Editor’s note: This analysis appeared last week on the74million.org.

Home to a sizable charter school sector and a host of private academies, Ohio is one of the friendliest environments for school choice anywhere in the country. Now, as courts and politicians decide the future of the state’s school voucher program, a study released in December indicates that private school choice hasn’t had the damaging impact that many of its detractors claim.

In fact, its author argues, racial segregation of students tended to decline in school districts where more students were eligible to receive vouchers from the state.

The report was commissioned by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a reform-friendly think tank with a special focus on research and advocacy in Ohio. Its arrival could help shape the debate over the effects of school vouchers and the course that the state’s ambitious choice agenda will take in 2023, though voucher critics may contest its findings on school funding.

Alleging that the public funding of private schools is unconstitutional, and that the current system “discriminates against minority students by increasing segregation in Ohio’s public schools,” a coalition of school districts sued the state last year. A Columbus judge rejected an effort by the government to dismiss the case just a few weeks after the Fordham report was issued.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers have revived an effort to massively expand the voucher program, known locally as EdChoice, to all of Ohio’s K–12 students after a similar move stalled in December.

Roughly 60,000 kids statewide receive EdChoice scholarships ($7,500 for high schoolers, $5,500 for younger children) to defray tuition costs at private schools, including religious institutions. That number has increased dramatically over the last decade, leading supporters of public schools to complain that their enrollment, finances, and academic offerings have been harmed by the rapid movement of families and funding from districts.

But study author Stéphane Lavertu, a political scientist at Ohio State University, argued that his research didn’t support those claims. The report shows that vouchers’ effects on student achievement and per-pupil funding in public schools are ambiguous, but not obviously negative — and far from increasing racial segregation in affected schools, he argued, EdChoice seems to actively decrease it.

“What we can say with some level of certainty is that segregation did not go up in district schools,” Lavertu said. “In fact, we can say with some confidence that it went down. That’s the only finding where I would say that there’s a clear direction, and it’s down.”

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Editor’s note: This report from Stephane Lavertu and John J. Gregg, with a foreword from Aaron Churchill and Chad L. Aldis, debuted on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s website.

School options have increased in Ohio and across the nation in recent decades. One prominent option is publicly funded scholarships that families can use to send their children to participating private schools.

Today, more than 75,000 Ohio students participate in one of the state’s five voucher programs, the largest of which are known as EdChoice. Despite their growing popularity, critics have argued that expanding voucher programs harms traditional school districts. But are they right?

This report explores the impacts of Ohio’s EdChoice program on school district enrollments, finances, and educational outcomes. The study includes detailed analyses of the state’s “performance-based” EdChoice program that, as of 2021–22 provides vouchers to approximately 35,000 students as well as its “income-based” EdChoice program which serves approximately 20,000 low-income students.

Among the findings:

• District enrollments were approximately 10-15% lower than they would have been had districts not been exposed to the program.
• Racial and ethnic segregation was approximately 10-15% lower than it would have been had districts not been exposed to the program.
• Total district spending per pupil (including both capital outlays and operational spending) was no different than it would have been had districts not been exposed to the EdChoice program.
• The academic achievement of district students as measured by the state’s performance index was significantly higher than it would have been had districts not been exposed to the EdChoice program.

You can read the full report here.

by Allison Hertog

Mississippi recently became the first state in the nation to adopt a public and private school choice program in which state and federal monies are provided directly to schools which parents choose. Aimed at students with dyslexia, it's also the second special needs school choice program in the country designed for children with a single type of disability. (Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program enacted in 2003 was the first.)

What makes this new program interesting is that it may be a starting point for other state legislatures where special needs voucher bills have failed due to concerns about parent accountability – Wisconsin comes to mind – or where special needs voucher laws have come under increased scrutiny due to reports of private school abuse of public money – Florida comes to mind.

Mississippi’s program morphed from a dyslexia screening and treatment bill (supported by a governor who struggled with the learning disorder) into a school choice measure during the proverbial sausage-making legislative process. It’s not as carefully or as broadly designed as it could have been. It also appears there’s currently only one school in the state which is specialized enough to meet the exceedingly specific criteria to participate. But nonetheless, it succeeds in incentivizing the growth of more highly-accountable school options for parents. (more…)