Local school officials are pushing back against the expansion of a school voucher program they say will funnel millions of dollars in much-needed funding from public schools to private schools.
The voucher program in question, called the EdChoice Scholarship Program, is intended to give families from underperforming public schools tuition assistance to send their students to private schools. It started in 2005, and many school districts in Ohio, especially urban districts like Toledo Public Schools, have been working around it since then.
But starting next year, the number of schools from which students are eligible to receive EdChoice vouchers will greatly expand, meaning districts that historically have had little to do with the program will soon see it apply to buildings within their boundaries.
Springfield High School, for example, has not previously been EdChoice-eligible, but it is listed on the 2020 to 2021 designation list. Superintendent Matt Geha said he worries the funding lost from students who take vouchers and move to private schools will essentially offset a recently renewed local property tax. He also questioned whether the coming EdChoice expansion is a fundamental attack on public education.
“What is EdChoice really trying to do? Is it trying to give households an option that they can’t afford or is trying to take away from public education?” he said.
‘Competition in the marketplace’
Questions like Mr. Geha’s have long been at the center of debates about school vouchers and their impact on K-12 school funding.
State Sen. Matt Huffman (R., Lima) is a supporter of school choice and school voucher programs. While he questioned some of aspects of the coming EdChoice expansion — he thinks voucher eligibility should be based on family income rather than school performance — he said the notion that voucher programs are an attack on public schools is “absolutely false.”
School vouchers are intended to give families better opportunities, and most families eligible to take vouchers won’t even do so, he said.
“What we should be concentrating on is giving all families a choice so that there can be competition in the marketplace,” he said.
EdChoice is one of four scholarship programs in the state that provides tax dollars to pay tuition at private schools. Through the program, a student’s home district pays $4,650 per student toward private-school tuition for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Families with students in high school can receive $6,000 per year.
For the 2019 to 2020 academic year, about 500 public schools statewide were designated as low-performing, allowing students to receive an EdChoice voucher according to information provided by the Ohio Department of Education. In the 2020-21 school year, the number of designated schools is set to rocket to 1,200. That includes schools from several districts historically known to perform well on the state report card.
The way schools become EdChoice eligible is complicated, as is the recent explosion in the schools that are part of that list. The conservative-leaning Thomas Fordham Institute, a policy think-tank that also sponsors some charter schools of its own, recently released a report that breaks down the change.
The criteria for how a school is placed on the list are outlined by state law and require the use of three years of school report grades, according to the institute. But state lawmakers in 2016 introduced a “safe harbor” policy intended to protect students, teachers, and schools from accountability sanctions during Ohio’s transition to new state report card assessments.
State report cards for the 2018–19 school year were released this fall, and a new list of EdChoice-designated schools was published not long after. Because of the safe harbor policy, the schools were identified based on data from the 2013-14, 2017-18, and 2018-19 school years. Officials have also recently modified what constitutes a struggling school by state law.
“Recent changes have gone from looking primarily at a school’s overall grade to other important data points like student growth and the school’s ability to help struggling readers,” the institute reports.
Washington Local Schools Superintendent Kadee Anstadt said the measures used to designate schools as EdChoice eligible are fundamentally flawed. To illustrate this point, Ms. Anstadt pointed to a school in a neighboring district: Toledo Public Schools’ Chase STEM Academy. Chase is considered one of the most improved schools in the area in recent years, yet it’s still on the EdChoice list.
“So really improvement doesn’t matter so much,” she said. “The list is just ongoing. It’s almost a mathematical formula to include as many people as possible.”
Washington Local Treasurer Jeff Fouke said the district is looking at spending approximately $800,000 this year in vouchers. He added that the expense is equivalent to 25 percent of the district’s annual revenue from its recently approved 3.9-mill operating levy. The district passed that measure in November to fund long-term facility improvement projects.
Ms. Anstadt described the loss of funding as “highway robbery,” and said it’s a disservice to local taxpayers to fund private school tuition.
“I’d like to go back and knock on a couple of those doors and say ‘I'm so sorry but everything you just passed is now going to private schools’...” Ms. Anstadt said.
Sylvania schools Superintendent Jane Spurgeon said the district had two schools eligible for EdChoice as of this school year: Stranahan and Whiteford elementary schools. Next year Hillview Elementary will be added, too.
Last year, the district spent roughly $277,000 in assisting 63 students with tuition to private schools. District administration has since calculated the cost of continuing to aid those students throughout their academic career, if they continue to receive EdChoice vouchers. In the next 13 years, the district would spend more than $3.5 million in school vouchers for them alone.
Creative schools and opportunities
For some districts in Ohio — especially urban districts like Toledo Public Schools — EdChoice is nothing new. TPS has lost students to private schools through the program since its inception in 2005.
TPS Superintendent Romules Durant said the district has tried to counteract those losses by increasing enrollment and by being fiscally responsible. He added the district has experienced an increase in enrollment annually since 2013. He added that prior to 2013, enrollment had not increased for 20 consecutive years.
“We began providing creative schools and opportunities that ultimately leveraged us. You’d be surprised how many kids are attending our schools that are coming from private entities, parochial entities, and suburban entities because it’s a great school choice,” he said.
Mr. Durant said he is not opposed to school choice but desires to see equity within the state law.
“At the end of the day, I support wherever parents want to send their kids because it’s education, but do it with equity and measure everyone by the same assessments so parents can truly take a look,” he said, adding that private schools should be as accountable to the state as public schools are.
“If you’re going to receive state dollars to attend a private school then you should be able to provide a state report card and go through the same anxiety as public schools,” he said.
Ohio State Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) put the point more bluntly. She said local taxpayers are paying for a choice that, in fact, may not be better for their children.
“Ohio taxpayers are funding private school institutions. Local taxpayers are paying a big price for choice and it might not be the best choice,” she said.
Matthew Daniels, Diocese of Toledo’s Department of Catholic Education’s senior director, said the private schools under the leadership of the diocese do not view EdChoice as a mechanism to compete with public education. In fact, he said it’s impossible to compare public schools to Catholic schools because of their fundamental differences.
He said Catholic schools strive to provide students with the same traditional education as public schools, but they also “spend a lot of time on character formation, faith formation, and the development of the full person.”
“That’s been our tradition for 450 years,” he said. “It’s difficult to have a level apples-to-apples playing field when fundamentally we really approach education from a different perspective.”
The EdChoice scholarship application period opens Feb. 1. Local school officials are busy lobbying lawmakers in Columbus to reassess the program before that happens.
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder (R., Glenford) said state lawmakers are discussing a variety of options to readjust the number of schools placed on the designated list. They’re also looking at ways to exempt some schools from the list in the near term.
“I don't know what the fix is of yet... We've tossed around a lot of ideas, but nothing has really been vetted as of yet. I feel confident that we'll have at least a short-term solution.”
First Published January 12, 2020, 3:45 p.m.
