Giving Compass' Take:

• Jessica Campisi reports on different actors working to advance school choice locally and nationally in April 2019.

• How can funders help to clarify the costs and the benefits of school choice? What does impactful school choice look like? 

• Learn about empowering students through school choice. 

While school choice and school choice-friendly policies aren't new, there's been a lot of talk around these topics in April. In the month after President Donald Trump's Fiscal Year 2020 budget request was introduced, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos began visiting states to campaign for one of the administration's main education proposals: Education Freedom Scholarships (EFS). And as states continue making their way through their 2019 legislative sessions, lawmakers in several regions are clashing over measures that promote school choice.

DeVos touts Education Freedom Scholarships
This school choice-promoting proposal — under which taxpayers can choose to contribute in exchange for dollar-for-dollar federal tax credits capped at $5 billion annually — was first announced in February. The idea behind these scholarships is that the credits would be for private donations to scholarship-granting organizations, and states could use the funds for initiatives including dual enrollment, private schools and homeschooling.

States weighing voucher, other choice-friendly bills
With many states months into their 2019 legislative sessions, some have taken up the issue of school choice in one form or another. This month, some of those bills made notable progress. For one, both the Tennessee House of Representatives and the state Senate passed the governor's controversial education savings account bill, which would create a voucher-style program that would give parents public school money to use on private schools or other educational services. It hasn't yet become law, but Lee called the moment "historic."

Read the full article about the push for school choice by Jessica Campisi at Education Dive.