Greg Lawson, research fellow with The Buckeye Institute, says the state did a wonderful thing in the last biannual operating budget when it opened up EdChoice Scholarships to all families.
"We basically made school choice universally available to any family that wanted to take advantage of whatever option they wanted to do," he tells AFN.
The scholarship program has gone through a number of different revisions over the last 20 years or so. There is an income limit to getting the full scholarship – what Lawson calls "sort of a sliding scale." Still, most families are eligible for a full scholarship.
He says a number of issues compel folks to change schools, including transportation, social issues, and funding.
Since EdChoice Scholarships do not give enough to cover education costs for many disadvantaged households, The Buckeye Institute is encouraging the General Assembly to include appropriate Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA).
As for physical transportation, even though districts are legally mandated to transport or help pay for the transport of students to their chosen school, some districts still make it difficult. Columbus City Schools, for example, have deemed transportation "impractical" for students who choose to go to private or public charter schools.
As a solution, The Buckeye Institute recommends resisting any efforts to roll back EdChoice eligibility or scholarships, easing charter school access to unused district school buildings, and issuing state report cards to improve information available to parents.
"This is the promise of school choice," Lawson says of the scholarship program. "This is an option to empower families to make sure that they're able to get their students where they want to send their students and where students feel that they're going to get the best education."
In a policy memo issued earlier this month, The Buckeye Institute says Ohio lawmakers should keep the state's promise to enhance and expand school choice for families.
The institute insists that students should come first, whether they learn at their local district school, a charter school, or one of Ohio's many alternative education providers, and state leaders should take commonsense steps to secure universal school choice and resist any efforts to undermine its success.
