May 10, 2011 6:11PM # Educational Freedom in Pennsylvania By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE The Pennsylvania state House has just passed an expansion of its existing k‑12 scholarship-donation tax credit program. [The vote was a deafening 190 to 7](http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/05/pa_house_passes_expansion_of_t.html) in a state that has voted Democratic in every one of the last five presidential elections. Nevertheless, there is serious opposition to this expansion of education tax credits in the Senate, where [several prominent lawmakers prefer a voucher bill](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_736328.html). It’s not clear which path the legislature will ultimately take, but there seems to be considerable agreement on the goal: giving parents true freedom of choice in education. A key point to consider, then, is which type of program is most likely to preserve the freedom and diversity of the education marketplace, thereby giving families a meaningful range of alternatives to choose from. I ran a regression study on precisely this question last fall (now forthcoming in the peer-reviewed *Journal of School Choice*). What I found is that [vouchers impose a large and statistically highly significant burden of additional regulation on private schools while tax credits do not](https://www.cato.org/pubs/researchnotes/WorkingPaper-1-Coulson.pdf). This is [not the only advantage of the tax credit program](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-coulson/a-winn-for-education-and-_b_848035.html), but it is a compelling one. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).