OHIO – As Ohio legislators buy time to complete and pass the upcoming budget, there are concerns that late changes to an education voucher bill won't help the students it was originally intended to help. Until now, vouchers in the state of Ohio have been given to families needing financial assistance or whose children attend low performing schools.

Helping students in Ohio attend a school of choice is a top priority these days.  

In fact, state-created voucher programs allowing economically disadvantaged students and those attending low performing schools, to go to a private school is sparking debate. 

That’s because proponents of the bill want to expand the voucher program to include more kids.

More than 23 thousand students attending low performing schools across the state took advantage of the financial help this year. But only 10,800 low-income families got aid; with those numbers combined it's less than half of the 60 thousand vouchers made available by the state. School choice proponent Chad Aldis says, reaching the allotted amount is a challenge. "The lack of hitting its' cap is not due to a lack of interest. It's due to very narrow eligibility." "The same schools regardless of academic performance were the only ones in the state eligible."

Now as the Senate has made changes to expand eligibility requirements, that's where things have gotten a little tense, igniting a response from Melissa Cropper, President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. "The reality of it is, expansion of this voucher language allows students who are already in private schools and whose families make a decent amount of money to be able to use this money to pay for their choice to not attend a public school regardless of the quality of the school."

For Cropper, that means less money given to those who it was intended for. 

While there is a difference of opinion about what the amended bill does, we took a look for ourselves at the bill analysis to understand it all. 

The bill does a couple of things in its amended form. It would for the first time

• allow for all public school kids in grades k-12, to apply for an income-based voucher to attend a private school in the 2020-21 school year
• allow kids in 8th grade who currently attend private schools without financial assistance, to receive an ed choice scholarship as long as they still meet the eligibility criteria.

Right now, a family of four can make around $45,000 and be eligible for the income-based voucher. If passed into law, families making up to twice that amount could receive help too. But school choice advocate Chad Aldis says, giving more families a chance to escape bad situations is needed and better for taxpayers overall. "If a student is in a school where they're not performing well, where they're not attending regularly; if they're getting bullied; if they and their parents feel unsafe, that's not going to be a wise investment for taxpayers." 

While Melissa Cropper isn't against school choice, she is concerned that a study run by the Thomas Fordham Institute showed that kids who switched schools weren't performing any better than those who went to public schools. "So, if we're not really helping the students that the proponents of this bill say that they want to help, then why are we again taking more money out of public schools to put it into a private school choice."

Aldis admits performance levels were down but said that could have been for any number of reasons. "We were only able to look at a small sliver of kids using a voucher and so it was hundreds of kids out of the tens of thousands that are using it. That's all we were able to credibly study." Aldis added that traditional public schools had a lot more incentives to focus on standardized tests than private schools to aid performance levels. 

Regardless, Cropper says they don't have a problem with families choosing the schools of their choice for their children, but she doesn't believe the state shouldn't pay for it when they are able to do so on their own.

While more than $161 million dollars in vouchers were given out this year to help kids attend private schools, the Ohio Federation of Teachers worries that money put towards private school education in this expanded way only deepens the challenges of being able to fully fund public education. Those on the other side of the aisle say, the vouchers are only a small fraction of dollars being given out and they don't fully cover tuition for those in high school.