AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation today expressed its strong support for SB 1410. The Texas Equal Opportunity Scholarship Program is a tax credit bill that enables businesses to create education scholarships, earning a credit against their franchise tax. The bill will benefit all Texas students, but especially students trapped in failing schools.
“In 2001, Florida lawmakers embraced a similar program as a part of Gov. Jeb Bush’s K-12 reform effort,” said Dr. Matthew Ladner, TPPF’s Center for Education Policy Senior Fellow. “As a result, today nearly three percent of low-income Florida students utilize scholarships from the Step Up for Students Tax Credit. Implementing this program has led to stronger academic gains for both scholarship recipients and public schools facing healthy competition. In addition, Sunshine State policymakers have seen the positive impact of the program in the lives of families and the program enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Florida legislature.”
“Sen. Patrick’s SB 1410 is an important step toward empowering Texas parents with the right to choose an education that best suits the specific needs of their child,” said James Golsan, TPPF’s Center for Education Policy Analyst. “Our state suffers from an inherently non-competitive education system in which physical proximity is the only determiner to where a student attends school. SB 1410 could inject efficiency-driving competition into the education system as a whole and ultimately benefit every student in Texas, not just those actively participating in the program.”
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Fellow with Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, a non-profit, free-market research based institute in Austin.
James Golsan is a policy analyst for the Center for Education Policy with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.