EISTC In The News

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Virginia’s Scholarship Tax Credits Are an Educational Beacon of Hope

AEIdeas

By Gerard Robinson

July 15, 2022

There is more to love about education in Virginia thanks to the budget Governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law on June 22, 2022. It contains the largest education budget in Virginia history at $3.2 billion, $900 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a 10 percent teacher raise, and a statewide literacy initiative. Youngkin’s budget also maintained a $25 million cap for the Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits Program (EISTCP), successfully fighting off an attempt to cut the EISTCP cap from $25 million to $12 million.

Established in 2012 by Governor Bob McDonnell, EISTCP provides scholarships to Virginia families with a household income up to 300 percent of the federal poverty guideline (400 percent for students with special needs) for use at private schools. According to a 2021 report, 38 scholarship foundations approved 4,674 awards worth $12.8 million.

I was Virginia Secretary of Education when EISTCP was under consideration, and I encouraged supporters to remember Virginia’s role in Massive Resistance and its use of taxpayer money to fund the creation of private white flight academies during the 1950s and 1960s. Why? To learn lessons from previous policy agendas, and to move our public conversation from a fear-based notion of choice to a freedom-based notion of choice.

Ten years later people committed to opposing EISTCP are again using a fear-based notion of choice, either directly or semiotically. A July 11, 2022 article paints a very dark picture of EISTCP by exploiting a real tragedy Prince Edward County families experienced during the fear-based era of choice to justify painting Jim Crow above the door of private schools that receive public money from scholarship foundations today.

The article warrants a reality check in three ways.

EISTCP is not your grandparents’ segregationist academies: The authors’ overview of segregation in Virginia, the role scholarship foundations played in the creation of white-only private academies, and public school closures in defiance to the Brown v. Board of Education decisions is important history. However, the author’s subtle innuendo that a publicly funded private school program in Virginia in 2022 is analogous to a fear-based choice ideology from the 1950s is uncreative fiction.

For starters, EISTCP requires scholarship foundations to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is a legislative instrument not available during the early years of the fear-based choice movement in Virginia. Secondly, if EISTCP is an expansion of the white segregation academies of the past, someone forgot to tell this to the Anna Julia Cooper School and Cristo Rey High School which overwhelmingly benefit students of color, or schools with an integrated student body.

Religious schools should benefit from public support: The author identifies St. Andrew’s School, the Elijah House Academy, and the Catholic school-focused McMahon Parater Scholarship Foundation as religious schools that receive public funds from EISTCP, or as one person referenced in the article calls it “taking money that they would otherwise owe in taxes.”

Long before the creation of EISTCP a decade ago, the Congress understood the public benefit provided by religious schools, authorizing public funding and tax benefits to support them. Examples include federal Title I and Title II funds, and a federal charitable income tax deduction for contributing to nonprofit religious organizations.

For many years, federal and state governments have used tax incentives that can be used to support private and public initiatives through: the Coverdell education savings accounts; the New Markets Tax Credits program supporting economic development of distressed communities; the Neighborhood Assistance Act Tax Credit Program for Education supporting nonprofit organizations that provide an education to low-income students in public, religious, and afterschool programs; and the Communities of Opportunity Tax Credit supporting access to housing in higher income areas for lower-income families.

Similar to these programs, supporting access to private education for lower- and middle-income Virginians through EISTCP improves their chances for economic and social mobility.

Wealthy donors matter: According to the author, it is an issue that “98% of contributions to the program claimed on tax returns during the past six years have been from individuals with six-figure incomes or above.”

It should not be a surprise that wealthy people are the biggest donors to 501(c)3 organizations that provide scholarships to students in Virginia. Wealthy people are essential stakeholders in Pre-K–12 education across the United States. According to one report, nearly 90 percent of affluent families donated to charities focusing donations on basic needs, religion, and education. While high-net worth households account for 3.1 percent of the population, they account for nearly one-third of all charity in the nation. They give four times more in donations to education organizations than the US population (21.6 to 5.0 percent). Rich donors matter.

In closing, EISTCP expands the freedom that families have to choose a school. EISTCP is not perfect, nor is it a choice for all families. Nevertheless, it remains an educational beacon of hope in Virginia.

 

 
 

Chris Braunlich column: Reject harmful budget cut to help students in need

  • By Chris Braunlich
  •  

 

Visit the website of Cristo Rey Richmond High School, and you’ll learn that all of the students there are from low-income families.

You’ll also read about scores of national and local partnerships providing hundreds of work-study opportunities. They teach students the art and science of working in an office environment, and the soft skills of communication, customer service, office etiquette and team-building. These are the sort of skills employers highly value and the ones that make young people highly employable.

What you won’t learn is those positive programs — and the future of their scholars — now might be in jeopardy.


The school came to Virginia because of the Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits (EISTC) Program. This offers a 65% state tax credit to donors supporting qualified scholarship initiatives serving low- and moderate-income children. In 2021, more than $600,000 in scholarships helped Cristo Rey serve students who needed a better educational placement, and whose incomes were less than $65,000 for a family of four.

The 3-year-old school carefully phased in its operations, starting with a freshman class and adding a new class each year. It is on track to enroll 250 students in 2023, with an ultimate goal of 350.

But a provision in the state budget agreement passed earlier this month could stop growth at Cristo Rey and other schools in its tracks. The provision imposes a $12 million cap on EISTC credits — a cut of more than half — despite a 20% growth in use since 2019. This $12 million level is nearly $1 million less than the amount used in the previous fiscal year, meaning at least 300 fewer students can be served.

It’s not just Cristo Rey: 100% of students at Richmond’s Anna Julia Cooper School receive free tuition because of the EISTC, and the program enabled the school to expand down to kindergarten, allowing it to start closing learning gaps sooner. In Petersburg, Saint Joseph Catholic School — the only nonpublic alternative in that city — was on the road to closing its doors when scholarship students provided additional resources to help it stay open. Other scholarship organizations focus on helping students with disabilities attend schools, preparing them for independent living.

The foundations involved must identify means-tested eligible students, find donors, calibrate donors to the student population (all donations must be spent within two years), and ensure a bad economy doesn’t cause donors to cut back and strand students who start school but are left without scholarships down the road.

Not too long ago, a corporate donor withdrew when federal tax interpretations changed, leaving a $1 million hole to plug. The goal is to make certain students are not hurt, and certainly not ratcheted back and forth between schools.


So scholarship foundations have moved cautiously (perhaps overcautiously). But with well-run foundations, students never ran the risk of being thrown out because there were no scholarships — until now.

If allowed to remain, this provision has the effect of cutting current scholarships for at-risk children by more than $1 million, destabilizing growth and expansion for schools seeking to serve more students, and leaving behind low-income parents and children struggling to secure a quality education. And it effectively eliminates the possibilities of adding new scholarship students, since growth will be frozen at less than even the current amount needed.

Within 24 hours of the budget becoming known, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office reportedly received more than 1,000 communications, urging him to restore the EISTC to full strength. Indeed, only the governor can prevent the unwinding of a scholarship program many low-income parents see as offering the best hope for their child’s future.

Rejecting the severe EISTC cut is the right thing for the governor to do. It is also the best hope to help underserved parents and children chart a better future, preparing them to be healthier, safer and more productive members of our society.

Chris Braunlich is president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy and a former president of the Virginia State Board of Education. Contact him at: [email protected]

Virginia budget deal cuts school choice program by more than half 


By Tyler Arnold / The Center Square
Jun 2, 2022
(The Center Square) – The Virginia budget deal, which passed both chambers of the General Assembly, would cut funding for a school choice tax credit program by more than half of its current funding.

The Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits Program provides a 65% tax credit for individuals or businesses who make donations for scholarships to students so they can attend certain private schools and nonpublic preschool programs. Current law caps the state funding for the program at $25 million per year, but a provision in the budget proposal would reduce that cap to only $12 million per year.

Although some lawmakers have argued they plan to reduce the funding because the full credit is not used annually, school choice supporters have spoken against the cut, and urged Gov. Glenn Youngkin to amend or veto the provision.

The Virginia Catholic Conference, which represents the Diocese of Richmond and the Diocese of Arlington, has spoken out against the proposed cut, and said the program has already surpassed $12 million in state funding this year.

“The Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits program is Virginia’s only school choice program,· the VCC said. “Through donor-funded scholarships, the EISTC program is a lifeline for thousands of low-income students, providing them critical financial assistance to attend schools that best meet their needs. In the current fiscal year alone, the program has generated more than $15 million in tax credits.”

Corey DeAngelis, the national director of research at the American Federation for Children, told The Center Square the governor could propose an amendment to keep the current funding level or suggest changes to improve the program.

Rather than reducing the state’s allocation of funds, DeAngelis said the governor could propose increasing the credit to 100%, which he said could increase use of the program. He said that would encourage more people to donate to the program and then more children could use that money to attend schools their family chooses at a time when the appetite for more education options is at “an all-time high.”

Earlier this year, Youngkin announced a school choice proclamation, in which he said he would support choice in education. “As your governor, I will continually stand up for students and parents and will sign the largest education budget in Virginia’s history,” the governor said in January. “Our goal is that every student will graduate high school ready to go to college or start a great career. Choice and innovation within public education is vital to achieving that goal.”

One of Youngkin’s proposals to expand school choice by creating university-funded lab schools was included in the budget proposal. The budget proposal currently awaits action from the governor.

Re-imagining Our Schools

Winsome Earle-Sears column: Creating a better education for
Virginia’s next generation

Feb. 5, 2022
By Winsome Earle-Sears

It is time for the commonwealth to shift gears. We need to have good schools for all children in all communities, and all ZIP codes. We need to return power to all parents. We need to give all children more opportunities.

Returning choice back to parents for their child’s education is not about doing away with public schools. But we cannot do it with “one size fits all.” It is not about public or private, online or bricks-and-mortar. It is about making them all better so that every child has an opportunity for a quality education.

We need to return choice back to parents for their children, to help them stimulate generational change and create generational wealth. Wealthy parents already have choices. Many politicians exercise choice and send their own children to private schools, yet at times, they will vote to deny the opportunity to others.

However, poor children — especially children of color — have been denied access to a good education for far too long. As a result, parents start disengaging with their child’s education. They lose hope.

All children deserve hope and a future. Last year on the campaign trail, I heard from too many parents who had lost hope for the future of their children. They asked questions of me such as, “Are you telling me that I have to send my child back to that school? Why can’t I send my child to another school?” It was heartbreaking because that mom was dealing with modern-day redlining, with certain children relegated to underperforming schools.

These questions I faced were in neighborhoods that had not seen a candidate at their doors for too long. Some parents had lost hope for their children years ago. Many parents have known a sense of frustration for years. The pandemic of the last two years now has demonstrated it to all parents.

As a mother of three daughters, former state delegate, former vice president of the Virginia Board of Education, prison ministry leader, director of a women’s homeless shelter, a business owner and now lieutenant governor, I know the importance of a quality education.

As a poor, Black immigrant family, the thing that got our family out of poverty was a good education. Success starts with graduating high school. Every parent wants their child to graduate from high school ready for life: every child, no exceptions, whether they’re going off to the military, trade school, college, certification program, work or a combination of those.

If you can’t read, you can’t succeed. Did you know that more than half of low-income fourth- and eighth-graders in Richmond and Petersburg cannot read on grade level? In fact, many of them are up to two grade levels behind and almost never catch up.

And it is not just the state exams. In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only one-fourth of Virginia’s low-income students are scoring “proficient” or better.

And those are the scores before the pandemic. The learning loss has been devastating: Before the pandemic, Black students and those who were economically disadvantaged trailed in the pass rates. The pandemic has widened the performance gap.

Visit a prison — and I ran a prison ministry — and 60% of the prisoners are functionally illiterate. Change begins with greater literacy rates.

We need to recognize that every child is different. Families need a variety of options to educate their child. No one system can do it all for everyone. Let’s give parents the resources so they can make the right choice for their children.

We can do that with an Education Savings Account, by utilizing the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit, and by opening more charter schools, lab schools and virtual schools. We can do that by helping public school programs become even more successful.

Everyone in the commonwealth has a stake in this. We all depend on good schools to provide a good education for good citizens, good government, good property values and good jobs. We live in a great nation and a great state. Great education will ensure it is there not only for us but for future generations.

Frederick Douglass once said, “Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.”

Please join me to ensure that a better education will always be there for the next generation. Let’s give all Virginians a hope and a future.

Overwhelming Support Shown for Virginia’s Sole Education Choice Program; 
Highest Backing Among Black Voters 

January 28, 2022 — As National School Choice Week 2022 concludes, the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy today released results of a polling question demonstrating the overwhelming popularity of Virginia’s sole education choice program. Support is particularly strong in the state’s Black community.

The question, contained in a poll about current General Assembly issues and conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling &Strategy, asked about support for the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit (EISTC), which offers a 65 percent tax credit to donors to nonprofit organizations that distribute private school scholarships to low-income children.

The poll surveyed 625 registered Virginia voters. Only 19 percent opposed the EISTC program, with 68 percent in favor and thirteen percent undecided.

Support for the education choice program was evident in every region and demographic in Virginia. Its highest support was seen among Black voters, 74-16 percent, with 66 percent of White voters backing the program. The issue is a political winner as well, with support from 64 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Independents.

The question can be found in this report issued by the polling organization, which has a long history of sampling Virginians on campaign and policy questions without any partisan leaning by the firm.

“After a year of closed school buildings and parents often forced to fend for themselves and their children, there is a hunger in the Commonwealth for additional quality options offering hope and opportunity for children,” said Chris Braunlich, president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute and a former president of the Virginia State Board of Education. “It is not a coincidence that the greatest backing for the EISTC scholarship program is from Black parents and those living in urban areas,” Braunlich noted. “These are the parents and children who have suffered the most in the last two years.

“Parents are experiencing the limitations of a ‘one size fits all’ system of education and it is overdue time that we increased parental options – whether through an expansion of the EISTC, enactment of Education Savings Accounts, or effective college partnership lab schools and charter schools,” Braunlich concluded.

For more information:

Christian N. Braunlich
President
(571) 212-0058
[email protected]

 

Fiscal impact assessment of the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits Program