Commonwealth Foundation Teams Up with U.S. Sen. McCormick to Promote Educational Choice

The Commonwealth Foundation was, once again, at the center of the ongoing struggle for educational freedom in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation.

U.S. Senator Dave McCormick hosted a town-hall event, organized by the Invest in Education Foundation (IIEF), about school choice. Megan Martin, the Commonwealth Foundation’s chief operating officer and general counsel, joined McCormick on stage to promote the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).

A first-of-its-kind program codified by the One Big, Beautiful Act, the ECCA will offer tax-deductible scholarships for students seeking educational alternatives to their neighborhood schools.

The ECCA should look familiar to Pennsylvanians. The new national program builds on the successful models established by Pennsylvania’s own tax credit scholarship programs, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC). In the 2024–25 school year alone, EITC and OSTC provided more than $525 million in scholarships to tens of thousands of low- to middle-income Pennsylvania kids.

EITC and OSTC have proven to be wildly popular in Pennsylvania. In fact, demand has outpaced supply, with more than 80,000 applications left unfulfilled. Moreover, polling shows that eight in ten Pennsylvanians support expanding EITC and OSTC. (Additional polling indicates 83 percent of Pennsylvania voters back the ECCA.)

Education shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Programs like the ECCA, EITC, and OSTC empower parents to make the best decisions about their children’s education, rather than relying on government bureaucrats.

To learn more about the school choice policies, please visit the Commonwealth Foundation’s previous posts about the ECCA, EITC, and OSTC:

• Educational Choice for Children Act
• One Big, Beautiful Bill Benefits for Pennsylvanians
• Pennsylvania’s Education Tax Credit Scholarships: How EITC Serves Children and Families in the Commonwealth