The past few years have been a busy time in Ohio education, as state leaders have pushed the envelope on educational choice, promoted the science of reading, and gone back and forth on all sorts of accountability policies. While progress has certainly been made—most notably in the realm of choice and charter schools—many of these areas remain unsettled. With the biennial state budget debates on tap, the coming year is sure to be another barnburner. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen, but here are my five—admittedly optimistic—predictions for 2025.
5. Lawmakers will get fed up with the busing fiasco and take action to ensure districts get their act together. In 2024, news broke over Columbus City Schools’ outrageous refusals to provide transportation to students attending public charter or private schools. In eleventh-hour decisions just before the school year, the district declared hundreds of resident students “impractical” to transport, leaving families scrambling to find ways to get their children to school. Recognizing the injustice, Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit to compel the district to provide transportation, a service that is generally required under state law (the case is still in court). This year, state lawmakers will intervene and make sure that parents and students aren’t left in a lurch by removing the “impracticality” loophole that some districts have exploited to avoid bussing students.
4. Lawmakers will stop shoveling “guarantee” money to districts losing enrollment. Reflecting demographic changes—fewer childbirths and outmigration—along with the rise of school choice and pandemic-influenced attendance patterns, enrollments at most school districts have been on the decline. Under a “fair” school funding formula, districts serving fewer kids should receive fewer dollars. But as discussed many times on this blog, Ohio has a longstanding (and politically motivated) tradition of shielding such districts from funding reductions through “guarantees.” This year, 240 districts (about two in five) are covered by one of the three main guarantees, at a cost to the state of $379 million. On a per-pupil basis, the largest beneficiary is East Cleveland, whose enrollment has dropped by a staggering 37 percent over the past five years. Crestwood, Waynesdale, and Grand Valley are other rapidly shrinking districts—their enrollments are down by more than 20 percent—that also receive large sums in funding guarantees. In a step towards a fair system that funds districts based on how many students they currently (not historically) enroll, lawmakers will remove guarantees from the funding system.
3. Lawmakers will put a lid on questionable career-technical “pathways” to high school graduation. After much debate, the legislature overhauled graduation requirements in 2019. Starting with the graduating class of 2023, students must now pass state math and English exams, or—falling short of that—meet one of three other options, which include a career-technical pathway. While providing this option makes sense, it now appears that some districts are pushing students to the finish line through dubious industry-recognized credentials (IRC). In Youngstown, 68 percent of students met the IRC threshold for graduation, and 86 percent graduated high school on time. That would be fine if the IRCs were tied to high-wage careers. But a closer look indicates that a vast majority of IRCs earned in Youngstown were National Incident Management System credentials, CPR First Aid, and a bleeding control certificate—a “bundle” of low-level credentials that meet graduation requirements but are unlikely to have value in most workplaces. That raises the question: Are most Youngstown graduates actually interested in jobs in disaster and emergency management, or were they pushed by schools to complete these programs as a quick and easy route to a diploma? A similarly questionable pattern has emerged in Akron City Schools where large numbers of students appear to be graduating via retail-based certificates. While retail careers can be fulfilling, do most Akron students have their sights set on such occupations? Recognizing the harm of steering students toward less rigorous pathways that may have nothing to do with their career aspirations, lawmakers will take actions this year that raise the bar for meeting the career-tech graduation requirements.
2. Lawmakers will continue the push for quality educational choices through funding improvements. Ohio has a proud history of supporting educational choice, and lawmakers will continue the progress towards a choice-rich, parent-centered system by doing the following:
- Increasing the charter school equity supplement: While lawmakers have provided much-needed supplemental funds to high-quality charters, they have only recently begun to address the wide funding gaps faced by non-qualifying schools. In 2023, the legislature created a new element that narrows some of their gap through an “equity supplement” that all brick-and-mortar charters receive. The amount is currently $650 per pupil—a good start but not nearly enough to bridge the gap. This year, lawmakers will boost the equity supplement to bring all charters a step closer to funding parity with local districts.
- Creating a poverty weight for scholarships: Even though scholarships (a.k.a. vouchers) continue to serve tens of thousands of low-income families, some have wondered whether the recent eligibility expansions are leaving them behind. To provide a boost for less advantaged Ohioans, lawmakers will create a poverty weight that provides an enhanced scholarship amount when low-income families participate in the EdChoice or Cleveland programs.
- Lifting the homeschool tax credit: Several years ago, lawmakers created a $250 tax credit that parents may claim if they homeschool their child. Homeschooling is certainly a labor of love for families, but this token amount hardly covers the cost of educating their children (materials and opportunity costs of forgone employment). This year, lawmakers will raise the tax credit amount to recognize the costs parents bear in educating their child, and to help better offset the out-of-pocket expenses associated with participation in homeschool co-ops or microschools.
1. Lawmakers will dismantle antiquated policies that promote mediocrity in schools. Following the calls of school reformers, as well as former presidents of both parties, President-elect Trump promised to get more serious about instructional quality in American classrooms. That’s well and good, but much of the policy machinery that prevents schools from rewarding excellence (and rooting out incompetence) exists at the state level. Ohio’s tenure laws, for instance, protect the jobs of poor-performing teachers by making it nearly impossible for their employers to fire them. Meanwhile, the state’s minimum salary schedule ignores teachers’ actual contributions to student learning, instead requiring schools to pay salaries according to years of service and degrees-earned. This year, Ohio lawmakers will repeal outdated state policies, such as tenure, salary schedules, and others, that get in the way of increased student learning and instructional quality in Ohio classrooms.
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Some may scoff at these predictions, and it’s true: I could very well go 0 for 5. Indeed, some of these actions are a big political lift, as they cut against the interests of powerful education groups. But if the past has taught us anything, the public often gets behind leaders willing to take on established interests, shake up how government is run, and work to serve people more effectively and efficiently. This year, Ohio lawmakers will have their opportunity to be bold and assertive—and work to the benefit of students, families, and citizens. Are they up to the challenge? I’m predicting that they are.
