RESEARCH

The Beacon Center of Tennessee has just released the highly anticipated “Saving Education” study, a new study on education, which focuses on the impact of opportunity scholarships, or vouchers, on the public school system. You can download the full study here.

The results were eye-opening to be sure, showing that students leaving public schools with vouchers are not the only ones who are helped, vouchers also benefit those children who stay in the public school system. Because only a portion of per pupil funding follows a child in a voucher program, there will be a substantial amount of money left over for the public school district. The study shows that on average, school districts across the state would have an additional $612 on top of fixed costs for every student that leaves the school district with a scholarship. Additionally, if a voucher program was focused on failing school districts, such as districts in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, these districts would save an average of more than $1,000 per student who left with a voucher. “The teachers’ union keeps repeating the myth that opportunity scholarships would take away money from our public schools, but that has been proven wrong yet again,” said Beacon CEO Justin Owen.