Education
Brandon Dutcher | April 19, 2016
Brandon Dutcher: Oklahoma's budget hole could be $1 billion deeper
Brandon Dutcher
In the Tulsa World this last weekend, OCPA’s Brandon Dutcher wrote about the fiscal impacts of educational choice programs, pointing to the cost savings happening for choice programs at the higher-ed level.
For example, the Oklahoma Tuition Equalization Grant — which is nearly identical in structure to Oklahoma’s private-school voucher program in common education (the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship) — is a modest $2,000 grant for students enrolling in private colleges. Created with strong bipartisan support in 2003, the grant has saved taxpayers more than $50 million, according to Oklahoma Independent Colleges and Universities.
You can read Dutcher’s entire op-ed here.
You can also read another analysis of the fiscal impacts of school choice here.
And finally, you can find OCPA research fellow Steve Anderson's spreadsheet showing Oklahoma's current spending per student here.
Brandon Dutcher
Senior Vice President
Brandon Dutcher is OCPA’s senior vice president. Originally an OCPA board member, he joined the staff in 1995. Dutcher received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma. He received a master’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in public policy from Regent University. Dutcher is listed in the Heritage Foundation Guide to Public Policy Experts, and is editor of the book Oklahoma Policy Blueprint, which was praised by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman as “thorough, well-informed, and highly sophisticated.” His award-winning articles have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, WORLD magazine, Forbes.com, Mises.org, The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, and 200 newspapers throughout Oklahoma and the U.S. He and his wife, Susie, have six children and live in Edmond.