Haven’t you heard? Ohio is spending $1 billion on private school choice!
Numbers had been moving as the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce finalized the reconciliation of the fiscal year. They appear to have settled, showing that Ohio provided $962 million in payments to just over 150,000 state scholarship students in all five programs for school year 2024, an average of $6,521.67 per full time equivalent.
Film buffs of a certain age may remember the “Austin Powers” movies from the 1990s, where Powers and his nemesis Dr. Evil, both played by comedian Mike Myers, square off in the modern day after being frozen since the 1960s. In one scene, Dr. Evil threatens to hold the world hostage for… “$1 million!” And that’s the gag – his evil henchmen have to point out that it “isn't exactly a lot of money these days.”
Over a century ago, Mark Twain popularized the phrase about three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Today it turns out that all three are in play by opponents decrying Ohio’s investment in parental school choice.
Lie: Scholarships are over budget
Opponents have been projecting since last fall that the program would overspend, reports forecasted from the earliest applications that were breathlessly repeated by media outlets. Even this weekend, major newspapers are repeating an unofficial $970 million scholarship number for fiscal year 2024. And now, with the program on target (current report below), including thousands more Ohioans taking advantage, opponents are claiming that the spending is just too large.
First, kudos to Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission for hitting the nail right on the head. It appears FY 2024 will actually come in just slightly under the budget projection of $964.5 million. And lawmakers correctly predicted that new scholarships would result in new enrollment, saving taxpayers dollars. As predicted, these are benefits for new participants as well as the overall state budget.
Damned Lie: Scholarships take money from public schools.
Nary a news report is filed that does not include someone from the public school establishment decrying choice and opining about what they could do if only they had those dollars. This language reveals a fundamental disagreement in which students “belong” to districts, which “lose” their funding when that student’s parent or guardian makes a choice and only state dollars follow the pupil. Consider the claim by Policy Matters Ohio that: “When legislators redirect funding from traditional public schools to pay for charters and vouchers (which pass public dollars through parents and into private schools), the vast majority of Ohio students who attend traditional public schools have to make do with less.” This, of course, is not how the math works.
Since Ohio’s current constitution was ratified in 1851, public education has always been funded by a combination of local and state tax revenues. Today’s school choice scholarships are funded only by the state portion. With Ohio’s 611 school districts generating different amounts of revenue, Ohio’s school funding formula “works to equalize funding and provide additional money to schools and districts that do not have capacity and wealth to raise revenues locally.” Every penny of local revenue stays with the local district. Local taxes, including about two-thirds of our property taxes whose valuations just increased, as well local district income taxes (where applicable) and all levies are directed only to public school districts, never state scholarships. If a district resident chooses not to attend, it is the state portion “lost” by the district, just as if that student moved away or was homeschooled. The district also does not need to educate the student. To paraphrase a quip overheard from Rick Hess, how much money should I have to pay the post office every time I send a package by FedEx?
Local revenues stay local, and the state formula “funds students where they are educated rather than where they live.” A resident’s state scholarship affects a district’s per-pupil revenue by reducing the enrollment (denominator) by one full pupil, yet reducing the revenue (numerator) by just a fraction of one pupil’s expense. To be fair, that’s probably not what opponents mean. They more likely imply that choice should not be available at all; in this way state scholarships “take away” from public schools the same way Medicaid does, along with roads, bridges, or anything else on which the state has inconveniently decided to spend money.
Statistics: It’s a billion!
That sure sounds like a big number! But is it? Why is it never referred to in context? While state scholarship numbers are in for fiscal year 2024, it will be months before we see the full financial reports of all school spending. So, let’s look at education funding in 2023, the last year before the second phase-in of the “fair school funding” plan that has been giving public districts a significant raise. (SY2024 will assuredly be a good deal higher.)
According to the FY2023 District Profile Report Ohio’s public schools averaged $17,114 in revenue per pupil, including $6,924 from the state funding formula. The same year’s Federal Revenues and Expenditures report indicates total revenue just over $30 billion. This is why the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce currently states: “In fiscal year 2023, the state of Ohio spent more on primary and secondary education than at any other time in state history. And state education spending will continue to increase.”
I’m not arguing against the “Fair School Funding Plan” implementation, nor suggesting that it should not continue its third and final phase-in for Ohio’s next biennial budget. But anyone claiming that Ohio has reduced its investment in public education has something else in common with Austin Powers, because the first DeRolph case was decided 30 years ago, and today’s school funding formula is hardly recognizable compared to that of the time.
There are, of course, so many ways this story could be reported. That thousands of new families are opting in to school choice. Or that the program is saving taxpayer dollars. For EdChoice Expansion alone the average is just under $4,660 per pupil, between a quarter and a third of what most public schools are spending per pupil when their official numbers come in, because some families receive a full scholarship of $6,166 for grades K-8 or $8,404 for 9-12, while the other end of the income-based sliding scale receives just $616 and $840, respectively.
But weren’t all of those people going to go to private school anyway? Decidedly not. That’s not to say that families did not desire a different education option, or don’t deserve them, but cost has been prohibitive. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Ohio had 198,751 total nonpublic students in school year 2022, down from 256,427 in SY 2002. This attrition has been gradual over decades, as relatively big classes of graduates exit each year to be replenished by smaller cohorts of the youngest students entering as tuitions have risen. But not this year. Instead of shrinking by another 2,000 to 3,000 students in 2024, Ohio’s chartered nonpublic schools gained more than 3,300.
This tracks with our own experience in the Diocese of Cleveland, where enrollment had been decreasing commensurate with increases in what parents have to pay as tuition (which has always been less than the total cost to educate thanks to the charity of the Church and school supporters). The chart below shows elementary school enrollment for the Diocese of Cleveland in blue compared to the average published tuition for the first child, including any parish discounts (i.e. the lowest first-child tuition) in green.
In SY2024, Ohio’s chartered nonpublic schools educated 173,156 of the more than 1.8 million students, which is well over 9% of Ohio’s student population. All state scholarships combined, provided from state revenues only, is barely 3% of the at least $30B wallet for education spending. It represents just 6% of the state-level budgeted education spending of $15.87 billion, which is a fraction of the overall taxpayer contribution. These are distributed to parents and guardians to enable them to participate, and thousands of new students and families, as well as tens of thousands of taxpayers are being supported in the type of education they desire. This is a boon for families and the state. They are choosing schools that are at least as academically distinguished as their public options and are a fit with the family’s values. The schools are directly accountable to parents who, if they are not satisfied, will go elsewhere, and their state scholarship funding would go with them. And it is a voluntary program that will only grow if nonpublic schools deliver the quality that parents and guardians desire.
In 2023-2024, the first year of universal school choice eligibility, enrollment in this diocese rose simultaneously across preschool, elementary and high school. The last time that happened (1998), the first “Austin Powers” movie was still in theaters. School choice in Ohio is a popular, beneficial public policy that benefits children, families, and, yes, even public school districts.
Frank O'Linn
Superintendent of schools
Catholic Diocese of Cleveland