Speaker 1: Do you want to be an Amfican slowly back on seven
Speaker 1: hundred WLW. Something we do in Ohio is going into
Speaker 1: a heated nationwide showdown, if you want to call it that,
Speaker 1: over whether taxpayer dollars should follow students right, portable funding,
Speaker 1: backpack funding, you want to call this. So we called
Speaker 1: it here in Ohio. The concerns are about budgets, accountability, curriculum,
Speaker 1: and it seems like school choice is becoming universal. So
Speaker 1: so far now six new states have added that choice,
Speaker 1: nineteen overall, including the Buckeye State, and only two of
Speaker 1: the new programs have full funding guarantees. That's a rub
Speaker 1: so here in Ohio to bring up to speed. If
Speaker 1: you're aware of this, or maybe you're Kentucky and Thean
Speaker 1: or somewhere else, we did universal school choice for K
Speaker 1: through twelve. It's sort of with near universal access. The
Speaker 1: problem is we don't have universal funding and that is
Speaker 1: the issue. We spend over a billion dollars on private
Speaker 1: school vouchers this year. And joining the show, he broke
Speaker 1: this down with the future where it's going is Ed Tarnowski.
Speaker 1: He is with ED Choice, where he's a policy and
Speaker 1: advocacy director. Ed welcome Ario, Thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me on. I'm doing very well. How about you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine. This has been a battle in Ohio
Speaker 1: for a long long time, I mean decades that the
Speaker 1: state Supreme Court found it unconstitutional and legislature pretty much
Speaker 1: ignored this whole thing. We moved to the school funding
Speaker 1: choice where it's it's universal, it's backpack. You know, you
Speaker 1: can take your money, it's out, you're eligible, you can
Speaker 1: go where you want to go. But we still have
Speaker 1: the funding question, which looms it's head during elections like
Speaker 1: we're having and where you know, some areas are are
Speaker 1: taking millage off their levees and saying, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to replace that with a one percent income tax. Let's
Speaker 1: say a lot of areas are doing that now because
Speaker 1: the funding model is broken. Is that true elsewhere or
Speaker 1: is that because we're kind of a trendsit are here
Speaker 1: in Ohio on this. We're one of the first states
Speaker 1: to do it, or one of a panful of full
Speaker 1: states to do it. But the funding question is the
Speaker 1: big outlier here.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things that that's part
Speaker 2: Ohio's bachelor program from a lot of the other school
Speaker 2: choice partlets in the country is well one. It still
Speaker 2: is about your and most states are moving toward education
Speaker 2: bigness accounts, giving families flexibility and how funds can be
Speaker 2: funds can be spent. But since Ohio has had had
Speaker 2: such a long history of school choice, the legislature opted
Speaker 2: for just expanding existing programs instead of creating a new one.
Speaker 2: But we were hoping to see Ohio move toward a
Speaker 2: more flexible system in the future, where you know, families
Speaker 2: can centered on things that typical tuition like tutoring, therapies, curriculum,
Speaker 2: things of that nature. When it comes to the fund,
Speaker 2: Ohio's the program that has universal ability where all families
Speaker 2: can apply, still still fall short on funding and it's
Speaker 2: actually tiered by my income. You will get more, you
Speaker 2: will get less money for vouchers the more the more income,
Speaker 2: the higher family's income is. And one of the reasons
Speaker 2: is so problematic is because it really falls short of
Speaker 2: creating maximizing a robust martiplace of education. We want to see,
Speaker 2: you know, we're not means testing for your local district
Speaker 2: school for example, now on whatever extra in common say
Speaker 2: you've been if your kids can attend your local district school,
Speaker 2: So why are we doing this a school choice, it
Speaker 2: should really be on the same putting. It's just a
Speaker 2: way of rethinking public education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and overall the argument has been, well, this is
Speaker 1: public money and you're destroying public schools and you're given
Speaker 1: the private enterprise who can do what? And there's no
Speaker 1: accountability here whatsoever. But where's the accountability that's led to
Speaker 1: the state of public schools right now? Where we're celebrating, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're now we have a D average. Now we've got
Speaker 1: a D on our state report card for example, and wow,
Speaker 1: that's the first time we've been out of f in
Speaker 1: twenty years. And we're now celebrating this and we've got momentum.
Speaker 1: And then they change the standards for measuring how the
Speaker 1: schools are with report cards, and we do this all
Speaker 1: over again. I think people are wise to it. I
Speaker 1: don't understand how that destroyed. How does competition destroy anything?
Speaker 1: Competition makes us better. That's a problem with anything where
Speaker 1: there's no cop healthcare is a great example of that.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. And what we're seeing is school choice is
Speaker 2: introducing a whole new type of accountability into American's education
Speaker 2: system that for so long we haven't had because you know,
Speaker 2: the parents or kids are unsatisfied that they're not being
Speaker 2: served properly by their school. When it comes to private
Speaker 2: school choice, parents can just walk away and if enough
Speaker 2: parents walk away, school will close. And the public school
Speaker 2: system is enough parents walk away or or they're struggling,
Speaker 2: or if they're you know, the students are struggling, the
Speaker 2: school just gets more funding. We're not really seeing that
Speaker 2: type of accountability. We're just seeing more money thrown up
Speaker 2: the problem. And clearly what we're seeing the district school
Speaker 2: system that's not working. To look at Baltimore, for example,
Speaker 2: one of the highest funded school districts in the country,
Speaker 2: and we've had years are not one student with proficient
Speaker 2: in after readings, right, and that's just unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Although it's a different problem, right because if you look
Speaker 1: at the traditional typically the urban schools are the ones
Speaker 1: that do poorly. At Tarnowski suburban schools or my kids
Speaker 1: went to school. Now there's taxes are higher obviously because
Speaker 1: property taxes. With the bill, we have plenty of suburban
Speaker 1: districts that people will flock to to send their kids to.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think that's going to change based
Speaker 1: on these models, right, it seems like this is going
Speaker 1: to hurt the urban areas and maybe rural areas more well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I'm a prod to the public
Speaker 2: school myself. I was lucky enough to go to a
Speaker 2: good district school. But and the thing to take away
Speaker 2: here is, you know, families, right under the current system,
Speaker 2: we do have school choice for people who can afford it.
Speaker 2: You can go ahead and take your buy a house
Speaker 2: in a higher performing school district. But if you can't
Speaker 2: afford to do that, then you're stuck in you know,
Speaker 2: those lower performing schools. So right now we have school
Speaker 2: choice in places about and places that are just relying
Speaker 2: on the district school system. Still we have school choice
Speaker 2: for the rich that people can afford to get up
Speaker 2: and move and buy a Mark Smith the house and
Speaker 2: a Marks the neighborhood. But if you can't, you can
Speaker 2: only go to your local district school. It is you
Speaker 2: will really be arrested if you're trying to send your
Speaker 2: kids to school in a different district. Yeah, outside of
Speaker 2: these arbitrarily drawn lines. So where now we have school
Speaker 2: shoes to the bridge and true school choices, you know,
Speaker 2: open competition allowing anyone to take the funding sati side
Speaker 2: for their kids and take it to the school that
Speaker 2: steps for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's to show you all full circle. We come
Speaker 1: back in when I was fifty four, when we had
Speaker 1: the fight over segregating schools, Brown versus Board of Education,
Speaker 1: where all you want to do is send his daughter
Speaker 1: to the school that was literally across the street or
Speaker 1: down the block from whether they've instead of busing or
Speaker 1: acrosstown because of the color of her skin. And now
Speaker 1: here's twenty you know, in the everwhere we live right now,
Speaker 1: we have kind of the inverse of that. It's like, well, wait,
Speaker 1: the school that's down the street for me is terrible,
Speaker 1: it's underperforming. There's a better performing school, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a private school across I should be able to
Speaker 1: send my kid there if I care about their education.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, and we talk about systemic racism. I
Speaker 2: mean some of these just for school lines are often
Speaker 2: I mean arbitrary, drun decades ago and often now the
Speaker 2: intentions in mind, and yet we're seeing them defended so
Speaker 2: staunchly and often blindly with that thought for with the
Speaker 2: reason being, you know, this is how things have been done,
Speaker 2: which I think are some of the most dangerous. We
Speaker 2: then English language. It's just it's time to rethink public education.
Speaker 2: I think that pandemically opens to a lot of minds,
Speaker 2: and I think what we're seeing with school choice sweep
Speaker 2: huvenation is that, uh I think it's the most significant
Speaker 2: education reform that we've seen that the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2: And that's why getting these details very so important because
Speaker 2: that school choice continues to increase and we're seeing more
Speaker 2: and more states and race. As we've talked about universal eligibility,
Speaker 2: we want to get that funding right too, because if
Speaker 2: you know, it's every state can make all kids eligible
Speaker 2: to applying for a program, but if they're not all funded,
Speaker 2: then is a truly universal we really will be really
Speaker 2: maximizing the education reform that we can see. The change
Speaker 2: that we can see.
Speaker 1: Ed Tranowski is with the ed choice and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the growing number of states that are moving towards
Speaker 1: school choice programs. We have it here in Ohio. The
Speaker 1: problem though, of course, is we yeah, universally eligible to
Speaker 1: do it, but there's no universal funding and that has
Speaker 1: been a problem in Ohio for a long time. Regardless
Speaker 1: of what we're doing, we spend over a billion dollars
Speaker 1: on vouchers last year this year, and that gets less
Speaker 1: than ten percent of residents. I think there's like a
Speaker 1: well over a million and a half students in the
Speaker 1: Buckeye State. What would that cost to fund that?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't have the numbers on the top of
Speaker 2: my head. However, what I will say is and Ohio's
Speaker 2: funding mechanism isn't necessarily one of the worst. The problem
Speaker 2: as that I see Ohio is that how it's you know,
Speaker 2: the funding is cured based and income. We want to
Speaker 2: see three university want to see all families able to
Speaker 2: access because you know, the more competition, the more competition
Speaker 2: is seeing, the more we see improvement on the education
Speaker 2: system as a whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have in Ohio it's like eight different private
Speaker 1: school choice programs. That's it's pretty fragmented. Does that hurt
Speaker 1: the goal of universal access?
Speaker 2: Yes? Well Ohio, Yeah, yes, we talk a lot of
Speaker 2: us did a choice because one of our big projects
Speaker 2: every year is BBC's School Choice where we break down
Speaker 2: the details of every single school choice program in the country,
Speaker 2: and Ohio is always a long one. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean Ohio. I think the reason they have so many
Speaker 2: programs one of the reasons at least is you know,
Speaker 2: Ohia has one of the longest histories of having school choice,
Speaker 2: private school choice in the country. Ohio and Wisconsin were
Speaker 2: kind of where the modern school choices and was born.
Speaker 2: Where we saw you know, regional in Wisconsin's Milwaukee, we
Speaker 2: saw it in Hios Cleveland. We saw regionally based small
Speaker 2: vetcher programs designed to serve love forming students, love pharma schools,
Speaker 2: and low came areas. So a lot of these programs
Speaker 2: have just been around for so long. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't think it necessarily hurts, you know, if as long
Speaker 2: as we do continue to have those programs in the
Speaker 2: universal ability, I think it's necessarily a bad thing to
Speaker 2: have programs on top of that. However, you know, I
Speaker 2: think it consolidated and just have you know, universal puneying
Speaker 2: across the board, get rid of that the incomes here,
Speaker 2: then it may not be necessary. And what we are seeing,
Speaker 2: as I kind of touched upon earlier, is Ohio is
Speaker 2: a big boucher state, not an education safety's account state yet,
Speaker 2: so one thing where it does fall short quite having
Speaker 2: so many different toucher programs, Ohio doesn't have a robust
Speaker 2: education Savit's account program or funds can be spent on
Speaker 2: things other than private school tuition, which we are seeing
Speaker 2: in those states last year or this year, rather we
Speaker 2: saw a balance seventy five percent involved private school choice
Speaker 2: related legislation, much related to education safeties accounts. So truly
Speaker 2: we're moving towards more flexibility for parents.
Speaker 1: And we have eighty eight counties in Ohio, and you know,
Speaker 1: a couple dozen are more than a couple doesn't are
Speaker 1: highly populated. But typically you know, Ohio, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of rural communities. Does this supply to them and
Speaker 1: do they get squeezed out or result of that?
Speaker 2: It absolutely applies to royal communities. And there's there's a
Speaker 2: couple of big reasons for that. I mean number one is,
Speaker 2: you know, one thing that we're putting together and we've
Speaker 2: done for some seats in the paths the dead choices.
Speaker 2: We call it the road map, and you'll see that
Speaker 2: generally speaking, people are much more closer to a private
Speaker 2: school options than they realize. I think in Georgia, for example,
Speaker 2: I think it's like which has a lot of rural areas.
Speaker 2: I think over like ninety percent of people are within
Speaker 2: fifteen twenty minute drive of a private school and two
Speaker 2: even in those royal communities where they do have maybe
Speaker 2: fewer options in some other areas. The glory of choice
Speaker 2: and a martiplies to education is you're going to see
Speaker 2: new education providers come up. In Arizona and Florida, for example,
Speaker 2: which which have now both had true universal educational choice
Speaker 2: for some time now, and then they have a history
Speaker 2: of having school choice prior to going full universal. We've
Speaker 2: seen massive increases in the number of education providers, in
Speaker 2: number of schools. You know, different entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial ideas for education,
Speaker 2: but we're seeing a record number of new education providers
Speaker 2: popping up as a result of this marketplace of education
Speaker 2: that's been formed with a system where the money's calm
Speaker 2: and the child and it's truly universal everywhere.
Speaker 1: He's at Taranowski with the edge Joys talking about the
Speaker 1: school vouchers in the whole program. Ohio is one of
Speaker 1: the newer states and one of the first states to
Speaker 1: do this, or maybe not the first, but we're kind
Speaker 1: of the mix. But now nineteen states total are offering this,
Speaker 1: and many more look like they're head in this direction.
Speaker 1: The other aspect outside of rural communities that this is
Speaker 1: going to affect is the fact that a judge in
Speaker 1: Franklin County recently ruled that the voucher program's unconstitutional. That's
Speaker 1: the other part of the problem, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the process or constitutional challenges in lawsuits. But it seems
Speaker 1: like it's difficult to get a measure on or even
Speaker 1: move with the universal of eligibility question as the funding
Speaker 1: mechanisms get fought and played out in court.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, well as we as we often jokes
Speaker 2: any dead taxes and teacher unions or others boniest groups
Speaker 2: doing once private school programs are extended to pass. It's
Speaker 2: certainly not the first time that we've seen losses. Uh.
Speaker 2: We continue to be be calm confident that school choice
Speaker 2: is legal, particularly especially at the federal level. You know,
Speaker 2: the state court is going to play out in state courts,
Speaker 2: so it is. We will see how it goes, but
Speaker 2: we certainly hope that families will continue to being able
Speaker 2: to access abroad this broad choice program.
Speaker 1: Should you know, what should and what should we do
Speaker 1: relative to funding? I mean, what give me an example
Speaker 1: of where it works and how they do it, because
Speaker 1: here it's it's property taxes and we have levees, and
Speaker 1: then we have some areas are pulling the levees back
Speaker 1: and we're doing income taxes and it's just a it's
Speaker 1: an uncna mitigated disasters. It's been going on since almost
Speaker 1: as long as I've been voting.
Speaker 2: Mm hm No, it's a great question. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about New Hampshire as an example because this
Speaker 2: year we're considering them the star of this year's legislation
Speaker 2: school choice legislation and when the Hampshires program does so.
Speaker 2: They had had their program since twenty twenty one and
Speaker 2: it started with an income limit, similar to what many
Speaker 2: of OHIOT programs started with, and this year they went
Speaker 2: forward and looked at an income liment, so now it
Speaker 2: has universal algibility. What said the Hampshire part is I
Speaker 2: was even talking about. It has one lucile of uses.
Speaker 2: You can use the funds on the varying educational expenses.
Speaker 2: But the main part here is that funding mechanism. The
Speaker 2: Hampshire's Education's Treatment com program ties its funding mechanism to
Speaker 2: the Stage education funding formula, so that money that's already
Speaker 2: set aside to educate each kid follows each kid. So
Speaker 2: instead of creating a new appropriation or revenue stream here.
Speaker 2: It's just it said that tapping into the funding already
Speaker 2: said that the state already sets aside for people on
Speaker 2: average to educate them. So we're seeing it choice to
Speaker 2: putting on the be put on the same footing as
Speaker 2: dig your schools. It's just rethinking public education as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: and this is really and based. There's no teering on
Speaker 2: income based on how much you get. You know, each
Speaker 2: student participating that gets the average for people funding. After all,
Speaker 2: it is the money set is tied to educate them.
Speaker 2: They would not get less if they were in a
Speaker 2: dishous school. So it's truly putting it on the same
Speaker 2: footing as dis schools. I think that's in create or
Speaker 2: like I said, for a bus marketplace of education, you
Speaker 2: get more competition and more competition because more entrepreneurship, more
Speaker 2: people coming up in new schooling models, and we send
Speaker 2: more improvement on the system across the board. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because right now, I mean I think it's less
Speaker 1: than ten minus. I said eight to nine percent of
Speaker 1: Ohio students are participating even though they're all eligible, and
Speaker 1: I think it's going to take a while for that
Speaker 1: to catch up. It's going to take a generation for
Speaker 1: this to be common. But the funding thing is what's
Speaker 1: got to be addressed initially at Tanowski with ed Choice,
Speaker 1: Thanks again for jumping on this morning, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Interesting how this is, you know, spreading to other states
Speaker 1: right now, the idea that hey, if public schools are failing,
Speaker 1: we have an alternative. Now, yesterday I had the superintendent
Speaker 1: of CPS and Studio Sean Murphy. They're making some great improvements,
Speaker 1: and certainly not all schools and CPS such a big
Speaker 1: urban districts, it's got problems. There's failing schools. The report
Speaker 1: card is still a problem, Attendance is still a big problem.
Speaker 1: Right but voters overwhelmingly supported a renewal levey for CPS
Speaker 1: as a result of that, so they're obviously, you live
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, you're satisfied with the progress. But you know
Speaker 1: if I'm not, I'm near a school where my kid
Speaker 1: would go and it's terrible, and I want to do
Speaker 1: better by them. I should be allowed to send them
Speaker 1: where I want to in a better performing school. And
Speaker 1: I think the school choice models actually affected public schools
Speaker 1: that way, because you have monosories and all these different
Speaker 1: types of schools or ways to teach kids that you
Speaker 1: didn't have before. So competition is good. That is the
Speaker 1: bottom line. Got a news update on the way and
Speaker 1: then our health and fitness doctor is here, Doctor Sanjay
Speaker 1: dealing with the time change still, he's got some ideas
Speaker 1: for you to help you out. Next on this Coutsolan
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