Indiana is a radical state when it comes to education funding. It now offers a handful of different types of K-12 education vouchers. The Indiana Choice Scholarship—a subsidy for families by which they use public funds to help pay for private school tuition—is the largest and oldest voucher in the state (existing since 2011).

IF the state K-12 funding had remained the same and IF this large voucher program didn’t exist, how much additional funding would your community school district have had?

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Data source: Dr. Phil Downs, “Voucher Impact,” 2017 to 2024, https://drphildowns.com/

This information represents the district share if voucher money were added to the basic (tuition support) grant. In economics lingo, it’s the “opportunity cost” of school choice. Think about it: what could your district have done with the money? 

Every Indiana public school is losing money because of vouchers. Even if no students leave your school district to use a voucher, even if you don’t have any voucher-accepting schools in your small or rural school district, your school district still loses money due to vouchers.