The White House budget released last week contained good news for school choice supporters. It includes a tax credit that would pay up to $2,500 a year in private school tuition for parents of children whose public schools are failing. The credit would cover 50 percent of the first $5,000 per child that's spent on books, computers, transportation, supplies and tuition at a school of the parents choice. It would be refundable, so even low-income workers who pay no taxes would benefit. The White House education budget also includes a new $50 million Choice Demonstration Fund, which would support local school choice experiments and $100 million to help charter schools buy, lease, or renovate buildings. Congressional Democrats have attacked the budget request for education, both for its choice elements and because, they say, it provides less money than the President agreed to when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act last month. Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller, who worked with the President to enact that law, argued that the funds for the tax credits would be better spent on Title I, the main federal education program to help poor children, and other programs under the No Child Left Behind Act. A White House spokesman noted that the President's budget also includes billion dollar increases for Title I and special education. School choice supporters, meanwhile, are watching for evidence that the administration is not only going to lay these new proposals on the table but is going to do battle to get them enacted. For details see "Bush Budget Proposes Education Tax Credit," by Mike Allen, The Washington Post, February 4, 2002, and "Democrats Criticizing Bush Budget on Education," by Robert Pear, The New York Times, February 13, 2002.
