Indiana spent roughly $439 million on its voucher program for the 2023-24 school year as enrollment in private schools hit a record high, a surge driven in large part by students from wealthy families.

The figure represents a $127 million increase from the $311 million the state spent on its voucher program last year, according to the Choice Scholarship Program annual report released Friday. The number of participating students in 2023-24 increased by approximately 32% from 2022-23.

Additionally, the number of voucher students from households making more than $150,000 soared after lawmakers last year abolished most requirements for participation and raised income eligibility to 400% of the threshold to qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program.

Nearly 8,000 students in 2023-24 came from households making between $150,000 to $200,000 annually, up from around 2,800 in 2022-23 — an increase of 183%.

And the number of voucher students from households making more than $200,000 increased roughly tenfold, from 354 students in 2022-23 to about 3,700 in 2023-24.

The number of students from those two income brackets combined who used vouchers in 2023-24 increased by 8,495, representing just over half the total growth of about 16,720 students.

Among the other income brackets, around 2,000 more students came from families making up to $50,000; an additional 2,000 came from families making between $50,000-$100,000; and the number of students from families making between $100,000 to $150,000 grew by a little more than 4,000.

Critics of the voucher program warned last year that relaxing the income eligibility requirement would effectively subsidize students from wealthier families to attend private schools. Supporters, meanwhile, said relaxing eligibility would give parents more choices in their students’ education.

Previous data showed that private school enrollment in Indiana was increasing, but not as quickly as the rate of voucher use, indicating that many students using vouchers this year had already been enrolled in private schools.

In a statement Friday on the voucher report, the Indiana State Teachers Association said the expansion funnels public funds “to those who can already afford private schools.”

“Public schools, which serve 90% of Hoosiers’ children, are open and nondiscriminatory, providing essential services and a common foundation for our diverse communities,” the ISTA said. “Vouchers undermine this public good by siphoning limited funds to private schools that lack accountability and do not serve all students equitably.”

The report notes that had all 70,000 voucher students attended their public schools, the state would have paid around $516 million in public school funding. However, the majority of Choice Scholarship students have never attended a public school.

Voucher students made up around 6.1% of enrollment statewide in 2023-24, according to the report, up from around 4.7% the year before.

The average voucher student in Indiana is a white, elementary-aged girl who lives in a metropolitan area and comes from a household of around 4.7 people making around $100,000, according to the report.

An additional 14 schools participated in the program in 2023-24, the most of any year of the program.

Chalkbeat is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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BLOOMINGTON — Indiana baseball coach Jeff Mercer went through a range of emotions during the 48 hours leading up to the NCAA’s tournament selection show on Monday afternoon. 

The roller coaster ended with overwhelming relief when the Hoosiers found out at the top of the hour-long broadcast they earned an at-large bid and a No. 3 seed in the Knoxville Regional alongside Tennessee, Southern Miss and Northern Kentucky. 

Indiana (32-24-1) will open the tourney with a game against Southern Miss at 1 p.m. on Friday. 

“You feel a sense of joy,” Mercer said, with a smile. 

More: Indiana baseball earns NCAA tournament bid, will play in Knoxville Regional

Indiana baseball puts exit interviews on hold  

That joy was in stark contrast to the mood in Indiana’s visiting clubhouse after dropping a pair of games to Nebraska in the Big Ten tournament semifinals on Saturday. 

After the night cap, Mercer delivered what he thought was a season-ending speech to his players that included shoutouts to the team’s upperclassmen. 

“I felt over the last several weeks if we won a (regular season) series at Nebraska, swept Michigan or if we got to the championship of the Big Ten tournament, that would nail it down,” Mercer said, during a Zoom press conference on Monday. “We kept coming up one game short of getting where we could be 100% confident.”

It wasn’t until Mercer dug a little deeper into the numbers — IU finished the season with a No. 56 ranked RPI and No. 39 strength of schedule — that he started to feel a bit better about the team’s chances. 

The results from the various conference championship games on Sunday fueled IU’s postseason hopes as well. 

“I think there were only two stolen bids and there could have been four or five really easily,” Mercer said. “Once those things broke our way, I thought we had a real chance to be in.”

Mercer still ended up preparing for both scenarios. He was ready to hold exit interviews with his players on Monday if they didn’t earn a tournament bid, but he had a practice plan ready to go as well. 

Those exit interviews will have to wait for another day. 

Knoxville Regional is a tough assignment for Indiana baseball

Indiana baseball’s first test will be a red hot Southern Miss team. The Golden Eagles have won six straight and 14 of their last 15 games. The win streak includes Sunday’s 14-11 comeback victory over Georgia Southern in the Sun Belt conference championship game. 

It was the team’s second consecutive tournament title. The latest came in dramatic fashion with Southern Miss erasing an 11-9 deficit in the ninth inning.

While Mercer’s assistants handle much of the prep work for the regional, he watched Southern Miss on Sunday since Georgia Southern was a team that could have stolen an at-large bid. 

“They don’t strike out, they don’t walk a ton, probably a lot like Rutgers,” Mercer said. “High batting average, singles and doubles, a lot of early contact and swings.” 

Designated hitter Slade Wilks does give Southern Miss some pop in the middle of the order. Wilks led the team with 14 home runs this season and has the fifth most in program history for his career (46). 

He hit .329 this season, had 35 extra-base hits and 65 RBIs. He enters the NCAA tournament riding a 32-game hit streak. 

The other early topic of conversation amongst the staff was Southern Miss pitcher Billy Oldham, who could be the team’s starter on Friday. Oldham earned first team All-Sun Belt honors this season with a 7-2 record with a 3.97 ERA and 96 strikeouts. He only gave up more than three earned runs in three of his 15 starts. 

“Throws 88-92 with a good changeup and breaking ball,” Mercer said. 

Indiana will also start scouting Tennessee, the tourney’s No. 1 overall seed, and Northern Kentucky as well. 

Northern Kentucky will be the easier scout since the team’s played earlier this season — IU won the 11-5 on March 6 — and Mercer is close friends with many members of the team’s coaching staff. 

Tennessee is hosting the regional after winning the SEC tournament. The Volunteers beat defending national champion LSU for its second title in three seasons.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana baseball’s 10-4 loss to Nebraska in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals put head coach Jeff Mercer in an unfamiliar position.

He didn’t know if the season was over or not. Just in case, he treated it like the end and hoped he was wrong.

That hope was rewarded Monday, when the Hoosiers learned they made the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. They will play Friday in the four-team regional in Knoxville, Tenn.  

After being eliminated from the conference tournament, Indiana was squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and projections had the Hoosiers either among the last four teams in or first four out. During his previous coaching stint at Wright State, Mercer knew his teams needed to win their conference tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. And across his first five seasons at Indiana, Mercer’s teams, including those that made the tournament in 2019 and 2023, had never been on the bubble.

So when it was time to deliver a message to his team following Saturday’s loss, Mercer is still unsure whether he handled it correctly. He called it a peculiar feeling, one he hasn’t felt before.

“Honestly, I treated it like it was the end of our season,” Mercer said Monday. “I don’t know if that’s the right thing or the wrong thing to do, but it was what I felt in the moment.”

He thanked outgoing seniors like Ty Bothwell, Ty Rybarcyzk and Morgan Colopy for their dedication to the program. He thanked players who have decided to pursue professional careers following the season. Mercer knew the Hoosiers’ postseason chances were out of his hands after Saturday’s two losses to Nebraska, and all they could do was wait until Monday’s selection show.

“I think in our society we don’t say thank you enough,” Mercer said. “I don’t think we appreciate people in the moment, look a guy in the face and say thank you for what you’ve done and how much you cared and how much you gave. So if that was going to be our last time together, I wanted to make sure that people got what they had coming, got what they had due, were appreciated and celebrated, and then we talked about I don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

“I told them the truth. I didn’t know. And I thought it would be close. We had some great wins, and then we had some bad losses, and I told them that. So if those bad losses were going to outweigh it, then so be it. And we kind of made our bed and we had to lie in it. So that’s about how the conversation went, told the guys I loved them because I do, gave them hugs, and if that was going to be it, make sure that nothing was left unsaid.”

Mercer had been feeling this uncertainty for weeks leading up to the Big Ten Tournament. He figured if Indiana won its series at Nebraska, it could secure an at-large bid. But the Hoosiers lost two of three. Mercer felt the same about a potential series sweep over Michigan the following weekend. But they fell one game short. 

Indiana won its first two Big Ten Tournament games to reach the semifinals against Nebraska, and Mercer thought one more win and an appearance in the Big Ten Tournament title game would “nail it down.” But again, a 10-4 loss Saturday night put the Hoosiers one step short of really feeling secure in its postseason future.

“We had a feeling we were on the bubble there,” Indiana first baseman Brock Tibbitts said. “And we knew that a win over Nebraska would kind of solidify our spot, and we weren’t able to get the job done. So after the game, it was really just uncertainty about what the future held, not knowing if that would be the last time you got to take the field with those guys or if we’d get a shot this weekend.”

“After the game Saturday where we lost and got eliminated, I didn’t feel great,” Mercer said. “Until I kind of stepped back and looked at more of the metrics and numbers.”

Indiana is No. 55 nationally in the RPI, a ranking system that’s taken into consideration when building the 64-team tournament field. But with 30 automatic qualifiers from conference tournaments, seeding isn’t as simple as inviting the top 64 teams in the RPI.

Indiana benefited from only two teams in the country “bid stealing,” meaning they won their conference tournament and received an automatic bid when they weren’t in contention for an at-large bid. As conference tournaments played out, there easily could have been four or five bid stealers.

And as Mercer further evaluated Indiana’s resume, he felt encouraged by a few key factors. Indiana played six conference tournament champions – Duke, Nebraska, Northern Kentucky, Dallas Baptist, Evansville and Arizona – and it had a 6-10 record against Quad 1 opponents. Only 34 teams nationwide played more Quad 1 games, and some weren’t in contention for a bid. The Big Ten also ranked fourth in conference RPI, and Indiana finished third in the regular season standings and made the conference tournament semifinals.

“By the end of [Sunday], I thought we had a real chance to be in, just the way the whole thing had kind of navigated,” Mercer said. “So I felt halfway decent [Monday] morning. I don’t think you ever feel really good until you see your name pop up, but over the course of that 48 hours I went from not feeling very good to feeling, kind of by this morning, much more confident.”

The NCAA announced the 64-team tournament field Monday at noon. And after waiting anxiously from Saturday night through Monday morning, the Hoosiers didn’t have to wait long when the selection show started.

Tennessee was announced first as the No. 1 overall seed, and Indiana quickly followed as the regional’s No. 3 seed, setting up a matchup against No. 2 seed Southern Miss on Friday at 1 p.m. ET. Northern Kentucky, which Indiana defeated 11-5 on March 6 in Bloomington, is the regional’s No. 4 seed. 

Indiana was ready to close the book on the 2024 season after losing to Nebraska, but Monday’s news has given the Hoosiers new life and a second consecutive NCAA Tournament bid as one of the last four teams in.

For Mercer, this year carries some extra meaning. Different from his first few years at Indiana, he has seen full-career development from many of his players, and ending their career with a tournament appearance is special.

His six years coaching Indiana span the entire college careers of guys like sixth-year senior Ty Bothwell, who will likely start on the mound for the Hoosiers this weekend, and Morgan Colopy, who’s been with the program since 2020. Mercer’s impactful 2021 recruiting class, with starters like Tibbitts, Carter Mathison, Josh Pyne and Luke Sinnard, will have professional decisions to make after the season. 

With those players and others, Mercer said after the Big Ten Tournament that this team could win a regional and that it’s the most prepared team that he’s ever coached to do it. 

Indiana has two starting pitchers, Bothwell and Connor Foley, that can go deep into games, an improvement from last year’s tournament team. Mercer said the bullpen has pitched especially well the last six weeks and has swing-and-miss stuff. And when it follows the game plan, he feels Indiana can be one of the better offenses in the country.

So when the wait was finally over, and the Hoosiers learned Monday they were in, he was happy they’ll get a chance to prove they are ready to meet the challenge.

“You feel relief,” Mercer said. “And you feel a sense of joy for those guys. You feel a sense of accomplishment for them.”