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June 2006
Ohio's first foray into a statewide school-voucher program clearly has some kinks, but they can be worked out.
The most surprising bump in the road to better school choices for families is that most of the 14,000 vouchers available statewide have no takers.
The deadline to apply is today, but as of Wednesday, fewer than 1,500 applications were received statewide. In Franklin County, where about 13,000 students are eligible because they attend underperforming public schools, only 318 had applied.
Several factors could be contributing to this weak response. The scholarships, worth $4,250 for an elementary student and $5,000 for a high-schooler, don't cover entirely the tuition at all nonpublic schools, and many parents from the poorestperforming schools would have trouble paying the difference. Application fees, which must be paid before a student is accepted and, thus, before a voucher can be awarded, might be another barrier.
Not all private schools accept vouchers, and some of the Franklin County schools participating in the program have only a few vacancies.
Still, even with these factors, the very low participation numbers suggest that the state has fallen short of the goal of letting people know that vouchers are available. Thousands of Ohioans each year enroll their children in new, untried charter schools in hopes of an improvement over their dismal public schools. Certainly, many of these families ought to be interested in a chance to attend well-established private or parochial schools, at free or reduced tuition.
Now comes a report that some parents who already send their children to private schools are suspected of enrolling them in one of the failing public schools, solely to collect a voucher for the private school they already attend.
Ohio Department of Education officials see this as abuse of the program, which is meant to open up the chance at a better education to families who otherwise could not afford it.
Some taxpayers believe that allowing certain families to receive privateschool tuition while denying this help to others who have struggled and sacrificed to pay it is unfair. On the other hand, vouchers are meant to help families with no other hope of escaping failing public schools. Handing out money to people who already send their children to private schools won't help improve the education of any Ohio children in public schools.
The Education Department is seeking legal advice on whether this end run to obtain vouchers can be allowed under state law.
While that issue is hashed out, the department should work on the program's other kinks. Are the dollar amounts high enough? Does the state need to give private schools more incentive to participate? Most important, what can be done to make sure Ohioans know that the option is available?
Vouchers hold great promise for Ohio's neediest students, but far more work remains to ensure that the program lives up to that promise.
The above appeared in the June 9, 2025 Columbus Dispatch
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