YES: Students will be ready to enter college or workforce
Members of the Ohio House and Senate are on the verge of passing the state’s biennial budget bill, and with that legislation they have a historic opportunity to approve new and much-needed graduation requirements for our state. If passed, these new requirements will meet a long-sought goal of everyone with a stake in quality education and the preparation of young Ohioans for higher education and careers.
Business owners and operators — the men and women who issue paychecks and create jobs for Ohioans — are among the many in this state who are urging legislators to support a strong, workable system of graduation requirements, one that can be applied fairly across Ohio’s many and varied local school systems. As employers and job creators often dealing with new technologies to keep our businesses and our state competitive, we need confidence that an Ohio high school diploma means something, and are a sign that job seekers are well prepared as they move from school to career.
That is why we support the carefully developed and widely supported requirements that are part of the budget legislation (House Bill 166) unanimously approved by the Ohio Senate and are currently part of
conversations with the legislative conference committee finalizing the state budget. The Ohio Senate, and particularly Sens. Peggy Lehner and Lou Terhar, are to be congratulated for their leadership on this issue, and we appreciate Gov. Mike Dewine’s administration for its open-mindedness on the requirements.
Sensible new standards will answer an urgent need in Ohio’s education system, a need most directly felt by high school students who are working toward graduation, but also by their parents, teachers and school superintendents. As the chief executive officer of the Ohio Business Roundtable representing CEOS of many of Ohio’s largest, most successful companies, I know how important meaningful, workable graduation requirements are to Ohio employers, large and small.
In fact, Ohio Excels — a statewide, education-focused consortium of business leaders, of which I am a board member — has played a key role in development of these new requirements. Ohio Excels worked closely with the Alliance for High Quality Education, a consortium of 74 Ohio school districts and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nationally respected advocate for education excellence. With input and support from other statewide groups, school district leaders and education advocates across the state, Ohio Excels and our partners have produced a plan that allows a high school student to earn an Ohio diploma by completing their required coursework, demonstrating competency in mathematics and English language arts and preparing for college or career.
Graduating students in the classes of 2021 and 2022 will be given flexible options as schools transition to new requirements. The class of 2023 (this fall’s ninth-grade students) will be the first to be fully affected. This will put an end to the fears and frustrations felt by so many Ohio students as evershifting graduation requirements, temporary measures and rumors of additional changes cause needless confusion and even anger. For some in the business community, it means they no longer have reasons to question the value of an Ohio high school diploma.
The coming final vote on Ohio’s biennial budget bill can mark an important step forward toward ensuring the success of our education system, the quality of our workforce and Ohio’s economic well-being. As business operators, job creators, and proud supporters of our state and local economies, we urge the General Assembly to pass the Ohio Senate’s unanimously passed and well-developed plan for a strong new system of high school graduation requirements.
Here we go again: Our state politicians are headed down the same road they traveled for more than 20 years, wasting untold millions of our tax dollars and showing zero results while ignoring local experts. The latest in a long line of examples is new high school graduation requirements.
A few years ago, Ohio implemented graduation requirements that basically said that if students were not college ready, then they would not graduate high school. When it became obvious that the outcome would be a huge decline in the number of high school graduates — and a political nightmare — a state superintendent work group was formed to find a temporary solution. I was a member of that work group and it became obvious to me that the new graduation requirements were a result of public university presidents trying to get more students enrolled in college, and not in the interest of high school students.
The university presidents were concerned about the huge decline in the undergraduates needed to support their overbuilt higher education system. My observation was confirmed when I asked an Ohio Board of Education member why the universities played such an outsized role and the response was, “I do not wish to answer that question over a