Opinion: Expert panel could revamp education in Ohio

Albert Einstein told us that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sound like our educational system? More and more money, a lot of tinkering, constant reforms and so little change.

The recession and state budget woes set off alarms, warning that many education needs can’t be met if we keep this up.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan now talks about the New Normal. He means we need to rethink the fundamental structure and delivery of education so that we can stop the cuts in important areas such as preschool, the arts and foreign languages.

Ohio already has exempted schools from prevailing-wage laws and required examining a state health-care pool. House Bill 153, the state budget, contained some other ways to improve productivity, and Gov. John Kasich named a Digital Learning Task Force. But we’ve barely scratched the surface.

While The Dispatch has editorialized in favor of an expert panel to look at consolidating some of Ohio’s school districts, we need a panel for a much bigger job: overhauling the entire statewide educational system to help all districts get more bang for their education buck.

Delaware created a state panel that identified statewide savings of 10 percent to 40 percent in transportation, purchasing, energy, construction and salaries and benefits.

An expert panel in Ohio could identify similar savings and direct them where they’d do the most good. Such a panel ought to include certified public accountants, economists, futurists and technologists and perhaps be chaired by Ohio’s state auditor. It should welcome input, but not control, from educators and politicians. Ohio’s system should be compared with the best practices of other states and countries. Members should review previous reports and presentations that only a few have seen and make them public. Everything should be on the table and on the Internet.

Here are some possibilities:

• Eliminating grade levels. Students would move along based on mastery of subject matter instead of seat time. Some students could exit school faster or earn college credit and others could be given additional help, but all would know more.

• Year-round schools . This would add a month of instruction for elementary students by slashing time currently used each fall for review. Lagging students could be caught up during three-week breaks.

• A 4-day school week . This practice has been adopted in other states, especially in rural areas, with some good results.

• Statewide collective bargaining. This could save local districts much time, energy and money, and public debate would inform citizens about issues. One state now has a statewide salary scale and several others are investigating them.

• A systemwide technological infrastructure . Utah’s Education Network is a good example. The potential for improving productivity is enormous. Just one example: Online tests cost less and yield much quicker and more comprehensive results. Education spends a fraction on technology per individual compared with business.

• Single-board governance . Four states have such a board, which would have authority over early childhood, elementary, secondary and higher education, and could make the system function more cohesively.

• State purchase of buses . North Carolina cut its costs by one-third.

• Pre-engineered school buildings . Such buildings could accommodate sections that can be added or removed with changes in student population changes. Wyoming saves 30 percent on school construction.

• Orphanages . These would provide stability for youth in dysfunctional homes. Economics professor Richard McKenzie reports that orphanage alumni have outpaced their counterparts in the general population, often by wide margins, in almost all social, economic and educational measures, including a 39 percent higher college-graduation rate.

Such overhaul will be far more difficult than the quick fixes politicians vote for or the magic bullets reformers want.

Still, Ohio’s overhaul could help meet our constitutional requirement to “provide a thorough and efficient system of education” and help correct our overreliance on property taxes. It could support efforts to again restructure school funding. Recommendations should have real teeth and legs and, for once, be based on what students need and not what adults want.

Ohio can either greatly increase systemwide productivity or continue to rely on more local taxes, more district cuts and doing less with less.

Einstein also said we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Pat Smith is a former teacher, president of the Worthington and state boards of education, executive assistant for educational policy at Ohio’s Office of Budget and Management and national reviewer for the Race to the Top.

patsmith10@sbcglobal.net