Chiara, a frequent commenter, sent the following summary of the Common Core fight in Ohio:
“Meanwhile, the Common Core fight in Ohio continues. It’s the Tea party lawmakers versus the Republican lawmakers.
“I have no idea why either group cares at all what is taught in Ohio public schools, because of both parties had their wish, there wouldn’t be any public schools at all.
“I’m flattered by all this sudden concern, but since the second this political battle is over they’ll be returning to either bashing public schools or selling them, I don’t care which side “wins”. I’m rooting for injuries.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I usually enjoy your articles… Usually… getting a little tired of the blanket statements towards republicans and Tea Party members though. If you look at the common core fight at the grassroots level, there are plenty of republicans and dare I say, Tea party members that are also actively fighting to protect public education. In many cases, these same people have close friends that are Democrats that are working together to combat this monstrosity. Our kids won’t win if we continue to be divisive with partisan comments. Just my 2 cents.
I wrote it so I’ll respond. I said “lawmakers” and I meant just that.
This is the co-chair of the Ohio legislative committee on education:
“America’s public education system is “socialism” and should be privatized, the vice chairman of the Ohio House Education Committee wrote in a recent online column.
“We need to do something that was done about 25 years ago in the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc: sell off the existing buildings, equipment and real estate to those in the private sector,” wrote state Rep. Andrew Brenner, a Republican from Powell, on Brenner Brief News, a website operated by his wife.
Brenner, himself a graduate of the Delaware, Ohio, public school system, said government control over education has led to many of the concerns raised with schools today, including standardized testing, Common Core standards, and powerful teachers’ unions.
Handing control over to the free market, he said, would eliminate the need for such standards and testing, as schools that fail to provide a good education will go out of business.
Tax dollars, he continued, should follow students to whichever school they choose, similar to how the federal government awards financial aid to college students.
“Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves,” he wrote.”
Governor Kasich has nothing good to say about any public school in the state, except when he’s ready for a photo op and parachutes into one.
I don’t make any assumptions about why individuals (grass roots) are opposing the Common Core in this state, and I assume many or most of them are supporters of public schools. That’s why I said “lawmakers”.
I don’t believe GOP lawmakers are well-intended, not because of any assumptions I made, but because of their public statements and actions. If they don’t believe public schools should be “sold off” perhaps they should stop saying they do, and if they support public schools perhaps they should stop cutting funding to existing public schools and privatizing them as fast as they can.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/03/ohio_lawmaker_americas_public.html
If we promise to repeal the Common Core will Republicans return the money they took from local school districts and passed out as tax breaks for people who make over 300K?
“Taking into consideration all funds for K-12, funding in 2012 would decrease 11.5 percent and go down 4.9 percent in 2013. Basic aid would drop by about $1.3 billion over two years: 12.2 percent the first year, 7.6 percent in the second.
Kasich said the budget contains “massive reforms” in primary and secondary education that would help save money.
The Kasich budget would double the EdChoice program to 28,000 voucher-eligible children and remove the current cap on the number of charter schools allowed in Ohio. The new setup also would allow either parents or teachers to take over troubled schools.”
Everyone is making out in the Kasich budget except public schools. Private schools, charter schools, people who make over 300k. Public schools were the designated losers in this totally awesome “massive reform” plan.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/03/15/kasich-releases-budget.html
SAL, not in Ohio. The far right in Ohio has purged the party of moderates. Kasich and the legislative leadership have declared all out war on teachers and schools. One education committee member calls public education “socialism”, another says teachers are all overpaid (my family qualifies for food stamps), Kasich vowed to “break the backs” of teachers and called a police officier an “idiot” for ticketing him. In Reynoldsburg, the Kasich backed school board is eliminating health care. Any Republican moderates left are cowering in fear of the heavy handed tactics used by our one party rule. Toe the line, or else you lose leadership roles or get a primary challenge funded by outside sources. There are no checks in place now, no balance.
It may be difficult to look at and make you uncomfortable, but complacency lets tyrants and insanity rule. Ohio is a mess.
Google “Reynoldsburg” and “ed reform” and you will be INUNDATED with promotional pieces on “edtech” from everyone in the ed reform caucus, from the USDOE to people selling software and screens.
So there’s a shocker, huh? The district that is the absolute favorite of everyone in ed reform is cutting teacher pay, getting rid of health benefits, and chasing more experienced, older, and higher-salaried teachers out.
Try not to trip over all of the business jargon. It’s all larded with ridiculous phrases like “incentivizing innovation”:
“Iterative Development. The lean startup methodology has transformed how new products are built and launched. While common among education technology startups, iterative development strategies are also being used by some school networks. Summit Public Schools in the Bay Area and Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority are simultaneously iterating on school models and learning platforms.”
Yes, by all means. Let’s spread the disaster that is the Michigan EAA to Ohio.
http://abcvitalite.com/2014/02/personalized-learning-demands-lean-blended-iterative-approach/
And the school board gets no kick back, I’ll bet. It is like the Springboro fiasco only popping up in Reynoldsburg. Destroy good teachers so there’s gold in them thar educational hills for profiteers. Voters seem asleep at the wheel and blindly following whatever the Dispatch and Plain Dealer tell them.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I am happy & encouraged to hear there is such a grassroots coalition actively fighting to protect public education in your neck of the woods!
Tea partiers and republicans, regardless of the common core, want to privatize education and are pro charter, without strings attached, pro profit schools, pro voucher (separation of church and state anyone?) and I, for one, find it repulsive how the democrats have taken a stance behind privatization, charters and vouchers because they are now getting the same donor cash as the republicans, and have lost their way since that cash is oh so intoxicating. The union busting and teacher bashing mentality has got to stop as well.
While I can agree with republicans and tea partiers that common core by the government and private persons (millionaire backers), since even a broken clock is right 2x a day, I cannot stand behind destroying public education, circumventing laws to make way for charters and TFA, and funding TFA and charters and vouchers with my tax dollars. Its just wrong.
Rest assured that I believe individuals who support public schools can oppose the Common Core for lots of good reasons.
What I can’t believe is that Ohio lawmakers are opposing the Common Core for lots of good reasons, or any reason at all, other than concern for their own political fortunes.
I don’t believe that.
Chiara,
I don’t often agree with Gene Krebs, bur watch his analysis about Huffman, Adams, and term limits from Aug 22 Columbus on the Record. Interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/
Try again…
Third time’s a charm…
Cx….that common core…..has to go…… I get so passionate, I can’t think!!!
The exact same thing is happening in TN. I have no idea how it will turn out but it’s mighty fun watching the circular firing squad.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx “circular firing squad”– what a great image for this & so many other political battles today!
I’m having trouble making sense of the “coercion” argument, too. A lot of Ohio districts dropped out of RttT because the funding didn’t cover the cost of the reforms.
“Race to Top grants not worth costs, officials say
Requirements tied to federal Race to the Top education grants have become more work than the money is worth, some Ohio school districts say. About 80 districts and charter schools across the state have backed out of the grant program since they won money in 2010, including an initial flurry of withdrawals because school officials realized that grants weren’t enough to cover the requirements attached to them.”
Was “coercion” really the reason lawmakers all jumped on-board this train, or are they saying that now because CC is unpopular with some of their political base?
Too, some of the RttT money they DID get was to cover some costs of adopting the CC. So they were coerced into taking money to put in the CC, when they didn’t want to put in the CC?
Again, I think people can oppose the CC for all kinds of good reasons, but I’m not buying that politicians were somehow tricked or coerced into this. If they were, they’re not very bright and they should resign anyway, because 1. they didn’t get that much money on a per school or per district basis 2. a lot of times the money didn’t even cover the cost of the mandates, and 3. SOME of the money they were supposedly “coerced” into taking was to put in the CC, which they had to have know if they bothered to read it.
Not making sense to me. This isn’t enough money as a percentage of a budget to “coerce” anyone into anything. I don’t know why they backed it and no longer do, but “money” probably isn’t the reason.
I could be wrong, but I believe that the coercion argument only has meaning as part of a Spending Clause argument, the principle being that Congress has the authority to spend (the flip side of its authority to tax), but that there are some limits on the extent to which Congress can use its spending power to get states to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. I think the ACA decision from a couple years ago is the only instance where SCOTUS has found that Congress violated its authority under the Spending Clause because federal funding was effectively coercive. So the coercion argument does seem like a long shot. But you’ve correctly intuited that one of the factors is how much money is at issue relative to the budget. Another factor may be whether the funding is something that states have a preexisting legitimate expectation of receiving, such that withdrawing or refusing funding based on a state’s failure to comply with certain conditions becomes mainly punitive.
I know the legal argument, thanks, I’m familiar with the highway funding case from law school, etc. but I’m talking about the POLITICAL argument they’re making.
They had to take funding that was partly dedicated to putting in the Common Core or…what? They wouldn’t get funding to put in the Common Core, that they hate an opposed anyway?
Looking at the individual grants (outside of large city districts), we’re talking about amounts like 100k. A lot of them were smaller than that, 30k, thereabouts. That isn’t enough to coerce anyone into doing anything. Some districts and schools dropped out of RttT easily when the grant didn’t cover the costs of the Obama “reforms”.
I think they want a political excuse for adopting RttT goals (including the CC) so the big, bad federal government FORCING them to do it is convenient.
The degree to which the political argument fails to hold water is one of the reasons why the legal argument is weak. Re: your point about individual grants — did individual districts and schools have the option to “drop out of RttT”? I thought those decisions were made on the state level.
Districts could opt in RttT, but different times. Remember a crushing recession and Ohio was hit very hard. Districts had to sell their soul to the devil to stop a real meltdown plus go to voters given Kasich’s draconian cuts. Tough to ask for an emergency levy after refusing Federal money. You had to hold your nose and take the medicine. Then came senate bill 5 which implemented RttT policies statewide and then some. Voters rejected in a referendum, but Kasich and the Republicans circumvented voters and added RttT rules in a budget bill which could not be opposed. Voila. We have RttT, Common Core, one party rule, and a state that is beginning to resemble North Korea.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I suspect the thinking of state politicos was, coming along when it did (height of recession), refusing any amount of federal monies toward the state ed budget would be dimly viewed by voters. Here in NJ (a blue state), Christie was roundly criticized for failing to meet the RTTT application deadline, & state ed chief Bret Schundler was fired for that failure.
Not that it mattered; Christie has plenty of ed-privatization backers; we are plunged into CCSS & VAM regardless of missing out on what would have been 400million aid.
Our school district figured out the cost was higher than the award so we refused the RttT money….however it has not eliminated all the crappy requirements.
And how were lawmakers in Virginia and Nebraska and Texas able to resist the lure of the Common Core? Ohio Republicans couldn’t manage to do what those states did?
They could have. They just chose not to, probably because they love the OTHER Obama initiatives, like unlimited and unregulated charter schools and ridiculous teacher measurement metrics, and now it’s politically convenient to blame JUST the Common Core on the feds.
http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/11/unlike_alabama_these_five_stat.html
“MathVale
September 8, 2014 at 8:41 pm
Districts could opt in RttT, but different times. Remember a crushing recession and Ohio was hit very hard. Districts had to sell their soul to the devil to stop a real meltdown plus go to voters given Kasich’s draconian cuts. Tough to ask for an emergency levy after refusing Federal money. You had to hold your nose and take the medicine. Then came senate bill 5 which implemented RttT policies statewide and then some. Voters rejected in a referendum, but Kasich and the Republicans circumvented voters and added RttT rules in a budget bill which could not be opposed. Voila. We have RttT, Common Core, one party rule, and a state that is beginning to resemble North Korea.”
Well, but on the plus side of that ledger was stimulus funding which governors used in various ways to either plug holes in budgets or create holes with tax cuts and then fill the holes they made with stimulus money. That happened.
I’m not picking on you. We agree on 90% of this. I just think it’s important to figure out how this all came to be, without blame-shifting among the responsible parties conveniently timed to midterm elections.
I am absolutely ready to hold the federal gang accountable for their role, but I’m not willing to let state lawmakers relinquish responsibility for public education, anymore they than they already have. They knew what they were doing. If they didn’t, they’re incompetent.
This is going to come up again. The Common Core plus testing will cost more than they’re claiming. Inevitably. Always. If we buy this “we wuz robbed!” line at the state level, they’ll avoid taking responsibility again. I think we have to keep who did what, when, clear.
It always surprises me that THIS IS A DEMOCRACY when we have politicians who represent their REELECTION more than the will of the people and that their reelection is basically out of the control of the voter and IN CONTROL OF WHOMEVER FINANCES A POLITICIAN’S CANDIDACY. The politician’s switching of gears “love common core” now “hate common core” is like sailing… follow the wind and enjoy the ride. Too bad “ed reformers” are directing that fickle wind which is bought and paid for by megabillionaires.
Let us make these politician WANNA BE’S who believe in “ed reformy ideas” (so long as it gets them elected), take some of these common core tests in order to even be qualified to run. And if their “winds” change after they are nominated (as they grovel for votes), let them TAKE THOSE TESTS AND FAIL.
And in the category of “just when you think things could not be more insane… Valerie Strauss in “Answer Sheet” currently has a story on a 13 year old internationally renown piano prodigy from DC.She is now forced to do homeschooling as she was “deemed” a truant for accepting world-wide invitations to play piano (meanwhile being a straight A student at her public school). Why? She would miss more than the 10 days of school and we know that the AYP DATA is the reason behind this. – Why take the child’s needs into account? Ahhh common rules applied cookie cutter to all whether you are a child terminally ill with cancer and back in the hospital – YOU MUST TAKE THE TEST. Whether you are a special needs student who is chronologically 12 but mentally 2 and missing part of your brain, YOU MUST TAKE THE TEST. What is differentiation nowadays… they style in which you CONFORM to “ed reform” or the way in which you approach bubbling in on an answer sheet ON A TEST? Do you go round and round in a circle while coloring in or do you make up an down movements?
Perhaps part of the problem in Ohio is the plethora of General Assembly members who are ALEC members? The following EDUCATION committee members(all GOP) are ALEC: House – Andrew Brenner, Tim Derickson, William Hayes, Kristina Roegner, Gerald Stebelton (chair), and Andy Thompson (Stebelton and Roegner are on the ALEC “Education Task Force” Senate – Balderson, Coley, Hite, Lehner (chair).
Somebody help us!!!!
Sounds just like Utah. I’ve always been a republican, but irks time for a new dance.