Ohio’s families have a variety of educational options, from traditional public districts to charters to private schools, religious and non. And a recent expansion in the state’s scholarship programs has made the non-public option more accessible than ever.
The expansion hasn’t been universally popular. Critics say it takes funding away from public schools (while it doesn’t touch district’s property tax dollars, Ohio’s current funding formula uses where students are being educated, not where they live).
But families are signing up. The number of students in the EdChoice Expansion program grew more than three times from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2024.
“Ohio provides a variety of educational options, including traditional public school districts, career-technical education schools and programs, public community schools, nonpublic schools, and home education,” says Lacey Snoke, chief communications officer and press secretary for the Department of Education and Workforce. “Parents can select the options that best meet their children’s learning needs.”
Currently, Ohio has five school choice scholarships. The Cleveland Scholarship is available to students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. There is the Autism Scholarship for students with an autism diagnosis and the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship, which serves all students with IEPs. The EdChoice and EdChoice Expansion scholarships are income-based programs that give state-funded scholarships to help students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend independent schools.
The passage of House Bill 33 in 2023 opened the expansion scholarship up to all students. Prior to that, only families whose household income was less than 250% of the federal poverty level qualified. Now, if a family’s household income is at or below 450% of the federal poverty level, students receive the maximum scholarship amount, currently $6,166 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and $8,408 for those in high school. Families with income levels above that receive reduced scholarship amounts.
In fiscal year 2023, about 23,000 students were enrolled in the EdChoice Expansion program. In fiscal year 2024, more than 88,000 students in Ohio were using the EdChoice Expansion scholarship, according to data from the state. For context, about 1,482,000 students were enrolled in a public district in the 2023-2024 school year.
“I think that the overall change in Ohio is that parents have a choice,” says Beth Lawson, director of media and communications for School Choice Ohio. “It’s not that there was a mass exodus from our public schools.”
The nonprofit serves the entire state, working directly with families to educate them on the different school choice options available. The organization can also help families contact schools and fill out paperwork, and it advocates for families on issues like transportation, according to Lawson.
“School choice should really be about finding the best fit for each student,” says Sharla Elton, superintendent of the Heritage Christian School in Canton. And the scholarships help take cost out of the equation. The majority of Heritage Christian’s families are able to use the scholarships from the state, along with other options the school can help with, to fully pay for tuition.
She also thinks it’s made their campus more diverse.
A lack of diversity can be a criticism of the scholarship program, and that experience may not be everyone’s.
As for Heritage Christian, the private school now has students of more races and cultural backgrounds, as well as economic classes, Elton says. And it’s seen “expansive growth” since the change in the EdChoice Expansion scholarship. The school had grown enrollment by about 40% in the five years before the expansion, she said; last year, it grew enrollment by 12%. It currently enrolls about 300 students.
Lawson says she has noticed that parents of younger children are more aware of the different educational options available in the state and interested in finding the best fit for their families, before students start to set down roots in a particular school community. The largest cohort of students using the EdChoice Expansion scholarship in fiscal year 2024—8,850—were enrolled in kindergarten.
“And so, they’re willing to go and investigate,” she says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they choose one particular option, but there’s a lot more interest in just finding out what those options are.”
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