Charter school students deserve every opportunity to learn in facilities built to meet their needs. Sadly, however, many of them attend schools lacking the amenities that parents normally expect—things like playgrounds, gymnasiums, science labs, and cafeterias.
Charter school students deserve every opportunity to learn in facilities built to meet their needs. Sadly, however, many of them attend schools lacking the amenities that parents normally expect—things like playgrounds, gymnasiums, science labs, and cafeterias. Most Ohio charter students, as a 2016 report finds, learn in cramped spaces that are smaller than the state’s recommended guidelines.
Charter schools’ inadequate facilities are the result of deficient policies. A January report released by former Auditor of State Dave Yost highlights the challenges facing charters—and the lengths to which some go to secure facilities. The auditor issued this “public interest report” in response to complaints about the leasing agreements of Ohio charter schools affiliated with the Concept, Imagine, and National Heritage Academy management companies. But before diving into the particulars of these cases, the auditor’s report lays out four facility barriers facing charters:
Taken together, these policies force charters into less conventional facility arrangements. The figure below shows that the vast majority of Ohio charters rent space, which the report attributes to difficulties in obtaining financing or grants. Less than 20 percent of charters have cobbled together the funds needed to purchase a facility. Some of these fortunate schools have already become pillars in their community, and with a building of their own, their prospects for the future are bright.
Figure 1: Charter school facility arrangements
While there is nothing inherently wrong with leasing space, the auditor’s report also describes the questionable leases of nine Ohio charter schools. These schools entered into unfavorable leases with real-estate firms tied to their management companies. As one of the few (if not only) suppliers of a viable facility, the management company held tremendous leverage over the school boards—and won leasing terms reflecting that power. The charter boards couldn’t easily walk away from the management company offer—no matter how bad the terms—and pursue other avenues.
This situation raises several concerns. First, the expensive leases—in some cases, roughly double the market rate—eat into the resources available for classroom instruction. Second, the high rents raise worries that taxpayer money is inappropriately benefitting real estate firms instead of schools. Third, leases such as these weaken charter school boards’ ability to sever ties with poor-performing management companies, as doing so could result in the school losing its building.
Fortunately, there are ways to fix this. Ohio has already undertaken serious reforms aimed at curbing these types of abuses, and the auditor offers additional suggestions—most notably, subjecting leases to competitive bidding.[1] Yet as the auditor recognizes, regulation alone can’t solve charters’ broader facility challenges. To this end, Ohio should pursue policies that would better enable charters to obtain suitable spaces at affordable prices. The most critical include the following three.
Strengthen state supports. Because charter schools lack access to local taxpayer support, the state needs to step up and support charter facilities. With only a meager $200 per-pupil facility reimbursement, charters have to use operational dollars—already stretched thin by inequitable funding—to pay for things like maintenance, utilities, and rent. Charters shouldn’t be forced to dip into instructional dollars just to make ends meet, and Ohio should increase the amount of dedicated facility funds to one that more closely matches the cost of maintaining a building. At the same time, legislators should also re-appropriate funds for the Community Schools Classroom Grant, so that more charters can undertake capital improvement projects.
Create a credit-enhancement program. To improve charters’ access to credit, Ohio should implement a “moral obligation” program. Already adopted by Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, this program would allow qualifying charters to use the state’s superior credit rating when seeking debt financing for capital projects, enabling them to secure funds at lower interest rates and save thousands of dollars over the life of a loan. Should a charter default, the state would pledge—and this is the moral obligation—to repay lenders. (Participating Colorado charters also cover some of the costs by paying into a reserve fund.) Ohio already has a loan guarantee program on the books for charters, but there is no evidence of use, nor any money appropriated to support it. To jump-start state backing for facility purchases and capital improvements, legislators should revive this law by appropriating reserve funds, increasing the amount of liability that the state can back, and allowing qualifying charters to substitute the state’s credit ratings when seeking loans.
Encourage use of underutilized buildings. Mothballed schools that have already been paid for by taxpayers are an obvious solution to charter facility woes. While Ohio does have a “right of first refusal” law, policymakers should go further to ensure districts actually make space available to charters. To do this, Ohio could take a cue from Indiana and publish a list of unused buildings that charters can potentially buy or lease. State lawmakers could also consider California’s approach, which requires districts to make underutilized space available to charters. This could encourage co-location in half-empty buildings, which can benefit not only charter students, but also pupils attending district schools. Given demand for facility space, there is no reason that any publicly financed building should go vacant or underutilized.
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Cramped classrooms and dubious leases are symptoms of Ohio’s inadequate charter facility policies. To ensure that all charter school students have the opportunity to learn in spaces built for learning, legislators should work to cure the underlying disease.
[1] In fall 2015, legislators enacted sweeping regulatory charter reforms whose effects may not have shown up in the auditor’s analysis of 2015–16 leasing data. Among other things, they include a provision that now requires an independent real estate agent to declare a lease “commercially reasonable” before a school and management company sign an agreement.
For the past few years, Ohio policymakers, educators, and advocates have been paying close attention to a “looming crisis” in educational attainment. Sixty-four percent of Ohio jobs in 2020 would require post-secondary education, concluded a 2013 study. But according to a Lumina Foundation study published three years later, only 43 percent of working-age Ohioans had a post-secondary degree or certificate. That left a gap of 1.3 million adults who would need to earn a high quality post-secondary certificate to meet the needs of employers. In an attempt to make closing this gap a priority, state leaders announced Ohio’s Attainment Goal 2025: A statewide objective for 65 percent of people between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-four to have a degree, certificate, or other post-secondary workforce credential by that year.
In early January, I explored how newly-elected Governor DeWine could use the state budget to push Ohio toward meeting its goal. Now that the legislative language for the budget is available, here’s a look at how DeWine and his team tackled attainment.
Getting a head start on credentials
Ohio already does a good job of offering K–12 students a head start on post-secondary degrees and credentials thanks to programs like Advanced Placement, College Credit Plus, and Career-Technical Credit Transfer. But the new administration has proposed expanding K–12 pathways toward post-secondary attainment with a $25 million appropriation dedicated to helping high school students earn industry-recognized credentials. The funding will be directed toward three areas:
Cynics might consider $25 million a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in total education funding. But this isn’t a trivial move. Programs like this have been successful in places like Colorado and Wisconsin. And while industry credentials can lead to rewarding and well-paying careers, less than 5 percent of Ohio graduates earned one in 2017–18. By appropriating a modest sum that targets credentialing programs and incentivizes student completion, the DeWine administration is taking a giant step forward.
Focusing on adult learners
When Ohio leaders first decided to pursue Attainment Goal 2025, part of the reason was because graduates of the K–12 system weren’t earning degrees and certificates at a fast enough rate to meet the needs of employers. To close the gap, Ohio needs to focus on increasing the number of adults with credentials. During his campaign, Governor DeWine proposed establishing regional job training partnerships to do this. The budget follows through on this promise by allocating $5 million for industry sector partnerships—regional job training partnerships between local businesses, education providers, and community leaders that provide Ohioans with competitive skills. It also appropriates $15 million for each year of the biennium to help a minimum of 10,000 Ohioans a year earn industry-recognized credentials at no cost.
In addition, the budget calls for the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) to team up with industry partners and Ohio Technical Centers to develop project-based learning models that “increase continuing education and non-credit program offerings that lead to a credential in order to meet the state’s in-demand job needs.” Technical Centers are considered part of ODHE’s workforce training and adult education division, which serves non-traditional students who left high school early, high school graduates who need additional skills before enrolling in college, and working adults who are interested in earning post-secondary credentials. Including these centers indicates an intentional focus on adult learners. It’s also worth noting that the provision focuses on in-demand jobs and emphasizes project-based learning—a method that usually centers on solving real-world problems and, when done well, gives students hands-on experience and develops their higher-order thinking skills.
Making college degrees more affordable
In a 2016 project from the Institute for Research on Higher Education, Ohio was ranked forty-fifthout of fifty states in college affordability. Policymakers have been trying to fix that, and DeWine’s budget continues that work in a variety of ways:
Of course, none of these programs on their own can solve Ohio’s higher education affordability problem. But taken together—and perhaps with a few other changes—the state could start moving in the right direction.
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Ohio has a long way to go, in a short amount of time, to meet Attainment Goal 2025. But Governor DeWine and his team deserve kudos for making attainment a priority in the budget, and for offering up some innovative ideas. Now it’s time for the General Assembly to follow suit.
Much of the Capitol Square chatter revolves around the school funding plan put forward last month by Representatives Robert Cupp and John Patterson. The plan would overhaul the state funding formula, and calls for a hefty $1.1 billion increase in K–12 education spending over the next two years. Since the initial rollout, a House subcommittee has listened to presentations from the plan’s architects—school district officials and their consultants—and last week, the committee heard testimony from various parties, including my Fordham colleague Chad Aldis.
As previously discussed, the Cupp-Patterson plan has its strengths—for instance, removing funding caps for fast-growing districts—and weaknesses, most notably its frosty approach to school choice. At this juncture, it remains to be seen whether the plan will be incorporated into the House version of the state budget bill that will soon be unveiled. For Ohioans who haven’t been following closely at home, here’s a recap of the proceedings thus far, along with some thoughts on them.
Lack of transparency
Considering that the plan touts transparency, the lack of detailed information has been surprising. While developers have released a broad overview and forecasts of districts’ funding amounts, they have not released particulars about how exactly amounts are calculated. No legislation has been introduced, nor has technical documentation been provided with all the nitty-gritty details.
One of the most glaring holes pertains to the computations of “base costs,” which under the proposal drive district funding amounts. Thus far, we have only a one-pager showing the various “inputs” that determine base costs. For instance, districts would receive funding for one teacher per twenty kindergarten students. But the documentation doesn’t go on to explain how the staff position is translated into dollar amounts. Is it based on each district’s average teacher salary and benefits? Or is it the statewide average total compensation for teachers? And how will it work in future years? For instance, will they use current salaries, plus some measure of inflation? Without this piece of the puzzle, one cannot replicate the computation, nor can the public critique this critical aspect of the proposal. As Cleveland superintendent Eric Gordon noted in his prepared testimony:
My team and I are trying to do our due diligence to create as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of the current formula versus the new formula.... Without seeing the [proposed] formula, we are left to make assumptions that may or may not be true and therefore can’t fully provide feedback that we think would be useful to the work teams.
Other key questions still remain wholly unanswered, including how the shift to direct funding for school-choice programs would work, or even how charter schools would be funded. Overall, the lack of concrete detail, three weeks after the initial release, is troubling.
Winners and “losers”
On March 29, projections of district funding under the plan were released. They include the changes in districts’ state aid from current-year amounts to those in FY 2020, the first year in which the plan would be effective. The press has had a field day with these data “runs,” which reveal major increases in state aid for some fast-growing wealthier districts (probably due to the elimination of funding caps) and flat-funding for several high-poverty districts. Though not technically “losers” under the plan—no district experiences a decline—some observers have raised alarms about the lack of additional aid for districts like Cleveland, Dayton, and Toledo.
There’s something to those concerns. Though high-poverty urban districts already receive more funding than the average district, the plan has been framed from the beginning as an attempt to address the influence of poverty on student achievement. In response, some developers are now saying that the proposal needs tweaking. Howard Fleeter, a school finance expert who consulted on the plan, told the Columbus Dispatch, “Anybody that’s been paying even casual attention can say you can’t be zeroing these places out. It’s going to need to be fixed.” It’s not clear what the patch might be. (Wasn’t one of the central ideas of this work to end today’s “patchwork” funding system?) But one possible solution is to simply inject more money into the proposal. This, of course, would cause the already extravagant price tag to balloon even further.
Price tag
Speaking of which, the billion-dollar question is how the state will pay for the plan. A couple proposals have been floated. One idea, as the statehouse newspaper Gongwer recently reported, is legalizing and taxing sports betting. But according to projections from the Casino Control Commission, this would generate peanuts relative to the actual cost—in the ballpark of tens of millions in annual revenue compared to the hundreds of millions needed to fund the plan. The modest revenue, not to mention the general yuckiness of cash-hungry governments raising money via gambling, could make this a less viable option. Melissa Cropper of the Ohio Federation of Teachers—a union whose members would benefit from higher spending—has suggested another option: Legislators could repeal the small-business tax deduction to raise the needed revenues. To her credit, the idea would likely bring in sufficient funds, but small businesses ought to have their say, too. To my knowledge, there have not been serious proposals for broad-based sales or income tax hikes, or cuts to expenditures in other areas, to pay for the increased outlays.
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With only a couple months until legislators pass the budget, the clock is ticking and questions still loom large. Improving school funding policy can and should be a regular topic of debate, and Representatives Cupp and Patterson deserve a tip of the cap for putting ideas on the table and stirring the conversation. But one has to wonder whether too many loose ends remain for this district-centric version of funding reform to move forward, at least for this biennium.
Not long ago, we at Fordham collaborated with Public Impact to call attention to school districts’ uneven practices when recruiting and selecting principals. Among other things, our study found that districts often overlooked applicants’ track records in boosting student achievement while serving as teachers. A recent study confirms that districts shouldn’t disregard these data, and should instead aim to hire those with the strongest record of performance.
A team of researchers led by Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington examines the link between principal effectiveness and their teaching histories. The analysis uses data spanning from 2006–07 to 2016–17 on 3,102 principals, all former teachers, in the state of Washington. About half of the principals taught in the same district, and roughly 20 percent in the same school building. They were more likely to be male and hold a master’s degree than their peers who stayed in the classroom; however, their teacher licensing scores were not significantly different.
For the 355 principals with data gauging their impacts on state math or reading exams while teaching, the analysts use those teacher value-added scores to determine whether they predict greater effectiveness as principals, as measured by value-added models that aim to separate principal contributions to pupil achievement from other school and classroom factors. For principals who formerly taught in grades or subjects that don’t yield value-added data, the study examines whether the absence of such data predicts principal effectiveness.
The main takeaway is that more effective teachers become more effective principals. In reading, those who had higher teacher value-added scores led schools that produced stronger learning gains in that subject than those with lower scores. Similar results emerge in math. Principals lacking value-added data from their teaching days are less effective in raising math achievement than those with who did have such data—perhaps because they never taught math. But the results are largely insignificant in reading.
Lastly, the analysts uncover an intriguing result when it comes to external versus internal hiring: Principals who previously taught in the same school are less effective than those hired outside of the district or from another school within the district. There is logic to hiring internal candidates—they know the culture of the school—but the evidence here suggests that a fresh face might be a stronger option.
The authors conclude “that policymakers have considerable opportunities to improve the effectiveness of the principal workforce through more purposeful selection of teachers according to their value added.” Fortunately, as a recent RAND Corporation report highlights, a few large districts have moved to more strategic principal selection practices, including data-driven hiring, and seen higher student achievement as a result. This study suggests that more districts would be wise to follow their lead when filling principal vacancies.
Source: Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden, and Bingjie Chen, “Do More Effective Teachers Become More Effective Principals?” CALDER Working Paper (2019).
The General Assembly’s Joint Education Oversight Committee has begun a series of hearings looking at all of the various components of Ohio’s school report cards. One component will be examined per meeting. Today, JEOC members reviewed testimony on the achievement component. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy Chad Aldis provided the following written testimony.
Thank you, Chair Cupp, Ranking Member Fedor and the Joint Education Oversight Committee members for giving me the opportunity today to provide written testimony on the Achievement component of Ohio’s school report cards.
My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C.
As many of you know, Fordham is a staunch supporter of rigorous, transparent school report cards. We believe that families and taxpayers deserve an opportunity to review the progress of their local schools. Over the past two decades, Ohio has implemented a robust report card that now includes key measures of student achievement and growth, along with indicators of college and career readiness. This multi-faceted approach offers a wealth of data but as the state has implemented new measures, the report card has become increasingly complex. While my comments below focus on the Achievement component, they should be viewed in the context of our broader thinking about how to improve school report cards which can be found in our December 2017 paper Back to the Basics. [1]
Parents, educators, and researchers have long understood that achievement is linked to adult success. Students who excel academically are more likely to attend our best colleges and universities, obtain the most rewarding jobs, exercise their civic duties, and enjoy the benefits of lifelong learning. This is why assessing and reporting achievement in core academic subjects remains a central responsibility of our education accountability systems.
Since their earliest iterations, Ohio’s report cards have focused heavily on achievement. Proficiency rates—in layperson’s terms, the percent of students “passing” state exams—are perhaps the most well-known indicator of achievement. Today, proficiency rates on various state exams are included in a report card measure known as Indicators Met. Furthermore, Ohio has long used the Performance Index, a measure that awards additional credit to schools when students achieve at higher levels. The table below depicts how the index works, with the weights and some illustrative data shown. The “% Students” column is what varies from school to school and is determined by the number of students achieving each level on the state assessment.
Districts and schools receive separate letter grades for proficiency rates (via Indicators Met) and the Performance Index. Moreover, the data from these two subcomponents feed into the larger Achievement component rating through a system that places 75 percent weight on Performance Index and 25 percent on Indicators Met. In total, districts and schools receive three letter grades (Overall Achievement, Indicators Met, and Performance Index) based on the achievement of students on state exams.
Ohio should assign a clear rating based on student achievement. But the dual Performance Index and Indicators Met ratings—along with the composite Achievement grade—communicate largely redundant information about how students fare against state standards. As a result, schools tend to receive similar grades on these metrics and low (or high) grades can “pile up” on schools. For instance, the Dayton school district—serving primarily low-income students—received F-F-F ratings on the Performance Index, Indicators Met, and Achievement on its 2017-18 report cards. The multiple ratings that signal similar things about student achievement could be seen as unnecessarily severe for high-poverty districts and schools that tend to struggle on “status” measures.
There are tradeoffs to consider when comparing the use of the Performance Index versus proficiency rates. In an accountability setting, the Performance Index encourages schools to widen their attention to all students, as it offers them additional credit when students reach higher levels. Meanwhile, relying on proficiency rates creates incentives for schools to focus narrowly on students just below the proficiency bar. That being said, proficiency rates have a straightforward interpretation, while the Performance Index is less intuitive. Although proficiency rates are critical to report, many scholars and educators now believe that an index represents a superior approach to accountability, as it encourages schools to serve students along the entire achievement spectrum.[2]
With regard to the Achievement component, we recommend eliminating Indicators Met. Instead, a single Achievement component rating based on Performance Index scores would best convey how all students in a school perform against state academic standards. Proficiency rates, however, should continue to be calculated and reported for informational purposes. ODE should report proficiency rates by grade and subject (and by subgroup) as supporting information on school report cards and in its various data systems. Schools, however, should receive their Achievement rating based solely on their Performance Index scores.
Student achievement remains a central feature of school report cards; families and citizens deserve clear indicators of how students currently perform against state academic standards. With a few modifications, Ohio could create a clearer portrayal of achievement, while also incentivizing schools to lift the achievement of all students—not only those around the proficiency bar.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony and please feel free to contact me with any further questions.
[1] https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/research/back-basics-plan-simplify-and-balance-ohios-school-report-cards.
[2] See for example, Morgan Polikoff, “A letter to the U.S. Department of Education (final signatory list)” (July 22, 2016): https://morganpolikoff.com/2016/07/12/a-letter-to-the-u-s-department-of-education/.
Editor’s Note: Back in September 2018, awaiting the election of our next governor, we at the Fordham Institute began developing a set of policy proposals that we believe can lead to increased achievement and greater opportunities for Ohio students. This is one of those policy proposals.
With Mike DeWine sworn in as Ohio’s 70th governor, and with his administration now well underway, we are proud to roll out the full set of our education policy proposals. You can download the full document, titled Fulfilling the Readiness Promise: Twenty-five education policy ideas for Ohio, at this link, or you can access the individual policy proposals from the links provided here.
Proposal: Maintain rigorous graduation requirements that require students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary for success after high school. To this end, policy makers could retain or slightly modify the end-of-course exam (EOC), SAT, or ACT, or industry-credential pathways that students can currently use to meet requirements. Alternatively, options could be explored that require students to demonstrate academic or career-technical competencies and meet other indicators of readiness (for example, cumulative GPAs or work experience).
Background: State graduation requirements are meant to ensure that students exit high school with the knowledge and skills needed for their next steps in life. For the past decade, Ohio required students to complete coursework and pass the Ohio Graduation Tests to graduate. Yet those tests were set at far too low a level; indeed, they actually assessed eighth-grade-level content, which is not nearly sufficient for true college or career readiness. To lift expectations, Ohio has phased in more challenging graduation standards. Starting with the class of 2018, the state now requires students to meet course requirements and either (1) pass EOC exams, (2) achieve a college-ready score on the ACT or SAT, or (3) earn industry credentials. Within the past few years, however, concerns that these requirements expected too much of students led state leaders to soften graduation standards for the class of 2018. At the urging of the State Board of Education, lawmakers weakened the new requirements, adding options based on alternatives such as senior-year GPAs and attendance rates, internship/volunteer hours, and capstone projects. Although some of the alternatives are worthy in their own right, the decision to permit students to fulfill just two of nine possible options allowed them to avoid demonstrating readiness via the exam- or credential-based pathways. At the end of 2018, the legislature extended graduation options to the classes of 2019 and 2020.
Proposal rationale: To ensure that students exit high school having demonstrated readiness for college or career, Ohio adopted higher graduation standards. But as they’ve come into effect, policy makers have weakened standards. With the debate still ongoing around requirements for the class of 2021 and beyond, lawmakers must provide leadership that assures Ohio’s graduation standards align with indicators of college or career readiness.
Cost: No fiscal impact on the state budget.
Resources: For discussion of student motivation and graduation exams, see Paul Peterson’s chapter “Holding Students to Account” in What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools (2014) and Adam Tyner and Michael Petrilli’s article “The Case for Holding Students Accountable” in Education Next (2018); for a comparison of states’ coursework requirements and college-admission standards, see Laura Jimenez and Scott Sargrad’s report Are High School Diplomas Really a Ticket to College and Work? An Audit of State High School Graduation Requirements, published by the Center for American Progress (2018); for more on states’ alignment of diplomas with college and career readiness, see Monica Almond’s 2017 report Paper Thin? Why All High School Diplomas Are Not Created Equal, published by the Alliance for Excellent Education; and for information about Ohio’s graduation requirements, see ODE’s “Ohio Pathways for a High School Diploma.”
Editor’s Note: Back in September 2018, awaiting the election of our next governor, we at the Fordham Institute began developing a set of policy proposals that we believe can lead to increased achievement and greater opportunities for Ohio students. This is one of those policy proposals.
With Mike DeWine sworn in as Ohio’s 70th governor, and with his administration now well underway, we are proud to roll out the full set of our education policy proposals. You can download the full document, titled Fulfilling the Readiness Promise: Twenty-five education policy ideas for Ohio, at this link, or you can access the individual policy proposals from the links provided here.
Proposal: Ohio should expand eligibility for the income-based EdChoice scholarship to families with incomes at or below four times the federal poverty level and make them available to students in grades K–12. For newly eligible families with incomes between 200 and 400 percent of federal poverty levels, scholarship amounts should be determined based on a sliding scale, with higher-income households receiving lesser sums. Those at or below 200 percent of the poverty level should receive the full scholarship amount, presently set at $4,650 for grades K–8 and $6,000 for grades 9–12. Funding should flow directly from the state rather than through school districts. In conjunction with an expanded scholarship program, Ohio should increase transparency around non-public-school performance by requiring the ODE to report student-growth results.
Background: Over the past two decades, Ohio has provided an increasing number of scholarships (a.k.a. “vouchers”) that enable families to access private schools. Today, Ohio has five programs, each with its own eligibility and program rules: (1) Cleveland Scholarship; (2) Traditional EdChoice; (3) Income-Based EdChoice; (4) Autism; and (5) Jon Peterson Special Needs. As figure 1 indicates, these programs have been phased in gradually, with participation now exceeding 45,000 pupils. But even with the recent expansions, too many youngsters from working-class homes are excluded from such educational opportunities. Traditional EdChoice is restricted to students who would otherwise attend low-performing public schools, generally located in Ohio’s highest-poverty communities; Cleveland is only open to children residing in that district. Meanwhile, the newer Income-Based EdChoice is open only to children in grades K–5 and those whose family income is at or below twice the federal poverty level (about $50,000 for a family of four); the Autism and Peterson scholarships are limited to students with special needs. Due to these eligibility constraints, private school options remain out of reach for many lower- and middle-income families unable to pay out of pocket for tuition. In terms of transparency for students’ academic outcomes, EdChoice and Cleveland participants must take state exams, and proficiency rates are reported (at an aggregate level) by their school of attendance.
Figure 1: Student participation in Ohio’s private school scholarship programs, 1997–2017
Data source: American Federation for Children, School Choice Yearbook (2016–17).
Proposal rationale: Many working-class parents—including those with income levels characteristic of first responders, nurses, and teachers—remain hard pressed to afford a private education for their children, should that be their preference. Ohio can open more opportunities for such families by providing financial assistance through an expanded Income-Based EdChoice program. Using a sliding scale to set scholarship amounts when family income exceeds 200 percent of federal poverty would allow Ohio to continue to target the bulk of its scholarship aid to the neediest families. Lastly, introducing a student-growth metric would improve public and parent understanding of the effectiveness of private schools educating scholarship students, apart from their baseline achievement.
Cost: Because the proposal funds scholarships directly rather than via deductions from school districts, the state would incur additional costs to fund an expanded Income-Based EdChoice. These costs would be offset by a reduction in state funds going to the students’ former schools. The exact fiscal impact depends on a variety of factors, including scholarship take-up rates, the state share index where students would have otherwise attended school, and whether the district funding was impacted by either caps or guarantees. The Legislative Service Commission has estimated that broadening eligibility in a way similar to this proposal may cost an additional $50 to $80 million per year, but that estimate doesn’t appear account for changes to the state-share index, which could reduce the cost to the state.
Resources: Information about private school scholarship programs across the nation can be found in the American Federation of Children’s report School Choice Yearbook (2016–17). For a review of research on scholarship programs, see Greg Forster’s report A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice, published by the Friedman Foundation (2016). For details on Ohio’s scholarship programs, including proficiency data, see the ODE web page “Scholarships.” And for a fiscal analysis on legislation (SB 85 of the 132nd General Assembly) proposing to expand scholarships, see the Legislative Service Commission’s “Fiscal Note & Local Impact Statement” (2017).
