Days after rejecting an Ohio Senate bill that would reduce the number of schools that would be eligible for EdChoice vouchers, the Ohio House passes a bill that would take the schools' performance out of the equation altogether.
The bill would be based only on the family income of the student's families. The proposed Buckeye Opportunity Scholarships would allow students to attend a different school if their family's total income is 250% of the federal poverty level. That would mean a family of four making less than $65,000 a year. The current system uses the state's report card to designate schools as poor performing, but that could go away if the house bill moves forward.
“The House proposal would eliminate the school performance one,” says 4th District State Representative Bob Cupp. “In large part because the mechanism we use to determine whether a school is failing or successful is very flawed and the house version would go entirely to income.”
Cupp who has been working on a permanent fix to the school funding problem, and says once that plan comes together it will also fix the current problems with the EdChoice voucher program.
