Ohio Governor Listens on K-12—But Action Awaits

Despite a faltering economy and a political rebuff from state lawmakers earlier this year, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is pressing ahead with a project to collect school improvement ideas from citizens statewide, with an eye toward eventual legislation.

To date, the first-term Democrat has held five public forums throughout Ohio on K-12 education, drawing crowds of 200 to 300 willing to consider such options as an extended school day or school year, and nontraditional age groupings for classes.

This fall, he plans to follow up with a series of meetings on ways to change the state’s school funding formula, which the Ohio Supreme Court in 1997 struck down as unconstitutional because it relied too much on property taxes, creating...