Education

Who’s draining whom?

August 22, 2025

Brandon Dutcher

It is sometimes alleged that Oklahoma’s private-school voucher and tax-credit programs are “siphoning money from public schools.” My response is twofold.

  1. The money doesn’t belong to the public schools. When it comes to education funding, Oklahoma’s elected officials have decided that their priority is educating students—regardless of where that education takes place. “It is the intent of the Legislature,” says Oklahoma’s universal-school-choice law, that parents “be able to choose educational services that meet the needs of their individual children.”
  2. Public-school funding is at record-high levels. Whether the time frame is long-term (100 years) or shorter-term (since private-school choice was enacted), the trend is the same: Oklahoma public school revenue continues to increase. Based on the bar chart below, it appears that public-education special interests have been siphoning money from taxpaying families while providing them with an ROI that is, frankly, unacceptable.

Source Notes

Public school information is sourced from the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System Revenue Reports, spanning from 2011-2012 to 2023-2024.

Data on Oklahoma’s three private-school choice programs are from the following sources. The total dollar amount is derived from the combined funding of these three programs. 

Oklahoma’s first private-school choice program, the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship program, was created in 2010. LNH data are from the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s LNH Annual Data Reports from 2020 to 2024. LNH data before 2020 are from Oklahoma Watch.

The Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Scholarship program was created in 2011. Due to incomplete data for this program, the maximum legally allowable amount was used as a proxy for the actual amount. 

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program was created in 2023. PCTC data are from the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s Parental Choice Tax Credit Report for 2024.

Questions or comments? Contact Curtis Shelton at curtis@ocpathink.org.