Just when you think the attacks on public education can’t get worse, some rightwing legislature has a new bad idea. It is probably intended to pave the way for more money for charters, vouchers, and the online industry, which make generous campaign contributions to the GOP. Did this come from ALEC?
The following report comes from Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition, which fights for fair and equitable funding for public schools.
Bill Phillis writes:
“Thorough and Efficient”–the time-honored constitutional standard for public education is threatened by a proposed change in the Ohio Constitution
When one thinks it can’t get worse for the public common school system, it does. Just this week, the chair of the Education, Public Institutions, & Miscellaneous and Local Government Committee of the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission introduced a proposal that would eliminate the “thorough and efficient system of common schools” language from the Ohio Constitution. The proposal would merely require the General Assembly to provide for a public school system.
The “thorough and efficient” standard has held the legislature’s feet to the fire for 160 years. Without a standard, public education could be diminished markedly and citizens would have no viable recourse via the courts.
The delegates to the 1850 and 1851 Constitutional Convention struggled successfully to reach consensus on the education clause and finally agreed on “thorough and efficient”, a wise decision.
When the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the system unconstitutional in 1997, some legislators proposed to remove the thorough and efficient clause from the Constitution so as to shut the Court out of any involvement in school funding matters.
This constitutional proposal is another serious attack on the public common school. Public school advocates and all other civic-minded citizens must rise up to stop this egregious attack on public education.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Contact the members of the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Committee.
I believe this is the proper link…
http://www.ocmc.ohio.gov/ocmc/members
Thanks for the info., William Phillis and Reading Exchange.
I went to the link. It rejected my comment, with the claim that the phone number, I have had for 38 years, is not valid. I e-mailed the Commission Co-chair and will send my comment snail mail.
ALEC wines and dines legislators. Wealthy donors enabled the gerrymandering that steals my vote. And the state’s website, disallows my comment.
As people are increasingly saying, “Pick up your pitchforks, time for a French revolution.
So now if the people are being regularly defrauded it’s perfectly legal? Why are they afraid of actually guaranteeing some form of quality in their education? Thorough means one that actually meets a standard, and efficient that the mission of those schools will be carried out in a way that means with as little enrichment to those carrying it out as possible.
Now if people can build fiefdoms out of educational funds…more power to them…even if the only standard they have to meet is making the politicians of their day happy.
How forward thinking our legislators are today….
Plunderbund is an Ohio political blog where they do great reporting on public schools.
Here, they take apart Ohio’s high stakes third grade reading test, which is yet another unfunded ed reform mandate this year.
I was wondering when we’d discover the profit motive behind the high stakes reading test given to third graders, and it looks like it’s built in here:
“In its online FAQ, ODE states that retained students must be provided with services by “outside providers” (=more privatization), but makes clear that the responsibility of paying for outside providers is in the hands of districts and community schools, not the state.”
I went to an Ohio public school advocacy meeting last week (not my district- a larger district outside Toledo) and the high stakes testing of third graders was a big topic of discussion by third grade parents.
The Third Grade Reading Guarantee is a national ed reform gimmick they’re putting in all over the country. It’s a high stakes test for third graders. They’re retained in third grade if they don’t meet the cut score. It goes by various names depending on the state. Ohio’s is simply cut and pasted from the national model bill.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/04/10/ohio-gop-votes-to-move-forward-with-retaining-up-to-half-of-columbus-third-graders/
“It’s a high stakes test for third graders.”
How utterly sick is that?
Child abuse nothing less.
I’m not even (generally) opposed to standardized tests, but I listened to third grade parents at the meeting I attended and it really is excessive and wrong. There were two parents there who had children that missed the cut-off by one point! One point.
I am rapidly becoming generally opposed to standardized tests.
There don’t seem to be any grown ups in the room. No one ever says “no”. I think they don’t say “no” because the moment they do the ed reform “accountability” freaks rush in and accuse them of backsliding. This is political. It’s ABOUT adults. The lawmaker in the video can strut around and brag about how tough she is, and she’s testing third graders! How is this “brave”? It’s the most cowardly thing I’ve ever seen.
I definitely agree with your last sentence!
“I am rapidly becoming generally opposed to standardized tests.”
Take that final leap Chiara, read and understand Noel Wilson to whom I so vigilantly keep referring. To quote TE but in the opposite sense of what he meant about Wilson’s work “there is no there” in educational standards and standardized testing.
Great reporting and writing Chiara, I greatly appreciate all your posts!!!
“I am rapidly becoming generally opposed to standardized tests.”
Welcome!
After years of taking them, giving them, and thanks to Duane, reading about them…
I have come to the conclusion that they are great for one thing, measuring how well off your family is and how well versed you are in the dominant culture.
Think about it…
Questions are biased ( culturally, gender).
Cut scores change and are rather random, really.
Often questions are poorly written, have no or too many correct answers.
Students have bad days…ill, personal issues, and there is no redo on so many if these pieces of junk.
I could go on and on.
Mandatory standardized tests must go!
“. . . and thanks to Duane. . . ”
Thanks for the mention but the credit belongs to Noel Wilson. I’m just the messenger, I hope they don’t shoot me. As I tell my students who thank me for changing a grade after they have completed an assignment “Don’t thank me thank yourself, you’re the one who did the work, not me, I’m just the scorekeeper.”
Chiara Duggan: “I am rapidly becoming generally opposed to standardized tests.”
It took me years of following ed blogs and reading—plus a “little” nudge from Señor Swacker and others!—before I arrived at the same conclusion sans the two words “rapidly becoming.”
You indignation is justified; that’s why I called the leading charterites/privatizers edubullies. They started with teachers, but they have since gone on to show that, unless opposed, they will do unto students and parents and communities and the general citizenry exactly what they did and are doing unto teachers. Bullies are like that; they don’t stop unless you make them stop.
Thank you for all you do.
And if you have any time, I strongly recommend the following three books re standardized testing.
1), Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING (2003 paperback of 1964 edition of 1962 original);
2), Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009 paperback);
3), Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2009 paperback).
Plus a freebie. Google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.” Many links; I give three just below. The first is from the Wall Street Journal [!] and is entitled “Daniel Pinkwater on Pineapple Exam: ‘Nonsense on Top of Nonsense’.”
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/04/20/daniel-pinkwater-on-pineapple-exam-nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense/
Link: http://www.pinkwater.com/the-story-behind-the-pineapple-and-the-hare/
Link: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/05/07/120507ta_talk_mcgrath
The above will forever disabuse you of any trace of the reverential worship of the numerical labeling, sorting and ranking of precious individual human beings by standardized test scores. *I refer, of course, to the belief system of the self-styled “education reformers” who apply these misleading measures to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN but very sparingly to THEIR OWN CHILDREN.*
Keep commenting. I’ll keep reading.
😎
“Who pays for outside service providers?
Districts and community schools must screen and approve at least one outside service provider for students who are retained by the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. They should outline clear criteria for their screening process and make it publically available.”
I see a huge opportunity here for edupreneurs in the high stakes testing of third graders!
I bet White Hat already has a division gearing up. How many private contractors can Ohio employ and pay out of public school budgets before the original public school collapses and just becomes an entity that processes payments to contractors?
Just to give you an idea how ridiculously ill-informed and reckless the promoters of the third grade reading guarantee are, here’s the legislator who promoted the law.
She insists we don’t teach reading in Ohio past third grade, because she took the phrase “learning to read and reading to learn” literally. She thinks that’s a rule in public schools.
Can we make a requirement that they actually have to enter a public school for longer than it takes to conduct a campaign photo op before they start putting in high stakes tests for third graders? Perhaps we could give the adults a standardized test on “public schools: facts versus what the lobbyist told you”.
I’ve had four third graders thru Ohio public schools, one of my closest friends is a third grade public school teacher, and nothing this lawmaker says in this interview has any connection to reality.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/03/16/third-grade-reading-guarantee-now-only-about-political-will/
“. . . nothing this lawmaker says in this interview has any connection to reality.” Quite correct but as KTA would say, it has everything to do with rheeality.
Horrifying that legislators think they can change the Constitution to further their profit interests.
How does changing the Constitution work in Ohio? Where I am at, if the legislature passes the amendment, it must then be voted upon by the people at the next general election. If that is the case in Ohio, is there a fund being set up to educate the public about what this amendment will do? If there is, I will donate!!!!!
The Ohio Constitution is like putty. The big money interests constantly propose and pass any special interest amendment they can. We are bombarded at the ballot box with issues. Republicans in this state are intent on completely dismantling public education. Moderate Republicans have been completely removed from state politics by the Kasich administration. Democrats are wandering the wilderness. Fracking and casinos are the new economy. The public is cowered by arch conservatives. Most people are desperate and looking for any job they can get. Dark times in what used to be a great state.
Horrific. And I thought where I am was bad. If there DOES become a fund, please let us know here. I will donate. I don’t have much, but Constitutions should NOT be changed to support monied interests. I know it’s happening all over, but I can at least try to help.
I sadly agree.
I encouraged my daughter’s family to leave the state, I hope the alternative they chose will be better, because we plan to move where they are. At least, their new state’s downward trajectory can’t be as rapid, as Ohio’s.
Why is it that legislators feel that they can mandate developmental readiness? Has there ever been a magic date when all children born on a specific date are able to perform the same skills with the same level of maturity/mastery? Given that a fairly wide range of ages enter third grade at the same time, and that we are all racing to the top, are we treating children like thoroughbred racing stock where all horses born within a certain range of time are considered the same age for racing purposes? Considering that racing stock are given the finest of care from before birth, we are handicapping children before they enter the starting gate. Upon second thought, I suppose our “racing stock” get pretty dandy preparation. After all, they have been chosen for their superior “breeding.”
A Human Experience. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of education and learning, and more specifically, I’ve been wondering what has gone wrong. How is it that the joy that I used to feel on a regular basis has been replaced by a creeping feeling of dread? Why am I angry so much of the time, and why have I been just going along as if I have no power or ability to change things? Big questions, deserving big answers. Though I have by no means come to a total understanding of what is going on, here is what I have thus far……
Years ago I taught for a while at a local college, and during my interview the head of the department made a statement that has had a profound effect on all of my subsequent teaching. He told me that, yes, the material is obviously important, but perhaps even more important was that I give my students a positive educational experience. A positive educational experience. I’m coming to realize that this is the source of my anger and frustration….it feels like the possibility of creating and sharing a positive educational experience with my students is slowly being sucked away, and is being replaced by a mechanized process over which I have less and less control. Of course, it’s not always easy to quantify a positive educational experience, or a positive learning environment. When I sit and listen to students’ problems with relationships, or family, or their feelings of inadequacy, or their fears about the future, their triumphs on the athletic field or in academic competitions, what they’ve learned in their vocational program, or when we just talk as two human beings sharing some time as we make our way through life on this planet, how do you quantify that? Where do you put that on your data wall? You’ll never convince me that I’m being ineffective because I’m “taking valuable time from test preparation” to just be human, because education involves more than simply mastering the material, and a positive learning environment is more than just being sure that we’ve covered everything we’re supposed to in just the right way. But of course, if you’ve never actually taught in a classroom you wouldn’t know that. If you’ve never felt those moments of joy and learning that have little to do with “the curriculum” you would have no idea what teaching is really about. If all you know are statistics and studies and theories of education it becomes easy to find “the solution.” But the solution to what? What is the problem you’re trying to fix? Can you not grasp that every student is not going to college, and some will never be able to or need to suss out the finer points of rhetoric contained in a piece of writing from the 18th century? I teach at a Career Center. Some of my students are going into college in the medical field or computer programming. But others are going to be the carpenters that build your house, the welders that weld the pipes that bring the natural gas that you burn every day, the cosmetologists that do your hair, and the electricians that allow you to read this right now. Why do they have to be college bound to “pass the test?” What would happen if the PARCC exams measured their skills? Who then would be found to be inadequate? Don’t get me wrong, I’m an English teacher, and I take academics very seriously, but every student is not the same. Different students need different things. What is so hard to understand about that? When one of my students comes to your house to fix your wiring, will you ask him or her to analyze Chaucer? I don’t think so. So why am I forced to make their lives miserable and destroy the possibility of creating a positive learning environment for them by teaching them things that turn them off and testing them on things that THEY WILL NEVER NEED? Who am I responsible to? The students who sit in front of me every day with all of their individual needs, or some billionaire theorists who have never met them and have never experienced any reality but their own privileged upbringing? Ultimately, teaching is a human experience, and that is what’s being lost. I know that teachers everywhere are having similar thoughts. A little investigating online will connect you with thousands of them. It’s time for us all to stand up for what we know to be right. If we do not, the profession that we love will be slowly strangled to death right before our very eyes. It’s happening right now. Make no mistake, this is not just another educational fad coming down the pike that we can wait out. They smell money. And they mean to have it.
“Who am I responsible to?” This question that all teachers should ask themselves no matter what age they teach. It goes without saying that students should top that list, but the why will vary with age. I felt the same anger, Sherm, when I was told I did not teach “with fidelity.” No, I taught to the needs of my students based on my professional judgement. My anger, though, beyond my concerns for my students, was driven by my feeling of powerlessness. My judgement was unimportant and irrelevant, but the question still remains.
This is how America is punished for not being involved enough. Politics would work for the people if 80% of us bothered to vote.
We know the Kochs and Waltons have become more powerful through changes to campaign financing and the “purchase” of politicians and legislation.
Yet if America voted, it wouldn’t mean much. In 2012, all the money Karl Rove’s Crossroads spent was wasted because of higher turnout. This won’t be the case in 2014 because there is no White House race.
So our job is to get people to show up, either for the best candidate, the lesser evil, or a protest vote. As teachers, we can encourage people to vote without getting political at all, just talk about civic duty.
So the democrats have controlled our failing schools for decades…all the while funneling tax paper dollars to their own party and interests. And only now that republicans are getting a cut of the wasted education dollars are you upset? Obama and the democrats are selling out the education system to the highest bidders through common core. Remember…if the states did not adopt common core, they would not receive federal funding. Why aren’t you calling out the community organizer for destroying what’s left of public schools?
Sherm koons…is absolutely correct, but similar comments being made all over the country by conservatives are being drowned out by shouts of racism, bigotry,…you know, all the buzzwords democrats use when the are losing an argument. Besides, Bill Gates and our liberal friends making bank at the colleges/universities need as many paying bodies as they can get!