Ohio has the second largest voucher program in the nation, after Wisconsin. We now know that half the vouchers are going to students who never attended a public school and are not “fleeing” from a “failing school” in which they were “trapped.” They are taking advantage of public money to attend private and religious schools, which their families would be paying for absent the voucher program. So taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize tuition at private and religious schools. It also turns out that many vouchers went unused. The rhetoric about waiting lists is phony. There is no evidence that students in voucher schools outperform their peers in public schools. There is much evidence–from Milwaukee, Cleveland, and D.C. that they do not. But the legislators don’t care. What is their goal?
Even as Ohio’s private school vouchers remain dramatically underused, there appears to be no rush to re-examine their need.
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The state offers 60,000 EdChoice vouchers for children in struggling public schools, and fewer than one-third were used this school year, according to data released Friday by the Ohio Department of Education.
In addition, the state in 2013 created 2,000 vouchers for low-income kindergartners across Ohio regardless of the performance of the public district. For this school year, 2,000 low-income first grade vouchers were added.
The state is advertising that 2,000 low-income second grade vouchers will be added in 2015-16, although that will require an appropriation in the state budget.
Nearly 3,500 of the 4,000 available low-income vouchers were being used as of Friday.
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Students who use the traditional EdChoice vouchers to attend private schools essentially take their state funding with them. Marion City Schools lost more than 40 students to vouchers this year at a cost of nearly $160,000.
In fiscal year 2012, Ohio’s public schools lost $75 million to EdChoice vouchers.
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The majority of those students in Marion attend St. Mary Catholic School, and Principal Jack Mental hopes the increase in students eligible for vouchers will lead to an increase in voucher kids whom his school attracts. The private elementary school has about 42 students on vouchers, making up 40 percent of the total school population.
Mental said the school has had some enrollment struggles — it will suspend teaching eighth grade next year because of a lack of students — and he is unabashed in his desire to sell the benefits of vouchers to area residents. He said he will reach out to parents through advertising, direct mail and social media.
“This could be a lifeline to our school,” he said, noting that he hoped to add 30 new students through the voucher program for next school year…
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If the low-income program continues to expand, it is expected to cost taxpayers more than $100 million each year by 2025-26.
The state offers 60,000 EdChoice vouchers for children in struggling public schools, and fewer than one-third were used this school year, according to data released Friday by the Ohio Department of Education.
In addition, the state in 2013 created 2,000 vouchers for low-income kindergartners across Ohio regardless of the performance of the public district. For this school year, 2,000 low-income first grade vouchers were added.
The state is advertising that 2,000 low-income second grade vouchers will be added in 2015-16, although that will require an appropriation in the state budget….
Kaleigh Frazier, spokeswoman for School Choice Ohio, said her organization has been doing consistent outreach through community events to share information about the program with families.
“What we see in the voucher program is steady growth every year,” she said. “We’re still finding there are many families that don’t know there are options available to them.”
The use of vouchers has grown from 3,141 in 2006-07 to 22,347 this school year. Of course the number of available EdChoice vouchers also has risen, from 14,000 in 2006-07 to 64,000 this year, including the low-income variation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Two pretty obvious “free market” issues here. If St. Mary’s can’t make it on its own without being subsidized by the government, isn’t closing it the natural free-market response? If there isn’t demand for your “product”, you go out of business – that’s what the ed rephormers tell us all the time.
And if there’s all these vouchers left over, isn’t that also the market’s way of telling us there’s not enough demand?
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The Catholic schools vouchers in Ohio are nearly a direct subsidy to churches, because churches subsidize the schools.
There’s this ridiculous legalistic play-acting that there’s no funds transfer, but of course there is. If the church was subsidizing the school and they no longer have to do that, the church has more funds to use as a church as a result of the state subsidy to the school. They can twist it any way they like but that’s what’s happening.
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Vouchers in this state are a way to keep private schools within the ed reform movement political coalition. You can’t set up a new publicly-funded system with charters and leave religious schools out. Obviously that leaves religious schools at a disadvantage. Whether public schools are affected or disadvantaged by any of this is never even considered, because really, who cares? Not a top priority of ed reform leadership, the schools 90% of kids attend. Not interested.
Honestly, there’s really no reason to keep private schools out now that we’ve redefined “public”.
If “public” just means “publicly-funded” then any contractor can provide the service, right? The President said his only objection to vouchers was they “don’t work” (whatever that means). If they “worked” I guess he’d privatize the whole system.
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if you want to know how little regard Ohio lawmakers and the rest of the huge gang of publicly-paid reform “leaders” have for the public schools that serve 90% of Ohio’s students, read this:
“The Akron school board is planning to spend at least $1 million more on private and charter school students who the state says have been asked to walk too far to their public bus stops.
Ohio law allows traditional public school districts to force their own students to walk up to 2 miles to the neighborhood building. Many urban school districts do this because there is not enough money to do more.
But if a parent chooses to send children to a private or charter school, then the school district must pick them up within a half-mile of their home — no exceptions.
“By law, no matter where they go, if Akron [Public Schools] is responsible for busing them, they are not allowed to walk more than a half-mile to the bus stop,” said John Charlton, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education.”
Public school parents should be voting all of these people out of office. They don’t just ignore public schools. They make every attempt to harm our schools with these special dispensations for “choice” schools.
I want to hire a private advocate. I’m tired of paying people to promote charter and private schools to the detriment of public schools.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/akron-schools-made-private-and-charter-students-walk-too-far-must-spend-another-1-million-1.566252
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The waiting list could be real. For instance, if there are only 25,000 seats in private schools for voucher students but 60,000 students apply for those 25,000 seats, then there might be a waiting list.
A case of more vouchers and students applying for them than there are open seats in private schools.
offer more vouchers than seats and that might lead to a waiting list—especially if some parents sign up their children on more than one waiting list but no one knows and the voucher people never remove those names.
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The market has spoken. We don’t need vouchers!
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1. Unused vouchers= post earthquake re-construction funds left in government’s bank account
2. Unused vouchers= tons of radiated debris left in the site of crippled nuclear reactors(and they are still left there today at 4-year anniversary)
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