Blogger Yinzercation has an excellent article explaining the negative effects of “tax credits” on public education.
“While our legislators are busy looking under their sofa cushions for spare change to fund the state budget, they might want to consider the $75 million that just walked out the front door. That’s how much the Education Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program costs us taxpayers every year.
“The misnamed EITC program has nothing to do with educational improvement and everything to do with funneling what would have been state budget dollars into private schools, while increasing profits for corporations. Here’s how it works: corporations can get an EITC tax credit by contributing to a Scholarship Organization, which channels the money to private schools. The companies receive up to 90% of their contributions as a tax credit, worth up to $300,000 per year, and can get a federal tax write-off as well, making the program highly attractive.
“Not only do corporations get a tax write-off, but they also receive good publicity and increased access to legislators. For example, gas driller XTO Energy (now owned by Exxon) donated $650,000 over the past three years allowing it to stage ceremonies all over the state at the time when its fracking technique was coming under intense scrutiny. The New York Times reported last week that a state official credited XTO with going “ ‘above and beyond’ its duty” when “[i]n reality, as much as 90 percent of XTO’s donation was underwritten by taxpayers.” [unless otherwise noted, all quotes from New York Times, May 21, 2012]….”
“And there is no accountability for that $75 million. The Keystone Research Center analyzed the EITC’s K-12 component (the program also funds pre-K scholarships and ‘educational improvement organizations’ that work with public schools) and found that “schools benefiting from the EITC scholarships are not required to report on student progress or document school quality.” [Keystone Research Center report, April 7, 2011]
“In fact, the legislature outlawed any attempts to collect such information and the program is actually managed by the Department of Community and Economic Development – not the Department of Education.
“With practically no state oversight, the public has almost no financial information on the organizations receiving tax credits or distributing scholarships. The Keystone report warns, “Experiences in Arizona indicate that a lack of financial accountability opens the door to the misuse of public funds.” And we’re talking about a program that provides scholarships to over 38,000 students to attend private and religious schools – that’s more than the number of students in the Pittsburgh Public School District.”
EITC is a “backdoor voucher program” promoted by ALEC and the voucher advocates “American Federation for Children.”
It is intended to undermine public education and funnel public money to private and religious schools with NO accountability.
Never forget: Vouchers have never won at the ballot box.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is another attempt to hijack democracy and give corporations a license to avoid paying their fair share while also harming public education. As long as the government is complicit in undermining public schools through secretive manipulations with corporations, the attacks will continue. The government is working against pubic education. This unholy alliance should be exposed to parents that want good public schools for their children.
Pennsylvania’s constitution — Article III, Sections 15 and 29 — clearly prohibits the diversion of public funds to sectarian private schools, not that GOP legislators ever pay much aattention to such niceties.
Years ago, when PA had a state constitutional convention, noted writer James Michener was a member of the bill of rights committee. He and I conferred several times by phone to discuss Michener’s desire to strengthen those provisions, but he did not think that the other delegates would go along with changed wording. So Michener and the committee agreed to back it up with what would be called “legislative intent”, that is, it would be the sense of the B of R committee that III 15 & 29 would clearly mean no government aid whatever to sectarian private schools.
Let me also call attention to the new book that exhaustively covers this matter by law profs Laurence Winer and Nina Crimm, God, Schools, and Government Funding (Ashgate, 2015). The authors strongly oppose diversion of public funds to sectarian private schools but, depressingly, show how the SCOTUS and state courts have slowly sabotaged the federal and state bans on such misuse of public funds.
What all this means is that all who care about preserving our public schools, our church-state separation wall, and our religious freedom have got to get serious about electing presidents, governors, and legislators who share these basic American values.
Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty (arlnc.org)
We simply cannot get lawmakers to focus on public schools. Do our schools bore these folks, or something?
I don’t know how it happened, but we seem to be paying a huge group of people in government who have little or no interest in our schools. Surely we can find people who actually value public schools to run public schools? That would seem to me to be a minimum job requirement.