School vouchers were not a campaign issue last fall. But they are a legislative priority today – the bill establishing them is co-authored by the Indiana House speaker himself.

Taxpayers should ask why lawmakers preaching fiscal responsibility are pushing legislation that would drain millions of dollars from Indiana’s public schools, with no data or research to support their assertion that sending public money to private schools improves education overall.

Economist Milton Friedman advanced the idea for school vouchers in a 1955 essay:

“Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children – provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards – and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand,” he wrote.

Friedman’s proposal initially attracted little attention, and when it finally began to build, voucher program proposals were appropriately challenged on constitutional grounds. A New York voucher program was thrown out on the grounds that state aid supported religious schools.

Milwaukee established a voucher program in 1989, allowing students to attend private, nonsectarian schools. The first such program to significantly subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars, it represents the longest-running and largest voucher program, serving about 21,000 students from low-income families. Indiana’s proposed program would eclipse the Wisconsin program, with no cap on the number of children who could receive vouchers and income limits up to $105,000 a year for a household of four – hardly a struggling family.

But what about House Speaker Brian Bosma’s claim that the competition posed by the voucher schools will improve all schools?

No research supports it. The conservative Weekly Standard weighed in on the Milwaukee program in 2008:

“The two most recent studies show that, since implementation of the voucher program, reading scores across all Milwaukee schools are falling,” wrote contributor Daniel Casse. “I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn’t been the deep, wholesale improvements in (Milwaukee Public Schools) that we would have thought.”

And from Sol Stern of the conservative Manhattan Institute, which promotes economic choice and individual responsibility: “Fifteen years into the most expansive school choice program tried in any urban school district (there is) … no ‘Milwaukee miracle,’ no transformation of the public schools has taken place.”

Another high-profile voucher program, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, was the subject of a long-term study by Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation & Education Policy. It concluded: “Results indicate that by the end of sixth grade, after controlling for differences in minority status, student mobility and prior achievement, there are no statistically significant differences in overall achievement scores between students who have used a scholarship throughout their academic career … and students in the two public school comparison groups.”

If the data don’t support the case for vouchers, lawmakers must be responding to constituents, right?

There’s no clamor for choice. Bosma tries to make the case there is by claiming there are 3,500 students on charter school waiting lists. But that figure represents about one-third of one percent of Indiana’s 1 million-plus public school enrollment.

Ball State University’s Bowen Center for Public Affairs conducts an annual opinion survey in mid-November on issues facing the upcoming legislative session. The current survey didn’t ask about vouchers, because they didn’t appear to be on the agenda. But a question about school improvement strategy found that only 25 percent favored choice through more public charter schools, while 67 percent wanted the money to stay with traditional public schools.

The Foundation for Educational Choice, established by Friedman – the same economist who introduced the voucher concept – did its own Indiana school choice survey which, unsurprisingly, found great support for vouchers, with 66 percent strongly or “somewhat favoring” and just 24 percent opposed. But unlike the Ball State survey, the pro-voucher group polled only registered voters. School policies affect all Hoosiers and residents who aren’t registered still pay taxes supporting Indiana schools.

So, without evidence that vouchers improve school performance or interest from Hoosiers to make them available, why the rush to provide school choice?

Consider where the push is coming from. The Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice is the loudest voice clamoring for school choice in Indiana. Look closely at the foundation’s supporters and you begin to see why they command the governor’s attention. Patrick Byrne, chairman and president of Overstock.com, is chairman of the foundation board. Campaign finance records show the Internet retailer and Utah resident has donated at least $125,000 to Daniels’ campaign coffers since 2007, plus $25,000 to Aiming Higher, the political action committee supporting the governor’s legislative agenda. Byrne also gave $200,000 to Hoosiers for Economic Growth, a PAC that supported primarily GOP legislative candidates last fall.

Byrne gave $15,000 to state Superintendent Tony Bennett’s campaign. At least four other Friedman foundation trustees made political contributions to Bennett and/or Daniels. That doesn’t begin to account for the millions contributed by school choice supporters like Christel DeHaan to Bosma, Bennett, Daniels and committees working to elect a Republican majority in the Indiana House.

In the absence of data and public support for school vouchers, the influence of campaign contributions speaks loudly. Public education supporters will need to speak even louder in the weeks ahead to protect Indiana schools and students.