Stephen Dyer is a former state legislator in Ohio. He is a practicing lawyer, an accomplished journalist, and a close observer of state education policy.
He wrote on his blog 10th Period:
According to state data from this year, a whopping 91% of parents with enrolled private school students are getting publicly subsidized tuition.
Ninety. One. Percent.
Back when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Cleveland’s voucher program was Constitutional in 2002, that number was 1.9%…
This has been done at the expense of Ohio’s 1.5 million public school students.
By the end of the currently proposed state budget, Public School students, who make up 84% of Ohio’s total student population, will receive 77.3% of all state K-12 funding. While the 9% of students whose parents receive taxpayer tuition subsidies will eat up 11% of all state K-12 funding¹.
Once again, the “money following the student” bullshit is laid bare by actual facts.
If money were really just “following the student”, then each of the three systems’ share of funding should match their share of population.
Yet the state’s privately run Charter Schools and private school tuition subsidies for mostly wealthy parents make up a larger share of funding than they do population.
At whose expense?
Public School students. And Public School parents, who now have to raise more property taxes to make up for this massive diversion of state funds that has meant they’re receiving 8% less state funding than their population would demand.
Footnote:
(1). And this just includes formula funding for Charter Schools and the Voucher payments. If you include all the additional funding streams for Charter School facilities (and other giveaways), and the administrative cost and auxiliary services reimbursements for private schools, along with transportation funding for both privately run systems, these percentages are even a few percentages higher for Charters and Vouchers and lower for publics. But I wanted to be conservative in my estimate and keep it to just the foundation payments to Charters and the Vouchers only for privates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yet more evidence, if any more were needed, that Chump and his cronies intend to keep the neediest among us indicated and voiceless.
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Okay, that was supposed to be uneducated and voiceless.
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Vouchers are a legal path to rob the public schools and transfer those public funds to private entities. Vouchers do not improve education at all. They are a tool to transfer wealth from the middle and working class to the affluent. Vouchers are a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
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Dr. Ravitch,
Thank you for posting this. I grew up in Ohio and was educated there for K-12 and undergrad. My elderly father and late mother both spent their careers teaching in Ohio, and Ohio’s State Teachers’ Retirement System (STRS) has been really good. My ailing father was fascinated by Dyer’s bar graphs. He wondered if it might have an effect on the retirement system. Though I cannot be sure, I told him it probably would not since he paid into it and current teachers pay into it. But then I thought about how fewer funds may lead to job cuts (likely starting with school nurses, guidance counselors, and the arts). The potential repercussions are astounding. Obviously, it would alter the per student funding.
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Ohio gop is determined to favor nonpublic schools.
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