The Warp and Woof of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program

• In Event: School Voucher Policy and Implementation: Lessons From Indiana and Tennessee

Abstract

Objectives

Situated at a geographic crossroads and enacted amidst considerable political conflict, the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program (ICSP) represents an inflection point in an important policy debate. The ICSP, which provided tuition scholarships to 9,324 students in 2012-2013, has had the most aggressive initial growth of any publicly funded private school choice program in history, and has the largest enrollment of any statewide voucher program. Its reach and scholarship size (about $4,500 a student) make it distinctive, as does its position within a larger set of Indiana policies designed to expand choice in the district, charter, and private school sectors and establish firm accountability standards for school performance. This paper analyzes several design features of and relevant constitutional questions related to the ICSP. The goal is to examine what makes the ICSP unique, and how those differences may inform what we see in other states in the future.

Theoretical Framework

Nearly 25 years after the enactment of the nation’s first publicly funded voucher program, we are now in the midst of an unprecedented period of growth for the “educational choice” movement (Author, in press). There are now more than 30 publicly funded private school choice programs in 18 states and the District of Columbia. In 2012-2013, these programs provided more than 240,000 children with some form of scholarship. Enrollment in such programs has nearly doubled since 2005, and the total amount of public funding for such programs (now estimated at more than $900 million annually) has more than doubled in that time.

The ICSP – enacted in 2011 and significantly expanded in 2013 – arguably represents a unique new approach to publicly funded private school choice policies in the educational choice movement, both in terms of policy design and program implementation. The purpose of this paper is to situate the ICSP in the larger landscape of choice programs nationally and provide context on its relevance as part of a larger choice and accountability ecosystem in Indiana.

Data and Methods

This paper includes a comparison of the relevant legislative and regulatory language for each of the relevant choice programs, as well as available data on program enrollment and spending caps. In addition, I examine several provisions of the Indiana Constitution implicated by the ICSP that deal with foundational questions of public aid for K-12 education and the role of religious private schools in publicly funded choice programs, as well as the state Supreme Court’s disposition of the constitutional questions surfaced by these provisions. I also consider the potential consequences in states with similar Constitutional language.

Results and Scholarly Significance

The ICSP raises important questions about the role of publicly funded private school choice within the broader movement to expand parent choice and improve school quality. This paper contributes to the growing literature on what constitutes “best practice” in policy design and program implementation, and suggests that features such as the relatively expansive student eligibility and scholarship size have contributed to the ICSP’s position as the largest statewide voucher program in the country.

Author

• John Andrew Schoenig, University of Notre Dame