Andy Spears looks at yet another state report showing that vouchers are not about resc uing the poor, but about paying off the rich.
Indiana produces an annual report on its private school voucher scheme. This year’s data makes it clear: The voucher program continues to eat an ever larger portion of the state budget AND the program essentially serves as a private school discount coupon for rich families.
The Indianapolis Star reports:
Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program allows families to use state dollars that would have followed their child to a traditional public school to instead pay for a private, parochial or nonreligious school.
The state releases this report annually, and for the 2024-25 school year, it showed that the state spent around $497 million on the program, which is an increase of just over $58 million from the previous school year.
Just a few years ago – in 2017 – the Indiana school voucher scheme cost the state $54 million. Now, the year-over-year increase in voucher expenses exceeds what the entire program cost just 8 years ago.
At the current growth rate, spending on vouchers in Indiana will have grown tenfold in less than a decade.
Tennessee starts a universal school voucher plan in the 2025-2026 school year. That program is already at capacity in terms of the number of applicants. All 20,000 slots will be taken.
If growth of the program tracks Indiana, that would mean that by 2035, Tennessee will be spending more than $1.4 billion on private school coupons.
Which brings us to the second big takeaway: These vouchers are just creating a discount for wealthy families – they are not a pathway for low- and middle-income families to gain access to private school education.