Guests: Education tax credits will not benefit our most vulnerable students
Public education is under attack in Oklahoma. For years, state leaders have prioritized private schools over our state’s public education system, openly advocating for private school vouchers despite opposition from education experts. Supporters claim that school choice bills will improve educational outcomes, but these measures offer little meaningful change for the 700,000 public school students in the state.
Current legislative proposals are misguided at best, and cast doubt on the integrity of our legislative process. After education vouchers failed in 2022, out-of-state special interest groups funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into our elections, running smear campaigns against the opposition. Our students’ needs cannot be used as a political bargaining chip, especially in a time of dwindling trust in public officials.
House leadership has proposed a $5,000 voucher tax credit to support private school families. The facts, however, don’t support leadership’s assertion that vouchers will benefit every student. Average private school tuition in Oklahoma is $7,000, but larger and more recognized schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are much more expensive. If the average statewide income is only $56,000, how can the majority of families afford to send their children to Bishop McGuinness ($16,245) or Cascia Hall ($16,800)? For most Oklahomans, private school tuition is immensely unaffordable, even with the proposed $5,000 tuition credit. Unsurprisingly, new data show that voucher tax credits overwhelmingly benefit households making more than $200,000 annually, benefiting the affluent minority instead of our most vulnerable students.
House leadership’s education plan also offers a $500 million increase in public school funding, but even with this increase, Oklahoma would remain at the bottom of the region in per-pupil spending, beating only Arkansas. Part of this stems from an outdated school funding formula that doesn’t adequately address social determinants, such as concentrated poverty, that disproportionately affect students of color. Oklahoma ranks 45th in the nation in key education metrics, largely due to decades of fiscal neglect that private schools haven’t had to face. Achieving top-10 status will require a significant and ongoing investment across the state and an update to the school funding formula to better account for today’s needs.
Education is a complex issue, with downstream effects that impact our health. Oklahoma has some of the worst health metrics in the nation, earning a D or F in 71% of health indicators. As a state, we are burdened with poor outcomes stemming from chronic disease and inaccessible healthcare. Experts agree that high-quality education can improve many of these challenges, and is important to every facet of our lives. With a better education, people can seek out better jobs with stronger insurance and higher incomes, which in turn contributes to the ability to live near healthier food options and excellent schools. If that isn’t enough, people with a better education live longer because they live healthier lives; they’re less likely to smoke and drink, and more likely to understand complex medical jargon from their physician. While this seems complex, the bottom line is that there is a strong relationship between school funding and educational performance. Each dollar we invest in our public schools is a commitment to better test scores, college-readiness, and graduation rates, and the sum of these educational outcomes will impact the entirety of our state’s future health for generations.
Gov. Kevin Stitt and Superintendent Ryan Walters have repeatedly claimed they want to fund students and not systems. Their actions have shown us they don’t mean all students. Oklahoma will always remain a bottom-10 state if we ignore our responsibility to future generations.
Alec Camacho and Andy Wilburn are medical students at the OU-TU School of Community Medicine.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Education tax credits will not benefit our most vulnerable students
