Stephen Dyer is the former Ohio House Education Committee chair and an award-winning journalist. In this post, he shows how voucher programs change the make-up of local public schools.
During my post railing against Ohio Charter Schools’ failure to graduate students, I came across a datapoint that I treated too flippantly: 201 Ohio school districts today have student populations 90% or more of whom qualify as economically disadvantaged. I kind of breezed past that fact in the post.
I shouldn’t have. I should have said, “What the f***? One out of every 3 Ohio school districts now have student populations that are 90% or more economically disadvantaged? Whoa! How did that happen?”
What changed here?
I decided to go back as far as Ohio’s report cards go: the 2005-2006 school year (the year I first ran for State Rep, which sure makes me feel old!).
Twenty years ago.
Wanna take a stab at how many school districts had 90% or more of their students qualify as economically disadvantaged then?
Five.
That’s right.
5.
Here they are: Cleveland, East Cleveland, Jefferson Township, Lockland and Mt. Healthy.
That’s it.
The next highest was Akron at 77%.
Today, there are 81 with 100% economically disadvantaged students. Another 29 that are 99.9% economically disadvantaged. Another 22 that are 99.8%.
You get the pattern.
What the f*** is going on?
EdChoice. That’s what.
That’s when I became suspicious. See, 2005-2006 was the first year of EdChoice vouchers. Now, of course, it’s an unconstitutional, nearly $1 billion annual expenditure that affects all but a handful of school districts.
So what are the EdChoice populations in the districts that are 90% or more economically disadvantaged vs. the districts that are less than 90% economically disadvantaged?
The 201 poorest districts in the state account for 47% of all EdChoice students. The remaining 406 districts account for 53%. On a per district basis, the poorest districts have 333 EdChoice students. The remaining districts have about 180 students taking EdChoice vouchers.
So clearly EdChoice is disproportionately affecting the 201 districts that are now 90% or more economically disadvantaged.