A judge in Columbus pressed pause on the state's plans to restructure the Ohio Department of Education after a hearing Thursday afternoon. The plan would have taken effect Oct. 3, creating a Department of Education and Workforce with a director appointed by the Governor taking on many of the powers and responsibilities currently held by the state Board of Education.
CLICK HERE to read the court order.
Seven of those board members filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming the plan violates the Ohio constitution since it was added to the state budget legislation at the last minute, and the judge agreed, citing the "single-subject rule" that states, "No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title."
News 5 spoke with Lt. Gov. Jon Husted Wednesday about the move to strip many of the board’s powers and responsibilities as part of that restructuring. He mentioned COVID-19 learning loss as one reason why a transfer of power is necessary.
“We have children that are still suffering learning loss from COVID,” he said. But Teresa Fedor with the Ohio School Board was just as quick to call that out as an excuse.
“Well, we knew that this was a power grab based on very high rhetoric; the fact that they used the COVID testing results to say that we failed the students and the schools in Ohio was ridiculous,” she said. So what do test results tell us about the state of post-pandemic education in Ohio?
Let’s start with the fall 2022 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank with a focus on education policy. It compared the 2018-2019 school year state assessments with the results of that same testing during the 2021-2022 school year.
The report found proficiency dropped almost across the board in math and reading and among fourth and sixth graders, as well as high school students. The only area where the numbers improved was among fourth and sixth-grade readers.
The report also found the steepest declines happened where there were already achievement gaps; among economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, and Black and Hispanic students. A disparity Husted also noted.
“Where schools were closed longer, which tend to be in our urban areas, children performed worse and are having a harder time recovering,” he said.
While it appears Ohio is struggling to recover all the learning loss the pandemic caused, we dug a little deeper and learned that’s the case for everyone.
The most recent report from The Nation’s Report Card compares 2019 results to 2022. In 2019, Ohio scored 241 in fourth-grade math on a scale of 0-500. That’s one point higher than the national average. In 2022 fourth-grade math scored lower at 238, but still three points higher than the national average of 235.
When it comes to fourth-grade reading, Ohio scored 222 in 2019, three points higher than the national average. In 2022 that score did drop to 219, which remained three points above the national average.
COVID-19 learning loss wasn’t the only issue cited when Husted talked about why it’s necessary to restructure the Ohio Department of Education. He also claimed the Ohio School Board failed to perform basic duties like hiring a state superintendent and struggled to pass simple resolutions. All of that, according to Fedor, is a narrative designed to justify a power grab.
