Fordham Institute — Ohio Base Cost Model Commentary

Source. Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Ohio), commentary series on the Fair School Funding Plan: Ohio’s new school funding formula — challenges with the base cost model and An overview of Ohio’s new school funding formula, and a look at whether it might stick. Type. Secondary source — policy analysis and critique. Location. fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/.

What it contains. Analysis of the base cost methodology’s structural properties, with figures this corpus uses for context rather than for computation: the pre-FSFP base cost of $6,020 per pupil in FY2021, the statewide average of $7,352 in FY2023 and $8,240 in FY2025, the stale-input problem (teacher salaries rose from $62,353 in 2018 to $67,654 in 2022, an 8.5% increase, while the model continued pricing from FY2018), and the small-district effect — districts under roughly 700 students, about one-sixth of Ohio districts, carry base amounts above $8,000 per pupil because minimum staffing floors apply regardless of enrollment.

Why a critical secondary source is cataloged at all. The small-district and stale-input observations are not in the department’s methodology documentation, which specifies the formula without evaluating it. They are the kind of claim the corpus needs in order to ask whether a mechanism does what it says, and they come with a point of view — Fordham is a school-choice-aligned organization and its critique of the base cost model should be read knowing that.

Access constraints. Freely available.

Caveat. Figures here are analysis, not the official record. Where they overlap with School Finance Payment Report — Line by Line Explanation the department figure governs — note that Fordham’s $7,352 for FY2023 and the department’s $7,349.22 for FY2022 are different fiscal years, not a discrepancy, and combining them without checking that would produce a false sense of a flat series.