The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Ohio spent more than a billion dollars on private school vouchers for the 2025 fiscal year, the second full year with near-universal school vouchers.
The total amount for Ohio’s five private school voucher programs was $1.09 billion, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Nearly half of the money ($492.8 million) was from Education Choice Expansion vouchers.
The $1.09 billion number is higher than the estimated $1.05 billion the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission predicted when it came to the scholarship programs.
“The thing that we’re concerned about is it seems like the EdChoice voucher program is expanding and skyrocketing with the money that’s being poured into that program, and there aren’t nearly as many students in that program to warrant that kind of infusion of money,” Ohio Education Association President Jeff Wensing said.
The five private school scholarship programs are the Autism Scholarship Program, the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship Program, the Cleveland Scholarship, the Education Choice Scholarship and the Educational Choice Expansion Scholarship Program.
Students on the autism spectrum are eligible to receive vouchers up to $32,445 for the Autism Scholarship Program.
Students who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) from their district are eligible for the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship.
The Cleveland Scholarship is for all students living in the boundaries of Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
Students living in the boundaries of a low-performing school district are eligible for Education Choice scholarships.
Lawmakers expanded the Education Choice-Expansion eligibility to 450% of the poverty line two years ago through the state budget — creating near-universal school vouchers.
K-8 students can receive a $6,166 scholarship and high schoolers can receive a $8,408 scholarship in state funding under the expansion.
For the EdChoice Expansion, there were 100,930 scholarships awarded averaging to $4,958 per participant, according to the ODEW data.
There were 42,602 traditional EdChoice scholarships awarded for a total of $283.1 million — with an average of $6,808 per participant.
There were 1,652,539 students attending Ohio schools during the 2024-25 school year and 1,465,041 of those students attended public schools (88%), according to ODEW data.
There were 16,691 less Ohio students enrolled in public schools during the 2024-25 school year compared to 2023-24, according to ODEW data.
Nonpublic Ohio schools had 181,244 students enrolled in fiscal year 2025 — a 4.6% increase compared to fiscal year 2024.
Aaron Churchill, Ohio’s research director for the pro-voucher Thomas B. Fordham Institute, was not surprised the private school voucher programs surpassed one billion dollars.
“I think it was understood that it would come to that amount,” he said.
Churchill expects the total private school voucher program dollar amounts to continue to increase the next couple of years before leveling off a bit.
“I wouldn’t expect (the total private school voucher program dollar amount) to go up as significantly as it has in the past few years,” he said, adding that the goal of the program is to give Ohio parents the ability to choose where to send their kids for school.
Total payments for the five scholarship programs for the past five fiscal years, according to ODEW data:
- $970.7 million in fiscal year 2024
- $610.2 million in fiscal year 2023
- $554.5 million in fiscal year 2022
- $444.5 million in fiscal year 2021
- $394.2 million in fiscal year 2020
Remaining scholarships
For the Cleveland scholarship, there were 8,345 scholarships awarded for a total of $55.1 million — with an average of $6,835 per participant.
There were 6,016 autism scholarships awarded for a total of $159.9 million — with an average of $29,110 per participant.
For the Jon Peterson Scholarship, there were 8,680 scholarships awarded for a total of $103.9 million — with an average of $12,796 per participant.
