I am going to start this commentary by asking a very important question, followed up by asking which state is going to be screwed based on the answer.
Q. What little known provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” – the landmark tax legislation passed in 2025 – has the potential to upend public school education in the United States?
A. The Scholarship Tax Credit Program
The state most likely to get screwed is, of course, California, which is on the verge of making a monumental mistake which could adversely affect the lives of its six million students.
The provision in the Scholarship Tax Credit Program gives individual taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 per year for cash donations to eligible nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations. The beauty of the tax credit is that it makes it essentially free for the taxpayer to donate the $1,700, since their taxes are reduced by the amount of the tax credit.
Here is the awesome part: all the money will be used to provide scholarships for K-12 education expenses, which can include home schooling, parochial and private schools, tutoring, books, computer technology, and other approved educational expenses. What makes it revolutionary is that it is the first federal program in the history of our country which allows federal dollars to be used for private schools and alternative educational opportunities for kids stuck in failing public schools.
Of course, there is one catch to the immense possibilities in this law to revolutionize education in America and that is: each state must opt in to the program to be eligible to dispense the money to families in the state. To date, 31 states have officially opted in. Every state with a Republican governor or Republican legislature has opted in, and because of the obvious allure of the program, three states with Democrat governors – New York, Colorado and Virginia – have agreed to participate.
By now you might be wondering what about California, since no one can plausibly suggest we don’t need the money, given the absurdly low-test scores for which we are now infamous. Not surprisingly, the teacher unions in the state have given their marching orders to our feckless governor and state legislators to reject what would potentially be billions of dollars for children who are currently victimized by a public schooling edifice that is warehousing them in content-free classes, where they spend their time until they are spit out into the world woefully underprepared to face the rigors of an information economy.
Just to give you the magnitude of what California is passing up, if one half of taxpayers in the state took advantage of the tax credit that could result in a pool of money approaching $16 billion for California. With that amount of money, you could give 1.6 million students in the state $10,000 each year to completely cover private tuition, home schooling, and/or intensive tutoring. Of course, the state would have to actively market the tax credit to ensure taxpayers are aware of it so they could take advantage of the program.
To try to quantify what this could mean for Santa Barbara, eligible families can’t make more than 300% of median income, which for a family of four in our county is $355,800 per year. Obviously, this would mean almost all families, or specifically 93% of all families in Santa Barbara County, would qualify.
The possibilities are immense.
However, in what could go down as the worst blunder the state of California has made in a generation, expect officials here to inexplicably forego the money. This is shortsighted, foolhardy, and cowardly. As a famous Roman philosopher once said, “Any man can make a mistake, but only an idiot persists in his error.”
Thank you, California, for proving once again that stupidity knows no bounds. You have consigned millions of your children to a bleak academic future for no apparent reason other than the stupidity of a frivolous governor and the fear of upsetting activist teachers’ unions.
Damn the CTA! Take the Money, California!