Ohio’s school funding system is the only one in the United States that has been declared unconstitutional four times because of its reliance on local property taxes.

Students and teachers at Federal Hocking Local School District face the reality of these inequalities every day. The district has a projected $800,000 debt for next fiscal year and cut 18 teaching and staff positions in February.

Trimble Local School District, one of the poorest in the state, was in fiscal emergency from 2001 to 2005 and hasn’t passed an operating levy in more than 40 years.

And while most of their peers remain confused or apathetic, two Ohio University students are doing something to change the system.

Terrez Thomas

Terrez Thomas takes his required education classes and spends time with his girlfriend. The rest of his time is spent researching about 200 years of Ohio education history to suggest solutions for the state’s unconstitutional school funding system.

Thomas received about $3,000 for research and housing last summer from the McNair Scholars Program, a U.S. Department of Education grant for first-generation, low-income or minority students seeking a master’s or doctoral degree.

While he’ll be continuing his research this summer, he’s already found that Ohio’s property tax-based school funding system has been outdated for decades.

Congress established property taxes as the means of funding schools in what is now Ohio with the Land Ordinance of 1785, eight years before Ohio became a state. This form of school funding was more effective when Ohio’s main industry was farming and property value was more evenly distributed, Thomas said.

Since the post-World War II era and the development of suburbia, Ohio’s industry and high-priced property has become more centralized in suburbs and affluent areas while inner-city and rural school districts sometimes fall between the cracks, he said.

Thomas is a proponent for “Getting it Right for Ohio’s Future,” a proposed constitutional amendment that would redefine the cost of education for each of Ohio’s more than 1.84 million students. Many education officials have questioned whether the current statewide per-pupil aid — $5,403 in 2007 — is adequate.

Thomas is using Federal Hocking — a district whose recent decisions have been driven by a lack of funds — as a case study of how local property taxes are inadequate to fund schools properly.

“Schools are forced to make decisions because of a lack of funds,” Thomas said. “Schools should not be making those decisions.”

Thomas is one of about 30 OU juniors teaching Federal Hocking sixth graders about the school funding system as part of Creating Active and Reflective Educators, a partnership between OU and Federal Hocking schools.

And this summer, he’ll turn from teaching Federal Hocking students to an internship with Chicago Public Schools, a program that his McNair faculty adviser, Rosalie Romano, said is highly competitive.

Much of Thomas’ work so far has led him to realize many education majors are missing a key concept in their field: politics.

“Education majors should know that politics and education are intertwined,” he said, “It should be a class by now.”

Holly Davis

Local teachers are finding ways to resist standardizing education laws such as the No Child Left Behind Act, and senior Holly Davis has conducted research explaining how and why.

A communication studies major in the Honors Tutorial College, Davis investigated for her senior thesis project how teachers across Appalachian Ohio, a place where schools often hurt for funding, are reacting to the mandates of No Child Left Behind in their classrooms.

No Child Left Behind is a federal act designed to improve schools’ accountability, standardize student performance expectations and give parents flexibility in choosing schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Web site.

The act aims to ensure that all students can read and do math at or above grade level by 2014. Ohio is slated to receive $717.4 million in 2008, according to the act’s proposed budget.

Davis said she has found that Appalachian Ohio has been ignored in discussions about improving the achievement gap, which generally includes racial minorities only. Because of the act, local teachers are struggling to celebrate small advances in achievement, find time to have fun in the classroom and develop a sense of the personalities within the classroom, she said.

“I’ve always had faith that education was the great equalizer,” Davis said. “It could be that, but it’s not.”

And while Davis’ research is primarily focused on how No Child Left Behind is hurting local teachers, she also has found ways teachers try to restore the learning environment of the classroom, which she hopes to present to area teachers.

Davis’ findings indicate that No Child Left Behind Act is setting teachers up for failure, said Scott Titsworth, Davis’ thesis advisor and associate director for graduate studies in School of Communication Studies. Davis’ research puts the emphasis in education where it belongs, he said.

“Very little of education policy is informed by what we know about student learning and teaching,” he said. “It’s very important to have somebody like Holly to go into education policy and influence it to be good teaching, rather than good politics.”

Davis’ work with education isn’t over after graduation. This summer, she’ll be heading to Baltimore to join the Teach For America program, which places graduating students into low-income schools in rural and urban areas.