- Sorry we have to tease out the updates on the voucher groucher saga a bit today. That’s the trouble with not posting daily (and don’t you dare suggest doing that either!). Let’s start with a piece posted yesterday by the good folks at Kent public radio that was premised on a simple and important question: What led to Ohio’s current “school choice conundrum”? The answer, from a key voucher groucher? “[A] small change made in Ohio law seven years ago” which has led to the current expansion of EdChoice eligibility over which a bunch of people are losing their collective mind. What?! Seven years ago!! Seven! All this panic over something which everyone and their brother has had seven years to prepare for?! Y’all still think I’m wrong about the arbitrary deadline? Get outta town. (WKSU-FM, Kent, 1/28/20) In this case, why is it that the media outrage is dominated by schools and districts? The folks being blindsided by change in short order are in fact parents who were eligible for EdChoice—and have been behaving accordingly—but who are now pawns in some game to find an “acceptable” number of eligible schools or students played by folks who should have been ready for this all along. Luckily, when parents are the focus of the voucher story, the tone does seem to change a little. But is anyone listening? (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 1/27/20) In this piece from the PD, one dad puts forth his perspective very succinctly: “If parents make the choice to send their children to another school, the schools really need to look at themselves and ask why.” One private school leader interviewed is even blunter: “We hear statements that they are the district’s kids or that the district is losing funding, that the children belong to districts. We at the Catholic church do not believe that children belong to districts. That’s a financing formula.” Nice. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/28/20) Can you guess which side Dispatch editors landed on? (Columbus Dispatch, 1/28/20) As if the “financing formula” wasn’t a bad enough emphasis, how about this ridiculous sideshow? A private school in Cleveland erroneously sent an EdChoice eligibility postcard to…*gasp*…a family that wasn’t eligible. The head of the school said he didn’t know how it happened. Well, I can tell him: It’s because reaching out to let families know about eligibility should be the job of the Ohio Department of Education or, more rightly, of the eligible schools themselves. They know all the names and addresses without fail, and it’s their doing that the families are eligible in the first place. Instead of being the family’s right to be informed about and assisted with their options, private schools themselves must discover those eligible—requiring public records requests, the occasional Supreme Court case, and indeed the rare mistake—and reach out to them on their own. Seems to me this is the same distinction between folks being allowed to take maternity leave from their jobs if they need it and being actively given assistance in obtaining maternity leave simply and easily. Imagine if it was some third party’s job to determine who might be needing parental leave in the near future, finding their contact information, and then sending a postcard to tell them that if they are or may be in need of leave that they can have it but only if they know how to access it. Just pick up the phone. Maybe we can help! Yeah right. (Cleveland Jewish News, 1/28/20)
- I had a whole bit here about the voucher “fix” waiting game between yesterday and today, but I’m bored of this already. Let’s cut to the chase. A legislative “deal” was hammered out over some marathon bargaining sessions in the Ohio Senate late into last night. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/28/20) What’s the “fix”? Don’t make me laugh. There’s only one thing that would keep Ohio legislators up and working that late. It’s all about the
moneykidsmoney. Look, even I can’t hide that. You can check out the deets in the Dispatch… (Columbus Dispatch, 1/29/20) …the Dayton Daily News… (Dayton Daily News, 1/29/20) …or the Cleveland Plain Dealer. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/29/20) Reading these pieces, no one seems entirely happy with the final product, which makes sense for the reasons we discussed on Monday (“a lose-lose win-win). The bill will go to the House today for more sausage grinding. - One notable Senate addition to the
higher ed credit transfervoucher “fix” bill is the provision that Lorain City Schools would be released from state oversight via a CEO-style Academic Distress Commission because it rose from an overall F to a D last year. In other words: power would be given back to the folks that ran the district into the ground because the folks that took over from them did such a good job in correcting their mistakes so quickly. (I mean, a really good job. Check out this laudatory piece on preschool improvements in the district that happened under the brief CEO/ADC paradigm.) While the guy who did all this did get a bonus for his work, he also got fired as a result. Unanimously. All about the kids baby! (Morning Journal, 1/28/20)
- We end today with unequivocally good news—and a nice way to celebrate National School Choice Week—in this look at the four charter schools in Dayton who earned additional funding from the state due to their high quality. (Dayton Daily News, 1/28/20)
Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
Policy Priority:
Topics:
