Education Savings Accounts Empower Families When Public Schools Fail Them

“What happens when a little kid can’t say his name or his teacher’s name?” asked Kelly Pichitino, mother of a child with special needs in Arizona. “What if there is something urgent where you have to get all the kids out of the school?”

Pichitino pondered these questions in 2017 when Arizona teachers closed schools and marched on the state Capitol as part of the RedforEd movement. At that time, Pichitino, a former Parent Teacher Association president and a firm believer in the value of public schools, had sympathy for the movement, but she still had to care for her son.

Eventually, she became fed up with the strike and applied for an education savings account. With such an account, state officials deposited a portion of her child’s education spending in an account that Pichitino could manage and use to buy education products and services for her son. According to her, the account was “life-changing” and “opened up customized education and therapies” that she could purchase and use in their home.

Read the rest of the op-ed at The Federalist. 

Jonathan Butcher is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute and the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation.