State leaders have not taken education reform seriously enough, nor have they moved fast enough to implement change, although one improvement they should definitely consider is modernizing the way students are funded, argues a new briefing paper from The Ohio Grantmakers Forum (here).
The forum sponsored a series of regional meetings last year to examine education needs. Many participants agreed with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that the idea of weighting student funding is key, at least as the way to allocate the money. The idea is that funding should be targeted for the needs of individual students (whether gifted, poor, or limited English proficient for example) and that the money should follow when the student moves to a new school (here). This is a sea change from the way funds now are allocated. The idea of Weighted Student Funding is gaining momentum among members of the State Board of Education and elsewhere.
The Grantmakers Forum conducted the meetings following its 2006 report Education for Ohio's Future that called for a pre-school-through-college system, quality teachers and principals, accelerated learning innovations, adequate funding tied to results, and the ever-present desire for Ohio to have "world-class" standards.
The regional meetings sought to amplify these worthy goals and examine how the state should make progress in achieving them. That, of course, is where it all begins to get much more difficult. The OGF's report concluded that the meetings produced no clear-cut view of how we get to an education system with "world-class standards," let alone how we get the students to actually meet those standards. "Ohioans are not in agreement on what school reform should look like and the state's highly valued tradition of local control exacerbates the problem," the report argues. We certainly could use fewer school districts in Ohio. How about one for each county-88 rather than 614? Meeting participants had other suggestions, like calling for stronger efforts to close the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students, rigorous academic standards, and improving the way teachers and school leaders are trained and supported.
While money is a recurring issue, according to the report, there was no agreement that just spending more money will actually solve any problems. Nor was there any agreement on where any new money should come from to further boost education spending over the billions the state has added since the first DeRolph decision in 1997.
Actually, there is very little to disagree with in this well-meaning little document but it's also clear that the effort doesn't do much to advance the debate. As well-intentioned as everyone always is when it comes to their schools, it's still unclear whether Ohioans will ever attain consensus on education.
