Students are learning. Parents are grateful. Donors are seeing the benefits.

And Pennsylvania taxpayers are saving money today — and tomorrow. (Over $1 billion in this school year alone.) Since 2001, Pennsylvania students, parents, donors, and taxpayers all have been reaping the countless benefits of the Education Improvement Tax Credit (“EITC”).

Each year, Pennsylvania individuals and businesses can donate to state registered non-profit scholarship organizations. The donation is eligible for a 90 percent tax credit against your state taxes. In other words, if you donate $1,000, you get $900 credited to your Pennsylvania taxes — and if you’ve overpaid your taxes, you get that refunded to you. For example, your $1,000 donation to a scholarship organization — helping them award scholarships to income eligible students — only costs you $100 out of pocket!

With the tax-credit donations in place, parents who meet state income eligibility apply to a scholarship organization for scholarships for their K-12 students. When students get scholarships, they get to leave a school that isn’t working, is unsafe, or isn’t the right fit. Working class and lower-income parents are empowered to decide where their children go to school. And taxpayers win because these children learn and graduate. 

We know it works because common sense shows it — the demand is overwhelming. Each year the program is over-subscribed by both students seeking scholarships and donors seeking to make donations.

So many parents apply for their kids, some organizations — like the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia (“CSF”) — have to hold lotteries to award scholarships. And companies and individuals seeking to apply for tax credits literally “line up” online when the annual program opens each July, hoping to be eligible before the limited tax credits run out.

Over 500,000 students have been helped so far. Over 90,000 will be helped this year.

Many advocates have detailed the emotional roller coaster of parents seeking help in the form of scholarships and grants. It is life-changing for those who get a scholarship — and for those who do not. I’ve written why so much more help is needed. 

But now we can prove it works academically, too. The Commonwealth Foundation conducted a year-long study of students who have been fortunate enough to get these tax credit-supported scholarships.

We’ve known parents are happy — they keep signing-up and sending their children back to their new schools. We now have the data to show that these students are learning — almost always better than their peers at their local district-run schools, and as well as if not better than the students at the school they’ve transferred into with their scholarship.

Students are learning. Parents are grateful. And donors can now see even more benefits.

Taxpayers win, too. How? EITC scholarships may never be greater than the non-public school’s tuition cost. Plus, the non-public school tuition is typically only one-quarter to less than one-half of the cost to educate that student in his/her local government-run public school district.

For example, the Philadelphia School District costs taxpayers about $24,000 per student. Yet the average CSF scholarship is about $2,500. 

So this year, taxpayers will save over $1 billion because these students will attend a non-public school instead of their local district school. And there have been relatively similar savings each year!

Plus, as we now know from data, the students in the scholarship program do better in school and are more likely to graduate. So, as taxpayers, we win in the long-term, too, every time a child graduates and is prepared for college or work.

If parents aren’t happy with the school they chose, they may leave — and take their scholarship — to find another school. If donors don’t see return on their tax-credit donation investment, they could stop giving or find a different scholarship organization.

A few years ago, the program was expanded and a “sister program” — the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) — was created so that especially poor students could get additional scholarship support.

Soon it was noticed that many non-public schools — especially in urban communities — have a majority of OSTC scholarship students in their student body, because of their very low family income.

So a new program was created for these clearly mission-driven schools: Economically Disadvantaged Schools (EDS). If a majority of a school’s students have OSTC scholarships, those students in those schools can receive an additional EDS grant to further help those students. (In other words, the poorest students — attending schools where most students are from low-income families — may get an additional scholarship.) This has the added benefit of helping ensure that these successful, mission-driven schools remain there to serve current and future students.

So that all these schools across Pennsylvania are helped, there is one designated scholarship organization to receive all EDS donations; the money is then distributed to the EDS-qualifying schools — schools with a majority of their children being OSTC recipients.

That designated organization is the decades-old Philadelphia-area based, BLOCS — Business Leaders Organized for Catholic Schools. But please know, when it comes to the EDS program, the money is awarded by formula to all eligible schools across our state — of all faiths and those of no faith. BLOCS is the largest scholarship organization in Pennsylvania and best to run EDS, without any administrative fee. Donors get a 99 percent tax credit on their donation — and 100 percent goes to schools serving the poorest of the poor.

The schools serving the poorest of Pennsylvania’s poor children are in communities needing these schools — for the children and those communities. (It’s similar to donating to the Salvation Army, the United Way, or Catholic Charities. You help a good organization knowing that your donation will be going to well-run, mission-driven non-profits doing good work.)

For pennies on the dollar of what it would cost to educate a child in a government-run district school.

Yes, this is a government-created program that actually works. Because it’s not bureaucratic and donors and parents hold the scholarship organizations and schools accountable.

As the Commonwealth Foundation has proven, when it comes to taxpayer and student benefit, EITC/OSTC/EDS gets an A+.

Guy Ciarrocchi is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania and is a donor to the Foundation for Catholic Education’s EITC program. Follow Guy @PaSuburbsGuy.