When we let vouchers drain our schools, it hurts us all.
November 18, 2025
Good Tuesday morning,
We’re getting under their skin. Losing is making them sweat.
We’re talking about the pro-voucher crowd, and they have $1.7 billion reasons to be nervous.
Their cash grab will go away when the Franklin County Common Pleas ruling that EdChoice private school vouchers are unconstitutional is upheld.
We know anti-public school billionaires across the country are pushing for vouchers in state after state. In each of those states, they have grass tops organizations that they fund.
In Ohio, we have the Bogus Buckeye Institute. See how they appropriate something about the state they operate in to appear organic.
The Bogus Buckeye Institute is part of something called the State Policy Network. If you go to the network here, you will see the Mackinac Center in Michigan, the Palmetto Promise in South Carolina. You get the drift.
It would be fine if they wanted to just pretend to be think tanks all around the country, but they are intent on influencing public policy, and their marching orders from their billionaire backers are to get busy promoting EdChoice vouchers in Ohio.
Which leads us to an Op/Ed that ran in the Columbus Dispatch. Read it here.
It’s full of factual errors, conflates information, and it’s just flat out wrong. This is why some people say the Bogus Buckeye Institute (BBI) is a “stink tank.”
Steve Dyer, the former state lawmaker who helped develop a constitutional formula for funding schools, tore the Op/Ed apart in his online substack.
You can read Dyer here.
Dyer points out that the BBI makes a false claim that public schools are swimming in money by including money for vouchers and charters in the state’s overall spending.
“That’s right,” Dyer writes. “(BBI) is writing an entire article complaining that school districts whine too much about vouchers taking money away from public school kids by citing K-12 expenditure data that…includes money going to vouchers and charter schools.”
“Ohio public students are receiving $1.6 billion less, adjusted for inflation, than they did 15 years ago,” Dyer writes.
He says this money could fully fund the Cupp Patterson Fair School Funding Plan.
We think the Bogus Buckeye Institute think tank needs to take a little more time thinking before putting out hogwash, but they have a different agenda.
Unfortunately, their views reflect the policies of the state legislature and the governor, so we are going to the courts for relief.
Is your district part of our historic lawsuit? Check here.
If not, why not? Learn more here.
Sincerely,
Vouchers Hurt Ohio