The Buckeye Institute Releases New Policy Brief: Lessons for Improving Ohio’s EdChoice Voucher Program

By Michael T. Hamilton, posted July 14, 2006

For Immediate Release --- July 14, 2006                                                     

Contact: Michael Hamilton   (614) 224-4422   cell (937) 219-5366

The Buckeye Institute Releases New Policy Brief: Lessons for Improving Ohio’s EdChoice Voucher Program

COLUMBUS, Ohio. --- Today the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions released a new policy brief entitled Lessons for Improving Ohio’s EdChoice Voucher Program.

This report compares the application process of the Milwaukee program, considered to be among the most parent-friendly in the nation, with the Cleveland program, which has a notoriously difficult process.  The lessons gleaned from the successes and failures of these two programs provide several recommendations for how the EdChoice voucher program can be improved.

Although the EdChoice voucher process is better than Cleveland’s, there is still much room for improvement.  A short application period and a school building’s fluctuating eligibility status make it harder and more confusing for parents to apply.  Ohio should continue learning from Milwaukee’s program and implement year-round, rolling admissions and city-wide eligibility based solely on a family’s income, rather than on the performance of individual school buildings.

“If parents can’t easily participate in a school choice program, it’s not really providing much of a choice at all,” according to one of the report’s authors, Buckeye Institute Education Policy Director Matthew Carr.  “The EdChoice program holds a great deal of promise for parents trapped in chronically failing schools.  Implementing the reforms detailed in this report will help make that promise a reality.”

You can view this policy brief at: http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/article/739.

If you have any questions, or would like to speak with one of the authors, please call me at (614) 224-4422, or contact me via email at mhamilton@buckeyeinstitute.org.  

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Michael Hamilton is Communications Manager at the Buckeye Institute and a student at Hillsdale College.