Jan Resseger reports here on Stephen Dyer’s astute analysis of Ohio’s state budget. Dyer is a former legislator who is now an Education Policy Fellow at Innovation Ohio.
This is Dyer’s report. Read it and weep. Ohio’s rightwing Republicans care more about campaign contributors than they care about the state’s students or the quality of education.
In looking at the plums for charters and vouchers, please bear in mind that most charter schools in Ohio are low-performing and score far below public schools, even in urban districts. And remember too that a study of Ohio’s voucher program sponsored by the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute concluded that students who used vouchers actually lost ground academically. So, when you see legislators increasing funding for vouchers and reducing oversight of charters, be aware that Ohio is underwriting and rewarding failure.
Resseger writes:
In the 2020-2021 biennial Ohio budget signed into law in July, lawmakers quietly embedded the radical expansion of school privatization. Rewards for charter schools and tuition voucher expansion are written into the budget in a lots of little ways, however, which means that, during the budget debate, few noticed the overall significance of exploding state support for school privatization. A new report released last week by Innovation Ohio, however, connects the dots among several measures which together will undermine oversight of charter schools and at the same time radically expand tuition vouchers. The report includes an examination of the fiscal implications for local public school districts.
The former chair of the Ohio House Education Subcommittee of Finance and now Innovation Ohio’s education policy fellow, Steve Dyer authored the report, which ought to be essential reading for legislators and a broad range of citizens—from experts to people who have not previously tracked the issue. Dyer writes a basic primer and at the same time an analysis sophisticated enough to teach experts something new.
Dyer begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.” Dyer explains that the new Ohio budget:
- weakens Ohio’s 2015 charter school oversight law that mandated automatic closure for academic failure after two years;
- weakens standards for Ohio’s already deplorable sector of “dropout recovery” charter schools;
- weakens Ohio’s oversight of its many charter school authorizers; and
- increases the transfer of state and even local taxpayer dollars to private—mostly religious—schools.
Read this summary of the state’s preferential treatment of failing charters and see if you can overcome an impulse to gag:
Although in 2015, the state cracked down on academically failing charter schools by mandating their closure after two years of failing test scores, the new budget awards these schools an extra, third year to stay in business. The new budget gives 52 schools which had been preparing to close another year of life. Dyer adds: “Interestingly, of the 52 charters that were scheduled to be closed under the old standard, 34 are run by for-profit charter school operators, including almost 20 percent of the former White Hat schools now being operated by Ron Packard—the founder of K-12 Inc.—the nation’s largest (and most notorious) online charter school operator. Another big operator set to take a hit was J.C. Huizenga’s 10 Ohio-based National Heritage Academies. Six of those were on the chopping block before the legislature offered a legislative reprieve. Huizenga is an acolyte of Betsy DeVos—the controversial U.S. Secretary of Education—and his political connections have kept his schools afloat for years, despite complaints….”
The new state budget also weakens standards at a set of charter schools described by their promoters as providing opportunity for students who have dropped out of school. While the education of school dropouts is a worthy purpose, in Ohio, the state has been providing millions of dollars of support for schools that clearly fail to accomplish that stated goal: “Some graduate less than two percent of their students in four years and less than 10 percent in eight years. The state’s already lax standards only require that dropout recovery schools graduate eight percent of their students in four years.” Before they can graduate, students in these schools must pass a state-approved test, but the new budget permits these schools, “to adopt another, easier test, and reduces the passing score.” It is predicted that the change in standards will save some of these schools from mandatory closure.
Ohio’s legislature is either bought and paid for by privatization advocates (very likely) or it is dominated by ideologues who want to reward failure regardless of how many children are miseducated.
We are now in late stage capitalism in Ohio and other states. Despite the failure of privatization, the lack of evidence and the loss of reason, Ohio is removing what little oversight it had over privatization and is transferring massive amounts of public dollars into private hands. Privatization has little to do with improved opportunities for students. It is about privateers grabbing public dollars and harming true public education. I hope the voters in Ohio have the good sense to vote against complicit politicians in the next election cycle.
Ohio politicians are a disgrace to the great history of the state, one of the leaders in the fight for free, universal public schools.
and this is likely to be the case across the nation from now until the next election: a growing push to remove what little oversight is left — profits to be created and sucked up with only that goal in mind: profits
At some point the public in Ohio will realize that the complete capture of our legislature and state government by charter and voucher lobbyists results in NO ONE in Columbus contributing anything to public school students.
The flip side of the ideological obsession with promoting and funding charter and private schools is the states public school students are neglected.
They simply return no value to 90% of students and families in this state. Our students get nothing in all these backroom deals. They are the DEAD LAST priority in Columbus.
Ed reforms contribution to public school students this legislative session? They are lobbying for another set of tests. That’s it. That’s the sum total return of paying them for the last 9 months. They want to mandate that public school students take yet another set of tests while exempting voucher students from the same tests they’re selling in our schools. Public school students are second class citizens in these schemes.
We really could do better. We could hire people in government who go there with the intention of contributing something to public schools instead of promoting an ideological agenda that EXCLUDES 90% of students and families. It simply isn’t fair that public schools are unfashionable in DC lobbyist circles so they have no seat at the table in state government. That’s wrong. It’s not fair to them. They are being cheated by the adults they are paying.
You can’t GET Columbus to focus on public school students, Diane. They refuse.
All of our “education sessions” are immediately hijacked by charter and voucher lobbyists. The entire debate becomes about their ideological vision of privatized systems.
90% of the students in the state are utterly and completely ignored. They’re slotted into this “status quo” category that none of these folks have ANY interest in working on.
We never GET to the public school students in this state. Each and every session the lobbyists flood Columbus and every education bill becomes a charter and voucher bill.
Go look at any ed reform site or think tank or lobbying group and look for ANYTHING relating to a public school or public school students. They simply DO NOT work for our kids, as in “provide any meaningful contribution”. None of them realize it either! It’s such an echo chamber that whole legislative sessions come and go without a one of them providing anything of value to any public school student in the state. This isn’t just accepted in ed reform- it’s the RULE.
Public schools are unfashionable. The practical result of that is none of these adults can be bothered to lift a finger on behalf of our STUDENTS. Year after year after year. We get nothing.
Where are the parents of the 90% of students in Ohio? Do they vote?
It’s difficult because there’s a disconnect. Deliberate in my opinion.
You should hear these ed reform advocates when they go out to their districts. They sing a completely different tune. They’re all BIG supporters of public schools when they’re campaigning in their districts then they go back to Columbus and recite the ed reform talking points and vote against public schools- that’s if public schools even come up. Most of the legislative sessions focus on ed reform goals, which don’t include public schools.
Most of the time our students are just MISSING. It’s like they don’t exist. That’s the BEST result, btw. Being ignored is preferable to being actively harmed. Ed reformers themselves say it- a successful ed reform initiative is one that they claim doesn’t HARM public school students. It’s an incredibly low bar. They brag not about supporting our students but instead about not actually harming them. That’s the low performance measure we have accepted.
Ohio needs a candidate for governor who will travel the state and explain the waste of billions on privatization of public schools. And who done it.
The truth is if Ohio didn’t have teachers unions there wouldn’t be a single paid adult advocating on behalf of students in PUBLIC schools.
The one and only reason our public schools haven’t declined more than they have under ed reform “leadership” is we happened to teachers unions who hire advocates. They work on behalf of teachers which provides some benefit to public schools and public school students.
If they were outlawed tomorrow there wouldn’t be any paid advocates at all for 90% of students. If you’re a public school parent supporting teachers unions is a no-brainer. No one else lifts a finger for public schools.
Ohio citizens should have known if they left the echo chamber in place after ECOT they would get the same results.
And they did. If they want change they are going to have to hire some adults who support public schools and public school students. Re-hiring the same people who created our lousy charter/voucher sector gives predictable results.
Clean house. Hire new people. We’ve had this same stale privatization agenda for 20 years.
Just think of the hundreds of millions–billions more likely –that have funded failing charters, online charters, and vouchers, and what might have been done to build a great public education system instead.