White students disproportionately use Ohio school voucher program

White students appear to get into private schools using taxpayer-funded vouchers at a higher rate than black students, raising questions about why that’s happening.

Ohio’s original voucher program, called EdChoice, allows students assigned to low-performing public schools to seek acceptance to a private school that accepts vouchers. A Dispatch analysis of 2014-15 data shows that the schools eligible because of their failing test scores were 61.3 percent black, but black students represented 48.5 percent of the students who were attending a private school on a voucher that year.

Whites made up 21.4 percent of the students attending qualifying low-performing schools, but 33.4 percent of those who applied and were accepted to a private school under the voucher program, state records show.

Add in a second, fast-growing Ohio voucher program, known as the EdChoice expansion program, which provides low-income students with vouchers even if they aren’t assigned to a low-performing public school, and the enrollment grows even more disproportionately white.

Read more: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/08/28/white-students-disproportionately-use-ohio-school-voucher-program.html