H5164 would increase the amounts of annual refundable tax credits allocated to the Education Scholarship Trust Fund through at least 2027-28 and expand eligibility to all private and homeschool students.
The House passed H5164 on March 21, 2024, by a vote of 69 to 27. We have assigned pluses to the nays because this bill would further expand the government’s monopoly on K-12 education, which seeks to displace traditional private or homeschooling in favor of universal state-sponsored schooling. Its exchange of public subsidies for curriculum and other regulatory controls effectively turns every participating student into a government-school student. Moreover, education is not the role of government. A child’s education is the responsibility of his or her family. The best “school choice,” by far, is for parents to choose not to place their child’s education in the hands of the state. Educational and economic freedom cannot be achieved by forcing other citizens to furnish their hard-earned tax dollars to fund all that now entails a compulsory, failing, and government-run K-12 school system.