I try to answer the "So what?" question
Vouchers are unconstitutional, charter schools are failing, both cost children in public schools about $3 billion and property taxes are out of control. What can be done? I have some thoughts...
Ok, everyone. I think I have laid out the problems with Ohio’s education funding and policy situation pretty clearly: Ohio’s private school tuition subsidy program is unconstitutional and costs taxpayers $1.2 billion a year, Ohio’s Charter Schools have failed students for 30 years and are now costing taxpayers $1.6 billion a year, and property taxes are out of control thanks to the state spending less of its operating budget on students in public schools than at any point on record.
I know. Not awesome. Which then begs the question: So what? I mean, what can be done to fix this mess?
First of all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and this Ohio education mess took Ohio Republicans 30 years to build with nearly uninterrupted, one-party rule.
But there are solutions that could dramatically improve our situation. And it doesn’t involve killing Charter Schools or even the unconstitutional private school tuition subsidies (for this exercise, I’m going to assume the Ohio Supreme Court may allow them in some form, even though I’m not convinced the Court will allow them in any form; I just want to assume the worst and hope for the best!).
Charter Schools
Let’s start with the largest budget item — the $1.6 billion-a-year Charter School program. We know three topline problems with the program: 1) the schools are failing spectacularly and always have, 2) the schools receive more per pupil state revenue on average than 97 percent of Ohio’s public school students receive, and 3) they spend about double the percentage of their revenue on administrators as Public School Districts do.
So let’s address each issue in turn:
Academic Accountability
Look, I had high hopes for HB 2 when it passed a decade ago. But it ain’t working. The rate of Charter Schools receiving a failing grade has remained steady throughout. More telling: While only 30 Ohio Charter Schools have been closed under the state’s closure law1 since 2003, only 11 have since HB 2 went into effect. And none — not a single Ohio Charter School — has been closed under the state’s Closure Law since 2020. The last time Ohio went this long between Charter School closures under its Closure Law was at the height of its so-called Wild, Wild West period when Charter School operators were the largest political contributors to Ohio Republicans. Here’s the list of Ohio Charter Schools that were closed under the state’s Closure Law, by the way:
So the accountability system, which relies on non-profit Charter School Sponsors to do the work of closing down the schools and the state funding that pays for their other ventures (conflict of interest, perhaps? Spoiler Alert: That’s next week’s post!), needs repaired. Here are three things that can be done to address this issue:
Toughen up the Closure Law. Current law allows the Charter School Sponsor and Charter School to establish the academic standards through their contract. That’s clearly failing. So here’s the idea:
Force Ohio Charter Schools to close when they meet the definition of a “challenged” School District — a designation that has traditionally opened up Public School Districts to Charter Schools — for two consecutive years.
The concept here is simple:
If a School District is struggling so much that the state allows Charter Schools to take a shot, shouldn’t we shut down those same Charter Schools if they’re providing worse educational options for two consecutive years?
The definition of a “challenged” school district is currently any district that receives less than 3 stars on its overall State Report Card grade. Currently, 19 percent of Ohio Public School students from 9 percent of all Ohio Public School Districts attend Public School Districts that meet this definition. And 58 percent of students in Ohio’s Charter Schools (representing more than 1/2 of all Ohio Charter Schools) meet this definition.
I know. Shocking, right? That 6 in 10 students in Ohio’s Charter Schools attend a school that would be considered “challenged” if they were a Public School District?
Fiscal Impact: If those Charter Schools closed under this new regime, it would return $685 million to the state’s K-12 foundation funding line item2, allowing it to inch closer to fully funding its own school funding formula. Importantly, it would also maintain Ohio Charter Schools as a nearly $1 billion-a-year state venture.
Funding Formula Changes
Ohio’s Charter Schools are funded using the same calculations as Public School Districts, even though Ohio’s Charter Schools have far fewer costs associated with them. So on solution is to simply build a Charter School-specific formula using actual costs for Charter Schools in the calculation.
New Formula: While constructing a completely new Charter School funding formula would take much longer than this blogpost would allow, I can look at just one aspect of it, so you can get a flavor of the impact. The average teacher salary in a Charter School is about 65 percent less than a Public School District, yet Charter Schools get paid as if their teachers make the same as Public School Districts.
Fiscal Impact: If you only changed the funding for an Ohio Charter School to include the cost of teachers in Ohio Charter Schools, you’d drop the cost by another $170 million, just on the base teacher cost. But teacher salaries are included in other cost calculations used in the Charter School formula too. So we’re probably looking at a $250-350 million additional cost savings. But that’s just a back-of-the-napkin estimate.
Money following the Child. If you didn’t want to re-do an entire funding formula for Ohio Charter Schools, you could require that money actually follow the child in Ohio. So here’s the plan: Every Charter School Student can only receive the amount of state aid they would have received in their Public School District of residence.
Fiscal Impact: This change would drive an additional $828 million back into the school funding formula for the 85 percent of students who attend Ohio’s Public School Districts. And (if you did nothing else), it would maintain Ohio’s Charter School program at a $750 million or so level.
Tie Quality to Funding
One way of doing both things here is to require that any student who leaves a Public School District for a Charter School must leave a lower-performing school building for a higher-performing Charter School. This is similar to what former state Sen. Joe Schiavoni (currently a Mahoning County Judge) proposed nearly a decade ago.
Fiscal Impact: It’s nearly impossible to make this calculation without tons of time and access to detailed state Charter School transfer data. However, if you look at the overall failure of Ohio Charter Schools compared with their Public School counterparts, it’s pretty clear that a significant number of Charter Schools would not clear this bar, especially online Charter Schools. So, again, a several hundred million dollar savings for Ohio taxpayers would result.
Overall, these changes — a combination of some or at least one or two — would benefit kids in Public Schools as well as Charter Schools!
The worst-performing Charter Schools would close almost immediately. The bloated state funding they’re currently receiving (based on costs in Public School Districts not Ohio Charter Schools) would be right-sized, with incentives for charters to boost teacher salaries because that would result in more state funding. And Ohio would still have a significant Charter School program costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Miscellaneous Provisions
Return oversight of the state’s Charter Schools to publicly accountable entities. Currently, unaccountable non-profits use Charter School oversight to fund their non-profit missions and no other states do this to the extent we do. Let’s have school districts or the state monitor Charter Schools, just like nearly every other state in the country does it.
Immediately close all Ohio Dropout Recovery Schools that can’t graduate at least 50 percent of their students in 4 years. Current state “standards” are met if schools can graduate fewer than 1 in 10 over 4 years. Ridiculous.
No for-profit operators. Currently, hundreds of Ohio Charter Schools are run by for-profit entities (which explains a lot of Charter Schools’ disproportionate expenditure on administrative overhead). Let’s ban the profit motive from Ohio’s educational sector, just as Ohio Republicans proposed doing many years ago.
E-Schools have to prove they have the students we’re paying them to educate before they receive a single penny in state funding. Making e-school funding retrospective rather than prospective will ensure no more ECOT scandals can occur. Just as an aside, this result should make Ohio’s accidental Sen. Jon Husted happy since he’s the only recipient of an ECOT honorary diploma, which he received while the school was busy ripping off taxpayers worse than anyone in our state’s history. Just saying.
Adopt real E-School standards. Ohio famously created E-School standards in 2003, then didn’t adopt them thanks to then-House Speaker Jon Husted (sense a pattern? I’m looking at you, Ohio voter). Let’s adopt real E-School standards that hold them accountable and ensure they’re effectively educating real kids, not the phantoms ECOT were “educating”, right Sen. Husted?
Charter Schools get their own funding line item. Removing Charter School funding from the same line item that pays for Public School Districts will bring transparency to the Charter School program and ensure they have to advocate for their funding, just like everyone else. It’s incredible to me that a $1.6 billion-a-year program has no line item in the state budget and is able to hide behind the funding for Ohio’s public school students (in addition to literally preventing the state from fully funding its own Public School student formula).
Bottom Line
The overall goal is this:
Right-size Ohio’s notoriously underperforming Charter School sector while improving the overall quality of all our schools, including Charters, by funding educational opportunities that perform best.
I’m not advocating for the end of Ohio Charter Schools.
I am advocating for an end to their 30-year, unchecked, taxpayer funded bender without any meaningful accountability for their consistent failure.
Now for those unconstitutional private school tuition subsidies…
Unconstitutional Private School Tuition Subsidies
Look. I think these broad-based tuition subsidies are unconstitutional and should be eliminated all together. And I think that the Ohio Supreme Court, if it looks at the circumstances of Ohio’s EdChoice program objectively, will agree.
However, I also live in the real world. And I know given how powerful the people are who think we should be shoveling billions of our tax dollars to private, mostly religious schools so the tuitions of parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools — and always have — can be reduced. So the Ohio Supreme Court may figure out a way to let them survive in some form.
So this analysis is not in any way a concession that Ohio’s private school tuition subsidies are not unconstitutional. They are. What I’m doing is addressing the program if it somehow survives judicial scrutiny. Clear? Ok. On to the policy changes.
Only Fund Movement
Currently, an estimated 2/3 of all private school students whose schools get these unconstitutional subsidies never were in public schools to begin with. Remember the old reason for the program? That we needed to “rescue” kids from “failing” public schools?
You never hear that anymore. Now it’s all choice for choice’s sake. And that’s because Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman has made it his life’s work to use your tax dollars to lower private school tuitions at religious schools for families who can already afford to send their kids there. Because he thinks that’s his ticket to Heaven? Who knows?
So here’s how you address that:
Only provide a tuition subsidy if the student attended public school for at least 180 days prior to applying for the subsidy. This would ensure the program is fulfilling its initial intent — helping families afford private school options if their public school isn’t working for their kid.
Fiscal Impact: Cutting EdChoice by 2/3 would return about $800 million to the public school student line item and still allow the EdChoice program to be more than 4 times the size it was when I left the Ohio House in 2010.
Money Follow the Students
As with Charter Schools’ funding, private school tuition subsidies are based on public school funding amounts. And, like Charters, private schools don’t pay their employees nearly as much as their public school counterparts.
Create a tuition subsidy formula where the amount of state funding the private school receives is what it costs the private school to educate the student, not the public school they’re leaving. This will address the obvious problem with students in nearly 2/3 of all Ohio Public School Districts receiving less state funding than what high school EdChoice subsidy recipients get.
Fiscal Impact: Without creating an actual formula and the fact that information on Ohio private schools is a data black box, it’s tough to make an estimate here. I think it’s reasonable to think tuition subsidy payments would be cut at least in half by this new formula, freeing up $600 million or so for public school students.
Cap Tuition at the Subsidy
When this program started, no private school could charge more than what the state tuition subsidy was. Now they can.
Cap the tuition for any students receiving subsidies at the amount of the subsidy. This would have a knock-on effect of probably preventing many of the larger, high-tuition private schools from taking the subsidies anymore. There has been a rash of schools who expel subsidy recipients for failing to make additional tuition payments.
Fiscal Impact: Again, it’s tough to tell. But it’s fair to say that at least 1/2 of the private schools taking subsidies wouldn’t be taking them if they couldn’t charge additional tuition on top of the subsidy. So, again, $600 million may be a fair guess of this alone — obviously less if the other provisions are adopted.
Accountability
One of the most outrageous facts about Ohio’s 30-year run with private school tuition subsidies is not a single penny has ever been audited. We have no idea if the money has been spent educating kids or buying awesome cars for administrators. It’s simply mind-numbing how a program that has spent about $8+ billion of your tax dollars is completely unaccountable.
In addition, Ohio private schools can choose from 40 different tests for their students to take, rather than the much more rigorous standardized tests (not that I think that’s a good thing, mind you) that Ohio pubic school students take. So here’s the plan:
Any private school that takes a tuition subsidy has to produce a report that explains how they spent the money and verify the student they claim to be educating actually exists. This will help taxpayers see how their money is being spent and also prevent any potential ECOT-like scandals from happening in Ohio’s private schools
Fiscal Impact: There will probably be many private schools that don’t like this scrutiny, as last year’s attempt to do a limited version of this proved. So, again, several hundred million dollars would likely be returned to public coffers. And we’d probably catch a few ECOT-like problems, which would also return funding to taxpayers.
Any private school that takes a tuition subsidy has to test those recipients using the same battery of state tests that public school students take. Kind of a no-brainer, but, again, they balked at doing this last year. So, you know.
Fiscal Impact: Again, most likely several private schools wouldn’t want to do this, so probably another hundred million or so dollars returned.
Pay Parents, not Schools
One of the major issues for proponents in their current lawsuit is that not a single subsidy goes to a parent or student; they go directly to the private school. This provision would address that.
All tuition subsidies are paid to the parent, who then decides which private school will get the subsidy. This is how the program used to work, but the subsidization zealots changed that a few years ago. This restores the program to its original intent.
Fiscal Impact: Probably minimal, since this is an accounting issue. But there may be a few schools that back out if they’re not guaranteed the money anymore.
Require Private Schools to Accept Any Recipient
Another major issue for the proponents is they can discriminate who they accept. This provision attempts to address that clear problem.
Private schools have to accept whoever chooses to attend their school with a subsidy. The highly selective private schools will hate this. But welcome to the concept of public funding, guys! Public schools don’t get to choose their students. Private Schools shouldn’t get to choose either, especially as the program approaches $1.2 billion.
Fiscal Impact: This would probably eliminate many private schools from the subsidy swamp. So we’re probably looking at another several hundred million dollar savings for taxpayers.
Miscellaneous
A portion of the subsidy has to be re-paid to the Public School District to reimburse their transportation costs. One of the ongoing issues with this program and Charters is school districts still have to transport kids to these schools. Having the transportation reimbursed by the private school is only fair.
No subsidy funding can pay for religious education. This would help avoid the obvious Establishment Clause problem the program currently has by requiring private schools to pay for religious instruction from other sources.
Create a report card for private schools. Look. If you’re going to provide billions of dollars to private schools to subsidize their tuitions, we should know how they stack up vs. public schools. So let’s grade them on that. And just so you know, public schools have traditionally cleaned private schools’ clocks on performance — more than 8 in 10 kids taking subsidies in one study came from higher performing districts. It’s currently next to impossible to compare Ohio’s public and private school performance because, like I said earlier, private schools get to pick the tests their kids take while publics don’t.
Subsidies get their own funding line item. Removing subsidy funding from the same line item that pays for Public School Districts will bring transparency to the program and ensure they have to advocate for their funding, just like everyone else. It’s incredible to me that a $1.2 billion-a-year program has no line item in the state budget and is able to hide behind the funding for Ohio’s public school students (in addition to literally preventing the state from fully funding its own Public School student formula). This is assuming, of course, that the program is ruled to be constitutional in some way — a conclusion with which I strongly disagree. As I’ve said before!
Conclusion
I’m sorry this post was so long. Doesn’t fit my style, usually. But I did want to put out there — especially at the beginning of a statewide election cycle — some ideas for folks to chew over as they speak with voters and Ohioans throughout the year.
Here’s the bottom line for me: For too long, Ohio leaders have overvalued Charter Schools and subsidizing wealthy adults’ private school tuition bills. That has forced Public School Districts to go for more frequent and larger property tax levies, pissing off all of us.
These provisions I’m proposing would maintain a school choice program on the order of about $1 billion total (still freaking huge), but free up the necessary state funding to fully pay for the state’s own Public School Student funding formula, which in turn will greatly reduce the need for and size of future tax levies and lead to some modest local tax relief.
Simply put: Invest in our public schools and cut our local taxes, or continue this bloated investment in both schools that fail our kids and programs that are unconstitutional, all to raise our local taxes.
The choice is yours, my friends.
And don’t forget to thank Sen. Jon Husted and his buddies for all this when you see them around this year! Just like ECOT did Husted all those years ago!
Lots of charters have closed for other reasons, financial mostly, which is odd considering how generous Ohio is to them. But I digress.