By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - Educators got mixed messages about school success this month with both record-high test scores and widespread rejection of districts' funding requests.

Last week, the state reported that several school districts lifted themselves out of academic trouble and reading scores rose statewide.

Fourth-graders also showed improvement in math, reading and science, while sixth-graders increased their math passage rate by 13 percentage points.

Yet at the beginning of the month, voters rejected 75 percent of the 103 school issues before them, the highest number of such requests in two decades and the highest failure rate in more than five years for an August election.

"My concern is that our schools have the resources they need to sustain these gains," state schools superintendent Susan Tave Zelman said when the discrepancy was pointed out to her.

The report card data reflects a new way of teaching and evaluating students based on changes to state and federal law.

For the first time, students taking new achievement tests are studying material based on state standards that are directly connected to the tests. Such tests were required under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Act, but Ohio lawmakers were also pushing for such changes before that law took effect.

The debate over the changes followed a parallel track in Ohio with an ongoing struggle over changing the way schools are funded. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled three times that the state system is unconstitutional because it relies too much on local property taxes, creating inequities between rich and poor districts.

Lawmakers poured record amounts of new money into schools as a result of those court decisions but districts have continued to struggle as costs outstripped revenue.

The success schools had on the report cards may make it difficult at the ballot, said University of Akron political scientist Stephen Brooks.

"One of the cries of the opponents of fully funding education is that it's not about money, it's about performance, and so in some ways the success supports that view," Brooks said.

It would be ideal if taxpayers would fund all school requests, since heavy local support is the only system available, said state Sen. C.J. Prentiss, a Cleveland Democrat.

The problem is that continued failures at the ballot will add up to reduced services, which could affect test scores, she said.

"Unfortunately, it's going to be up to the local districts to sell, 'We may be successful now, but when we do all these drastic, draconian cutbacks, there's no way we can maintain our progress,'" Prentiss said.

"It's going to be an onus on the schools to connect the dots, and it's really too bad."

Senate Education Chairman Robert Gardner sees it differently, arguing the state has given more money to schools than ever before. Districts should use the test results to make their case, he said.

"What I've heard for years and years is that people want to make sure their dollars are being spent prudently," said Gardner, a Madison Republican.

The test scores "are things they can tout, whereas before all they had was the warm and fuzzy, 'we're doing a real good job of educating your children,'" he said. "But there was no way of validating that."