Lisa Graham Keegan, National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2001
In a brief for the National Center for Policy Analysis, Lisa Graham Keegan, CEO of the Education Leaders Council and former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, makes the case for tuition tax credits, which were found constitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1999. She explains the logistics of the credits, which have since been adopted in Florida and Pennsylvania and are gaining in popularity. In Arizona, taxpayers make a voluntary donation to a school tuition organization (STO) of their choice and in turn, their tax payment is reduced by the amount of the donation. The STO, working as a nonprofit organization, turns the money into tuition scholarships for students to attend private schools. Since its inception in 1998, the Arizona program has grown enormously. Donations have jumped from $2 million in 1998 to $17.2 million in 2000, with 70 to 80 percent of its scholarships going to low-income families. The Pennsylvania model is similar to that of Arizona, but differs in that it authorizes tax credits to businesses instead of individual taxpayers, and that it is 75 cents on the dollar rather than dollar-for-dollar. Keegan attributes the success of tuition tax credit programs both to their simplicity and to the incentive they provide for taxpayers and businesses to support educational opportunities. Her concise analysis can be accessed on the web at http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba384/ or by contacting Joan Kirby at 202-628-6671 in the NCPA Washington office: 655 15th St. NW, Suite 375, Washington DC 20005.
