Ohio begins bridging funding gap between affluent, poor schools

It costs more to educate poor pupils, said a policy director.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A Washington-based think tank says Ohio has had some success in narrowing the school funding gap between affluent and poor districts.
A national study by Education Trust found poor districts in Ohio received an average of $54 more per student in state and local funding than affluent districts in 2002-03, the most recent years figures are available.
That's a substantial improvement. Ohio districts with poorer students received $394 less per child in 2000 and $667 less in 1997 than those in well-off areas.
Ohio fared better than the nation as a whole, with high-poverty schools getting about $900 less per student than their richer counterparts, the study showed.
Differing perspective
However, Ross Wiener, policy director of Education Trust, said the gap in Ohio may not really have been closed because it requires more money to educate poor pupils who generally start out farther behind in areas like reading.
Assuming it takes 40 percent more to educate a poor child, Ohio's poor districts are being shortchanged by $487 per child, according to the report.
William Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding agrees that disparities continue between rich and poor districts.
"As a state we have not made a concerted effort to get an accurate cost of what it takes to educate a regular kid," much less a disadvantaged child, he said.
The coalition has been working to get lawmakers to change school funding since a 1994 lower-court case and a 1997 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that the state's system of paying for public education is unconstitutional, partly because it relies heavily on local property taxes.
"It's a system stacked against poor kids," Phillis said, because suburban districts with high property values can generate more money than urban and rural districts, which often have a hard time getting local issues passed.