Students who attend a private school through Ohio's EdChoice Scholarship Program still take the state's achievement tests each spring. The results are reported to the state education department, but nothing much else is done with the data. The results aren't reported publicly. The achievement and progress of voucher-bearing students isn't analyzed. The program's impact on student academic performance isn't assessed. To its credit, the Ohio House of Representatives wants to change that.
In February, Governor Ted Strickland proposed that any private school that enrolls a voucher-bearing child would have to administer the state's achievement tests to all of its students, even those kids whose parents are paying out of pocket for their education. While the results of those tests might tell us something about the private schools participating in the EdChoice program, it would tell us nothing about the impact of the program on the voucher-bearing students specifically. Under the pending House version of the budget bill, the state's test would only be administered to voucher-bearing students but the results of those tests would be publicly reported in a meaningful fashion. Specifically, the education department would be required to compile and report the performance of voucher-bearing students on a statewide basis, by school district, and by private school. The data would also be disaggregated similar to the test data for public schools, and the test results would be shared annually with parents of participating students and eligible students.
The House proposal could even be considered a "sliding-scale" of voucher accountability. Student privacy rules apply, meaning results are only reported for subgroups of 10 students or more. Private schools that enroll just a handful of voucher-bearing students won't see their test scores made public. (This school year 279 Ohio private schools enrolled voucher-bearing students, with 94 of those schools enrolling 10 or fewer such students.)
