A fellow blogivist alerts us to a breaking development in Georgia. The State Senate has approved a tuition tax credit scholarship program (read the full bill). The bill now just needs to be signed by the Governor, Sonny Perdue. Perdue signed a special-needs voucher program last year, so there is every reason to expect he’ll sign this bill as well.

Any time a state passes a scholarship program like this one, it is good news. Tax credit programs like this one encourage individuals and corporation to give to scholarship funds that help needy children get out of failing public schools. Thousands of kids will now be given opportunities that before existed only in their dreams.


But there are some shortcomings, as we might expect. The bill limits individual contributions to $1,000 for individuals and $2,500 for couples. Importantly, the corporate contributions can be as high as 75 percent of their tax liability, a respectably high amount.

Also, the total of tax credits allowed by the program is capped at $50 million. This is a pretty healthy cap size, $6 million more than Pennsylvania’s. But it is still an artificial limitation on opportunity. State per pupil spending is around $8,000 per student. If we assume the average scholarship will meet this level, then this program can only help about 6,250 of Georgia’s 1.6 million school kids.

Kudos to Georgia. They should be proud. But we must remember, this big victory is but a drop in the bucket.