Opponents of Oklahoma’s school choice program claim it primarily benefits “the rich” because, in effect, the joint income of a working mom and dad with children is greater than the income of a young, single person with no children.

Yes, the arguments against school choice really are that stupid.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits to cover the cost of private school tuition. 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 $7,000; families with $150,001 to $225,000 qualify for a $6,500 credit; those earning $225,001 to $250,000 receive $6,000; and those earning $250,001 and up qualify for a $5,000 credit.

Families in the two lowest-income brackets are prioritized by getting larger credits and being granted credits ahead of families in the top three brackets.

But critics argue families with income between $75,000 and $150,000 are “rich” because the median income in Oklahoma is $62,138. They imply families earning more than $75,000 should not be allowed to benefit.

Here’s the catch: The median income of all Oklahomans includes young, single adults with no children who have not reached their peak earning years.

In contrast, the median income of married-couple families in Oklahoma is $95,573, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey.

That means over half of families headed by married parents in Oklahoma have household income exceeding the threshold for the current maximum credit of $7,500, and more than half of those families would be barred from the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program if it were limited to household income of $75,000 or less.

Furthermore, single parents who remarry would be particularly harmed by a $75,000 hard cap. Stay single, and you can put your child in a good private school. Get remarried, and you’re suddenly ineligible for the program and have to remove your child from school.

Roughly two-thirds of Oklahoma children still live in a home with two married parents, and nearly three-quarters live in a home with two adults. As already noted, single parents often remarry, meaning children in those families are likely to be in a two-parent household in the future.

Middle-class families have good reasons to want school choice. In 2024, the Annie E. Casey Foundation notes that 62 percent of Oklahoma fourth-grade students whose families are not economically disadvantaged nonetheless scored below proficiency on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading tests.

Oklahoma is not a high-income state, but school-choice opponents are torturing statistics to pretend otherwise and strip middle-class families of opportunity.

As I’ve said before, school-choice programs should be open to all, just as public schools are, regardless of parental income. But the reality is that the Oklahoma families benefiting the most from school choice are thoroughly middle.