Over the course of the past year, I have spoken and written a lot about tax credit scholarships. When I do, I am often bombarded with questions. “Who would be eligible?” “How would this work?” “How much are the scholarships worth?” The questions go on and on. My response often is, “It depends.” Tax credit scholarship programs can be, and have been, designed in many different ways. Still, the Show-Me Institute wanted to give some concrete examples for Missourians to consider and to help answer some of the questions or concerns about tax credit scholarships. Therefore, we commissioned three case studies about tax credit scholarship programs in other states by some top experts. We will be releasing these case studies over the next few weeks.
Today, we are pleased to announce the release of “Live Free And Learn: A Case Study Of New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program,” by Jason Bedrick. Bedrick is a policy analyst at Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. Previously, he served as a legislator in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, a small state with the “fourth-largest English-speaking legislative body in the world.” After his time in office, he was instrumental in the passage of the Granite State’s tax credit scholarship program.
His paper describes the particulars of the New Hampshire scholarship program. It also provides data from the first survey of scholarship recipients. The survey indicates that most of the scholarship recipients were from low-income families. The tax credit scholarship allowed many students to attend private schools that they would not have been able to afford without the support that the program offered.
As you might imagine, parents who received a scholarship for their child tended to be very satisfied. In fact, “All of the scholarship recipients who attended a public school in the previous year reported greater satisfaction with their current school” (p. 19).
I encourage you to take a look at “Live Free And Learn.” And stay tuned for our next two tax credit scholarship case studies.
