Ben McCullough for State Representative

A 21st Century Education

Our children and youth are Northwest Ohio's strongest asset. I have made it a pledge of mine to restore the confidence of our young people in America's government and leadership, so that the torch may be passed to preserve our democracy.

When I talk about the innovative economy, a cleaner environment, securing our people, restoring confidence, and building bridges - there is one focal point that can lead us to all of these things, and that is our children's education. Being still active in my education and recently graduated through our local programs, I understand that there are strengths and weaknesses in how we deal with educating America's newest citizens - especially of Northwest Ohio. The time is now to solve these discrepancies, and I will fight every day to ensure that we leave our communities better than the way we found them, for the sake of our children.

I find the lack of school funding in our area to be inconsistent with our values. In the four DeRolph v. State of Ohio cases since 1991, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled our system of funding to be unconstitutional. After the third ruling, the Court got tired and failed to require changes. This is uttterly disappointing: that even the Ohio Supreme Court is allowing us to give up on our public schools! Districts' failure to pass levies over and over again is not creating the kind of learning environment we ought to be fostering. Students are losing important programs such as extracurricular activities, fine arts, and ones that aid the disabled. This lack of funding also allows our structures to deteriorate, and materials to become out-of-date. The next wave of educators are discouraged from coming here. First, we must recognize that our current situation is unsatisfactory, and must be corrected. Do our children, who keep our towns alive, deserve to be underfunded? Why does Stateline.org tell us we, as the 7th most populous state, rank 17th in per-pupil spending? Children in the 21st century will face the most challenging competition for work that America has ever seen. We cannot afford to let our own future lag behind reality. For a 21st century, college preparatory education, our public schools must gain state funding to update structures, technology and books; and to restore cuts in programs during and after school that keep our children in a positive, active environment. We must understand that schools are one of the strongest assets of our community, and want to do things to bring students back, with hope that they will bring their experience and knowledge to strengthen our community, and raise their own families here one day.

So how do we do this? Let's look to the Ohio constitution for guidance. The document says our state must secure a thorough and efficient system of public common schools. What does thorough and efficient mean? I believe it implies that our children deserve the best, and that the state should take on some of the responsibility in funding schools. Raising property taxes every time is just not equitable for our children. There needs to be a consistent standard of what is "thorough and efficient."

Our system now, sadly, is deficient. School districts by fiscal year 2008 in Ohio will have an outrageous $5 billion deficit. If education is a consitutional priority in Ohio, then the source for income should partially be from the state. We already pay a great deal of taxes to the state, but they are funding programs that have not worked for decades, giving tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, or are being unwisely invested. We can cut costs in a myriad of places, then redistribute the savings to public schools. I will not raise taxes, because I already believe we are burdened. But I will raise education as the priority for new state spending. School aid should be particularly focused on districts that have lost property tax revenue, and districts that are putting students in danger by not having the means to provide them a basic education. We must make it an overall goal to make education fair and equitable, whether you live in a wealthy district or one that cannot afford the tax burden. For schools that wish to exceed a state standard of "thorough and efficient," property tax increases can fund their extra needs as determined by the local school boards.

Charter schools and vouchers are not the way to solve our educational issues. The original concept of these schools was to create pilot programs of new ideas for teaching that could be implemented in the public schools. This is where I believe the concept should end. Instead charter, private and parochial schools are being funded by the state indirectly through vouchers, as an encouragement to leave the public education system. But what this is really doing is taking public dollars away from where they are needed most, being, the public schools themselves. Vouchers are a slap in the face to our public schools: saying in effect, "we've given up on you." This is a short term solution that has the potential to become a long term problem. I also want to fully fund Head Start programs for preschoolers, and open it up as an option for all children in Ohio, even those who use other childcare as well.

Our state also has a problem in judging a student's knowledge. Currently, all high school students are required to pass the new Ohio Graduation Test to receive their diploma. Yet should we disregard the different teaching styles of our educators and fit all students, even the disabled, into a "one-size-fits-all" mold? The cookie-cutter strategy here is forcing teachers across the state to teach students the methods for taking a single test within a September-to-February period of one year, rather than letting educators be the teachers themselves, and teach in methods they find to be most effective based on experience. It is time to recognize that for all its merits, a student's abilities cannot be judged based on a single test. This is not to say eliminate the test, because it does serve a partial purpose in setting a bar for achievement. But the playing field must be leveled here, and the OGT must be revamped. I will work closely with Ohio's educational boards and committees to ensure that the OGT becomes a factor but not a standard for graduation, and that it more accurately and completely measures our students' proficiencies. Students rarely know what they got wrong when receiving their score, so improvement for next time is impossible. Further, the state of Ohio must stop the current method of using this test as the bar for school funding, and rewarding high-performance districts. Of course it can be one in a set of incentives to work for, but it makes no sense to disqualify schools from public funding opportunities due to poor performance - these schools need the most help.

Ohio's high schools are in a time-warp. The system as it was intended was to educate large children, not the young adults who now must enter a world of more knowledge and an explosion of competition from outside. The system of the 1960's, on which high schools are based, never even intended to educate every child, because a small percentage actually ended up graduating. Well, we are in a new world now. A child leaving high school without a modern education simply cannot enter the modern workforce. Advanced Placement (AP) courses are not sufficiently rigorous: in fact, at some schools they are considered the basic course, and regular classes are more or less remedial. As I mentioned with the OGT, the problem is that once again, teachers are teaching the AP exams and not sufficient course material. After the exam, the class basically ends. How are we preparing students for college when they will suddenly not know exactly what is on a professor's test, or not be sure exactly how to succeed? College is becoming the students' first taste at real life, whereas in high schools adaptability is not even tried. We need to create true, college prepatory institutions with more broad course listings, a myriad of options that will allow students to "test drive" career paths before being put on the fast track in college. Teachers should be given the freedom to actually teach the subject of their expertise, so they do not enter the classroom bored by standards of a test. Being recently graduated from one of these schools, I am prepared to use my real-life experience to shape a debate at the Statehouse.

Ohio families struggle when paying their due to colleges. According to Measuring Up in 2002, Ohio received an F for higher education affordability. It takes an astouding 29% of an Ohio family's income to support a child through college, compared to 18% in other states. Perhaps this is because public university tuition here is 67% higher than the national average, making it less expensive for an Ohio child to attend school in Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, or another state than a public school here at home.

Overall, the 21st century education must reflect exactly what we want our students to be able to do - think outside the box, work to find new methods of teaching, and apply them within the classroom. A teachers' years of training and experience should never be compromised by legislators who believe they know more than the educator how to teach. Instead of struggling to meet a bar, we should set one, and lead for ourselves. Students in a 21st century education should be well-prepared and creative in their thinking. They must be allowed chances in every subject area to innovate and dream, and strive for their personal best. To prepare our students for the outside world and the competition they will face, we must create incentives so that we have the best staff and faculty for them here. All the proposals I have set in other categories, in turn, focus on building our communities in a way that the future will want to stay here - even bringing other regions' best and brightest to us. With your support, I will work so our educators may set the example, making Northwest Ohio's system of learning one that is world-class.