[T]he program has become a subsidy for predominantly wealthy, white suburban families. The program's average recipient is a white female, who has never attended public school, from a family earning more than $99,000 a year. The shift has taken a huge bite out of state funding for public school - an estimated $600 million this year.

Looking forward, experts and critics in Indiana question whether the state can afford to subsidize sometimes wealthy private schools to the tune of $1.6 billion (since the program started) without devastating the public schools that provide the vast majority of the state's education.

When the voucher program first launched in 2011, 24 percent of voucher users were black students. Today, that demographic has dropped to 9 percent. At the same time, the number of white students on vouchers has increased from 46 percent to 64 percent as the program has expanded.

In 2023, the eligibility was changed again to include families with incomes up to 400 percent of the free and reduced lunch threshold. The result was that a family of four that makes over $222,000 now qualifies. Today, there are more students receiving vouchers whose families make more than $100,000 than those making less than $50,000.

"It started out low-income, but it is no longer low-income," State Rep. Cherish Pryor said. "It's now a way for some of the wealthiest individuals or upper-income individuals to pay for their child's private education."

Pryor also voiced concern for a lack of diversity and fairness. The fact that private schools do not have to "let in every student that presents themselves to the school" raises equity issues.

"You're getting taxpayer dollars - you should be accountable for every single penny that you spend," she said. "But I don't think it's fair to starve our traditional schools and then expect for their performances to be stellar when we haven't given them the proper resources to have a stellar educational system."

This is another example of how something supposedly implemented to help minority - nominally poorer black students - has been transformed into another wealth-transfer to predominately upper-middle class white families who previously paid 100% of the cost to send their kids to private/parochial schools. Instead of helping disadvantaged minorities - as these voucher programs were originally sold to the public - now the program benefits whites at the expense of poorer blacks, and becomes another example - whether intentionally or unintentionally - of tacit systemic bias, nee racism, in its usage.

Ebs,

My parents paid for my Catholic school education for 9 years - Kindergarten thru 8th grade. They wanted me to go to a Jesuit high school that cost $5,000 per year back in 1974. I said, that's crazy and went to my then public suburban high school and ended up at Notre Dame anyway. Truth is my dad was then a school teacher and mom didn't work. Either we didn't eat or they'd have had to go into debt for me to stay in a private high school.

That aside, one other aspect of how the voucher program morphed from something designed to help disadvantaged blacks into a funding-sucker of the public schools where 91 percent of black students actually attend, making it harder still for them to compete with white students receiving objectively superior educations offering a greater variety of class choices - especially for advanced, higher achieving students.

This is a "system" that was originated to assist lower income and minority students that now primarily serves wealthier white families have their private school tuitions subsidized by all taxpayers. And since it has a disproportionate impact on blacks and other minorities, it has become another example of a government-instituted, unintentionally-biased program that harms mainly blacks/poor and helps predominantly whites.

This is what systemic racism/bias/classism looks like and it still exists in today's society just like it has since America became America.

They weren't having any of that. IOW, they didn't value getting a better education for their kids.

I understand completely. Private schools don't put up with what public schools have no choice but to deal with. And parental involvement is expected in most parochial school settings that I've been in.

MBlue hits on why the voucher program in practice can very well be discriminatory towards the very communities it was supposed to serve. Private schools aren't idiots. They will always keep their tuition costs higher than the state stipend, giving them a non-race based, financial shutoff valve to keep students they don't want outside their gates.