Providing students with the best educational options should be one of the most bipartisan issues in America. But as we’ve seen too many times, politics can often overshadow students.  

Commonwealth Foundation Champions Education Freedom in Keystone State

For years, the Commonwealth Foundation has championed school choice and educational freedom for students in the Keystone State. And when negotiations for the 2023-24 budget began, Commonwealth took on the fight to give better options to Pennsylvania’s neediest students.  

Pennsylvania spends nearly $22,000 per student each year and is one of the highest per-student spending states in the country (according to 2020 figures). However, according to recent testing data, almost half of the state’s fourth and eighth graders cannot read proficiently or perform math at grade level. 

While Pennsylvania does have school choice programs (largely thanks to Commonwealth), it does not offer students education savings accounts which would give families true options and control over their futures.  In 2023, the Commonwealth team set out to change that. 

Commonwealth Team, Education Experts Devise Lifeline Scholarships

During state budget negotiations, Commonwealth’s team worked with education experts and legislators to champion Lifeline Scholarships (also known as the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success [PASS]). Lifeline Scholarships would have provided students in the bottom 15% of public schools with scholarships ranging between $2,500 and $15,000 a year to attend schools that better served their needs. The scholarships would come from allocated funding and not take any money away from public schools.  

Lifeline Scholarships not only would have given options to the students who need help the most, they wouldn’t have taken away any resources from the state’s public school system. Because of this fact, Lifeline Scholarships were supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.  

Commonwealth Promotes Education Freedom Among Parents

Commonwealth’s team knew they had to not only reach legislators, but the parents and students who would benefit from these scholarships. So, Commonwealth sent mailers to 21,000 parents from some of the lowest performing schools in the state.

Commonwealth also sent over 22,000 texts to parents in the Philadelphia region, bought ads on one of the state’s most popular news-talk radio stations, penned 49 op-eds in the top publications around the state and the Wall Street Journal, and reached families via strategically placed digital and billboards ads.  

Thanks in part to Commonwealth’s efforts, legislators from both parties and the governor supported the scholarships. Governor Shapiro even supported Lifeline Scholarships when he was campaigning. But, as the Wall Street Journal explains, the governor supported Lifeline Scholarships, until it was too hard politically to do so. 

“After clearing the Republican Senate, Lifeline Scholarships moved to the Democratic House, where representatives on both sides of the aisle support school choice. After the governor bungled the budget, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, a Democrat and teachers-union proxy, sided against students and his own party’s governor by holding the bill hostage. Mr. Bradford claimed he would be open to future discussions if Democrats scored more wins in their “priority” areas. This gave Mr. Shapiro his first real test of leadership. He could use his political capital to force his own party to rescue kids trapped in failing schools, thereby risking an extended budget impasse and union ire, or he could go back on his word. 

“Mr. Shapiro failed the test. He said he would use his line-item veto to strike funding for Lifeline Scholarships from the budget.” 

Unfortunately, because of politics, Pennsylvania students will have to wait for Lifeline Scholarships.  

Commonwealth Foundation Fights For Increase to Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit

But despite the governor’s failure to give Pennsylvania families better educational options, Commonwealth’s team refused to give up. The 2023 budget deal included a $150 million increase for the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs—the largest ever increase for these programs.

Of this, $130 million of this funding is for K-12 scholarships, enough to provide approximately 35,000 additional students with scholarships in 2024 while raising the average scholarship amount. This increase surpasses last year’s then-record increase and represents a $275 million increase in two years. While several other states have passed universal educational choice, Commonwealth’s victories—despite the Lifeline loss—represents the largest collection of educational choice programs in America. 

Students in Pennsylvania deserve the options and resources to learn and grow—regardless of their zip code. While politics too often gets in the way of making that possible, Commonwealth is continuing to champion students and earn important victories.