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Whether Kasich will have any big announcements or unveil any new proposals remains to be seen, but recent remarks provide some insight into the governor's thinking.

 

"Sixty-seven percent of Ohio parents, I'm told, according to one of the polls, thinks the schools are doing a great job.  But 41 percent of our high school graduates are in 11th and 12th grade remedial courses at the universities, which drives up the cost," said Kasich a an Associated Press forum recently in Columbus. "I think it probably also contributes to these enormously high dropout rates, because you know when you go to college, all this cool stuff is going to happen and you're taking 12th grade math. And you see a very high dropout rate. As one of the presidents of one of the universities said, 'I have kids in remedial programs from school that are labelled excellent'. This whole system, we just have to tell the truth about what is going on with our education system," he said.

 

Kasich, a Republican, says he wants to put more money into instruction. "The solution lies in more parental involvement, so we have to keep working on this, and this is going to take a long time to get people where they need to be to understand that there are additional reforms that need to be made. This is a long way to go. We've made some improvements with what we've done with vouchers and charter schools, but we've got teacher evaluations, we've got a long way to go and I have to say some teachers would be confused about this. You know, here you have someone saying you have 41 percent remediation but their school is labelled excellent. So they say it's not my problem and so that whole system of how we judge how our kids are doing needs to be re-evaluated." 

 

Also at the AP forum was Democrat Eric Kearney, the minority leader in the Ohio Senate. Kearney says he, too, has heard from university officials that Ohio students are often unprepared.

 

"We want our kids, at least we say often times, that we want our kids to be competitive both in the state of Ohio, nationally and internationally. And so if we're going to create kids that can compete on that level, is the school system or the school funding mechanisms that we have now designed to reach those results?" said Kearney. "Well, I won't provide you with my opinions about that, but I'll just tell you what university presidents tell us in the Senate Finance Committee. They tell us that most Ohio college students are not prepared for university level work. Well, that suggests to me that they're not ready to be competitive on a state, nation or international level. So, something needs to be completely redone with the Ohio funding system and what we're trying to do."

 

WOUB will broadcast The State of the State address on WOUB-FM and stream the video live at WOUB.org at 1 p.m. on Tuesday.