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The
Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register...
Get
School
Reform Right
February 8,
2012
Twenty
percent of the young Ohioans who enter the state’s public education
system
don’t graduate from high school. The average is much worse - 35 percent
- in
urban areas.
Ohio Gov.
John Kasich is right to consider that a tragedy that is both
unsustainable and
avoidable. He also is correct in avoiding knee-jerk reactions to the
problem.
During his
State of the State speech Tuesday in Steubenville, Kasich outlined
challenges
that need to be met throughout Ohio’s education establishment. With a
few
notable exceptions, he did not prescribe solutions, however.
When the
governor did talk about specific initiatives, he did so in a way often
not heard
in Ohio or, for that matter, on the national stage.
For
example, Kasich discussed expansion of the voucher system whereby some
parents
can get government help to enroll children in private schools, as an
alternative to failing public institutions. Access to vouchers has been
expanded greatly, making about 60,000 of them available this year, the
governor
noted.
For several
years Ohio’s work to encourage alternatives to public education focused
on
vouchers and charter schools run privately but with state funding. An
enormous
failing in that outlook was that state officials, in effect, merely
threw money
at the problem.
That is to
say, they provided taxpayers’ money for charter schools, but exercised
little
oversight. “Let me make it clear: If you’re an underperforming charter
school,
we’ll be on you,” Kasich pledged Tuesday.
Better
public schools are essential, of course. On Tuesday, speaking from one
of the
best in the state, Steubenville’s Wells Academy, Kasich emphasized that.
But he
stressed his reform campaign will be based not on fads or politically
correct
movements, but on effectiveness. “I have to spend the next year
building a
consensus,” he told his audience, adding he wants to “find out what
works, be
data-driven, and do it.”
Too
much time and money has been wasted,
not just in Ohio, but in many other states and at the federal level, on
school
reform campaigns that had little or no hope of working - and did not.
Kasich is
right to insist on an evidence-based model to improve public education
in Ohio.
If he can develop it, the year he plans to spend on the process will be
time
spent well.
Read
this and other articles at the
Intelligencer
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