The ECCA is proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress that would expand K-12 educational opportunity by generating privately funded scholarships for as many as two million students nationwide to access the highest quality, most suitable school of their parents’ choice. The legislation contains a non-refundable 100 percent income tax credit to encourage contributions to not-for-profit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) to provide up to $10 billion in scholarships annually for K-12 tuition or other educational services. There is no role for the U.S. Department of Education, no new federal spending or mandates on states and school districts, and full protection against government encroachment of religious liberty and school autonomy. The U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means passed an amended ECCA in September 2024.
School Choice:
- Tax policy. The ECCA is designed as tax policy, not education policy from Washington. Importantly, taxpayer/donors would not benefit financially from the credit since they must donate at least as much as the tax credit; i.e., taxpayer/donors are the funding mechanism, students are the beneficiaries.
- Support choiceand public schools. While school choice can bring a competitive challenge to public schools, candidates and elected officials can and should support all children and the educational choices their parents make for them – meaning one can simultaneously support school choice and improving public schools.
Public support:
School choice enjoys the most widespread voter support of any policy issue. RealClear Opinion Research (RCOP) polling (here) found school choice overall had 71% support to 13% opposed:
- Among political parties, 66% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans and 69% of Independents favored school choice.
- Among race and ethnicity, 73% of Black, 71% of Latino, 70% of Asian and 71% of White voters support school choice.
- RCOPpolling also showed that 76% of voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports school choice, including 77% of Democrats, 86% of Republicans, 67% of Independents, 76% of Latinos, 79.5% of Blacks, 73% of Asians and 76% of Whites.
Benefits of the ECCA:
The ECCA would financially empower parents by giving them access to the highest quality, most suitable education for their children, thereby freeing them from public schools that are low-performing, unsafe, or impose inappropriate curriculum and teaching that undermines their values. Detailed polling in 2022 by OnMessage, commissioned by Invest in Education, found that various categories of voters overwhelming agreed with the following statements:
- Parents should have the right to choose the school that is best for their child, rather than being forced to attend failing or unsafe schools based solely on where they live;Blacks (82%), Latinos (77%), and independents (76%) agreed.
- Parents should be in charge of decisions regarding their child’s education; it is not fair that only wealthy parents truly get to decide where their child goes to school; Blacks (81%), Latinos (81%), and independents (73%) agreed.
- Schools should be focused on teaching the basics and stop focusing on pushing a political philosophy. Parents should be able to move their children to a different school if they believe their school has become too political; Blacks (78%), Latinos (74%), and independents (70%) agreed.
Myths:
- Myth: School choice hurts public education.
Reality: Studies have shown school choice also benefits students in public schools through more competition and by giving parents leverage as education “customers”. Lawmakers can support school choiceand public schools; they are not a zero-sum proposition.
- Myth: School choice takes funding from public education.
Reality: Education funding should be about educating students, not sustaining a system; thus, it should follow the child to the school in which they are enrolled. Still, an extensive 2021study found that in states with robust choice programs, per-pupil spending on public education still increased over time.
- Myth: The ECCA is a tax cut for the wealthy.
Reality: Students benefit from school choice and the ECCA, not taxpayers. Taxpayers who donate to SGOs remain financially neutral since they must donate at least as much to an SGO to receive the tax credit; accordingly, they are not financially better off in the transaction, they don’t receive a tangible item in return, nor can they benefit their own child.
For more information, visit Invest in Education Coalition.
FAQs
Would the ECCA “take money from public education?
No. The ECCA is a tax bill, not a spending bill. The bill amends the Internal Revenue Code, not the federal Education Department.
There are no cuts to education funding. To the extent federal and state funding formulas are impacted by public school enrollment, however, funding levels could shift based on parents choosing to enroll their children in schools outside the district public system. Empowering parents to decide what is best for their children’s education is properly determinative as taxpayer funding of education should reflect enrollment levels, and thereby fund students, not systems comprised of bureaucracy and real estate. Accordingly, public school systems would face increased competition to best educate children and satisfy parent “customers.”
Nothing precludes federal, state or local governments from increasing funding of public education even as it educates fewer students, which has been the case as K-12 education freedom and school choice expands. And they have.
Education funding has been robustly funded, and no money is being “diverted” from a tax credit against federal income taxes. The federal government spends more money than ever on K-12 education, including adding $190 billion during Covid-19, not all of which has been spent after three years.
Education funding continues ever upward at the state and local level, even as school choice programs have expanded rapidly in about half the states.
Consider the following:
According to an analysis of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of State Budget Officers, from Oct. 2023:
- An NCSL review of K-12 education budget proposals for fiscal year 2024 indicated that nearly every state considered increased spending. All respondents to an NCSL survey of state fiscal offices reported increased appropriations in FY 24, with a range of 1.46% to 25.35% in year-over-year growth.
- A National Association of State Budget Officers survey showed 43 states increased spending in higher education and 39 states increased spending in K-12 education in FY 2023. Similar numbers of states raised spending in FY 2022. In fact, total state spending on both K-12 and higher education has increased in every year since state budgets began recovering from the Great Recession in 2013.
- A 2021 study found that the five most robust school choice states, Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin, concluded: “The states with robust educational choice programs may have had smaller-than-average increases in inflation-adjusted spending since 2002, but the per-pupil spending still went up, not down."
- Money should follow the student. We appropriate money for students, not systems. Education funding should be about funding students, and it should follow those students to the school where their parents want them. That’s the privilege of upper-income families and this bill would extend that those families with less, which is what parental choice programs have done in the states. This bill makes for a more equal society in terms of K-12 educational options being accessed by more families.
Great Catholic schools across New England can be found here:
Connecticut
https://www.dioceseofbridgeportcatholicschools.com/
https://www.catholicedaohct.org/catholic-schools
https://www.norwichdiocese.org/Find/Schools
Massachusetts:
https://schools.worcesterdiocese.org/our-schools
https://www.catholicschoolsalliance.org/list-of-schools/
https://diospringfield.org/catholicschools
Maine:
https://portlanddiocese.org/schools
New Hampshire:
Rhode Island:
Vermont:
https://www.vermontcatholic.org/schools/catholic-schools/
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