Since the launch of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program, which provides Oklahoma families with refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition, critics have claimed that private schools would respond by simply increasing tuition to the maximum credit amount.

But the latest report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission indicates that is not the case. Instead, children from low-income and middle-class families have been able to attend Oklahoma private schools without using the full tax credit available to them.

One national expert is not surprised, saying there “is no credible evidence that private school choice programs drive up private school tuition.”

Patrick J. Wolf, distinguished professor and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas, said that market forces and the nature of many private schools mean factors other than revenue maximization impact tuition rates.

“Private schools have incentives to keep their tuition low,” Wolf said. “Religious private schools, especially, have a long tradition of charging tuition well below the average cost to educate their students. All indications are that the tuition of private schools subsidizing their tuition prices to keep them low continues even in states with school choice programs.”

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program has five income brackets: Families earning up to $75,000 can receive a $7,500 per-child refundable tax credit; those earning $75,001 to $150,000 get a credit of $7,000 per child; families with income between $150,001 and $225,000 qualify for a $6,500 credit; those earning $225,001 to $250,000 receive a $6,000 credit; and those earning $250,001 and up qualify for a credit of $5,000 per child.

In its Sept. 4 report, Oklahoma Tax Commission data showed that the average tax credit for families with incomes below $75,000 was less than $7,200 per child, despite having a maximum credit of $7,500 available.

For families with incomes between $75,001 and $150,000, the average tax credit has been $6,741 per child, despite having a maximum credit of $7,000 available.

And for those with incomes between $150,001 and $225,000, the average credit has been $6,390 apiece, despite qualifying for a maximum credit of $6,500.

Those figures indicate that many Oklahoma private schools are charging tuition of less than $7,500.

Tuition data collected by Private School Review show that the average private school tuition in Oklahoma is $11,325 per year for the 2025-26 school year. The average private elementary school tuition cost is $10,996, and the private high school average is $12,464.

But that average is inflated significantly due to 13 private elementary schools and 11 private high schools that charge tuition of $15,000 per child or more. Notably, several of those schools serve special-needs students or at-risk students.

Of the 69 private elementary schools and 46 private high schools in Oklahoma covered by Private School Review, 27 private elementary schools and 13 private high schools charge tuition of less than $7,500 per child.

Notably, the average tuition at Oklahoma private schools also remains well below the per-student revenue provided to Oklahoma public schools.

In a report released in April, the National Education Association found that Oklahoma public schools had $14,066 in revenue receipts per student in the 2023-2024 school year when calculated based on average daily attendance.

Tuition Hikes at Some Schools Didn’t Keep Up with Inflation

A recent report from the National Center for Research of Education Access and Choice, authored by Douglas Harris and Gabriel Olivier of Tulane University, noted that “COVID generated much larger increases in tuition” at private schools than did the availability of school vouchers or other private school-choice programs in states nationwide because “schools experienced higher costs with respect to technology, increased demand from families, and general price inflation” during COVID.

Data in the report, based on a review of 22 private schools in Oklahoma over multiple years, showed that private-school tuition in the 2020-2021 school year was roughly $6,875 and increased to about $7,375 by the start of the 2024-2025 school year. Notably, that meant private-school tuition at those Oklahoma schools increased at a rate lower than inflation.

Nationally, the report noted that there were often “limited tuition increases in religious schools,” and suggested that this is due in part to religious schools’ “mission or spiritual dimension,” which causes them to prioritize accessibility over revenue maximization.

The report also noted that the tuition figure and school size that arose the most often in their review of private schools nationwide was a “tuition of only $5,000 annually and a school size of 30 students.”

“Many private schools evidently operate ‘under the radar’ with very few students in church basements, for example,” Harris and Olivier wrote. “This means the new voucher programs will increase access for a larger number of families than might otherwise have been assumed and will likely increase enrollment in smaller and cheaper schools.”

The report estimated that, nationally, school voucher programs “dramatically reduce the net price for most parents by 50-80 percent.”

The Oklahoma Tax Commission reports a solid majority of children benefiting from the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program so far this year—55.6 percent—are from low-income and middle-class households with incomes below $150,000.

Among married-couple families in Oklahoma, Census data shows that the median household income was $95,573, meaning half of married-household families with children have income below that level and half above that mark.

The Oklahoma Tax Commission reports that 3,945 children whose families applied for the tax credit are leaving public school this year to enroll in private school. (The commission did not collect information on how many children switched from public to private school in previous years of the school-choice program.)

As a group, the 3,945 children switching to private school are equivalent to the total enrollment at the 27th-largest public-school district in Oklahoma out of more than 500 districts statewide.