Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Adequacy and Equity, reports on the cost of school choice, relying on the data compiled by former legislator Steve Dyer. This is interesting because polls regularly show that the public is fine with choice if the money does not get subtracted from local public schools. It does. It always comes right out of the budget of local public schools. School choice always means budget cuts for public schools. There is no separate pot of money for charters and vouchers.
Bill Phillis writes:
Charters and vouchers took away over one-half billion in local revenue from school districts in school year 2019-2020
$525,187,286* in local revenue was deducted from school districts for privately-operated alternatives to the public common system. Columbus property taxpayers subsidized charter and voucher students to the tune of $76, 548,933* during the 2019-2020 school year.
Article VI §2 of the Ohio Constitution requires the state to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that the system is unconstitutional. Yet the state removes hundreds of millions of dollars from school districts to fund the state’s pet projects. Incredible!
*Steve Dyer’s analysis
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It was a lost decade for Ohio public school students, who were completely ignored.
The ed reform demands on charters and vouchers are always met as the first priority, and what then happens every legislative session is no one gets around to doing anything for the 90% of students in the state who attend the unfashionable public schools.
Every single session is consumed with funding charters, expanding charters, re-regulating charters. Once lawmakers meet that demand from the ed reform lobby, they get right to work on vouchers.
No one works on behalf of public school students in this state. The ed reform lobby has utterly captured state government and the ed reform lobby doesn’t do any work on behalf of public school students, so no one else does either.
and every year the exact same game continues: at some point it MUST begin to bother the voters enough to SEE it and organize against it
It’s much like the federal response to the pandemic. Ed reformers lobbied for special funding for charters and private schools, which they immediately got, and no one ever got around to lifting a finger for public school students.
They still haven’t done anything for public school students and it’s been 7 months.
They simply do no measurable work on behalf of students who attend public schools.
The US Department of Education under the Trump Administration has spent far more time lobbying for a national voucher than they have assisting any public school, anywhere.
They take public school students and families for granted. They feel no political pressure at all to serve us, so no one does.
Every public school student in this country was put SECOND to ed reform’s political agenda regarding a huge national voucher program. They accomplished nothing for public schools or public school students.
Ask the ed reform lobby in Ohio what they have accomplished for PUBLIC school students this year- they sell themselves to the public as “education advocates” so they should be able to point to an actual accomplishment.
Nothing was done. There wasn’t even an effort expended. Public schools and public school students have disappeared from the state government agenda because they’re captured by a “movement” who put public school students and families as the dead last priority.
It’s been like this for a decade and until the ed reform echo chamber gets broken up and loses clout in this state public school students and families will continue to be treated as second class citizens.
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Sep 10
Appreciate the majority of US Senators who voted to put students and families first today! It’s past time to put politics aside and ensure EVERY student can continue learning in the ways and places that work best for them. #SchoolChoiceNow”
Still hard at work lobbying on behalf of private schools and private school students.
Still no effort expended at all on the unfashionable 90% of students who attend what ed reformers refer to as “government schools”. The denigrating language is used to make it clear they have utter contempt for our schools and students, and don’t serve them.
Maybe the people of Ohio should start taking an active role in how their tax dollars are spent. If citizens around the state organize and work to get enough signatures, perhaps the people will be able to countermand the charter lobby. With enough signatures, it is possible to get change put on the ballot, but it will take a couple of years to make this happen. It will also take a considerable amount of grassroots effort. https://ballotpedia.org/Signature_requirements_for_ballot_measures_in_Ohio
It is just so brutally unfair that the United States is going to hit the same group of public school students AGAIN.
There are kids in public schools today who bore the brunt of the Wall Street crash and now will bear the brunt of the pandemic.
No other country in the world threw their public school students under the bus like we did and we do it to them over and over.
Every time there’s a catastrophe one group of people are the designated losers and it is ALWAYS public school students.
Tens of thousands of full time paid “education advocates” in the ed reform lobby and somehow no one lifts a finger for 90% of students.
Ludicrous, but that’s what happens in an echo chamber.
Are any of the thousands of paid “education advocates” in ed reform planning on stepping up for public school students when the massive budget cuts hit their schools?
Is it fair to put the entire burden of our country’s abject failure to handle this pandemic on second graders? We’re really going to take this out of them, like we did after the financial crash? Twice in 10 years we screw everything up and the only people who suffer as a result of our stupidity and recklessness are young people?
Who does this? Who sacrifices the next generation like the United States does? It’s insane.