Voucher Costs to Local Public School Districts
Indiana is a radical state when it comes to education funding. It now offers several different types of K-12 education vouchers. The Indiana Choice Scholarship—public funds given to families to subsidize their private school tuition—is the largest and oldest voucher in the state (existing since 2011).
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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?
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.
Data source: Dr. Phil Downs, “Voucher Impact,” 2017 to 2024, https://drphildowns.com/
Note: 2022-2023 saw a smaller budget increase coupled with a big jump in inflation leading to a larger shortage relative to previous years. In the 2023-2024 budget, a bigger increase in the budget and slowing of inflation brought it back down.
The defunding of our community public schools happens for many reasons. Click the icons below to navigate and learn more.
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