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An Educated Public Needs Public Education: Is it being undermined?

Why does our country need a public education?

The Founding Fathers maintained that the success of the fragile American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens. They believed strongly that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues and would participate in civic life, vote wisely, protect their rights and freedoms, and resist tyrants and demagogues. The critical role of an educated electorate to an effective democracy makes a high-quality system of public education a democracy issue.  Any effort to weaken our system of public education or thwart its fundamental role of preparing citizens for self-governance, weakens our democracy.  

There appears to be a War being waged on public education in Ohio and around the country and we should be ready to protect democracy by preventing the rise of policies that weaken public education for all.  This War includes: 

      1.  Efforts to Hurt the individual rights of certain children and weaken our commitment to value of each child 

      2.  Efforts to suppress the free exchange of certain ideas through controlling Curriculum and Instruction  

      3.  Efforts to limit Democratic Governance and provide Constitutionally mandated funding so that public     education remains public.

Public Education Issues to Watch (Prepared by LWVO Education Specialist)

The assault on K-12 public education is coming from many directions, including from the Ohio Legislature. While the activity is overwhelming, LWVO, Honesty for Ohio Education, and the Ohio Legislature’s websites are good resources for staying up to date. (Legislature.Ohio.gov and LWVohio.org/education-agenda)

Here is a summary of the education policy activity in this legislative session and a few things from prior sessions still in play.  It includes changes enacted as part of SB33, the state operating budget that took effect this summer.

1. Efforts to hurt the individual rights of certain children and weaken our commitment to value of each child 

**HB8 requires schools to notify parents about student sexual orientation or identity. 

*HB63 requires schools to have conflict resolutions instruction.

*HB68 bans transgender students from sports teams aligned to their preferred identity.

*HB183 limits the rights of LGBQT students including what bathrooms they can use. 

*HB206 allows school districts to develop policies that result in indefinite expulsion of students. It uses punishment instead of a problem-solving approach and impedes equal education opportunity.   

***HB 616 titled “regarding the promotion and teaching of divisive or inherently racist concepts in public schools” and also mentioned curriculum/instructional materials on sexual orientation or gender identity.  It weakened the commitment to all children and is one of several bills (like 327) offered in prior sessions attempting to do so.

2.  Efforts to suppress the free exchange of certain ideas by controlling curriculum and instruction(and staffing)

**SB17 mandates teaching capitalism in financial literacy courses.

HB33 requires that districts use only the “Science of Reading.” which is basically phonics instead of other teaching methods

***HB 616  is titled teaching divisive or inherently racist concepts and also mentions the teaching of gender identity and sexuality issues in public schools is one of several bills offered in prior sessions attempting to control the content of classroom discussion, claiming that teachers are indoctrinating students in a specific perspective. (HB 327 was another and was called the “both sides bill” in the media).

The Social studies curriculum is the focus of two bills with opposing purposes. 

*HB103 creates a task force to change social studies standards to include the American Birthright curriculum developed by a rightwing think tank. 

*HB171, promotes multicultural understanding. 

Book bans are also on the rise.  This effort to limit exposure to controversy and diversity is typically approached as a local school district policy issue thus, takeovers of local school boards by people with specific values that also want to limit diversity exposure are also on the rise.

Staffing (Who can teach and support)

*SB14 makes veterans eligible to teach without a license.

*HB240 permits school districts to employ chaplains to provide support services.

3.  Efforts to limit Democratic Governance and provide Constitutionally mandated funding so that public education remains public.

Democratic Governance of Public Education

HB33, the state budget, created a new Department of Education and Workforce, and gave almost all responsibilities previously held by the state board of education to the Governor’s appointed director.  The law eliminates the public’s voice in shaping policy and implementation of state laws, and the benefits of a representative and informed governing body. 

*HB235 – This proposal would change the state board of education to 15 elected members representing the 15 congressional districts.

*HB267 –This bill would change local school board elections from nonpartisan to partisan and requires primary elections. 

 

Constitutional Funding of Public Education 

HB33 retained the Fair School Funding formula, made a second two-year funding increase, and increased categorical aid.  It still falls short of a constitutional funding level.  The remaining challenge is to achieve full funding in the state’s next two-year budget. Fully funding the state’s public system must be the priority for the use of K-12 education dollars.

 

Privatizing Education

Watch for new proposals to extend public subsidies for home schooling and students in unchartered nonpublic schools, private school construction, and to use of local property taxes for private schools. 

HB33 increased eligibility for income based EdChoice vouchers so that any household is eligible for support and the full voucher amount is available to those with incomes up to 450% of the federal poverty level. There is no cap on the number of vouchers that can be awarded. Vouchers have become an income subsidy for any household that prefers private education. Public education is in direct competition with private, religious and charter schools for public funds. A funding crisis is likely.

Accountability

The state testing program is used to judge the success of public schools, students and educators and a variety of consequences are attached to the results. 

It is not used to hold private schools accountable. 

Test results tend to reflect the income of test takers, leading to serious equity issues when tied to high-stakes decisions. 

HB33 removed two high stakes consequences – state takeover of school district governance and mandated grade level retention for third graders failing to meet state cut scores. There may be efforts to reimpose the third-grade retention requirement. 

*Indicates introduced and assigned to a committee in this session

** Indicates bill passed in one house and awaiting action in the other.

*** Introduced in prior session, but did not become law