With two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich joining the crowd of candidates for the
2016 Republican presidential nomination, it’s a good time to look at the public
education mess that has developed in his state under his leadership.
Kasich has pushed key tenets of corporate school reform:
*expanding charter schools — even though the state’s charter sector is the
most troubled in the country
*increasing the number of school vouchers that use public money to pay for
tuition at private schools, the vast majority of them religious — even
though state officials say that fewer than one-third of those available were
used by families this past school year
*performance pay for teachers — even though such schemes have been shown
over many years not to be useful in education
*evaluating educators by student standardized test scores in math and
reading — even though assessment experts have warned that using test
scores in this way is not reliable or valid.
Meanwhile, the Ohio Education Department in Kasich’s administration is in
turmoil.
