Karen Francisco, editor of the editorial page of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, is grateful that Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb will not cut the budget of the state’s schools, but wonders whether the state can afford to maintain more than one system of publicly-funded schools. She might well have also asked whether the state can afford a third system of privately-managed charter schools.
Currently, there are 326 private and religious schools in the state receiving $172.7 million annually. Taxpayers have paid more than $1 billion to non-public schools since the choice program began nine years ago. Researchers have found that voucher schools do not provide better education than public schools; typically the students in voucher schools perform worse than their peers in public schools or at best, keep up with them.
When the fall campaign season gets underway, Statehouse candidates should be prepared to share their views on the growing cost of funding two Indiana school systems. In a struggling economy, can we afford it?
As the cost of the voucher program increased by 7%, the number of students participating increased by just over 1%. Voucher enrollment actually declined in the fall, the first time in the program’s nine-year history, according to the report. But voucher eligibility was expanded to add a second enrollment period from Nov. 1 to Jan. 15, so that 459 more students enrolled for spring.
Coincidentally, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence chose this week to tout school choice as an answer to racial injustice.
“We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country,” Trump said in remarks in a White House Rose Garden news conference. “Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade and probably beyond because all children have to have access to quality education.”
But Indiana’s school choice program is not a civil rights program.
Indiana’s Choice Scholarship program hasn’t seen a stampede of minority students to private and parochial schools. Fewer black students received vouchers this past year than in the previous school year. While the percentage of Indiana children younger than 18 who are black is 14%, the percentage of black students participating in the voucher program is 11.79%. Hispanic youth make up 25% of Indiana youth 18 and under but 22% receive vouchers. White youth make up 50% of Hoosiers under 18 but nearly 57% of voucher recipients.
Meanwhile, the costs of reopening the schools safely will be substantial. Last year’s budget will be I sifficient to ensure that schools can reopen safely. It is time to ask whether the state can afford two separate publicly-funded school systems.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
typo
Last year’s budget will be I sifficient to ensure that schools can reopen safely.
There are similar problems in Ohio, where Republicans have enlarged an EdChoice voucher program that ensures public schools lose funding in favor of private and mostly religious schools. Never publicized is the fact that the EdChoice vouchers are not sufficient to cover the tuition in many private and religious schools. Not publicized is the fact that the EdChoice vouchers are for state-approved private and religious schools, not the entire range of these schools. EdChoice for state-approved high schools in Cincinnati means you can go to a Catholic School segregated by gender, but you also have fees well above the voucher. Elite private and religious schools continue, as always, to offer their own scholarships, if any.
“Never publicized is the fact that the EdChoice vouchers are not sufficient to cover the tuition in many private and religious schools.”
It’s worse than that.The ed reform “movement” – the professional marketing and lobbying arm- deliberately misrepresent this by stating over and over that students can choose the same schools wealthy people use.
It isn’t true. They get a low value voucher. None of these families are “choosing” the more expensive and prestigious private schools- they could never afford it.
Another over-hyped, over-sold rip off from ed reform. They should spend less time marketing and lobbying lawmakers and more time focusing on education.
Vouchers are no real benefit to students’ education. As far as I am concerned, vouchers have no inherent educational value. They are a useless waste of public tax dollars. The only thing vouchers accomplish is to further undermine public schools. If parents want a religious education for their children, they should have to pay for it themselves. Tax dollars should not be used for religious education.
Along with the voucher discussion there needs to be a discussion about how ed reform’s singular focus on charters and vouchers- and their success at capturing lawmakers with it- has led to 20 years of neglect of public schools.
Here’s what public school students got out of the ed reform “movement”- tests. That’s it. Their sole contribution to 90% of students and families is incessant, endlessly changing testing schemes.
There is NO positive ed reform agenda of any kind for public school students and families. They contribute nothing to our schools and they own all of DC and half of state legislatures. It’s ridiculous. Makes no sense, unless you realize it’s an ideological agenda, not an educational agenda.
No
Can you imagine districts not throwing millions into standardized testing every year? And vouchers? And charters? We could actually have…. smaller class sizes, more resources, happier students… Time to expose and disrupt ALEC. Time to Defund the billionaires.
FYI. One could argue that IN funds not 2 but 3 separate school systems: traditional public schools, charter schools and publicly funded private schools. IN Charter schools are legally considered non-profit public schools but all of them are operated by corporations – some for-profit and some non-profit but both supported by various consulting, testing, Ed products & services companies and which are all for-profit. But this is splitting hairs. The question is not how many school systems IN taxpayers can afford, it is whether IN taxpayers SHOULD be paying for more than one system of public schools. Period. And the answer is no.