Final Study: Private voucher school students permanently fall behind peers in public school
08/09/2018

Indiana students in the state’s private school voucher program are falling behind in math and showing no improvement in Language Arts.

According to a just released study of the state’s private school voucher program, “the goal of improving the academic performance of low‐income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.”

The final study was preliminarily released last year by Chalkbeat after obtaining it through a public records request.

The earlier study showed that voucher students made up the losses in four years after transferring from their public school. The final, revamped study now shows that the losses "persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school.”

State spending for the private school voucher program grew to $154 million in 2017-18 and nearly $500 million since the controversial program began.