Jan Resseger writes that HB 70, the law allowing the state to take over school districts because they have low test scores, will be a permanent stain on John Kasich’s legacy. Who knew that Republicans believe that the best way to “fix” schools is to eliminate elected school boards? Did anyone tell the Ohio legislators about the failure of state takeovers in Michigan and Tennessee? So-called “Reformers” despise democracy.
The bill was rushed through the Republican-dominated legislature, which prefers to abrogate local control rather than invest resources in districts enrolling large numbers of poor children.
First the state took over Youngstown, now it is taking over East Cleveland and Lorain.
The newly appointed leaders are hiring uncertified administrators and bringing in TFA. Just what vulnerable children (don’t) need: totally unqualified educators.
The implementation of state takeover has been insensitive and insulting. Ohio’s Plunderbund reported in March, 2018 that Krish Mohip, the state overseer CEO in Youngstown, feels he cannot safely move his family to the community where he is in charge of the public schools. He has also been openly interviewing for other jobs including school districts as far away as Boulder, Colorado and Fargo, North Dakota. And a succession of members of Youngstown’s Academic Distress Commission have quit.
Plunderbund adds that Lorain’s CEO, David Hardy tried to donate the amount of what would be the property taxes on a Lorain house to the school district, when he announced that he does not intend to bring his family to live in Lorain. The Elyria Chronicle Telegram reported that Lorain’s CEO has been interviewing and hiring administrators without the required Ohio administrator certification. Hardy has also been courting Teach for America. In mid-November, the president of Lorain’s elected board of education, Tony Dimacchia formally invited the Ohio Department of Education to investigate problems under the state’s takeover Academic Distress Commission and its appointed CEO. He charged: “The CEO has created a culture of violence, legal violations, intimidation, and most importantly they have done nothing to improve our schools.” The Lorain Morning Journal’s Richard Payerchin describes Dimacchia’s concerns: “Dimacchia claimed student and teacher morale is at an all-time low, while violence (at the high school) is at an all-time high…”
At last week’s Statehouse rally, Youngstown Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan described all the ways HB 70 abrogates democracy: “The legislation took away the voice of the locally elected school board members and gave an autocratic, unaccountable, appointed CEO total control over every facet of the system. The CEO can hire who he wants. Fire who he wants. Pay people whatever he wants. Hire consultants and pay them as much as he wants. Buy whatever he wants and pay as much as he wants for it. Tear up collective bargaining agreements. Ignore teachers. Ignore students. Ignore parents. And he also has the power to begin closing schools if performance does not improve within five years. Nearly four years in, here’s what the Youngstown Plan has produced: Ethical lapses. No-bid contracts. Huge salaries for the team of administrators the CEO hired. Concern and anxiety among students, parents, and teachers. And the resignation of most of the members of the Distress Commission who were charged with overseeing the CEO. Here’s what it hasn’t produced: better education for our kids.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not only a stain on Kasichs legacy but also on Obama’s.
Obama’s henchmen Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel and John King loved the concept of taking over and closing schools with low test scores. Obama himself even applauded the mass firing of teachers at one such Rhode Island school.
People need to keep it ever at the fore of their mind that these policies are bipartisan.
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If Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren runs for Prez, someone needs to nail them down on what they think about this policy because so far, mum’s the word.
One can not claim to be either Democratic or democratic and support such a policy.
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Obama recently met with Beto O’Rourke, and Biden has stated that he is the most qualified to run. There is a buzz that the Democrats will run a Biden, Beto ticket. It’s just rumor at this point.
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Where have we heard that ** most qualified** claim before?
I can’t seem to put my finger on it.
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Most qualified can mean best prepared and able to perform a job
But it can also be used in the sense of a qualified opinion, which must be taken with caution because the information provided is limited in scope and is therefor possibly of an unreliable nature.
The most qualified individual in the latter case would be the one who has most often been represented in a light that does not necessarily reflect the whole truth.
So I guess I would agree that Biden is the most qualified.
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Members of one local community affected by ** Democrat** Emanuels tyrannical closings had to resort to a long hunger strike to get Emanuel to even talk to them.
Is that what it means to be a Democrat these days?
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AGREE!
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we must ALWAYS think back on how really terrible the Obama years were for schools: Bush’s policies were simply adopted and then ramped up with so much teacher/neighborhood blame, that favorite bone of RttT
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The fascinating thing about republican willingness to take away local control is that the chief complaint of almost all the republican voters I know is the government taking away local control. This continues a long list of the paradoxical, including the longstanding republican compaints about liberal judges legislating from the bench, federal budgets with deficits, …. You get the idea.
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I find it even more fascinating when someone who calls himself a Democrat supports taking away local democratic control through unequivocally undemocratic means.
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The democrats were forced to do what the Lincoln Republicans would not do during reconstruction: they were obliged to use federal intervention to right the wrong of slavery a century later. Of all the issues causing republicans to decry usurpation of local control, integration and prayer in the schools strike me as two of the most motivating to older voters in the south. One of my first political memories was a huge billboard in East Tennessee calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren.
Warren was an example of the consensus period in American History, when some of the issues were so obvious that both parties supported the same social idea. Appointed by a Republican president, Warren was skewered as a liberal, a part of our recent March to the right.
Perhaps Obama’s tendency to depend on federal solutions to local problems came from an understanding of the civil rights movement, making him succeptible to the charge that “education reform was the civil rights issue of our time”. Perhaps other democrats had little understanding of the issues due to the nature of their educational experiences. Whatever the reason, democratic unwillingness to accept local control of schools is as ironic as republican attitudes.
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The Democrats were not forced to behave undemocratically.
They CHOSE to behave that way.
Regardless of what the motives might have been, the decidely undemocratic behavior is undeniable.
Also, i can only guess at how the African American communities who were simply TOLD by people like Rahm Emanuel that their neighborhood schools would be closed might feel about the idea that it was done in the name of civil rights.
Somehow, I think some of them might not see it quite that way.
But obviously Emanuel and Obama did not give a damn what they thought or felt. A couple of real Democrats those two.
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Incidentally, can you imagine the outcry from Democrats if Trump or one of his current or former cabinet members did what Emanuel did in Chicago (closed 50 schools in one day in predominently African American communities) all (supposedly) in the name of civil rights?
I can. It would be deafening.
But for some reason when Emanuel did it there was not a peep from the vast majority of Democrats
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SDP: all good points, made succinctly. You are a good poet too.
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Eisenhower stated that his appointment of Earl Warren was the biggest mistake of his presidency. See
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/commander-v-chief/554045/
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There are too many hypocrites on both sides of the aisle. Most politicians speak “with forked tongues.”
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I don’t think there even IS an aisle in this case.
Democrats and Republicans seem to be inseparably commingled whdn it comes to takeover, control and closing of so called failing schools.
I see lots of evidence of that and little to no evidence that there is ANYone sitting across some sort of aisle.
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Kasich is still being portrayed as a moderate, a sane Republican, an antidote to Trump. Not buying it, he’s still very right wing, especially when it comes to education, he’s an extreme privatizer.
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Kasich is NOT a moderate although he likes to paint himself as a moderate. Kasich thinks he can play two sides of the aisle. I hope the people of Ohio wake up.
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With the death of the first President Bush, we can now say that the phrase moderate republican is an oxymoron.
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The corruption in Ohio is hardwired into state legislation with the Fordham, Ohio Philanthropy, KnowledgeWorks, Battelle for Kids and like groups having an outsized influence on schemes to dismantle public education. Constant vigilence and detailed reporting on fraud is needed, also the protests, ideally followed by actions to kick out the legisistors who are in kahoots with these crooks.
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This right here.
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Kasich has a political problem, so what does he do?
He blames public schools:
“Here’s what I’m worried about,” he said. “Are the workers resilient?”
Kasich is concerned that the workers losing their jobs aren’t equipped for the new jobs of the future — and he blames the schools for not preparing them properly.
“How do we prepare (for the future)?” he asked. “Our school systems aren’t doing it.”
Ed reform encourages and rewards this behavior. All any of these politicians have to do is dump problems on public schools and they get a pass for doing absolutely nothing to address them.
It’s almost a reflex with politicians now- any hint of criticism on ANY issue and they grab a stick and start beating public schools. And ed reformers encouraged this nonsense every step of the way. They allow the entire political class to escape accountability for everything, because everyone can blame everything on public schools.
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Blaming one group for all the problems of a society is a classical technique used by tyrants.
It has been used to great effect by both Republicans and Democrats, who blame teachers because it makes them look tough on education and so far, has cost them little in the way of lost votes t the polls.
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Kaisich has NO CLUE.
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Sorry. Kasich.
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You misspelled it twice. It should be Kasick.
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They may not go through with it. Ohio state government has so little interest in public education I doubt they can rouse themselves to privatize Youngstown or anywhere else.
The state had abandoned public education. The upside to that for public schools is we may be spared the cheap, quick-fix gimmicks and constant chaos promoted by national ed reform lobbyists.
They mostly just lobby for vouchers in Columbus. Not a lot of interest in the 90% of families who attend the unfashionable public sector schools.
Maybe we should count our blessings. Neglect from ed reformers is better than what they do when they show up to work- actual harm. I’ll take being ignored.
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Come on all this character kasich is a real piece of work. He tried to run for president and was a laughing stock and certainly was a puppet to trump during the election run off.
A guy like Kasich to me is a guy who is well over his head and seems like he is always trying punch his way out of a paper bag. I mean he appears to be a guy who is better suited to the basement fixing the plumbing rather than governor.
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State takeover, another “accountability” measure cooked up by bipartisan ed deformers, is played hardball-style in gerrypublicaned Ohio. Guess they’ll have to learn the hard way, like Newark. After 20 yrs of increasing local simmer, a series of failed legal challenges, & zero ed improvement, Cami Anderson’s school closures/ charterizations were the final straw. A local educator/ politician won mayoralty on an education platform, & w/n 2 yrs, local control was restored under Christie’s nose. I wish many more Ras Barakas on the poor cities of Ohio.
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Cami now advising Beutner in Los Angeles
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