Overview

The Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program represents the latest in a series of activities undertaken by its founder and members of its board of directors to provide Georgia families with greater opportunities for access to learning.

The Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program is rooted in the philosophy that parents are the first and most important educators of their children and should have equal access to any public funds that the government makes available to parents for the K-12 education of their children. The public education funds received by parents should then be available for use by them to secure an education for their children at the schools of their choice, whether public, public-charter, private, or home schools.

Throughout history, several noted philosophers, economists, and jurists have stressed the importance of school choice:

• “If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them.”- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
• “Government, preferably local governmental units, would give each child, through his parents, a specified sum to be used solely in paying for his general education; the parents would be free to spend this sum at a school of their own choice, provided it met certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate governmental unit. Such schools would be conducted under a variety of auspices: by private enterprises operated for profit, nonprofit institutions established by private endowment, religious bodies, and some even by governmental units.”- Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education” (1955)
• “While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society. . . . The failure to provide education to poor urban children perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, dependence, criminality, and alienation that continues for the remainder of their lives. If society cannot end racial discrimination, at least it can arm minorities with the education to defend themselves from some of discrimination’s effects.”- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from his concurring decision in the landmark school choice case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002)

Charter Schools

Charter schools are nonsectarian public schools of choice that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. The "charter" establishing each such school is a performance contract detailing the school's mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success. The length of time for which charters are granted varies, but most are granted for 3 – 5 years. At the end of the term, the entity granting the charter may renew the school's contract. Charter schools are accountable to their sponsor—usually a state or local school board—to produce positive academic results and adhere to the charter contract.

Prior to 1998, only local public school districts were permitted to create and operate charter schools. In 1998, Georgia law was amended to allow parents, educators, community leaders, and others to petition their local school boards for approval to create and operate charter schools.

A copy of a 1997 Wall Street Journal article discussing the Georgia charter schools reform effort is available here.

Since 1998, local public school boards in Georgia have been slow to embrace the charter school movement. As a result, in 2008, Georgia law was amended to create a statewide commission that can approve a petition for a charter school even if the local school board has rejected it. The Georgia Charter Schools Commission will work with the Georgia Department of Education Charter Schools Office to ensure that potential charter school organizers who have their petitions rejected by a local school board will receive a fair hearing from an impartial chartering authority.

More information about Georgia’s charter school efforts is available at: http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/pea_charter.aspx.

In a June 2008 Issue Brief of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, GOAL Board member, Gerard Robinson, who also serves as the President of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, co-authored a paper titled “The Color of Success:  Black Student Achievement in Public Charter Schools."

Privately-Funded School Choice

In the late 1990s, two privately funded scholarship programs offered low-income parents residing in urban communities throughout America the opportunity to send their children to the K – 8 public and private schools of their choice. Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation America (“CEO America”) and Children’s Scholarship Fund provided millions of dollars’ worth of tuition scholarships to families.

In February of 1997, the GOAL Scholarship Fund, then operated by Georgia Community Foundation, Inc. (“GCF”), received a $315,000 grant from the Children’s Education Foundation, Inc. (a CEO-America program), to provide 250 Atlanta families with scholarship assistance. The administration of the GOAL Scholarship Fund inspired Jim Kelly and the members of the GCF board to pursue other education reform initiatives.

A copy of an article from the Atlanta Business Chronicle featuring GCF’s administration of the GOAL Scholarship Fund and its attempt to secure contributions from the Children’s Scholarship Fund is available here.

Publicly-Funded School Choice

During the 1990s, in an attempt to provide low-income families with opportunities to escape poor-performing public schools, publicly funded school choice programs were instituted in Cleveland, Ohio, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In the case of the Cleveland program, the public schools in many of the poorer parts of Cleveland were deemed failures, and the Ohio legislature enacted the Pilot Project Scholarship Program in an effort to address the problem. The program provided tuition vouchers for up to $2,250 a year to some parents of students in the Cleveland City School District to attend participating public or private schools in the city and neighboring suburbs; it also allocated tutorial aid for students who remained in public school. The vouchers were distributed to parents according to financial need, and the parents chose where to enroll their children.

Teacher unions in Ohio sued to block implementation of the program. Ultimately, in a 5-4 decision in the case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Cleveland school voucher program, deciding that the program did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In the Zelman case, Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., for which Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program Director Jim Kelly serves as president, filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief in support of school choice. A copy of the amicus curiae brief is located at http://www.ij.org/pdf_folder/school_choice/ohio/amicus/SCLJ.pdf.

A copy of an article detailing Jim Kelly’s involvement in the Zelman case and his participation in the school choice movement is available here.    

A copy of a Survey of School Choice Research, authored in 2005 by GOAL Scholarship Program Board member Gerard Robinson, is available here. 

After-School Programs

For many low-income working parents, it is critical to be able to have their children participate in after-school programs that provide additional educational opportunities, character-building activities, and a safe environment. Often, groups not employed by the school district offer these after-school programs at local public schools.

Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program board member Gerard Robinson, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, Inc., has written about the importance of these after-school programs. A copy of his article is available here. (Link to pdf)

In the case of Good News Club v. Milford Central Schools (2001), the Supreme Court of the United States decided that local school districts could not discriminate against religious groups seeking equal access to space in public schools for the delivery of after-school programs similar in purpose to the ones that secular groups are permitted to deliver at the public schools.

In the Good News Club case, Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C. filed an amicus curiae brief in support of equal access for religious groups to public schools for the operation of after-school programs. A copy of the amicus curiae brief is available at
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/99-2036/99-2036fo5.pdf.

Georgia Special Needs Scholarship

Often, parents of children who have special needs because of disabilities have difficulty locating an appropriate educational setting for their children in public schools. To address this problem, in 2007, Georgia law (Senate Bill 10) created the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship.

The Georgia Special Needs Scholarship allows children with special needs to receive a scholarship from the state of Georgia for use at a public or private school that best fits the needs of the child as determined by his or her parents.

To be eligible to receive a Special Needs Scholarship, a student must:

• have a parent who currently lives in Georgia and has been a resident for one calendar year;
• have been enrolled as a student at a Georgia public school and present for both the October and March FTE counts of the preceding school year; and
• have his or her parent fill out a parental intent form from the Department of Education.

In the 2007-08 school year, 908 children received scholarships, averaged at $6,273. Further information about Georgia’s Special Needs Scholarship is available at http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/sb10.aspx.

Tax Credit Scholarships

With its enactment of the Georgia Education Expense Credit (House Bill 1133), Georgia has joined the five other states that are using tax credit scholarship programs to provide children from low-income families with greater opportunities for access to learning.

The Georgia Education Expense Credit provides individual and corporate taxpayers with the opportunity to contribute to qualified student scholarship organizations and receive a dollar-for-dollar credit against their Georgia income tax liabilities. The amounts contributed to the SSOs are used to provide scholarships to students who desire to attend private K-12 schools.

Corporations who contribute to qualified SSOs are eligible for a credit against their Georgia income tax liability in an amount not to exceed the actual amount expended or 75 percent of the corporation’s income tax liability, whichever is less.

Individuals who contribute to Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc., in the case of a single individual or a head of household, will receive a credit against their Georgia income tax liability in an amount equal to the actual amount expended or $1,000.00 per tax year, whichever is less. In the case of a contribution made by a married couple filing a joint return, the amount of the tax credit is equal to the actual amount expended or $2,500.00 per tax year, whichever is less.

The annual amount of available Education Expense Credits has been capped at $50 million.

A copy of Georgia’s Education Expense Credit legislation is located at
http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/
versions/hb1133_HB_1133_AP_7.htm