Expanding School Choice: Making Education More Accessible or Bureaucratic Boondoggle?

Expanding School Choice: Making Education More Accessible or Bureaucratic Boondoggle?

Expanding School Choice: Making Education More Accessible or Bureaucratic Boondoggle?
The Trump administration’s proposal would make Catholic schooling more accessible, but it raises concerns about federal overreach.

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos introduced a proposal last month, aimed at expanding school choice, that would provide “a $5-billion annual federal tax credit for voluntary donations to state-based scholarship programs.”

While some groups welcome the proposal as a way to help make Catholic and private schools more accessible to lower-income families, others have raised questions about its long-term effects on the federal government’s influence on education.

The “Education Freedom Scholarships” plan has been introduced in both the House and Senate by Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. The Department of Education (DOE) explained that these scholarships “will be funded through taxpayers’ voluntary contributions to state‐identified Scholarship-Granting Organizations (SGOs),” and the taxpayers who contribute will get a “non‐refundable, dollar‐for‐dollar federal tax credit.”

They emphasized that the scholarship program “will not create a new federal education program” but “instead will allow states to decide whether to participate and how to select eligible students, education providers and allowable education expenses.”

“The key element of the proposal is freedom for all involved,” DeVos said in a statement announcing the program. “Students, families, teachers, schools, states — all can participate, if they choose, and do so in the ways that work best for them. The major shift is that a student’s needs and preferences, not their address or family income, will determine the type and quality of education they can pursue.”

According to the DOE, states could put the program funding toward an array of educational opportunities for students, including private and home education, special-education services and therapies, summer and after-school education programs, and tutoring for students in low-performing schools.

However, several prominent organizations that advocate for school choice have come out in opposition to the proposal, raising concerns over the consequences of this kind of federal involvement in state school-choice programs.



Constitutional and State Concerns

Lindsey Burke, the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, told the Register that, while the Trump administration’s support for school choice is welcome, “establishing a nationwide federal tax credit scholarship program goes in the wrong direction: It would grow, rather than shrink, federal intervention in K-12 education.”

Burke explained that the tax credit could incentivize a certain kind of giving that could hurt state programs.

“A dollar-for-dollar tax credit at the federal level could also mean donors give first to the more generous federal program (most state programs are not dollar-for-dollar),” she said, “and then, if they still have funding available, contribute to their state program. That CONTINUE READING: Expanding School Choice: Making Education More Accessible or Bureaucratic Boondoggle?