Ross Duffin's blog

Public Education in Ohio

February 7, 2005

I first came to this country as a graduate student and got to enjoy the benefits of an education at an outstanding American university. Everything seemed great. But when I got a job and a family, I started paying attention to elementary and secondary education for the first time, and I couldn't believe how the public education system worked in Ohio. Maybe it's that way everywhere in the US.

Every single municipality (including incorporated suburbs) has its own school board. Of course, it has its own mayor, city council, police department, and fire department, too. (This unbelievable bureaucratic redundancy is something I should save for a later comment.) The US Constitution stipulates that education is a state responsibility. So individual states have the right to determine the curriculum to be pursued by students in that state—so long as the curriculum is acceptable according the US Constitution, of course. Those state mandates for curriculum are then passed down to the individual school boards, who determine how much it's going to cost to implement the state curriculum, then ask their city councils for sufficient funds to do so. The funds for education come from taxes on property, so if you have expensive homes in your neighborhood, or if you have some wealthy corporation operating in your municipality, then your district is likely to have plenty of money. But if more money is needed than has been budgeted, then municipalities must ask the citizenry if they are willing to increase their property taxes enough that there will be sufficient funds to implement the state curriculum.

Often, the answer is no. Incredibly, the answer is no. People who no longer have children in school, or who think they pay too much tax anyway, or have no more money to spare, or think they are not getting enough for the taxes they are already paying, vote no, and the levy, as it's called, is defeated, and the school board has to get by without the money. What this means is that municipalities that manage their money well, and have citizens that support their schools, have really, really good school systems. And the others have really bad systems. Not necessarily bad teachers or administrators, but bad systems because they don't have enough money to buy everything they need, or to pay competitive wages for the best teachers, or to maintain their facilities, or to implement the state curriculum.

It's incredible! Education is a state responsibility, and the state board sets the curriculum, but the individual municipalities get to decide if they want to pay enough money to fund it. If they don't, the state curriculum means nothing. How is this fair? How is this "state control of education"?

I grew up in Canada, where education is a provincial responsibility. Provinces are like states, of course, and they set the curriculum. But they also control the funding for public education. And the taxes that are used for education come from taxation at the provincial level. So there is no disparity between districts based on property values or the inclination or disinclination of the voters to pay for the latest educational needs.

Gosh, that seems democratic to me.

In Ohio, the Supreme Court has told the state it must reform the education funding system because it's unfair. It's said this several times, but still, nothing has been done. It's worth asking why.

Americans are so fixated on low taxes that they've completely lost sight of the reason for taxes in the first place. Taxes are to enable the government to provide services. It's not how much you pay, but what you get that should be the issue. Taxes are not bad in and of themselves—though try telling that to any candidate trying to get elected in America! There just needs to be some equitable formula for collecting the taxes necessary to run the education system in the state of Ohio. It isn't being done now in spite of court orders to do it. Somebody at the state level has to be held legally accountable.

 When our oldest child became old enough to go to kindergarten, my wife and I had a choice: we could send him to private school (of which there are several excellent ones in our area), or we could move to a municipality that has a good public education system. For family reasons, or for economic reasons, not everyone has that choice. They are stuck where they are with the public education system they've got. But private schools and moving shouldn't be necessary. The Constitution put education in the hands of the states. States have the right to set curriculum, but they also have the responsibility to see that every child has an equal opportunity to pursue that course of study. Right now, that isn't true in Ohio, and probably in lots of other states as well.

The bottom line is that people in Ohio, in general, are not well educated. How can this be allowed to continue? Who benefits from the status quo? Why has the government of Ohio not lived up to its legal and moral responsibility to improve public education? I believe the answer is because the Republicans, who have dominated state politics in Ohio for decades, are flourishing under the current system and don't want to see it change. How can that be? How can an under-educated electorate serve one party or another?

Every election, I watch the Republicans run ads to convince people to vote against their own economic best interests. They do it in a number of ways: by wrapping themselves in the flag, by scaring people, by smearing good candidates on the other side, and by preaching blindly against taxes and the opposing candidate who, for sure, will "raise your taxes" or has already done so "422 times." If people are not educated enough to see the flaws in these arguments, then they can more easily be persuaded to the point of view of the advertising, even if they would personally benefit so much more from the policies of the other side. A less educated electorate is a more easily swayed electorate. You can't buy elections, but you can buy advertising, and create a system where that sort of advertising works best.

That's why I think the Republicans in Columbus continue to do nothing about public education in this state. And if they disagree with me, then why don't Ohio State Representatives, Ohio State Senators, and the Ohio Governor get off their duffs and do something! The Ohio Supreme Court has been telling them to do it for years. They are contemptibly in contempt, and they've obviously decided it's in their best interests to do nothing. But as George W. Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame on you"—Or something like that.