A growing number of statehouses are considering measures that would allow school districts, parents and students increasingly to use taxpayer funds to explore alternatives to traditional state-backed public education.
The flurry of new bills—which range from supporting private-school options to putting education dollars directly into parents’ hands—comes amid concerns of federal overreach in schools and a backlash against the widespread implementation of common education benchmarks and standardized testing.
It has also gained momentum from elections last November that increased state legislatures’ numbers of Republican lawmakers—traditionally backers of school choice.
A bill that passed in the Nevada Assembly Thursday proposes tax credits for businesses that support private-school scholarships. Meanwhile, a measure to establish so-called education savings accounts, which put state funds into special savings accounts for some parents to pay for certain services directly, on Thursday passed in both chambers in Mississippi. This latest form of flexibility has caught the eyes of legislators in many states since Arizona and Florida began programs in recent years.