School Choice: The Fairy Tale

July 15, 2025

“There is no Santa Claus, there is no Easter Bunny, and there is no such thing as school choice.”

This is a quote from Dan Heintz, a Cleveland Heights-University Heights School Board member and teacher at Chardon Local Schools.

“The Ohio Constitution is real; school choice is a fairy tale,” he told reporters at a press conference Vouchers Hurt Ohio held last week.

Since its inception, the pro-voucher crowd has sold the siphoning away of billions of tax dollars from public schools as a choice for parents and students.

Once upon a time, vouchers were cynically sold as a “choice” for poor parents, but the pro-voucher crowd has dropped all pretense of helping poor families.

Now, in its new, improved packaging, vouchers are advertised as the choice for all families when in fact the vast majority of vouchers are going to wealthy families whose children are already enrolled in private schools.

In her ruling that the EdChoice private school voucher program is unconstitutional, Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page addresses the false issue of “choice.”

In our Count 1, where our attorneys successfully argued that private school vouchers create a separate and unequal system of uncommon schools open only to the privileged, Judge Page writes:

“The chartered non-public school, not the student or parent, applies to the state for an EdChoice voucher. By bestowing participating private religious schools with complete control over prospective students’ participation, the “school choice” here is made by the private school, not “as a result of independent decisions of parents and students.”

The private school operators choose, and they can discriminate using race, religion, family income (oh so important), academic or athletic ability, and disabilities to accept or reject any student without explanation or accountability.

“Chartered non-public schools participating in the EdChoice program are not subject to anti-discrimination laws, giving them complete control over whether to enroll a prospective student, and allowing them to turn students away based on their religion, sexual orientation or disability,” Judge Page writes in her 47-page opinion.

These are our tax dollars taken directly from the pool of money that is supposed to pay for our common system of common public schools open to all children.

Is your district part of our historic lawsuit? Check here.

If not, why not? Learn how to join here.

Sincerely,

Vouchers Hurt Ohio