School Choice Benefits Low-Income Families

Vouchers and scholarships help children from cash-strapped families achieve the American dream

Letter to The WSJ. 

"Mr. Kelly argues that Arizona’s education savings accounts program forces trade-offs in state spending, even though he concedes that ESAs represent only 8% of the state’s education budget. He then criticizes the $50 billion price tag on the federal scholarship tax credit for education. The 2025 federal budget was $7 trillion, making the scholarship program less than 0.75% of federal spending. The idea that these scholarships will result in significant “lost revenue” is ridiculous.

Mr. Kelly laments that when students leave public schools in a choice system, public schools lose money. “Hold harmless” arrangements can blunt the blow of enrollment shifts, but even if such options didn’t exist, what would the senator propose we do? Shouldn’t funding vary with enrollment? Would he propose not increasing funding when enrollment rises? He can’t have it both ways.

Finally, Mr. Kelly links to a story in the Washington Post that associates vouchers with declining enrollments in Arizona. Recent projections from the National Center for Education Statistics predict declining student populations due to birth dearth, not school choice, as we see the largest losses projected in states like California that don’t have choice programs. Even if choice was driving declines in enrollment in public schools, that should be a wake-up call that public schools are only viable with a captive audience.

Michael Q. McShane

EdChoice"