A new report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission shows the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program is allowing thousands of students to shift from public school to private schools with the majority of beneficiaries coming from low-income and middle-class families, including children on state welfare programs.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition with the largest credits going to those with the lowest income.

The 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 to $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.

Preference is given to families in the two lowest income brackets.

As of May 1, the Oklahoma Tax Commission reports that 36,860 children have been approved to receive credits for the 2025-2026 school year. So far 2,999 children whose families have applied for the program are currently enrolled in a public school. Based on rough estimates of Oklahoma’s total private school enrollment from the most recent available figures, that would translate into a 7-percent growth rate for statewide private-school enrollment in Oklahoma.

If the tax-credit program allows roughly 3,000 children a year to shift from public school to private school for five years, private-school enrollment in Oklahoma will increase by about 36 percent over that period.

The report shows that many children benefiting from the school-choice program, including those moving out of public schools into private schools, are from low-income and middle-class families.

Of the 36,860 children approved for the school-choice program so far, a majority are either from low-income and working-class families in the two priority income categories, qualify for state benefit programs such as food stamps and Medicaid, or are homeless/financially disadvantaged.

In terms of the overall dollar amount, 59 percent of tax credits awarded by May 1 went to families with incomes below $150,000, those qualifying for welfare programs, and children who are homeless/financially disadvantaged. And nearly 80 percent of credits have gone to children in families with incomes below the program’s top bracket.

The raw number of children receiving the tax credit from families with incomes below $75,000 exceeds the number receiving the tax credit from families with incomes greater than $250,000, according to the report.

Nearly three-fourths of children receiving the credit so far for the 2025-2026 school year are from families with incomes below the program’s top bracket.

The Oklahoma Tax Commission’s data shows that 69 percent of children seeking the school-choice tax credit to switch from a public school this year to a private school in the 2025-2026 school year come from families in the priority categories with incomes of less than $150,000.

To claim that most beneficiaries of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit are “wealthy,” school-choice opponents have often categorized anyone with income greater than $75,000 as “rich.”

However, for that claim to be true, critics must classify Oklahoma public-school teachers as “wealthy.”

According to the National Education Association, a left-wing teachers’ union, the average public-school teacher’s salary in Oklahoma is $61,330. That means a household in which both the father and mother work as public-school teachers in Oklahoma would have joint income placing them far outside the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit’s lowest-income bracket providing a $7,500 per-child tax credit to those with earnings below $75,000.

Federal wage data for Oklahoma show that many families with incomes greater than $75,000 are working in thoroughly middle-class fields.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the household income of a family in which a father works as a truck driver and a mother works as a dental hygienist would be far above $75,000 and could even exceed $150,000, based on the annual mean wage for both professions.

A father working as a wellhead pumper in Oklahoma and a wife working as a registered nurse would also have household income nearing the cutoff for the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit’s priority categories.

The same holds true for the household income of an electrician married to an insurance agent, a police officer married to a teacher, and a welder married to a librarian.

Notably, the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program is providing a private-school education to children at a lower average cost than what would be spent on the same child in the state’s public-school system.

According to financial data reported by schools to the state’s Oklahoma Cost Accounting System (OCAS), new revenue in Oklahoma public schools reached $9,600,703,488 in the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent for which full data is available. Since student enrollment was 698,923 that year, that comes out to an average of $13,736 per pupil.

That means the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program is also benefiting public-school finances, at least indirectly, by freeing up money as children leave public schools for private schools. On a per-pupil revenue basis, Oklahoma public schools would have spent $41.1 million on the 2,999 children who want to use the school-choice program to leave the public-school system in the 2025-2026 school year. That money will now be free to use on other students in the public-school system.