BuckeyeBlog

An article in the Columbus Dispatch today touched on a few interesting issues. The main point of the article was about how much money the state’s Medicaid program (and, by extension, the state’s taxpayers) could save if the state placed as many people in home and community-based long term care instead of nursing homes. Since nursing homes are far more expensive for most people, it is likely the state could save up to $140 million a year if it just met the national average for home and community-based care.

This is something I’ve written about before. The state should do all it can to ensure that Medicaid dollars (the largest item in the state budget) are being spent in the most cost-effective way possible. The long-term care system is not living up to that standard. But as the Dispatch points out, there is a potential problem in trying to get the state to the national average for home and community-based care: there aren’t enough younger people who would be needed to provide this care. As has been discussed in other contexts, younger people aren’t staying in Ohio nor are they coming to the state. It just isn’t a place that draws people to live in it.

What this points out is that state policymakers are going to have trouble addressing the state’s rising Medicaid spending issues without addressing the more fundamental issues plaguing the state. Reforms like eliminating the income tax, instituting right-to-work legislation, universal vouchers, and the like would make the state an attractive place for younger people. Fixing long-term Medicaid care is important; fixing the underlying issues that are hurting Ohio is even more important.

Buckeye Institute President David Hansen and Education Policy Director Matthew Carr spoke with 1370  WSPD-AM’s Brian Wilson Thursday during a Liberty and Learning tour.  Listen as they discuss the recently released Buckeye Institute roadmap to educational success, “A Child-Centered Solution to School Finance in Ohio,” charter schools and education transparency.

…the EdChoice Scholarship program!  And public schools!  And parents!  And kids!  And most definitely, the free market!

Why are there so many winners this week?  Because the Friedman Foundation is announcing a new report that reveals that school choice is good for everyone.

This Wednesday, the study by Friedman Foundation Senior Fellow Greg Forster of our EdChoice Scholarship Program will be released to the public.  I can tell you that his research of the poorly performing public schools that lost children to EdChoice will reveal academic improvement for the kids left behind in those schools.  He’s not the only researcher to determine this fact, but to have evidence here, in our own backyard, of the success of school choice is truly encouraging.

In fact, the only losers here are the opponents of school choice.  When an EdChoice child succeeds at a private school – he’s a winner.  When a public school student succeeds because competition improved her school – she’s a winner.

So when will the naysayers stop with the ‘doom and gloom’ reports school choice harming the public school system and get on the freedom bandwagon?  When they decide kids should be the priority in education.

Matthew Carr, the Buckeye Institute’s Education Policy Director spoke last Thursday at our “Milton Friedman Legacy in Ohio” event at the Columbus Athletic Club. Thursday would have been Dr. Friedman’s 96th birthday.

Click here to watch Matthew’s full presentation.

(Alternative Formats: Google Video or Blip, and the PowerPoint Presentation)

I’m lucky enough to be in the great city of Chicago at the ALEC convention, listening to former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist speak on school choice. You want a city where people want to live? Let them stay in the city with their kids, by allowing them to place their child AND their tax money in a school they choose.

One of the best parts, Norquist says, is that suddenly teachers unions bargain less for severance and pension, the things that most affect teachers about to leave, and start to negotiate working conditions for teachers who are staying.

Dennis J. Willard of the Akron Beacon Journal writes today that Governor Strickland’s “Conversations on Education” appear to be a sincere attempt to bring about meaningful reform:

It would be easy to dismiss Gov. Ted Strickland’s 12-city tour on education reform as a dog-and-pony show.

To do so, however, would be to prematurely demean the governor’s sincere intentions to seriously address Ohio’s woeful education funding system.

And we should at least give the governor an unimpeded path as he attempts to listen to Ohio.

On Tuesday, Strickland kicked off his ”Conversations on Education” in Columbus before an audience of about 200 people representing educators, parents, students, business owners and others.

The crowd talked about infusing students with passion, making school fun, crafting individual education plans to meet the student’s needs and talents, longer school years, all-day kindergarten, the return of the arts and physical fitness, and less emphasis on testing…

…Still, Strickland admitted afterward that he didn’t hear anything particularly new.

(more…)

National Review Online has posted an interview with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.  Since leaving office, he has remained involved in education reform through the Foundation for Excellence in Education.  One part of the Q&A caught my attention in particular: 

NRO: In your opening remarks at the conference, you said that our education system is like “an 8-track system living in an iPod world”? What changes do you think need to be made to bring our education system into the 21st century?

   (more…)

Youngstown teacher union boss Will Bagnola should be credited for candor in revealing the YEA’s true interests in thwarting kids from getting the education they need from a charter school. According to the Youngstown Vindicator:

Will Bagnola, teachers union president, said the Youngstown Education Association’s chief concern was that sending city kids to the charter school could result in job losses for teachers in the regular system.

(more…)

Washington, D.C. school choice leader Virginia Walden Ford talks about the importance of families sharing their experience in the scholarship program. My favorite quote from this clip:

Legislators need to see the faces of the children who will benefit from their parents having choices.

Go here for more Voices of School Choice.

Last week Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson reported that the Cincinnati Public School (CPS) district has found a loophole for denying students eligibility for the EdChoice voucher program. In short, any student in a school that has been rated as being in Academic Emergency or Academic Watch (the equivalent of an F or D grade respectively) for at least two of the previous three years is eligible to receive a voucher. However, apparently if two or more failing schools are consolidated into a new building the clock on eligibility starts over again. The students moved into the new building must endure two more years in a sub-par school performance before being eligible again.

Recently, CPS has consolidated four failing schools (all EdChoice eligible): Heberle and George W. Hays into the new Hays-Porter elementary school and Central Fairmount and Whittier into the new Rees E. Price Elementary.

As Bronson reports:

Let’s underline something else: Kids who wanted to learn, whose parents wanted something better than a new building with the same old mismanagement, fear and chaos, could have switched to safer private schools with Ohio EdChoice vouchers.

But they were blocked by CPS, voucher advocates say.

Thanks to a state loophole, a failing school with the same students and staff suddenly becomes a successful school when it gets a new building with a new state identification number. That restarts the clock for at least two more years of failing report cards before students are eligible for vouchers again.

Some Hays-Porter students came from Heberle Elementary – which was on the bubble, with declining scores. The rest, from failing George W. Hays Elementary, were eligible for tuition vouchers of $4,375 each.

But their failing school report cards were magically erased by a new building that turned out to be worse than the old schools.

To be fair, this may all just be a coincidence and we are in no way implying malevolent intent on the part of CPS administrators. But it would be much easier to believe such a benign explanation if CPS didn’t have a history of trying to skirt the EdChoice rules. As the paper notes in a sidebar: “Cincinnati Public Schools has bent the rules before to sabotage vouchers. Last year, it was the only district in Ohio that refused to provide a public list of about 1,500 students who were eligible for EdChoice vouchers.” In the end, the district provided a list of eligible students but neglected to include their last names.

Rather than responding to competition by improving the quality of their schools, districts may have decided to respond by capitalizing on loopholes and other games. Unfortunately, the only people they’re really cheating are their own students.