CV NEWS FEED // Less than a month into the new year, school choice has shown itself to be a leading issue among lawmakers at both the state and the national level.
Utah and Iowa became the latest states to pass legislation ensuring universal school choice. Now federal lawmakers are considering the Educational Choice for Children Act – a bill designed to bring school choice to every state at once.
All of the current movement on the issue of school choice struck CatholicVote Communications Director Joshua Mercer as fortuitous, as this week, January 30 to February 3, is National Catholic Schools Week.
“This has to be the biggest National Catholic Schools Week I can remember, at least in terms of national buzz and legislative discussion,” Mercer said. “And I think 2023 is also shaping up to be the biggest year for school choice in the history of the movement.”
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox on January 28 signed a law providing a $8,000 scholarship directly to the family of each qualifying K-12 student in the state. Days earlier, Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a similar law, creating $7600 education savings accounts.
Both laws make state education funding directly available to families, who will be free to put the money toward the public or private schools of their choice, or even spend the money at home should they choose to homeschool.
“Iowa & Utah just passed universal school choice,” tweeted school-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis on Monday. He pointed out that “Arizona & West Virginia passed universal school choice in the past 2 years,” describing them as only the “1st dominoes to fall.”
DeAngelis foresees a flurry of similar legislation in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming. “A universal school choice revolution has ignited,” he says.
America’s Catholic bishops, looking out for the nation’s approximately 6,000 Catholic schools, would welcome such a revolution.
At the local level, Bishop R. Walker Nickless of the Diocese of Sioux City praised Iowa’s new school choice law almost immediately. “It’s a great day for education in Iowa, both for private and public schools,” he said. “We look forward to serving more families in the Diocese of Sioux City who want to enroll their child in a Catholic school.”
In Congress, the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) would provide similar funding to families for school choice via a tax credit scholarship. The ECCA carries the endorsement of CatholicVote, Catholic Education Partners, and other proponents of the Catholic faith and religious freedom – including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Bishop Thomas Daly, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, wrote to a letter last week to thank Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, and Rep. Adrian Smith, R-NE, for introducing the ECCA.
“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Catholic Education is pleased to support this legislation,” Daly wrote:
The Catholic Church teaches that parents are the first and primary teachers of their children and therefore have the right to select the best educational environment for their children. Whether that is in a public, homeschool or private school, parents know the needs of their children.
…I am very grateful for your work on this legislation and your efforts to ensure the program is open to all students in all sectors. The prospect of expanded educational choice for families will benefit American education and better serve our children.
The ECCA “would provide up to $10 billion in annual tax credits against federal income and corporate taxes for individuals and businesses donating to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations for K–12 education,” explained Nathan A. Benefield and Luke Messer in a recent column at Newsweek.
Benefield Messer also pointed out that school choice expansion “is a popular, bipartisan measure.”
State tax credit scholarship programs like Pennsylvania’s have experienced remarkable success, with student demand for scholarships far exceeding program limits. Polls consistently show that voters across the nation—regardless of ethnicity, race, or political party—overwhelmingly support educational choice.
During 2020 and the years that followed, polling found an increase in support for education alternatives as parents nationwide expressed frustration with public education officials’ policies in response to COVID.
The public education system also saw a drop in enrollment, while private Catholic schools in some areas saw their enrollment spike – especially as they returned to in-person learning and lifted COVID restrictions long before public schools did.