The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette succinctly explains that vouchers have failed in Indiana. 

Taxpayers will shell out $153 million this year for vouchers.

Almost anyone can get a voucher, but not many students or families want them. According to the latest report, cited in the Journal Gazette editorial, only 3.11% of the students in the state use them. Only 4.25% enroll in charters. An additional 4.44% attend private schools without a voucher. In traditional public schools are 88.2%, and no one in the Indiana legislature gives a thought to the overwhelming number in public schools or the damage that vouchers and charters do to them.

The Fort Wayne public schools will lose $19 million. The schools of Indianapolis public schools will lose $20 million. In what universe does it make sense to take away money, teachers, and programs from the vast majority of students to subsidize religious schools for a tiny minority of students?

According to their advocates, vouchers were supposed to “save poor children from failing schools.”

Not true.

“Fewer than 1 percent of the 35,458 voucher recipients qualified for the program this year because he or she lives in a public school district with an F-rated school. But 245 students used vouchers to attend Horizon Christian Academy on North Wells Street, one of about a dozen voucher schools earning an F in 2017.”

Vouchers were supposed to save taxpayers money.

Not true.

”That might be the case if every voucher student would have otherwise attended public school. But the percentage of voucher students who never attended a public school grew to 56.5 percent this year, and there is no evidence the families wouldn’t have chosen a private school even without a voucher.”

Vouchers were supposed to be for low-income families.

Not true.

“About 20 percent of voucher recipients came from households earning more than $75,000 a year. Four percent of voucher students came from households earning more than $100,000 a year in income. The state’s median household income is $52,314 a year.”

Furthermore, voucher schools are not open to all, unlike public schools.

“Some of the faith-based schools limit admission on the basis of religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The voucher advocates claimed that vouchers would raise academic achievement.

Not true.

“Nearly $13 million in voucher money flowed to schools receiving a D or F on state report cards. The Indiana State Board of Education just last week granted a waiver to Ambassador Christian Academy, a “D” school. The state board agreed a majority of students showed academic growth over the last school year, even though the same board proposed new accountability rules for public schools that will not give credit for academic growth.”

In sum, Indiana is squandering many millions of dollars on an ineffective voucher program that benefits few students.