In recent weeks, two national publications have assigned Ohio grades for its education policies and outcomes. The first, “Quality Counts,” came courtesy of Education Week. It revealed that Ohio’s grades have fallen from previous years, moving the state down in national rankings. The second was a group of report cards that rated states on their support for public higher education. These grades were furnished by the Young Invincibles (YI), a national organization that seeks to represent the millennial generation. At first glance, the reports don’t share much in common. Quality Counts examines K–12 education and, despite lower rankings, still grades Ohio as middle-of-the-pack. The Young Invincibles report, on the other hand, examines higher education and gives Ohio a giant red F.
Closer inspection reveals that the reports both examine the connection between education and money. “Quality Counts,” for example, points out rising poverty gaps on Ohio’s NAEP results. Ohio’s gaps between poor and non-poor kids aren’t just large, they’re getting larger—the opposite of the national trend. The YI report, meanwhile, focuses on the financial difficulty of attending college in Ohio. While Ohio has seen some of the smallest tuition hikes since the recession, both its two-year and four-year tuition are well above the national average. Ohio spends only $4,314 per full-time student (almost $2,000 less than the national average), and Ohio families pay for 63 percent of the cost of public college (a larger burden than the national average).[1]
Taken together, these two reports offer a bleak picture for low-income youth in Ohio. First, the K–12 education system isn’t preparing them well for college. As the “Quality Counts” report indicates, they are less likely to score well on NAEP in Ohio than in other states. State report cards indicate similarly low scores in areas beset by poverty, such as Ohio’s Big 8 urban districts. Before anyone fills the comment section with statements like “Of course low-income students don’t score well/aren’t prepared, they’re low-income,” let me offer a gentle reminder that poverty isn’t destiny, poverty doesn’t explain away our country’s overall lackluster performance, and high expectations matter. We know from the work of stellar schools serving low-income students that poverty and its effects, while difficult, are not impossible to overcome. There are schools across the nation and right here in Ohio providing low-income students with an excellent education.
Unfortunately, while some schools (not nearly enough) are overcoming poverty gaps, the YI report shows that college isn’t financially feasible for many families. The average student debt load in Ohio is just over $29,000—a hefty price tag for low-income students and their families to shoulder. To make matters worse, the YI report points out that Ohio only allocates $244 in grants per student each year, which is under half the national average. Pell grants, which are federal, can help, but the maximum award for 2015–16 is $5,775. That’s not enough to cover the average yearly tuition and fees for a public four-year, in-state college in Ohio ($10,196). Basically, Ohio’s low-income kids face a double whammy: Test score data indicates that they aren’t well prepared by our K–12 system, and even those who do receive a good education are hamstrung by the cost of attending a public university (not to mention a private one). Putting college financially out of reach for low-income students isn’t just unsettling because of its inequity, but also because college typically results in a large increase in lifetime earnings. If we subtly—even inadvertently—bar low-income students from being prepared for, getting into, paying for, and graduating from college, what does that do to the upward mobility roots of the American Dream?
Of course, Ohio does have a promising partial solution in College Credit Plus, which seems to be a bona fide hit with Buckeye students and families. There are also scholarships, as well as options other than college. But the truth remains that poor preparation and financial burden should never be the deciding factor in any student’s choice on whether to attend college. This is particularly true for low-income students, who are bearing the brunt of our K–12 and higher education systems’ failings. Add to that the fact that low-income families struggle, through no fault of their own, to provide the same extracurricular opportunities that affluent families take for granted, and we’ve got ourselves a problem that should be far more rage-inducing than most of the stories that dominate Ohio’s politics and press. An important election year looms. Let’s hope policy makers start paying attention to poverty in a way that results in concrete improvements to access and outcomes.
[1] Another interesting takeaway from the Young Invincibles report: an eighteen-point college attainment disparity between black and white Ohioans and a twenty-five-point attainment gap between Latino and white Ohioans.
