When Utah lawmakers convene in regular session next year, tuition tax credits may be on the docket again. Utah Republican leaders recently approved a request to study the matter.
Although the specifics of any bill are far from being available at this point, the general idea behind such a tax credit is to help low-income people send their children to private schools, giving them a set of educational choices that currently exist only for wealthy people, while spurring public schools to improve through competition in the process.
We can anticipate what many Utahns will say to this. Didn't voters reject a private-school voucher plan a few years ago, overturning a law passed by the Legislature? Yes, they did, but the tuition credit plan is a viable way to help a perpetually cash-strapped state fund its many education needs while improving performance generally. Meanwhile, the school-choice train is pulling away from the station and gaining momentum all across the country, with good success, and Utah can't afford to sit still any longer.
This year alone, 13 states have enacted school-choice legislation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another 28 have bills up for consideration. Ohio recently expanded its voucher system to include three times as many students as before. Milwaukee's school-choice program, the oldest in the nation, was expanded as Wisconsin decided to lift the cap on how many students could participate. Indiana created a voucher program that will make about half the state's students eligible, and it also expanded its charter school program to allow universities to authorize charters.
Vouchers and tuition tax credits are not new ideas. These states would not be expanding the programs unless they were yielding results and were popular among constituents.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Arizona and its tuition program, which allows residents to send up to $500 to a scholarship organization in exchange for a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their income tax bills. The program came under fire because much of the money went to private religious schools. But the court, in a majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said those payments "result from the decisions of private taxpayers regarding their own funds." They are not the equivalent of government sending funds to sponsor religion.
That decision has opened the door further for school choice plans. Many proponents nationwide had held back because they worried about court challenges.
Utah education already has benefited from an expanding charter school program, which redirects a measure of public funds. The state would be foolish not to also consider a true school-choice program that could reduce the enrollment burden on public schools without reducing the amount of money left for those students who remain, all while giving poor people access to the same opportunities as the well-heeled.