In June, Ohio’s sweeping EdChoice Scholarship Program suffered a near-fatal blow after a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge ruled the program unconstitutional. That ruling found that using public funds to subsidize tuition at private religious schools violates the Ohio Constitution’s ban on directing “school funds” to religious or sectarian institutions.
The judge also found that the expansion of EdChoice undermines the state’s duty to maintain a “thorough and efficient” school system, especially as public schools remain underfunded. An appeal by the state attorney general is in the works.
Project 2025 posited that a second Trump administration would usher in the dismantling of K-12 public education from the inside out by doubling down on “parental choice” and continuing to encourage states to redirect tax dollars toward private and, especially, conservative religious schools. What happens next may reveal if Ohio can continue to expand school choice programs without significant changes that address growing concerns about funding and accountability.
In the 1990s, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich began quietly laying the groundwork with Catholic Church officials to funnel taxpayer money into private and, especially, parochial schools. Ohio formally launched its voucher system in 1996 with the Cleveland Scholarship, a program intended to help students in Cleveland leave low-performing public schools for private schools.
Over the next 16 years, state lawmakers rolled out several initiatives, including the EdChoice Scholarship Program in 2003, open to students who did not qualify for the Cleveland program. The EdChoice scholarship allows any low-income family to access EdChoice. Previously, it was only available to students who attended low-performing school districts. In 2023, the state budget bill made the program available to any family in Ohio, regardless of income, essentially creating a universal voucher program. If a family’s household income is at or below 450 percent of the federal poverty level, they receive $6,166 for K-8 students and $8,408 for grades 9-12 students. If the family’s income is higher, they can receive a prorated amount—so even the wealthiest families can use the vouchers.
Catholic dioceses and affiliated educational organizations have led aggressive campaigns to reroute public dollars to sectarian classrooms—turning “school choice” into a vehicle for state-funded evangelism. But this growing network of private schools faces little to no public accountability. These institutions are not held to the same transparency, oversight, or nondiscrimination provisions as public schools, despite tax dollars being siphoned off from them to fund the private schools.
“It’s not hyperbolic to say we are really facing the potential end of our public school system in Ohio.”
The court found that because of the state’s failure to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan, public schools received $6.5 billion in FY2022, short of the $7.2 billion they would have received under the plan. The shortfall is roughly equivalent to the amount spent on the EdChoice expansion during the same fiscal year.
“It’s not hyperbolic to say we are really facing the potential end of our public school system in Ohio,” says Christina Collins, executive director of Honesty for Ohio Education, a statewide coalition that includes families, educators, civic leaders, and faith communities.
A 2024 Ohio Legislative Services Commission report found that 15,000 Ohio students receiving the EdChoice Expansion Scholarship come from families earning above 750 percent of the federal poverty line. “This is just a rebate program,” says Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, a coalition of school districts. “This is a program to [transfer] money from poor people to people that are making $600,000 a year and have a million-dollar house.”
Compared to public schools, private schools run with far less state government oversight. Many parochial schools adhere to standards that discourage families from airing concerns publicly or discussing them with other parents. Instead, parents are encouraged to resolve issues quietly, and then, only through school administrators.
This structure left Cincinnati parent Rebecca Surendorff feeling powerless. While her children were enrolled in a Catholic school, Surendorff described feeling shut out of their academic lives. “It feels like everything’s A-OK because your kids are getting As,” she explains. “But then your kids’ Iowa scores come in, and they’ve dropped from the 50th percentile to the 25th. It’s hard to tell whether the problem lies with your child or the educational environment.”
Surendorff, the co-chair of Ohioans for Child Protection, a statewide advocacy group, would later withdraw her children from the Catholic school, the same school she attended as a child, following a series of sexual misconduct complaints from former students at the school. When she enrolled her children in a public school, it quickly became clear that they were behind in subjects like science and math.
“It truly is a free-for-all in private schools,” Collins says. “Private schools don’t have to follow state standards. They don’t have to show their curriculum; they don’t have to show what standards they are following.” The result, she adds, is a system with few safeguards for families.
As questions mount about academics, oversight, and the use of public funds for private education, she emphasizes that meaningful reforms must include clear accountability measures. “Number one would be similar financial reporting to what public schools have to do. Public schools have to submit an annual financial report and a five-year forecast.” Those documents become public records, but Collins notes similar private-school documents are not made available to the public. While participating private schools are required to submit an annual financial report to the state with basic expenditure information, they are not required to submit forecasts.
She points to Ohio House Bill 407, a 2024 proposal with bipartisan support that would have increased oversight for private schools receiving public funds. But a number of key financial accountability measures, such as fiscal profiles, were removed from the proposal during committee review.
Though the bill ultimately did not make it to the House floor, Collins remains optimistic, acknowledging that achieving meaningful reforms will require sustained political pressure. She notes that while no new reforms have been introduced in the current legislative session, there is strong interest from multiple stakeholders to revisit oversight measures.
Collins and her allies are also seeking allies in rural communities. Many of these areas lack private schools, but residents see their tax dollars diverted to voucher programs nonetheless. “Their buildings are crumbling, while their property taxes are hurting them, while their students are receiving underresourced education, that is where their money is going,” Collins says. This growing awareness, she argues, is building a grassroots groundswell that could pressure lawmakers to act.
The EdChoice legal challenges and mounting public skepticism about the program put the voucher system at a critical crossroads. The shape of future funding and accountability reforms may determine the future of public education in Ohio.