aboutFund the Child

April 9, 2008

Chad L. Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio, took exception to a recent Columbus Dispatch letter to the editor from William Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding.

Mr. Phillis...takes issue with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Fund the Child report, a document that seems like common sense to most Ohioans, except maybe the education establishment.

Mr. Phillis agrees with the Ohio Supreme Court that Ohio's school funding needs a "systematic overhaul." However, in his view a significant part of any solution is more money. This "blank check" approach, which can hardly be considered reform, will not increase equality without changes in how school districts distribute their resources among schools.

The Fordham Institute, praised by The Dispatch editorial board for offering a "fresh idea," presents a systematic overhaul in which all schools, no matter where they are, are funded according to their students' needs.

Mr. Phillis suggests that the Fordham Institute stands to benefit from their study. The truth is that Fordham and other innovative partnerships like those that support KIPP Academies and the Gates Foundation investment in STEM schools only benefit over time if they perform well. In the end, performance can be the only true measure of success for our schools.

School choice is growing rapidly because parents want more high quality options. Everyone knows that some children are excluded from these opportunities based solely on the income of their parents. That's what the

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aboutFund the Child

At $17 billion and counting we can't afford to waste it

Terry Ryan / April 9, 2008

In producing the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's report Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance (see here), we knew that critics would attack it as William Phillis did in a March 29 letter to The Columbus Dispatch. What we reported collides with the rhetoric and political arguments of interest groups like Phillis' Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. They have been clamoring for more money for so long that they can't even see when they've won.

Fund the Child shows that Ohio has made serious progress in closing the funding gap between low- and high-poverty districts. In fact, in a 2008 report, the Education Trust cites Ohio as one of just 10 states that have successfully narrowed the gap. In 2000, Education Week gave Ohio a D+ for school-funding equity; in 2008 the state earned a B-.

These findings collide with the tired arguments of folks like Phillis, who have been calling for more state spending on public education for more than a decade, and they've gotten it. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, in 1997 Ohio's taxpayers invested $13.4 billion in K-12 education and by 2007 this had increased to $16.8 billion--some $1,930 for every adult living in the state. In this same period, per-pupil expenditures, again using inflation-adjusted dollars, increased 25 percent (from $7,500 to about $10,000).

Yet, there seems to be no amount that is enough for Phillis. In March 1997, Phillis told

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At $17 billion and counting we can't afford to waste it

K-12 could learn from Fingerhut's higher-ed plan

Emmy L. Partin / April 9, 2008

Last week, Chancellor Eric Fingerhut released his 10-year strategic plan for Ohio's colleges and universities (see here). Over the next decade, Ohio will seek to transform its higher-education institutions to boost educational attainment across the board. As Governor Ted Strickland develops his own K-12 education reform package, due out this time next year, there are at least five themes from Fingerhut's plan worth carrying over to primary and secondary education:

Accountability is the path to change. A higher-education accountability system will measure how individual institutions and the state progress. As institutions show progress, the state will ramp up its investment in those institutions. K-12 education also benefits from both transparency and accountability for results.

Institutions must embrace both cooperation and competition. Competition among universities and from private and out-of-state colleges has not spurred excellence. Fingerhut's strategy will push colleges and universities to work together on accomplishing a single set of statewide goals. Certainly, schools will still vie for the best and brightest students, but now enrolling more students than the next university will no longer be a primary indicator of success or the sole driver of state funds. Academic results matter now, too.

Students deserve choice in educational options. No two students are the same and no one university or college can be everything for every student. Universities should focus on their core missions and strengths in order to bolster their strongest programs. Students in Ohio should be able to choose

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K-12 could learn from Fingerhut's higher-ed plan

That's not quite what we said

Emmy L. Partin / April 9, 2008

Two years ago, the Great Lakes states' affiliates of the National Education Association launched the Think Twice project to "review think tank research on public education issues and policies" (see here). The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is on the short list of organizations they are keeping an eye on (see here), thus our recent report, Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance received a review.

Bruce Baker of the University of Kansas provides a decent analysis of our report (see here), yet a few of his points deserve clarification:

• Fund the Child does not suggest that Ohio move to a fully state-funded and state-governed education system but rather calls for state education dollars to be allocated following the principles of Weighted Student Funding (WSF). Ideally, all education dollars would be weighted according to student needs and follow students to the public school they attend, but our report recognizes that Ohio's long tradition of local control makes this prospect challenging when it comes to locally generated dollars.
• Baker asserts that the three principles of Weighted Student Funding are actually three separable reform strategies mislabeled in Fund the Child as a single strategy. While each principle could be implemented singly, our report-and other WSF research before it-suggests that the principles are of equal importance and that implementing them independently will contribute to the failure of a WSF system.
• Baker cites as a failing in Fund the Child the

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  That's not quite what we said