Ohio is in the midst of a heated debate about the future of school funding. The governor, supported by House Democrats, has presented an "Evidence-Based Model" of school funding that is based largely on the work of professors Allan Odden and Lawrence Picus. This model has been roundly criticized by professor Paul Hill, professor Eric Hanushek, Fordham, and Republicans in the Senate who dismantled the governor's plan in their version of the state biennial budget.
Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth write in their new book on school funding that such evidence-based models are "simply not credible." As an alternative to the evidence-based model, Senate Republicans have proposed moving closer toward a system of school funding that funds the child. This has triggered calls from groups like Education Voters of Ohio for "a list of citations that suggest per-pupil funding does a better job than the evidence-based model in determining what an excellent education looks like."
In response to such calls following is a list of some of the most recent and thoughtful pieces on the advantages of funds following the child:
1)???????????? Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington. This peer-reviewed document includes more than 30 separate studies at a cost of $6 million. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the studies involved an interdisciplinary team of more than 40 scholars including many of the country's best known economists, policy analysts, lawyers, and specialists in school finance, instruction, and educational innovation.
2)???????????? Creating a World-Class Education System in Ohio from Achieve, Inc. and McKinsey & Company. This report drew on a wide range of internationally recognized experts in education and specific best-practice examples from around the world.
3)???????????? Fund the Child: Tackling Inequity and Antiquity in School Finance from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. This bipartisan manifesto on Weighted Student Funding was signed by 75 educators and policymakers from across the country, including three former U.S. Secretaries of Education, a former Secretary of the Treasury, a former Chief of Staff to President Clinton, and two former governors. This extraordinary coalition urged a "new method of funding our public schools - one that finally ensures the students who need the most receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to public school choice."
4)???????????? An Integrated Approach to School Funding Reform in Ohio, a report of the School Funding Subcommittee of the Ohio State Board of Education, adopted by the full board in December 2008. This report from the Ohio State Board of Education provided recommendations to state policy makers for moving toward Weighted Student Funding in the Buckeye State.
5)???????????? Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance, by Public Impact and the University of Dayton School of Education and Allied Professions. This report provided a detailed plan for how the state of Ohio could move toward Weighted Student Funding. It was authored by leading school funding experts in Ohio (Professors Dan Raisch and Barbara DeLuca at the University of Dayton) and the Harvard-trained (and Rhodes Scholar) school funding expert Bryan Hassel of Public Impact.
6)???????????? Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education they Need by William G. Ouchi. This book drew on the results of a landmark study of 223 schools in six cities, a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Ouchi and his research team discovered that the schools that consistently performed best also had the most decentralized management systems, in which autonomous principals--not administrators in central office--controlled school budgets and personnel hiring policies.
