The Kansas Senate is taking up a bill that would provide an education tax credit for parents who choose to send their children to private school or to homeschool.
Senate Bill 75 would provide a tax credit of $8,000 per child enrolled in an accredited private school or $4,000 per child enrolled in a non-accredited private school, including homeschooling.
Proponents say that students whose parents cannot afford private tuition would benefit tremendously. Nearly half of low-income students in Kansas are below grade level in reading and math, and the education system refuses to spend more than $500 million in At Risk funding to help students who are at risk of failing as required by state law.
Predictably, the education establishment at a hearing on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, was in full-throttle opposition.
Kansas PTA, for example, claimed in written testimony that tax credit programs — which they referred to as “vouchers” — do not serve the needs of “at-risk” students.
“Evidence continues to accumulate that voucher programs across the country do not result in better test scores for at-risk students, and, in many states, have led to significant declines in their academic achievement,” PTA said, although no documentation to support their claim was provided.
There is evidence, however, that Kansas school administrators and school boards have overseen precipitous declines in student outcomes and won’t use At Risk funding as required by state law. In 2023 the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit issued a report which painted a damning picture of mismanagement and misuse of funding for “At Risk” students.
Presented on July 6, 2023, the audit covers the 2021-22 school years and found that the “significant problems” found in the 2019 audit still exist, and none of their recommendations from the time have been actually addressed.
Indeed, state law requires that districts may only use at-risk funding on programs approved by the Kansas State Board of Education. Those programs are required to be “evidence-based” and be “based on peer-reviewed research that shows the program produced better student outcomes over a 5-year period than would otherwise be achieved.”
In their conclusion, LPA was scathing.
“This is the second time we have evaluated district at-risk expenditures and KSDE’s role in at-risk programs in the last 4 years,” the report reads. Despite calling out several problems and making recommendations to correct those problems in December 2019, little appears to have changed. The problems with the department’s approved at-risk program list have persisted and are especially concerning.”
Mary Sinclair, who spoke on behalf of PTA and is on the Shawnee Mission school board, also claimed Kansas students perform at or above the national average on multiple standardized metrics including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, picking the 2022 scores.
Sinclair’s claim is, unfortunately, not true. As previously reported by The Sentinel, Kansas scores have been below the national average in nearly every category on the NAEP exams and on the ACT for several years.
The 2024 NAEP results released this week and in the adjacent table show Kansas’s national ranks are mostly in the 30s and 40s. Every proficiency level is below the national average.
Laurel Burchfield, writing in opposition to the bill for a group called “Mainstream,” falsely claimed the bill would violate First Amendment protections.
“This diversion of public funds is nothing more than another state-sponsored attempt to undermine public schools and favor private, religious ones – a clear violation of religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Burchfield wrote.
However, the First Amendment protects free speech. It prevents the State from imposing religious beliefs, but it does not enjoin parents from choosing a religious education for their children.
Education tax credit proponents focus on student needs, not system desires
While the opponents focused on the potential impact on the education system, proponents said the education tax credit would help students and families.
Americans for Prosperity Foundation-Kansas, Kansas Policy Institute (which owns The Sentinel), Kansas Family Voice, Catholic schools across the state, Marantha Christian School, and some parents said the issue comes down to better educational opportunities for students vs. simply continuing what has not been working.
Elizabeth Patton of AFP-K noted that “74% of parents with school-aged children in Kansas support (education savings accounts) ESAs. Only 31% of Kansas residents think education is headed in the right direction in the state. More than half of school parents in Kansas prefer one or more days of home-based schooling per week for their children. If given the option, over 50% of parents in Kansas would choose something other than their local public school to educate their child.”
KPI President James Franko noted that the achievement gap between low- and high-income students is evident in NAEP scores.
“Not only did the 2022 NAEP composite scores drop considerably from 2019, Kansas students are now performing worse than in 2003,” Franko wrote. “Only one in four Kansas 8th graders is proficient in math or reading. Only 30% of 4th graders are proficient in math, 35% in reading. The proficiency rates for low-income students are much lower.”
He also pointed to a public opinion poll conducted by SurveyUSA on behalf of Kansas Policy Institute, which found that 78% of voters with children or grandchildren in Kansas public schools support ESAs, and only 17% are opposed. That survey also found that parents slightly preferred an education tax credit over education savings accounts.
While admitting that an education tax credit is not a “silver bullet” for the issues facing Kansas students, Franko said the goal is not just to have good schools for the sake of having good schools but rather to prepare Kansas children for life.
“The goal is to give every Kansas child the opportunity to succeed,” Franko wrote. ‘That will mean attending a high-performing public school for most children, but it should also include a different avenue for children where the local public school is not the right fit.”
