In Arizona, the first state to adopt an education savings account model, parents who choose to exit the district public system receive 90 percent of their child’s state per-pupil funding.

Education savings accounts are gaining popularity in states across the country, providing thousands of students with control over their educational destines.

Parents can then use those funds to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, textbooks, curricular materials, and a host of other education-related services, products, and providers.

They can even roll over unused funds from year to year, saving for future education-related expenses.

In other words, instead of assigning children to government-run schools, and then sending education dollars to those schools with little regard for whether the schools are performing well or meeting the needs of students there, education savings accounts give those funds directly to parents (who are experts in the needs of their own children), and allow them to completely customize their child’s education.

Read the full article on education savings accounts by Romina Boccia and Lindsey M. Burke at The Heritage Foundation