Toledo Blade slams educators

Article published January 23, 2007

Toledo Blade

Different circus, same clowns

A PROPOSED ballot issue on school funding - a constitutional amendment intended to bypass the Ohio General Assembly - is just one more devious attempt to direct a never-ending stream of taxpayer dollars straight into the pockets of the usual suspects.

By usual suspects, we mean the militant teachers' unions, school administrators, and school boards, all of which are behind a constitutional amendment with the deceptively bland title "Getting It Right for Ohio's Future."

The proposal also marks the reappearance of a group called Coalition for Equity & Adequacy in Education, which wasted untold amounts of public money in suing the state over school funding for more than a decade, beginning in the early 1990s.

Ohioans should be very wary about the potential to reincarnate anything like the coalition's DeRolph case. It will only cost them more money.

The proposed amendment - its backers are seeking 400,000 signatures to place it on the statewide ballot next November - would declare a "high-quality" public education "a fundamental right" of every child, which is at least more direct than the constitution's current mandate for a "thorough and efficient" school system.

Unfortunately, deciding precisely what constitutes a "high quality" education would be left not to lawmakers but to a commission appointed by the governor and legislature.

The panel would report its findings to the Ohio Board of Education, which would determine the cost each year, and the legislature then would have to determine a tax structure to pay for it.

The main draw of the amendment, according to its backers, is that the share of school funding would be gradually shifted from local property taxes to the state, but it wouldn't end local levies and it wouldn't guarantee property tax rollbacks.

While we understand that tax levies are the form of taxation probably most disliked by Ohioans, the end result of this Byzantine process almost certainly would be higher cost to the public and less local control over schools. Reduce the property tax and the revenue will just have to be located elsewhere by jacking up other taxes.

What's wrong with asking parents to pay a greater share of the cost of educating their children?

We absolutely agree with David Hansen, president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a conservative Columbus think tank, that throwing more money at public education isn't the answer. As he points out, public schools in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati rank at the top nationally in teacher pay, yet all three districts perform poorly.

Public school teaching has become one of the most lucrative middle-class professions. And while exceptional teachers are worth their pay, mediocre educators protected by their unions are not.

Unfortunately we don't sense that Governor Strickland has a plan of his own, other than to coddle the teachers' unions. No matter how much is spent on the education of, say, an inner city child in Cleveland, his or her prospects are gloomy without a solid and wholesome environment at home.

"Getting it Right" has it all wrong.