Public Comments to the Ohio State Board of Education
My name is Susie Kaeser. I live in Cleveland Heights, where I have been a public school advocate for the last 40 years. I currently serve as the education specialist for the LWVO.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my research and thoughts about Ohio’s Edchoice voucher program and the harm that it is causing to public education, and more specifically the unfair burden that deduction funding places on public school children who attend schools in districts where there is concentrated poverty.
Educators and education policy have long recognized that there are extra costs associated with educating children who live in poverty. That is the reason we have Title 1, and the reason that state aid considers the additional costs of high poverty school districts.
Yet, when you look at the characteristics of the students who attend the public schools that are most affected by Edchoice vouchers, it is these very children who are forgoing substantial amounts of public funds to pay for some students to attend a private school. Those with the greatest need are losing the most. This is not right.
As you all know, EdChoice vouchers are available to students who reside in the attendance area of a public school that has been defined as “failing.” Both the way education quality is evaluated and the way vouchers are funded are problematic and undermine equity.
Ohio’s state achievement tests are the primary tool used to assess education quality. Testing experts are clear that standardized tests provide a limited snapshot of what students know at a given moment in time. For that reason, it is appropriate to use them to inform instruction, but they are not reliable enough or robust enough to make high stakes decisions including making a judgment about education quality. Furthermore, test-performance is a very limited definition of quality. But the biggest problem is standardized tests are a much more reliable measure of the income of the test taker than the quality of education that the student receives. Researchers have long documented that tests measure out of school factors more reliably than what happens in school.
By basing the award of vouchers on a metric that measures income, the Legislature created a policy that discriminates against poor children.
Ohio uses deduction funding to pay for scholarships. This unique method makes the local school district responsible for paying the private school for each voucher student. It is $4,650 for elementary students and $6,000 for high school. Prior to 2019-20 voucher students were counted in a district’s ADM and brought to that district’s coffers the same amount of state aid as a public student. In most districts the state contribution was less than the voucher cost so the local district had to use funds appropriated for public school students to pay the difference. In 2019-20 state funding was frozen at the FY 2019 level, making EdChoice districts responsible for the full cost of every new voucher without the benefit of any state contribution. And despite the pandemic, the legislature did not stop the growth of vouchers in the 140 existing EdChoice districts. Those communities continue to accrue new costs.
This uninvited expense for local school districts reduces the funds available to educate the students who attend the public schools but doesn’t reduce costs. Local boards of education must decide how to close the funding gap. They can cut education opportunities or ask local voters to raise property taxes – or both. None of these options is good for communities or students. The loss of funds to EdChoice slowly erodes the quality of education available to public school students, increases tax payer animosity toward their public schools, divides public and private school families, and burdens local communities with taxes that undermine the viability of that community.
These are substantial harms.
And when you look closely at who is harmed, the need for a solution becomes even more urgent. Our neediest students are being short-changed by EdChoice.
During the stay at home order in March I plowed through the data on the Ohio Department of Education website that documents public school enrollment, EdChoice voucher use, and the cost of vouchers. I also used the Cupp Report for demographic data. I looked at voucher use in 2018-19 and 2019-20.
Between 2015-16 and 2018-19 there were 40 Ohio districts that had at least one Edchoice school. In 2019-20, a safe harbor provision was lifted and additional schools were added in existing districts as well as in 100 more communities. For this analysis I looked at the 40 districts that have been funding vouchers for several years. They are hard hit because of the long-term accumulated loss of resources for public education.
My findings are predictable, yet breathtaking and heart breaking.
While voucher use varies widely among these 40 districts – from 0 in Switzerland of Ohio to 5,800 in Columbus, – 94% of vouchers during 2019-20 were awarded in these 40 districts -just 6% of Ohio’s districts. The majority of students enrolled in 39 of these districts live in poverty.
22 of the 40 hard hit districts must fund 100 or more vouchers. These are the “high use” districts. In 2019-20:
90% of all of Ohio’s vouchers were awarded in just 22 districts
the majority of students in all of these districts live in poverty
in 19 districts more than 75% of students are poor- this is concentrated poverty
similarly, the majority of students in 20 of these districts are racial minorities as are 94% of the students in these 22 districts combined
By using a metric that measures income to define where EdChoice vouchers are available, Ohio state policy discriminates against children who live in poverty. Given historic segregation, our high poverty school neighborhoods are also typically home to children of color.
These students are missing out on educational opportunities because their school districts must fund private education for a few students.
Choice should not undermine our public system or punish children who believe that a public education is the best place to learn.
I hope you will consider the impact of state law on equal education opportunity, and that you will advocate for the end of policies like EdChoice that undermine opportunity for students with the greatest needs.