Pennsylvania's Track Record on Private School Vouchers: Still No Accountability

Decades of chronic underfunding and inequitable funding have been spiraling Pennsylvania's public school system into crisis--failing kids and threatening the future of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Court has ruled that the state's current funding system for K-12 schools is unconstitutional and the state must take action to adequately and equitably fund schools. This report provides a cautionary tale for those considering expanding existing taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools in Pennsylvania or creating a new program. Pennsylvania does not need to rely only on evidence from other states in evaluating whether to establish a new taxpayer-funded school voucher program. The reason: Pennsylvania already has two existing voucher programs now funded for a combined $470 million per year, over four times more than in 2012-13, the first year of the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) program, the newer of the two new voucher programs. The legislature first provided funds for the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program in 2001-02. This report updates a 2017 Keystone Research Center report on these two existing voucher programs, which have received about $2.6 billion in state tax credits since their inception. This report finds: (1) All students in the state do not benefit equally from Pennsylvania's voucher program--students in rural communities often don't have access and participating schools are allowed to, and do, discriminate against students; (2) By design, neither the EITC nor OSTC program requires meaningful educational or financial accountability; Scholarship organizations and schools have few reporting requirements, making it difficult to assess impact or program compliance; (3) The EITC/OSTC programs are subsidizing religious schools that have few state-required standards regarding curriculum. Some of these schools receiving public money teach creationism as science and present the Bible as factually accurate history; and (4) PA's existing voucher program subsidizes the state's most elite and expensive private schools, as well as affluent families. The inadequate accountability in Pennsylvania's $470 million OSTC and EITC programs (for 2023-24) makes clear that the state should not divert more taxpayer dollars to these programs or create a new one. At minimum, a comprehensive financial and educational audit of these programs must be done first, including to evaluate curricula schools use and make recommendations regarding basic curriculum standards. The Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and reported that, due to a lack of reporting requirements, it could not do so. Pennsylvania should also prioritize fully and fairly funding public schools, which serve all of Pennsylvania's students. A public dollar spent on expanding existing or creating new voucher programs in Pennsylvania is a dollar less that can be spent to meet the court-ordered mandate to fix the unconstitutional public school funding system.