Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has been doing his level best to reverse the state's substantive progress on providing school choice for Ohio students stuck in failing schools. Parents and students are the immediate losers...but at least the teachers unions are happy to be getting an immediate return on their investment. Ken Blackwell, writing at Townhall:
Calling school vouchers "undemocratic" and charter schools a "dismal failure," Gov. Strickland, in his first major public policy address, slammed the door of educational opportunity on thousands of poor children and crushed the hopes of their parents.By denying these children the equal access to a quality education that choice programs offer, he also denied that the bloated public education bureaucracy and its entrenched unions have failed our children. Gov. Strickland positions his opposition to choice as part of an overall effort to eliminate inefficiency and force accountability, but he misleads.
Currently, large numbers of Ohio's public schools, particularly those in the state's urban areas, fail to teach our children. Public school failure can be measured in many ways. For example, over 115,550 students in Ohio's eight largest cities are attending 251 schools not meeting even the state's minimal education standards. Far larger numbers of children are receiving educations that leave them completely unprepared for today's global economy.
In contrast, school choice programs are working and growing. First in the form of charter schools for 76,000 pupils in over 200 schools, then in an autism scholarship expanding choice to key middle class constituencies, and now to the EdChoice program making another 50,000 students eligible for 14,000 vouchers to escape failing public schools.
These fledgling choice programs are becoming increasingly popular because public schools are performing so poorly. In fact, Ohio's charter schools and vouchers are only available to students living in districts in academic emergency or academic watch.
Parents like the programs because they empower them. Teacher unions oppose the programs because they weaken their position at the collective bargaining table.