Submitted by Adam VanOsdol
on behalf of the Indiana School Boards Association
The Indiana School Boards Association has released the following school choice fact sheet, as the State Senate embarks on budget hearings and prepares to take up the proposed expansion of the Choice Scholarship Program and the establishment of ESAs (education savings accounts).
- Resolutions opposing vouchers and ESAs have been adopted by more than 125 school boards that collectively serve nearly 500,000 students.
- Indiana ranks fifth in state budget support for private school choice but 39th in public K-12 expenditures per pupil.
- Funding for private education in the House-passed budget increases by 23.4 percent in Fiscal Year 2022 and 29.3 percent in Fiscal Year 2023, while funding for traditional public schools increases by 3 percent in FY 22 and 1.4 percent in FY 23.
- In the first year of the ESA program, an estimated 3,203 students out of 187,000 eligible would be expected to sign up, but there is no cap on the number of students who can participate. Parents of selected children who opt out of public schools and open an ESA would receive 90 percent of the state per-pupil funding that would otherwise go to the local public school district – about $6,000 per child per year.
- Voucher eligibility expands to a family of four earning around $145,000 and a family of five earning approximately $170,000 – amounts that qualify as upper-class incomes in many Hoosier communities.
- House Bill 1005 requires an annual survey of parent satisfaction with the ESA program but no state reporting on measurements of actual student learning outcomes.
- More than one-third of Indiana counties (33) have zero Choice Scholarship schools, while another 20 counties have just one. Only 8.7 percent of last year’s voucher recipients resided in rural Indiana.
- Indiana has expended more than $1 billion on Choice Scholarships since the program’s inception in 2011-2012. Unlike public schools, private schools are not audited by the State Board of Accounts, nor are they required to publish an annual financial report.
- A 2018 study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Kentucky examining the first four years of the Choice Scholarship Program found students who used a voucher to transfer to a private school experienced achievement loss in math compared to their peers who remained in public schools.
For more information, visit ESA Is Not OK and follow ISBA on Twitter and Facebook.