Reader Laura H. Chapman looked at Governor Kasich’s education agenda in Ohio and recognized its source. What is startling is to see the overlap between ALEC and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top:
“This is important work, and ALEC needs to be exposed as the source of Governor Kasich’s policies, along with the legislature’s eagerness to approve the Department of Education’s uncritical use of the “management models” and PR from the Reform Support Network created by USDE to promote the RttT agenda nationally.
“The A-F grading system, for example, was introduced in Ohio schools last year (2013). It is the latest highly reductive strategy for ranking schools and a version of the 2011 model legislation provided by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
“Teachers and schools are assigned letter grades, thereby obscuring a host of issues with the underlying VAMs and cut scores that feed into the ranking. ALEC offered this legislation, in part, because it is a simplistic system and appeals to the press. The league tables produced under this system are no more complex than the traditional A-to-F grading system, or so it seems.
“However, in Ohio, the system is anything but simple. Up to nine “performance indicators” are graded in the A-F system, then these grades are recast as a single rating. For example, a school cannot receive an “A” if any subgroup of students is awarded a “C.” Some grades are based on “attaining a year’s worth of growth” in test scores. This is a fictional concept from economists who think that gains in scores on standardized tests—pre-test to post-test and year-to-year—are “objective” and should count more than other factors in ranking schools.
“In addition to the continued use of VAM scores to rank teachers and schools (with SAS’s proprietary formula and contracts worth millions), about 70% of Ohio’s teachers are rated on their production on gains in scores on state or district approved pre-and post-tests tests. These are described in the dreadful “student learning objectives”
“(SLO) exercises that teachers have to produce for one or more their courses or classes. The teachers are graded on their write-ups of SLOs and have to meet about 25 criteria or go back to a revision. You would think teachers are working to specifications for assembling a 747 airplane. I have elsewhere called this “accountability gone wild.” And in Ohio, 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is determined by this non-sense–whether it the VAM or the SLO. For most teachers, an undisclosed formula in a spreadsheet calculates the minimum acceptable gain scores for SLOs and churns out a color-coded rating for the teacher–Green-to-yellow-to-red.
“The league-table ratings of Ohio’s schools are gaining the same press as major sports, but without the full-time staff looking into the minutia of school reform or the day-to-day work of teachers and administrators. It comes as no surprise that the A-F grades assigned to schools mirror the SES profiles for communities (Amos & Brown, 2013).
“Our Governor, John Kasich, is a pawn of ALEC. He has also decided to offer a “third grade reading guarantee” as suggested by ALEC’s model legislation. Next up is likely to be ALEC’s Student Achievement Backpack Bill. This makes the Duncan/Gates agenda for data mongering “friendly” to parents. The “Backpack” provides access by a student’s parent or guardian or an authorized local education agency (LEA) official to “the learning profile of a student from kindergarten through grade 12 in an electronic format known as a Student Achievement Backpack.” The information in this profile is housed in the “cloud.” It can be accessed by qualified users from a “Student Record Store” posted on the state education agency website. It also includes data about all of the teachers-of-record for a given student, with only a few limits on the data that can be entered. See http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/student-achievement-backpack-act/http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/student-achievement-backpack-act/
“You can find out about ALEC’s legislation in your state at http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
“Other Sources here: American Legislative Exchange Council. (2011, January). A-Plus literacy act, Model legislation: Chapter 1. School and district report cards and grades. Retrieved from http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/the-a-plus-literacy-act/
Amos, D.S., & Brown, J. (2013, August 22). State unveils new report cards. Cincinnati Enquirer. Retrieved from http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130822/NEWS0102/308220025/State-unveils-revamped-report-cards”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ALEC. The Commin Core of legislation.
What ALEC has done is make it possible to elect clueless knuckleheads who then appear to write legislation.
Nationalized lobbying at the state level.
I agree totally with Laura Chapman and am running for the District 7 State Board of Education seat to overturn the ALEC inspired test score driven OTES. Could Laura Chapman contact me at michaelctu@aol.com. Michael Charney
It’s going to get worse in Ohio before it gets better. One aggravating feature of Ohio’s new SLO model is that, as a teacher, for each kid you either get a score of 0 or 1. Simple as that. They meet the contrived target — 1 point. Miss it — 0 points. If 90% or more of your students meet the target, you’re in the highest category. 80% next highest. Then 70%. Then 60%. Below 60% means the teacher is ineffective.
And this scoring system makes up (at least) 50% of a teacher’s total evaluation.
Who knew it was so easy to evaluate a teacher?
Thanks.
I’d like to know exactly how easily I may dismiss these scores.
I wasn’t planning on relying on them anyway, but they’re sold as complex and beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, so we need simple explanations 🙂
I have not heard of this “yes” or “no” 1 to 0 method of scoring SLOs for teachers. Could you tell me if this is a district policy or it this information is on the Ohio Department of Education website?
Perhaps I missed that, or prehaps that is the method of calculation, that has been programmed into the spreadsheet where you enter your pre-test to post-test gains in test scores.
I do know this, A former student of mine meets 400 fourth graders every two weeks for classes that are 45 minutes long. The subject is art. Any percentage calculation for her will differ from the special education teacher who has 15 students daily for a year, all day with the exception of several rolling “interventions” and pull-out programs.
Percentages are a great way to mislead everyone about the work of teachers. Unfortunately, the Obama admiistration announced yesterday that this VAM/SLO scam will not be imposed on teacher education programs. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/barack-obama-arne-duncan-teacher-training-education-106013.html#ixzz2zwfJdsRs
Big mistake. Correcti the typo in the last line WILL NOW be imposed on teacher education programs.
VAM is so silly. I am hearing from my daughters our choir is considering Smartmusic to score SLOs for music teachers. The software mechanically matches the pitch of the students sung notes using frequency algorithms and calculations. Our school has used this software in the past to grade students. Can you imagine Bach, Debussey, or Dizzy Gillespie’s comments on this approach? Wonder how much value-add The Messiah or Pictures at an Exhibition would score in the pursuit of accountability, grit, and rigor?
Laura, the sheets we were given came straight from the Ohio Department of Education. It is/was as cut and dried as I’m telling you (at least at the high school level). Every kid is a 1 or a 0. Simple as that. As a teacher, I find the measurement system offensive (kids are a 0 or a 1…really?!).
And next year the (all kids are A+ students) PARCC tests are coming.
Chiara, it’s almost too easy…but I’m not sure it makes a difference.
I cannot discern a single difference between the Obama Administration and the Kasich Administration approach to public schools.
I’m sort of mildly curious how the Democratic political people at the state level thread this needle, and slam Kasich on public schools when the Obama Administration are apparently joined at the hip with Kasich on public schools. How do you slam “ALEC” re: John Kasich when Duncan follows the ALEC playbook too?
Boy, they have their work cut out for them. Kasich can honestly point to Arne Duncan on each and every policy.
It reminds me of the 1990s, when most Democrats were joining with Republicans to push lousy trade deals and deregulating the financial sector. It’s deja vu all over again 🙂
I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
Professional Loss and Grief in Teachers (a survey)
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
Jackie, you have no doubt found the research on this, but as a reminder, I think it is important to trace some of the ‘foundations’ of NCLB as it got started in Texas during the Bush governor’s reign. The state is still trying to cope with some of the effects from that time. That is, if they have even started to cope.
Two days ago, I contacted the representative for my Ohio district about ALEC. His reply stunned me.
He wrote, “…Since ALEC is a federal agency, your opinion would be better off in the hands of your Congressman, Steve Chabot…”
Are there concerted efforts to enlighten the politicians in Columbus? Or, is my Republican representative an anomaly?
That’s hilarious. It’s just knee-jerk, I guess. “Federal! Bad!”
FEDERAL AGENCY!!!!!!! I think I may throw up. How on earth did this guy get elected with so little knowledge?
Good piece on the close relationship between Wal Mart, TFA and charter schools.
I have a lot of Wal Mart workers as clients and I could make a suggestion to Wal Mart on how to “improve public schools”.
Wal Mart workers complain that they cannot raise their children properly because Wal Mart relies on “Just In Time” scheduling for workers. JIT came from manufacturing, and it was intended to apply to products, not people. Parents can’t plan their lives when they work at Wal Mart, because they don’t have any control over their schedules. This means their children are also subject to the chaos and disorder Wal Mart-type management induces in low income households. Try finding good reliable daycare with a JIT schedule, or try supervising homework with a JIT schedule. It’s nearly impossible.
Wal Mart could not spend any money at all and improve public schools. They could give their workers a schedule that doesn’t change every month. They can’t parent properly because they can’t plan. They need reliable, predictable schedules and income from month to month.
Less chaotic low income households may actually do some good, and it wouldn’t require privatizing public schools or buying politicians. Treat parent-workers like human beings instead of automobile components and see if that trickles down to better performance of students in public schools.
This JIT scheduling is really, really evil. Thank you, Chiara, for raising the issue.
“Attention Walmart students. We have a special on critical thinking skills in aisle 2 for the next hour only. As always, thank you for learning at Walmart.”
We (still) have a lot of manufacturing here and parents who work in manufacturing have a huge advantage over parents who work in low wage service jobs (like Wal Mart).
They have a predictable schedule and predictable income in manufacturing so their households aren’t so chaotic and it’s easier to raise children and set schedules and boundaries. It’s no more complicated than that. I see both kinds of parents in my practice, and parents who work in manufacturing have less chaotic households, and I’d bet their kids do better in school.
Maybe Bill Gates could fund a study. I doubt he will, because that would suggest that business interests have a role and are responsible for how children do, OUTSIDE of bashing public schools and teachers. It’s much, much easier and less politically perilous for lawmakers to bash public schools and teachers, isn’t it?
One things that’s nice about Ohio and the attack on public schools is the opposition is bipartisan. I helped with a public school bond campaign (this is a majority R area) and there was broad agreement that this is “both Republicans and Democrats”
Which is true.
Ed reformers really ARE bringing us together! We all loathe our politicians, equally, on public schools. We haven’t been this close in years.
Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education is hosting its second community forum at the Sylvania (Toledo) Branch Library, April 29th from 6:45-8:15. More information is on their Facebook page. They especially need more parents and community members to spread the word.
Yes. ALEC runs Ohio. We are a 50-50 state, but completely controlled by one party, and the far right wing at that. Democrats and moderate Republicans have been “cleansed” from government and have no voice. We expect “right to work” to be back-channeled in during the lame duck session and much more draconian, anti-teacher measures in the next session. Times are very dark for teachers, schools, and students. The glimmer of hope is in the down ticket races, but right now Kasich is out raising Fitzgerald 4 to 1. The GOP is gleefully anticipating an orgy of teacher bashing and they can hardly contain themselves. The House education commitee members have suggested turning over ALL schools to corporations to avoid creeping socialism as well as firing all teachers ranked “ineffective” on the VAM scores. There are now going to be high stakes, standardized, more “rigorous” tests for kindergarteners to improve the Third Grade Reading Guarantee results – itself an arbitrary cut score. No kidding.
I had many students record SLO post-test scores lower than pre-test. That means they lost knowledge I never taught them. Complete nonsense. That’s like negative lengths or backwards time. These scores introduce so much error and bias, my stack ranking drops from a skilled to ineffective. In many cases, the model is so sensitive, one question on a test changes the results completely. The insanity of VAM knows no bounds. As I talk to other people outside education, they are completely unaware of what is going on in our state.
I was helping my son with his stats 101. I chuckled at a quote from the textbook. “Fancy formulas cannot correct for flawed data”. Perhaps the “experts” praising VAM need to retake basic statistics.
If Democratic lawmakers in Ohio were truly advocates for public schools they could do a lot more.
They could push back against some of the federal and state public school bashing, for example, and point out that lots of public schools are doing really good and difficult work.
We never even hear about Ohio public schools, unless it’s politically-motivated bashing at the state and federal level.
We hear from the Fordham Institute and the Obama Administration and Kasich. Three VERY LOUD anti-public school voices, and nothing from the public school side.
That’s what advocates do. They speak on behalf of the people who elected them, and they DON’T just do that immediately prior to elections.
Democrats don’t have a majority in Ohio, but surely they can do more than stand around like potted plants and allow Obama Admin and Kasich Admin to dominate the debate.
Where are they?
Excellent points. I think Dems have been so demoralized and decimated by the 2010 elections, they have yet to get back on their feet. They are leaderless and wandering the wilderness. I mean Cordray was voted out? The far right GOP is also consolidating power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and pay to play. I would include moderate Republicans in your question. They, too, were pushed out of the central committee, school board, agencies. But one thing extremists are known for is overreach. That will be their undoing. Always is.
It will take some time for Ohio to come to its senses. Much of rural Ohio votes for a GOP that does not exist but in myth and spin. Jobs are trickling in as the national economy improves, but a standard of living well below pre-2008 may be the new normal.
People, except for a fortunate few, are not happy, but they don’t know what to do. They have been fed a steady stream of negativism towards government and schools to the point they vote against their own interests. Ohioans don’t know who to trust. When I talk to conservatives, I hear a lot of anti-teacher spin, but rarely rooted in reality. Perhaps a moderate populist movement starting in down ticket races and local governments.
The observation of “the overlap between ALEC and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top got me thinking…. and it IS interesting to note that while President Obama has been unsuccessful in getting any education bills reauthorized he hasn’t had any pushback from Republicans on Race to the Top. My conclusion: Race to the Top has helped advance the privatization agenda forward, an agenda both Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats support. There does seem to be bi-partisan support for profiteering!
ALEC insists that what it does cannot be described (at least not legally) as “lobbying.” This enables them to slip through loopholes in anti-corruption laws. ALEC is certainly out to influence legislation, but “lobbying” is far too weak a word. I’d say ALEC is more of an outsourcing of the most basic function of government. Our elected politicians aren’t lawmakers, they’re lawfetchers.
This year in Ohio, teachers and administrators across the state are pulling our hair out dealing with the latest abomination from the lawfetchers in Columbus: it’s 57,000 words of new government regulations known as House Bill 555. Its two sponsors are ALEC members. Six of its seven co-sponsors are ALEC members. It’s not an Ohio law. It’s an ALEC law.
Chris Cotton, English teacher at Shaker Heights High School in Ohio
mrcottonsroom.wordpress.com
“Lawfetchers not lawmakers”, would be an excellent headline for a main stream media expose…..
if we lived in a democracy.
I could have rewritten the entire post and just substituted North Carolina and governor McCrory to a make the same points. But I would have had to add even more ALEC provisions. Nice job- and good luck Ohio. Many of us are fighting the same reforms.
Hi everyone,
I’d like to share a talk I recently gave to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL about the excessive testing going on in our public schools and who is profiting by it.