Could School Choice Work at the Federal Level?

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order indicates that school choice is on the way for military families and students in the Bureau of Indian Education, but there’s momentum building in Congress for something even bolder: a federal tax credit scholarship program that would unleash school choice across all 50 states. For those who support education freedom, this might seem like the holy grail of K-12 policy—but there’s good reason to be wary of federal involvement in school choice.

The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) proposes tax credits for individuals and businesses that donate to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs)—nonprofits responsible for awarding funding to students. Households with an income not greater than 300 percent of the area median gross income would be eligible to receive funding. The program would initially be capped at $10 billion—enough to give about 2 million students $5,000 each. Families could use these dollars on a variety of educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, and homeschooling curricula.

Tax credit scholarships are a fixture at the state level. Twenty-two states have similar policies in place, and scholarships are paid for with private contributions, not public dollars. The ECCA goes to impressive lengths to protect families and SGOs against burdensome regulations, including promising “maximum freedom to provide for the needs of the participants without governmental control” and barring the ability of “any Federal, State, or local government entity…to mandate, direct, or control any aspect of any scholarship granting organization.”

The potential upside of the bill is huge. Overnight, millions of students could gain access to public school alternatives, dealing a significant blow to the teachers unions’ stranglehold over K-12 education. For families in places like California, New York, and Connecticut—blue states with little hope of adopting school choice—the ECCA could provide an immediate lifeline, especially for those who might struggle to afford private options.

Families in states with existing school choice programs—like Arkansas, New Hampshire, and West Virginia—would also benefit since funds from the federal program could be combined with dollars from state programs. School choice participants receive less funding than public school students, and extra resources would give families even more options and help cultivate a more robust marketplace of K-12 providers.

It’s easy to see why school choice advocates are lining up to support the ECCA. But in the long run, inviting the federal government into school choice could prove detrimental.  

The ECCA would make private providers vulnerable to far-reaching regulations that fundamentally change the K-12 marketplace. Because scholarships aren’t funded with public dollars, private schools couldn’t be regulated directly under the program. But they could be caught in the crosshairs if federal lawmakers decided to target SGOs, such as by regulating how they operate or establishing requirements for where scholarship dollars can go.

Private schools that grow dependent on federal dollars could then be forced to comply with federal dictates around admissions, testing, curricula, and countless other things. Regulations like these would make private schools more like public schools, reducing the benefits of school choice and offering families fewer meaningful options. While similar threats exist for state-level school choice programs, giving the public school lobby a one-stop shop in D.C. would raise the stakes for everyone. Burdensome mandates would no longer be confined to just one state and could easily affect thousands of private providers. Because the most likely path to passing the ECCA is through budget reconciliation, it would be even easier for opponents to uproot the bill’s safeguards.

For those who want educational freedom, the federal government has a legitimate constitutional role in providing more options to military families, students attending Bureau of Indian Education schools, and those living in D.C. But that’s where its involvement in school choice should end. The ECCA, as crafted, provides little cause for concern—but there’s virtually no chance it will stay that way for long.

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