Jan Resseger writes that the Ohio Legislature is up to its familiar tricks.
While no one was looking, it passed more voucher legislation, again brazenly violating the state constitution, which requires public funding of public schools and forbids public funding of private schools. Let us not forget that former Governor John Kasich was instrumental in this violation of the public trust.
Five years ago right at the end of a spring session of the Ohio Legislature, a group of state senators added a long amendment to House Bill 70, which was about expanding the number of full service, wraparound community learning centers—schools with medical and social services located right in the school. The amendment had nothing to do with the subject of the original bill. The amendment’s purpose was to establish the state takeover of the school district in Youngstown and set up a procedure for state takeovers of other so-called “failing” school districts. A deal had been cut. No opponent testimony was permitted. The Ohio Senate passed the amended HB 70 and sent it back for quick approval by the Ohio House. Within hours, Governor John Kasich had signed it, and without public input, an appointed Academic Distress Commission supplanted the elected school board in Youngstown.
This time the subject is vouchers.
Last spring, just as everything shut down due to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, both houses of the Ohio Legislature debated changes in the EdChoice voucher program and came up with two separate bills. EdChoice eligibility is currently described by legislators as “performance-based.” The state designates EdChoice schools by these schools’ low ratings on the state’s school district report card, which everybody agrees is flawed. Last spring the program was expected to double in size. At angry hearings, school districts complained because EdChoice vouchers are funded through something called “the school district deduction.” The House plan would have funded the vouchers out of the state budget; the Senate plan kept the school district deduction.
Read the rest of this sorry story. It is especially sorry since legislators already know that vouchers in Ohio do not improve test scores; they actually drag them down. For shame!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Jan, Thanks for this superb analysis of the zero-sum political games being played out in our state legislature. Andrew Brunner’s determination to subsidize private and religious education through vouchers on the grounds that public schools are “socialist” is absurd and strange. If pubic schools, governed by elected officials are socialist, so are elected state legislators, including himself.
The state has damaged schools enough, and particularly by its method of grading schools A-F with meaningless formulas for “performance categories” based on ludicrous scoring and weighting of these. Then there is the business of aggregating the weigted scores, and reducing these to the A-F designations. The influence of Brunner on state policy is easily summarized as terrible. He and his supporters are determined to steal money from the public school districts most in need of funds.
It really is a shame for public school students and families that the majority in the Ohio legislature are wholly captured by the ed reform lobby and take direction from them.
The end result is that they never get anything done for PUBLIC schools in this state.
The ed reform agenda is always the first priority- vouchers and charters. Public schools never get to the top of the list so no one in state government accomplishes anything for 90% of the students and families in the state.
It’s absolutely typical of states dominated by ed reformers that a public school funding scheme would be delayed another year but a private school funding scheme would be fast-tracked. They simply do no work on behalf of students and families who attend public schools- they contribute nothing.
In order to get some effort expended on public schools Ohio is going to have to break the ed reform lock on state government. If you hire ed reformers, public schools will get nothing.
Ohio’s backwards population elects politicians who are like them and proud of it.
A ranking of the electoral votes for trump, by state, ranks Ohio third after Texas and Florida. Pew described Biden voters (74%) as saying it is a lot more difficult to be a Black person in this country than to be a White person. Only 9% of trump supporters said the same. The disparity in opinion increased during trump’s 4 years.
Nuns from a convent in Newark, Ohio were photo props at a Trump rally. The Ohio Catholic Conference promotes school choice similar to the conservative Fordham Institute (billionaire funded).
Privatization was first proposed in Georgia during Talmadge’s term as Gov. in order to avoid court mandated integration.
In 2020, Ohio officially has less stature than the Deep South Georgia which went for Biden.