School choice in the states and what freedom scholarships might mean there. So i have three state policymakers here today. Kimberly yee is the 36 treasurer of arizona, and were grad to have you here. She stewards a 40 billion state budget and makes sure that the checks go to whom they need to go to. Treasurer yee has a number of firsts under her belt that are worth mentioning. Shes the first asianamerican elected to statewide office in arizona. Shes the first chineseamerican republican woman to win a major statewide office in the United States. She was Senate Majority leader in arizona and not the first, with but notably followed Sandra Day Oconnor about four decades later, so thats worth mentioning. She also, as i said, she chaired the Senate Education committee and helped create the nations First Education savings account in 2011. And interestingly, has a little bit of a pattern, i think, that you worked on the executive team of the former Arizona State treasurer, dean martin, and no
Glad to have you here. She stewards of 40 billion state budget and makes sure the checks go to whom they need to go to. Treasurer yee has a number of firsts. The first asianamerican elected to statewide office in arizona. Will the first chineseamerican republican woman to win a major statewide office in the United States. She was Senate Majority leader in arizona, not the first, but notably followed Sandra Day Oconnor so that is worth mentioning. She chaired the Senate Education committee and helped create the nations First Education savings account into thousand 11. Interestingly, has a pattern i think that you worked on the executive team of the former Arizona State treasurer, dean martin, and now you hold the post. And you are an analyst for the Senate Committee of education that you would later chair. Some grassroots work and then heading. Thanks for being here. John deberry is a representative of the 90th district in tennessee general assembly. He represents memphis and he has bee
This is about one hour. Good morning. And i getnat malkus to take us through our panel with state decisionmakers and we have an excellent panel and im going to introduce them now and we are going to jump into a discussion of School Choice in the state and what education scholarships might mean there. I have three state policymakers here today. Kimberly yee is the 36th treasurer of arizona and we are glad to have you here. She stewards of 40 billion state budget and makes sure the checks go to whom they need to go to. Treasurer yee has a number of firsts. The first asianamerican elected to statewide office in arizona. The first chineseamerican republican woman to win a major statewide office in the United States. She was Senate Majority leader in arizona, not the first, but notably followed Sandra Day Oconnor so that is worth mentioning. She chaired the Senate Education committee and helped create the nations first edution savings account into thousand 11. Interestingly, has a pattern i
Pleased to have i like to say that its a washington based think tank. We have from arizona, tennessee and pennsylvania, and they will talk about how some of the issues in washington affect the children and parents in those parts of the country and really, thats what our discussion is all about. How can we make our schools better. Now, a little bit a sense of how i come to this issue and why i think its so important. Some of you may know i spent 20 years in the social services in new york and working on the ways we help people get into work and out of poverty and move up economically. Personal responsibility, work, work supports, those things were important, but i always knew there was another domain, another domain of activity that was equally important to our safety net programs. Maybe more important in our safety net programs in helping struggling families moving up and helping their children move up economically and that was the world of education. And no one has done more, it seems
Where are parents can customize the learning experience. It could grow by the way probably to 100,000 if we had the budget to be able to make that happen. In states that are focused on this for special needs kids and for in the case of nftd adef and oth nevada and other place, my vision of this with the right policies in place, the most open system, would you have a half day, perhaps mom could pick a half day of of a traditional Public School, take an ap calculus course thats not available in that classroom setting online from one of the Virtual Schools, take an online music class from juilliard and a spanish course with a local retired school teacher. In that system, my guess is that our education outcomes would be much stronger and more sustainable to be able to deal with the world that were moving towards. So the question is, what are the issues at hand to implement this vision . And its complicated. Theres a lot of things that have to be worked on. What does accountability look lik