Expanding the Cleveland Voucher Program
The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program (CSTP) has been in existence for several years. Over that period, legal concerns limited program enrollment and prevented its expansion to other Ohio urban school districts. With the U.S. Supreme Court having affirmed the CSTP in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris it is the appropriate time to expand the scholarship program.
The Buckeye Institute study Education Empowerment Zones: Revitalizing Ohio’s cities through School Choice, details the benefits of increasing the CSTP scholarship amount and opening the program to all Cleveland residents, regardless of income. An expanded voucher available to the middle-class, combined with strong community schools, could lead city revitalizing efforts by enticing middle-income families with children back into the city.
Increasing the availability of high-quality education opportunities to all residents increases the attractiveness of living in Cleveland to working and middle-class parents. An increased population of working and middle-class families leads to stabilized neighborhoods, increased economic integration and rising home values. School choice is vital not only to the educational prospects of Cleveland children, but to the health and vitality of the city as a whole.
Financial Concerns
The main concern that many Ohio policymakers have with expanding vouchers in Cleveland is the cost. That is a legitimate concern given the state’s recent budget situation.
An easy way to address this concern is to utilize the community school funding mechanism to fund the CSTP. Community school funding is based on the following principle: every state aid dollar tied to a student’s enrollment in a public school follows that student to a community school. This means that every student is guaranteed at least the base cost funding amount, although it could be more depending upon a particular student’s situation. This amount generally, though not always, covers the full cost of educating the student in question.
The main goal of an expanded CSTP is to revitalize Cleveland by using scholarship availability to encourage families to move back into the city. As such, funding scholarships for current Cleveland private school students not already eligible for CSTP merely increases funding without a concomitant increase in population. A “look back period” should therefore be instituted that requires all first-year CSTP recipients to have attended public school the previous year. This change ensures that the state pays only for students currently in the state system.
How It Would Work in Cleveland
Since the CSTP depends upon parents making choices on which school is best for their children, it would be impossible to predict with any accuracy the exact impact of the CSTP expansion. What we can see, however, is how funding the CSTP in this way would ensure revenue-neutrality, adequate scholarship levels, and more money per pupil for the Cleveland Municipal School District.
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During the 2003-2004 school year base cost funding is set at $5,058. The Cleveland Municipal School District is estimated to receive an average of $5,898 per pupil in state aid. A student from a Cleveland public school applying to the CSTP would be guaranteed at least a $5,058 scholarship. The nearly $850 difference in state aid per student will remain with the Cleveland Municipal School District, except in cases where a student receives special education services.
In either case, the Cleveland Municipal School District will retain all locally generated revenue, estimated to be $3,385 per student during the 2003-2004 school year. These funds remaining in the now smaller district will raise total revenue per pupil and offset the fixed costs that will continue to be incurred by the district.
If large numbers of students move into Cleveland from the suburbs, the state very well may spend more dollars per pupil. Should this occur, however, the CSTP will clearly be achieving the goal of getting families to move back into the city.
Conclusion
Structuring the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program this way has four main benefits. The first one is that it ensures the revenue-neutrality of state education spending, regardless of whether one or 10,000 students enroll. Second, it would place the CSTP on similar footing with Ohio’s community schools. Third, CSTP scholarships would automatically increase whenever basic state aid to schools increased. Fourth, it ensures that all local revenue remains with the local school district.
If Ohio policymakers are serious about revitalizing Ohio cities like Cleveland, they must recognize the importance parents place on good schools and their willingness to move to get them. Surveys of families above the poverty level in the Cleveland Scholarship Program emphatically state that they would not be staying in the City of Cleveland if they did not have the voucher available to them.
These working and middle-class families that Cleveland has been losing to the suburbs are the backbone of a healthy, vibrant city. By increasing the scholarship amounts and making them available to all Cleveland residents, policymakers will have taken an important step towards revitalizing the city.
Joshua C. Hall is the director of the Buckeye Institute Center for Education Excellence and a lecturer in economics at Capital University.
