How School Vouchers Work

School vouchers are one of the biggest, least-understood changes in how Wisconsin pays for education. Here is how the system actually works, and how it reaches your property tax bill. Every figure below is sourced.

$584.8MWisconsin’s 2024-25 cost for the private-school choice programs

$42.9Madded to property-tax bills statewide in a single year

$13,371paid per high-school voucher (K-8: $10,877)

What a voucher is

A school voucher uses public tax dollars to pay tuition at a private or religious school. The state Department of Public Instruction sends the payment directly to the private school on the family’s behalf. Wisconsin’s statewide program is open to families earning up to 220% of the federal poverty level, about $66,000 for a family of four. For the 2025-26 year, each voucher is worth $10,877 for grades K-8 and $13,371 for high school.

How it’s paid for: the part on your tax bill

This is the mechanism most voters have never been shown.

The money comes out of your public schools first

Vouchers are not funded by a separate state check. They are funded by pulling money out of the public school district where the student lives.

1

A student in your district takes a voucher to a private or religious school.

2

The state subtracts the voucher’s cost from the state aid your public school district would otherwise have received.

3

To replace that lost aid, your district is given room to raise local property taxes by the same amount.

The result: the cost of the voucher lands on your property tax bill, not the state’s. You keep paying to run the public schools and cover the vouchers leaving them.

How much it costs, and how fast it’s grown

In 2024-25, Wisconsin’s private-school choice programs cost about $584.8 million, and the last state budget passed the largest voucher increase in the program’s history, pushing the per-voucher payments up sharply. Of that total, roughly $266 million is pulled directly from local school districts through the aid-reduction mechanism above, most of which districts recover by raising property taxes.

The bottom line for your public schools: the state’s own Department of Public Instruction estimated that one recent round of voucher expansion alone could add $42.9 million to the statewide school property-tax levy in a single year. That is money following students out of the public system your neighbors still pay to run.

What vouchers cost Outagamie schools

In 2025-26, roughly $16 million in state aid was pulled from the seven public school districts headquartered in Outagamie County to fund private-school vouchers, money that would otherwise support local public schools.

Voucher aid pulled from each district, 2025-26

Appleton Area$8.26M

Kaukauna Area$2.12M

Hortonville$1.99M

Kimberly Area$1.48M

Little Chute Area$0.97M

Freedom Area$0.66M

Seymour Community$0.57M

Total: $16.05M pulled from these seven districts in a single year.

And it has grown fast, roughly 14 times over in a decade

Voucher aid deducted from Outagamie-County-headquartered school districts, 2015-16 to 2025-26. 2025-26 is unaudited.

Sources

The funding mechanism (aid reduction and property-tax backfill), the $584.8M statewide cost, the $266M aid reduction, and eligibility (220% of the federal poverty level). Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, “Private School Choice and Special Needs Scholarship Programs,” Informational Paper 31 (January 2025): legis.wisconsin.gov (LFB IP-31).
Per-voucher payment amounts ($10,877 K-8; $13,371 high school, 2025-26) and what the programs fund (private and religious school tuition). Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: dpi.wi.gov (payment amounts), choice programs overview.
Outagamie district voucher aid deductions (per-district and the 2015-16 to 2025-26 series; 2025-26 unaudited). Wisconsin DPI, Longitudinal Survey of Aid Deductions for WPCP/RPCP, SNSP, and New ICS: dpi.wi.gov (aid deductions). Figures are the WPCP/RPCP voucher deduction from each resident district’s state aid; the seven districts are those headquartered in Outagamie County (some extend into neighboring counties).
Property-tax impact ($42.9 million added to the statewide school levy in one year), citing a DPI estimate. Wisconsin Policy Forum: wispolicyforum.org.

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