$1,700 Doesn’t Buy a Helluva Lot
The recent tax bill (AKA the Big Beautiful Bill) has a provision for parents to donate up to $1,700 to a scholarship granting private school and then take that exact amount as a credit (not a deduction) against income taxes owed. In essence, the family would have no expense at all for the donation.
The Republican party has been trying since Ronald Regan to come up with a plan to fund private schools with taxpayer money without running afoul of the U.S. Constitution. This plan seems to do the job.
Seventeen hundred dollars is not a poke in the eye with a stick. Nor is it a path for lower to middle income families to be able to afford private school. It essentially allows higher income families to get a $1,700 reduction in tuition. Non-public schools for children with disabilities have tuition rates that often range into six figures but definitely above sixty thousand. The seventeen hundred dollar reduction will not make that tuition affordable for lower or middle income families.
Private school tuition for plain students for day programs in above thirty thousand. A seventeen hundred dollar reduction in tuition will help those families that could afford the thirty thousand all along but will certainly not make that tuition affordable for lower to middle income families.
Individual state governors need to agree to accept participation in the plan. Governors in blue states will be in a bind. To accept the arrangement means they are going against their principles of not spending taxpayer dollars on private tuition. If they don’t accept the plan, their private tuition paying families (and voters) will feel cheated out of a good deal. Teacher unions are against states joining the program.
Cui bono? Who benefits? Wealthier families paying private tuition definitely benefit by having their tuition reduced. Lower to middle income families are still out of the pool because the reduction is still insufficient to give these families a true choice. And of course, politicians benefit because they can brag they have helped parents have choice in schools for their children even if the choice is only available to a select few. Not much will change for kids, but then this was really never about kids because in private education $1,700 doesn’t buy a helluva lot.