Democratic governors have mostly been in wait-and-see mode this year as the start of the first national school choice program approaches—and little has changed since the Trump administration released its proposed rules for the program two weeks ago.
Sixteen governors—15 Democrats and one Republican—and the mayor of the District of Columbia have yet to announce whether they’ll opt in to the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, according to Education Week’s tracking of governors’ decisions. That number hasn’t changed since May.
Through the program, which launches Jan. 1, taxpayers can claim dollar-for-dollar federal credits of up to $1,700 (and $3,400 for married couples) for donations to groups that award K-12 scholarships to cover private school tuition and public school student expenses such as tutoring and after-school programs. Governors have to opt in for students in their state to be eligible for the awards, though taxpayers from anywhere can make donations and claim the credit.
To date, 31 states have confirmed they’re participating while three governors have said no.
Among the 16 governors who haven’t announced their intentions, some said earlier this year they would await rules from the Internal Revenue Service spelling out how the program operates before deciding.
Now that those rules are out, there’s still little movement.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week confirmed her state would participate, though she had said in May she intended to opt in as long as the rules contained no “poison pills.” The decision makes Hochul the second Democratic governor, after Jared Polis of Colorado, to opt in.
(Four other states led by Democrats are also participating, but that’s because Republican lawmakers in Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina overrode their governors’ vetoes on participating and because the former Republican governor of Virginia opted in before a Democrat took his place in January.)
“I’m not going to leave money on the table when it could help our kids,” Hochul said in a statement. “That’s why I have also been directly engaging with business leaders, who have committed to use this program to support public school students and their academic needs.”
Education Week reached out to the offices of the 16 governors who haven’t disclosed their intentions along with the District of Columbia mayor. Spokespeople for most—from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington state—replied and said they were reviewing the newly released rules. Some said they wanted to ensure public school students would benefit.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will “make a decision grounded in what best supports working families, students, and our public schools,” a spokesperson said.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration is “examining who the program would serve, which opportunities are available, and how it could best benefit public school students,” a spokesperson said.
And Hawaii Gov. Josh Green’s office noted the proposed regulations “limit states’ ability to establish their own administrative requirements, set priorities, or ensure nondiscrimination.” Green’s office also noted state constitutional restrictions on public support for private schools and potential “state resources and oversight responsibilities the program would require” as considerations in the governor’s ultimate decision.
In two states, lawmakers have complicated the path to opting in.
Rhode Island’s Democratic legislature earlier this year passed a bill, which Democratic Gov. Dan McKee signed, removing the governor’s sole authority to opt in. Instead, the legislature will also have to agree.
And in Vermont, the Democratic legislature passed a law, signed by Republican Gov. Phil Scott, requiring that scholarships from the program benefit public school students and that scholarship-granting organizations and entities accepting the funds follow nondiscrimination requirements. Those provisions put the state at odds with the Trump administration’s rules for the program.
What Democrats want from the program
To be sure, the IRS regulations don’t reflect the wish list many Democrats had. States won’t be allowed to set program parameters to, for example, direct scholarships only to public school or low-income students. There’s also no provision allowing them to enforce antidiscrimination measures.
And the IRS’ proposed regulations did not provide further clarity on the school-related expenses tax-credit scholarships can cover. The breadth of that final list could determine the extent to which public school students can benefit. The IRS says it’s a “high priority” to publish guidance on allowable expenses and plans to do so “as soon as possible.”
Democrats’ hesitation has a political dimension, too, especially with midterm elections imminent, said Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University.
“If they stay away from this, they’re going to [anger] all the after-school people, all the tutoring people, a lot of public school districts [where] superintendents are eyeing this and going, ‘I think I could do something cool with this,’” he said. “If they get in, they’re going to make labor really angry and anyone who deeply distrusts the Trump administration.”
But Jorge Elorza, the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, sees a potential political upside for Democrats in opting in. Polling his organization has commissioned has found majority support for the scholarship program, including among Democrats and parents of school-age kids. Opting in could also help a gubernatorial candidate’s standing among independent voters, he said.
“What we see happening here is that the politics around school choice are being scrambled in real time,” Elorza said. “No longer is it obviously the case that Democrats should stay away.”
How much will public school students benefit?
There’s uncertainty both about how large the tax-credit scholarship program will become and the extent to which it will help public school students, particularly those in low-income areas.
The IRS projects the program could grow to $26 billion in 2030 in the 30 states that had opted in before Oct. 1, providing scholarships to at least 2 million students. By comparison, Title I for disadvantaged students—the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding stream for schools—totaled $18.4 billion in 2026.
The proportion of that funding that flows to public school students will depend in part on public schools setting up an infrastructure to accept scholarships, including by charging fees for services the program can cover and teaming up with an emerging set of scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs, focused on public school students or starting their own.
In a working brief released this week, Cowen, from Michigan State, projected—based on giving patterns for Ohio’s tax-credit scholarship for private school tuition and an Arizona tax credit for public school giving—that the program could generate $112 per public school student across all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2030.
In the 30 states on which the IRS based its projection, the per-student figure would work out to about $3.2 billion for public school students based on current enrollment.
Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, worries that the scholarship program will disproportionately benefit wealthy students based on typical charitable giving patterns and state private school choice programs’ history of supporting students who were already enrolled in private schools.
"[T]axpayers in wealthy communities could donate to SGOs that serve low-income students,” he wrote in a recent commentary. However, "[i]t seems much likelier that we come to see the FSTC as a Title I for rich kids [rather] than a source of redistributive, charitable giving.”
