DEAR EDITOR:

College students awarded EdChoice scholarships profit from Ohio’s regulatory and accountability system for school-choice packages.

Ohioans depend on statutory and administrative codes to make sure that all faculties meet fundamental high quality requirements for college kids.

Accountability is a elementary subject in a lawsuit filed towards the state over the constitutionality of the EdChoice Scholarship Program. The swimsuit alleges nonpublic college suppliers will not be accountable for the state {dollars} they obtain. This assertion is inaccurate. College suppliers are accountable to the state and to the households of scholarship recipients.

EdChoice suppliers are faculties chartered by the state board of schooling to — on the very least — guarantee a high-quality normal schooling. Colleges should both full the chartering course of immediately with the state, or be accredited by associations wherein their requirements are reviewed by the state superintendent’s Advisory Committee on Chartered Nonpublic Colleges and permitted by the state.

The state’s Working Requirements relevant for EdChoice suppliers are equivalent or markedly just like these of public faculties. Different required statutory and administrative code provisions are state mandated assessments, together with the third-grade studying assure and commencement checks, course content material necessities, well being and security requirements, requisite hours of instruction, anti-discriminatory provisions and obligatory background checks.

Moreover, EdChoice suppliers comply with a rigorous software course of with the Ohio Division of Training, which displays compliance from information associated to highschool buildings, to employees, volunteers, admission insurance policies, fireplace inspections and meals providers licenses. Colleges are required to have these information out there for compliance evaluations, introduced or unannounced, by state staff.

But it surely’s not solely compliance that makes nonpublic college scholarship packages accountable. EdChoice and different scholarship packages give dad and mom a significant approach to maintain faculties accountable for his or her youngsters’s schooling. If dad and mom are dissatisfied, they’re empowered to go away, together with their funding.

In the end, EdChoice suppliers are most immediately accountable to the scholars and fogeys for whom they serve.

Let’s keep in mind these suppliers are nonpublic faculties that garner public {dollars} — not by default — however solely when dad and mom independently train their academic selection. Furthermore, scholarship funds cowl only a portion of the full value to teach college students. As such, they shouldn’t be regulated precisely as public faculties are. In spite of everything, for fogeys to have a variety of school-choice choices, nonpublic faculties shouldn’t be mirror photographs of public faculties.

LARRY KEOUGH

Legislative advocate

for Catholic faculties