As Ohio’s General Assembly continues working on the biennial state budget, policymakers have the unique chance to pursue meaningful education reform for Ohio’s K–12 students. Given the dark rain clouds of the past fourteen months, we are all grateful to see a silver lining emerging. Ohio is currently considering the largest school funding overhaul in at least twenty years—the best opportunity in a generation to make a difference for Ohio schoolchildren and their families.
The pandemic has disrupted elementary and secondary education like nothing else in our lifetimes. Schools have been shuttered, students sent home to learn in online “classrooms,” and curricula rewritten to cope with new realities. Public school administrators grappled with the risks and complexities of reopening. Many parents have wondered how well their children were really learning in remote environments. Others didn’t have to wonder; they saw firsthand that their children were not thriving online. And parents across the Buckeye State have been forced to reconsider the pros and cons of their local public schools in ways they had never done before.
In fact, an interesting recent poll shows that 66 percent of parents with a child at home agreed that at least a portion of funding should follow students in what is sometimes called the “backpack” model.
Enter education savings accounts—often referred to by their acronym ESAs—which satisfactorily address the sentiment of those same 66 percent of parents and the unique challenges facing families in the wake of the pandemic.
As the name suggests, ESAs are special savings accounts funded with state education dollars, which are designated for families to spend on education expenses. ESA funds can be used to pay for a wide variety of educational products and services, including laptop computers and other necessary technology for distance-learning, software, online courses, private tutoring, other support services, and curriculum enhancements.
ESAs also give parents greater control over their children’s education by directly giving them additional financial resources to help pay for more personalized learning tailored for each student’s individual educational needs.
No school or system, whether public or private, has a proven silver bullet strategy for educating students during a pandemic. And no one-size-fits-all model will properly educate every child—whether there is a pandemic or not. Unfortunately, the current proposals being considered by our elected officials still fund our public school systems rather than the students they are tasked with teaching.
ESAs are more flexible than Ohio’s existing voucher programs because ESAs would allow parents to pay for more than just tuition. Rather than continue funding school systems, Ohio—like its families—should reevaluate its approach to education and education-related spending to accommodate present and future realities.
Even before the pandemic interrupted two academic years, the Nation’s Report Card warned that African American and Hispanic students, as well as students in low-income households, were suffering from persistent academic achievement gaps. The pandemic is unlikely to have closed those gaps.
Indeed, more students than we would like to admit have probably slipped through the educational cracks over the last year.
Through ESAs, Ohio could help students at every income level, of every race, and in every neighborhood of the state pay for learning that is right for them. Nine other states have pioneered ESA programs tailored to meet their students’ needs. Ohio is falling behind and should join the growing movement toward funding the unique needs of students rather than one-size-fits-all business as usual.
In the wake of this devastating once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, this biennial budget offers Ohio’s General Assembly a corresponding once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We must reassess K–12 education and carefully design and implement an ESA program, with guardrails to ensure that funds are easy to access and appropriately spent, but without onerous burdens or bureaucratic meddling. Ohio should take a student-first approach in order to significantly improve education outcomes for students in every corner of the state. Sometimes, the hardest thing is to recognize the silver lining when it appears. The General Assembly should act now—for the sake of all Ohio students.
Robert Alt is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Buckeye Institute.
