Now, they raise flags to honor terrorist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Parents should have the right to place their kids in schools that will compliment their own core values. This is long overdue.