Giving Compass Take:

· The Heritage Foundation discusses the potential for Congress to use annual funding for the 21st CCLCs to instead provide education savings accounts for military children.

· How will the education savings accounts be funded and used? What are the benefits of education savings accounts?

· Read more about ESAs for children of the military. 

Congress left unfinished business in 2018. Lawmakers considered proposals to create education savings accounts (ESAs) for children in military families, but they failed to agree on how to redirect taxpayer resources from existing programs to create the accounts. In a proposal introduced by Representative Jim Banks (R–IN) and Senator Ben Sasse (R–NE), a portion of federal Impact Aid funding would have been repurposed to help federally connected students in military families find quality learning options.

Impact Aid remains a promising path forward for funding ESAs for military families. The 116th Congress should also consider repurposing funding from other federal education programs that have been slated for elimination or are otherwise not meeting program objectives so that students in military families can have more learning options. Such programs could include Education Innovation Research Grants (funded at $120,000,000); Part A of Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, $1.1 billion); and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program ($1.2 billion annually).

Read the full article about education savings accounts for military children by Lindsey Burke, Jude Schwalbach and Jonathan Butcher at The Heritage Foundation.