Last month, I attended the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s Fall Research Conference. This is the ultimate wonk conference — more than 2,000 policy analysts and researchers convening in Atlanta, Georgia to talk about the most recent research on topics of public policy.
I go to this conference because I’m interested in what people are learning about public policy across the country. I’m often interested in learning things that I can bring back to Ohio — new analysis being conducted that is not happening here in the Buckeye State. Ohio isn’t usually on the cutting edge of policy analysis, so this is a good place for me to learn about things I can bring back home.
Imagine how surprised I was when I saw one of the most innovative research projects in the country presented by the Ohio Department of Education.
If you follow Statehouse news, you likely have heard about the efforts to reform education finance in Ohio. Alongside these legislative reforms, which will likely lead to billions of dollars in changes for school funding in Ohio, the state Department of Education (newly changed to the “Department of Education and Workforce”) has been conducting a series of studies on the cost of education in Ohio.
Two of these studies were released late last year.
In November 2022, the Department of Education released a study by the American Institutes for Research on the cost of adequate special education in the state of Ohio. A month later, the Department released a study by West Ed and APA on the cost of education for English language learners in Ohio.
What I found fascinating about these studies was the approach they took. The studies were focused on a similar question: what will it cost to provide an adequate education for key student subgroups? They then answered these questions by turning to Ohioans.
Each of these studies included both interviews and surveys with professionals across the state to understand the components needed in education and the costs associated with these components. They both also undertook a “professional judgment panel” approach that utilized panels of local experts to understand the resources needed to provide education and the cost of those resources.
The Department of Education and Workforce is now contracting a new study, this time focusing on economic disadvantage, a component of school funding that could have a wider research than the last two studies.
While the Department has not officially endorsed the findings of these reports, they commissioned them in order to make sure that policymakers had access to the best information possible when formulating school funding policy.
Whether the General Assembly incorporates the results of these findings into future education budgeting is yet to be determined. We still live in a democracy, so it is not technocrats who make these decisions, it is elected officials who do.
That being said, these sorts of studies represent a triumph for evidence-based policymaking and a marrying of the ideals of rational policy analysis and local input. Often Ohio is the last to undertake innovations in policy, but this is a situation where Ohio is leading the way. And as a state, we should be proud of that.
Source : Ohio Capital Journal
