Posted on Saturday, March, 5th, 2016 in Newsroom.
In his proposed budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo once again allocates $150 million for education tax credits that would divert much-needed resources from public schools to create vouchers for private and parochial school tuition.
Although his attempts to create these vouchers have been defeated repeatedly, he is trying again.
by Lori Bezahler, Commentary
In his proposed budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo once again allocates $150 million for education tax credits that would divert much-needed resources from public schools to create vouchers for private and parochial school tuition.
Although his attempts to create these vouchers have been defeated repeatedly, he is trying again.
Education tax credits allow corporations and individuals to make donations to nonprofits that offer scholarships to private and parochial schools. In exchange, the donors receive a credit on their state tax bill. New York’s proposed legislation would allow a credit for 75 percent of the donation, up to $1 million per donor. The model legislation for New York, and many other states’ education tax credit laws, comes from the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
In New York, and elsewhere, wealthy anti-government activists are key advocates for the legislation.
Without the legislation, donors are already able to make charitable donations to these same nonprofits and schools, and to receive tax benefits for the donations as for any charitable contribution. But with education tax credits, they get a much more generous benefit, paid for by you and me.
A study of Pennsylvania’s education tax credit program by the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center shows that ordinary Pennsylvania taxpayers cover more than $9 out of $10 of the corporate contributions. Because of the way Pennsylvania’s law is structured, the study found that corporations actually pay only $20 of a $300,000 donation. Once federal tax deductions for the charitable contributions are also calculated, some “donations” even yield a tax benefit that exceeds the contribution — so they may actually make money on the deal, even as public schools lose resources and taxpayers see their tax dollars go to tuition for private and religious schools.
Although dubbed the Parental Choice Act, and marketed to New Yorkers as a way to provide families with choices outside of the public school system, there is ample evidence from other states that these programs are more about schools choosing students, than parents choosing schools.
Rather than making private schools accessible to all children, these programs serve to exclude them. In Georgia, nearly one quarter of the schools accepting voucher funds have explicit policies excluding LGBTQ students and children of same sex couples, and nearly all participating private schools in Georgia are segregated by race. In Mississippi, participating schools have been shown to refuse admission to students with special needs who have been approved for the state’s scholarships.
In addition to overt policies that exclude whole groups of students, the cost of attending private schools usually exceeds the voucher, making them unaffordable to the families they are purported to serve. According to the Milton Friedman Foundation, the average tax credit scholarship is just $900, but since the average private school tuition exceeds $9,500, that will do little to make private education available to most families.
It should be no surprise then that the average gross income for families receiving the tax-funded vouchers in Georgia was more than $35,000 above that of the average Georgia family.
New York is not likely to do any better. Cuomo’s proposal excludes only the very wealthiest New Yorkers by setting the cap for family income at $250,000, nearly five times the state’s average household income.
Even for children that do receive the scholarships, the programs may not actually improve the quality of education. Private and parochial schools are not required to adhere to the same standards as public schools. In Pennsylvania, nearly all participating schools are religious schools; some use curricula that presents creationism as science.
And most states, including Pennsylvania, have no way of monitoring the performance of participating schools. In those states that do have some measurement protocols in place, the results are not good. Students in schools participating in Louisiana’s voucher program are 25 percent to 50 percent more likely to fail all tested subjects than their public school peers. In Florida, over a three-year period, a small number of the voucher-funded private schools saw improvement in academic achievement, nearly twice as many saw a decline, and overall their performance was no better or worse than public schools.
The primary goal of our state’s education policy should be to provide a high quality education to all of our children.
Cuomo and all New Yorkers can take a lesson from the failed experiment of tax credit funded vouchers in other states and seek out effective and fair ways to achieve that goal.