Editor’s note: This commentary by Kevin Mooney, senior investigation journalist at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank, originally appeared June 16 in the Daily Caller.
By following through on his campaign commitments to expand school choice, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro can distinguish himself from other elected officials cowed by the teachers’ unions, according to education policy analysts.
But he only has a few weeks to make good on his pledge to increase the supply of scholarship funds available to students in failing schools since lawmakers will potentially finalize the 2022–23 budget on June 30. If Shapiro can persuade some of his fellow Democrats to embrace school choice initiatives as part of the ongoing budget negotiations, he could have a transformative impact on the state’s educational system.
Marc LeBlond, the director of policy for EdChoice, a nonprofit that favors a wide range of options for K–12 education, is optimistic that Shapiro will support some form of “Lifeline Scholarships” for students in the worst-performing school districts while also accommodating an increase in the existing tax credit scholarship program.
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