Vouchers, Catholic Schools, and Teacher Workforce Dynamics: Evidence from Indiana

• In Event: Post-Pandemic Changes in School Choice Practices and Policies

Abstract

Indiana has recently expanded its statewide voucher program’s household income threshold such that almost all Indiana students are now eligible. Nearly 70,000 students used vouchers last year, making Indiana’s program one of the largest nationwide (Indiana Department of Education, 2024). While researchers have extensively studied Indiana’s voucher program impacts on student and school outcomes (e.g., Austin, 2015; Berends, Waddington, & Austin, 2023; Canbolat, 2021; Egalite & Catt, 2025; Waddington & Berends, 2018; Waddington, Zimmer, & Berends, 2024), no research to date in Indiana or nationwide has focused on changes to the private school teacher workforce. Half of Indiana’s voucher students attended one of the 167 K-12 Catholic schools operating across the state, creating a unique opportunity to understand how vouchers have influenced the teacher workforce in an entire sector. We use the rollout and expansion of the voucher program in Indiana to study whether and how it has impacted the teaching workforce in Catholic schools relative to traditional public schools by answering the following research questions:

RQ1: How did the composition of teachers in Indiana’s Catholic schools change as the voucher program expanded, relative to public schools over the same timeframe?

RQ2: Are changes to the teacher workforce associated with the changing composition of students in Catholic schools as the voucher program expanded?

RQ3: To what extent does the additional revenue afforded Catholic schools through the voucher program explain any differences in teacher composition, turnover, or hiring?

To answer these questions, we will use twelve years of Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) longitudinal data, which includes comparable public and private school student, teacher, and school measures that we can track over time. These data are unique, making Indiana one of the only contexts in which a study of private school teachers in voucher-participating private schools can be carried out, and important especially as other states undertake analogous changes to their choice policies. We will answer our research questions using both descriptive and difference-in-differences analyses, leveraging the expansion of family eligibility for vouchers as a source of variation in the presence and salience of vouchers across Catholic schools and how the revenue for schools changes over time.

As of the 2022-23 school year, there were 4,135 teachers in 165 voucher-participating Catholic schools. After the most recent voucher expansion, our preliminary findings indicate that the share of non-white teachers increased by 1.2 percentage points, relative to public school teachers over the same time. We also find that the average years of teaching experience decreased by nearly a year, and concurrently the proportion of teachers who are in their first year increases by 4.5 percentage points. Some possible explanations are that with increased funds flowing to Catholic schools as a result of more families receiving vouchers, schools may have either increased teacher salaries and/or had the ability to hire additional teaching support staff. We will probe these potential mechanisms further in the full paper by incorporating financial data on the amount of voucher program funds going to each school annually.

Authors

• Joseph Waddington, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Shaun M Dougherty, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Julie Dallavis, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Kiara Sanchez, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Isabel J Thompson, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Co-Author