Do you want to be an Amfican slowly back on seven hundred WLW. Something we do in Ohio is going into a heated nationwide showdown, if you want to call it that, over whether taxpayer dollars should follow students right, portable funding, backpack funding, you want to call this. So we called it here in Ohio. The concerns are about budgets, accountability, curriculum,
and it seems like school choice is becoming universal. So so far now six new states have added that choice, nineteen overall, including the Buckeye State, and only two of the new programs have full funding guarantees. That's a rub so here in Ohio to bring up to speed. If you're aware of this, or maybe you're Kentucky and Thean or somewhere else, we did universal school choice for K through twelve. It's sort of with near universal access. The problem is we don't have universal funding and that is
the issue. We spend over a billion dollars on private school vouchers this year. And joining the show, he broke this down with the future where it's going is Ed Tarnowski. He is with ED Choice, where he's a policy and advocacy director. Ed welcome Ario, Thanks.
For having me on. I'm doing very well. How about you.
I'm doing fine. This has been a battle in Ohio for a long long time, I mean decades that the state Supreme Court found it unconstitutional and legislature pretty much ignored this whole thing. We moved to the school funding choice where it's it's universal, it's backpack. You know, you can take your money, it's out, you're eligible, you can
go where you want to go. But we still have the funding question, which looms it's head during elections like we're having and where you know, some areas are are taking millage off their levees and saying, well, we're going to replace that with a one percent income tax. Let's say a lot of areas are doing that now because the funding model is broken. Is that true elsewhere or is that because we're kind of a trendsit are here
in Ohio on this. We're one of the first states to do it, or one of a panful of full states to do it. But the funding question is the big outlier here.
Well, I think one of the things that that's part Ohio's bachelor program from a lot of the other school choice partlets in the country is well one. It still is about your and most states are moving toward education bigness accounts, giving families flexibility and how funds can be funds can be spent. But since Ohio has had had such a long history of school choice, the legislature opted for just expanding existing programs instead of creating a new one.
But we were hoping to see Ohio move toward a more flexible system in the future, where you know, families can centered on things that typical tuition like tutoring, therapies, curriculum, things of that nature. When it comes to the fund, Ohio's the program that has universal ability where all families can apply, still still fall short on funding and it's actually tiered by my income. You will get more, you will get less money for vouchers the more the more income,
the higher family's income is. And one of the reasons is so problematic is because it really falls short of creating maximizing a robust martiplace of education. We want to see, you know, we're not means testing for your local district school for example, now on whatever extra in common say you've been if your kids can attend your local district school, So why are we doing this a school choice, it should really be on the same putting. It's just a way of rethinking public education.
Yeah, and overall the argument has been, well, this is public money and you're destroying public schools and you're given the private enterprise who can do what? And there's no accountability here whatsoever. But where's the accountability that's led to the state of public schools right now? Where we're celebrating, Hey, we're now we have a D average. Now we've got a D on our state report card for example, and wow, that's the first time we've been out of f in
twenty years. And we're now celebrating this and we've got momentum. And then they change the standards for measuring how the schools are with report cards, and we do this all over again. I think people are wise to it. I don't understand how that destroyed. How does competition destroy anything? Competition makes us better. That's a problem with anything where there's no cop healthcare is a great example of that.
Oh absolutely. And what we're seeing is school choice is introducing a whole new type of accountability into American's education system that for so long we haven't had because you know, the parents or kids are unsatisfied that they're not being served properly by their school. When it comes to private school choice, parents can just walk away and if enough
parents walk away, school will close. And the public school system is enough parents walk away or or they're struggling, or if they're you know, the students are struggling, the school just gets more funding. We're not really seeing that type of accountability. We're just seeing more money thrown up the problem. And clearly what we're seeing the district school
system that's not working. To look at Baltimore, for example, one of the highest funded school districts in the country, and we've had years are not one student with proficient in after readings, right, and that's just unacceptable.
Although it's a different problem, right because if you look at the traditional typically the urban schools are the ones that do poorly. At Tarnowski suburban schools or my kids went to school. Now there's taxes are higher obviously because property taxes. With the bill, we have plenty of suburban districts that people will flock to to send their kids to.
You know, I don't think that's going to change based on these models, right, it seems like this is going to hurt the urban areas and maybe rural areas more well.
Yeah, and you know, I'm a prod to the public school myself. I was lucky enough to go to a good district school. But and the thing to take away here is, you know, families, right under the current system, we do have school choice for people who can afford it. You can go ahead and take your buy a house in a higher performing school district. But if you can't afford to do that, then you're stuck in you know,
those lower performing schools. So right now we have school choice in places about and places that are just relying on the district school system. Still we have school choice for the rich that people can afford to get up and move and buy a Mark Smith the house and a Marks the neighborhood. But if you can't, you can only go to your local district school. It is you will really be arrested if you're trying to send your kids to school in a different district. Yeah, outside of
these arbitrarily drawn lines. So where now we have school shoes to the bridge and true school choices, you know, open competition allowing anyone to take the funding sati side for their kids and take it to the school that steps for them.
Yeah, it's to show you all full circle. We come back in when I was fifty four, when we had the fight over segregating schools, Brown versus Board of Education, where all you want to do is send his daughter to the school that was literally across the street or down the block from whether they've instead of busing or acrosstown because of the color of her skin. And now here's twenty you know, in the everwhere we live right now,
we have kind of the inverse of that. It's like, well, wait, the school that's down the street for me is terrible, it's underperforming. There's a better performing school, you know, maybe it's a private school across I should be able to send my kid there if I care about their education.
Well, of course, and we talk about systemic racism. I mean some of these just for school lines are often I mean arbitrary, drun decades ago and often now the intentions in mind, and yet we're seeing them defended so staunchly and often blindly with that thought for with the reason being, you know, this is how things have been done, which I think are some of the most dangerous. We then English language. It's just it's time to rethink public education.
I think that pandemically opens to a lot of minds, and I think what we're seeing with school choice sweep huvenation is that, uh I think it's the most significant education reform that we've seen that the civil rights movement. And that's why getting these details very so important because that school choice continues to increase and we're seeing more
and more states and race. As we've talked about universal eligibility, we want to get that funding right too, because if you know, it's every state can make all kids eligible to applying for a program, but if they're not all funded, then is a truly universal we really will be really maximizing the education reform that we can see. The change that we can see.
Ed Tranowski is with the ed choice and we're talking about the growing number of states that are moving towards school choice programs. We have it here in Ohio. The problem though, of course, is we yeah, universally eligible to do it, but there's no universal funding and that has been a problem in Ohio for a long time. Regardless of what we're doing, we spend over a billion dollars on vouchers last year this year, and that gets less
than ten percent of residents. I think there's like a well over a million and a half students in the Buckeye State. What would that cost to fund that?
Well, I don't have the numbers on the top of my head. However, what I will say is and Ohio's funding mechanism isn't necessarily one of the worst. The problem as that I see Ohio is that how it's you know, the funding is cured based and income. We want to see three university want to see all families able to access because you know, the more competition, the more competition is seeing, the more we see improvement on the education system as a whole.
Yeah, we have in Ohio it's like eight different private school choice programs. That's it's pretty fragmented. Does that hurt the goal of universal access?
Yes? Well Ohio, Yeah, yes, we talk a lot of us did a choice because one of our big projects every year is BBC's School Choice where we break down the details of every single school choice program in the country, and Ohio is always a long one. But yeah, I mean Ohio. I think the reason they have so many programs one of the reasons at least is you know, Ohia has one of the longest histories of having school choice,
private school choice in the country. Ohio and Wisconsin were kind of where the modern school choices and was born. Where we saw you know, regional in Wisconsin's Milwaukee, we saw it in Hios Cleveland. We saw regionally based small vetcher programs designed to serve love forming students, love pharma schools, and low came areas. So a lot of these programs
have just been around for so long. You know, I don't think it necessarily hurts, you know, if as long as we do continue to have those programs in the universal ability, I think it's necessarily a bad thing to have programs on top of that. However, you know, I think it consolidated and just have you know, universal puneying across the board, get rid of that the incomes here,
then it may not be necessary. And what we are seeing, as I kind of touched upon earlier, is Ohio is a big boucher state, not an education safety's account state yet, so one thing where it does fall short quite having so many different toucher programs, Ohio doesn't have a robust education Savit's account program or funds can be spent on things other than private school tuition, which we are seeing in those states last year or this year, rather we
saw a balance seventy five percent involved private school choice related legislation, much related to education safeties accounts. So truly we're moving towards more flexibility for parents.
And we have eighty eight counties in Ohio, and you know, a couple dozen are more than a couple doesn't are highly populated. But typically you know, Ohio, we have a lot of rural communities. Does this supply to them and do they get squeezed out or result of that?
It absolutely applies to royal communities. And there's there's a couple of big reasons for that. I mean number one is, you know, one thing that we're putting together and we've done for some seats in the paths the dead choices. We call it the road map, and you'll see that generally speaking, people are much more closer to a private school options than they realize. I think in Georgia, for example, I think it's like which has a lot of rural areas.
I think over like ninety percent of people are within fifteen twenty minute drive of a private school and two even in those royal communities where they do have maybe fewer options in some other areas. The glory of choice and a martiplies to education is you're going to see new education providers come up. In Arizona and Florida, for example, which which have now both had true universal educational choice for some time now, and then they have a history
of having school choice prior to going full universal. We've seen massive increases in the number of education providers, in number of schools. You know, different entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial ideas for education, but we're seeing a record number of new education providers popping up as a result of this marketplace of education that's been formed with a system where the money's calm and the child and it's truly universal everywhere.
He's at Taranowski with the edge Joys talking about the school vouchers in the whole program. Ohio is one of the newer states and one of the first states to do this, or maybe not the first, but we're kind of the mix. But now nineteen states total are offering this, and many more look like they're head in this direction. The other aspect outside of rural communities that this is going to affect is the fact that a judge in
Franklin County recently ruled that the voucher program's unconstitutional. That's the other part of the problem, and that's part of the process or constitutional challenges in lawsuits. But it seems like it's difficult to get a measure on or even move with the universal of eligibility question as the funding mechanisms get fought and played out in court.
Mm hmm, yeah, well as we as we often jokes any dead taxes and teacher unions or others boniest groups doing once private school programs are extended to pass. It's certainly not the first time that we've seen losses. Uh. We continue to be be calm confident that school choice is legal, particularly especially at the federal level. You know, the state court is going to play out in state courts,
so it is. We will see how it goes, but we certainly hope that families will continue to being able to access abroad this broad choice program.
Should you know, what should and what should we do relative to funding? I mean, what give me an example of where it works and how they do it, because here it's it's property taxes and we have levees, and then we have some areas are pulling the levees back and we're doing income taxes and it's just a it's an uncna mitigated disasters. It's been going on since almost as long as I've been voting.
Mm hm No, it's a great question. And I'm going to talk about New Hampshire as an example because this year we're considering them the star of this year's legislation school choice legislation and when the Hampshires program does so. They had had their program since twenty twenty one and it started with an income limit, similar to what many of OHIOT programs started with, and this year they went forward and looked at an income liment, so now it
has universal algibility. What said the Hampshire part is I was even talking about. It has one lucile of uses. You can use the funds on the varying educational expenses. But the main part here is that funding mechanism. The Hampshire's Education's Treatment com program ties its funding mechanism to the Stage education funding formula, so that money that's already set aside to educate each kid follows each kid. So instead of creating a new appropriation or revenue stream here.
It's just it said that tapping into the funding already said that the state already sets aside for people on average to educate them. So we're seeing it choice to putting on the be put on the same footing as dig your schools. It's just rethinking public education as I mentioned, and this is really and based. There's no teering on income based on how much you get. You know, each student participating that gets the average for people funding. After all, it is the money set is tied to educate them.
They would not get less if they were in a dishous school. So it's truly putting it on the same footing as dis schools. I think that's in create or like I said, for a bus marketplace of education, you get more competition and more competition because more entrepreneurship, more people coming up in new schooling models, and we send more improvement on the system across the board. Yeah.
Yeah, because right now, I mean I think it's less than ten minus. I said eight to nine percent of Ohio students are participating even though they're all eligible, and I think it's going to take a while for that to catch up. It's going to take a generation for this to be common. But the funding thing is what's got to be addressed initially at Tanowski with ed Choice, Thanks again for jumping on this morning, appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on.
Interesting how this is, you know, spreading to other states right now, the idea that hey, if public schools are failing, we have an alternative. Now, yesterday I had the superintendent of CPS and Studio Sean Murphy. They're making some great improvements, and certainly not all schools and CPS such a big urban districts, it's got problems. There's failing schools. The report card is still a problem, Attendance is still a big problem.
Right but voters overwhelmingly supported a renewal levey for CPS as a result of that, so they're obviously, you live in Cincinnati, you're satisfied with the progress. But you know if I'm not, I'm near a school where my kid would go and it's terrible, and I want to do better by them. I should be allowed to send them
where I want to in a better performing school. And I think the school choice models actually affected public schools that way, because you have monosories and all these different types of schools or ways to teach kids that you didn't have before. So competition is good. That is the bottom line. Got a news update on the way and then our health and fitness doctor is here, Doctor Sanjay dealing with the time change still, he's got some ideas
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