Extending Tax-Credit Scholarships

If the government must have a presence in our education system, tax-credit scholarships should be available nationally.

Author: Larry Sand

According to a just-released Education Opportunity in America report by 50CAN, only 39% of public school parents are satisfied with their child’s education.

Other polling results are also discouraging. Released in August, EdChoice’s annual Schooling in America Survey revealed that 64% of parents think K–12 education in America is on the wrong track. Not only is this an eight-point increase from last year, but it is also the highest level of pessimism among parents since the question was first asked in 2014.

Hence, it should be no surprise that a poll from RealClear Opinion Research discloses that 71% of Americans, including 80% of Republicans, 66% of Democrats, and 69% of independents, support school choice.

And indeed, parental freedom is accelerating rapidly. Over the past three years, 12 states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia—have passed universal or near-universal school choice laws, and more states are set to join them in the coming years.

Three more states could be added shortly, as school choice is on the November ballot in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska. Additionally, Texas is among the states poised to pass sweeping choice measures in 2025.

In all, 32 states have implemented some sort of private choice program thus far, and as EdChoice reports, over one million children now participate in these programs across the U.S. Moreover, 22 million students—or 40% nationwide—are now eligible to participate.

While education is a hot-button topic, the subject has not been a high-priority issue in the presidential campaign. Donald Trump has addressed it a few times, notably asserting, “I’m going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states.”

Kamala Harris responded to Trump’s comments about closing the DOE in a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, saying, “We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”

Harris’s comment is, of course, fallacious. The U.S. Department of Education does not fund public schools to any serious degree. On average, each state derives just 13.6% of funding for public K-12 education from the federal government. Those dollars come with strings attached, and the cost of complying may not be worth ceding control of classrooms, which is why some states are considering weaning themselves off the federal dole.

However the election shakes out, it’s doubtful that the federal hand in education will disappear. So, the best we can do is to minimize it and leave education policy and financing to individual states, with one exception: a national tax credit program.

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