Part 1: New OTC Data Proves the Parental Choice Act is a Wealth Transfer Not a Path for Opportunity
1. What the OTC Data Reveals
When the Oklahoma Tax Commission (OTC) responded to our Open Records request, it provided the first detailed, school-level look at how Parental Choice Tax Credit dollars are being distributed. The file covered 214 named private schools. The data confirmed three critical points:
Household income: Nearly one in four approved students (≈26%) came from families earning over $250,000 a year. By comparison, only about 3–4% of Oklahoma households earn that much, meaning the program is heavily tilted toward the state’s wealthiest families.
School profile: Roughly 70% of the named schools had religious identifiers in their names—Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, or evangelical terms like “Victory,” “Rejoice,” and “Shepherd.”
Scale: The program has already directed $579 million in tax credits to private schools across just two years, with a statutory cap of $250 million annually going forward.
Equally important is what the OTC data does not show. The spreadsheets include no information about student performance, or household demographics. In fact, OTC itself confirmed that it does not maintain those fields and directed us back to its public summary reports.
Put simply, the data confirms what critics feared—that vouchers primarily serve families already in private schools and at the highest income levels—while offering no evidence that taxpayer dollars are producing better outcomes for the students the money was supposed to help.
📊 Key Findings from OTC Data
26% of voucher students come from households earning $250,000+.
Only 3–4% of Oklahoma households are in that bracket.
70% of named schools are religiously affiliated.
$579 million in tax credits distributed in two years.
2. A Wealth Transfer, Not Opportunity
The Legislature passed the Parental Choice Tax Credit under a bold promise:
“Parents … are best suited to make choices to help children … reach their full potential and achieve a brighter future.”
Those words sounded compelling on paper. But the data confirms the reality is very different.
One in four voucher recipients come from households earning $250,000 or more.
By contrast, only about 3–4% of Oklahoma households earn that much.
Families in the lowest income brackets—the very group lawmakers claimed to help—make up only a small fraction of voucher recipients.
Rather than broadening opportunity, the program has become a subsidy for the wealthiest households, widening inequality and disproportionately excluding Oklahoma’s minority communities.
Governor Stitt has often said he would run Oklahoma like a business. In business, when you make a bad investment, you cut your losses—you either shut it down or make significant modifications. Instead, this voucher scheme keeps pouring taxpayer dollars into a system with no accountability that OTC data shows is not meeting its stated goals.
We’ve already offered lawmakers a solution: apply the same income safeguards as Oklahoma’s Promise and require basic testing to prove that voucher students are getting a better education than in public schools to justify the level of investment. If the Governor truly wants to run the state like a business, he should welcome those safeguards. Otherwise, Oklahomans are left to ask: is he really acting as a businessman—or as a broker for the wealthiest families, neglecting his responsibility to the rest of the state’s students?
3. No Evidence of Better Outcomes
For public schools, Oklahoma law requires annual standardized testing, graduation tracking, and public reporting through the state’s A–F school report cards. These systems give parents, taxpayers, and lawmakers a way to measure results.
For voucher-funded private schools, there are no such requirements. The Oklahoma Tax Commission doesn’t collect student achievement data. The Department of Education doesn’t track it. The Regents don’t oversee it. In short, no state agency has been tasked with measuring whether students receiving vouchers are learning more than their peers in public schools.
The absence of accountability would be troubling enough. But national evidence paints an even worse picture. Studies in Louisiana, Ohio, and Indiana found that voucher students often performed worse in math and reading than students who stayed in public schools. Even the recent Tulane REACH Center study covering 11 states concluded that vouchers do little to raise outcomes—and in many cases push results backward.
That raises the obvious question: if private schools receiving public dollars are free from accountability, and the best research shows weaker performance, why is the Legislature still writing checks?
If lawmakers truly want to put children first, they must attach the same safeguards that already exist in Oklahoma’s Promise scholarships: income eligibility and performance tracking. Without them, the program is simply draining resources from proven public-school programs and not providing real school choice while providing no evidence of the effectiveness of this staggering amount of money.
4. Why Pass a Bill That Fails Its Own Promise?
The Legislature knew what it was promising. The language of the bill made it clear:
“Parents … are best suited to make choices to help children … reach their full potential and achieve a brighter future.”
But two years in, the evidence points in the opposite direction: high-income families capture the bulk of the benefit, most of the dollars flow to religious schools, and there is no proof that voucher students perform better. In fact, research from other states shows they often perform worse.
So why pass and continue to fund a bill that fails its own test? The answer lies not in student performance, but in politics. Party leaders and national operatives from religious based organizations have made “school choice” a flagship issue, pressing legislators to follow the national script regardless of local results. Since these vouchers primarily find private Christian schools that get public funding to expand Christian education using the guise of school choice.
The OTC data also shows most voucher dollars are flowing to religiously affiliated schools. Roughly 70% of the named schools in the dataset carry identifiers like Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, or evangelical names such as Victory, Rejoice, and Shepherd.
For decades, laws supporting the separation of church and state kept tax dollars out of religious classrooms. That line has blurred in recent years with U.S. Supreme Court rulings, but the practical result in Oklahoma is unmistakable: taxpayers are underwriting religious education with no oversight or accountability.
This is not the model Oklahomans were promised. Instead of creating opportunity, lawmakers created a subsidy primarily for private religious institutions that operate outside state academic standards. Oklahoma lawmakers have chosen loyalty to the party line over loyalty to the students and taxpayers they represent.
That choice has consequences. By continuing to fund a program that widens inequality, shifts money from public schools to religious institutions, and produces no measurable return, the Legislature is failing in its duty of financial stewardship of taxpayer money.
The Legislature has two paths forward: continue defending a program that does not deliver or take responsibility seriously and fix it with the safeguards already proven in Oklahoma’s Promise.
5. The Better Investment: Community Schools
If the Legislature’s goal were truly to raise student achievement, it would direct funds to programs with a proven track record. One model already working in Oklahoma are Community Schools.
Community Schools combine rigorous academics with wraparound supports: on-site health clinics, mental health services, tutoring, after-school programs, and active parent engagement. These are the very supports research shows improve attendance, boost test scores, and raise graduation rates—especially in high-poverty districts.
We don’t have to look far for proof. Union Public Schools in Tulsa has become a national leader in the Community Schools model. The district has documented:
Improved attendance, especially in elementary grades where chronic absenteeism had been a barrier to learning.
Higher test scores in reading and math for students participating in extended-day and after-school tutoring programs.
Increased graduation rates, climbing from the mid-70% range to above 90% in the years since adopting Community School strategies.
The contrast with the voucher program is stark:
Vouchers: funnel money to families already in private schools, with no reporting requirements, no accountability, and no evidence of better outcomes.
Community Schools: serve public school students directly, document results annually, and have a long track record at Union and in the other nineteen states with community schools for measurably improve performance for the children who need it most.
And the cost? A 20-school Community Schools demonstration project was estimated at $30–35 million statewide—barely a tenth of what vouchers have already consumed. Even a fraction of the $600 million allocated to vouchers could expand the model across Oklahoma, reaching hundreds of thousands of children instead of just a few thousand in private schools.
Call to Action
The Legislature will not change course unless Oklahomans demand it. That means making your voice heard.
📞 Here’s what you can do today: Call the offices of Governor Kevin Stitt, Senator Adam Pugh, and Representative Dell Kerbs—the leaders most responsible for oversight of this program—and tell them, in your own words:
“The OTC data proves the Parental Choice Tax Credit is not helping low-income families. It’s a wealth transfer to the richest households and a subsidy for private religious schools, with no evidence of better outcomes. I’m asking you to either cancel the program or rewrite it with the same income safeguards and accountability standards as Oklahoma’s Promise.”
Key Phone Numbers
Governor Kevin Stitt: (405) 521-2342
Senator Adam Pugh (Chair, Senate Education Committee): (405) 521-5622
Representative Dell Kerbs (Chair, House Education Oversight Committee): (405) 557-7343
Find your legislators:
Senate Directory: www.oksenate.gov/Senators/Default.aspx
House Directory: www.okhouse.gov/Members/Default.aspx