Julius Caesar led Roman forces to victory in the decisive battle of the conquest of Gaul at Alesia. Having pursued the Gauls to a fortified city, Caesar first surrounded the city with a wall (to keep the Gauls trapped in Alesia) and then a second wall (to keep Roman forces protected from a relief army). Having completed these and other siegeworks, Caesar began the process of starving a surrender out of Alesia. Vercingetorix, the commander in Alesia, forced his non-combatants (women, children and elderly men) out of the city and into the no-man’s land between the city wall and the newly built interior Roman wall. The cruel decision had two aims- first to stretch the supply of food for the defenders, and second to convince the Romans to stretch their own limited supplies.
Vercingetorix, who had previously been running a guerrilla-style campaign attacking Roman supply lines, underestimated Caesar. Caesar was only willing to leave a single way out for his opponents. Caesar refused the refugees, and when a huge Gallic relief army attacked the outer Roman wall while Vercingetorix’s forces assaulted the inner wall, Caesar defeated both forces. After multiple failed assaults, the relief army withdrew, and Vercingetorix surrendered.
Why the trip down historical memory lane? In a Vercingetorix-like move, a bill in Oklahoma proposes to cast more than 1,400 Oklahoma students out of the state’s personal use tax credit program. Oklahoma’s potentially revolutionary refundable personal use tax credit inspired your humble author to write a study on the promise of the approach. Oklahoma has by far the most potent personal use tax credit, but improvement opportunities include eliminating or lifting the statewide cap on funding and the limiting of participation to accredited private schools. The accreditation requirement puts any new private school in the position of competing with established private schools whose students can access the credit for years as they seek accreditation.
As noted in the study:
“Oklahoma covers 68,577 square miles in land area, so 160 participating private schools is only one for every 480 square miles in the state. The state’s population of course is not distributed evenly throughout the state, but for context: Oklahoma has more than 1,700 public schools. The relative scarcity of private schools in the state makes the onboarding of new private schools crucial to the success of the program. Educators could create new private schools, especially in areas in which demand exceeds supply. Unfortunately, lawmakers did not design the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act in a fashion that recognizes the need for additional private schools.”
In other words, a requirement for private school accreditation that does not provide an onramp for new school supply looks like a visit from our old nemesis, the Baptist and Bootlegger coalition.
A reasonable approach adopted by multiple states to address this issue allows new schools to participate in choice programs while in the process of seeking accreditation. Unfortunately, legislation currently pending in the Oklahoma legislature would tighten accreditation requirements, eliminate 30 schools with private accreditation from participating, and upend the education of 1,400 students in the process. In short, it fails to address one major shortcoming of the Oklahoma program and makes another one worse. Several school choice and religious liberty groups have communicated their opposition.
The legislation includes a trade: grandfathering credit participants from year to year in return for tightening accreditation. The cap created the possibility that families might not be able to participate from year to year; eliminate the cap, eliminate the problem. While everyone should feel sympathy for families unable to continue participating in the credit because of the cap, the interests of students whose education solutions lie in startup schools stand as no less worthy. In fact, grandfathering will have the effect of casting other students out.
Balancing the demand and supply side of the choice equation will be vital to developing a truly flourishing education space.
