BuckeyeBlog

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Brian Wilson radio show in Toledo. During the segment we spoke about the current state of school choice in Ohio, problems with informing parents about their options, and the accountability argument that continues to be fought between supporters and opponents. Later in the program, Brian interviewed Governor Strickland and asked for his opinion about giving parents the right to choose the school best suited to their child’s needs. The Governor’s response was truly Orwellian (around 9 minutes into the segment): “I think private schools are fine, but I don’t believe the public should be expected to pay for a private education when the public has no oversight as to how those resources would be spent or utilized.”

The Governor’s argument here is very much what Orwell referred to as “newspeak“, and in particular an attempt to reduce a concept to a simple dichotomy that does not allow for any gray areas of meaning. According to Strickland there is only public and private, and apparently any institution that is not completely controlled and operated by the state (or a local) government is a private entity that cannot be trusted with public funds.

There are two significant flaws with this logic. The first is that there is in fact a significant middle ground between public and private, and the line continues to be blurred. In the academic literature, and increasingly in the real world of policymaking, the old top-down models of government have been replaced by public-private partnerships, network governance, and the reinventing government model popularized by Osborne and Gaebler. The state should focus on what it does best, steering policy, and work with the private and nonprofit sectors that can focus on rowing, or actually handling the day-to-day implementation of policy. In short, these new conceptions for governing highlight the significant gray area between public and private institutions. The Governor’s dichotomy is a false one, and anachronistic at that.

The second flaw with the Governor’s argument is that private schools do face public oversight. Far from enjoying total autonomy from the state as Strickland suggests, private schools are subject to a fair amount of state regulation. A new report from the Friedman Foundation studied the regulatory environment for private schools in every state, and Ohio received a C-. The report card for Ohio makes it clear that the “no oversight” argument is simply wrong.

Ultimately, what I think all of this points to is the danger of believing that the public interest can only be served by government-run institutions. To be sure, there are some areas where public-private partnerships work better than others and it is a debate worth having about its applicability to K-12 education. But the reflexively anti-private school arguments of choice opponents are nothing more than sophistry and do nothing to further the debate we ought to be having.

Update:

The House vote on SB 57 has been delayed until probably June 10th, since Representative Widowfield, a bill supporter, resigned from the House yesterday and was unable to vote today.

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The Special Needs voucher, SB 57, may be debated and voted on in the Ohio House today.

Interested citizens can follow the debate here on the Ohio Channel.

Warning: there may be scenes that will anger or disappoint you. For example, the pervasive distain many legislators will have for parents’ abilities to choose what is best for their children, or, their unquestioning embrace of socialistic principle in defending a one-size-fits-all government monopoly of public education.

As we heard in the Senate debate, there will be gross distortions of the facts, particularly the cost of the program. When any number more than $70 million in terms of money spent though the voucher program is mentioned, know that to be a whopper. And the opportunity for the program to save money for taxpayers (because the vouchers are capped in certain instances and because private schools – namely your community’s Catholic, Christian or Jewish schools well-versed at efficient operations – are simply less expensive that public schools) will probably not be aired.

Finally, watch for a poison-pill amendment perhaps coming from OEA-beholden Republican Randy Gardner. Rep. Gardner may propose what will sound like a good idea, to remove the voucher funding from the current flow of state money to local schools for special needs children.

But think of the perverse incentive this creates for public schools: if they are able to get rid of their special needs students into the Voucher program, they still get to keep all of the state funding as if the child were still filling a chair in their building. Also, the competitive effects – of public schools improving their activity because of parental/market accountability — that have been found in Florida would no longer apply. There would be no ‘whip of competition’ to condition the public schools to perform better.

The true purpose of this amendment will be to redesign the voucher as a costly, duplicative program thereby giving Gov. Strickland a more defensible excuse to veto it.

As S.B. 57, passed by the Ohio Senate, gears up in the Ohio House, there’s little doubt that the teachers unions, Democrat party and Gov. Ted Strickland will be angling toward the veto. The bill would establish scholarships for students with disabilities.

Strickland’s view is, “Funding private schools with public tax dollars deprives the state and its taxpayers of proper oversight .”

Yep. Proper oversight.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, a few free individuals are allowed to do what actually works, rather than report to bureaucracies and do the happy dance when their ignorance ratios move from 56 percent to 55 percent. Teachers, students, parents and those who care about getting actual things done for actual children have opened a school that avoids patterns in the decoration, installs obscuring, movable screens over mirrors – all things that are important to autistic students.

Autistic students gained their ability to benefit from funds spent for them several years ago, thanks to efforts by many people, including state Rep. Jon Peterson, R-Delaware.

Too bad students with other disabilities won’t be able to do the same.

Parents, kids and the principle of freedom won a victory in the Ohio Senate today, although by a narrow margin. The vote on SB 57, the Special Needs Scholarship was 17 to 15 in favor. All Democrats voted against the bill, along with Republican Senators Stivers, Schuring and Grendell. Now SB 57 moves to the Ohio House.

Kudos to Senate Education Chair Joy Padgett, Senate President Bill Harris and SB 57’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin Coughlin for their leadership in shepherding the measure to passage.

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Up for a vote today in the Ohio Senate Education Committee is a bill giving families of children with disabilities new options for their education. The provisions of Senate Bill 57, also known as a special needs voucher, were passed by the General Assembly last year as part of the budget bill but were vetoed by Governor Strickland.

The Governor gave two reasons for his veto: first, school choice programs lack accountability; and, second, school choice programs harm public schools and the children who remain in them. (more…)

In justifying his veto last year of a voucher program intended to help disabled children achieve better in their educations, Governor Strickland offered up two of the teacher unions’ tried and true critiques of school choice. One was the fallacy that regulatory accountability is both effective and the only tool for conforming public expenditures to public goals. We’ll explode this notion elsewhere on BuckeyeInstitute.org in a couple of days or so.

Strickland then offered the familiar assertion that school choice hurts the children who remain in public schools, through draining resources in a way that would harm “…the vast majority of students, including disabled students, who attend public schools.”

Unfortunately, the facts don’t back the Governor up on this assertion.

The Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have looked at the Florida McKay Scholarship, the program model for Ohio’s special needs voucher, and found that:

Public school students with relatively mild disabilities made statistically significant test score improvements in both math and reading as more nearby private schools began participation in the McKay program. That is, contrary to the hypothesis that school choice harms students who remain in public schools, this study finds that students eligible for vouchers who remained in the public schools made greater academic improvements as their school choices increased.

Disabled public school students’ largest gains as exposure to McKay increased were made by those diagnosed as having the mildest learning disabilities. The largest category of students enjoying the greatest gains, known as Specific Learning Disability, accounts for 61.2% of disabled students and 8.5% of all students in Florida.

The academic proficiency of students diagnosed with relatively severe disabilities was neither helped nor harmed by increased exposure to the McKay program.

Strickland has threaten to veto SB 57, Sen. Coughlin’s and Rep. Peterson’s latest version of a statewide special needs scholarship.

If he follows through on his threat, we’re wondering exactly how the Governor will explain to the parents of disabled children across Ohio, both those who would have taken advantage of the voucher and those who wouldn’t have, why he chose to ignore the facts about a special needs voucher and favored the prerogatives of teacher unionists and other adults over the needs of their children.

For a fuller briefing on the special needs voucher, visit BuckeyeVoices.org where a podcast with report author Winters has just been posted.

Ohio’s popular Ed Choice school voucher program continues to grow. Today is the sign-up deadline for the coming school year and it’s clear that Ohio parents want educational choice.

The program has enjoyed sustained growth since it was implemented three years ago. In fact, this year’s applications have already surpassed last year’s by 12 percent according to the Ohio Department of Education. Parents seeking information on the program should contact School Choice Ohio at (614) 223-1555.

Read more about the program in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer.

Yesterday, Buckeye Institute Education Policy Analyst Beth Lear testified before the Senate Education Committee to refute specific findings of a labor union-backed report critical of Ohio’s successful Autism Scholarship program.

Senate Bill 57, currently under deliberation in the Senate, will expand the special needs choice program.

The Cincinnati Enquirer had a great column yesterday by Peter Bronson that notes an interesting trend in one Cincinnati neighborhood:

While most of the city has been losing families to suburbs that offer more land, newer houses, lower taxes and better schools, this neighborhood is a magnet for young professionals with large, growing families.

Why is this happening? EdChoice vouchers. Orthodox Jewish families are being attracted into the city so they can be near a private Cincinnati Jewish school. These are young professionals, the same type of people who have been fleeing urban settings since the 1960s.

As Bronson notes:

This is not your typical economic development plan. But it shows how a strong school can glue a neighborhood together. These families bring contributions far more valuable than the cost of vouchers.

Freedom as a way to spur economic development? Who would have imagined?

The way states calculate their high school graduation rates has been big news the past few days. The New York Times carried a story about the US Department of Education’s plan to require all states to use the same formula for determining graduation and dropout rates. Their decision, according to the Times, is based on the widely accepted belief that states currently use inaccurate and misleading methods for determining these rates.

Recent graduates line up at South High School in Cleveland, last August. Research shows the city’s public school district had the third highest gap between urban and suburban graduation rates (35.9%) during the 2003-04 school year. Baltimore City’s public school system had the highest at 47%.
By Tony Dejak, AP

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