Shapiro Failed on School Choice—Again. There's Hope Despite Him

The state budget is finally done, but Pennsylvania families should be angry. That’s the most important takeaway from the budget that Gov. Josh Shapiro and state lawmakers passed last week.

For 12 months, he’s called these scholarships “unfinished business.” And yet the governor folded amid pressure from his party and the teacher unions. Despite bipartisan support in the Pennsylvania Senate, every Democrat in the House voted against Lifeline Scholarships, with nary a word to the contrary from the governor.

Families surely saw this coming. For two years, Shapiro has winked at progressives (including his largest out-of-state donors in New York and California), hinting that he won’t enrage their government union allies. He’s let state House Democrats be the bad cops while he pretends to be the good cop. But he’s the governor, and if he wanted to pass Lifeline Scholarships, the kids who need them would be walking into better schools this fall.

Until now, the question has been: Why isn’t Shapiro fighting for school choice? Now we’re wondering: Is Shapiro fighting against school choice? His inaction is a form of action, showing he doesn’t stand with struggling students and their families.

Pennsylvanians want Lifeline Scholarships. New polling shows that 75% of Pennsylvanians still support Lifeline Scholarships, including 87% and 88% of Black and Hispanic voters, respectively. If only Shapiro would stand with them.

Is there any good news in the budget deal? If you look hard enough, small but important improvements in other school choice programs exist.

The new budget added $75 million to Pennsylvania’s existing Educational Improvement Tax Credit and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program programs. This increase comes on the coattails of a $150 million increase in last year’s budget. That’s $225 million in less than a year to help Pennsylvania kids find the better educational alternatives they deserve.

Though these tax credits are helpful, Lifeline Scholarships would have been much better. The tax credits can take years to ramp up, and they aren’t targeted to the kids who need the most help. They also suffer from extensive wait lists. Lifeline Scholarships would fix those issues, giving the families of low-income kids in struggling schools immediate access to safer schools where learning thrives.

Families should be furious. They only get a hint of the promised progress.

Outside the budget deal, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a new school choice policy through a key committee: the Child Learning Investment Tax Credit. It would create an $8,000 per-child refundable tax credit that offsets education-related expenses for families attending a nonpublic school.

This tax credit would make education affordable for not only families seeking education alternatives but also taxpayers. An $8,000 tax credit is a far more palatable investment in our children’s education than the record-high $22,000 Pennsylvania spends per student.

This commonsense policy could soon pass the full state Senate on a bipartisan basis. You’d think Shapiro would also back it since he floated this concept back in February, but his spokesman says the governor doesn’t support it.

Shapiro’s flip-flop proves he’s fighting against the school choice families want. He’s for school choice in press conferences and speeches. But when it’s time to pass the most critical policies into law, he betrays his word.

But Shapiro can’t ignore this issue forever. If the Democrats lose the Pennsylvania House in November (a very plausible scenario), the legislature will send genuine school choice bills and budgets to his desk.

While families should be furious now, they can be hopeful for the future. It’s a question of “when” and not “if” Pennsylvania gives families the freedom to send their kids to better schools. But it could and should have happened in the latest budget deal if only Gov. Shapiro had kept his promise.

Charles Mitchell is President and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.