Hearing on Senate Bill 1 — Proponent Testimony of Jon Graft, Superintendent, Butler Tech (March 28, 2023)

Summary

Proponent testimony on Senate Bill 1 dated March 28, 2023, from Jon Graft, Superintendent of Butler Tech Joint Vocational School District, to the Ohio House Economic and Workforce Development Committee. The testimony describes a thirty-year career in public education and says that many changes in education are incremental. It criticizes the use of seat time as learning time and Carnegie Units, and cites the Carnegie Foundation on how the unit was developed in 1906. It says Senate Bill 1 is the first step in the transformation it seeks and that Graft looks forward to working with the Governor's Office.

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              Ohio House Economic and Workforce Development Committee
                                Hearing on Senate Bill 1
              Proponent Testimony of Jon Graft, Superintendent, Butler Tech

                                          March 28, 2023
Chair Swearingen, Vice Chair Santucci, Ranking Member Upchurch, and members of the Ohio
House Economic and Workforce Development Committee, my name is Jon Graft and I
appreciate the opportunity to testify today in support of SB 1. I currently serve as the
Superintendent of Butler Tech Joint Vocational School District. I have spent my thirty-year
career in public education working as a teacher, athletic director, assistant principal, principal,
Head Start director, and superintendent. I arrived in the world of education with the onset of
computers in classrooms, the internet and used something called email technology in my first
years as a teacher.

As with any experience in life, things change and we must learn to adapt as human beings.
Change is neither good nor bad but rather inevitable and we must learn to cope and progress with
it. However, I am saddened to see that many of the changes in education are incremental and
would best be described as moving furniture on the Titanic. For most of my career, I have
worked to go against the grain of the traditional assembly line model of education which became
formalized at the end of the century; the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s. Yet,
we continue to utilize the antiquated practices of seat time as learning time, batch students
according to chronological age, and Carnegie Units.

According to the Carnegie Foundation, “The unit was developed in 1906 as a measure of the
amount of time a student has studied a subject. For example, a total of 120 hours in one
subject—meeting 4 or 5 times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, for 36 to 40 weeks each year—earns
the student one “unit” of high school credit. Fourteen units were deemed to constitute the
minimum amount of preparation that could be interpreted as “four years of academic or high
school preparation.”

This sounds like many schools in Ohio and frankly, across the nation. The current practice of
general supervision of the system of public education in the state, including policy forming,
evaluation functions and financials are all built on the Carnegie model. We have attempted to
move the furniture on the Titanic but the technological glacier continues to be straight ahead of
us.

There must be a sense of urgency on all of our parts to move the education system into the 21st
century. We must be able to move faster than the speed of business in order to handle the
tremendous amount of change occurring in our world. This is why we support SB 1, because it
restructures the agency in charge of our education system—and elevates career-technical


  Butler Tech Fairfield Twp. Campus • 3603 Hamilton Middletown Road • Fairfield Twp., OH 45011
education—in an effort to make government more responsive to the rapidly evolving economic
and workforce climate across Ohio.

“Of the jobs that will exist in 2030, 85% have not been invented yet. The pace of change will be
so rapid that people will learn “in the moment” using new technologies. The ability to gain new
knowledge will be more valuable than the knowledge itself.” (Dell Technologies Research
Explores the Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships. Dell 2018)

The revamped Department of Education and Workforce would oversee a Division of Career-
Technical Education and a Division of Primary and Secondary Education, each with a deputy
director serving on the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board. These deputies having a direct
channel to our Governor will increase efficiencies within our system and eliminate a lot of red
tape. This is important because we no longer have time for bureaucracy. As educators, we don’t
have time peel back layers upon layers of work that has been done in the past. We have local
school boards to provide a voice for our communities and stakeholders. We have practitioners
across the state ready to mobilize efforts to renew our vision for public education in Ohio.

To be clear, I know several people who have served on the Ohio State Board of Education. They
are good people attempting to do good work on behalf of Ohio’s children but they are working
within a system that does not adapt well to the changes needed in today’s always developing and
innovating world.

 “Two things are happening at the same time – the velocity of technology is increasing
exponentially and yet it has never been as slow as it is today; and secondly, the volume of
knowledge being generated boggles the mind. Volume of knowledge is doubling every 12 hours,
the doubling rate used to be 25 years in 1945. Speed with which technology is progressing is the
driver which are upending our careers, transforming lives and disrupting economies.”
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/human-knowledge-doubling-every-12-hours-amitabh-ray/).

I encourage you to support Senate Bill 1’s streamlining efforts to assist in creating an Ohio
education system that is nimble and can move faster than the speed of business. I am more
encouraged than I have ever been as an educator to see the needed changes so many educators
like me have desired for over thirty years. I look forward to working with the Governor’s Office
to see to it that all of our students in Ohio get the best education in the United States and across
the world. Senate Bill 1 is the first step in this transformation.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be happy to answer any questions.




  Butler Tech Fairfield Twp. Campus • 3603 Hamilton Middletown Road • Fairfield Twp., OH 45011


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