Kathy Hochul Tries Having It Both Ways On School Choice

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul seems to be walking a tightrope on education reform.

Last week, she surprised nationwide school choice advocates with her recent announcement to opt New York into the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC), the K–12 tax-credit scholarship program codified by the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

However, her support comes with conditions. Although she supports the FSTC’s “potential to help New York students and schools,” Hochul also “awaits information from the federal government on the program,” hoping to avoid anything that resembles “poison pills that could harm New York’s education system.”

But Governor Hochul’s hesitancy is completely unwarranted.

I can attest to the success of programs like FSTC. My state, Pennsylvania, is home to two of the most successful tax-credit scholarship programs: the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC). Combined, EITC and OSTC awarded more than 101,000 scholarships last year.

And the vast majority of which went to low- and middle-income households. The average household incomes were about $78,000 for EITC and $56,000 for OSTC — well below the commonwealth’s median household income of $100,557.

After 25 years of EITC and OSTC, this time-tested Pennsylvania experience disproves all the predictable critics of school choice. It empowers working-class families, provides educational opportunities to every type of student and hasn’t hurt public school funding. In fact, Pennsylvania remains among the highest-spending states nationally.

Despite this success, Hochul joins a long list of Democratic governors who are also stalling on the FSTC.

Four governors — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs — have all vetoed legislation that would have opted their states in. Fortunately, sizable legislative majorities in Kentucky and Kansas successfully overturned their respective vetoes.

Most of these governors have only offered mixed messaging. Stein said he had already planned to opt in (yet hasn’t done so) so the bill he vetoed was “unnecessary.”  Hobbs, who said she hasn’t “ruled out” opting in, also claimed that programs like FSTC “lack accountability, transparency, and oversight.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has also adopted the wait-and-see approach. His evasiveness tracks: Shapiro has a bad habit of overpromising and underdelivering on school choice. In 2023, Shapiro went on Fox News, infamously promising “every child of God” a quality education, only to veto scholarships for kids stuck in low-performing schools a few weeks later.

Other governors have been more vocal in their intransigence. While texting with his state comptroller, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who allowed his state to roll back its own tax-credit scholarship program, shared his erroneous concerns about FSTC diverting public dollars toward private schools, claiming the program “doesn’t seem fair.”

But while these governors drag their feet, kids stuck in public schools don’t have the privilege of waiting.

Academic performance in each of these states’ public education systems has stagnated. Only a quarter of Kentucky eighth-graders are proficient in reading. Six out of ten Kansas fourth-graders are below proficient in math. Only a third of Arizona fourth-graders read at grade level. About a quarter of North Carolinian students are chronically absent. And even following year after year of record-level spending, barely a third of Pennsylvania and Illinois kids can read or perform math at their respective grade levels.

Public schools are failing to educate our kids. The longer these governors wait, the longer they leave kids trapped in failing schools. Refusing to opt in would be, in the words of Arne Duncan (President Barack Obama’s education secretary), a “moral failure.”

What makes this failure even more acute are the costs—or lack thereof. It costs nothing to opt in. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The scholarships are privately funded, leaving public coffers untouched.

In fact, opting out will cost states more. Even if their governor refuses to participate, individuals can still receive the tax credit by donating to out-of-state scholarship organizations. That’s the money leaving the state, something which no political leader should ever advocate. And according to analysis by Education Reform Now, non-participating states stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars for their stubborn refusal.

Also, the “waiting for federal guidance” argument is an obvious dodge. The U.S. Departments of Education and Treasury already released the federal guidance they all claim to be waiting for.

So, dear governors, what else do you need to know? What more do you need?

Or are you just dodging? If I didn’t know better, your hesitation, in the words of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, “appears to reflect ideology more than caution.”

Meanwhile, the kids stuck in your state’s failing schools don’t have the luxury of waiting. They deserve better. It’s time for you to do the right thing: Stop stalling and opt in to the FSTC and give kids a fighting chance for a quality education.

Andrew Lewis is President and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.