Does school choice drain funding and resources away from public schools?
No. Real world experience and evidence show that states and cities with school choice programs have not seen their public school budgets go down. When students leave public schools using voucher programs, they free up more money for the students who remain. Taking a student out of public school removes the cost of educating that student. Most of these savings re¬main in local school budgets where they benefit other students; the rest of the savings go into state budgets. States and cities with school choice programs have all increased their per-student instructional spending in the years since the programs began. Two examples may help for consideration. By 1992, Milwaukee’s school choice program had been in place for two years, and according to the U.S. Census, the city’s public schools spent $9,038 per student; by 2007 that figure had swelled to $11,725 – a 30 percent increase in real dollars. Cleveland’s school choice program launched in 1997, when the city was spending $9,293 per st
