In 2022, a coalition of traditional public school districts filed a lawsuit that aimed to eliminate the EdChoice Scholarship, Ohio’s largest private school choice program. As part of their argument, the plaintiffs claimed that, while a traditional public school “accepts all comers,” scholarship-accepting private schools don’t. Taxpayer dollars, they said, should only go to schools that are required to take all students who want to enroll. 

It would be a compelling argument if true. But, as I pointed out in this 2022 piece, it’s not.

Nearly four years later, a lot has changed. An initial ruling in the EdChoice lawsuit sided with the plaintiffs. The case is now before an appeals court. Despite the pending lawsuit, the 2023 state budget established near universal eligibility for the program. And the number of families participating continues to climb.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the establishment’s claim that unlike private schools, everyone has equal access to public schools. It’s just as hypocritical now as it was then. But in our current economic climate, where it’s even harder for many families to afford homes in communities with excellent public schools, that hypocrisy has become even more appalling. In an effort to cut through this freshly-claimed falsehood, let’s revisit my initial rebuttal with some updated data.

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In many places in Ohio, traditional public schools aren’t open to everyone. Most of those places are suburbs, which are only open to students who live within their district boundaries. These boundaries are rooted in real estate redlining that’s had a lasting effect on American society. They don’t require an application for entry like private schools, but they do require proof of residency. And instead of tuition, they require payment in the form of a hefty mortgage and property taxes, or sky-high rent, a price tag that’s often far out of reach for low- and middle-income families.

Consider how this works in the Columbus metro area. Columbus City Schools (CCS), the largest district in the state and one of the named plaintiff districts in the EdChoice lawsuit, served over 46,000 students during the 2024–25 school year. On the most recent state report card, it posted an overall rating of two out of five stars. That’s the same overall rating it earned during the 2023–24 and 2022–23 school years. Ratings on individual measures have also been flat: Achievement, Progress, and Gap Closing have remained at two stars for three straight years, while Graduation and Early Literacy have stayed consistent at one star.

One- and two-star ratings are clear indicators that a district and its schools aren’t meeting state expectations. But a closer look at individual ratings shows just how bad things actually are. Even in an era of lackluster graduation standards and grade inflation on school report cards, the 2025 state report card shows that just 83 percent of CCS students graduated “on-time” (in four years). Nearly 65 percent of the class of 2024 took the SAT, but only 6 percent earned remediation-free scores on the reading, writing, and math sections. [1]Twenty percent of students took at least one Advanced Placement course, but less than 5 percent earned a score of three or better on their exams. And while nearly 97 percent of third graders were promoted to fourth grade, only 36 percent proved they could read proficiently on the state ELA exam. Just 16 percent of K–3 students who were off track in reading progressed to being on track by the end of the school year.

Now, imagine you’re a parent living in Columbus. You want to make sure your child has the best education possible, and the data above—likely combined with your own experience—have convinced you that CCS isn’t the best option. You still want your child to attend a public school, though, so you start looking around. Ohio’s school district map shows that there are over a dozen districts that share borders with CCS, and because you have reliable transportation, they’re all viable options. A close look at 2024–25 report cards reveals that seven of the identified districts had overall ratings of three stars or higher and no one- or two-star ratings on the primary measures of Achievement, Progress, Graduation, or Early Literacy. Those districts are Bexley, Dublin, Gahanna-Jefferson, Grandview Heights, Hilliard, Upper Arlington, and Worthington.

You decide to focus on these seven districts. Your first move is to look into open enrollment because, even though your assigned district is academically low-performing, you like your neighborhood and you’d rather not move. Unfortunately, open enrollment isn’t an option. None of these seven districts allow students who live outside their borders to enroll in their schools.

If you want to enroll your child at one of these higher-performing districts, you’ll have to move. But that’s easier said than done. In fact, purchasing a home in the districts that surround Columbus is financially out of reach for many city residents. The table below lists the median household income in 2024 dollars and the typical home value in each district as of this writing. Every single one has a significantly higher median income than Columbus. The smallest difference—between Columbus and Gahanna-Jefferson—is nearly $43,000. The same is true for typical home values. The closest difference, also between Columbus and Gahanna-Jefferson, is over $131,000. In districts like Bexley, Dublin, Grandview Heights, and Upper Arlington, the typical home now costs more than a half-million dollars. For all but the wealthiest Ohioans, it’s become a pipe dream to buy a path into excellent public schools.

It’s important to keep in mind that this table shows median incomes. There are thousands of Columbus households that make far less than $66,000 a year. The same is true for typical home values. Wealthier enclaves within Columbus—neighborhoods like Clintonville and Victorian Village—are driving up the average home value for the rest of the city. And don’t forget, thousands of Columbus residents are renters, not homeowners. That means they don’t have any home equity to help with a down payment on a new house. To make matters worse, many signs point to homes in central Ohio getting even more expensive over the next few years.

It’s possible that these families could rent, rather than buy, their way into these communities. After all, renting is now cheaper than buying a home in every major U.S. city. But as the table below shows, average rents at the time of this writing are also higher in the suburbs. And remember, the same factors driving up real estate prices are also driving up rent. Luxury apartments downtown boost the city’s median rent and make it seem a lot closer to suburban averages than it actually is.

As a last resort, you look for family and friends who are living in the districts you prefer but can’t afford. Your loved ones are residents, and they pay taxes, so maybe your children can list those addresses as their proof of residency. But a quick Google search reveals that’s a really bad idea. Apparently several of the districts on your list hire private investigators to tail parents and make sure they’re actually residents. In other parts of the state, parents have been sent to jail for enrolling their students in districts where they don’t reside. Much as you want your kids to have a better education, doing jail time is a steep price to pay.

The upshot? You’re stuck. The public schools that claim they’re open to all aren’t actually open because you don’t make enough money to live there. You can’t send your children to temporarily live with family or friends because districts have teams of lawyers and private investigators to hunt you down. And although Ohio has a statewide open enrollment policy that approximately 80 percent of districts participate in, the affluent, high-performing districts that surround cities like Columbus are almost exclusively closed.

What makes the establishment’s “we’re open to all” argument particularly galling is that they already know all of this. They know not all districts are open. They know that only certain kids are fortunate enough to attend the high-performing districts that they hold up as exemplars of public education. They just don’t care. Not about families, anyway. All they care about is protecting their interests—adult interests—and maintaining their monopoly. Public schools, they say, are a public good. And when something is a public good, it should be protected at all costs.

For readers who are unfamiliar, public good is an economic term that refers to services that are available to all members of society and are often paid for via tax dollars. To qualify as a public good, a service must meet two criteria. First, it must be non-excludable—the availability of the service can’t be limited to only certain people, like those who can afford to pay. Second, it must be non-rivalrous. That means when one person uses the service, it can’t prevent someone else from doing so.

EdChoice opponents are quick to point out that private schools fail to meet these criteria, as they can exclude certain students and have limited seats available. But as the central Ohio data outlined above clearly demonstrate, public schools often fail to meet these criteria, too. Yes, there are school buildings where kids are provided with an education. But is it the same education? Does everyone in the public have access to this public good, or do those who are richer get a better version? Are we really going to tell the parents of a Columbus third grader who can’t read, or a sixth grader struggling with basic math, that their child is receiving the same education as the kids in higher-performing districts that, just like private schools, exclude thousands of families?

That’s where school choice comes in. Rather than asking families to trust that districts with decades of poor performance are suddenly going to take improvement efforts seriously, charter schools and private school vouchers give families a lifeline to another option. But instead of asking why families might be so desperate for other options, districts like Columbus are pouring millions of dollars—money that could definitely be used elsewhere—into destroying all competition.

You see, it’s not enough for districts to close their borders and be hypocrites. They also want to prevent kids from attending any and every school that’s not under their control. That’s why they’re so outraged by data demonstrating that urban charter schools outperform local districts. That’s why they’ve filed a lawsuit to eliminate the EdChoice program. And that’s why, when parents dared to express concern over a lawsuit that could upend their lives and their kids’ futures, the callous response from the plaintiff districts was that families “do not have sufficient knowledge about either the Ohio Constitution or the EdChoice Voucher Program to be of any use to the Court in deciding this case.”

The bottom line is this: If you’re rich enough to buy or rent a home in a high-performing district, your kid gets to go to an excellent school. The world is your oyster. If, however, you can’t afford to pay your way into one of these districts, then most—if not all—high-performing public schools are closed to you. You can either resign yourself to the assigned district that, for myriad reasons, doesn’t work for your child, or you can take advantage of school choice programs. But beware—if you put your child’s interests above those of the adults running your district, the establishment will brand you as a traitor. Because after all, your kids are really their kids.