Help Families: Enact the ECCA

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[Your City & State]

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Summary

Lawmakers in 36 states have enacted various forms of assistance for tuition-paying families to help those families enroll their children in the most appropriate elementary or secondary school. Connecticut is not one of those states. In the coming weeks, however, Congress will be in the unique position to help tuition-paying families across the country – including here in Connecticut- through the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). The ECCA facilitates K-12 scholarships for up to two million students across America to attend schools that best meet their educational needs as determined by their parents. Under this bill, $10 billion in federal tax credits would be available for individuals and businesses that contribute to non-profit scholarship-granting organizations. The funds could be used to pay for tuition, tutoring, special needs services, homeschooling curriculum materials, and education technology, among other eligible uses. Scholarships would be funded with private donations, not federal dollars, and donors would receive a federal tax credit. The ECCA would expand school choice and opportunity while respecting federalism, protecting religious liberty, and ensuring private school autonomy. We need your help in urging Congress to pass this unique opportunity. Please take a moment and encourage your legislators by sending them the message that appears on the right side of this page.   FAQs Would the ECCA “take money from public education?”   No. The ECCA is a tax bill, not a spending bill. The bill amends the Internal Revenue Code, not the federal Education Department.   There are no cuts to education funding. To the extent federal and state funding formulas are impacted by public school enrollment, however, funding levels could shift based on parents choosing to enroll their children in schools outside the district public system. Empowering parents to decide what is best for their children’s education is properly determinative as taxpayer funding of education should reflect enrollment levels, and thereby fund students, not systems comprised of bureaucracy and real estate. Accordingly, public school systems would face increased competition to best educate children and satisfy parent “customers.”   Nothing precludes federal, state or local governments from increasing funding of public education even as it educates fewer students, which has been the case as K-12 education freedom and school choice expands. And they have.   Education funding has been robustly funded, and no money is being “diverted” from a tax credit against federal income taxes. The federal government spends more money than ever on K-12 education, including adding $190 billion during Covid-19, not all of which has been spent after three years.   Education funding continues ever upward at the state and local level, even as school choice programs have expanded rapidly in about half the states. Consider the following:   According to an analysis of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of State Budget Officers, from Oct. 2023: <ul> <li>An NCSL review of K-12 education budget proposals for fiscal year 2024 indicated that nearly every state considered increased spending. All respondents to an NCSL survey of state fiscal offices reported increased appropriations in FY 24, with a range of 1.46% to 25.35% in year-over-year growth.</li> <li>A National Association of State Budget Officers survey showed 43 states increased spending in higher education and 39 states increased spending in K-12 education in FY 2023. Similar numbers of states raised spending in FY 2022. In fact, total state spending on both K-12 and higher education has increased in every year since state budgets began recovering from the Great Recession in 2013.</li> <li>A 2021 study found that the five most robust school choice states, Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin, concluded: “The states with robust educational choice programs may have had smaller-than-average increases in inflation-adjusted spending since 2002, but the per-pupil spending still went up, not down."</li> <li>Money should follow the student. We appropriate money for students, not systems. Education funding should be about funding students, and it should follow those students to the school where their parents want them. That’s the privilege of upper-income families and this bill would extend that those families with less, which is what parental choice programs have done in the states. This bill makes for a more equal society in terms of K-12 educational options being accessed by more families.</li> </ul> Myths: <ul> <li>Myth: School choice hurts public education.</li> </ul> Reality: Studies have shown school choice also benefits students in public schools through more competition and by giving parents leverage as education “customers." Lawmakers can support school choice and public schools; they are not a zero-sum proposition. <ul> <li>Myth: School choice takes funding from public education.</li> </ul> Reality: Education funding should be about educating students, not sustaining a system; thus, it should follow the child to the school in which they are enrolled. Still, an extensive 2021 study found that in states with robust choice programs, per-pupil spending on public education still increased over time.   <ul> <li>Myth: The ECCA is a tax cut for the wealthy. </li> </ul> Reality: Students benefit from school choice and the ECCA, not taxpayers. Taxpayers who donate to SGOs remain financially neutral since they must donate at least as much to an SGO to receive the tax credit; accordingly, they are not financially better off in the transaction, they don’t receive a tangible item in return, nor can they benefit their own child.    For more information:  https://investineducation.org/school-choice/   Great Catholic schools across Connecticut can be found here:   https://www.dioceseofbridgeportcatholicschools.com/ https://www.catholicedaohct.org/catholic-schools https://www.norwichdiocese.org/Find/Schools   https://tinyurl.com/CTCatholicSchools202425

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