Any eligible child can now receive voucher, regardless of family financial status

by Parker Vibbert

The Indiana Choice Scholarship, commonly known as a school voucher, was created in 2011 in an effort led by former Governor Mitch Daniels, R-IN, with the goal of providing lower and middle-class Hoosiers the opportunity to attend Private Schools.

Daniels advocated for the program and signed it into law to help Hoosier students.

“My intention was to give low-income citizens the same range of choices for their children’s education as their wealthier neighbors have,” Daniels stated in an email interview.

Daniels was also critical of the mandate that students must attend specific schools.

“We don’t tell them where they must buy their groceries or where they have to get their haircut, but in this most crucial of life decisions we had been telling them that their kids will attend a specific school, even if they found that school unsafe or of poor quality,” he stated.

With that goal in mind, the vouchers opened the door for students in poor or failing schools to attend private, often religious, schools whose tuition they otherwise could not afford.

It quickly grew into the largest school voucher program in the United States, with 76,000 Hoosier students using school vouchers in the 2024-25 school year.

Daniels served as president of Purdue University from 2013 to 2022, and has again served as interim president since July. No stranger to helping students and their families financially, he froze the tuition at the university for 11 straight school years during his prior tenure, and it has continued into the 2026-27 school year, reaching the university’s 14th consecutive year of frozen tuition.

Daniels says this is a priority because he has seen the financial burden Hoosiers face in their daily lives.

“I arrived at Purdue after 10 years of daily personal contact with the people of Indiana, and I was highly conscious of the pressure high college costs were imposing on our low- and middle-income families. I thought it was especially important for our public universities to prioritize affordability, and Purdue, the state’s land-grant school, most of all. In business and government, I had found again and again that large bureaucracies will always charge more if they can get away with it.”

Despite the annual tuition freezes, Daniels said Purdue never wound up with a deficit, which was enough for the practice to continue.

“When we broke the annual increase pattern, and found that we could still break even, I was able to persuade our board to do it a second time, then a third, and the success became self-reinforcing,” Daniels said.

Now, Governor Mike Braun, R-IN, and the Republican supermajorities in both houses of the Indiana General Assembly have removed the $220,000 yearly income cap for a family of four on the voucher program, allowing any eligible child to receive a voucher, regardless of financial status.

State Representative Wendy Dant Chesser, D-Jeffersonville, criticized the move, pointing to data showing the average yearly income of a school voucher recipient is around $102,840, nearly 50% higher than the average annual Hoosier income of roughly $70,000.

“In the 2024-25 school year, more voucher dollars went to families earning over $100,000 than to families earning less,” Dant Chesser said.

Dant Chesser also criticized the method in which the income cap was removed, being included in the state budget.

“The income cap change was included in the 2025 state budget bill instead of being passed as standalone legislation. I voted for the state budget because of what it did for our community, including funding for skilled trade education.  If removal of the income cap had been its own bill, I would have voted against it.”

Critics argue the state is now giving money to families who don’t need it so their children can attend an elite private school at little to no cost to them.

Daniels rebukes that argument.

“The duty of the state is to provide for children’s education, not to dictate where, or what form that education should take.  Regardless of their income, parents are simply directing tax dollars they have paid to the schools they believe [are] best-suited to their children.”