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School choice is saving us money

Education by the Numbers is the title of a new study about school voucher and tax credit programs. "This study calculates the fiscal impact of every existing voucher and tax-credit scholarship program, in order to bring empirical evidence to bear on the debate over the fiscal impact of school choice. Of the 18 voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs in the United States, twelve began operations before the current school year and their fiscal impact can thus be assessed." It was prepared by Susan L. Aud, PhD, for the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.

"When a student uses school choice, the local public school district no longer needs to pay the instructional costs associated with that student, but it does not lose all of its per-student revenue, because some revenue does not vary with enrollment levels. Thus, school choice produces a positive fiscal impact for school districts as well as for state budgets." (from summary) School choice does not take money away from the district--it saves money. It does cut back on some power, and that in my opinion, is the real threat, whether from private, voucher, or homeschool.

One program that is different than most states is Ohio's Autism Scholarship Program.

"In addition to the Cleveland voucher program, Ohio provides up to $20,000 in state funding for privately provided education services, including private school tuition, for students with autism. Assessing the fiscal impact of the Autism Scholarship Program is difficult, as autism ranges in severity from very mild to very severe, meaning that private school costs for these students will also vary considerably. To make matters worse, Ohio school districts do not currently report data on instructional spending for autistic students.

Since Ohio does not make sufficient data available, we cannot calculate the program’s fiscal impact on local public school districts. We can, however, calculate its fiscal effect on the state of Ohio. Funding for disabled students in Ohio uses weights for the various categories of special needs. For example, a disabled student receiving a weight of 2.5 would generate special education funding for the local school district equal to two and a half times the foundation funding level for one regular student. Students with autism receive a weight of 4.735 for their Basic Aid portion of the formula revenue. In addition, these students are counted in the general enrollment and generate funds that way as well. Determining the formula revenue associated with an autistic student requires multiplying the foundation amount ($5,169 in 2005 and $5,283 in 2006) by 5.735. This gives us the total funding burden that is shared between the state and the local districts. We multiply this by the local share percentage (which is 0.68) to determine how much is funded locally. What is left over after this local share is subtracted is the average state formula spending per student. The results of the calculations for 2005-06 and 2006-07 are shown in Table 7. (of the article)

Even though the program serves very few students, and even if we make the conservative assumption that each student uses the maximum voucher amount of $20,000, the Ohio Autism Scholarship Program has generated $1 million in savings for the state."

HT Joanne Jacobs