This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 30, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown. During this year's school choice week, it's worthy to consider the scholarship tax credit.

They provide for more student education than vouchers,

and they're more politically saleable,

but they're less studied than vouchers.

Jason Bedrick, an education policy analyst

at the Cato Institute, explains why.

So it's School Choice, National School Choice Week around the country.

We are celebrating all the various forms of school choice, public school choice and private

school choice. And when people think about private school choice, often they

think specifically of voucher programs where the government collects money from taxpayers and then pays generally

low and middle income students to go to the schools of their parents choice.

But in reality the largest private school choice

program in the country is what's called a scholarship tax credit. There are

16 states, or actually there are 16 programs operating in 13 states right now that are scholarship

tax credits.

The difference is that private businesses and then

individual taxpayers donate to nonprofit scholarship organizations and then receive a tax

credit anywhere from 50% to 100% of their donation.

And then those nonprofit scholarship organizations

fund low and middle income kids attending the school

of their choice.

...