Governor Kasich has signed a bill into law that grades schools on an A through F grading scale, which is a part of a bigger education plan that the Governor intends to release soon.
Ohio Governor John Kasich says Ohioans can expect to see his plan for improving education in Ohio’s k through 12 schools by the end of this month. He says he and his staff have been working on it for months. And Kasich says he’s glad details of it are not being released to the press.
"You don’t want to things out before it’s completely done and you don’t want to get things out before you have a way of explaining it because it’s very complicated. School funding is extremely complicated and you move one thing, it moves another. So you really want to get it right and not confuse people out of the box so no, I’m really pleased we haven’t. First of all, if someone tried to explain it, it would come out piecemeal," says Kasich.
Kasich says his upcoming budget will give schools themselves the power to determine their own programs to an extent. And as far as merit pay for teachers, Kasich says he’s for the idea but would rather have schools determine how it is awarded.
"Well, I’m a big believer in teacher bonuses but we think we have a way in our school education proposal that could allow school districts to design programs," says Kasich. "You know the Cleveland public schools have that now with the Cleveland reform plan. I’m a big believer that you can pay people more who do excellent jobs. But I’d rather have it come from the bottom up than the top down because if it comes from the bottom up, then we can get agreement within the districts with the school boards, the teachers and everybody else but it’s absolutely something that I think makes a lot of sense."
Kasich says his plan will be comprehensive but he won’t give many details at this point.
"It will be up to you to judge whether it’s significantly different. But I believe it’s more than just the dollars. There will be more to it that are different than what we traditionally look at - who wins and who loses. There will be other components of the bill that will be beyond that," says Kasich.
The Governor’s budget is due to the legislature on February 4th and he wants to get his education plan out there in advance of that deadline. Kasich says he’ll first talk about it in a meeting with school superintendents then in a public town hall meeting.