Yesterday, both houses of the Virginia Legislature rejected Education Savings Accounts, aka Education Scam Accounts.
The Virginia Mercury reported:
All four bills put forward by Republicans this year to let parents use state education funding to cover the costs of educational opportunities outside the public school system failed to make it through this year’s General Assembly.
One bill carried by Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, died in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Two others carried by Dels. Phillip Scott, R-Spotsylvania, and Marie March, R-Floyd, failed in Republican-controlled House Education subcommittees
The most promising, House Bill 1508 from Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, initially cleared the House Education Committee, which Davis chairs, but ran into trouble later in the legislative process.
That bill, which gained the support of numerous Republicans including Lt.-Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, would have created the Virginia Education Success Account Program, a proposal that would allow parents to set up a savings account funded with state dollars that could be used to cover educational expenses outside public schools in Virginia. Funds could be used for costs like tuition, deposits, fees and textbooks at a private elementary or secondary school in Virginia.
Last month, Davis estimated that an average of $6,303.25 could have been available per student. The program would only have applied to students previously enrolled in public school or who were starting kindergarten or attending first grade for the first time….
Davis said when the bill reached the House Appropriations Committee Friday, he was one vote short of what he needed to pass the legislation and agreed to send it back to the Education Committee in hopes of fast-tracking it through the approvals it still needed. He told the Mercury he considered adding a delayed enactment clause to the proposal to skirt concerns about the current budget cycle but said the committee was “one day short” of exercising that option.
But that bill died in committee.
Democrats opposed all of these measures, because they would take funding away from public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good!
More good news; Vermont legislature tries to do the right thing with public funding of private schools:
In more rural parts of Vermont, many towns are too small to operate public schools. Instead, students are eligible to receive public tuition money — sometimes called vouchers — to attend school elsewhere. Students can use those dollars to pay for tuition at public and private schools in and out of the state.
For years, as a general rule, private religious schools were excluded from Vermont’s tuition system. But amid a series of Supreme Court decisions — most recently, Carson v. Makin, last June — that firewall has effectively disintegrated.
The prospect of taxpayer money subsidizing religious worship is an uncomfortable one for many secular Vermonters. It also raises legal questions, because Vermont’s constitution includes a clause that protects residents from being forced to support religious practices with which they disagree.
Great news!!
Sanity and intelligence win another battle.