Show-Me Institute Podcast

The ESA Experience with Jenny Clark

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Jenny Clark, Founder & CEO of Love Your School, about the experience of navigating Arizona's Education Savings Account (ESA) Program from a parent's perspective.

Jenny shares her personal journey as a mother of five in Arizona and how her family has utilized a variety of schooling options to fit each child's unique needs. She explains the flexibility ESA programs offer, the challenges parents face in accessing and managing the funds, how it empowers families to take control of their children's education, the growing popularity of school choice in Arizona, and more.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Broadcast on:: 11 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) - Well, I'm really, really excited for this conversation on the podcast today because I was thinking about how recently in Missouri when we talk about a scholarship program or universal choice, which there's a chance. We've had some conversations around that in Missouri. I get a lot of questions of like, what would that look like? And what if parents abuse it? And should we trust parents to be able to spend the money? And how do we know that their kids are gonna do okay academically? And the person who popped in my mind was Jenny Clark, I love your school in Arizona because you have five kids, is that right? And you in Arizona has universal school choice. And they've had some form of school choice for a long time, but they were the first state that just went ahead and said, "Anyone can take the state money to educate their child." Essentially, however, you would like with that money. But I would like to know just a little bit about your background with that and your experience and why you decided to go this way with your children. - Awesome, well, thanks so much for having me on. First of all, I love talking about love your school and ESA. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So I was a state home mom for 10 years. I have five kiddos, three boys and two girls. And I was homeschooling. And about six, seven years ago now, we discovered that our oldest two boys were struggling learning to read. And so did some research, did some investigating and found out that under IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it's a mouthful, I was able to get my students evaluated at the local public school district. So any family, your kids are homeschooled, private schooled, you can get those evaluations. And we went through that really difficult lengthy process, which I can go into more later if it's important. But at the end of it, our kids ended up having severe dyslexia and dysgraphia, which is handwriting. And so they qualified at the time for our state's Education Savings Account Program or ESA. Because back then, for universal, it was for students that had a disability and a few other qualifying categories. It was a very small program. So once I jumped through all of these hoops for just months and months and months, and we finally got on the ESA, I was like, this is incredible. Like, this is completely life-changing. Like, I'm a stay-at-home mom. My husband is just finishing law school and working. And these dyslexia therapies are so expensive. And the public school district had said we don't even have those types of therapies 'cause I was like, should I enroll them? And you were able to use our ESA to get incredible dyslexia curriculum, tutoring, and all sorts of just really fun educational extras. And I started love your school after that just because I wanted to help more families go through that process and have someone to guide them so they wouldn't be alone. - So now you've done it with your three younger kids as well? - Yeah, so all five of my kids are on ESA. Three of them now have diagnosed dyslexia. And one of our fourth kiddo qualified actually first speech delay as a preschooler. 'Cause in our state, you can actually get on the ESA free kindergarten if you're a student with disability. So she was on pretty young. So all five of our kids are on an ESA. - Do you still homeschool them all or do they go to school? - So this year actually because our state got a universal education savings account in 2022, which means that all 1.1 million school-age children in Arizona qualified to take their education dollars to the school or education environment of their choice, a lot of new amazing schools and options have popped up in Arizona in the last two years. And so four of my kids are at this really cool hybrid school this year. It's three days a week, it's Christian, it's faith-based, it's no homework on Mondays and Fridays. They do like their remaining schoolwork and they absolutely love it. And the cost is just under the ESA award amount. And so this school is only in year two and they have over 300 kids and a massive waiting list. It's incredible. - And then in person, oh yeah, in person. - Oh wow. - My oldest son, just this year, started an all-up-heart high school program for homeschool kids. So he does all of his work through the week on Fridays. They go all day and they have all five or six. You can choose the classes of all of their classes on a Friday, brand new program just this year. - Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I've looked into the Arizona program quite a bit recently and looking at some of the vendors, my kids are well out of college, I have grandchildren. But I was like, wow, that's really, I kept finding vendors and I'm like, how fun is this? You get a little construction kit once a month. I mean, a lot of subscription services, just like parents are homeschooling but here comes all this extra really cool stuff around. Gardening or culinary arts or, and then I was thinking to myself, how would I even be able to decide how to put together the educational program that would just hit all the things I really wanna hit and bring in the academic pieces as well. And it just seems like so much potential to create such an enriched educational experience for your child that my kids all went to public schools, I went to public schools. And I know that they're fine. They're all fine now, but they watched a lot of movies. They had a lot of downtime at the public school. You know, there was just, and I was like, wow, I could really have tailored this thing. I don't even know what I would have done because there's so many options available. So good for you and the families in Arizona that you get to do all of that stuff. And do you feel like companies have responded? Like have they come into being because you guys have the money, the state money? - Yeah, so pre this year, and for the first several years we were on an ESA, we were completely homeschooling, home educating with our ESA, and we did exactly that. Like we have this robust Facebook group that started years ago in Arizona, love your school, actually has a really big ESA parent Facebook group. And so you go on there and parents would be like, hey, I need to know about X, Y, or Z. And then all these parents will say, check out this company, check out this company, check out this tutor. It's like a really cool community. And we did, like my kids over the last six, seven plus years have done so many amazing, incredible things because of an ESA, the delivery box kits, like during COVID. I shared a thread once about all the things that my kids were still able to get and do during COVID because we were already on an ESA. And there was a part of me that almost felt like guilty like sharing that and sharing those photos because we still had tutors that were relating to me, we were getting all sorts of cool delivery boxes in the mail, we were buying incredible curriculum and other different things. But one of my favorite stories that I love sharing about companies and how they're benefiting from ESA's is there was a company called Wishaka. It's like W-A-S-E-C-A. And they have really cool Montessori style curriculum, lots of stuff about nature and other countries. And I was like, this curriculum looks amazing and actually I could buy this and it would cover three of my kids, little expensive, but we have the ESA funds for it. And it was like sold out, sold out, sold out. So I called the company and was essentially like, hey, there's like a discount, I'm trying to do this stuff, order your products. And like, when are they gonna be back in? They're like, gosh, we don't know. Like we're getting all these orders right now out of Arizona and I was like, oh, let me explain to you why and what's going on. And they were just like flabbergasted. And so that's a big part of actually our work at Love Your School is when we hear about new amazing companies or online programs, synthesis is another great example. It's an online educational program that started out at SpaceX and we find out about them. We make sure they know about ESA and how it works and how parents have to make purchases so that it's approved. And then we promote it to parents so they know the cool stuff that's out there for their kids because we're all looking for, you know, like what's best for our kids and what's gonna meet kind of their unique needs. - So there's what, 80,000 maybe now in Arizona? - Yes. - In the program, 80,000 students, ish. I did see on a couple of the vendors' websites that they'll say ESA students, you know, click here, kind of a thing, like they are trying to reduce the burden on parents because do you feel like you're like, gotta be one of the earliest adopters? There is a burden on parents to figure out these programs and figure out how to maximize what the experience, wouldn't you say? - Absolutely. - And one of the biggest challenges can be when you're trying to make a purchase, let's say, and the company is like not a vendor in our system or they don't wanna be a vendor. And so you're paying for it and getting reimbursed, which is what a lot of parents here do. It's like the silly paperwork friction things that often come with government programs that we're constantly trying to reduce of like, hey, you can't have the parent name on the invoice. You gotta have the name of the kiddo 'cause if you have five kids on the program, you have to make sure it's all attached to each child. So there's a lot of like learning that takes place, but it is exciting when you start to hear, you know, people who are like former teachers or stay-at-home moms that are just insanely talented and have these amazing skills and they wanna bring those skills to kiddos. I tell people all the time, whether they're like at the park or people I meet for coffee and they're like, oh, I do this little thing on the side. I'm like, would you be interested in tutoring ESA parents? - I feel like you could charge this, you could do this. I'm like setting up people's businesses for them because I think about my own kids and I'm like, I want my kids to learn about that. And that's something that we did in Arizona with this place called the Phoenix Woodworking School. - Oh, cool. - We did a video on it. It's this incredible retired gentleman. He actually, it's just one of those stories where you're just like, you have to hear it from him 'cause it's too crazy to believe, but he had a brain tumor, cabinet maker, business, woodworker and they, he couldn't go back to his regular job and is get all this equipment, this great facility. And his own children were like, dad, why didn't you start a school? And so early on, they just didn't have people coming. People didn't know about it. At the same time, I was wanting my kids to start learning woodworking. So I'm searching around, found the website. I remember explaining to him and his wife what an ESA was. I'm like, listen, hear me out. - Yeah. - What it is, this is how I wanna pay. This is what I wanna do. And they were like willing to work with me. We got them approved. And then I started promoting them. And within a year, they were completely maxed out, weightless of 130 kids. My kids go there. They have learned so much. They've made the most incredible things. - That's awesome. - This man who thought he was basically gonna have to like retire and wasn't sure what he was gonna do has a thriving income and school. And all of these parents are getting amazing skills for their kids. So it's just really exciting. - That's awesome. So is it difficult for the businesses who wanna participate? Does the state make it hard on them? - I think the state doesn't make it hard on them, but governments are not inclined to make things easy for businesses, right? And so sometimes just the nitty gritty of like the paperwork or having to go through the state system or how the depositing of the ESA funds work, all of those things I think are, there's significant opportunities for improvement, actual implementation and operation of ESA programs. As we've talked about before, I am very lucky that I was on the ESA and my kids were on prior to universal ESA. So we actually have debit cards and we can still access the funds that are in our state set aside ESA account with the debit card. So, you know, when I'm paying the woodworking school, they send me an invoice, I enter in my debit card number, I make the payment, but a lot of other families have to take that invoice and go through a very kind of wonky system. And it just makes it hard and I'd like to see Arizona and other states remove that friction for families because we can argue up down in sideways whether or not these programs should exist. But if a state is passing an ESA program and it's there, it should work flawlessly for the parents and the families who it's intended for. - But they are subject to political wins, right? So in Arizona, depending on who the governor is, you guys and by you guys, I mean families with Arizona ESAs had a slight setback within the last few months, right? From the current administration, what happened there? - Yeah, so essentially our governor in our Attorney General's office right now, Attorney General Christmas, they came out and essentially said, "Hey, we think we see something in the law "that nobody has seen before, which is that." Any curriculum that a parent is or any supplemental item, which I'll explain what that is in a second, that a parent is purchasing, that it somehow has to be tied to curriculum. So just as an example, reading books have always been approved. As a parent, you can go into a store, a bookstore, or go online and let's say you're doing a section on American history, you can go buy a bunch of books and it doesn't need curriculum attached to it because it's educational, it's a book. Well, Attorney General's office said, "We actually think that all those items, "which are categorized as supplementary items "or supplemental items, they should have to be "specifically outlined, like the title of the book "should be in the curriculum." I love your school, we were like, that's crazy. That hasn't happened under our prior superintendent who was a Democrat, our current superintendent who is a Republican, and quite frankly, we think it's a conflation of some of the law and a misunderstanding of what the law's intent is. The result is that it has made things incredibly difficult for ESA parents since July. That's when they came down with that decision. And thankfully, the Goldwater Institute in Arizona has filed a lawsuit that will be, so this will be hatched out in court to look at, hey, does the law actually say that? Like, is that burden actually there for parents? And it's just really a sad and unfortunate situation because again, the program is here, it exists and families are using it. And a significant percentage of the families on Arizona's ESA are students with disabilities. And so the fact that we're playing politics with these kids and saying we wanna make it harder for you to buy the things that you need to educate your kids, that's just not what we should be doing and how we should be spending our time. - Yeah, your current superintendent of instruction supports the program, right? - Yes, our current superintendent of public instruction does support the ESA program. - Which is our equivalent of commissioner of education. So Missouri's got a commissioner of education and we have had a really, we have a scholarship program, it's called MOS scholars. 85% of the kids in the state are eligible. So pretty much covers up to an income amount that parents can, to be honest, make their own choices anyway. So pretty much everyone is eligible and there has been resistance to funding it. So Arizona started out as a tax credit program a long, long time ago. And then you guys sort of inched in with, as I understand it, the ESA for students with disabilities and then governor Ducey just busted it open and said, if it's good for some, it's good for everyone essentially, right? - Yeah, that's made it universal. Made it universal. - We've had kids who go to private schools who were already in private schools could get the ESA, right? Like it's just universal universal. And we've had a lot of resistance to that. And one thing I really want to address like out loud is, I think I know where you're gonna go with this, but the idea that you can't trust parents to spend the money in a way that will actually result in learning that, you know, I feel like there's been a lot of gotcha stories in the media like a parent bought a standup paddleboard or tickets to see world, whatever it was. And the idea is that parents don't know how to do this and they can't be trusted. - Yeah, absolutely. - Are you Jenny Clark to that? - No, so well, first of all, we all know that there's no amount of government in this spending that's acceptable, right? But if we're talking about not being able to trust parents because of miss spending, we have to look at the information and the data. And there is an astronomical amount of waste, fraud and abuse in the public school system and public school spending. I mean, I think a lot of us saw the, you know, chicken wings story recently where an entire school district, millions of dollars were essentially wasted because someone was purchasing, big purchasing chicken wings, right? And they started investigating and realized that the chicken wings that we bring purchased were not boneless. And so when you're buying chicken wings for kids, they're supposed to be boneless chicken wings and millions of dollars, right? - Millions. - Because of these types of things that are happening in the public school system. So the amount of waste, fraud and abuse in the public school system is absolutely astronomical. And that's because those systems are so large. But in Arizona, in our last Arizona auditor general report on the ESA program, which was done late 2018, and of course, you know, we're welcome and open to more evaluations on our program, found less than 0.01% of miss spending. And in some of those cases, when a parent back then we only had debit cards, would run a card somewhere that was approved, like Lakeshore learning, we used to have this issue. And Lakeshore learning would say, I'm so sorry, your ESA card is denied. And you were like, oh, no problem, I'll pay for it and get reimbursed. They were even counting those types of situations where a business had a merchant credit code or MCC code that was prohibited at the time by the department. They were counting that even as miss spending when it wasn't. So the number's probably even less. But the whole point here is not to try to get to a system where there is going to be 0%, right? There are always going to be bad actors in any type of government program. But you want to have appropriate guardrails that allow for those things to be caught and checked, but also give the families the freedom to purchase the items for their education. And I love talking about the cases like the paddle board, or things that people try to bring up that are like super controversial. And where I go with that conversation is this. I want my kids and this generation to be competing against other countries like China and places where these kids and what they're learning and what they're doing is pretty intense and pretty incredible. And I looked up how much the paddle board or water sports kayak industry is. And it's hundreds of millions of dollar industry. So if a kid on an ESA gets a $200 paddle board and is out there in one of our Arizona man-made lakes and is paddleboarding and all of a sudden goes, you know what? How to make this paddle board better. We could put the nozzle over here and we could put this piece over here and I don't like how it balances here. And all of a sudden a child who's never even had the experience or understanding of what it's like to do a water sport starts thinking about how he can make a product different and better. That's a good use of taxpayer dollars. That's the type of entrepreneurial thinking that I want for my children and for American children in general. - Absolutely. And you know, when parents are deciding what's the physical education piece of it versus the schools deciding what's the physical education piece of it. I mean, again, when you talk about waste fraud and abuse anyone who's been a parent in a school where every teacher got a whiteboard. Every teacher, every classroom. And then maybe they got training after the fact or every child got a Chromebook. There was a whole Apple iPad thing in LA Unified. I mean, any of those kinds of things were like, this is just bad decision making, right? It's just like spend the money. We're gonna figure it out later. Anyone who's at a child in the public school has probably got at least one experience with something like that. Or kids go to amusement parks. Anyway, I don't like to get in that conversation because I think we're micromanaging what parents are supposed to be allowed to do. But what about the question of are kids gonna learn more? You know, like we can't do these programs unless you can show me that the states that have these programs are doing better academically than the states that don't have those programs. Do you think that there should be a qualification on the program that kids have to have higher test scores in that program versus not in the program? - I absolutely do not. And that really is coming down to the accountability question, right? And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is our current understanding and idea of accountability, which is standardized testing, is that the standard by which we want to judge ESA programs and these kids and these families that are utilizing these programs? And I would say, no, it's not. We all know that there are massive issues and that it varies state by state with how we currently check for performance and accountability, right? Now, most private schools, to be honest, they're already utilizing either the state testing or other testing because they want to promote that. They want to say, hey, come to our school, look how amazing our kids are doing, but it's voluntary. It's not required. And when it comes to families who are home educating or producing an education, all a cart, I want to say to the people that are like, well, those kids should get testing so we can prove it. I want to say, are you kidding me right now? Like, have you even seen some of the cursory data that's out there about how well homeschool kids actually perform, how they have greater college retention, their SAT scores and these types of things? I'm like, get out of here, right? Because nobody cares more about how your child is doing than you as the parent. And I don't even like the argument where they're like, yeah, but some families, those low-income families or those families that never went to college, what about them? - I like to say that in Missouri, 25% of eighth graders scored on grade level, public school students. And I don't think that 75% of ESA parents would find a math curriculum for their child that fits them and finish it up after the year and go, well, well, Gastro didn't get through it, Gastro not on grade level. I don't think that three out of four homeschool parents would be like, well, that was a wash. He didn't get it, you know what I mean? - Oh, totally. - So we'll move on to the next year. We'll move on from that to algebra. He didn't get the, you know, he didn't get pre-algebra, but whatever. I mean, the way it happens in the public school system where we, year after year after year, at least in Missouri, we don't get to 50% on grade level ever. We're like in the 40s and 30s. And I just don't believe that half of homeschool parents would just be like, you know, at homeschooled them, it didn't work out, but we just kept going. I just think that's the accountability where parents saying, okay, for some reason, you're, you know, eight and you're not reading fluently. So we need to get really hyper focused on this reading thing for you because as a parent, you're going to be the one that's like, and I think people, a lot more people got this during COVID when they watched their kids learn, you know? And they're like, what happened along division? Things like that, you know? And I think that that is, you know, some folks don't think it's sufficient accountability, but I think it's big, big accountability when you have a parent who is the one who's invested the time to look for the resources or to choose how that child's going to be educated. And then they expect the return on that. And I think it's enough, and I think it's certainly better than anything happening in the public school system, but I hear that all the time. Like, and Arizona actually academically has improved since they became a very wide open choice state, even just charter schools. I mean, they have improved particularly in growth. So you do see it in Arizona, you do see it in Florida, but I just don't think that that should be the measure. I think the measure is going to be a very long game. It's going to be how these children do in college and beyond in attainment, in earnings. And certainly I would agree with you, like your children are much better positioned than so many kids who experience the pandemic as kindergartners or ninth graders. I mean, that generation is going to, our third grade reading scores across the board in the United States are so far down. And those kids, they probably won't catch up. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have right now, my youngest two are nine and six. So I think about all the time, if they had been, if we hadn't had the EFA and they had been in a traditional preschool or kindergarten program without the option of an ESA, how much worse off they would be, 'cause they're right in that window. And I'm just so grateful when I look at my kids, I'm like, I can easily say that my children did not experience any of the social, emotional, or educational learning loss that students did in the public school system experience, which is a tragedy because they were on, they were on an ESA and we had the funds to just continue and keep on moving. And your point about math, just kind of final thoughts on that, I think it's really great because you can respond faster when you have an ESA and something isn't working. If you buy a curriculum and let's say it's, you know, math you see, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, my kid is, this isn't working. It's not the best fit for them. Your brain is not processing it this way. You can order a new curriculum tomorrow and try that new math curriculum out. You can go on out school and get an online math tutor. You can take them to the local tutoring company down the street and pay for it with your ESA. How long do you think it's gonna take when your child's in the public school system to get the issue addressed? Get them evaluated to see if they have a learning disability. That's a whole nother thing that takes three to six months. Get them pull out services and all those types of things. We've lost almost a whole year and do rapid response when you the parent are in control of the funding. - That's awesome. I could talk to you about this forever, but I don't want to take too much more of your time. I just wonder like in closing, Arizona was a leader in this. Arizona was the first state. Now we have 12 states where parents can essentially craft their own education. Not all of them include homeschooling. Do you think we're sort of getting past the traditional, I don't know about traditional, like the prior view of homeschoolers as being sort of like anti-social, sort of like trying to stay away from society and keep their kids away from society and their kids are gonna grow up and be odd 'cause they're homeschooled. Do you think that finally can be put to rest? - Oh, I think it's totally being put to rest. I think when you as, because more adults are interacting with these kids who have been homeschooled or who have been home educated with an ESA and these kids are now coming of age to get jobs, right? They're applying for different things and these adults are going, something's different about this kid in a good way. And so the stigma that was once associated with homeschooling, I don't think exists anymore. And I think the other thing that's happening is this beautiful pressure and demand from families that are in states going, okay, my friends is in Arizona and they get $7,500 per child to home educate their kiddo or put them in private school if they want. And the money goes all the way up to $30,000 a year if they have a student with a disability. Why don't we have that? I want that. And so that parents talk and that pressure is there. And so even those states that have passed ESAs that I think have wrongly excluded homeschoolers, I think those families are going to start putting pressure for those laws to be changed too. Because the most important thing to remember is that disabilities don't discriminate based on whether the child's in public school or private school or is being home educated. And a lot of those diagnoses like dyslexia, one in five kids have dyslexia now, one in 33 kids have autism. And so when we're sitting here saying we're going to give that money, but only if the kid goes to a private school, that's actually not doing what's best for the child, it's not doing what's best for your state. And ultimately the country as a whole to pick and choose winners when it comes to ESAs and education. Now I know in some states it was really hard to get either additional funding for students with disabilities or include homeschoolers. But I look forward to seeing that change as parents put that pressure on their lawmakers in the coming years. - Yeah, I hope to see that as well. Well, thank you so much for joining us. You're busy, I won't take more of your time, but I do appreciate it. It's such a great perspective as somebody who's been around this scene for a long time in a big way, so thank you so much. - And can you just say your website one time? I love your school. - Yeah, so our website is loveyourschool.org and you can also find us on Instagram and X. - loveyourschool.org, I've said it twice incorrectly. So thanks so much, Jenny. - Thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)