LOCAL

Tax dollar use for private school tuition initiative coming under fire

Local superintends say system is flawed

Jessie Balmert
Coshocton Tribune

COLUMBUS – Students in 1,228 public schools will soon be eligible for a taxpayer-funded scholarship to private schools – all because the state says their public schools failed them.

Without a fix, Ohio taxpayers will owe private schools a hefty check to educate those students. And a recent change would allow private school students who have never set foot in a public school to claim that money, too.

Starting Feb. 1, those students can apply for up to $6,000 in taxpayer money to attend a private school instead. A recent change allows private school students to claim that money even if they never attended a public school.

Students are eligible for this money because their public schools are considered failing or on the verge of failing, say standards set by Ohio law. But the list of eligible schools has ballooned in recent years, leaving lawmakers and school officials wondering: Are nearly 4 in 10 public schools really not up to snuff? 

“We have pinned a lot of school districts and teachers with a bad rap and said that they were failures,” House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, told reporters in December. “They’re not failures.”

Some of the loudest criticism has come from the state’s richest schools – places unaccustomed to being labeled “underperforming.”

Now, Ohio lawmakers have to clear those schools’ names and stop private schools from striking pay dirt at public schools’ expense. A handful of legislators are hammering out a fix that should dramatically decrease the number of schools eligible. 

Why is this a problem now?

For years, Ohio has offered taxpayer-funded “scholarships,” often called vouchers, for students in underperforming public schools to attend private schools. The most popular voucher is called EdChoice, which requires a student’s public school district to pay $4,650 toward private school tuition for kindergarten through eighth grade and $6,000 for high school.

The number of students using EdChoice vouchers has swelled in recent years, growing from 23,500 receiving $113 million in 2019 to 30,000 receiving nearly $149 million in 2020.

The payout for next year could be even higher. Here’s why:

First, the most recent state budget allowed private school students to apply for this money even if they were never enrolled in a public school. The change forces public schools to use money intended for public school students to pay for private school students who never would have gone there. The $6,000 voucher is sometimes higher than what schools receive from the state to educate public school students. 

Second, the number of students eligible for these vouchers is poised to rapidly increase because of several changes made by lawmakers. For the 2020-21 school year, students at 1,228 public schools from 424 districts – two-thirds of the state’s school districts – are eligible. That’s up from 476 schools in 137 districts for the 2019-20 school year.

Under current law, schools are labeled “underperforming” – and thus eligible for private school vouchers – if they received a D or F in one of several categories on their state report card in two of three years reviewed. These categories include everything from graduation rate to third-grade reading skills.

“The system of state report cards used to determine underperforming schools contradicts itself when the same system is used to provide federal and state designations at the highest level for that building,” said Superintendent Mike Masloski of Ridgewood Local Schools. 

One category that has led to an increase in eligible schools is a growth measure called “value-added.”

Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz of Green Township explained it this way: If the New England Patriots reached the Super Bowl two years in a row, the team’s value-added score would be an F because it showed no improvement.

“That’s kind of ridiculous,” Seitz said. 

What’s the fix?

Amid calls from angry school officials, lawmakers realized they needed a fix – and fast. Seitz said the proposed solution involves three changes:

  • Private school students who never attended a public school would not be eligible for money through the EdChoice voucher.
  • As an alternative, lawmakers would make it easier to obtain an income-based voucher by raising eligibility to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $100,000 for a family of four. 
  • Schools would not be labeled “underperforming” if they received an overall score of A or B on the past two years’ report cards. Schools that received a C would be eligible only if they were in the bottom 10% of all buildings in the state. 

Those changes should dramatically decrease the number of students tagged as attending failing or near-failing schools – and thus decrease the taxpayer money being spent on vouchers, Seitz said.

The long-term solution involves changing how these schools end up on the “underperforming” list. That means tackling Ohio’s much-maligned school report cards. 

Report cards should guide schools on how to improve – not punish unnecessarily, said State Rep. Catherine Ingram, D-Mount Auburn, a former Cincinnati school board member. 

“The report card has been a punitive kind of ‘bang you in the head with a sledgehammer’ thing,” she said. “The Ohio Department of Education should be helping districts get better instead of dinging them on what they’ve been doing wrong.”

Superintendent Dalton Summers, of River View Local Schools, said he would agree with other officials who are against the legislation as it currently appears. River View isn’t directly affected at this time, but he knows it could be in the future.

“This type of legislation is not only flawed, but is inappropriate,” he said. “If the legislators wish to have local tax dollars leave local control and local oversight, then they should put the issue on a ballot and let the public decide.”

(Tribune reporter Leonard Hayhurst contributed to this report.)