Of the students who qualified by household income in 2025-26, about 36,300 came from homes earning above $100,000 and about 30,100 from homes earning less. The year before, it was the other way around, roughly 37,000 to 33,100.
Students from households making more than $200,000 climbed to 7,146, close to double the 3,699 two years earlier. Students from households making $50,000 or less dropped from 16,238 to 11,905 in one year.
Those numbers don't capture everyone. Another 14,136 students qualified because their families appeared in a state database of people receiving certain public benefits, and the report doesn't list their incomes.
The program served 80,548 students in all, up 5.9%. Growth has slowed two years running since a 31.6% jump in 2023-24, when lawmakers opened vouchers to nearly all families, Chalkbeat Indiana reported.
To qualify last year, a family of four had to earn less than $237,910. Lawmakers scrapped that cap in 2025, and every Indiana student became eligible July 1, 2026. Next year's report will be the first to show the effect.
The state awarded about $548 million in vouchers for 2025-26, up from $497 million. Most voucher students didn't come from public schools. The report found 69.5% had no record of ever enrolling in one in Indiana.
"Many voucher programs were initially justified as an escape hatch for poor families that would give them access to schools they couldn't afford," said Dr. Jennifer Jennings, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, and author of the book, "The Scarcity Loop: How School Choice Reshapes the Rationing of Public Education". "We're increasingly seeing voucher funds flow to families who were already in private school. Overall, that's a shift from expanding access to subsidizing affluence."
Indiana isn't alone. A Brookings Institution analysis of several states found that wealthier areas tend to get a disproportionate share of voucher money. The pattern was strongest in states with no income limits, such as Arizona. It was weaker, or even reversed, in North Carolina and Ohio, which give larger awards to lower-income families. Indiana and Iowa, which barred the highest earners, fell in between. Programs open to all students now exist in at least 18 states, according to the Education Commission of the States.
"If the families best positioned to use vouchers are those who already have the most options, vouchers can reproduce or exacerbate inequality rather than reduce it," Jennings said. "You can make the subsidy universal without making access universal, and that's what new programs have done."
Public education advocates say Indiana's program increasingly helps families who could already afford private school, Chalkbeat reported. Voucher supporters argue that looking at income alone ignores family size. Of the families who qualified by income, 72% have four to six people in the household.
