Looking forward; looking back—no surprises in either direction

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1. Nothin’ but voucher stories in the news this weekend—quelle surprise—giving us the state of play pretty clearly without need of much comment from your humble clips compiler. State spending on Ohio’s five private school voucher programs amounted to $1.17 billion in the 2026 fiscal year, up from $1.09 billion the year before. This is because 4,300 more students were using them in 2026 than in 2025—for a total of 185,584 kids. Simple, right? (Ohio Capital Journal, 10/19/26)
   
   

2. National eyes were on Ohio following last week’s appeals court ruling upholding a lower court’s determination that the EdChoice Scholarship is unconstitutional. Reason was already looking ahead to case’s likely next stop—the Ohio Supreme Court—by looking back at a previous Ohio voucher case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. (That’s the one where our OG vouchers, the Cleveland Scholarship Program, was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.) A lawyer defending our voucher programs this around says, “When you look at what the Constitution says, and you look at what the court said in Simmons-Harris, I think the only conclusion that the Ohio Supreme Court can walk away with is that programs like [EdChoice] are constitutional.” (Reason, 10/16/26)
   
   

3. All 185,584 students using vouchers in Ohio this year are currently at risk of losing those vouchers following last week’s ruling. Lawyers for the coalition suing the state over vouchers are confident in their chances at the next stop, despite what opposing lawyers say. But, JIC, they all say in this piece that they would be happy to spend more of school districts’ state money pursuing a statewide referendum if they turn out to be mistaken. No surprise there either then. (Cleveland.com, 10/16/26)

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