This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 18, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

At the state level, 2015 has already been a big year for educational freedom.

Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom,

discusses the long list of highlights and short list of disappointments.

The Wall Street Journal called 2011 the year of school choice after 13 states had adopted

new or expanded school choice programs. This year looked like it was going to be the year of educational choice.

And by that I mean in 2011 most of the states were either adopting a traditional voucher program

or they were adopting a scholarship tax credit program where donors to

scholarship organizations would receive tax credits in return for their donations and then those scholarship organizations would help low and middle income families attend the school of their choice.

The major difference this year is that a number of

states have adopted education savings accounts. Unlike previous voucher and tax

credit programs, the savings accounts allow families to

purchase a wide variety of educational products and services.

For example, in addition to

traditional private school tuition

they could also purchase

tutors, textbooks,

online classes, homeschool curricula, etc.

And so it allows families to truly customize education

for their children.

All right, so which states have moved and what did they do?

...