The Year of Educational Choice: Update IV

This is the fifth post in a series covering the advance of educational choice legislation across the country this year. As of my last update in mid-June, there were 13 new or expanded choice programs in 10 states. Since then, South Carolina has adopted a new school choice program and three other states--Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin--have expanded existing choice programs (including two voucher programs in Ohio), bringing the total to 18. That's considerably more than the 13 new and expanded programs that led the Wall Street Journal to dub 2011 the “Year of School Choice.”

Here's the updated tally:

New Educational Choice Programs

• Arkansas: vouchers for students with special needs.
• Mississippi: ESAs for students with special needs.
• Montana: universal tax-credit scholarship law.
• Nevada: tax-credit scholarships for low- and middle-income students.
• Nevada: nearly universal ESA for students who previously attended a public school.
• South Carolina: voucher-like "refundable" direct tuition tax credit for students with special needs. 
• Tennessee: ESAs for students with special needs.

Expanded Educational Choice Programs

• Alabama: Raised the annual scholarship tax credit cap from $25 million to $30 million and raised the contribution cap from $7,500 to $50,000. However, the expansion came at a price: the legislation lowered income eligibility threshold from 275 percent of the federal poverty level to 185 percent (from about $67,000 to about $45,000 for a family of four). Current scholarship recipients are grandfathered in.
• Arizona: Expanded ESA eligibility to include students living in Native American tribal lands.
• Arizona: Expanded the types of businesses that can receive tax credits for donations to scholarship organizations.
• Florida: Expanded ESA eligibility to include more categories of students with special needs and increased the budget from $18.4 million to nearly $55 million.
• Indiana: Increased amount of tax credits available for donations to scholarship organizations ($2 million over two years).
• Indiana: Eliminated cap on the value of each voucher. Vouchers are worth 90 percent of the state's per-pupil funding.
• Louisiana: Expanded school voucher program (funding roughly 600 additional vouchers).
• Ohio: Increased the value of several categories of vouchers.
• Ohio: Raised the funding caps for special-needs vouchers.
• Oklahoma: Expanded eligibility for its special-needs tax-credit scholarships and raised the tax credit value from 50 percent–tied with Indiana for the lowest in the nation–to 75 percent.
• Wisconsin: The state budget raises and eventually eliminates the statewide voucher cap. Gov. Walker is expected to sign the budget by Monday.

Pending Legislation 

• Delaware: Considering ESA legislation.
• North Carolina: Both the NC House and NC Senate passed budgets that expanded funding for the state’s voucher program and increased the size of vouchers for students with special needs. Budget negotiations are now in overtime. 
• Pennsylvania: Considering an expansion to the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit.
• Rhode Island: Considering ESA legislation.

The previous entry in this series also included an update on the status of school choice lawsuits around the country. Since then, one has been decided. The Colorado Supreme Court struck down Douglas County's school voucher law for violating the state's historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, but the county's board of education will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. AEI's Rick Hess has more on the anti-Catholic origins of the Blaine Amendments and their implications at the Supreme Court, and Cato's own Neal McCluskey explains how the Blaine Amendments block "the only way to deliver education consistent with a harmonious, diverse society: choice."

[Note: updated to correct impact of the amendment to Indiana's voucher law.]