The new bill proposes adding underperforming STEM schools, which don’t have criteria for closure, to the state rules for closure. It also holds charter schools to the same closure requirements as public schools.
“SB 127 would create an equal playing field for each type of school for when they are required to close and provides the same pathways for rehabilitation,” Brenner said.
Ohio has gone through cycles of trying to rehabilitate low-performing schools. Under current law, a school is subject to closure if the building is ranked in the lowest 5% of public school buildings for performance index for three consecutive years and has gotten an “F” on value-added performance, an overall score of “F,” a one-star progress rating or an overall performance rating of less than two stars on the state report card.
In 2015, a law passed requiring state takeover of certain schools where academic performance was low. This law primarily impacted northeast Ohio schools, with Youngstown, Lorain and East Cleveland school districts among those affected.
But since then, no schools have been added to the takeover list. A moratorium was passed in 2021 on adding districts to the academic distress commission, but that ends at the end of this school year, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
The bill would not immediately impact local schools if passed as is, because it would reset the report card requirement at the current school year and require three years of low scores before schools would be required to close or face remediation.
However, Jefferson Twp. Local Schools, Springfield City Schools, Trotwood-Madison City Schools and Dayton Public Schools, plus several local charter schools, have had buildings ranked in the bottom 5% of schools in the state or got one star on the performance index, which ranks test results, in the 2023-24 school year.
Response to bill
The conversation around Senate Bill 127 has focused on accountability for local schools or how local schools could be penalized under the new proposal.
Jocelyn Rhynard, a member of the Dayton Public School Board who was on the board the last time Dayton Public faced state takeover, said the bill does nothing to provide additional resources. Instead, it removes local control, she said.
Rhynard added if schools close, it just means students would be forced into another school, leading to overcrowded classrooms and a heavier teacher burden.
“School rankings used as a metric for student learning shows a lack of understanding of how districts educate students,” Rhynard said.
Others said the bill doesn’t do enough to improve schools.
“We have to bring accountability, we have to improve quality and we have to do both a carrot and a stick approach to make sure that we get improvements here in Ohio,” said Greg Lawson, research fellow at The Buckeye Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in the state.
Lawson said Ohio needs to aggressively provide incentives to improve schools and better education.
Chad Aldis, vice president of policy at the Ohio Institute, said there were three areas where he believed the bill could be strengthened. He said the growth measure should be a one-star rating on the value-added metric of the report card instead of ranking by percentile, apply the same intervention criteria to both public and charter schools but intervention and restructuring should only apply to district schools, and instead of excluding report cards prior to the 2024-25 school year, to keep the current system.
“I personally don’t think that intervening in a school and requiring them to do something different when there is extraordinarily low academic achievement and very low growth year after year after year ... the state has a moral obligation to intervene,” he said.
Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, a teachers’ union, said the bill was punitive and mirrored failed policies of the past.
He said he agreed with Aldis that students should be in schools that can help them grow academically and that the state has a moral obligation to intervene when that isn’t happening, but argued that focusing on better investments and community engagement could help more.
“We believe that a better approach is really focusing on meeting the needs of the whole student with wraparound services in the community learning center model,” DiMauro said. “We don’t believe that we should add on additional punitive measures that really take agency away from local communities and we believe this bill has the potential to do that.”
The Ohio School Boards Association, the Ohio Association of School Business Officials and the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, all three of which represent public school officials, said in written testimony that they had concerns the legislation would lead to unintended consequences that would not benefit needy students.
The organizations asked for the bill to switch away from a bottom 5% proposal, but did not identify an alternative.
“The criteria outlined in the bill will lead to constant restructuring in Ohio’s schools, without parameters to prevent the annual elimination of buildings,” the organization leaders said in written testimony.
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