The Next Frontier in School Choice: Tuition Tax Credits?

While most discussion of school choice focuses on charter schooling and school voucher programs, the fastest-growing form of choice in the United States is tuition tax credit programs. Now operating in Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Iowa, and Georgia and benefiting about one hundred thousand students, these programs use the tax code to help individuals and corporations steer millions of dollars into K-12 scholarships for eligible students. Little understood and lightly regulated, these programs constitute a hotly contested frontier in school choice. Are they a pernicious threat or a bold new opportunity? How should these programs be designed? What are the implications for K-12 reform and the future of choice-based reform? Please join University of Colorado professor Kevin Welner, author of the new book NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), and education experts Kevin Chavous of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute, and Sheila Simmons of the National Education Association for an in-depth discussion of this topic. AEI's Frederick M. Hess will moderate.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess



  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including “The Same Thing Over and Over,” “Education Unbound,” “ Common Sense School Reform,” “ Revolution at the Margins” and “Spinning Wheels,” and he pens the Education Week blog, Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public School Charters as well as on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.


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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
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