Photo by Arthur Krijgsman
I recently had an op-ed published in The Des Moines Register. In case you missed it, here is the piece in full:
Iowa families are rightly concerned about rising property taxes. That concern deserves serious, honest debate. But in a Des Moines Register column published on January 18th, Rekha Basu argues that eliminating Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) would be a sensible way to help fund property tax relief and strengthen public schools.
That conclusion rests on faulty assumptions—and risks harming Iowa students and families in the process.
At the center of the proposal Basu highlights is a plan from Herman Quirmbach to end ESAs and redirect those funds toward reducing the school-related portion of property taxes. It is presented as a “win-win.” In reality, it creates a false choice between supporting families who use school choice and addressing Iowa’s property tax challenges.
First, ESAs are not a “drain” on public education. Families who participate in the program continue to pay property taxes that support local school districts, even though their children no longer attend those schools. Public schools retain local revenue for students they are no longer educating. At the state level, ESA funding is typically lower than the per-pupil cost in the public system. Also, public schools receive $1200 for every student with an ESA, even if they never set foot in a public school. Treating ESA funding as a pure loss ignores these basic fiscal realities.
Second, the argument that school choice primarily benefits wealthy families oversimplifies who uses ESAs and why. Iowa families choose nonpublic schools for many reasons—academic rigor, special-needs services, safety concerns, faith-based education, or simply a better fit for their child. ESAs make these options accessible not just to the affluent, but to middle-income and working families who otherwise would have no real choice at all.
Basu also suggests that ESAs were driven largely by cultural disagreements with public schools. That framing dismisses the real experiences of parents across Iowa who are focused not on politics, but on their children’s needs. Education policy should reflect families’ diverse circumstances, not reduce them to caricatures.
The column further raises concerns about church-state separation, implying that ESAs improperly funnel public money to religious schools. But this issue is well-settled. ESA funds go to parents, not schools. Parents independently decide how to use them. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld programs structured this way as constitutional. Calling ESAs a violation of church-state separation misrepresents how the program works.
Another claim is that ESAs are unfair because some rural counties lack private schools. Yet the absence of options in some areas is not a reason to eliminate choice statewide. In fact, school choice programs often encourage new models to emerge over time, including hybrid, microschool, and online options. In Iowa, we are seeing the creation of new private schools, particularly where they never existed before because of ESAs. Ending ESAs would lock in today’s limitations rather than allow innovation to meet future needs.
Most troubling is the underlying premise that eliminating ESAs is an acceptable way to “pay for” other policy priorities. Education Savings Accounts serve real students and families who have made decisions based on the program’s existence. Treating those students as a budgetary offset undermines trust and stability in education policy.
Property taxes are a serious issue. Public schools deserve strong support. But Iowa does not need to sacrifice educational freedom to have that conversation. School choice and public education are not mutually exclusive, and framing them as such only deepens division without solving the problem at hand.
Iowa’s strength has long been its commitment to families, opportunity, and practical solutions. Preserving Education Savings Accounts while debating fiscal policy honors that tradition far better than eliminating options for students who rely on them.
Shane Vander Hart is the communications director for the Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education and the Iowa Association of Christian Schools.