Ohio does better than almost all other states in directing school funding to poor and minority students, according to a national report released Tuesday.
According to The Education Trust, a nonprofit education policy group in Washington, D.C. run by former Education Secretary John B. King, Ohio ranks near the top in making sure school districts with high poverty and high concentrations of minority students are getting a bigger piece of the state funding pie.
That might come as a surprise to anyone who is aware of Ohio’s decades-long struggle with how to fund its schools fairly. Complaints are perennial. School funding was even the subject of four Ohio Supreme Court decisions in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ruling the system unconstitutional.
“This sounds like good news,” said John Charlton, spokesman for the Ohio Office of Budget and Management. “A lot of the things that the Kasich administration has tried to do … is to direct funds to areas of the most need.”