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Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program

The Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program (OSTCP) was created pursuant to Act 85 of 2012, which enables eligible students residing within the boundaries of a low-achieving school to apply for a scholarship to attend another public or nonpublic school.

In Pennsylvania, a low-achieving school is defined as a public elementary or secondary school that ranked in the lowest 15% of its designation as elementary or secondary for the school years shown below based on the combined Mathematics/Algebra I and Reading/Literature scores from the annual assessments administered (PASA, PSSA, and/or Keystone).

Pursuant to Section 2010-B of the School Code, 24 P.S. §20-2010-B, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is required to publish a list of low achieving schools, which is available below.

Low Achieving Schools

For archived lists of low-achieving schools, please contact the OSTCP team at ra-ostcp@pa.gov.

Schools That Receive OSTCP Students

Become A School That Accepts OSTCP Students

For the 2022-23 school year, PDE will begin collecting information as well as websites to the tuition page from schools that wish to accept students that receive scholarships from this program using SurveyMonkey. A school's information will always be as current as shown on its website and there will be no need to send updates to PDE when there is a change or update in tuition rates. The link to the SurveyMonkey data collection tool is shown below:

If you prefer, you can complete and submit the form below for your school and email it to PDE at RA-OSTCP@pa.gov. Effective 11/15/22, we will no longer accept these forms from schools that wish to supply information and tuition rates for future years.

Schools that wish to accept students that receive scholarships from this program must complete a participation form by no later than February 15th. The Pennsylvania Department of Education publicly posts a list of these schools (above) on or before June 6th of each year.

Please note: PDE's role in this program is to identify low-achieving schools and, as a courtesy, provide a list of schools that accept students from this program. PDE does not accept applications, approve the scholarship organizations or make any decisions on the amount of funds granted to a student. These decisions are handled through scholarship organizations under the Department of Community and Economic Development.