Debates over how to teach math echo the conflicts over reading instruction, and some issues are similar. But unlike math, reading—in its full sense—draws on everything a person has been able to learn.

“Experts say it’s time for districts to turn their attention to math instruction,” Holly Korbey writes in a recent article for Ed Post, adding that in math, as in reading, student achievement is low, teachers have received inadequate training, and philosophical battles are raging.

A professor of special education—leader of a group called The Science of Math—told Korbey, “Take every single thing that’s been written about the science of reading, and hit ‘find/replace’ for math.”

It’s true there are parallels. The math “wars,” like the so-called reading wars, go back at least to the 1950s, when progressive educators rebelled against “traditionalists” who favored explicit instruction and memorization of facts.

In reading, many educators—and especially faculty members at schools of education—rejected systematic instruction in phonics in favor of a belief that children naturally acquire the ability to read. In math, progressive educators downplayed the need for kids to memorize things like multiplication tables, arguing that it was more important to allow them to discover math concepts for themselves.

Evidence from cognitive science indicates that the progressives—and their intellectual descendants—have been wrong in both areas. Most kids won’t learn to decipher, or decode, words fluently without explicit instruction in foundational reading skills, including phonics. And while math is about more than just memorization, students who haven’t memorized basic math facts will struggle with higher-order math.

The reason has to do with the limited nature of working memory, the aspect of our consciousness where we take in new information and try to make sense of it. Working memory can only juggle four or five new items for about twenty seconds before it starts to get overwhelmed.

If you have relevant information stored in long-term memory—and you can retrieve it fairly effortlessly when you need it—your capacity to understand new information expands. But if, say, you’re trying to solve an unfamiliar kind of math problem through trial and a lot of error—or guessing at words while trying to understand a text—your working memory will get seriously overloaded.

But the similarities between math and what is commonly called “reading” shouldn’t overshadow their fundamental differences. And the parallels between math and reading “wars” shouldn’t obscure the fact that in reading, the conflict has historically overlooked a lot of important turf by focusing overwhelmingly on problems with decoding instruction.

Fundamental differences between reading and math

It’s true that you need automaticity with foundational skills to be successful in reading, as in math. But once you’ve learned to decode written words, your ability to comprehend what you’re reading draws on virtually everything you’ve learned.

If you already know about the topic, you’ll probably find comprehension much easier. Even if the topic is unfamiliar, you’ll still be relying on your ability to understand general academic vocabulary—words like “validity” or “capacity,” which don’t often appear in conversation. Beyond that, your comprehension will depend a lot on your familiarity with the sentence structure of written language—its syntax—which is far more complex than that of spoken language.

With math, you also need to draw on prior knowledge, but the possibilities are a lot more limited. If you’re learning algebra, for example, you’ll need to know how to do things like multiplication and division, and you’ll need vocabulary like “binomial.” These are all concepts that can and should be directly taught.

But we can’t explicitly teach kids everything they need to understand complex text. We can, however, immerse them in specific topics in subjects like history and science, building their academic vocabulary and familiarity with complex syntax through discussions and writing instruction grounded in the content they’re learning. The evidence indicates that if we start doing that early and continue it over the course of their schooling, they’ll gradually acquire the general knowledge they need to be proficient readers.

There’s another important difference between math and reading. With math, students generally need to master foundational skills before they can engage in higher-order operations. But with reading, foundational skills and higher-order processes—let’s call them “comprehension”—should develop simultaneously along two separate paths.

Along one path, children who aren’t yet fluent decoders should be practicing foundational skills on simple texts they can read on their own. At the same time, they should be acquiring academic vocabulary and familiarity with complex syntax by listening to texts being read aloud by a teacher—texts they can’t yet read easily themselves—and participating in class discussions focused on the content they’ve just heard. Once they have knowledge of a topic, they’ll have more capacity in working memory for the demanding tasks of reading and writing—if they read and write about that topic.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the way reading comprehension is generally taught—a fact that is often overlooked in the efforts to bring reading instruction in line with science. Instead, it’s more often approached the way math and decoding should be—as though there were a fixed universe of skills that students can practice to automaticity and then apply generally.

These supposed skills include things like “finding the main idea” and “making inferences,” which children “practice” using books on random topics that are easy for them to read on their own. This kind of practice eats up so much of the school day that there’s often little or no time for knowledge-building subjects like history and science.

Let’s not focus only on math instruction

We should of course address the serious problems with math instruction. But it would be short-sighted for education policymakers and funders turn to math at the expense of other areas of education that also need to be brought in line with cognitive science if we want all children to succeed.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, recently increased its investment in math to over a billion dollars, with part of that increase coming from its expenditures on “English language arts,” which is basically another term for “reading.” The page of its website devoted to K–12 education now focuses only on math, and specifically on improving outcomes for historically disadvantaged groups of students, although it’s not clear which side of the “math wars” the foundation will come down on.

I’m not suggesting that the Gates Foundation or other funders return to their previous efforts to boost reading outcomes, which didn’t yield much in the way of results. I also understand the temptation to narrow the focus to math, which—because it’s a more confined sphere of knowledge—seems like an easier nut to crack.

But if we really want to improve education outcomes for all students, we need to stop thinking of the entire universe of learning as consisting of “reading” and math. We need to dive into the deep, rich—albeit sometimes politically rocky—waters of history, science, and the arts, at the elementary level. If we don’t, students with more highly educated parents will continue to acquire academic knowledge while others continue to be denied access to it, and gaps between those two groups will persist or even continue to grow.

The theory behind the Gates juggernaut on math, and perhaps that of other math-focused initiatives, is that it will equip students with the general skills they need to be successful. “Math helps students make sense of the world,” Gates Foundation official Bob Hughes told Ed Week. “It gives them critical thinking and problem-solving skills they can use later as adults.”

But if students haven’t learned much about things like history and geography—as is the case for far too many today—their math skills are unlikely to transfer to other areas. They may be able to solve an algebra problem, but will they be able to read and understand a news story, or vote in a responsible manner? Only a fraction will work in jobs that require higher math. But all of them will be citizens in a democracy—and our common future, as well as their individual trajectories, depends on their getting a well-rounded education.

Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.

School choice and parental empowerment are among the hottest topics in education these days. Here in Ohio, state lawmakers are actively discussing proposals that would strengthen private school choice and public charter schools. One topic that doesn’t get as much attention is interdistrict open enrollment, one of Ohio’s oldest and most popular choice programs. As we’ll see in this piece, lawmakers still have room to improve this program by making it accessible to more students. 

Under this policy, students are allowed to attend public schools in a neighboring district, tuition-free. This opens up significant possibilities: Students can attend schools that offer special academic or extracurricular programs that aren’t available in their home district. It can allow them to attend a school with close companions or one that is closer to their home. For students from less advantaged communities, open enrollment can increase access to higher-quality schools located in their vicinity—schools that tend to be more racially and socioeconomically diverse, as well.

To their credit, a large majority of Ohio districts allow non-resident students to open-enroll, and approximately 80,000 students avail themselves of this opportunity. But—as permitted under Ohio’s voluntary participation policy—about one in six districts forbid open enrollment. They choose to close their doors to outsiders, allowing only children who reside in the district to attend their schools. As the figure here shows, refusing districts (shaded in dark blue) are located almost exclusively around Ohio’s largest cities. This map is based on 2018 district participation in open enrollment, but the pattern continues today. These suburban districts are overwhelmingly White and affluent, while the center-city districts are overwhelmingly Black and poor. Some might say that this is what systemic racism looks like; at the least, it’s a form of “educational redlining.”

We at Fordham and others have argued that state law should require all districts to participate in open enrollment. This would unlock options for more Ohio students, especially children who live in urban areas and lack district-run options other than those provided by their home district. It would also allow more suburban students to transfer from one district to another, without having to pick up and move.

Yet one commonly heard objection to such a requirement is that districts don’t have the physical space to serve more students. That’s a fair concern, and legislators would be smart to include a capacity waiver provision in a switch to mandatory participation.

But it’s also important to understand that this objection doesn’t apply in most cases. Consider the data shown in Figure 1. Of the 108 districts that aren’t accepting open enrollees this year, 79 of them have experienced enrollment losses from 2018–19 to 2022–23. In 38 of these districts, the declines are fairly steep (more than 5 percent). As Table 1 indicates, most of these rapidly shrinking districts are located in Northeast Ohio, a region that has experienced flat to declining general population trends. In the Cleveland area, for instance, Bedford, Garfield Heights, and Maple Heights school districts have all experienced enrollment losses of more than 13 percent since 2018–19. Surely, districts such as these have room in the inn.

Figure 1: Change in enrollment among non-participating districts from 2018–19 to 2022–23

Table 1: Non-participating districts with declines of more than 5 percent from 2018–19 to 2022–23

* * *

Districts with declining enrollments have no excuse for refusing students who want to attend their schools. Financial implications shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, either, as the state provides per-pupil funding that should cover the incremental cost of educating additional students. While the district may have increased expenses for items such as textbooks and supplies for open enrollees, it won’t need to spend significantly more on facilities or teacher salaries when they fill empty seats. Those types of fixed costs are already paid for. In fact, operating closer to capacity would not only benefit students, but could also achieve efficiencies that allow districts to stay off the local levy ballot.  

Public schools should be “open to all.” By denying access based on a student’s zip code and requiring parents to purchase housing in their districts to attend, non-participating districts continue to defy that principle. State lawmakers should finally step in to address the nonsensical refusal of certain districts to serve Ohio students.

Last month, Fordham kicked off our new Think Again series with my colleague Adam Tyner’s appropriately skeptical take on the claim that standardized tests such as the SAT prevent minority students from accessing higher education.

This month, I offer my own contribution: a similarly skeptical analysis of the claim that public charter schools “drain” resources from traditional school districts.

Contrary to that widespread assumption, the implication of many local, state, and federal policies is that districts’ total revenues per pupil increase when students leave for charter schools. For example, in thirty-seven of the forty-six states where charters exist, they are partially or entirely excluded from local funding sources such as bond levies. Similarly, many states have adopted “hold harmless” policies that temporarily shield school districts from the revenue declines that would otherwise be associated with declining enrollments. (Federal Title I programs include similar previsions.) Consequently, districts’ total revenues per pupil should increase insofar as students exit the system but the associated tax dollars stay put.

Importantly, some research suggests that the presence of charters has reduced residential property values and, by extension, local revenues per pupil in Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Yet other studies paint a more positive picture. For example, a recent Fordham study that focused on “independent” charters—that is, those not authorized by the “host” school district—found null or positive effects on districts’ total revenues per pupil in most states. In other words, at least on average, charters may have little effect on districts’ total revenues per pupil in either direction.

Meanwhile, research on charters’ effect on districts’ instructional spending per pupil is mixed. For example, studies of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California all found declines in districts’ instructional spending when charters expanded, both in absolute terms and as a share of total spending. Yet in Massachusetts and New York City, instructional spending seems to have increased. This matters, given charter opponents’ claims that their expansion forces districts to accept larger class sizes or lower teacher salaries.

Finally, research on charters schools’ academic impacts on district schools has become increasingly positive in recent years. For example, at least a dozen studies have found positive effects on district students’ achievement, while just three have found negative effects.

Ironically, the logical implication of these findings is that, insofar as charters are marginally reducing districts’ total revenues, they are also making them more efficient. And conversely, increases in district students’ achievement aren’t necessarily evidence of greater efficiency insofar as districts reap a fiscal windfall.

Either way, districts that lose students to charter schools can and ultimately will adjust their behavior, much as they do in response to the inevitable changes in local demographics. In other words, the challenge for policymakers is managing whatever transition costs may be associated with moving to a more choice-based system in a way that is fair to students and taxpayers.

In general, insulating districts from the fiscal pressures associated with enrollment declines is the wrong way to approach that challenge. But when and where districts are granted some sort of grace period—that is, when policymakers allow their revenues per pupil to increase temporarily—the associated costs should be borne by the general public, not the marginalized children whose parents or guardians have chosen to send them to a public charter school.

Here is a list of ideals and values commonly held within a particular group of people in American life. Name the group of people who prize the following things: a belief in personal responsibility and individual merit; a respect for order, rules, and self-discipline; and a personal commitment to vibrant institutions that are critical to civil society.

It’s a fair bet that the reflexive answer of many readers would be “conservatives.” Perhaps parents or the clergy. Maybe athletes and coaches. But there’s another group that probably doesn’t come reflexively to mind: public school teachers.

Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan famously quipped that “Latinos are Republican, they just don’t know it yet,” a remark that looks more prescient with each election cycle. A similar case can be made about teachers, only in this case it runs in the opposite direction: Teachers are congenitally conservative. It’s Republicans who just don’t know it yet. 

Conservatives commonly complain that public education has been captured by progressive ideology. That’s because education is inherently progressive. When it functions properly, education is an engine of social advancement, fairness, and upward mobility—all goals broadly aligned with the outlook of multi-racial, working-class progressivism. At the same time, a school is an inherently conservative institution. We build and maintain schools to expose children to our nation’s history and culture, to bond them to their community and country, and to prepare them for a responsible adult life of informed, engaged citizenship.

While teachers might not think of themselves as conservative, they preside over institutions that have proved remarkably resistant to change. Public schools endure in their basic form and function not because we lack alternatives to placing two dozen children in a classroom led by an adult every weekday, but because sending children to a place called “school” is an enduring and valued practice in nearly every American community.

It’s unsurprising that conservatives would see school choice as the best defense against a public school establishment that seems hostile to their values. Breaking the monopoly of public education—this is very nearly conservative dogma nowadays—forces schools to compete for students and funding, spurring innovation and excellence in turn. Yet what many conservatives seem not to understand is that embracing school choice as the exclusive, even primary, lever of reform while disengaging from efforts to improve public education is a mistake.

For starters, asking America’s parents to abandon their support for local public schools in favor of entirely new educational paradigms is a heavy lift. Changing schools or homeschooling can be profoundly disruptive to family life and routines, as well as children’s social lives. Transportation challenges are often insurmountable. Nor is school choice the reliable bulwark against progressive indoctrination that proponents paint it as. At elite private schools serving families with the most resources and the greatest number of schooling options available to them, the cutthroat competition for seats, combined with social pressure to be “anti-racist,” has made those schools more inclined to adopt progressive policies and curricula. Few private-school parents have shown a willingness to buck their schools’ strident progressive orthodoxies and leave.

Moreover, public school teachers are less hostile to conservative views than is commonly assumed. An Education Week survey showed that only 5 percent of teachers described themselves as “very liberal,” while another 24 percent described themselves as “liberal.” A plurality (43 percent) described themselves as “moderate.” The remaining 27 percent identified either as “conservative” or “very conservative.” This would make the teacher workforce only slightly less conservative, and somewhat more moderate than Americans at large. Debates over education, however, tend to be driven by union leaders, political advocates, faculty at colleges of education, and philanthropic funders, all of whom are a deeper shade of blue than the teachers they represent or seek to influence.

One fruitful source of common ground between conservatives and public school teachers may be student behavior, which has emerged as one of the most significant factors driving teachers from the profession. Conservatives, already skeptical of trends like restorative justice and impatient with lax student discipline, are likely to find supporters among a critical mass of teachers who want safe and orderly classrooms. There is even potential for consensus among conservatives and teachers on increasing pay.

The inescapable truth about education in America is that there is no foreseeable scenario under which traditional public schools will not educate the majority of the nation’s future entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, soldiers, and citizens for generations to come. Conservatives are not wrong to take exception when activists seek to impose a progressive agenda on what is at heart a bedrock government service, but to respond by promoting school choice as a conflict-avoidance strategy functionally cedes public education—and the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren—to the left. If conservatives earnestly believe that public education is a hotbed of progressive indoctrination on social and political issues, it would be an act of self-immolation to surrender future generations to its influence.

None of this is to suggest that conservatives should abandon the push for school choice. The clearest triumph of the education-reform era has been the creation of new education institutions, particularly public charter schools, which are largely free from unionization and bureaucratic meddling. New networks of high-performing urban charter schools in particular have provided critical relief to communities beset by generations of public school failure. School choice is a positive force for education pluralism and system-wide improvements, and conservatives should continue encouraging and supporting choice-oriented reforms.

At the same time, they should think long and hard before retreating from engagement with traditional public education. The problems with American public schools are legion, but a simple fact dwarfs all others: They are where the children are.

Editor’s note: This is adapted from “Teachers and the Right” in the Spring 2023 issue of National Affairs.

Within a few years of their 2010 rollout, the Common Core State Standards for math and English became a popular scapegoat for a host of perceived ills in K–12 education. (And yet, despite all the vitriol, the Common Core lives on in most states, even if it goes by different names.) Just earlier this month, in a New York Times op-ed, Pamela Paul took a new line of attack, charging the Common Core with draining the joy from high school English by focusing on skills and cutting traditional reading assignments. The decline in English majors, Paul concluded, must be partly attributable to the Common Core.

As a millennial who attended high school in the early aughts and taught high school English during the Common Core’s early years, I found that some of Paul’s points resonated with my experiences:

• English classes have indeed tended toward assigning shorter texts and excerpts, and this is a real problem. Poems and short stories belong in the curriculum, too, but developing stamina by reading longer texts remains critical.
• Various political pressures are increasingly limiting what can be taught in English classrooms.
• Schools are, by and large, underestimating students’ ability to grapple with challenging material.

But these and others of Paul’s concerns aren’t the fault of the Common Core.

First, she blames the Common Core for kids’ lack of interest in actually reading the texts assigned for English class. As a colleague of mine pointed out, the invention of Cliffs Notes in 1958 would indicate that this is no new phenomenon. A retired teacher with whom I spoke described scenes from fifty years ago that were identical to those in my own high school, decades and states away: kids huddled together before class, the ones who had done the reading whispering summaries of the previous night’s chapters to the kids who hadn’t. I can’t imagine that these were the only two schools where this happened prior to 2010.

Paul also denounces the Common Core’s emphasis on skills. Of course, there are teachers who can make literary analysis dry. (By the way, didn’t kids have to diagram sentences back in the day? Was that what made literature “soar” for them?) But by putting “literary devices” in scare quotes, Paul seems to imply that English class shouldn’t be teaching such essential concepts at all. The Common Core standards don’t mandate mindless annotation with colored pencils, as in her caricature; they state that students should “demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.” Doesn’t that seem like exactly what English is for—and has been for generations? And teaching key skills using great books (notice how the two are complementary!) makes English seem more relevant to many students. 

Another concern cited is the Common Core’s supposed de-emphasis on literature. There’s Paul’s misleading line: “By high school, 70 percent of assigned texts are meant to be nonfiction.” That guidance is specifically for twelfth grade, and more to the point, that 70 percent is across all subjects. In other words, the intent of the standards’ creators is to build students’ literacy in history, science, and other fields—not to strip English class of literature.

Paul also implies that the Common Core encouraged the “dumbing down” of content. But it’s hard to fault those standards for whatever dumbing down is occurring when they call for grade-level texts and explicitly include Shakespeare. A decade ago, in fact, Common Core opponents argued that its reading expectations were too challenging. The push for “just-right” or “leveled” books, on the other hand, has been around since at least 1946.

Perhaps most offensive—and least related to the Common Core—is her insinuation that the authors capable of “open[ing] mind[s] and test[ing] abilities of comprehension and interpretation” are, by necessity, almost exclusively white men. This ought to go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t: Women and people of color have written plenty of challenging and important books. If James Joyce can teach American high schoolers about Irish culture and modernism, as Paul recalls fondly from her own experience, then Chinua Achebe can teach them about Nigerian history and anticolonialism. If students can learn from William Faulkner’s themes of fate and adversity—another of Paul’s suggestions—then they can learn from Zora Neale Hurston’s novels, also set in the American South and with similar themes no less universal.

Diversifying English curricula does not require tossing aside every classic by a white male author. Rather, it means adding more pages to students’ reading loads (a point, again, on which Paul and I agree) and exposing them to a greater variety of authors. Doing so will engage more students and broaden their intellectual horizons—goals toward which Paul and I would both love to see progress.

To go after the Common Core is to misdiagnose what’s at issue in English classrooms. To ensure that students read challenging books and develop as readers and writers, however, is to ensure they will be informed, critical thinkers prepared for college, career, and citizenship—regardless of what major they choose.

One way education systems have tried to raise the performance of Black and Brown children is by matching students with teachers of the same race and ethnicity. The conventional wisdom is that such practices are strongly supported by research, but a recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly offers a contrarian view.

Two Penn State researchers used data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten (ECLS-K) to look at the national cohort of students who entered kindergarten during the 2010–11 school year, and to follow them through fifth grade. They included details from three tests of academic achievement, five teacher ratings of classroom behavior, and two independently assessed executive functioning tasks. The sample of 18,170 children is large and racially, ethnically, and economically diverse. The outcomes of interest were reading, science, and mathematics achievement; problem behaviors; self-control; interpersonal skills; approaches to learning; cognitive flexibility; and working memory. They also examined whether students were placed in gifted or special education classes.

Approximately 63 percent of students had a teacher of the same race or ethnicity during any elementary grade. Among White students, it was 92 percent, versus 45 percent for their Black and Hispanic peers. White students were especially likely to experience matching throughout most or all of elementary school—55 percent of them for five or six grades—due to the prevalence of White teachers leading elementary classrooms. The contrasting figure for Black students was only 3 percent, and 10 percent for Hispanic students.

For select groups, there were some positive impacts. For Black students, matching resulted in significantly fewer internalizing problem behaviors, such as anxiety, loneliness, and low self-esteem. And for Black girls, it also led to fewer externalizing problem behaviors, such as arguing and fighting with others, acting impulsively, and expressing anger. For students of any race or ethnicity who had previously displayed low levels of academic, behavioral, or executive functioning, racial and ethnic matching resulted in fewer externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors but, unfortunately, lower academic achievement. There was also a small but statistically significant negative effect on science achievement.

When looking at the entire sample, however, the impacts disappear: Student-teacher racial or ethnic matching was not associated with significant effects in reading or mathematics achievement, externalizing or internalizing problem behaviors, self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, cognitive flexibility, working memory, or gifted education service receipt. Students were less likely to receive special education services when they were taught by a teacher of the same race or ethnicity, but the level of significance is difficult to determine due to the small sample size of recipients.

The researchers properly note that their study focused only on elementary grades and might miss benefits of matching that emerge in middle and high school (or perhaps later in life), and they suggest further analysis along these lines.

SOURCE: Paul L. Morgan and Eric Hengyu Hu, “Fixed effect estimates of student-teacher racial or ethnic matching in U.S. elementary schools,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly (December 2022).

Cheers

• More high school seniors are saving themselves time and money by choosing apprenticeships over college. —Wall Street Journal
• Three superintendents are leading the charge in removing cueing-based reading curricula from schools. —K–12 Dive
• The late Marion Joseph was a tireless advocate for phonics-based reading instruction in California. Her long struggle is paying off in Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2022–23 budget, which includes a $1 million appropriation for the creation of a “Literacy Roadmap.” —Cal Matters

Jeers

• The new season of ABC’s hit show Abbott Elementary trots out clichés and outright falsehoods about charter schools, earning high praise from prestige media (read this for a thoughtful rebuttal). —New Yorker
• Understaffed schools are experimenting with four-day weeks to attract more teachers, but the loss of instructional time will hurt students. —Washington Post
• One writer claims that education commentary is too optimistic and that a half-century of research has “utterly failed” to close achievement gaps (Andrew Rotherham thinks he overstates the case, though). —Freddie deBoer
• Classes are canceled for 422,000 students as support workers in the Los Angeles Unified School district go on strike. —New York Times

What we’re reading

• “The strange death of education reform, part two” —Matthew Yglesias
•  “Chicago’s two mayoral candidates have starkly different visions for reckoning with the city’s steep enrollment losses and under-enrolled schools.” —Chalkbeat Chicago
• There are parallels between the “reading wars” and the “math wars.” Math, however, requires far more direct instruction to build the foundation necessary for higher-order problem-solving. —Natalie Wexler
• “Why did America’s leaders stop caring about schools?” —Economist
• Grades are the primary basis for making decisions about students, but teacher autonomy makes grading inconsistent even between classrooms in the same school. —The Conversation

The wage difference between college and high school graduates, or the “college wage premium,” grew during the pandemic. On average, recent college graduates earn $52,000 per year compared to the $30,000 earned by those with only a high school diploma. Nevertheless, an increasing number of teenagers are deciding to forego college despite the documented financial benefits. Nationally representative surveys of high school students conducted over the last few years indicate that the cost of higher education is the primary reason why.

It’s hard to blame teenagers for wanting to avoid the crushing debt that’s dominating headlines and impacting the lives of older generations. It’s also important to recognize that skipping a traditional four-year college isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Opting for a career and technical education (CTE) program offers plenty of benefits, including boosted income and a chance to develop valuable soft skills. The industry-recognized credentials associated with career pathways have proven to be valuable to both students and employers. Work-based learning opportunities like those in Rhode Island and Delaware can open the door to well-paying jobs and in-demand careers. And the Wall Street Journal recently reported that more students are taking advantage of apprenticeships, which offer workers on-the-job learning experience with pay, job-related classroom training, and the chance to earn a credential—all at little or no cost. 

The catch is that in many places—including Ohio—there are access barriers and unanswered questions about program quality. The Buckeye State has prioritized strengthening education-to-workforce opportunities in recent years, but there are still thousands of students who lack access to or knowledge of available career pathways. (A mere 8 percent of students in the class of 2021 earned enough points in Ohio’s industry credentialing system to graduate based on their career experience and technical skill.) And while state leaders have improved overall data transparency, Ohio still doesn’t link K–12, post-secondary, and workforce outcomes. Without these data, it’s impossible to determine which of Ohio’s CTE programs and career pathways are valuable alternatives to a four-year degree.

Between the steep cost of higher education on one hand and CTE access and quality issues on the other, many young people end up adrift after graduating from high school. Strategic adjustments to state policy could give them the information and support they need to get back on track. In fact, the governor’s recently released budget recommendations contain several proposals that, if strengthened and passed, could lay the groundwork for some much-needed improvements. Let’s take a look.

Increasing support for graduates

DeWine has proposed establishing an office called ApplyOhio within the Ohio Department of Higher Education. It would be responsible for coordinating efforts to support Ohioans in “accessing a pathway to a post-secondary education after graduating high school.” Although state institutions of higher education are mentioned, the language also explicitly mentions Aspire programs (which provide free services to help adults acquire a variety of skills), Ohio Technical Centers (independently operated CTE centers that offer training and credentials for in-demand jobs), and other post-secondary institutions. In other words, ApplyOhio will be responsible for helping people access all types of post-secondary education, not just a traditional four-year degree. ApplyOhio would also help with efforts aimed at increasing the state’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion rate, improving the post-secondary admissions process, and recruiting Ohioans with some college credit but no degree to re-enroll in higher education. 

At first glance, this might seem like just another layer of bureaucracy. But it’s actually a strategic move with two potentially huge benefits. First and foremost, it makes the state directly responsible for serving a population—recent high school graduates who aren’t enrolled in college—that typically gets overlooked. If the ApplyOhio office works as intended, it could step in and fill a massive void. In fact, the office could even partner with K–12 schools to ensure that students are more aware of their options before they graduate, thereby smoothing the often-bumpy transition. Second, re-engaging adults who already have some post-secondary education under their belts is crucial. For the individuals who are re-engaged, earning a credential or degree could vastly improve their job prospects and quality of life. And for employers, the talent pipeline will improve and expand. That’s a win-win that could significantly boost the state’s economy in the short- and long-term.

Investing in and improving CTE programs and infrastructure

One of the biggest headlines of DeWine’s budget is his increased investment in CTE programs and industry-recognized credentials. He’s proposed investing $26 million on industry-recognized credentials for high schoolers in both FY 2024 and 2025 and a whopping $50 million in new funding for CTE equipment during both fiscal years. DeWine’s budget would also require the Ohio Department of Education to increase the number of in-demand CTE programs across the state, and incentivize schools and businesses to offer work-based learning opportunities to thousands of students.

These are solid steps in the right direction, but the state can and should do more. A recently published brief from ExcelinEd and Ohio Excels offers four recommendations. The first, establishing a biennial return on investment analysis, would allow policymakers to identify which pathways are aligned with employer demand; evaluate student participation and outcomes for each program; and determine whether current offerings deliver on federal, state, and local investment.

Increasing awareness of college affordability

According to the Dayton Daily News, the cost of first-year tuition and fees at Ohio’s public universities rose about 4 percent between the fall of 2021 and 2022. That’s less than inflation, which went up by more than 8 percent, but an increase nonetheless. At most of Ohio’s public universities, a full year of tuition can cost between $10,000 and $13,000. On-campus housing can add, on average, about $12,401. Additional and unavoidable expenses, like textbooks, hike the price up even further. For example, U.S. News & World Report estimates that the total cost at Ohio State University for the 2021–22 academic year—an amount that includes tuition and fees, room and board, books, supplies, transportation, and personal expenses—was approximately $29,368 for in-state students. Financial aid and scholarship funds, though, brought the average cost down to roughly $18,165 for in-state students who receive need-based aid.

Eighteen thousand a year for four years isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely more manageable than $29,368. That’s why FAFSA is so crucial. By filling out this free form, students and families can apply for the grants, scholarships, and loans from federal, state, and local sources that make college more affordable. Many colleges and universities also use FAFSA to determine eligibility for their own institution-specific grants. To get a true picture of what higher education costs, families need to know how much aid is available—which means they need to fill out FAFSA.

Unfortunately, as of March 3, only 44 percent of Ohio’s class of 2023 had completed the form. It’s likely that a good chunk of students opted not to complete the form because they don’t plan to attend college and thus don’t believe they need financial aid. But given that affordability is one of the primary reasons why students are choosing not to attend college, it should worry policymakers that so many students are unaware of the financial assistance that would be available to them if they chose to enroll. This information could change the post-graduation plans for hundreds, even thousands, of teenagers. That includes high-achieving students from traditionally underserved backgrounds who would excel in college but don’t apply or enroll because they assume it’s out of their financial reach, as well as first-generation or low-income students who would benefit from the long-term financial boost of a college degree.

To increase FAFSA completion numbers, DeWine has proposed requiring every student to provide evidence of having completed and submitted the form in order to graduate. (He tried to pass a similar measure in the previous budget, but failed to get legislators on board.) There would be some exceptions, including allowing a parent or guardian to exempt their student by notifying the school that they won’t be completing and submitting the form. But for most students, FAFSA would no longer be optional. This seemingly small change would have an outsized impact, as it would raise awareness about the financial aid that’s available to students, and could push high schools to offer more assistance to families who are confused about how, when, or why to use FAFSA.

***

In Ohio, far too many recent high school graduates are struggling to find their place. The cost of higher education seems to be keeping students away from college campuses. Meanwhile, state leaders can’t guarantee that career pathways and CTE programs with the potential to be a viable alternative to a four-year degree are as accessible and high-quality as they should be. In his budget, Governor DeWine has proposed a variety of initiatives that could help address these problems. For the sake of younger Ohioans and the long-term health of Ohio’s economy, lawmakers would be wise to heed these proposals and build on them.

1. Governor DeWine was talking education policy on the TV news earlier this week. His strongly-held priorities right now: Making the science of reading the law of the land (“If we really want to increase the proficiency of reading, which we have to do, we need to take this dramatic move and we need to do it now.”), and combining school choice expansion with traditional school support (“Our bill is a balance and it’s a good balance.”). Nice. (NBC4, Columbus, 3/21/23) I am very glad the TV news folks are getting straight talk like that from the governor. Because the “Columbus parent” they talked to the other day about school funding was laying down unfiltered, unchallenged nonsense from some Bizarro World where Ohio’s Fair School Funding Plan never passed. (NBC4, Columbus, 3/20/23)
   
   

2. The governor also talked to NBC4 about the potential for sweeping changes to the structure of education governance in Ohio. That topic was also on the minds of the state board of education during their meeting this week, during which they voted against hiring a search firm to look for a new state superintendent. Largely because of the probability that it would end up being moot at best or a huge waste of money at worst. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/20/23) After they were released from their windowless basement chamber at ODE done with their meeting, four members of the state board of education popped on over to the Statehouse to complain to legislators about the very bills that could ultimately render their votes—and their debates, and their squabbles, and their endless reviewing, and their penchant for inaction—moot. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/21/23)
   
   

3. Speaking of education boards doing their thing (were we?), the elected board that runs Columbus City Schools voted this week to approve a resolution urging the state to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan, rather than continuing the phase in of this new-ish education funding mechanism. (Which does, in fact, exist, despite what some parents in Columbus might think…or even say—confidently—on the record.) The elected members also expressed their opposition to school choice expansion bills pending in the legislature. Whew. I sure am glad our big city district leaders are getting the important stuff done, aren’t you? (Columbus Dispatch, 3/21/23) Staying on the topic of Ohio’s big city districts for a moment: More complaints against Cincinnati City Schools’ superintendent are coming out from behind closed email boxes. While the gripes coming from district parents here are quite different than those we heard coming from staff members on Monday (seriously, you should read them; extremely enlightening), they continue upon the previously established theme of “District leadership is not currently doing what we want them to. Waaaaaaa!” (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/20/23) Despite all the sideshow stuff going on, elected board members in Cincinnati did seem very serious in their discussion of possible transportation changes for the 2023-24 school year. However, it feels to me like they have placed the most disruptive such changes at the top of their list while relegating the more innovative possibilities (smaller vehicles and Metro passes for older students) to the bottom. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/21/23) Meanwhile, here’s a look at how Cleveland Metropolitan School District is embracing AI teaching and learning tools, rather than running away from them as other large districts have done. “Instead [of blocking these technologies], the District is focused on helping students and adults recognize and use these tools as productivity tools, knowing they will exist in the world our graduates will be living in,” CMSD leaders said in a statement. “It is going to happen. And so the question is, how do we responsibly get in front of it?” Well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Lots of details in the piece if you are interested in checking them out. (Signal Cleveland, 3/22/23)
   
   

4. And in the bougie burbs of Cleveland: Expanded STEM courses are causing some parents in Lakewood City Schools to worry about a loss of art and music time for their kids. (News5 Cleveland, 3/20/23)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.