Reality Check With Jeanne Allen

The major tax reform law that passed Congress in mid-December 2017 included a provision expanding the use of so-called 529 plans—tax free savings accounts that allow parents to put away money for their children’s college education. Now, they can be used for elementary and secondary education too. In this week’s Episode 6 of Reality Check with Jeanne Allen, Thomas Carroll, a leader in the effort to include the measure in the tax bill, explains why it’s so important: “it’s the first time that a national school choice measure has been adopted [at the federal level] in the past 20 years.” Carroll knows what he’s talking about—he helped create New York’s charter school law and founded a network of high-performing urban charter schools.