Great public schools provide opportunity for children, their families, communities and the entire state. All children, regardless of ZIP code, race or family income deserve to be educated in a fully and fairly funded school. Yet for many years Ohio lawmakers have fallen short. Even as policymakers have required public schools to do more, they…

Great public schools provide a foundation of opportunity for children, their families, communities and the entire state. All children, regardless of ZIP code, race or family income deserve to be educated in fully and fairly funded schools. Yet for many years Ohio lawmakers have provided neither sufficient nor fair distribution of state support.…

On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

We analyze the votes taken in the Ohio State Legislature pertaining to the establishment of six school voucher programs: The Ohio Scholarship and Tutoring Program, The Autism Scholarship, The Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship, The Educational Choice Pilot Scholarship, The Educational Choice Scholarship, and the Income-based Scholarship…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's sponsorship annual report highlights our work with eleven schools that served 4,150 students in five Ohio cities during the 2016-17 school year. We value this opportunity to keep stakeholders and the public informed about our efforts, and provide information on each of the schools that we sponsor. Additionally,…

This document is the final report on Central State University's implementation of Section 371 of Ohio Amended Substitute House Bill 153. Implementation of Phase I action items required that deliverables and timelines be shifted to give Central State the best opportunity for early success. In Phase II, Central State responded aggressively to a…

Beginning in 1997, a series of Ohio Supreme Court decisions ruled that Ohio's school foundation-based funding system was unconstitutional. Despite judicially mandated reform directives, little change was made until recently when Ohio adopted a modified Evidence-Based Model (EBM) into its statutory funding scheme. Ohio's EBM is intended to remedy…

The purpose of this descriptive case study was to describe the implementation of Ohio's version of the Evidence-Based Model (OEBM) state school finance system in 2009. Data sources included state budget documents and analyses as well as interviews with local school officials. The new system was responsive to three policy objectives ordered by the…

The fight over school funding in most states involves a long battle in the courts that may span several years and never have a definitive endpoint because resistance to adequate funding of public schools appears to be endemic to government processes. The "DeRolph" case, first filed by the plaintiffs in December 1991, is one such legal…