Last month, federal lawmakers unveiled the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act, which would expand federal support for innovation, opportunity, and access to high-quality education for students across the country. The proposal represents a significant step forward in strengthening the education system for all students and especially for low-income students, who are too often overlooked.
The proposal would create a federal tax credit program to incentivize private funding of student scholarships. States that choose to participate will provide individuals and corporations a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to selected nonprofit organizations that provide scholarships. States will decide how students might use each scholarship, allowing every state to tailor their use of federal tax credit funds to their needs.
The policy idea is good news for all families, but low-income and working-class students are the biggest winners. Scholarships will help families tailor education to the needs of their students. Such programs in states have turned around the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. For example, Florida’s tax credit scholarship program has driven gains for students in both reading and writing with no direct cost to taxpayers — not many programs can say that. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has successfully helped thousands get a great education and is popular across the political spectrum as well. In the past, Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., even co-sponsored the program. This is good news for the potential to attract a diverse array of political supporters to the new federal proposal, as is the case in every state where such programs exist.
This program also creates an incentive for parents to explore, and educators to offer, a wide array of educational pathways that meet the individual needs of every learner. Decades of research reveal that when we focus on specific, personalized learning approaches, students can achieve higher graduation and achievement rates than their peers. But what limits students today is lacking access to the wealth of opportunities that exist out of their zoned schools. When we limit education opportunity to where people live or what districts fund, we limit future success.
So, the proposed new federal tax credit is the best way for the federal government to contribute to the reforms and innovations happening in every state and many communities. While this is a great step, the way we deliver education in this country is far from achieving the transformational change our students desperately need. Congress can and should take three additional steps to support efforts aimed at revolutionizing education.
The first is ensuring, like Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate bill does, the tax credits available for schooling apply to apprenticeship and workforce-related programs and expand eligibility to non-traditional students. Such a step would help the nearly 80 million adults with no postsecondary credential and the thousands of businesses that can’t find enough skilled workers. Instead of allocating funds to the same training programs that created our current situation, Congress should incentivize the workforce programs that best meet the needs of industry. Increasing corporate and private funding of these programs would help people receive the education and training they need to be productive, successful citizens and would help our economy achieve its full job-creating potential.
The second is to expand the reach of expected infrastructure dollars to support educational innovations and opportunities in rural communities. These communities afford few options to students, are closed out from most digital learning programs, and rarely utilize national and global expertise in teaching and learning. By ensuring infrastructure funds can be utilized to expand education, we can help rebuild these important communities.
The third is to make changes to how we accredit and support higher education. There is no question that higher education is undergoing much-needed scrutiny. The debate over how and where students can learn is ubiquitous today. Yet, traditional postsecondary education does not recognize this. We have to reduce the rigidity of accreditors, incentivize institutions to measure students based on competency (not how many years they study), and reward prior education and experience to drive more completion and credentialing.
Expanding opportunity must encompass all levels of learning to get us closer to the ultimate goal of ensuring everyone has access to the American dream. Congress has the chance to help reimagine education, make historic and bipartisan progress toward providing all students the opportunity for high-quality teaching, and solve some of the most pressing problems affecting our country. That’s a chance that doesn’t come around often.
Jeanne Allen is the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.
