Gadfly Bites 10/21/26—School choice news with a difference

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1. Some big EdChoice news from Cleveland.com today. And while it’s not particularly new news, it does actually read like news, rather than opinion, which is a nice change for this media outlet. The story covers a December 2025 report released by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, providing data on recipients of the EdChoice Expansion Scholarship in FY 2025. The top-line finding is that nearly three-quarters of new voucher recipients that year were either incoming kindergartners or students leaving traditional district or charter schools to go to a private school. The remainder were students already attending a private school but using a voucher to help them pay tuition for the first time. As I know you know, my 10 persistent and patient subscribers, the grouchers have long said that most new vouchers are used by existing/current private school families, while voucher supporters have said that this is typical at the start of a program but bound to wane in a couple of years. I feel like this data shows we’re right, which does indeed feel like news—news that everyone can use and which may not always get reported. Kudos to Cleveland.com journalist Michael Johnson for the important coverage. (Cleveland.com, 10/19/26)
   
   

2. Reading that last clip back again, I do wonder if the voucher grouchers realize that the early outcome they hate so much (more voucher funds going to existing private school families) is actually better for them than the alternative. Because once the existing private school families are set up in the program, all new enrollments are necessarily going to come from existing public schools—either school movers or new enrollees (like kindergartners or high schoolers). Feels like that’s worse situation for them, enrollment-wise, so perhaps they should keep quiet in the early stages and be happy they aren’t losing more students right out of the gate. But what do I know? For I am not of the voucher groucher persuasion and their thought processes are alien to me. Keep that dichotomy in mind, thought, when you read this piece: Columbus City Schools is looking for budget savings and has high school student transportation in its sights. Two of the three options include eliminating yellow buses and providing public transit passes to students—which would have to include charter/private/STEM school kids who rely on the district for busing. But I get the sense that the Dispatch doesn’t care for this idea, making sure to note our local public bus system’s dismal “missed-trips” data, which the paper has recently uncovered reported quite prominently. The implication is that district-attending high schoolers will get a bad deal if yellow buses are canceled for any of those alternatives, which cannot be allowed. But surely the fact that charter or private school kids will be similarly- or perhaps even-more-inconvenienced by the plans would have to figure in to the decision. Or am I missing something? (Columbus Dispatch, 10/21/26)

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