Georgia School Choice Bill

The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act is a major victory for school choice in Georgia but, hopefully, just the first step.

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Georgia Promise Scholarship Act

The Georgia House of Representatives passed SB 233 this past week- also known as the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act. This bill is the first real step that the state of Georgia has taken to establish a school choice program in the state. As almost anyone who knows me knows, I am a huge supporter of school choice and one of my early newsletters was on school choice which you can read here. It should come as no surprise that I was very excited to see this bill pass the Georgia House.

So, what exactly is this bill?

Let’s start with a little background first. This bill was originally passed in the Georgia Senate last year, which was the first time that a school choice bill had passed either house of the Georgia General Assembly. After the bill passed the Senate, there was a mad rush to get the House to pass it with Governor Kemp making a particularly strong last-minute push. This was particularly significant because previous Georgia governors had tended to remain silent on school choice bills and Governor Kemp bucked this trend to try and get the bill passed.

Unfortunately, the bill failed to pass the House by a vote of 85-89 with 16 Republican lawmakers voting against the bill.

In one sense, this was still a massive success for the school choice movement in Georgia because it was the furthest any school choice bill and gone in the Georgia legislature. However, it was undoubtedly disappointing to see so many Republicans, in particular, fail to pass the bill.

Fast forward a year, the House of Representatives voted again on SB 233 this time with a much different result. This time the vote was 91-82 with seven Republicans and one Democrat who previously voted against the bill flipping to vote in favor of it this year. Now, the bill will need to pass the Senate again and be signed into law by Governor Kemp by March 28th. Hopefully, the House of Representatives proves to be the hardest obstacle for this bill to overcome.

What’s in it?

Here is a good summation from Georgia Center for Opportunity: “It [SB 233] creates Promise Scholarships, which are state-administered, state-funded accounts that would give families $6,500 per year and per student to use for approved education expenses. Another common name for this type of program is “education savings accounts.”

The approved education expenses that parents could spend the public funds on include, among others defined in the bill, private school tuition, homeschooling materials, or tutoring.

Not all students in Georgia qualify though. The $6,500 will only be available to students who meet two major criteria 1) a parent’s income cannot exceed 400% of the federal poverty level (around $120,000 for a family of four) and 2) the student must be enrolled in a Georgia public school that has been in the bottom 25% of public schools for two consecutive years according to Georgia’s College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI).

In other words, the bill specifically limits funding to lower-income students who are currently enrolled in failing schools.

More is Needed

Before I go on to explain why more needs to be done to increase school choice in Georgia, I want to make very clear that this bill is a good start and it is great news that it passed the House. I wish the bill would go further than it does, but I still think it is very much worth passing and will be good for Georgia.

With that said, there is a lot more work that needs to be done to expand school choice in Georgia.

To start, school choice should not be limited to only students who are in the bottom 25% of public schools in the state. As Buzz Brockway writes, “It’s important to note that limiting the Promise Scholarship to only the bottom 25% of schools doesn’t cover all the schools in Georgia that receive D or F grades in CCRPI.” By limiting funds to only students in the bottom 25% of public schools, there will be students who are still in failing public schools according to the CCRPI but do not qualify for funds.

While I understand some measure has to be used to determine “failing” schools, the CCRPI scores that the bill uses to make that determination were last calculated in 2018-19. This means that there may currently be schools that would score in the bottom 25% of schools now but didn’t 5 years ago so students in that district would not qualify for funding.

Because the bill specifies that a school must score in the bottom 25% of schools for two consecutive years, students who find themselves in a school that scores in the bottom 25% of schools would have to remain enrolled in that school for another year before they could be eligible for the $6,500. This is foolish and blatantly unjust in my view.

A couple more limits that the bill contains that I hope are done away with or expanded later are the income level cap and the amount of funds. The income cap presents the same issue that other entitlement cliffs do in that it has the potential to disincentivize earnings beyond the cap. For example, a family of four that makes $100,000 may hesitate to take a new job that pays $125,000 because they would lose out on the $6,500 per student. While I think this may certainly be the case, this is pretty low on my list of priorities in future bills.

On the other hand, the limit on the amount of funds is a little more concerning. According to the Georgia Recorder, “The program’s cost would be capped at 1% of the state’s Quality Basic Education formula, or about $140 million, which would accommodate about 21,500 students.” Frankly, this needs to be expanded to include more students to ensure no student who qualifies ever gets rejected. Also, this will need to be expanded if any other expansions in qualifying students are to be placed in the future.

The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act is undoubtedly a major win for the school choice movement in Georgia, but there is still much work to be done to expand the program. In particular, future legislative sessions should look into removing the “bottom 25% of schools” qualifier for students to be eligible for funding so that, ideally, all students, no matter their school, can receive the $6,500 towards their education of choice.

Before any of that can take place though, the Senate still needs to pass it again and Governor Kemp needs to sign it into law. Let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later.

God Bless,

Hunter Burnett