Fact sheet: Vouchers and ESAs

Fact Sheet: Vouchers and ESAs
MARCH 19, 2021 • PRESS RELEASE

The Indiana School Boards Association is releasing the following fact sheet, as debate on school choice programs continues to grow. The State Senate is preparing to consider the expansion of Choice Scholarships (vouchers) and the establishment of ESAs (education savings accounts), and it's critical that the public knows the facts.

• Resolutions opposing vouchers and ESAs have been adopted by 170 school boards that collectively serve nearly 650,000 students.


• Indiana ranks fifth in state budget support for private school choice but 39th in public K-12 expenditures per pupil.


• An estimated 3,203 students out of 187,000 who would be eligible are expected to sign up for an ESA in the first year of the program, but there is no cap on the number of students who can participate.


• Under the proposed legislation, parents of selected children who opt out of public schools and open an ESA would receive the equivalent of a taxpayer-funded debit card loaded with 90% of the state per-pupil funding that would otherwise go to the local public school district — about $6,000 per child per year.


• Voucher eligibility would expand to households of four earning $145,410 and households of five earning approximately $170,274 – amounts that qualify as upper-class incomes in many Hoosier communities. The proposed thresholds are more than twice as high as Indiana's median household income of $57,603 in 2019.


• House Bill 1005 requires an annual survey of parent satisfaction with the ESA program but lacks state reporting requirements on measurements of actual student learning outcomes.


• The House-passed budget spends an additional $144M over the next two years on the Choice Scholarship voucher program and ESAs. The number of private school vouchers funded by the state is estimated to increase from 36,100 this year to 48,452 in FY 2023.


• More than one-third of Indiana counties (33) have zero Choice Scholarship schools, while another 20 counties have just one. Only 8.7% of last year’s voucher recipients resided in rural Indiana.


• Indiana has expended more than $1 billion on Choice Scholarships since the program’s inception in 2011-2012. Unlike public schools, private schools are not audited by the State Board of Accounts, nor are they required to publish an annual financial report.


• A 2018 study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Kentucky examining the first four years of the Choice Scholarship Program found students who used a voucher to transfer to a private school experienced achievement loss in mathematics compared to their peers who remained in public schools.

For more information, please visit ESA Is Not OK and follow ISBA on Twitter and Facebook.

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Media contact: Adam VanOsdol, 317-275-2183, avanosdol@isba-ind.org