Recently, reimaginED executive editor Matt Ladner noted the 10th anniversary of education savings accounts, which debuted in Arizona in the form of the Empowerment Scholarship Account. In the past decade, research has demonstrated a refreshing truth about the accounts.
In an age of fake news, they have proved authentic, empowering parents to customize their child’s education, and families are, in fact, doing exactly that.
Data from North Carolina’s two education savings accounts programs find that a larger share of families are using their child’s account to purchase more than one education product or service than those who are only paying for one item, such as private school tuition.
Sixty-four percent of account holders used an account to customize their child’s learning experience in North Carolina’s accounts’ first two years—approximately double the share of Arizona families that customized a student’s experience in the first two years of account availability in that state.