Shapiro Says He's 'Very Open' to Federal School Choice. The Facts Say It's Time to Opt In

Gov. Josh Shapiro has told Pennsylvanians he is "very open" to the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, Chalkbeat reported after his October debate. The election has now come and gone, and the governor still has not said yes. Asked about it, his office pointed The Center Square back to those debate remarks and said his administration had tasked agencies with working out how the program would function under the federal rules. This week Sen. Dave McCormick put the question to him in writing, urging him to opt the commonwealth in and warning that the "window of opportunity for Pennsylvania is rapidly closing".

Fairness first. The governor's caution has a stated reason: his team said it wanted to digest the Treasury Department's regulations before committing, and those rules arrived only in the fall. Opponents, including AFT Pennsylvania, have long fought tuition tax credits and vouchers, arguing they take resources away from traditional public schools, The Center Square noted.

Those concerns deserve a serious answer. The facts supply one.

The program, passed last year as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, gives donors a dollar-for-dollar credit against their federal income tax for gifts of up to $1,700 to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations, beginning in 2027. In states that opt in, students qualify if their household income is no more than 300 percent of the area median, adjusted for family size, according to The Center Square's account of the program.

Notice who pays. The credit comes off a donor's federal tax bill. It is not a line in Pennsylvania's budget, and it does not reach into any school district's accounts. Saying no would not save Harrisburg a dollar. It would simply leave federal help for Pennsylvania children on the table.

Nor is this only about private tuition. Chalkbeat has reported that some public school advocates see "money on the table" in the credit, because scholarship groups can also help families with costs such as tutoring. A program that can put a tutor in front of a struggling public school student is hardly an attack on public education.

The commonwealth is not starting from scratch. McCormick argues that Pennsylvania's Educational Improvement Tax Credit and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit have already given the state the administrative experience and the network of scholarship organizations to build on. EdChoice, a group that supports school choice, reports that the EITC has grown from $20 million a year when it began in 2001 into a $630 million effort.

The demand is not in question either. According to EdChoice, scholarship organizations received 170,568 K-12 applications in 2023-24 and could fund only 101,751 of them, leaving roughly 69,000 students without help. Behind each of those numbers is a mother or father who filled out a form hoping for a better fit for a child and was told the money had run out.

Pennsylvania families have heard warm words about scholarships from Harrisburg before. In July 2023, Shapiro and legislative Democrats closed a budget deal that left out the proposed voucher program for students in struggling schools, Chalkbeat reported. Parents who were promised help then are entitled to a clear answer now.

McCormick is hardly alone. Education Week's tracker counts 31 states, most of them led by Republican governors, that have opted in to the program or plan to. Pennsylvania, with its long record of tax-credit scholarships, would seem a natural fit to join them.

McCormick also told the governor the state does not need to wait for final regulations, pointing to Treasury guidance that lets states, scholarship organizations and taxpayers rely on the proposed rules for contributions made beginning Jan. 1, 2027. In other words, the information the governor said he was waiting for is in hand.

There is a deeper principle here, too. Parents, not bureaucracies, bear the first responsibility for raising and educating their children. Scripture charges them to train up a child in the way he should go, and a good government makes that calling easier, not harder. Opting in costs the state nothing, takes nothing from public schools and gives tens of thousands of waiting families a chance.

With the election behind him, the governor has every piece of information he said he needed. Pennsylvania's parents have waited long enough for a yes.