By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The EdChoice designation dropped on six schools in Wood County has spurred many questions about the state’s answer to low test scores.
The designation means that any student at an EdChoice school can get scholarship money to go to a private school. That practice is found troubling to many facing the demotion.
First, the scholarships aren’t given to the students who struggled with the state testing. Instead, the top students may choose to leave for private schools – making it even harder for the EdChoice school to reach the grades it needs to shed the designation.
Second, the publicly funded scholarships are paid to private and parochial schools – which don’t undergo the rigorous state testing required of public schools. So the change in schools may or may not benefit the students.
And third, for every student who leaves an EdChoice school, the district loses state funding. So who suffers in the long run when a district has less to spend on education?
But the fact is that now six school buildings in Wood County are saddled with the EdChoice designation.
In Bowling Green, Crim Elementary just joined Kenwood Elementary in the distinction.
The number of EdChoice schools in Ohio nearly doubled last year – to more than 1,300. Others in Wood County are Lake high school and middle school, and Northwood elementary and high school.
This is the highest number of schools to be designated in a given year, which Bowling Green Superintendent Francis Scruci said, “illustrates the inequities of the state system to evaluate school districts.”
At a recent Ohio School Board Association meeting on EdChoice, the moderator informed school districts that under the current rating system, the number of EdChoice will just keep growing, Scruci said. It was predicted that 2,000 schools will drop into the category by next year.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Bowling Green Board of Education heard from Angie Schaal, the district’s executive director of teaching and learning.
“We have amazing teachers. We have amazing kids. We have amazing families,” Schaal said.
“It’s discouraging that they work so hard and that doesn’t show up on this one day of testing,” she said.
School buildings can be demoted to EdChoice status for a host of reasons.
Scruci stressed that the district was not shirking responsibility – but was questioning the metric used to designate Ed Choice schools. In Bowling Green, the ranking was based on K-3 literacy test results from 2013-14, 2017-18 and 2018-19.
Kenwood has already implemented a new phonics program, that will likely be put into place at well at Crim.
“We’re not just purchasing programs to band-aid things,” Schaal said. “We know that early literacy really matters.”
Schaal and staff are looking at the science of how children learn to read – how to combine decoding of words with language comprehension, to ultimately get to reading comprehension.
A concerted effort is now being made to provide specific phonics materials – that before teachers had to find on their own, Schaal said.
Research also shows that students from lower economic status often come to school less prepared.
“We spend a lot of time making up for that,” Schaal said.
Bowling Green is judged on the same scale as Perrysburg – though 80 to 90 percent of Perrysburg kindergartners come into school with acceptable skill levels compared to 50 percent in Bowling Green. So Bowling Green students have much further to go to reach that third grade standard. Teachers spend a great deal of time helping students catch up.
“My goal is that all of our kids learn to read,” Schaal said.
The effect of the EdChoice designation on Kenwood Elementary this year has been the loss of 33 students whose parents decided to use state funding to enroll their children in private schools. Parents of 370 children opted to keep their children at Kenwood.
The private schools taking in the students get “scholarships” of $4,650 a year for K-8 grades, and $6,000 a year for 9-12 grades.
Meanwhile, for each child leaving Kenwood, the school district loses $1,980 per year. The reason Bowling Green City Schools receives so much less than the private schools is because of the district’s “perceived wealth,” Scruci said.
Even if Crim and Kenwood shed the EdChoice designation in a few years, the expenses could linger. The state program allows parents of kindergartners to take them out of the public school and place them in private facilities all the way through graduation.
“This is a system set up to fail public schools,” Scruci said. Some see the EdChoice program as the Ohio legislature’s move toward expanding the school voucher system.
“We accept the accountability,” he said. “But we have a flawed system in place to evaluate schools.”
The logic of the EdChoice ramifications is lacking, agreed citizen Ken Rieman, who expressed his concerns at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.
“What I find most disturbing about the EdChoice program is that it does nothing to help those children who need more help,” Rieman said.
Meanwhile, the entire school system suffers, he added.
“You could have your best students leave and next year you could even have more trouble,” Rieman said.
The EdChoice program needs to be evaluated, “rather than pointing fingers at teachers, administrators, or even the children,” he said.
The metrics for EdChoice are being questioned in other districts, such as in Solon, where an elementary has had extremely high scores – but was deemed part of the EdChoice program when the scores dropped slightly.
“There are a lot of districts surprised by being on that list,” Schaal said.
