Almost three-fourths of and nearly two-thirds of Ohio fourth graders were not proficient in reading in 2022, according to a new study.

Seventy-one percent of Ohio eighth graders were not proficient in math — a number that has only gotten worse over time, according to the latest Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Book. Back in 2019, 62% of Ohio eighth graders were not proficient in math.

“It’s super important to reach those benchmarks because it’s what’s at least been shown to be where we want our students to be that helps set them up to be successful in later grades and later in life,” said Matthew Tippit, policy associate at Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

Ohio fared slightly better than the rest of the country — 74% of American eighth graders were not proficient in math, according to the report.

Sixty-five percent of Ohio fourth graders were not proficient in reading in 2022, a percent point worse when compared to 2019. Nationally, 68% of fourth graders were not proficient in reading.

Ohio public schools are preparing to implement the science of reading which of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

The state’s two-year budget, which was signed into law last year, included .

A little more than half (57%) of Ohioans three and four-year-olds were not in school during 2018-2022, according to the report.

Thirty percent of all students nationally (14.7 million) were chronically absent from school, which typically means missing at least 10% of school days in a year.

“The COVID-19 pandemic wrought serious academic damage as it closed schools and separated students from their physical learning environment,” Annie E. Casey Foundation President and CEO Lisa Hamilton said in the report. “Unprecedented drops in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math proficiency among students in the United States between 2019 and 2022 amounted to decades of lost progress.”

The stakes for catching up on the COVID-19 learning loss are high. Up to is dependent on addressing unfinished pandemic-era backsliding, according to a February report from the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford University.

Students who don’t go , according to a 2013 report published in the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Economic Commentary.

Overall, Ohio ranked 28th in the nation based on 16 indicators and ranked 18th in the education category.

Poverty

Almost half a million Ohio children were living in poverty in 2022, according to the report. The 446,000 children living in poverty made up 18% of ���󾱴�’s kids. 10% of Ohio children representing 264,000 kids lived in high-poverty areas in 2022.

Sixteen percent of American children totaling 11,583,000 kids were living in poverty in 2022, according to the study.

“That’s so concerning to me just because of what we know that living in poverty can do to all other factors of life,” Tippit said. “We know that health indicators tend to be lower. We know that education outcomes are worse. We know that long term, you’re more likely to stay at that level of income as your family.”

About 40% of Ohio children have experienced one or more adverse childhood experience such as family economic hardships, their parents being divorced or a parent spending time in jail, according to the report.

would create the 26-member Adverse Childhood Experiences Study Commission which would recommend legislative strategies to the General Assembly.

State Reps. Rachel B. Baker, D-Cincinnati, and Sara Carruthers, R-Hamilton, introduced the bipartisan bill which passed last month in the House.

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COLUMBUS, OHIO –– The dire problems facing Columbus City Schools can be illustrated by comparing two buildings: Como Elementary School and Hamilton STEM Academy. Built as identical schools in 1954, they sit less than 2 miles apart, about 4 miles north of downtown.

Como has never undergone a significant renovation. Original floor tiles that an official said contain asbestos still cover a majority of the school, many of its plexiglass windows are no longer translucent and wires snake through the hallways, crudely affixed to the top of cinder-block walls.

While the building has been retrofitted with air conditioning and a new playground, “We can’t do everything,” admits T. Alex Trevino, the district’s director of capital improvements. In addition to its obvious physical shortcomings, the school, with a capacity of 400 students, has only 243.

Meanwhile, a $3.5 million renovation last year has transformed Hamilton’s 47,000-square-foot building, adding flooring that cuts down on noise, new windows and furniture, and walls full of cubbies with doors that make classrooms look neater. Freshly painted hallways are dotted with inspirational sayings. “The kids are excited about the building. It’s changed the school culture,” says principal Christopher Brady. Still, Hamilton is only two-thirds occupied, with just under 400 students in a building with a capacity of 575.

Six schools, including Hamilton, have undergone extensive renovations, with two more planned this summer. But in a district with 113 schools — most of them built before 1975 — the buildings are deteriorating faster than the city can fix them. The district spends some $544,000 on facilities and maintenance for each school every year, $86,000 more than the national average.

Like nearly every urban school district in the country, Columbus has significantly fewer students than it did just six years ago. At its peak in the 1970s, the district educated 110,000 students. By 2017, that figure had shrunk to 50,000. Today, the district has an enrollment of about 45,400.

Some of those students transferred to charter or private schools. An expansion of a state program has let more families use public dollars to pay for tuition. While 26,400 people applied for vouchers last school year, that to 91,100 in the current school year.

At the same time, the district’s schools were rated the worst in central Ohio. Columbus’s overall rating was a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, ranking it last among 49 districts in Franklin County.

It’s clear that Columbus City Schools is facing challenges that defy easy solutions. But the course of action officials have settled on — closing schools and redrawing attendance boundaries — has been tried twice before, and failed. 

Earlier this year — after voters approved a $100 million levy to fend off teacher layoffs and fund infrastructure improvements and renovations as federal COVID funds run out — the district hired a consultant for $500,000 to assess its buildings. It also created a 22-person task force to consider which schools to shutter.

But there’s no guarantee this solution will work. Closing schools is the least popular action a district can take, and this marks the third time since 2016 that Columbus has tried to overhaul its operations. Both previous efforts were stymied, and a list of 20 possible school closures has already generated criticism from residents and union members.

“I’ve been on a school closing committee,” says Douglas Harris, the Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education at Tulane University. “Sometimes it can be in the best interest of the district, but it’s the last thing anybody ever wants to do.”

No one knows the reality of the situation better than Jim Negron. In 2018, he led the committee that proposed closing schools and redrawing attendance zones — a plan that was rejected by the Board of Education. The president of CK Construction is co-chairing this year’s task force as well, and he remains optimistic these decisions will set the district up for success for the next 20 years.

“This is really important work. There’s something special happening in Columbus,” he says.

There is a reason for Negron’s optimism. Columbus is the fastest-growing city in the country, according to a new study by the Bank of America Institute, and more people are likely coming. Intel is planning a $20 billion manufacturing plant in New Albany, about 15 miles from downtown. Honda and LG Energy Solution are teaming up to create a plant about 45 minutes southwest of the city to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. New zoning rules will allow about to be built in Columbus.

All this makes some, including teachers union president John Coneglio, question why the district isn’t looking to spruce up more of its schools instead of closing them. “We’re dismantling schools without a plan to grow the district,” he says.

He worries that unused buildings might be turned into parochial or charter schools, which would siphon off more students from the district. Already, parents are getting texts from charter schools with offers to help fill out their paperwork, he says. Will the city “leave neighborhoods empty and ripe for charters to take our kids?” he asks. 

Coneglio, who was originally on the task force but resigned, says the district’s efforts have a “predetermined outcome, and their goal is to guide you to that outcome.”

When the task force revealed at a May 7 meeting the 20 schools that might be closed, so many union officials and city residents attended that the district had to create an overflow room so everyone could watch the proceedings, according to a in The Columbus Dispatch.

“There’s a lot more work to be done here,” board President Christina Vera said at the meeting. “This is not going to be an easy lift.” 

Afterward, Superintendent Angela Chapman tried to head off criticism when she answered a question about upset parents by saying: “I would say … to take a deep breath. These are initial recommendations that have been submitted to begin the conversation about where we go from here. … These are not the final recommendations.”

The task force is slated to send a final list to the seven-member Board of Education in June. Any changes would take effect in fall 2025.

Even before the task force made its initial recommendations, co-chair Al Edmondson admitted that informal lobbying had begun. “People call and say, ‘Don’t close my school down. My mom went there, I went there.’ But these buildings are old. Something needs to happen.”

Harris says he has found that closing schools works best when a district considers the effect on the community and not just how much money can be saved. He urges leaders to “find ways to keep teams together,” because bonds among families, teachers and principals are hard to re-create. 

A conducted by Harris and two colleagues found that closing the lowest-performing elementary schools can improve student achievement, but not if children are placed in worse schools.

While Harris admits the disruption of changing schools can impair learning, this is offset by transferring to a better school, he says. And future cohorts of students, such as kindergartners, would attend the better school without disruption.

But this “is contingent on closing the lowest-performing schools … which doesn’t often happen,” he adds.

Columbus’s board policy calls for the task force to consider 14 factors in deciding which schools to close; the first on that list is teaching and curriculum. Other items include the age and condition of the building, the number of students who will need to be relocated and enrollment trends. Task force members are also to make sure closures don’t disproportionately affect one section of the city.

Before the meeting, Negron said he had already heard from a lot of residents, and he expects — and hopes — to hear from more before the final recommendation next month. “There’s a lot of passion around the task at hand. That’s not unexpected. I expect to hear more, and I welcome that.”

Correction: Students from Columbus City Schools have transferred to both charter and private schools.

A Republican-led bill just introduced in the Ohio House would charge teachers and librarians with a felony offense for distributing material deemed “obscene.”

The problem is, the bill does not explain what materials would be considered obscene, despite laying a fifth-degree felony on the feet of teachers and “public school librarians” who may possess or share such material.

State Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, put forth last week, a bill that would “create criminal liability for certain teachers and librarians for the offense of pandering obscenity,” according to the language of the bill.

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Librarian, in this sense, is defined as “a librarian employed by a school district, other public school … or chartered nonpublic school and a librarian employed in a school district public library.”

Teachers and school district librarians would be barred from creating, reproducing, publishing, promoting or advertising “obscene material.” They are also prohibited from creating, directing or producing “an obscene performance,” the bill states.

But what falls under “obscenity” is not clear from the initial language of , which has yet to receive committee consideration in the House. The word “obscenity” only appears three times in the six-page bill: in the title of the proposed legislation and twice referring to the title of the criminal offense.

“Obscene” shows up eight times in the bill, but only accompanying “material,” “performance,” “articles” and in a clause about giving notice about “the character of the material or a performance.”

HB 556 aims to amend existing statutes in the Ohio Revised Code, and pulls exact language from those statutes — for and one explaining legal “” — but neither of those statutes lay out what is considered obscenity either.

It’s that lack of clarity that is giving teachers and library groups hesitation on the bill.

The Ohio Education Association said it is still reviewing HB 556, and Ohio Federation of Teachers president Melissa Cropper said the group has not taken a position on the bill, but she is “concerned with the vagueness of the bill and the ability for it to be weaponized by bad faith actors who are focused on attacking public schools and libraries, not on protecting children.”

“We also question whether there is need for this new bill or if existing laws can address the concerns behind HB 556,” Cropper said in a statement. “We plan to discuss this bill and these concerns with legislators and with our members.”

Questions beyond the motivations of the bill are still coming up as well, including whether or not “school district public libraries” can include the libraries of a community that are also classified as school district libraries.

The Ohio Library Council’s executive director, Michelle Francis, said the group does “have concerns with the legislation.”

“We reached out to the sponsor and we look forward to meeting with him soon,” Francis told the Capital Journal.

The bill includes an “affirmative defense,” meaning if the person accused of pandering obscenity can prove the material or performance was “for a bona fide medical, scientific, religious, governmental, judicial or other proper purpose,” they can use that as a defense against the charge. The word “educational” was struck from the language in the proposal as reasoning for an affirmative defense.

As part of the affirmative defense, the material must also have been given by or to a “physician, psychologist, sociologist, scientist, health or biology teacher, faculty member, person pursuing bona fide studies or research, librarian other than a school librarian, member of the clergy, prosecutor, judge or other person having a proper interest in the material or performance.”

Soon after she had gone to jail for trying to get her children a better education, Kelley Williams-Bolar’s teenage daughter Jada confronted her mother with an accusation that will stick with her forever.��

“You’re not there for me,” said Jada, now 26. Like the rest of her family, Jada still struggles with her mother’s 2011 felony conviction for sending Jada and her sister Kayla to a suburban school outside Akron, Ohio, using their grandfather’s address.

By the time Jada stood firmly in front of her, Williams-Bolger had spent nine days in jail, overwhelmed by how a felony could upend their lives, jeopardizing future housing and employment opportunities. She started to defend herself, then went silent. She knew Jada was right.

“But you know, it was my mind that wasn’t there. It wasn’t there for years,” conceded Williams-Bolar, a longtime educator and child care provider. “…Honestly, it destroyed me. It was a lot to deal with. I wasn’t the same mom for my daughters.”

Years after their prosecutions and forced removal from districts, families across the country like Williams-Bolar’s are still paying the price, economically and emotionally, after being prosecuted for acting in the best interest of their children. 

In Pennsylvania, one family ultimately owed over $10,000 for tuition and amassed legal fees into the six figures for keeping their child enrolled in a suburban school after moving out of the district three months before the end of the school year. In Connecticut, Tanya McDowell, whose family was experiencing homelessness, used her babysitter’s address to enroll her five year old in a Norwalk school. She was convicted on larceny and unrelated drug charges, serving .��

Outside of the legal ramifications, many families still struggle with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, their family relationships and work suffering as a result. Their children have felt at times like they had lost their parents and interest in school. 

Now seven decades after the Supreme Court outlawed sorting children by race and promised quality education for all in the landmark Brown v. Board decision, experts are beating the drum that continuing to exclude children from quality schools based on their home addresses perpetuates segregation. Advocates have also called for an end to the practice of prosecuting parents who, knowingly or unknowingly, disregard zone lines when enrolling their children.

Williams-Bolar’s daughters were zoned for Akron Public Schools, 15 minutes but seemingly a world apart from Copley-Fairlawn, the predominantly white suburban district where her father lived and often cared for her daughters. Visiting Copley’s schools, she saw acres of land, science fairs, a sprawling greenhouse, and a full computer room. Akron’s schools at the time had rapidly decaying infrastructure. Styrofoam cups filled with dirt were the plants in her daughters’ science classes. 

Night and day, she said. She just couldn’t have anticipated what the cost of enrolling her kids in Copley would be. 

Months later, her trial began. Intense scrutiny on the case made their family recipients of unwanted, international attention. A school district contractor showed up to their front door, looking inside their refrigerator, closets, bathrooms, counting each toothbrush. Teachers and students at her daughters’ school made snide remarks about their mother’s jail time. They’d catch neighbors’ side eyed, judgemental gazes. 

White men started driving slowly by their home at any time of day, never speaking, only staring. This would happen about a dozen separate times. 

Williams-Bolar sometimes stayed in her room crying for days, not knowing how much time was passing. Her depression lingered well after . 

Three years on probation also meant the family couldn’t travel to see relatives in the south. She was also barred from visiting her father in prison for months. Though his involvement with her school enrollment case was dropped, soon after the state convicted him on fraud charges related to government benefits. Williams-Bolar maintains the case against her father would not have been pursued without the unprecedented spotlight on her family. 

“Once you get in the lion’s den, they’re not just gonna let you go,” she said. 

He served 11 months in prison, and died in its hospital one month before release. 

“He loved going out barbecuing in the front yard. He loved all his grand babies coming over, always listening to music,” said Kayla, now 30. “I mean, the greatest grandpa a girl could ever ask for. Damn near like a father to me, and I’d do anything to have him back. But here we are.”

Investigations in and recently confirmed districts still regularly confront families suspected of living outside of their boundaries. Today, their methods are usually less public, with districts hiring private investigators or threatening prosecution to get families to disenroll their children. The thousands known to be kicked out of their schools for address sharing are disproportionately Black and brown. 

In at least 24 states, parents can face criminal prosecution, fines and jail sentences for address sharing. Only one, Connecticut, has decriminalized the common practice. 

To reduce the scale of the issue and promote integration, districts could adopt county boundaries, encompassing more diversity and better reflecting work-life patterns, rather than neighborhood lines that mirror racist housing segregation. But they often “lack the political will,” to do so; quality schools remain scarce by design, said civil rights lawyer Erika Wilson. 

And though Williams-Bolar knows a friend was similarly confronted by the district who believed her family lived outside the boundary, they never prosecuted her or asked her to remove her two children. The friend was related to a prominent leader in the NAACP. Williams-Bolar later met a former Copley student who alleged he lived in Akron, too, and that the school knew at the time, but let him stay because he was an athlete. 

“I think it’s common at these, these selective schools. The problem is it’s very, very selectively enforced,” said Tim DeRoche, author, researcher and founder of Available to All, a watchdog organization. 

‘I remember my wife losing her hair’

Around the same time Williams-Bolar was navigating her trial, just one state over, six year old Fiorella Garcia pleaded with the governor of Pennsylvania to drop charges against her parents. Crying, she said she didn’t want to go into foster care. 

In 2012, her parents Hamlet and Olesia Garcia faced up to seven years in prison, felony convictions, and losing custody of their daughter. The suburban Lower Moreland Township School District alleged Fiorella lived outside of its zone, in Philadelphia. Fiorella and Olesia lived temporarily with her grandparents in Lower Moreland, but failed to notify the district that they had moved out. 

In records reviewed by The 74, the Garcias repeatedly offered to pay the district the cost for Fiorella to finish the school year in Lower Moreland so as to not interrupt her schooling. Their requests were denied. 

Their mug shots headlined local news the night they were arrested, alongside headlines that alluded to tax fraud. Olesia, who owned a private insurance company, risked losing her license and business. Their address made its way into coverage, and soon after, their car was vandalized.  

“This has never got off my head … I remember my wife losing her hair,” Hamlet Garcia said, trying to hold back tears. Losing so much sleep, he tried medication and experienced chest pains, which he attributes to the stress. 

Their tide only changed after leaving their public defender, who wanted them to settle for a guilty plea. The Garcias incurred close to $100,000 in debt to instead hire a high profile law team from Florida, money they say would have gone toward their daughters’ college education or family vacations. 

Ultimately, all . The family paid $10,752 “tuition” to the district and a $100 fine. 

In the decade that has followed, Garcia has devoted most of his time to learning education law, organizing for school choice and Republican political campaigns, feeling betrayed by the Democrats he felt were responsible. Fiorella, now 17, is about to graduate from high school. 

Telling her story and becoming a parent advocate has been Williams-Bolar’s “medicine.” She feels she’s a part of changing education policy to expand access to quality schools and “leave a legacy for my dad because he didn’t deserve none of that. He didn’t deserve to die in jail.” 

Today she works at one of Akron Public Schools’ high schools as a paraprofessional: the superintendent refused to fire her after the ordeal.

“Honestly,” said Kayla, who’s also considering going back to school to be an educator, “I’m still trying to heal.” 

In Ohio, where students who scored poorly on state reading tests had to repeat third grade for the last decade, the state legislature ended the requirement last summer in a bill that also adopted the science of reading.

In Indiana, state officials just restored mandatory retention of low-scoring third graders after a seven year absence. Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a law this month requiring students that don’t score as proficient on the state’s IREAD-3 tests to be held back in third grade, with few exceptions. The state estimates the new law will hold back 18 times as many third graders when it takes effect in 2025  — 7,500 compared to just over 400 today.

Third grade retention and science of reading are two strategies for improving reading that have . Both Ohio and Indiana joined the third grade retention movement in 2012, though Indiana later backed away before rejoining it this spring and Ohio never fully embraced it.

Both states have also seen reading scores drop on NAEP, the “nation’s report card,” even before the pandemic, then decline more after. Such results make it only natural for legislatures to shift gears, experts said.

“Third grade is obviously a critical moment,” said American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio. “There’s nothing to be gained by giving kids more of what hasn’t worked. It should trigger different, intensive efforts.”

He and others like Timothy Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, said the key is not just adopting something that sounds good, but making sure it changes classroom instruction. 

Both Ohio and Indiana seem to be covering those bases, with more teacher training, new textbooks, and other student supports. Whether those are enough and how well they are used by teachers, schools and parents is still to be determined. 

Right now, the desire for immediate change, particularly in Indiana, is clear.

“About one in five students in Indiana can’t read effectively by the end of third grade,” said Indiana State Rep. Linda Rogers, one of the law’s authors. “This is not acceptable. If a child hasn’t learned basic reading skills by that point in school, they’re going to struggle to learn almost every other subject.”

Indiana education superintendent Katie Jenner told the legislature the state can’t have 14,000 third graders scoring below proficient on Indiana’s IREAD-3 test, as happened in 2023, without taking real steps to catch them up.

“The students who are just moving on are never passing. Ever. Ever,” Jenner said. “It’s hard to say that, but it’s honest.”

Indiana’s new law also requires more testing of second and third graders to identify struggling readers and for more interventions, such as l summer reading classes after second and third grade for students who are behind.

Jenner said adding these interventions and the retention mandate is a natural second step in the state’s literacy plan after focusing on having the right reading lessons through the science of reading and training teachers to teach them last year.

Requiring students to repeat third grade after not passing reading tests became law in California in 1998, rising  to national prominence after Florida adopted the policy in 2002 under then-Gov. Jeb Bush. Since then, , though with differing policies on which students – such as special education, English Language Learners or students who have already repeated a grade – are exempt.

All shared a similar reasoning: Third grade is where students usually shift from ”learning to read to reading to learn,” or needing to read well enough they can read and learn other subjects. Students need to master reading by then, backers argued, or they will fall behind in 4th grade and beyond or may never learn to read. Mandatory retention also gives students, parents and teachers a deadline for taking reading seriously.

The strategy has promising early results, withSome of the most dramatic results came in Indiana under an earlier version of third grade retention that was dropped in 2017, a Brown University study showed.

But opponents in multiple states raised objections each time bills were introduced, usually citing studies that show smaller gains and psychological damage to students who are held back because of teasing, feelings of failure and being separated from friends. The studies have also noted Black and Hispanic students are usually held back at higher rates than white students.

Indiana was an early state in the third grade retention movement when former state superintendent Tony Bennett pushed for it in 2010. The legislature did not agree, but the state board of education mandated it with an administrative rule in 2012.

The Indiana Department of Education eased that requirement in 2017-18, telling schools to consider student performance in all subjects, even if not scoring well in reading, to decide if a student should move to fourth grade.

Third grade reading also had big changes in 2012 in Ohio, when then-Gov. John Kasich won approval from ���󾱴�’s state legislature for his “Third Grade Reading Guarantee” that required more tests to identify students having trouble reading and for schools to hold back students who score poorly.

Unlike Indiana, which always made proficiency the threshold for promotion, Ohio set a lower score that needed to be raised over time. That set off constant debates each time the state school board had to decide how much to increase the score. Over time, the score crept higher but too many board members had reservations for the needed score to ever reach the proficiency level.

About 3,600 students were held back each year under ���󾱴�’s retention law before several Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it last year.

“Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy that currently exists, (a change) will give local and parental control to districts when deciding to retain a child,” Republican Rep. Gayle Manning told legislators in pushing an opposition bill last year.

In the end, a joint House and Senate committee chose to give parents the final say in holding back their children as part of a compromise state budget bill. Though many Ohio Senate Republicans wanted to keep the retention requirement, they relented because the bill included the shift to the science of reading and a requirement that students keep receiving extra reading help until they can catch up.

“I wasn’t in favor of it (ending retention), but we put some things in that I wanted,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Andrew Brenner, also a leading backer of science of reading. “I think that will help immensely to get kids back on track over the next couple of years.”

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce does not yet know how many students avoided retention this fall because of the law change.

In Indiana, attempts by Democrats to give parents the final say in whether a child has to repeat third grade, like Ohio decided last year, were voted down by Republicans. Attempts to delay the law until the state could see how science of reading changes affect scores also were voted down.

Two Republican lawmakers are trying to strengthen an existing Ohio law by requiring — instead of just allowing — school districts to create a policy letting students to be excused from school to go to released time religious instruction.

State Reps. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, and Gary Click, R-Vickery, recently introduced and it has had one hearing so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

“The correlation between religious instruction, schools, and good government are embedded in our constitution,” Click said in his written testimony. “You will notice that HB 445 does not establish which religion but merely acknowledges the opportunity for religious instruction. This opportunity is open to all faiths.”

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May vs. shall

Ohio law currently permits school district boards of education to make a policy to let students go to a released time course in religious instruction.

HB 445 would require school districts to create a policy and changing the wording of the existing law in the Ohio Revised Code from “may” to “shall.”

“While many schools have taken advantage of the permissive language of the law, some school boards have been less accommodating,” Click said. “Regardless of their intentions, their failure to implement a sound policy in this matter results in a denial of both the students’ and parents’ constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.”

Cutrona agreed with his co-sponsor.

“Words have meanings and they really do matter,” he said. “So the difference between a little word like may versus shall can make all the difference in the world.”

Released time religious instruction must meet three criteria which would remain the same under the bill: the courses must take place off school property, be privately funded, and students must have parental permission.

The United States Supreme Court upheld released time laws during the 1952 case which allowed a school district to have students leave school for part of the day to receive religious instruction.

State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, R-Ashtabula, questioned why this bill is needed if the law is already in place.

“My experience has been that if the federal law requires it, school districts are usually very hesitant to violate federal law or federal practice,” she said during a recent committee hearing. “I’ve just wondered why you want to see that change also in the state law if it’s already required in practice.”

Click said he knows nearly a dozen school districts that have denied religious instruction programs like LifeWise Academy, an Ohio-based religious instruction program that teaches the Bible.

“I believe that when we clarify this language, it will make a more broad statement that this is not only constitutional and legal, but it is something that needs to be done in the state of Ohio to accommodate parents and their children,” Click said.

LifeWise Academy

Click mentioned LifeWise Academy in his testimony.

“(LifeWise founder) Joel Penton began to organize and create an efficient model that provided training for instructors, character-based bible curriculum, and a platform that is reliable and reputable for participating schools,” Click said. “…While this opportunity is not limited to LifeWise, they have formulated the model program for release time for religious instruction.”

, launched in two Ohio school districts in 2019 and today enrolls nearly 30,000 students across more than 12 states. The program will be in more than 170 Ohio school districts by next school year — more than a quarter of the state’s school districts.

LifeWise, which is non-denominational, supports the bill.

“It gives parents the freedom to choose character-based religious instruction for their children during the school day, in accordance with Supreme Court rulings,” Penton, the founder of LifeWise, said in a statement.

However, there has been pushback to LifeWise.

Freedom From Religion Foundation Legal Fellow Sammi Lawrence wrote a letter to from taking place in their district.

“Per its own words, LifeWise’s goal is clear: they seek to indoctrinate and convert public school students to evangelical Christianity by convincing public school districts to partner with them in bringing LifeWise released time bible classes to public school communities,”  said.

have also sprung up before the program comes to a school district.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Kids like her daughter Clara, a second grader, glommed on to its rich characters; she’s especially fond of Lily, who wears her black hair in a short bob and has a collection of plush toy lions. Fellow teachers, meanwhile, like that it “hits everything” students need to be strong readers.

“It slowly builds, introducing more and more sounds, and then it jumps right into blending those sounds into little words,” Morrison said. At least two independent link the program to “significant positive” results.

But that winning combo initially wasn’t enough for ���󾱴�’s education department to put Superkids on its list of approved . Morrison homed in on a likely culprit: , a nonprofit that for nine years has operated as a kind of “Consumer Reports” for the K-12 publishing industry. At the time, Ohio leaders approved only programs that won the organization’s coveted green rating. Superkids earned a more modest yellow.

“How EdReports can be the sole basis of this process is astounding,” Morrison, also a local school board member, wrote to the state. Ohio trains teachers in the , she said, but “this list takes us three steps backward.”

Ohio ultimately relented after Zaner-Bloser, which publishes Superkids, appealed. Temporary as it was, the episode demonstrated the outsize power of EdReports in the world of high-stakes curriculum decisions — a power that has come under increasing scrutiny as more parents embrace the phonics-laden science of reading. Critics of the nonprofit say it has continued to award green ratings to reading programs that might still accommodate balanced literacy — a discredited philosophy in which teachers encourage kids to learn to read by surrounding them with books— and has slapped effective programs with yellow ratings.

In interviews with The 74, EdReports officials say they’ve gotten the message.

Starting in June, its reviews of early reading materials will reflect a fuller embrace of the science of reading. “Phonics and fluency are now non-negotiables” for a green rating, said Janna Chan, EdReports’ chief external affairs officer.  

Reviewers will also no longer use “three-cueing” — a practice associated with balanced literacy that encourages students to identify unfamiliar words by picking up clues from text or pictures. Since 2021, at least 10 states have .

An internal memo sent to EdReports staff in February and obtained by The 74 acknowledged growing doubts about the organization’s credibility as states pass new reading laws. CEO Eric Hirsch wrote that the organization is “most vulnerable to criticism around our reviews” of comprehensive English language arts programs called basals or “big box” curricula — programs that some have attacked for being “” and giving lip service to the science of reading. Hirsch wrote the memo in response to a that critiqued the organization and highlighted newer groups providing alternatives to its reviews.

EdReports contracts with a network of over 600 reviewers, many of them current or former teachers who earn up to nearly $3,000 per review. Working in teams of five for an average of four to six months, they if curriculum products meet standards and are easy for teachers and students to use.

Evidence of the organization’s considerable influence isn’t hard to find.  A 74 analysis of , a data service that stores recordings of public meetings, reveals that since January 2021, EdReports has been mentioned over 100 times during school board meetings. District leaders and staff frequently invoke its ratings when making budget recommendations.

The “end-all, be-all for curriculum review” is how Bill Hesford, an assistant superintendent in the Bayfield, Colorado, district described the organization during a January discussion of a new math program.

That same month, T.C. Wall, assistant superintendent of the Bolivar, Missouri, schools, assured her board that all reading programs up for consideration had earned the organization’s highest rating.

“We’re starting with quality stuff,” she said.

Financially, there’s much at stake for both districts and curriculum companies. Fueled by a one-time infusion of federal relief funds, school systems spent roughly on curriculum in the 2021-22 school year alone. Due to the time and expense such reviews require, districts typically wait as long as six years before revamping their offerings.

Pressure to ‘conform’ 

For many publishers, EdReports’s green stamp of approval is a valuable marketing tool they trumpet in .

Others lost trust in its reviews years ago. 

Collaborative Classroom, a curriculum provider, publishes four literacy programs based on the science of reading used by hundreds of districts. One of them underwent four reviews in three years because, in Hirsch’s view, new features warranted a fresh examination. But the process left Kelly Stuart, the publisher’s president and CEO, exhausted and disillusioned.

“We play in this world as a nonprofit,” she said. “But if we were a for-profit company, there would be a tremendous amount of pressure on us to conform and meet all green.”  

In a world so contentious its seminal debates are called “,” critics have been — including those who initially welcomed EdReports. 

Karen Vaites, a literacy expert and advocate, once led marketing efforts for Open Up Resources, a nonprofit that offers free curriculum materials to districts. Declaring that “excellence is now easy to find,” she was among the first to in 2018.

In recent years, her views have taken a 180.

“EdReports is no longer an effective guidepost,” said Vaites, who founded the in January to essentially compete with the organization. One of its first projects is to review , an Open Up Resources program that earned a yellow from EdReports, but has showing effectiveness and won from districts that use it.

Vaites said she no longer has a financial relationship with Open Up Resources. But having once been an EdReports “fangirl,” she said she feels “doubly obliged to let people know that they need to look beyond” the site.

If loving memes about curriculum is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

But seriously, enough with districts adopting pricey curricula that bomb reviews.

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites)

Hirsch declined to address her specific criticisms, but said he and his team plan to gather feedback from researchers, as well as district and state leaders, to respond to critics’ concerns. By the end of the summer, the organization expects to update guidelines for all three of the content areas it reviews — English language arts, math and science — and apply them to next year’s reports. 

Hirsch told The 74 the pivot is in keeping with its mission as an organization geared toward — and staffed by — teachers.

“You’re not a great teacher if you can’t reflect on practice,” he said.

‘No counterbalance’

With backing from major foundations, Hirsch founded EdReports in 2015 to help guide districts toward materials that satisfied the then-relatively new , a set of guidelines in math and language arts that most states still follow. In an attempt to tap into the booming market, many publishers touted their products as “Common Core-aligned” even when their commitments were tenuous at best. Experts say a third-party reviewer was sorely needed. 

“Some publishers had a vice grip on the whole curriculum thing,” said Kareem Weaver, an Oakland literacy advocate featured in , a documentary about the push to provide low-income and minority students with high-quality reading instruction. “Before EdReports, there was no counterbalance to publishers’ claims of being ‘high-quality.’ ”

Now with an $11.5 million annual budget, Hirsch called the organization “amazingly transparent,” without “taking a dime from publishers.” But Weaver thinks EdReports would have a greater impact if its reviews factored in evidence of effectiveness. 

“Don’t just treat kids like guinea pigs,” he said. “Parents have to know if their kid is actually going to get the things they need in regular classroom instruction.”

Hirsch responded that solid, independent evidence of a specific curriculum’s effectiveness . When it does exist, publishers typically offer it in response to reviews. But he conceded that EdReports could make the information easier to find. 

‘Bloated’ materials

Evidence is also important to state leaders, who increasingly to adopt reading programs based on research. But some experts say publishers are responding to new mandates by “overstuffing” their products — adding structured, phonics-based lessons without removing the older ones.

Vaites points to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s , one of the three programs approved as part of — a two-year effort to overhaul literacy instruction in the nation’s largest school district. EdReports gave it a green rating, despite complaints about its overabundance of units, lessons and worksheets. 

“As a novice teacher, you’re going to get overwhelmed when you see four pages that go along with one lesson,” said April Rose, an instructional coach at P.S. 132Q in Queens, who works with the United Federation of Teachers to support staff transitioning to the program.  With such wide offerings, some teachers struggle to find assignments for students that match the standards they’re trying to teach, she said, or hop from one skill to the next without giving students deep practice.

Jim O’Neill, a general manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said Into Reading is designed to let teachers “grow while teaching with the program.” The broad range of lessons and activities, he added, is also intended to support students at multiple levels in one classroom.   

“Coming out of the pandemic, there are two things we have — students with different needs, but also new teachers who are just beginning to teach reading,” he said. “Having carefully crafted lesson plans can help them get up and going with the right resources for the right students at the right time.” 

Hirsch acknowledged bloat is a problem, but said publishers are reluctant to remove features some teachers prefer. 

He suggested that districts adopting a new curriculum view EdReports as just a starting point — and follow up with adequate training and support for teachers. 

Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agreed. “School districts rely too much on these external reviews without a clear understanding of what they tell you and what they do not,” he said. “They need to give a close look at the programs themselves.”

Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation provide financial support to and to The 74.

Ohio senators have passed a bill to limit cell phone use in schools, but it allows local districts to decide on the best practices for their students.

“Being a parent in the age of smartphones is — my mom would say is harder than she had it,” Natalie Hastings, mom-of-two, said.

Hastings believes boundaries with technology are important, but there are struggles when it comes to school.

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“There was some bullying in the restrooms and people were taking videos,” she said. “There is now a policy in place at the building level where kids can bring their phones to school and power them off, put them in their backpacks.”

Starting in the fall of 2023, a new policy at Akron Public Schools requires all secondary students to keep their cell phones in magnetically locking “Yondr” bags. Students are allowed to use their phones in the lunchroom and between classes but must silence and stow them away.

 around the state have started cracking down on phone usage, and state lawmakers are joining in.

“I thought the idea of eliminating use of smartphones during the school day is a great idea,” Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said.

Huffman and his members just passed , legislation that added a provision to require each public school district to create a cell phone policy, emphasizing that phone use should be as limited as possible during the school day.

The legislation would also require the Department of Education and Workforce to adopt a model policy on student phone use that public schools could utilize. These policies come at a request of Gov. Mike DeWine, who said in his State of the State Address that phones are “detrimental to our kids’ mental health and they need to be removed from the classroom.”

Hastings is mainly supportive of the Senate’s bill.

“I would advocate that every building principal is the one who can make the best decision for their specific kids,” Hastings said.

She is worried about a competing version of policy — , which would ban personal devices like cell phones, computers, headphones and smartwatches unless a teacher specifically allows it, there is an emergency, it is needed for healthcare or if a student has a learning disability and it is part of their accommodations.

The bill would require public schools to create an internet safety policy. The legislation also mandates grades 6-12 to have courses on the negative side of social media.

But it isn’t clear if House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) is on board with the Senate.

There were some questions in our caucus on what the details were on the cell phone language and we had several members who wanted to read those languages,” Stephens said.

State Rep. Tom Young (R-Washington Township), the sponsor of H.B. 485, wasn’t thrilled with the Senate’s actions.

“They have every right to do that, of course, however, we will have hearings on my bill because it’s important that we get feedback from the districts and those interested parties so that we can have best practices and that’s really important.” Young said. “Citizens should have a right to speak about a piece of legislation — period — especially one that’s important. If we’re going to do this then we’re going to do it right.”

Hastings said Ohio should start small before major mandates.

“It’s a level of distraction that we are still figuring out in real time,” she said.

The Senate’s version goes back to the House for a concurrence vote.

This article was  on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Kim, a 12th grade student at West Lafayette High School, discovered his dog, Joy, had heartworm disease and ordered medicine through an online pharmacy.

But the medicine Kim ordered would not only be ineffective but also aggravate Joy’s illness even more.

Motivated by his dog’s health scare, Kim designed a way for people to verify the authenticity of pharmaceutical products — by printing an edible QR code directly on the medicine.

Kim was one of in middle and high school who presented their inventions and research projects focused on solving key global issues at the in Washington, DC.  

“There have been countless tragedies and deaths caused by either substandard, falsified or diverted pharmaceutical products,” Kim told The 74. “So I’m glad to have had this opportunity to raise more awareness of counterfeit medicine.”

Hosted by and the , student innovators were selected from an array of nationwide competitions, including the where more than 2,500 students submitted projects across six categories: Environmental Stewardship, Future Foods, Health & Medicine, Powering the Planet, Tech for Good and Space Innovation.

Here are five student innovators featured at the National STEM Festival:

Joshua Kim, 18

West Lafayette High School · West Lafayette, Indiana

Among more than 50,000 online pharmacies worldwide, Kim found only 3 percent operate and distribute medicine legally — contributing to the annual deaths of over one million people.

Kim said the measures most pharmacies use to reduce counterfeit concerns are “limited by low security,” such as only tracking medicine through its exterior packaging.

“It’s easy for medicine to be removed from their packaging…and dose level securities are either limited by the need for expensive technology or trained personnel,” Kim said.

“So this means patients at home do not have access to ways of verifying their medicine.”

Kim believes his edible QR code will allow people to ensure they are receiving genuine and legitimate medicine.

Ashley Valencia, 17

Harvest Preparatory Academy · Yuma, Arizona

Self-conscious about her crooked teeth, Arizona high schooler Ashley Valencia saw how expensive dental care can be growing up in a low-income family. But it wasn’t just her family that couldn’t afford dental care — many of her neighbors also struggled to afford it. 

Valencia, a 12th grade student at Harvest Preparatory Academy, channeled her insecurity to help students in developing countries who have even less access to proper oral hygiene products — by creating an affordable toothpaste and mouthwash using their native plants.

“I always knew I wanted to do something in medicine so when I thought about different [research] topics close to me, I started to think about my past experiences,” Valencia told The 74.

“That’s why I created my own oral treatments that were easily accessible and affordable to people who might not have access to the things I had,” she added.

Valencia said she shared her research with public schools in the Philippines to address their students’ dental concerns.

At the festival, Valencia said she plans to travel to developing countries across South and Southeast Asia to share her oral hygiene products.

“Because I come from a school that doesn’t have a lot of resources…being able to attend the festival and present my research to all of the important people that were there was really exciting,” Valencia said.

Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho, 18

New Mexico Military Institute · Roswell, New Mexico

From lion’s mane to king oyster, New Mexico high schooler and longtime vegetarian Clarisse Telles Alvares Coelho loves eating all types of mushrooms.

Coelho, a 12th grade student at the New Mexico Military Institute, said the misconceptions of mushrooms inspired her research project on their health benefits — particularly the abundance of a soluble fiber called beta-glucan.

“I knew many people didn’t like mushrooms…but what if I was able to make them change their minds,” Coelho told The 74. “With beta-glucan acting in your immune system, our metabolism works faster.”

Coelho said she was “very surprised” to have the opportunity to present her project at the festival.

“It was such a great feeling because there was so much hard work and late nights put into researching this project…[so] it was so amazing to be recognized,” Coelho said.

Alicia Wright, 17

Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology · Conyers, Georgia

Concerned by our global carbon footprint, Georgia high schooler Alicia Wright discovered the majority of CO2 emissions come from the cement used in construction.

Wright, an 11th grade student at Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology, found a way to replace cement with mycelium — a type of fungi that can be transformed into a biodegradable construction material.

“I was inspired by the complexity of mycelium and how fungus works,” Wright told The 74. “This will better the environment so that future generations can enjoy as we have.”

At the festival, Wright said the diversity of students presenting their projects with her felt “empowering.”

“It was very encouraging to see people with my skin color and gender presenting with me,” Wright said.

Haasini Mendu, 16

William Mason High School · Mason, Ohio

Ohio high schooler Haasini Mendu came up with a way to improve medication dosage for Parkinson’s disease — a disorder that causes involuntary body movement, often called tremors.

Mendu, an 11th grade student at William Mason High School, designed a wearable device that quantifies the number of tremors someone has and automatically sends the information to an app she created called “TremorSense.”

She said the information is processed through an “AI-based machine learning” filter to distinguish between tremor and non-tremor movements.

Mendu said the opportunity to meet other students and build connections was her favorite part of the festival.

“It was very easy to make some friends and also learn about their very cool inventions and ideas,” Mendu told The 74.

“Having this recognition…feels motivating to continue working on my skills [because] there were so many people interested in what I’m trying to do with my research.”

As of this school year, most of the state’s families became eligible for . This means that any Ohio student can access public funds to pay for tuition at one of 462 participating private schools in the state.

However, the scholarship can’t be used at public schools, and because of in ���󾱴�’s open enrollment laws — which are supposed to allow students to transfer to public schools outside their residential zone — many of the state’s highest-ranked public schools remain for most children. 

For instance, 35 of ���󾱴�’s 97 school districts have chosen not to participate in open enrollment, making them inaccessible to students who don’t live within their boundaries.

Often, the only way for students to access these highly ranked public schools is to move. This is easier said than done, since the cost of public schooling is often hidden in expensive mortgages or rents. 

In Ohio, the median home sale price in January 2024 was $215,300, requiring an annual household income of about to obtain a typical mortgage. Yet home sale prices in non-participating five-star districts averaged nearly $351,000, according to data collected by , a platform that gathers information on school districts. 

For instance, in the five-star Indian Hill Exempted Village School District, the median home sales price is more than . Numbers like these make districts like Indian Hill, and their top-quality schools, effectively off limits to middle- and low-income families.

Currently, 107 of ���󾱴�’s 658 public school districts don’t participate in open enrollment. The Ohio Department of Education & Workforce awarded of them four or five stars in student achievement on the state’s Performance Index for the 2022-23 school year, based on statewide exam scores. Notably, these non-participating districts include in the state. 

Some of them could likely accommodate transfer students, since K-12 enrollment statewide declined by — a loss of nearly 81,000 students — between the 2018-19 and 2023-24 school years. For instance, the highly rated and non-participating Beachwood City and Tipp City school districts saw their enrollment decrease by .

Without , these districts can continue to shut out students who could fill those empty seats. However, there is one way for families to get their kids into some of these districts without moving: They can buy their way in.��

Under Ohio law, school districts that opt out of the state’s open enrollment program can charge tuition to transfer students at a rate equal to or less than an amount established annually by the state Department of Education. Of the 107 districts, a Reason Foundation investigation found that 22, or 21%, charge public school tuition to non-resident students. Another 46 allow district employees who live outside the zone to enroll their kids for a fee.

Ohio Public School Districts’ Annual Tuition Rates Charged to Transfer Students:

In some cases, these districts operate more like private schools than public schools, because admission is often at the superintendent’s discretion. For instance, Northmont requires that applicants have at least a . Other districts, such as Centerville City, permit tuition-based transfers, but only for children of their teachers.

Of the districts charging tuition, the average fee is about $11,000 per student per school year, the Reason Foundation investigation found. That’s $11,000 annually to attend a supposedly public school. At least 12 districts charge $10,000 per transfer annually, while nine districts charge less. 

By contrast, private schools in Ohio charge about in tuition, on average. Most families can use EdChoice Scholarships to cover participating private schools, these scholarships cannot be used to pay tuition at public schools. This means private school tuition can be more affordable than some public schools. 

When school districts can sell their seats they lose their democratic qualities and become de facto private schools. Public schools should be free to all students, not just those whose families can afford to live there — or pay.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine used his recent State of the State speech to proclaim the importance of child care and education, but a national report released last week ranks Ohio near the bottom of the country in preschool spending.

The National Institute for Early Education Research’s report showed nationwide disparities in access, quality and funding for preschool, with Ohio sitting at 43rd in total reported spending on the early education.

“Most states have not committed to serving all children, and even those states that have often fall short,” W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director and founder of NIEER at Rutgers University, said in a statement. “Most states need to increase funding per child substantially to enable providers to meet minimal standards for a high-quality, effective program.”

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The report called inadequate funding “a near universal problem.”

Barnett did praise a 2023 increase in state-level funding of $122 million over two years as part of the most recent state budget, as well as a $250 increase in per-pupil funding, the first in the state since 2009. Ohio ranked 36th in state-specific spending on preschool in the new report, which specifically studied the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s publicly funded Early Childhood Education program for the 2022-2023 school year.

That boost followed a reduction in the 2022-2023 school year, when state spending dropped $268 per child from the 2021-2022 year.

“We encourage Ohio to keep up the progress, as much work remains to provide access to full-day, adequately funded early learning opportunities that will help children develop and parents earn a living,” Barnett wrote in a release on the new data.

Ohio has a total of 18,000 children enrolled in pre-K education, with 35% of the school districts offering a state-funded program. The federally funded Head Start program for ages 3 and 4 has a state enrollment of 24,649. No state contributions go to the Head Start program for 3 or 4 year olds, according to the study.

Nationally, preschool enrollment rose to 35% of 4-year-olds and 7% of 3-year-olds, with overall state expenditures increasing by 11% compared to 2021-2022 data.

“However, despite this notable progress, most states still fell short of their pre-pandemic preschool enrollment,” NIEER stated.

In terms of access, Ohio ranked 36th for 4-year-olds and 26th for 3-year-olds.

saw Ohio in 36th for 4-year-old enrollment, but slightly lower at 27th for three-year-old enrollment.

In the 2024 research, Ohio only met half of the 10 benchmarks noted in the report.

Benchmarks met by the state in the most recent NIEER report included early learning and development standards; curriculum supports; specialized training for teachers; screening and referral; and its continuous quality improvement system.

Researchers found the state hadn’t met benchmarks in teacher degrees, assistant teacher degrees, staff professional development, maximum class size and staff-to-child ratios. This data was identical to last year’s met and unmet benchmarks for Ohio.

An associate degree is required in the state for pre-K teachers, but the NIEER benchmark is a bachelor’s degree. For assistant preschool teachers, the Ohio requirement is a high school diploma, though the NIEER sets a benchmark of a child development associate credential or equivalent credential.

Maximum class size set in Ohio is 24 for 3-year-olds and 28 for 4-year-olds, though NIEER recommends 20 or lower.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

St. Anthony would have closed if ���󾱴�’s legislature had not made vouchers so available over the last 10 years — so much so that the school can fill its 225 seats with students using vouchers to pay tuition they couldn’t afford otherwise, said Scott Embacher, a consultant for the school.

Without the vouchers “it would be stunning if we were still open,” he said.

Private schools across Ohio like St. Anthony have seen an infusion of hundreds of millions of tax dollars in recent years as the Republican-dominated state legislature has made vouchers available to more and more families. After years of enrollment declines and closures, private school operators, particularly religious schools, are filling seats, adding students and even looking to expand.

Voucher use in Ohio has grown more than 400 percent in the last 10 years, from 30,000 students in 2013-14 to more than 120,000 today. The state tax dollars going to families and private schools has grown from $175 million then to potentially $1 billion a year now.

The most dramatic leap — a nearly 50 percent jump from 83,000 to 120,000 — came just this school year after the Ohio legislature eliminated the last income cap for families to receive a voucher in summer of 2023.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, the legislature’s leading champion of vouchers, said he expects that number to climb again in the 2024-25 school year. Because the eligibility rules were changed so late, families and schools had little time to learn of the changes and make plans for the fall.

“People have already made their decisions for the year about where their child is going to go,” he said. “They’re going out for the basketball team, and they’ve already got the bus route . So the increase in the number of new students next year, it’s going to be much greater, because people will have figured it out.”

Huffman said he hopes the latest increase in vouchers will help older schools build up enrollment and even add new classrooms. He has hinted at directing more money to them, but has not proposed any plan yet.

If he does, ���󾱴�’s bitter debates over vouchers that started when it was one of the pioneering states in the movement will flare up again. 

���󾱴�’s Cleveland-only voucher program in the 1990s was one of the first in the country and sparked complaints that it improperly advanced religion by providing tax money for religious schools. The landmark Zelman vs. Simons-Harris Supreme Court ruling in 2002, which sprung out of the Cleveland vouchers, allowed religious schools to be part of voucher programs if they were not the only recipients.

Since then, often led by Huffman, Ohio has added vouchers for low-income students, for those whose local public schools were designated as “failing” because of low test scores and then for families with ever-increasing incomes, raised in steps over time. Most recently, the legislature in 2023 removed the last income limit for voucher eligibility.

Every student is now eligible for $6,165 through eighth grade and $8,407 for high school, with a sliding scale of reductions only when family income is over 450 percent of the poverty level, or $135,000 for a family of four. Even then, voucher amounts can never go below 10 percent of the standard amount.

At each step voucher expansion drew applause from school choice advocates, while also sparking complaints from school districts and teachers unions that they pulled students and dollars out of district schools. Criticism of funneling money to religious schools has continued, as several estimates show more than 95 percent of voucher dollars in Ohio go to those religious schools.

A coalition of school districts have sued the state to block voucher expansion for these reasons since 2022. A trial is scheduled for November.

State aid to private schools could grow in yet another way. Some school choice advocates, including the conservative Buckeye Institute, have started calling for the state to start paying for private school construction, as it does with public schools. Brian Hickey, executive director of the Ohio Catholic Conference, said schools would welcome help building schools in rural areas that don’t have existing Catholic schools.

St. Anthony is looking for money to build a four-classroom addition behind the school and has early drawings of how it would look while it seeks funding. The school is already asking legislators if there might be state money available.

The most recent voucher expansion passed in 2023 seems to be serving students already at private school in this first year, avoiding the usual complaints of taking students from traditional districts. But critics blast it as simply a transfer of money to middle- and upper-class families who had already been able to afford having their children in private school.

Criticism persists that ���󾱴�’s voucher programs have less state accountability than traditional school districts or charter schools. There is no national consensus on how voucher students are tested and if schools should be rated.  

Some states, like neighboring Indiana, have private school students using vouchers take all state tests. The state then gives those schools the same report cards as district and charter schools.

In Ohio, the legislature has slowly stripped away requirements for voucher students to take state tests and now have the voucher schools just report results of other national standardized tests of their own choosing, like the ACT or SAT.

That has long drawn criticism from opponents, who say that all schools using tax money should be held to the same standards.

“One thing that you won’t see in the (state) report cards is ratings for private schools that are now taking hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds, subsidizing private school tuition,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, one of the state’s two large teachers union. “As voucher enrollment is exploding, I think there is a massive need for accountability.”

In response to these complaints, two Republican representatives introduced a bill last month calling for state report cards for private schools accepting vouchers and for those schools to report more financial and student disciplinary data.The bill has yet to have a hearing.

The conservative leaning Fordham Institute, which supports school choice and most of the voucher expansion, has publicly shared concerns about accountability. And while Chad Aldis, who leads Fordham in Ohio, said he’d probably support money helping private school construction, he’d want safeguards there too. As with charter schools, Aldis would want to be sure private school operators can’t build facilities or buy equipment with tax money and then use them for something other than a school.

Voucher supporters say adding testing and other reporting requirements would increase administrative work and costs. They say the schools are a bargain, costing the public far less than district schools with all their local taxes on top of state aid. And they say parents don’t need report cards to know if the school is right for their children.

Huffman said it’s not really fair for public schools to call for the same accountability for private schools because public school districts never close. Private schools have had to close after losing students, he said.

“They’re not held accountable,” Huffman said. “They in fact, continue to operate, especially schools that don’t perform academically. That’s not true for private schools, because parents take their kids out.”

At least seven Ohio public universities are reviewing scholarships in the wake of comments Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost made about race-based scholarships after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious admissions.

Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the University of Toledo and Youngstown State University all said they are in the process of reviewing their scholarships. This is in addition to Ohio University and Ohio State University, .

“The University of Toledo has paused the distribution of scholarships that consider race as a part of their award criteria following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the use of affirmative action in higher education admissions,” university spokesperson Tyrel Linkhorn said in email.

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This affects 6% of Toledo’s nearly 1,200 donor-supported scholarships, which is worth $500,000, he said in an email.

“The University and The University of Toledo Foundation are actively working with donors to explore potential revisions to scholarship agreements so we can continue to support our donors’ goals in a way that fully complies with the Supreme Court decision,” Linkhorn said in an email.

Kent State and Youngstown State mentioned the Supreme Court case and “guidance from the state of Ohio” as reasons for their review. Cleveland State just mentioned the Supreme Court case and Akron didn’t give a specific reason.

The Capital Journal previously reported that awarding race-based diversity scholarships and that Ohio State University is in the “process of updating scholarship criteria to ensure compliance with the law,” according to the .

Ohio University has 130 gift agreements that are currently under review that represent $450,000 in potential scholarship awards, university spokesperson Dan Pittman said in an email.

“The review is to ensure language in the gift agreements remains lawful,” Pittman said. “If deemed necessary, the University will work with donors to make revisions to language in the agreements.”

Ohio State University expects to give away approximately $448 million dollars in financial aid this fiscal year, university spokesperson Ben Johnson said in an email.

Bowling Green State University, Miami University, Northeast Ohio Medical Center, Shawnee State University, the University of Cincinnati and Wright State University did not answer questions about the status of their race-based scholarships.

A university spokesperson for Central State University, ���󾱴�’s only public historically Black university, said in email they don’t have race based scholarships.

Supreme Court decision

The next day, Yost sent a letter to Ohio colleges and universities saying “employees must immediately cease considering race when making admissions decisions,” according to the letter. It also said his office won’t legally protect someone at a college or university who uses race as a factor.

The topic of race-based scholarships came up on a Jan. 26 call with universities, said Yost’s spokesperson Bethany McCorkle.

“What was said in response to a question was after the recent Supreme Court decision, scholarships will need to be looked at to ensure compliance with the law,” McCorkle said in an email. “Although the Court did not expressly prohibit race-based scholarships, it indicated that ‘eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.’ Race-based scholarships discriminate on the basis of race in awarding benefits. Therefore, it would follow that such programs are unconstitutional.”

The Harvard Supreme Court decision is being “weaponized to intimidate and create fear,” said Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors.

“We obviously disagree with the Harvard decision, and we also disagree with how the Attorney General is trying to extrapolate it to apply to virtually anything that touches race,” she said. “We hope that institutions are not being pushed into a direction that ultimately will harm students.”

If race-based scholarships are removed from universities, Kilpatrick said it could prevent Ohio students from earning degrees.

“This is a dangerous slippery slope, and they should be cautious about how far they’re trying to push this,” she said. “This will undoubtedly dry up desperately needed revenue streams for institutions.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Starting next year, Ohio school districts and community schools will have to use core curriculum and instructional materials for English language arts and reading intervention programs from lists created by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce as part of the state’s science of reading implementation.

their list for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten through fifth grade, and about a third of the state’s school districts and community schools are already using at least one of the initially approved core reading instruction curriculum, according to ODEW survey results.

This is part of ODEW’s efforts to implement the science of reading across classrooms starting next school year.

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The state’s two-year, $191 billion budget included — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.

The science of reading of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Ohio is one of 37 states that have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading since 2013, according to .

“There’s nothing more important than young people knowing how to read,” Gov. Mike DeWine said back in January at ODEW. “I’m convinced that using the right curriculum and making sure all the teachers are teaching in that way based upon the science of reading is going to make a huge, huge difference in the next few years.”

It has previously been reported that  and 33% of third graders were not proficient in reading before COVID-19.

“I think this is a great opportunity to really improve reading in the state of Ohio and it’s one thing I’m going to monitor myself very, very closely,” DeWine said.

ODEW Survey

One of the first steps in preparing to get the science of reading in every Ohio classroom was figuring out what curriculum is currently being used in schools and what professional development educators are receiving.

ODEW sent a survey in September to all public school and community school superintendents (1,007 in total) about the instructional materials they use and professional development training their educators receive.��Almost all of them (995) completed the survey as of Dec. 22 and .

The survey showed 789 school districts and community schools use the same core instructional materials for kindergarten through fifth grade. Of those, 93% use published curriculum while the remaining 7% use locally created instructional materials for core literacy instruction.

Professional development

Nearly 70% of school districts and community schools said their teachers previously completed science of reading professional development before this current school year, according to the survey results.

The science of reading provisions in the budget includes stipends for teachers to receive professional development in the science of reading.

K-5 teachers, English language teachers in grades 6-12, intervention specialists, English learner teachers, reading specialists and instructional coaches will receive $1,200 stipends. There will also be $400 stipends for middle and high schoolers teachers in other subject areas.

All teachers and administrators must complete their professional development by July 2025, unless they have already completed a similar course.

“It was very plain to me and to my wife, Fran as we traveled around the state last year that a lot of teachers had come out of their college without really the background in science of reading,” DeWine said. “So this is going to take a while, but I think teachers are embracing it when they really start to see the results.”

The Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor is required to create an audit process that shows how every educator training program aligns with teaching the science of reading instruction.

Literacy coaches

The budget will fund 100 literacy coaches that will help public schools with the lowest level of proficiency in literacy based on their performance in the state’s English language arts assessment.

More than 400 community schools and districts reported having no literacy coaches. 18 districts and community schools have between six and 10 literacy coaches, and 10 reported having more than 10 literacy coaches, according to the survey results.

A study by researchers from Ohio State University found that the likelihood of violence against teachers could be greater in schools that focus primarily on grades and test scores.

The study, which was published in the , surveyed 9,000 teachers in the nation, particularly before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did researchers find that violence against teachers was more likely in elementary schools than in other schools, but also that female teachers “experienced more violence than others pre-COVID-19,” according to the study.

“Female teachers were more likely to report experiences of violence from all types of perpetrators pre-COVID-19, whereas females only experienced more violence perpetrated by parents during COVID,” the study stated.

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There was a difference in region as well, with rural and suburban schools reporting less violence than teachers in urban schools before and during the pandemic.

But overall, the “performance goal structure” was what the study found connected teachers with levels of violence, no matter who perpetrated the violence.

“Our results indicate that an instructional climate that emphasizes performance and test scores may set the stage for negative teacher and student interactions that may lead to violence against educators,” the study stated.

Of the teachers surveyed, 65% reported at least one verbal threat or property damage incident by a student before the pandemic. In the 2020-2021 school year, incidents dropped 32% verbal threats and 26% property damage, but the lower rates don’t mean the likelihood of violence was less common overall, according to the lead author, OSU educational psychology professor Eric Anderman.

“People say no one was in schools then. That’s not true,” Anderman said in a statement. “A lot of times teachers were in the building, but the students were at home. And some of the violence occurred over Zoom.”

Anderman said the research didn’t show an emphasis on mastering skills, so much as the focus on placing a grade or test score at the forefront of education, that created violent situations.

“What was really striking was this performance culture predicted all kinds of increased violence by students, whether it be physical violence, verbal threatening, or property violence,” Anderman said in a release announcing the study.

Solutions posed in the study involved changing the performance-focused methods in schools and creating channels for students to release stress without pushing grade-based success.

“This is about changing the way we talk to kids about what learning is about and what is really important,” Anderman stated in the release.

The study comes after a conducted during the pandemic showed nearly half of all teachers who participated wanted to quit or transfer.

Anderman was a part of that 2022 study as well, as part of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Violence Against Educators and School Personnel,  and the anecdotes and information from the study showed him there was “a crisis in the teaching profession,” according to a release when the survey was published.

That survey showed 33% of the teachers participating reported “verbal attacks or threats of violence,” 29% of those threats received from parents.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Those initiatives, created to help the high-poverty district’s students after schools closed during the pandemic, are among the highest-profile cuts out of $91 million proposed by new district CEO Warren Morgan.

Other proposals to cover the loss of an additional $12,000 per student in COVID aid also include ending a decade-long experiment of year-round classes in some schools.

“We got almost $500 million in COVID relief dollars from the federal government that allowed us to do really extraordinary things during an extraordinary period of time,” Morgan said as he announced his plan. “Those dollars go away, creating a little bit of this cliff.. in the financial situation that we’re in.”

A placed Cleveland with the third-highest per-student grants of big cities in the country, after Detroit and Philadelphia.

The exact details of cuts will be set over the next few months. More cuts are expected for the 2025-26 school year.

But the broad plan for cuts outlined by Morgan and which the school board will vote on Tuesday is Cleveland’s first public attempt to sort out which pandemic programs are worth keeping and what older efforts must be cut as a tradeoff.

Cleveland is not alone in having to make cuts as the $190 billion infusion the federal government gave schools through relief grants known as CARES, ESSER and ARPA run out. 

But both the financial boost from pandemic aid, and now the crash, is far more dramatic for high-poverty districts like Cleveland, which has the highest child poverty rate in the country among big cities.

Because the aid formula sent more money to high-poverty districts than affluent ones, the pandemic grants gave the neediest students more help with tutoring, laptops, better ventilation, mental health and other programs to catch up from lost school time. 

The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University reported in the fall that .The , though enrollment swings the last few years make exact numbers impossible.

“For many of those districts, it made up an outsized percentage of their usual budget, which we think from an equity perspective, was a great thing because it allows those districts to make investments that they have long needed,” said Qubilah Huddleston, who works on school funding issues for the Education Trust. “That said, they are also now faced with making some of the toughest budget decisions that they probably had to make in a while.”

Huddleston also cautioned that other factors, including state aid changing as enrollment fell across the country, are adding to districts’ budget troubles.

”Districts are dealing with a lot more than just the ESSER loss,” she said. “It’s certainly the factor that’s contributing the most, but they have also experienced enrollment declines that they did not expect. They have also inflation, right, things costing more, whether it’s energy, whether it’s labor… happening all at the same time that this loss of ESSER dollars is happening.”

Cleveland has its own local issues affecting how the cuts play out. The district has a new CEO, allowing him to pick his own priorities without being accountable for past promises. The district expected budget deficits in the next few years regardless of COVID and COVID aid, so typical financial needs are hard to separate from those caused by the loss of federal money. 

And the district is negotiating a new contract with the Cleveland Teachers Union, which will add costs, so Cleveland officials have incentive to highlight a lack of money while teachers have incentive to focus on what is still available.

Cleveland Teachers Union President Shari Obrenski said the long-expected cuts are not a crisis and noted that all the federal money may have bought the district an extra year before needing to ask voters for a tax increase.

“This is what I find frustrating about the narrative that’s coming from the district right now,” Obrenski said. “We were able to use our ESSER dollars to make our general fund dollars last longer, which I think was actually a very good idea.”

Some of Cleveland’s proposed cuts hit programs that started using federal aid, while others cut efforts championed by former CEO Eric Gordon that Morgan is re-evaluating.

Morgan has proposed cutting $6.4 million budgeted for providing every student a laptop and providing many with portable wifi hotspots when they do not have internet access at home. So-called “one-to-one” computer programs are increasingly common in suburban districts and was a goal of Gordon for years before the pandemic forced the district to buy devices for remote classes in the 2020-21 school year.

It was a huge step for Cleveland, ranked as the worst-connected city in America by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance.

The district also made continuing this program a key promise of its fall 2020 campaign for a tax increase for the schools.

But Morgan said not all students are receiving laptops and teachers are often not sending them home with students.

The district would not immediately answer questions from The 74 about how many laptops or hotspots are included in that estimate or how much progress has been made in attempts to provide affordable internet access in disconnected neighborhoods.

Cleveland’s summer learning program, which took traditional remedial programs and turned them into a mix of classes and fun activities as a way to re-engage students, is also being trimmed. Morgan estimated he can save $30 million over the next two years by cutting the program from 4,225 students last year to 3,500 this year with more class time in shorter days.

Morgan also proposed cutting $34.1 million over two years budgeted for afterschool programs run by outside groups like the Boys and Girls Club or America SCORES, a national program that mixes soccer with poetry. Traditional school athletic teams and clubs are not affected.

A coalition of providers, Clevelanders for Afterschool, has formed in opposition, saying cutting 93 programs from 17 providers will hurt students. David Smith, who runs some programs and is organizing the push to keep them, said they help students emotionally and academically, along with helping reduce crime in the city.

“It’s not a good idea to push these kids out in the streets after school and close the building behind them,” Smith said.

Morgan said he hopes these programs can find other funding or that city recreation centers can fill the gap.

Morgan also proposed saving close to $14 million by cutting extra school days from schools that have classes year-round or extra days in the school year. Gordon started several specialized high schools that focused on topics like STEM, medicine, or aerospace and maritime careers that run through the summer to keep learning momentum with students and avoid summer learning loss.

Those eight schools have 20 additional school days, while another 13 have 10 extra days added to their school years.

Morgan said the academic results of these schools are mixed, even though they receive more money than other schools to pay teachers for extra days.

“Right now, that sets up some inequities,” Morgan said. “We have schools that are receiving disproportionately more resources, more time and school days. Staff are receiving more resources. We do want to really make sure that we are equitable.”

Two new education bills have been introduced by Democrats in the Ohio House: One to ensure school meals for any students who request them, and another to increase base teacher salaries to $50,000 per year. The future of the proposed laws is uncertain with Republican supermajorities controlling both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.

A bill introduced by state Rep. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and state Rep. Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, would “require public schools to provide meals and related services to students,” even beyond changes made in the latest operating budget.

“Regardless of whether a student has money to pay for a meal or owes money for earlier meals, each school district shall provide a meal to a student who requests one,” the new bill, , states.

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The bill also prohibits a requirement that a district discard a meal after it has been served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals” or “publicly identify or stigmatize a student who cannot pay for a meal or who owes a meal debt.”

In 2019, a 9-year-old Ohio student’s hot lunch was taken away over a $9.75 unpaid balance, .

The bill comes after changes were made in the most recent state operating budget to provide no-cost meals to any student who qualifies for reduced-price or free meals.

After the budget was passed, advocates praised the , but said more could be done to reduce the categorization of children and the visibility of those who have meal debt.

qualified for reduced-price or free lunches for the 2022-2023 school year, according to data from the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, up from 46.6% the year before. Qualification is based on household income, and children are eligible at up to 185% of the federal poverty line.

Brewer and Mohamed’s bill also requires that districts direct “communications about a student’s meal debt to a parent or guardian and not to the student, except … if a student inquires about that student’s meal debt.”

Teacher pay

In a separate bill, state Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, seeks to increase the base teacher salary to $50,000 per year statewide.

That would be an increase from the current base salary of $35,000 for teachers with a bachelor’s degree. Teachers with less than a bachelor’s degree would have a base salary set at $43,250, while teachers with five years of training but no master’s degree would start at $51,900 and teachers with a master’s degree or higher would start at $54,750, according to the bill, .

���󾱴�’s average teacher salary has remained lower than the U.S. average since 2014, according to an analysis by, which showed an 11.2% increase in Ohio salaries from fiscal year 2012 to 2021, where U.S. salaries grew by 17.9%.

A found that average weekly wagers for teachers have remained “relatively flat” since 1996, with teachers making more than 14% less in Ohio when compared with other college-educated workers.

Salaries will still be determined based on years of service under the newest House bill, including a maximum of five years active military service.

Both bills are led by Democratic sponsors, meaning the way forward will be rocky in a Republican supermajority Ohio General Assembly, especially when this particular General Assembly has had a .

The bills still need to be assigned to a committee for consideration before public comment and possible votes can take place.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Steve Dackin, appointed as the first director of the recast Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, told The 74 in an interview last month that building pathways to careers will be his second biggest priority — just after overseeing ���󾱴�’s shift to the science of reading, which Gov. Mike DeWine and the legislature also mandated last year. 

For Dackin, career education even comes before the difficult task of tackling academic deficits students developed during the pandemic.

“I think a good job is the quickest way out of poverty,” said Dackin, a former local school superintendent and community college administrator. “I just see this as the mission of the agency.”

“First priority is making sure kids can read and write,” he said. “Second priority is making sure that they’re able to be employed and have a path to a good job.”

Dackin, 66, comes to the job with clear strengths, but also with controversy.

He has experience in both school districts and career pathways, having served as superintendent for more than six years of the 7,500-student Reynoldsburg school district near Columbus. Additionally, he has more than seven years connecting students, businesses and Columbus State Community College as that school’s superintendent of school and community partnerships.

Over the last few years, Dackin has also worked with the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board on a research project that looks at how well schools teach students about career opportunities. He said that the project, whose findings could be released in February, will be one guide in his new position.

A former member of ���󾱴�’s State Board of Education, the current board selected him as state superintendent in 2022 to head the old version of the education department. But Dackin, who had a lead role in the search for that post before becoming a candidate, faced ethics complaints and had to step down just three weeks after taking the job.

Since the new director position is now appointed by the governor, the conflict of interest issues no longer apply.

���󾱴�’s shift to having an appointed director also drew controversy because it takes away control from the state school board, which has some elected members, and gives it to the governor. Some state board members sued to block the change, saying it would violate the rights of voters who elected them, but they failed and the powers of the state board and superintendent are now much more limited.

With those issues cleared, Dackin talked with The 74 about the department’s expanded mission.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: Do you see the mission of this department really changing now that workforce has been added to the name? How much?

Dackin: Yes. I mean, we have workforce in our title. We can’t separate education from workforce. It’s inseparable. And so to have a prepared workforce means that we have to do our due diligence on the preparation side. 

I’ve heard a lot in the last four or five years, from employers about their needs, and you hear everything from ‘I just need people who can pass a drug test.’…that’s a refrain from some… to ‘We can’t find people who have the skill set that I need,’ you know, and ‘We can’t find people who have the employability skills that I need,’ like showing up to work on time and being able to work with people, contribute to the team, some of those things that we know are needed. 

The American High School is amazing to me, how resilient it’s been for 50 years. Think about your own experience in high school. My guess is you experienced a seven or eight-period day where you had classes every 50 minutes and three minutes or four minutes between a class and then went to the next class and went to the next class and, and so on. And high schools look a lot like that still. I think it’s time to take a step back and ask ourselves, ‘Are we getting what we need to have for this new demand of an information-based economy?’ I think that’s a lofty question for a whole lot of people to try to answer.

The 74: Are you watching what Indiana’s doing right now? They’re having a big talk about rethinking and transforming High School and making work experiences a much more central part of high school.

Dackin: Well, I will be now. No, I wasn’t aware of that. And again, I’m 14 days in the job, but I’m always interested in looking at whatever places that are producing real outcomes. Because there are a lot of places doing things, but not many places are producing real outcomes. And again, to me, the ultimate outcome is a good job. 

I think a good job is the quickest way out of poverty… We have so many good jobs in Ohio right now. I just see this as the mission of the agency.

First priority is making sure kids can read or write. Second priority is making sure that they’re able to be employed and have a path to a good job. 

Third thing we’re trying to do is to deal with the accelerated learning issues that we have. You know the pandemic really set a lot…we had some students in the state who weren’t in school for two years. And so there’s still a lag there, around what they experience and where they’re at, and their gaps in learning, mathematics being a really good example of that. We have huge achievement gaps in math, more than even literacy. So we have to think about interventions we need to be doing and, frankly, make sure the department has a role in helping to analyze and research interventions that work and make those available to folks.

And then the fourth priority is none of this happens well if students aren’t safe, or they have challenges in their mental or emotional well-being. I’ve always applauded the governor since his first budget for putting money in and getting the legislature to agree to make dollars available for student wellness. It’s really hard to concentrate and read and write and do arithmetic if you’re dealing with all kinds of emotional or mental health issues.

So these are our four priorities. That’s all I want. Four. And they align with the Governor’s priorities. And I think when you can get really focused on doing a few things but doing better than anybody else, you’ve got a shot at doing something big.

The 74: You were state superintendent briefly under the old system? Do you prefer it this way? Is this really the best way going forward? 

Dackin: Yeah. I think the thing that I liked about this opportunity is that the governor’s focus is the same focus I’ve had my entire career. And it’s the same focus I had even as an appointee on the state board. First and foremost is literacy. We can’t accomplish our workforce goals if kids are not reading at or above grade level as they matriculate through the system. That’s foundational. I think that literacy is almost a right.

He’s put a stake in the ground around the science of reading. We know more now about how kids read and learn how to read than we ever have in the past. Our knowledge about the function of the cognitive processes in young brains, we know more now than ever. For him to say, ‘This is what we’re going to do in Ohio,’ took courage. And it was a visionary step on his part, to get us on the right path toward a more preferred future. 

The 74: Did you make the jump to science reading, when you were at Reynoldsburg?

Dackin: We did the science of reading in Reynoldsburg. We didn’t call it that, but we had the components of the science of reading. 

One of the things we did really well in Reynoldsburg is that we hired really, really, really, really quality teachers and principals. And then we gave them the authority to make decisions that they felt were in the best interests of their kids, relative to the outcomes we set. That was a difference-maker. 

The 74: So what if the professional in the classroom wants to use three-cueing with the kids? (���󾱴�’s law that requires teachers to use the science of reading approaches banned so-called “cueing” — having young students figure out what a word is through context or pictures — that has been a key part of other reading strategies.)

Dackin: Well, right now, the role of the Department of Education is to enforce the law. And so that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna enforce the law. That’s kind of a nonnegotiable.

The 74: But do you agree with that, that it should be banned, like the state has?

Dackin: I agree with the fact that we have focused on five components of the science of reading that are research-based and have proven results. We felt that when I was a superintendent, and I know districts that do it very well. And so that’s where I plant my flag.

The 74: With this new department, how would you balance how much is straight workforce prep? And how much is just straight education?

Dackin: I don’t think you can separate the two. That’s been one of our challenges, not just Ohio, but across the country. We’ve seen Career Tech as a place that some kids go, and we have general education as a place for other kids to go, and it’s been this kind of separation point. But employers say the skill sets that are needed, and the knowledge base that is needed now in the workforce are a sophisticated set of skills. 

The last couple years, I’ve been working on a project on an issue that I think few people have a fundamental understanding of. The number of kids who enter high school in any given year in Ohio as freshmen…about 135…136,000… between 68 and 70% of those kids never get to a four-year degree In Ohio. It’s a big number.

But we have all these jobs that are posted right now that we can’t fill. And so we need every able-bodied Ohioan to be skilled, ready to take these jobs. We can’t have a stat like that, where three-quarters of the workforce after they get out of high school, are not sure what they’re doing. 

We then have to kind of reverse-engineer this a little bit. And that is, what are they doing while they are in K-12? And how do we ensure that kids are graduating and how do we expand opportunities while we have them in K-12 so that they’re leaving us in K-12 with requisite skills that become employable?

Dackin continued talking about the research project with the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board and how little students are taught about career opportunities.

One thing we do not do well in high schools in this state, and I suspect in many states, we never grab a kid’s heart while they’re in high school. I think it’s time to kind of use the phrase, reverse engineer, the middle school, high school experience so that we can start grabbing kids’ hearts.

They don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t know about careers, largely.

We found out a couple things. One is most kids were led to believe that their primary opportunities would be either in college or the military. There was little discussion about careers in technology, careers in medicine. So right now they’re at a deficit. If you ask a kid, what do you want to do when you get out of high school, they’re void of much information about what’s available. 

That’s a shame, shame on us as adults. We’ve got to figure that out.

I think our challenge is to make sure that every kid, as they’re going through our K-12 system, their parents have access to labor market data that talks about what the careers are, what the pay is, what it takes to get from point A to point B. So many people don’t know how to navigate the system, because it’s very complex.

The 74: How much do you think that report is going to guide some of your vision for this job going forward? 

Dackin: I think that is one of many blueprints that we can build on. You’ve got to have multiple strategies. And we’ve got to see some pilots out there where we can get real data on what’s happening, real outcome data. One of our challenges in our state is it’s tough to get employability data.

We’ve got (places where) it’s being done pretty well. Our challenge in Ohio is how do we scale that? How do we ensure that it just isn’t the luck of the draw, that a kid happens to be in a place where they have a really well-thought-out system from K-12 to a good job? College may be part of that, maybe not, but how do we scale it?

The bipartisan sponsors of a new bill to target chronic absenteeism want to model a piece of advice from novelist Jean Shepherd: “In God we trust, all others pay cash.”

In a proposed two-year pilot program, Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz and Democratic Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, both of Cincinnati, said cash transfers would be sent to kindergarteners and ninth graders to jumpstart school attendance which has long suffered in the state, but that was exacerbated by a global pandemic.

“This is the number one issue we are facing in education,” Isaacsohn told the House Primary & Secondary Education Committee this week. “It is an absolute emergency and we need to act like it.”

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According to the , prior to the pandemic, kindergarteners considered chronically absent – missing 10% or more of a school year for any reason – registered at 11%. In the last school year, the rate ballooned to 29%.

Those chronically absent from their freshman year of high school represented 15% of students before the COVID-19 pandemic set in, but has now risen to more than 31%.

“That is not just Ohio. There has been a cultural shift all over the country away from regular, 90-plus percent school attendance,” Isaacsohn said.

One part of the new pilot program, if approved, would provide a total of $1.5 million over two years to give qualified school districts enough for up to two schools to distribute transfers to students or their parents/guardians. Seitz told the committee it will be up to the district to decide how the distribution of funds works, whether it be a biweekly transfer of $25 for each student, quarterly transfers of $150, or annual payment of $500.

A second part of the program would create a base award of $250 for graduating students from qualifying high schools, with an additional $250 to $750 for students with GPAs of 3.0 or above.

School districts would qualify if they receive federal Title 1 funding and rank in the lowest 20% of traditional public schools in graduation rate, as the bill is currently written. Any district hoping to be included in the pilot program would still have to apply.

Rural school districts and urban school districts must be included, Seitz said, and both types “must exhibit chronic absenteeism in the highest quartile based on the most recent state report card ratings.”

“So, we’re going to pick sort of the worst of the worst on attendance and see if we can move the needle,” Seitz told the committee.

With ���󾱴�’s keeping students in school and helping them graduate, Seitz said the program comes after several other local-level efforts to bring students in.

“We’ve tried pizza day and we’ve tried playground hours, and we’ve tried all kind of foo-foo stuff,” Seitz said. “Doesn’t seem to work.”

The sponsors received criticism from some Republican members of the committee who worried paying students for something they should be required to do might send the wrong message.

“I don’t see this as rewarding good behavior, I see this as rewarding bad behavior and encouraging the entitlement mentality that a lot of our young people are receiving,” said state Rep. Beth Lear, R-Galena.

State Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania, questioned paying students “to follow the law,” even as truancy laws and parental consequences exist in the state, and even pondered the long-term effects of the concept of financial incentives to abide by the law.

“Are we going to get to the point where we’re paying rapists not to rape,” Williams asked the co-sponsors. “Are we really going to start that trend where we’re going to go in and invest to prevent people from committing crimes?”

Seitz said the “deterrent effect” of laws against crimes like rape have the desired effect, but that isn’t the case for those fighting against chronic absenteeism.

“The deterrent effect of a truant officer is about zero, because most districts don’t even have them, or if they do, they can’t even begin to do the job,” Seitz said.

State Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, a former teacher, agreed that creating an incentive to allow teachers to have their impact on students in the classrooms only serves to help where truancy enforcement – or lack thereof – doesn’t.

“The truancy laws and attendance laws we have in Ohio quite frankly just don’t have a whole lot of teeth,” Brennan said.

The state could benefit as well if the program works, since students who are chronically absentee and those who fail to graduate not only hurt their financial potential, but also the state’s, sponsors said.

“They have lower lifetime earnings, therefore they’re paying lower taxes, they have higher rates of incarceration and interactions with the criminal justice system, higher utilization of public benefits,” Isaacsohn said. “So this is a situation of let’s pay now, so we don’t have to pay later.”

If the pilot program’s data shows success in improving absenteeism and graduation rates in the state, Seitz also said money for future programs could naturally work itself out with less of a need to fund the state’s dropout recovery schools.

The bill will have public hearings for both opposition and proponent comments in the House Primary & Secondary Committee before it goes up for a vote.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

But even that prediction rests on optimistic assumptions about continued improvement in the coming years. For some states, it could take longer. In Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina, for example, the percentage of students chronically absent for at least 10% of the school year went up in 2022-23, from the American Enterprise Institute.��

The report, based on available data from 39 states, calls chronic absenteeism “schools’ greatest post-pandemic challenge.” 

“We need to make a hard pivot moving forward,” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank. Minor decreases in chronic absenteeism rates are not enough to stave off “a disaster for the long term” he said, especially in low-performing and high-poverty districts that had serious absenteeism problems before the pandemic.

Malkus, a former middle school teacher, called for districts to make attendance a high priority, especially among elementary educators. Parents, he said, are more likely to respond to messages from children’s teachers than from “a stranger from the school district.” 

The report, one of two separate studies of chronic absenteeism released Wednesday, further underscores the enormity of a national crisis that is hindering students’ ability to recover academically from the pandemic. The second analysis shows a substantial increase in the share of districts where at least 30% of students missed 18 or more days of school. 

The review of federal data breaks down the rates into five levels of chronic absenteeism, with extreme being the highest. 

“We came up with these categories before the pandemic,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works. At that point, nearly 11% of districts nationally had extreme levels. “Then the pandemic hit, and it was like ‘Oh my God.’ ”

By 2021-22, the rate had more than tripled to almost 39%, , the final installment in a three-part from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. The data “compels action from state education agencies and policymakers,” researchers wrote.��

‘It’s alarming’

Some state lawmakers share that sense of urgency. So far, eight bills in seven states aim to reestablish good attendance habits among the nation’s students. 

Earlier this month, a Maryland called interim state chief Carey Wright to testify about whether news reports of shockingly high rates — with over half of students repeatedly missing school — were true.  

“It’s alarming,” she told the members, after sharing district and state-level data. “We have a lot of children who are chronically absent at very young grades, and that’s a real concern, particularly when you’re thinking that they’re starting their educational career.”

In Maryland, 274 schools out of 1,388 had an extreme chronic absenteeism rate in 2017-18. By 2021-22, that number had reached 700.

Lori Phelps, principal of Woodbridge Elementary in Catonsville, joined Wright to explain how her staff reduced its rate from 28% in 2021-22 to just over 9% in 2022-23.

Identifying patterns that increase absences is part of the answer, she added. For example, students were more likely to miss school on early-release days, so the staff worked with parent leaders to offer an afternoon program on those days. The PTA charged $10, but waived the fee for students with the most absences.

“We all want to prioritize those very important state scores,” Phelps said, “but we made a decision two years ago to prioritize attendance.”

No buses

But even parents determined to get their children to school face significant obstacles if they don’t have transportation. In Colorado, every district has to save money or because of driver shortages, said Michelle Exstrom, education director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. She serves on a expected to propose transportation solutions by the end of the year.  

“In rural areas all over the country, where kids don’t have a ride to school, it’s like, duh, they’re not going to be at school,” she said. A lot of parents can’t leave work at 2:30 to pick up their children, she said, and even high school students with cars often can’t drive to school because there’s not enough parking, she said.

In Ohio, two lawmakers think some might reduce chronic absenteeism in kindergarten and ninth grade, two grade levels with rates around 30%. 

The bill, from Democrat Rep. Dani Isaacsohn and Republican Rep. Bill Seitz, would offer $500 annually to families in low-income districts to boost attendance rates in those grades and ideally save money on dropout recovery services in the long run. If passes, it would start as a pilot this fall .

Seitz told The 74 he expects “significant supportive testimony,” based on the success of a similar program led by a .

Another proposal in , which had a 30% chronic absenteeism rate last year, would provide for home visits and tutoring to keep frequently absent high school students on track for graduation. And a would update the definition of “educational neglect” to include a parent’s failure to comply with attendance requirements.

‘Studied in real time’

But both Malkus and Chang expressed skepticism of state solutions that fail to factor in the highly localized nature of the problem. , for example, one reason chronic absenteeism levels haven’t dropped is because “there are whole communities still feeling the effects of wildfires,” said Marc Siegel, spokesman for the state education department. In general, Malkus said it’s unlikely state legislation would be “a rapid-enough response.” And Chang worried that legislators could be “too prescriptive.”

“I think folks have to have local flexibility to unpack the issues,” she said. 

But she does think states are helping in at least one critical area: producing more accurate and timely data. 

In the past, it was often June before states released chronic absenteeism data from the year before — a fact that delayed efforts to help students. In Rhode Island, the public can the percentage of students at each school on track to be chronically absent by the end of the year. Malkus would like to see more leaders take that approach.

 “If we want to address it with eyes wide open,” he wrote, “chronic absenteeism needs to be studied in real time.”

The most recent state budget made changes to allow more students to be fed at no cost, but the battle to quell child hunger is still ongoing in Ohio.

The budget bill passed last year provided more than $4 million in funding to allow any students qualified for reduced-price of free breakfast and lunch can get the meals at no cost for the .

It’s not quite the universal meals that when budget talks began, but the are progress in the right direction, child and education advocates in the state concluded.

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The programs that are still attempting to help stem the flow of student hunger are seeing the struggles that inflation has on the cost of food, and Katherine Ungar, senior policy associate with the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, said the stigma of the income-based school food programs is still a barrier.

“It’s creating these categories that can create that stigma,” said Ungar.

Ohio has taken strides to help in the future by pledging to use federal dollars to establish a summer program that will give low-income families with child of school-aged children “grocery-buying benefits” while schools are closed, according to the USDA, who estimates more than 29 million children nationally could benefit.

“During the summer months, we estimate almost 1 million kids … lose access to meals,” Ungar said.

CDF-Ohio researched the whole-child impacts of categories like housing, health care and food insecurity. In fiscal year, 2023, the group’s showed an increase in the state’s students who were eligible for reduced-price or free school meals and considered “economically disadvantaged.”

The number of kids qualifying for the no-cost or low-cost lunches, for which any student in a household with up to 185% of the federal poverty line is eligible, when from 46.6% in the 2021-22 school year to nearly 50% in the 2022-23 school year.

This new summer benefit will be eligible to about 837,000 Ohio children, according to Ungar, and the economic impact of the benefit could bring $150 million into local economies.

The (EBT) gives eligible families who apply pre-loaded cards with $40 per child per month. The EBT program works in conjunction with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Women, Infants and Children (WIC) funds and other nutrition assistance efforts.

But the program can only be used if eligible families apply. Children who are certified as eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school would be eligible for the Summer EBT as well, but still have to apply through the same process as the free-or-reduced-lunch application.

“We know there are families who qualify but have not completed the application form,” Ungar said. “Some families may not think they’re eligible, but it’s important that anyone who could be eligible applies, so that those benefits can get to the people who need them.”

A similar program was available during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the USDA found that the program decreased “children’s food hardship” by 33%, and took between 2.7 and 3.9 million out of hunger across the country.

According to research by the , the pandemic EBT program brought Ohio children an estimated $2.2 billion in nutrition assistance between Spring 2020 to Summer 2023, the end of the pandemic program.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

An Ohio House bill to notify parents of any content in state schools that may contain “sexuality” was introduced before an Ohio Senate committee earlier this month.

Critics likened the bill to Florida’s “, which was implemented in 2022 and bars classroom discussion for some grade levels on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Republican co-sponsors state Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, and Rep. Sara Carruthers, R-Hamilton, brought the bill before the Senate Education Committee.

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“This is a common sense bill that simply acknowledges the fundamental role that parents play in the life of their children,” Swearingen told the committee. “It is statistically undeniable that when parents are involved in their kids’ lives, kids succeed.”

During its run through the House, the bill was opposed by a variety of youth advocacy groups, including the Kaleidoscope Youth Center, the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio and the Trevor Project, along with some school districts, the ACLU of Ohio, the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio School Counselor Association.

The groups took issue with House Bill 8’s language, which requires schools to notify parents and allows parents to remove students from classes based on the “sexuality content” of those classes, and amendments made that LGBTQ advocates said made topics related to the LGBTQ community “perhaps inappropriate for the classroom,” according to Equality ���󾱴�’s then-spokesperson Kathryn Poe, during the House committee process.

Mallory Golski, civic engagement and advocacy manager at Kaleidoscope Youth Center said calling the content “sexuality content,” the bill is “targeting LGBTQIA+ youth and even something as simple as a story that they might be reading in English class, if there is a queer character in that story, that can be flagged as sexuality content.”

In the Dec. 5 committee hearing before the Senate Education Committee, Carruthers, however, likened the regulations under the bill to the process that would take place if a child was hurt in the park and an ambulance was called.

“Who do they call to find out your child’s medical history or allergic reactions to medications?” Carruthers posed to the committee. “Somehow, I don’t believe they would call the school to find out this information.”

Swearingen said the bill “protects a parent’s ability to direct their child’s physical and mental health.” To do so, the school districts are “prohibited from keeping changes in the health of the student from their parents, and the school district is also prohibited from encouraging the student to hide these issues from their parents,” he told the committee.

That is part of the problem youth advocacy and education groups have with the bill, saying that opens the door for children to be “outed” for their gender identity or sexual orientation, when such information might put them at risk in certain households.

At the committee hearing, the bill received revisions through a substitute bill, which made changes “per the revised federal code,” according to Carruthers. She said the sponsors had “been working very closely” with committee chair state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, on the sub bill.

The bill included definitions for the terms “age-appropriate” and “developmentally appropriate,” which were modeled after existing federal definitions. Federal law uses those definitions for “activities or items that are generally accepted as suitable for children of the same chronological age or maturity” or “typical for an age or age group,” according to state Sen. Sandra O’Brien, R-Ashtabula, who presented the substitute bill to the committee.

The substitute bill will continue through the hearing process in the education committee before moving on to a vote of the full senate.

The bill passed the House with a vote of 65-29 in June.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

With paradigms shifting all around us, we must reimagine and build a modern, equitable public education system that unleashes the creativity, confidence and compassion of young people to adapt and contribute to a fast-changing, interconnected world. 

Real and meaningful change is possible, but it requires a public education system that makes learning relevant and enlivening, supports students’ discovery and pursuit of their purpose, and integrates learning throughout the community. 

A by Transcend shows that they aren’t engaged or enthusiastic about school. Only 31 percent reported that what they learn in school is connected to life outside the classroom, and just 35 percent said they are learning about things that interest them. Only 18% of adults considered themselves very career-ready after high school in a by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The time to reimagine American education is now.

Our team at Education Reimagined is working with educators, communities, and researchers to reconceive a modern public education system that shifts the brick-and-mortar model of schooling to one built on that offer deeply personalized opportunities to all students. 

Community-based, learner-centered education is an approach that promises to forge more equitable, meaningful and successful futures for our young people—and, consequently, our society. 

To help this vision become reality, we recently launched a research and development acceleration initiative. This effort is designed to catalyze the work of innovative sites, and crystallize the requirements for developing a forward-thinking public education system. This proactive step promises to expedite the evolution of public education, ensuring it meets the needs of the future. Education Reimagined aims to raise more than $20 million by the end of 2024, with the goal of creating five demonstrations of community-based public education systems over the next five years. 

At the core of these learning environments is a safe and nurturing home base, where learners develop relationships with advisors and peers who help guide them through their learning process. Learners also access learning hubs that offer vibrant, rich experiences centered on academic learning and skill-building within the context of interests and actual experiences. At field sites, they engage in real-world projects through internships and apprenticeships, allowing them to pursue their interests in a real-world setting.

In this system, children will learn everywhere — in parks, museums, libraries, businesses, homes, schools and civic centers. Learning is tangible, rooted in context, and intrinsically tied to each young person’s interests, aspirations and identity. 

This is not a fantasy. Community-based learning ecosystems are already creating new and exciting opportunities for hundreds of students in communities across the nation. A diverse group of learning communities are now leveraging this approach to transform the learning environment. Students in these sites are finding and pursuing passions that have the potential to last a lifetime.

At the brand new City View Community High School ecosystem in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, students’ home base is at the local Chamber of Commerce. They create personalized learning activities, connected to standards, through learning hubs that allow them to dive deeply into subjects that matter to them. Educators and advisors guide these community-based projects and allow students to explore topics at partnering local businesses, which are the field sites. This collaborative approach prepares them for their future, with direct access to careers in robotics, business ownership, fashion and video game programming. 

As core to the Columbus Learning Ecosystem Initiative, educators, business executives and community leaders have created interconnected learning opportunities for students to solve real-world problems in ways that prepare them for ���󾱴�’s burgeoning economy. The state’s adoption of 5G has attracted a host of global giants like AWS, Google, Intel and others opening operations there — including manufacturing, data centers and more. Through home bases, learning hubs, and field sites, learners are granted the autonomy to identify problems and work alongside industry professionals to devise solutions.

These schools engage students directly in their interests and provide opportunities to solve real-world problems and create artistic projects they may be doing when they join the workforce. The possibilities are as endless as our imaginations. The enthusiasm and results of this approach are promising, but we need to learn more, which is what our R&D initiative is designed to do.

We have a bold vision. Many may argue it is too ambitious. Still, hundreds of educators and learners are listening and engaging in visionary conversations about the future of U.S. public education. Most exciting, however, is the growing number of educators, policymakers, parents, community leaders and others already making community-based learning ecosystems a reality for more students. 

We are at a pivotal moment in public education. If we want the best futures for our students and the world, community-based learning ecosystems must be the path forward. It is in our nature as humans to learn and grow. By supporting our young people in their educational journey, we enable them to transcend our wildest imaginations. This progressive step forward bodes well for all of us.

We know from decades of reform efforts that our education system needs a reboot with a fundamental redesign. It’s time to move forward in partnership beyond school reform to an education revolution. How exciting is that?

Virginia Democrats were primarily celebrating being able to now block the governor’s plan in the state, but the outcome of Tuesday’s races — both at the state and local school board level — raise questions about the political viability of other Youngkin mandates, such as adopting state policies seen as hostile to LGBTQ+ students and giving parents far greater control over classroom materials. 

These volatile issues have roiled national politics for the last several years and were at play in school board and statewide elections in multiple places Tuesday. But voters , as seen in Democratic and progressive-leaning teachers unions quickly heralding the results and foes of Moms for Liberty, a high-profile, hard-right parent group whose candidates did not fare well, . 

“Voters across the country rejected extremist politicians and school board candidates running on divisive “culture war” issues in yesterday’s elections, as mainstream parents rallied instead behind those championing investments in safe and welcoming public schools that kids need to recover and thrive,” the American Federation of Teachers said Wednesday.

Citing its own analysis of 250 races nationally, the union said AFT-supported candidates won in over 80% of them and that “extremist school board candidates” were defeated in Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Wichita, Kansas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Aldine, Texas; and throughout Ohio and Minnesota.

On the other side of the aisle, the conservative Center for Education Reform was hoping for an opportunity to extend school choice funding measures that did not materialize: “If [Youngkin’s] party wins the votes necessary to take the majority in both chambers, there is potential for this state to provide parents with Education Savings Accounts.”

Here are five places where the school culture wars were pivotal in the 2023 elections:

Pennsylvania: Two school board contests in particular, in Pembridge and Central Bucks in suburban Philadelphia, were being watched nationally as a showdown between Republican incumbents, who had adopted a range of anti-LGBTQ+ and ultra-conservative curriculum measures, and Democratic challengers who pledged to change course. The contests also drew outsized political contributions, most notably in Central Bucks where Democrats and Republicans . The of the Central Bucks races and appeared to go to candidates opposed to the Moms for Liberty-aligned incumbents.

Virginia: In Spotsylvania County, where a conservative board was among the first to implement Youngkin’s education platforms, all four GOP-endorsed candidates lost to more liberal opponents. One who went on to defeat, Kirk Twigg, suggested that books pulled by the board from school libraries should be burned. He lost by almost 25 points, . In Loudoun County, which became ground zero for a host of culture war issues, particularly during Virginia’s prolonged school closures, all nine board members will be new in this upcoming term. “It was chaos for the last four years and I’m glad the election is finally over, and we can get to work,” said Deana Griffiths, .

Ohio: The state, where former President Trump won 53% of the vote in 2020, became a leading story out of the 2023 elections when voters and reproductive health care in the state constitution. It’s difficult to say how those voters may have gone down ballot in their local school board races, but in central Ohio, either supported or aligned with Moms for Liberty or the right-leaning 1776 Project won their races. In the Lakota and Forest Hills districts outside Cincinnati, including painting over a mural celebrating different races, carried the day.

Minnesota: Five of the largest suburbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities this year saw an unprecedented wave of spending by two political action committees backing candidates running on parental rights agendas. As of last week, the Minnesota Parents Alliance and a local affiliate spent a combined $80,000 — the lion’s share donated by one person — on 44 school board candidates. Just nine of their candidates clinched their election, according to unofficial results. Three races were as of Wednesday afternoon. Two of the PAC-supported candidates won board seats in the state’s largest school system, the Anoka-Hennepin School District, which has a long history of local elections centering on culture war issues. In the southern city of Hastings, where in the 2021 election cycle activists outed the now-former school board chair’s 8-year-old child as transgender, three Minnesota Parents Alliance candidates captured seats on a seven-member board. 

New Jersey: Parental rights and gender issues have taken center stage at school board meetings, with the results from Tuesday’s election being mixed on whose agenda resonated more with voters. In Morris County, where school boards have fought over parental notification and LGBTQ+-themed reading materials, conservative candidates did well. In Sussex and Bergen County, however, incumbents lost seats after blocking pride signs on school grounds, seeking to remove books from the library or altering policies on transgender students, .

The programs, in which students are promised free college tuition if they graduate high school, have long been considered a silver bullet against the soaring tuition and loan debt blocking many young people, particularly those who are low-income, from earning degrees and finding fulfilling careers.

But in the last few years, college promise programs from Kalamazoo to New Haven, Buffalo, Detroit and Columbus, Ohio, have realized that paying tuition alone doesn’t always achieve the ultimate goal of making lives better. So they have added staff and built partnerships with business to start internship, mentorship and apprentice programs that give “promise scholars” a start on career paths.

Further highlighting the shift, college promise advocates nationally will hold their fourth Nov. 8 and 9 at the University of Tennessee. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and First Lady Jill Biden will speak at the event, whose major topics include “Empowering Career Exploration and Pathway Discovery” and “Building the Promise Pipeline of Workers.”

“We’re quick to say ‘Go to college, get your degree,’ but you don’t have that follow up piece of what do you do after that?” said Jade Scott, who works with the Detroit Promise through the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “So many students get lost in the shuffle, like ‘I’m done with my degree, what do I do now? And this is where we really come in.”

“Now, we’re talking about how we get them employed,” Scott added. “What are we doing to support you, as you make that journey from these college classes into an actual career that you genuinely enjoy, or that’s making you money, or that’s offering you a sustaining lifestyle?” 

Detroit Promise, with the help of the chamber, gave 450 students work experiences such as internships or job shadowing in the 2022-23 school year, Scott said.

The Kalamazoo Promise, perhaps the best-known promise program in the nation, considers the internship program it launched in 2022 so important it calls it “Higher Promise.” 

Cetera DiGiovanni, Higher Promise coordinator, said parents previously kept asking if Promise officials knew of open jobs while businesses repeatedly asked the program for help finding talent.

“We know that kids are graduating and no one has jobs,” DiGiovanni said. “We thought we would be the mediator to bring them together.”

David Rust, executive director of Say Yes Buffalo, said the evolution is natural. Say Yes Buffalo, which started as a scholarship program in 2011, placed 25 students in apprenticeships in the fall of 2022 and another 25 this year.

“It stands to reason that there will be refinements, expansion of features, because we know a lot more now about what scholars and students need,” he said.

College promise programs began in the 1990s with individual philanthropists adopting single schools and pledging to cover college tuition for any student that graduated from high school and enrolled in college. Anonymous donors in Kalamazoo started a citywide promise program in 2005, then other promise programs like Say Yes to Education expanded from single schools in the 1990s to the cities of Syracuse and Buffalo, New York, Greensboro County, North Carolina, and finally Cleveland in 2019.

States like Tennessee have also added statewide promise programs as the ranks have swelled to more than 400 programs nationally. The programs differ in what colleges they pay for, with some covering only the local community college, some only in-state public colleges and others including private universities that choose to be partners with them.

But once lauded for wiping out the worries of tuition debt, promise programs have found that students, particularly low-income students, also need chances to test drive careers they think they might like. They need mentors in their field. They need workplace experience before graduating and seeking a full-time job.

Sometimes students simply need a paycheck while they are in school to pay for rent, commuting to class and meals, which promise programs rarely cover. Or they skip college altogether because class time takes away earning time they need to help their families.

“Free college can be too expensive for students,” said Rust. “A lot of our scholars, over 50 percent, have combined family income below $40,000. So, we’ve seen this more so than ever throughout the pandemic, you (students) do what you have to do, not necessarily what you want to do.”

There’s also benefit to the regional economy when students find careers that keep them in the city after college. 

In Columbus, Ohio, where a pilot promise program pays for Columbus school district graduates to attend Columbus State Community College, companies such as Nationwide Insurance and gas and electricity supplier IGS Energy are eager to take on promise students in college as paid interns.

John Wharton, 19, a second year finance student at Columbus State, started work at IGS this fall helping manage and audit customer accounts for $18 an hour. Because he has an interest in marketing too, his supervisors are also trying to find chances to work in that department.

“It gives you a sense of feeling for what the real world is,” said Wharton, who had never had a job before the internship. “This gives people a platform to gain insight, whether or not they actually want to do what they’re studying.”

Abdallahi Thiaw, 20, also a Columbus Promise student, also just started as an intern this fall with the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio for $20 an hour for 20 hours a week. Since he is earning an associates degree in interactive media, developing apps and programs that can be used on mobile devices, the board has him developing a chat program for its website that lets users find out what services the nonprofit provides.

“It’s a big opportunity for students like me, because a lot of job fields will tell you that once you graduate, you need experience,” said Thiaw. “But the main issue is nobody’s offering experience, so how are you going to get that experience? But with this program, it offers students like me experience and on top of that, you get paid great wages, which really helps us in focusing on school.”

David Campbell, director of communications for the board, said matching students with work that fits their interest, like is happening with Thiaw, is ideal.

“That idea is the genesis of this program, that they need to work, they need to have some money, but it needs to be earned and still learn, right?” Campbell said. “It has to combine with their degree, so they get someplace at the end of it.”