How School Choice helps Ohio Families

Greg R. Lawson of The Buckeye Institute discusses the issue of falling enrollment in public schools and why school choice is the way to go

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, I want to spend a minute on the

(00:01):
Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line with Greg Lawson
from the Buckeye Institute. Greg, I hope you had a
good weekend. Good morning. A piece you wrote in the
Dispatch kind of caught my eye having to do with
school choice ed choice. There is apparently a coalition of
local public school districts that have filed a lawsuit against

(00:22):
the state's ed choice program to try to kill it. Now,
my question is, why would local public school districts want
to restrict or limit where kids and their families decide
that they want to go to school.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, I think there's two big reasons. I think the
first reason is because many folks in the public school
system believe that they are really the only place that
students should go, and that the only way you should
ever be able to go to any sort of alternative
education provider is if you're wealthy enough to be able
to pay for it completely out of your own pocket.

(00:57):
And I think the second piece is because they think
that all the public dollars really ont a flow to them.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I mean, that's it. Really, it's you know, whose money
is it? You know, it's like, should the money follow
the student or should the money stay in the district.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, the Black Guy Institute has been saying, and so
of a wonderful group of other school choice coalition partners
saying that money should follow the students. Yes, this is
about families. This is about parents making good decisions for
their own children. And in many cases, the public district
school is exactly the right place, and many families, probably
even most families in the state, are going to make

(01:33):
that decision. But there are many different situations that families
confront and many different things. In fact, it could be
different for different children in the same household too, And
that's what school choice gives families, the flexibility to figure
out what the right fit is for each individual student.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
So what's the public school's argument. Just, you know, this
is taxpayer dollars, this is our money. We were entitled
to it.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I guess if it all boils down to is basically yes,
they are saying that ed choice is an unconstitutional system
because they are claiming that it is essentially a parallel
system to the public school system, and that in the
state constitution there's certain provisions that say you have to
have it's que they call a quote strengthen the constitution

(02:19):
thorough and efficient system of public schools. But the problem
with this argument there's quite a few, but the biggest
thing is is that Ohio already does spend a ton
of money to state on public schools. It is spending
to make sure there's a thorough, efficient school Now. I
know that many of the public school districts are arguing
about that point. There's always battles at the state House

(02:42):
about the school funding formula and how it operates. But
at the end of the day, state spending on public
education has been going up every single year. Now. In
some cases districts are saying it's not enough, but you
can't say that it's not increasing more. And in many
cases districts that don't get as much money as they
think they should, or as much money as maybe they

(03:02):
did in the year before is because of a whole
bunch of things like declining enrollments or increasing property values
and increasing revenues coming in because of the property tax.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, I don't think it's a revenue problem. Speaking with
Greg Lawson from the Buckeye Institute, it's it's an expense
problem in my view. And you pointed out that enrollment
has been declining in public schools throughout the state for
the last some the twenty odd years, you know, and
then you know, then the money also starts to shrink
as well. To me, Greg, it comes down to outcomes.

(03:33):
I mean, what kind of outcomes are you getting when
you send your kid to all public school? Are the
graduation rates good? Are the kids going to college? I
mean those whole sports analogy of you know, winning cures everything,
and right now, in a lot of districts, including the
Columbus City to a lot of these kids aren't winning.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
No, And I think that's right now. I mean, obviously
it's variable. There's plenty of school districts, public school districts
that do very well in these frimes. Sure, so I
think it's clear to want to make that point clear.
But at the end of the day, it's absolutely right.
And there's a lot of evidence that in some of
these cases, especially with the A choice program, that there
are actually differences in college enrollment from students that go

(04:11):
through the ED choice program in certain districts and not
across the board in certain districts than others. And so
that's a positive things. This argument that school choice is
not good academically, I think the evidence shows that it
does work. It works for a lot of students, And again,
at the end of the day, it's about families. There's
a whole host of reasons that families might choose to

(04:32):
do this. And I think the most pernicious bad thing
that's happening in this entire endeavor by the school districts
is they literally want to kill this program. There's over
one hundred thousand students that are availing themselves of this
program across the state, and what these school districts essentially
would have happen is all of those students, or at

(04:52):
least many of those students, maybe not every single one,
but many of them, and they would force them back
into a public school system that their families had made
a proactive choice to step out of as a as
a response to being able to get the voucher. So
I think that's a terrible thing. They're literally trying to
take that choice away and essentially flood the school districts

(05:14):
back with all these students that have voluntarily left.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
And I want to make sure that people understand, I mean,
you mentioned this, I want to make sure that it
gets highlighted again. There is data out there that ED
Choice students who you know, left their quote unquote home
district to go to either a private school or a
charter school. Those students that left were substantially more likely
to enroll in college than kids who stayed in the

(05:38):
public schools. Yes, absolutely, if that's the only take home
of this interview, that that's what you got to hear.
I mean, you're setting your kid up by choosing the
school that you feel fits them better. And what local
districts are filing suit against ED Choice? Is Columbus Public
involved in that?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh? Yes, absolutely they are. There's several of the suburbs
are as well. And this is actually a lot of
I mean it's districts from around the state that are
doing this. But yeah, absolutely, there's districts right here in
Central Ohio, Columbus being the largest of course, that are
directly involved in this. And you know, again, I think
it's a very sad state of affairs. If the state

(06:22):
was not spending more money every year, you might have
a somewhat different argument. But it has been for most
of the last twenty years, with the exception of the
Great Recession back in two thousand and eight, the state
has been spending more money every single year. So I
think when you peel all the layers back, these post
school districts are basically just trying to get access to

(06:43):
more funding no matter what, without that much consideration as
to the actual students themselves.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
One of the things you also pointed out speaking with
Greg Lawson from the Buckeye Institute is during COVID, a
lot of these public districts, you know, closed their schools
and did you know the the school from home thing,
and private schools kind of didn't. They stayed open or
they opened up a lot quicker if they even closed
at all, And there's a lot of kids that are

(07:10):
behind because of that.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Well, and I think that's another thing that is particularly
galling about this entire effort, is that's absolutely right. As
a matter of fact, many of these public school districts
tried to fight the governor on reopening and literally tried
to keep this going on months and months and months.
And I know there was a lot of fear and
all that stuff back in the COVID era, but at
the end of the day, private schools were staying open.

(07:35):
Many of the public schools were trying to fight to
stay closed. And keep kids on computer screens instead of
in the classroom. And look, we already have enough challenges
with achievement gaps between minority students and white students. We
have enough graduation proms, We had enough chronic truancy before
COVID hit. It's gotten worse because of that extended shutdown

(07:59):
that happened. And again, private schools didn't do that. So
you know, again I go back and say, we're looking
at this through the lens of what's right for students.
I don't think that decision back during the COVID closures
was right for the students. It was about other issues,
and that is another reason why parents should have choice.