HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett’s month-old administration on Wednesday officially endorsed the use of taxpayers’ money to enable low-income students in failing public schools to transfer to private schools, but stopped short of backing a more far-reaching plan.

State Education Secretary-nominee Ronald Tomalis, the first speaker at a Senate Education Committee hearing that drew a standing-room-only crowd, said targeting school vouchers at low-income youngsters in the worst-performing public schools would intensify competition within the state’s educational system to produce “exponential benefits” for all students.

Tomalis did not endorse a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeffrey Piccola that in the third year would allow any low-income public-school student to use the per-pupil subsidy the state government sends to his or her school district to attend a different private, public or religious school. Tomalis said the bill “starts the conversation” about how to expand choices for students.

Piccola said his bill would create an “educational free market” that would greatly expand options for students and derided the present system as a “monopoly” guarded by teacher unions and school boards.

Sen. Anthony Williams, a Philadelphian who campaigned on the issue of school choice in a losing bid for the Democratic nomination for governor last year and is a co-sponsor of Piccola’s bill, said the issue is about civil rights.

“Separate but unequal is what we have,” he said.

Opponents said the bill could cost taxpayers as much as $1 billion a year once fully implemented. It also would undermine public education by draining money from local districts; would fail to hold the nonpublic schools accountable for students’ academic progress or how the voucher money is spent; and would leave it up to those schools to decide which students should be accepted, they said.

Piccola said the estimated bill’s cost has yet to be calculated, but that it would not reach $1 billion a year.

The bill also would increase state funding for an existing program that provides tax breaks to businesses that sponsor tuition scholarships for children in lower-income families.

Tomalis said the “factory model” approach to education — in which a student’s residence determines which public schools he or she attends — is becoming outmoded with the expansion of charter schools and other alternatives to public schools. Modern parents who are used to having abundant choices in other aspects of their lives are demanding more in the education that their taxes finance, he said.