Some Facts About School Choice for Joe Hoeffel

In the Democrat contest for Pennsylvania Governor, Joe Hoeffel came out swinging, attacking Anthony Williams for supporting school choice. Apparently, Hoeffel thinks the PSEA money is more important to his candidacy than poor children who can’t vote. Says Hoeffel (emphasis added),

I believe that using tax dollars for private school vouchers would greatly weaken public education and would be a direct threat to the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania public schools

But one need not take it as a matter of faith…we can actually examine the record of school vouchers.

Indeed, vouchers have improved student learning, graduation rates and test scores in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington DC. They have even had a positive competitive impact on public schools in Ohio and across the country (as noted “no empirical study has ever found that vouchers had a negative effect on public schools”).

And school choice costs dramatically less, freeing up money for property tax relief, or spending by public schools.

That is not even to mention the success of tax credits for scholarships, like Pennsylvania’s highly successful Educational Improvement Tax Credit, and similar programs in places like Arizona and Florida.

Hoeffel should get himself a copy of the ABC’s of School Choice or the School Choice Yearbook so he can discuss some actual facts, instead of using the unions’ talking points from 1990.