School choice programs: Testing mandates are more prevalent than you might realize
Eli Hager and his colleagues at ProPublica have published some eyebrow-raising articles lately about Arizona’s universal education savings account (ESA) program. Most recently, Hager dug into its testing and accountability requirements—or lack thereof. When it comes to the public’s ability—and that of policymakers—to know whether Arizona’s program, or the schools and other vendors that it’s funding, are effective, there’s zilch, nada, nothing.
Yet Arizona turns out to be something of an outlier. Most school choice programs—including education savings accounts programs, especially those enacted in recent years—come with sometesting mandates. Granted, there isn’t as much transparency or accountability as I’d like. As I told Hager, “If you’re a private school that gets most of its money now from the public…there should be accountability for you, as there is for public schools. If the public is paying your bills, I don’t see what the argument is for there not to be.”
Yet in many other states, there’s more of it than conventional wisdom assumes. Table 1 provides a detailed look at testing, transparency, and accountability requirements, pulled from a recent Rand analysis, as well as Education Week, FutureEd, and (especially) EdChoice.
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