More vouchers, less accountability

House would increase public cash for private tuition and unregulated religious schools

Ohio’s top politicians want to spend an additional $432 million on private school tuition over the next two years, including a new voucher for unregulated religious schools. A new brief from Policy Matters tracks the House’s proposals to increase spending on Ohio’s current voucher programs while adding another, worth $35.1 million in its first year. The new voucher, called a “nonchartered education savings account” (ESA) would pay for tuition at nonchartered nonpublic schools, which fail to meet current standards of accountability and performance.

“This new voucher program would impose only minimal new rules for nonchartered nonpublic schools,” said Piet van Lier, senior researcher and author of the brief. “Instead, it would lower expectations even further for private schools that take public money in the form of vouchers.”

The new ESA program is in addition to voucher spending increases carried over from Gov. DeWine’s budget proposal, which increase cost of Ohio’s five extant voucher programs by $375.9 million over the current two-year budget period, from just over $2 billion to $2.4 billion. This increase is part of the same budget proposal that would underfund public schools by $2.75 billion by scrapping the bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan.

“Following the governor’s lead, the House continues to draw from a voucher playbook that disrupts and diminishes Ohio’s public schools,” van Lier said. “This unchecked spending on unaccountable schools shortchanges the vast majority of Ohio children whose families rely on public schools to build their futures.”

“Creating yet another voucher program, for religious schools that have actively avoided public oversight and regulation, reveals the absolute disregard for the Ohio Constitution’s requirement for a system of common schools and flies in the face of our nation’s foundational belief in the separation of church and state,” van Lier said.