The Georgia Public Policy Foundation writes:

The Children’s Education Foundation (CEF) was started in August of 1992 with a gift of $1 million from a successful Atlanta businessman who wanted to provide a choice of educational opportunities to low-income families. Because of limited finances, these families had no choice in where their children went to school.

The program was designed to provide participating families with a 50 percent financial scholarship (in the form of a voucher) toward the tuition cost at a school of the parents’ choice, either public or private. The other half of the tuition would have to be paid by the family.

Despite the availability of a “free” education at their assigned public school, many times more low-income families applied to participate in the program than could be accommodated. Within the first week of the program’s announcement, CEF received more than 500 applications for the 200 slots, and was forced to cut off applications when the number reached nearly 1,000…

Georgia State University’s Policy Research Center conducted a survey of the parents of 95 CEF scholarship students…When a low-income family is required to come up with half of the cost of tuition, as is the case with the CEF program, that family must be extraordinarily convinced that a different school will greatly benefit the child…

The survey…found that with incomes only slightly above the poverty level, these families were willing to do whatever was necessary to pay their half of the tuition. For example:

• 26% cut other expenses
• 21% added work hours or took second jobs
• 13% received some financial help from relatives or friends
• 8% became employed at their children’s schools

…For these children and many more, the privately-funded voucher program of the Children’s Education Foundation is their only hope — their ticket out. Being financially disadvantaged, these children would have no alternative to the schools assigned to them, except for CEF…

Unlike families that have enough money to pay full tuition at private schools, or even families who can afford to relocate to another school district with better schools, these families would have no choice except for CEF.

Success . . . One Child At A Time
A scholarship for an ambitious low-income child can enliven the entire family and bring hope to the entire neighborhood. This is especially true where the educational needs of so many children from low income families are not being adequately addressed in their neighborhood public schools. Yet, in these same neighborhoods, there are often private and parochial schools that could better serve some of these children. There are also situations, like Tiffany’s, in which transferring to an out-of-district public school is best for a particular child.

Privately-funded initiatives will not reform education in the inner city, but they will bring substantial new hope to a few eager children and to their families. As the father of one scholarship child has so aptly noted, “How can we go wrong if we can keep our dreams alive?”

So, are school choice programs successful? The clear and convincing answer for several hundred Atlanta children and their families is an unequivocal, “Yes!”

HatTip: Catallarcy