Critics say Ohio’s expanded school voucher program is draining funds from public schools, while proponents argue that parents should be able to decide who educates their children.
Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship program was enacted in 2005 to help students from low-income families and those in underperforming districts afford tuition at private schools. It was expanded in 2023, raising the income levels and dropping the requirement that a school district be underperforming.
In a class-action lawsuit filed in January, 2022, a handful of public school students, 200-plus districts, and the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding argued the EdChoice program violates the state constitution’s mandate for a single public system of education.
The Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit claims taxpayer-funded private school vouchers are draining hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio’s constitutionally required public education system — though they started out as a way to help lower-income families escape failing schools.
Stephen Dyer, former chairman of the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee of the Ohio House Finance Committee, said the vouchers were initially only supposed to help students in underperforming districts.
“Originally, the vouchers were supposed to be used to save poor kids in poor schools,” said Mr. Dyer, a current member of the steering committee for the Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding. “Now we are subsidizing wealthy parents who were sending their kids to private schools already. These kids were already in private, mostly religious schools.”
Schools receiving expansion dollars BLADE GRAPHIC
Mr. Dyer said the expansion in the sheer number of students who receive vouchers has been dramatic.
“There has been a massive explosion in vouchers primarily in areas where there were no or a low number of vouchers in the past,” Mr. Dyer said. “There are vouchers going to kids who do not reside in underperforming districts.”
The number of students who received EdChoice Expansion scholarships increased from 23,272 students during the 2022-2023 school year to 82,946 students during the 2023-2024 school year, according to data provided by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
Last year, Ohio sent nearly $400 million via vouchers to private schools, that’s up from the previous year when the state sent $315 million for 57,000 students.
Families who earn up to 450 percent of the federal poverty level, or $135,000 for a family of four, can receive the full amount of the scholarship offered for the 2024-2025 school year. The scholarships are $8,408 for high school students and $6,166 for K-8 students.
Before the changes state lawmakers enacted, only families whose incomes were at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or $75,000 for a family of four, were eligible for the vouchers.
Critics of expanded choice say it pays parents who were already sending their children to private schools.
Sylvania Superintendent Veronica Motley believes many of the students receiving the expanded EdChoice vouchers never attended a public school.
Ohio has changed how it funds EdChoice Expansion over the last few years. Previously, money was directly deducted from the school district where the student receiving the scholarship lived. Funding now comes directly from the state budget, which makes it more difficult to discern how many students receiving vouchers have only attended private schools.
“We have not seen an increase in people running from Sylvania schools,” said Ms. Motley. “We believe that those who are getting the expanded EdChoice vouchers never attended the schools in the district. They are just taking advantage of the money and who can blame them?”
Washington Local Schools Superintendent Katie Anstadt said the district had 188 students in the EdChoice Expansion in the 2022-2023 school year.
“For the 2023- 2024 school year, the number jumped to 309,” she said. “We believe we lost approximately 100 students last year to vouchers, but we are not sure. The state is playing a shell game, frankly. The money is no longer deducted from our foundation. We have no way of tracking it.”
Chris Varwig, a member of the Toledo Public Schools Board of Education, is also a member and former president of the Ohio School Boards Association.
“In 2023, the first year of the EdChoice Expansion, there were 600 students applying for the vouchers,” she said. “In 2024, 720 students received the vouchers. As a whole, TPS saw 4,800 students receive vouchers with just over $4 million lost in taxpayer money. Like other districts in Ohio, we will eventually have to go back to the taxpayers for money.”
Critics of the expanded program also question the value the state is getting.
Ohio House Bill 407, sponsored by Reps. Gayle Manning (R., North Ridgeville) and Bill Seitz (R., Cincinnati), is trying to address the accountability issues.
The bill would require voucher students to take Ohio’s standardized tests in addition to the alternative national tests they already take. The bill is currently in committee.
Tom Rhatican, an associate director with the Catholic Conference of Ohio, sent testimony in opposition to House Bill 407.
“Parents are the primary educators of their children and deserve an opportunity to choose the best school for their family,” Mr. Rhatican said. “The EdChoice program helps to mitigate the financial concerns of many parents who prefer a Catholic education for their children. Our schools create an atmosphere animated by the Gospel that provides parents with an educational option open to Catholic and non-Catholic students, most of whom are from working poor and middle-income families.”
Students in private schools, a majority of them religion-based, are not required to take the same tests students in the public schools take.
“We pay $8,400 per student, which is more than we give public schools per pupil, yet they are not tested to see if they are actually doing any better than they would have been in a public school,” said Mr. Dyer, the education advocate. “Private schools are not magic. This is not what Jefferson imagined when he set out the plan for public schools. We need to have accountability, and these schools need to be audited.”
Representative Seitz said if it passes, a private school with more than 20 percent of its students on vouchers would also have to administer the state proficiency tests to those students.
"I am a supporter of EdChoice and the public schools,” Mr. Seitz said. “I think people have a right to know: Do they perform better with a voucher than they would have at a public school?”
The bill would also require the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to create a report card for voucher-accepting private schools to make them more comparable to public schools, report their admission procedures to ensure they are fair, and ask the schools to account for voucher funds separately from other funds.
Mr. Seitz said the committee is receiving opposition from the Catholic schools. He said he believes the schools are saying they do not want the state dictating what must be in their curriculum.
“In the end, I have no idea what the concern is,” he said. “We are not trying to hurt the Catholic schools. The problem is the schools use an alternative assessment test. The kids do not take the state tests. The results are not apples to apples. We need a fair comparison of achievement. The metrics are not fair, and it makes the comparison difficult.”
Mr. Seitz said the Ohio House wants to make sure the public schools still receive funding based on the Fair School Funding Plan, enacted in 2021. The plan changed how the money the state provides districts for each student is calculated.
“The Senate wanted universal choice, and the House wanted full funding for public schools,” Mr. Seitz said. “I am OK with the EdChoice expansion as long as we are fully funding the public schools as well. I am just not sure if the EdChoice program can be sustained. It cannot be sustained at the expense of the public schools.”
“I do feel strongly about this,” Sylvania’s Ms. Motley said. “These schools have access to public dollars without public accountability. It concerns me deeply that there is no state testing.”
Jake Johnson, director of Catholic School Mission for the Diocese of Toledo, said the Toledo Diocese already tests its students.
“All elementary students take the MAP [Measure of Academic Progress] test, the alternative test, which is state-approved,” Mr. Johnson said. “Both public and nonpublic schools use that test. In high school there are additional tests they take. Parents can see that piece of their child’s academic performance and see how their child is doing.
“The parents in our schools are very engaged and very hands-on. They would hold us accountable if there were issues. The tests our students take are comparable to the tests the public schools use. They are just different products,” he said.
In his statement, Mr. Rhatican said Catholic schools must adhere to extensive chartering requirements for accountability and transparency to be chartered by the state.
He said the schools reported data including state operating standards, health and safety standards, curriculum, teacher and professional staff licensures, and administrative cost reimbursements.
“In the area of testing, many of our schools use both the state test and approved ‘alternative tests’ that are reliable, valid, and correlate to state proficiency levels,” Mr. Rhatican wrote.
Mr. Johnson said the Toledo Diocese covers 16 schools in 19 counties.
He said he did not have the figures concerning the total number of students with vouchers or whether the numbers would put them at 20 percent or more to require the diocese to give the state of Ohio proficiency tests if House Bill 407 becomes law.
“The students this past year did not have their scholarships until January,” he explained. “We will not have those numbers until October.”
Julianna Flanner, manager of tuition and scholarships at Emmanuel Christian Academy, said the EdChoice programs have benefited students and their families.
“It gives the opportunity of school choice to many families, and that is a huge benefit,” Ms. Flanner said. “A decent amount of students here have benefited from the scholarship programs. I would say the program is very valuable in the state.”
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