Ohio adopted a voucher program. Then another and another. There are five different voucher programs. The Republicans who control the State Legislature hate public schools, so they eventually decided to make vouchers universal. They removed the income limit so that every family could obtain vouchers.

The cost of vouchers yearly went from $124 million last year to $966 million this year—and it may go even higher.

Do Ohioans really want to underwrite the tuition of every student who chooses to enroll in nonpublic schools?

You will not be surprised to read that the vast majority of students who use vouchers are already students in private and religious schools.

Poor kids are not being “saved” by vouchers. Affluent families are getting a subsidy from the states. Many private schools have raised their tuition in response to the new voucher money.

Ohio also has many charter schools. Typically they get worse academic results than public schools. Some have been mired in financial scandals. The most notorious charter scandal involved an online for-profit school called The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT). Over two decades, it collected $1 billion from the state. Its owner contributed to politicians. It had big-name speakers at its graduation ceremonies, like the Governor and, on another occasion, Jeb Bush. It has the lowest graduation rate of any high school in the nation. When the state auditor asked ECOT to return $67 million due to phantom students, it declared bankruptcy.