The uproar over private school scholarship programs, which support the education of more than 150,000 Ohio students, continues to drone on. Critics’ rhetoric can get intense, including labelling these school choice programs an “existential threat” to public education and demeaning them as a “vouchers scheme.” In recent months, detractors have eagerly cited the expense of providing scholarships—about $1 billion per year—likely an effort to smear the programs as bloated and little more than government waste. Skeptical media outlets have also routinely featured the amount in headlines.
A billion dollars is certainly a serious chunk of change. But when considering who these funds support, as well as the amount public schools receive (spoiler alert, it’s $30 billion), scholarship expenditures, at 3 percent of Ohio’s K–12 funding, are not quite as alarming as critics maintain.
Let us first remember that these funds—it’s true!—are being used to educate students. Dollars aren’t just being “given” willy-nilly to private schools, as one op-ed headline once framed it. Schools only receive scholarship funds when parents choose them for their sons and daughters. But who is benefitting from these programs, and how much is being spent on their education? And are the dollars simply going to wealthy folks, as recent news stories have suggested?
The figure below shows the breakdown of funding across all five of the state’s scholarship programs in FY24. We see that a total of $962 million was spent on these initiatives—a sum that is usually rounded to the more outrage-inducing amount of $1 billion.
Figure 1: Scholarship spending across all programs, FY24
A closer look at scholarship spending should calm fears that these dollars are being used in wasteful or inappropriate ways.
- $53 million supports students who use the Cleveland Scholarship, the oldest of Ohio’s scholarship programs. This initiative opens private school options to thousands of low-income Cleveland students who would otherwise attend one of the city’s long-struggling public schools. No one in their right mind should be grumping about this part of the overall expenditure.
- Roughly $230 million support special-needs students through the Autism and Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarships. Are critics angry about this slice of the spending pie? Let’s hope not, as these dollars support children who face significant educational challenges—and may be the ones most ill-served by public school systems.
- Just over $272 million is used to provide EdChoice scholarships to children slated to attend low-performing public schools. This long-standing program serves primarily disadvantaged students from other troubled big-city districts, such as Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo. Reflecting urban demographics, slightly over half of the students in this program were Black, Hispanic, or multiracial in 2023–24.
- Finally, $405 million was spent on Income-Based EdChoice. These funds benefit a more diverse mix of students from various communities and socio-economic backgrounds. This reflects the program design, which provides full scholarships to low- and middle-income families who don’t qualify for the other programs, as well as partial scholarships worth scaled-back amounts for wealthier households. While data are unavailable about how much of these funds support low- to middle- versus high-income households, the reduced scholarships mean that more affluent families receive a relatively small portion of the funding.
In sum, a more careful analysis shows that the vast majority of the $1 billion are being used to support students with disabilities, students who would otherwise attend low-performing public schools, and children from low- and middle-income households. What’s wrong with that? Some continue to argue that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go to religious schools, but that borders on intolerance to parents who seek an education for their children that aligns with their beliefs. It also ignores the fact that scholarship-receiving families pay their fair share of state and local taxes, too, including taxes that support public schools their children do not attend.
Speaking of public school funding, let us also be mindful that the scholarship expense pales in comparison to their revenues—important context that is almost never mentioned. Instead, critics routinely contend that the $1 billion—and presumably, the 150,000 scholarship students with it—should be rerouted to “underfunded” public schools. As one commentator put it:
Ohio Republicans care about diverting a ton of taxpayer money (desperately needed by cash-strapped, levy-dependent districts) to benefit private school families, regardless of income or need, who choose to send their darlings to diocesan grade schools and religious high schools.
Notwithstanding the cringy name calling of children, the writer is wrong to portray traditional districts as “desperately…cash-strapped.” In FY24, public schools received $30 billion—thirty times more funding than what’s spent on private school scholarships. Of course, public schools enroll more students, but not anywhere near thirty times more students (it’s about ten times). Hence, on a per-pupil basis, public school funding is 2.8 times the average scholarship amount across all five programs ($18,183 versus $6,521). As the table below indicates, this is no one-year blip: Public school funding also greatly exceeded scholarship funding in FY22 and FY23, as well.
Table 1: Public school funding versus scholarship amounts
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Sky-is-falling rhetoric is par for the course when it comes to private school scholarship programs. But the hysteria rarely matches reality. As for the $1 billion being spent on scholarship programs, the truth is that the vast majority of these funds support less advantaged families who rely on scholarships to enroll their child in a private school of their choice. Meanwhile, scholarship spending remains small in comparison to overall public school funding. As Ohio continues to debate school choice programs, here’s hoping for a calmer, more fact-driven discussion.
