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June 2005
Contact:
Laura Devany, Alliance for School Choice
602/468-0900, 602/615-8897 (cell)
[email protected]
PHOENIX—In the midst of the best legislative year yet for the national school choice movement, more children than ever before will be able to leave poor-performing public schools and use their education funds in private schools. Ohio Gov. Bob Taft today signed a budget with three school choice programs including the largest statewide voucher program of its kind in the nation. For the first time, the total number of targeted school choice scholarships available nationally will be in the six digits.
"Star Wars teaches that the Empire always strikes back, and it has. But in several states, the interests of children prevailed over the special interests dedicated to protecting the status quo," declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, the Phoenix-based organization that leads the national effort to support school choice programs to expand opportunities for economically disadvantaged schoolchildren.
Targeted K-12 school choice bills passed 16 legislative houses in 10 states this year. Four states – Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Utah – enacted new or expanded school choice programs and Arizona, Minnesota and Pennsylvania are still in serious legislative play. This year, more than 84,000 children from low-income families exercised the power of school choice. Next year the number of scholarships available is projected to increase by 25% to more than 105,000.
Ohio’s two-year budget includes a new statewide program for 14,000 general education children to leave public schools in academic emergency to attend private schools, and an improvement of two existing programs – expanding the Cleveland Scholarship Program to include 11th and 12th grade and making permanent the Autism Scholarship Program and removing the cap.
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