ALEC ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

FROM TRUTHOUT

Public Education in the Crosshairs - ALEC's Private Scholarship Tax Credits

Thursday, 19 September 2013 00:00By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | Report

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(Image: Apple and books via Shutterstock)A commitment to high-quality, free public education for all children has long been the foundation of our democracy and prosperity. Although never fully honored, our commitment to an educated citizenry has created a society that is generally literate and able to participate in democratic governance. That commitment is now under multiple attacks by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and many ALEC-created bills target public schools, teachers and teacher unions. One ALEC bill in particular, the "Resolution Supporting Private Scholarship Tax Credits," has mostly flown under the radar - but could have grave, far-reaching consequences.

An Overview of ALEC's Scholarship Tax Credit Campaign

Tuition scholarship tax credit laws, which allow a person or corporation that makes a donation to pay primary or secondary school tuition to take a tax credit - or under some laws, to take a tax deduction - and use state tax codes to subsidize private or parochial education, affect far more than money for private school tuition.

"These laws optimize the warped view of the world that many corporations through ALEC are building toward," said Nick Surgey, director of research at the Center for Media and Democracy, which launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011. "Their rhetoric might be all about the free market, and they might dress it up by talking about helping kids from poor families, but there is no denying that the real beneficiaries from these laws are those whose intention is to take a wrecking ball to our public education system."

A handful of states have enacted versions of private scholarship tax credit laws: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin. Other states are likely to join that list. In 2013, theIdaho House approved a tuition tax credit scholarship 35-33, but it failed to get out of the Senate Taxation Committee by a 7-2 vote. According to state Sen. Bob Nonini (R-Couer d'Alene), if enacted, this bill would shift approximately 2,600 children from public to private schools. It seems likely that this bill will come up for consideration again.

In the last term, the US Supreme Court's conservative majority dismissed a case that questioned the constitutionality of Arizona's tuition tax credit law on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the claim. That dismissal did not rule on the merits of the case. A New Hampshire case is on the Supreme Court's docket for 2013-14.