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
For archived lists of schools that receive OSTCP students, please contact the OSTCP team at ra-ostcp@pa.gov.
Become A School That Accepts OSTCP Students
PDE collects information as well as websites to the tuition page from schools that wish to accept students that receive scholarships via 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. Please contact the OSTCP team at
RA-OSTCP@pa.gov if you are a new school who would like to be added to the listing.
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.