Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
MONEY'S NOT SOLE ANSWER TO OHIO'S EDUCATION MESS
By Charles A. Byrne
Crain's Cleveland Business, August 25, 1997
Conservative Republican state representatives and their supporters secured a remarkable victory for voters in Ohio in the mad rush to shove more taxes down the throats of her taxpayers. They stopped the education juggernaut en route to the biggest tax increase in Ohio's history for an enterprise that has enjoyed continued increases far beyond the cost of living for generations.
An industry that has seen its enrollment decline 25% while seeing like failures in competencies. At the same time, inflation adjusted costs have increased over 200%. Any other such organization with these results would be shut down. Not so if you are a government body that can continue to function poorly and cry all the way to the bank.
We further have no reason to suspect that any tax increase would satisfy the court as to what may further the system to be "through and efficient" as they cited.
I well know the assessment of learning is difficult to evaluate, but the one sure test of performance is the employer who has great difficulty finding able help, and millions spent on "remediating" those entering colleges today. (Ohio spent $32 million remediating those entering Ohio state colleges in 1996.)
Countless studies indicate money per se does not translate into achievement, but the over 500 school districts that sued the state and their leader, William Phills, will have none of it. They will not be satisfied until Ohio is reduced to a federal vassal with an economy that consists of "taking in each other's laundry."
The artifice of securing voter approval was the easy way out for legislators and the governor who together do not have the guts to address substantive educational issues in general, or to confront the "education mafia" in particular.
As presently constituted, our education expenditures for 1997 will exceed $14 billion for K-12 public-funded education, a pittance of which is passed on to alternative schools. We spend over $5.25 billion of state money and $9 billion in property taxes. This $14.25 billion represents over $100 per month for every man, woman and child in Ohio.
Though modest accountability measures were passed by the Legislature, what remains in place from the past continues to strangle genuine reform and falls far short of offering citizens anything but empty platitudes. We are less prepared for the age ahead and the fast-moving service economy racing at breakneck speed.
The core curriculum that the World War II cohort knew and learned well -- often with as little as eight years of schooling -- far surpassed what is expected from the preponderance of today's children.
Granted, the role of urban public-funded schools in particular has expanded to where they are full social service centers. Nonetheless, countless alternative urban schools from the same pathological milieu are succeeding in educating their charges at much less cost. Many are faith-related schools, a "value added" addition that works.
The governor and Legislature are to be congratulated in initiating two education experiments that should prove meritorious in evaluating future directions in Ohio. The Cleveland Scholarship Plan offering an emancipating voucher system for the poor of Cleveland and the soon-to-be-instituted "community schools" (generally known as charter schools) for Lucas County (Toledo area).
The former has completed a year of schooling for close to 2,000 students and their improvement was found to be measurably sound. It will be continued while awaiting the Ohio Supreme Court's constitutional "take."
This issue won't go away; it will go the U.S. Supreme Court, will be approved, and will be part of the renaissance of education in America. Parents in the first year of the Cleveland schools program are delighted with the school culture, program execution and scholastic success of their children.
Meanwhile, I will urge my state school board colleagues to consider a comprehensive study on how computer technology can better be utilized in country districts in particular, by using satellite means to spare building too many "housing units" for children. (We are in the process of spending millions in building upgrades).
Along that line, Superintendent John Goff has asked us to consider a joint high school program for some districts and let elementary and middle schools remain in place. The idea of shared industrial tax revenue among many districts, not just the one blessed with such a facility, has merit, too.
The sharing of administrators and/or combining small districts with nearby neighbors has to be reviewed as well. Education funds must go for education, not for the proliferation of administrators (fiefdoms?).
State treasurer Ken Blackwell supports a "child-centered," state-funded grant system administered through "education service centers" at the county level, whereby parents are empowered to choose the school that fits their needs. This offers choice options to those not empowered so that they can move into a system that works. Such parent authority begets the parent ownership that accounts for education productivity. The court would have to find such a program "thorough and efficient," methinks.
Yes, there are several considerations we must consider, for money alone has failed for a quarter of a century, and it hasn't worked for far too many. We have to "color outside the lines" for a change and see if we can't deliver better results, rather than beating the same old dead horse.
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Charles A. Byrne is the 11th district representative to the Ohio Board of Education