The big school choice turnaround in Iowa that more states should follow

Other states would be wise to follow Iowa’s Gov. Reynolds’s school choice playbook.

State lawmakers are often slow to act, but they can move quickly when voters make them feel the heat. Consider Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds recently signed the nation’s third publicly funded education choice program for all K-12 students, following West Virginia and Arizona.

This represents a stunning reversal. A smaller proposal failed to clear the legislature last year. What changed?

The Students First Act will provide Iowa families education savings accounts (ESAs) that they can use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, curricular materials, and a variety of other education expenses. The ESAs, funded with a portion of the state’s per-pupil spending, are worth about $7,600 annually. That more than covers the average private elementary school tuition in Iowa (about $5,400) and nearly covers the average private high school tuition (about $9,200).

“Schools they trusted all these years were usurping their authority as parents and they didn’t like it,” said Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair. At first the legislature tried dealing with each issue as it arose, but eventually state lawmakers offered a comprehensive solution: school choice.

“The legislature got tired of playing whack-a-mole with all the issues,” said Sinclair. “School choice solved all of them at once.”

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