Officials with the Southern Education Foundation called on state lawmakers Tuesday to "mend or end" a $50 million-a-year tax credit program that funds private scholarships with little public accountability and widespread potential for abuse.
"Georgia's tax-credit program for private choice has failed the state's children and Georgia taxpayers," said Steve Suitts, vice president of the Atlanta-based organization that has advocated for fairness and excellence in education since 1867. "It is time to end -- or vastly mend -- Georgia's failed experiment in tax credits for private schools.
Georgia is slated to spend about $50 million in tax money on scholarships for private school students next year. Supporters have argued that the scholarship, created in 2008, is doing what it was meant to do -- provide children of modest means to attend private schools -- and that the program's critics are "crazy extremists."
Critics have charged that the program diverts public tax dollars to a program that has little accountability and has sidestepped its original objective of giving poor students in low-performing schools private scool alternatives.
"Based on all available evidence, it is clear that the state's investment in private schools has failed to achieve its aims," Suitts said.
His group, which spent two years assessing the scholarship program, said evidence shows:
-- a significant number of tax credit-funded scholarships are going to students who already attend private schools and likely are from higher income families;
-- available records show some of the student scholarship organizations created to dole out the scholarship money to private schools or private school money did not meet the requirement that they distribute at least 67.5 percentof each year's tax credits to scholarships.
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