Doesn’t school choice drain resources from public schools?
Absolutely not! No state or city with school choice has seen its public school budgets go down. When Milwaukee’s school choice program was founded in 1990-91, its public schools spent $6,316 per student; by 2003-04 that had risen to $10,375. Cleveland’s public school spending rose from $6,616 in 1996-97, when its choice program began, to $10,420 in 2003-04. And these fi gures include only the portion of school budgets known as “current expenditures”; figures for total education spending would be even higher. Why have cities with school choice seen such large increases in per-student spending? Believe it or not, school choice is one of the reasons. The claim that choice drains money may sound plausible; schools are funded on a per-student basis, so fewer students means less money. But a growing body of research fi nds exactly the opposite: school choice programs actually improve public school financing. school choice gives the public school system more money to educate each student. The
