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Setting the record straight on education reform

Guest Contributor
Guest Contributor
Opinion
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by Paul Anderson

Someone once told me that Republicans act but never explain, and Democrats explain but never act. Some have said that Nevada parents don’t totally understand what an Education Savings Account (ESA) is, how it might be beneficial to their kids’ education, and what impact this has on our state. There has been an enormous amount of misinformation about the education reforms made two years ago, but Nevada families need to know the facts and they deserve to know that good people are working hard for them every day.

When I became majority leader in the Assembly for the 2015 session, I had only one mission in mind – the mission that brought me to the Assembly for the first time in 2012, and one I have been dedicated to every day since, and that is improving education for our children. As the father of four, I have seen first-hand the serious flaws in Nevada’s public education system, and from that has grown a passion to make things better for those who will come later. They were promises I made to my family and to my constituents, and they were promises I intended to keep.

Nevada’s public education has ranked at or near the bottom nationally for decades. While we have zoomed to the top in job creation, business development and tourism, we have failed our children for years. Most of those years, my friends across the aisle controlled both houses of the Legislature, and while I’m not one to point fingers, their current protestations ring hollow with that knowledge.

We knew that reforming education wouldn’t happen overnight. It would take hard work, patience, investment, and the knowledge that we were going to attempt things that are still fairly new, not just in Nevada but across America. We had to break the status quo.

First, we knew we wanted to give parents options. Every student has unique needs and learns differently. Second, we needed to ensure that what we did worked for students from every demographic – no family should be ahead in the game because of their income, their race, their gender. We also knew that we needed to make sure that what we did didn’t just get people half-way there, it had to get them over the finish line. That’s why ESAs can be used, not just for the cost of tuition, but for uniforms, computers, tutors, books and transportation.

Nevada’s ESA program gives students the opportunity to find a school that fits their needs – whether that’s technical school, private school – so students have the ability to go where they learn best. Perhaps most importantly, ESAs are not funded by taking any money out of the public school system, but instead are funded by a new budget line. That way, we weren’t taking money out of public schools that needed it. In fact, in order to balance our desire to serve all students, we invested hundreds of millions of dollars into our public schools from special needs to gifted and talented to career technical education.

We also knew that the state would not have the ability to fund universal ESAs, and that even the funding we did get will need to be augmented by other forms. So, we introduced and passed the Opportunity Scholarship, which doesn’t just help low-income families send their children to good schools, it allows folks who have met some success in life to give back to their communities by donating to the program.

In two short years, these programs have taken off. Nearly 10,000 families have applied for an ESA, and to date, $10.5 million has been donated to the Opportunity Scholarship program, and that amount continues to grow. We knew then and know now that these programs would work if given the chance, but these numbers are beyond our expectations.

There are good people, friends of mine, who have disagreed very publicly with me. They have accused ESAs of being a tool of the rich, of robbing public schools to fund schools in wealthy areas, and running a voucher program. (For what it’s worth – the difference between an ESA and a voucher is that an ESA can cover non-tuition education expenses, as explained above, and can roll over year to year. A voucher covers tuition and is not able to be rolled in subsequent years.)

But how long do we fail before we try to fix the problem? By giving students choices, by customizing educational opportunities, and trying new programs that have shown success in other states, we have a real opportunity to progress and to show students that we are willing to come together for their sake. Our students deserve results and progress.

This is not the time for canned political one-liners. That won’t solve any problems. This is a time to keep working and to keep promises. It’s a time to empower parents and students, to provide them opportunities and to bring Nevada’s system of education into the 21st century. My promise has always been that I will do what needs to be done to improve educational opportunities. I have kept it. I am still keeping it.

Quality education should not belong solely to those who can afford it – it should belong to everybody, and ESAs help get us there.

Republican Assemblyman Paul Anderson in his Carson City office on Feb. 14, 2017.

Paul Anderson, a Republican, is the Assembly minority leader. You can read more about him here.

Feature photo: Elementary school in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Feb. 07, 2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

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