A. J. Wagner formally resigned as a member of the Ohio State Board of Education, due to family circumstances.
He wrote this letter of advice to his colleagues.
He said that he “joined the Board with a hope of moving the needle on programming for children in poverty from ages zero to three. I leave the Board having accomplished nothing in that regard. So, I leave with one more articulation of recommendations for what can be done to improve education in Ohio.” He has a list of recommendations that are based on research and commonsense. Every state and local school board member should read his recommendations.
I hope his colleagues take his letter and proposals to heart. Ohio has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on low-performing charters and disastrous cyber charters, allowing their public schools to be negatively impacted and underfunded. Mr. Wagner has sound ideas about how to improve education in Ohio.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s getting interesting in Ohio. There’s some breaches in the ed reform echo chamber.
I’m thrilled. Public schools couldn’t really take any more hits from the ed reform monolith.
We were the first state to put in vouchers and the first state to “flood the market” with unregulated charters. It makes sense that we would be the first state to recommit to public schools after 15 years of monolithic ed reform cheerleading.
Research from Northwestern University, by Dr. Figlio, proved Ohio’s voucher experience was a failure. There was no research finding related to the value of school competition, despite claims to the contrary. We can speculate on the motives (possible desperation), for making an unsubstantiated claim.
Bottom line, Ohioans don’t want money siphoned from public schools so that the Walton’s and Bill Gates can be successful in their plotting. Nor do they want their communities and children to suffer for the enrichment of Wall Street, the tech industry and home grown schemers.
This letter speaks to all boards of education, both state and local, as to the necessary advances public education needs, “advances” that we once had as the world’s foremost leader in public education, only to be destroyed by privateers hellbent on economic and political control. However, with privatization given a strong shot of steroids with this latest election, these recommendations will be filed away in the drawer marked “Common Sense Ideas That Work But Eat Into Our Profits”. Thank you to Mr. Bentley for articulating what all communities need for better schools. However, I fear that public education in America will cease to exist by the end of Mr. Trump’s first term. And, quite frankly, please forgive my pessimism, but Americans regard civic participation as picking the winners out of the pools of the desperately hopeless lost souls on whatever TV talent show is airing. Or buying the latest iPhone 5648748s to “keep the economy going”. The late comedian George Carlin was spot on when he uttered to Keith Olbermann 10 years ago, somewhat quoting and paraphrasing: “This country’s finished, has been for a long time. No one questions anything, everyone’s too fat and happy, everyone has a cellphone that makes pancakes and rubs their [nether region], and as a result, no one wants to rock the boat, no one wants to question anything. Americans have been bought off and silenced by toys, gadgets, gizmos, games, stuff….” How can we advocate for community involvement to save public schools when the fundamental notion of what it means to be American has been steadily privatized since the 70s to become nothing beyond a self-interested, Me-centered, consumer who’s only offered a choice, not a voice?
Yossarian,
We will not let them get away with their diabolical plan to starve public education, to create a marketplace of failure. Join the Network for Public Education.
Thanks, D. I know, I sound so depressing. As a teacher, my frustration has exceeded my threshold to deal, it seems. Even a good chunk of my colleagues voted for all this. The reality that some of my colleagues voted against their own interests, to speed up their potential dispossession, at both state (NY) and federal levels, is too much to wrap my head around.
Mr. Wagner’s resignation is an indictment of the corruption in Columbus. Wagner was the most principled and most important public servant on the Board. I hope his exposure to the profit-seekers and the self-serving, libertarian, oligarch, ideologues, crowding the halls of the statehouse with their checkbooks, won’t haunt him in the well-deserved break, he’ll get by leaving.
Meanwhile, Ohioans are left with charter schoolers, Rosenberger and Batchelder and Common Core’s Peggy Lehman. Ohio taxpayers left holding the bag for $1 bil. in fraud and lost education, and the winners- paydays for the Republican party, the tech industry and Wall Street- a sickening legacy for current and future Ohioans.
Agree 100%. A real loss. I am glad he was not silent about the mess in Ohio
I’ve been chatting with Mr. Wagner for almost 2 years. This is a great loss to Ohio Education. May his replacement have the same fortitude that he does.
E.D. Hirsch shows very convincingly in his latest book “Why Knowledge Matters” that the achievement gap can be dramatically reduced by implementing a coherent, cumulative knowledge-based curriculum. Exhibit A in his case is France, which had such a curriculum until the late 80’s when they adopted the American-style anti-knowledge approach to education, whereupon the achievement gap between elite and working-class French exploded. The French kept detailed records and the data is very powerful.