President Donald Trump's recent executive order indicates that school choice is on the way for military families and students in the Bureau of Indian Education, but there's momentum building in Congress for something even bolder: a federal tax credit scholarship program that would unleash school choice across all 50 states. For those who support education freedom, this might seem like the holy grail of K-12 policy—but there's good reason to be wary of federal involvement in school choice.
The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) proposes tax credits for individuals and businesses that donate to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs)—nonprofits responsible for awarding funding to students. Households with an income not greater than 300 percent of the area median gross income would be eligible to receive funding. The program would initially be capped at $10 billion—enough to give about 2 million students $5,000 each. Families could use these dollars on a variety of educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, and homeschooling curricula.
Tax credit scholarships are a fixture at the state level. Twenty-two states have similar policies in place, and scholarships are paid for with private contributions, not public dollars. The ECCA goes to impressive lengths to protect families and SGOs against burdensome regulations, including promising "maximum freedom to provide for the needs of the participants without governmental control" and barring the ability of "any Federal, State, or local government entity…to mandate, direct, or control any aspect of any scholarship granting organization."
