New Study Shows Benefits of Vouchers

Parents Christopher and Chelsea Boggs made a judgment call when they enrolled their children in private school using Ohio Educational Choice scholarships. A new study from the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., backs up the decision with data.

Participants in the voucher program, informally called EdChoice, are substantially more likely to enroll in college than students who remain in public schools. Once students start college, the benefits continue. EdChoice participants are much more likely to graduate.

These impacts are strongest for boys, Black students, students who struggled academically before leaving public schools, and students from the lowest-income families. 

The research, published on April 22, 2025, comes one week before a crucial hearing in an ongoing lawsuit to challenge the EdChoice program. The Franklin County Court of Common Pleas will determine the fate of the program in a hearing starting on April 28.

The Boggs family from Columbus and other EdChoice participants from Akron, Canton, Middleton, and Toledo, Ohio, have signed on as defendants and are now fighting to save the program they view as a lifeline. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents them.

Previous studies on the effectiveness of school choice programs have focused on test scores. The new research takes a different approach, looking at long-term results.

“Our findings of positive impacts on college enrollment and degree attainment indicate that state test scores might not be the best way to judge the performance of private schools, which often have different curricula from public schools and might face different incentives to concentrate on than state examinations,” the authors conclude.

Also significant: The study shows that EdChoice does not lower public school performance. “Allowing students to use public funding to attend private schools did not harm outcomes for public schools in Ohio,” the authors conclude.

These findings gut the main arguments against EdChoice.

Vouchers Hurt Ohio, a coalition of public school districts, sued to stop the program in 2022, claiming that it undermines the state’s ability to operate a “thorough and efficient” public education system.

The Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, takes a different approach. Union President Scott DiMauro has called the EdChoice funding model, which allows taxpayer money to follow children to the schools of their choice, a “flawed premise” that contributes to “white flight” from diverse communities.

Both of these arguments hinge on blame reversal. If public schools fall behind, it is someone else’s fault. And if parents leave, they share some of the blame. Attacks like these are not new. Oregon attempted to criminalize private education more than 100 years ago, and many states continue today with onerous restrictions on homeschooling, microschooling, and anything else that threatens the status quo.

Left unspoken in Ohio is the perverse incentive to protect a $28 billion monopoly for education industry insiders.

Choice opponents have a strong motivation to dismiss or ignore the Urban Institute findings. But the study’s authors make it difficult. The authors tracked the college enrollment of more than 6,000 EdChoice participants between 2008 and 2014 and compared them to more than 500,000 students with similar demographics in Ohio public schools. 

The Boggs did their own study informally at the kitchen table. They initially thought they would send all three of their children to local public schools. But the parents changed their minds when they realized their children would attend low-performing schools based on nothing more than their address.

The Boggs felt trapped. EdChoice gave them an escape. Their children now attend a high-performing private school. “The only way we can afford to do this is because of the EdChoice program,” Chris Boggs said.

The scholarships are an equalizer. They allow education providers to compete on a level playing field, which keeps everyone sharp. Vouchers Hurt Ohio and union leaders prefer brute force.

No scholarships. No choice. No competition.

Ohio rejected this thinking long ago. The state has a good thing going, which the new study confirms. The courts just need to follow the data.