The flow of taxpayer money to public and private schools in today’s atmosphere of scarce and highly contested fiscal resources heavily influences the debate over school choice. While there is considerable information on disparate funding among public school systems across the nation there is little empirical data on the cost of publicly financed nonpublic school programs. In an effort to advance the debate on public funding of school. choice from the theoretical to the empirical, this study was constructed to quantify and analyze state funding patterns for public and nonpublic education. It was devised to ascertain the amount of money one state, Ohio, expended on public and nonpublic education over a six-year period in order to elucidate the actual costs of current policies that aid nonpublic school students and to compute the state’s true fiscal effort for public education. Ohio was elected for study because its educational system comprises all elements of the debate on school choice. It has an extensive history of legislation that provides nonfinancial and indirect to nonpublic schools as well as recent school choice enactments, such as intradistrict and interdistrict open enrollment policies and a pilot scholarship program for low income children in the city of Cleveland. It has also been judged as maintaining an unconstitutional school funding system which has resulted in highly disparate educational opportunity for K-12 students across the state. The data indicate a level funding pattern over the six-year period of the study, from FY 1990 through FY 1995, with very little variation in the percent allocated to education form the general state budget. The proportions allocated to public and to nonpublic schools have remained steady as well. The evidence indicated that an average 97.4 percent of the state’s education budget went to public schools and an average 2.6 percent supported nonpublic school students. Over the six years under study, the amount of money that was allocated in support of nonpublic school students totaled approximately $683.7 million. If the portion localities pay for bus transportation for nonpublic school students is included, the amount increases to $836.3 million. / Ph. D.