Bill Phillis writes about the GOP’s pusillanimous capitulation to its masters and is prepared to sacrifice its public schools to satisfy DC-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute and ALEC, funded by CharlesKoch, the Waltons, and DeVos.
He writes:
School choice zealots seem to be driving the state education policy train
In spite of the harm being heaped on school districts due to corruption in the charter industry and the wild expansion of vouchers, the school choice zealots are in control. State officials seem powerless to establish rational Ohio education policy.
According to current media reports, the voucher “fix” being considered in the Ohio Senate, would lessen the harm to some school districts in the near term but would set the stage for a universal voucher system in the future. The local choice zealots and their big boy moneyed allies, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Fordham Foundation, are driving policy that undercuts the very foundation of the public common school. State officials seem to cower when confronted by the choice crowd.
Time to march on Columbus.
Jan Resseger wrote to me that the “fix” is a fraud and her own integrated, mixed-income district will be devastated.
She wrote:
I noticed you forwarded the Dispatch piece as though it will help anybody. The Ohio Senate “solution” will simply leave in place all the damage from current year. In CH-UH we have 478 percent growth in vouchers this year. These kids will carry those vouchers out of our district’s budget each year until they graduate from high school.
We’ll hope that this afternoon the House mitigates this in some way. Leaves vouchers in place for now—but moratorium on their growth for a while. Leaves flawed state report cards in place without a deadline to change them. Expands income cap on the other kind of state funded vouchers.
The mess is embedded right in this so-called “solution.”
–Jan
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fordham is the worm at the core of Ohio.
Will the folks at Fordham be happy with all their private schools, funded with vouchers, that teach people to hate foreigners and LGBTQX persons, that Cain and Abel rode around on dinosaurs, that Jesus sent Trump the serial predator and Russian asset to Make America Grate Again? This is the world that they are helping to create. But, hey, it pays very well to be an officer at a Deformy think tank where thinking tanks.
And Dr. Ravtch, respectfully, if you are going to post about Fordham, use the full name:
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute for the Securing of Big Paychecks for the Officers of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Petrilli and Finn have edited a book of essays on the need for a content-rich curriculum. They seem to be clueless that the puerile, backward skills bullet list that was misnamed the Common [sic] Core [sic] has become the de facto curriculum in the U.S. In other words, by promoting the Gates/Coleman bullet list, they have achieved precisely the opposite effect–they have advanced the blithering idiocy of teaching “skills” instead of descriptive (what) and procedural (how) knowledge.
Their championing of standardized tests based on the Gates/Coleman skills bullet list and of high stakes attached to those tests (teacher evaluations, school closings, third-grade retention, etc) has led, predictably, to an outcome precisely the opposite of what they claim they intend–to devolved curricula and pedagogy that are not only typically content neutral (any crap will do) but often content free. “Oh, we English teachers don’t teach content,” you will hear people say. “We teach the Common Core skills.”
And that’s because the CC$$ is a skills list, and they (the Deformers) have made this all that matters.
It’s astonishing, really, that they don’t grok this. But if they bothered to leave their Think Tanky perches and actually look at textbooks and online materials based on the Common Core, they will see exactly what I mean. Gone is any semblance of coherent, extended instruction in knowledge domains. In its place, we get, instead, instruction on this Common Core skill, then instruction on that Common Core skill, ad nauseam.
As a textbook author, pre-Common [sic] Core [sic], I would get instructions like this: Write a unit to teach the short story form. Write a unit to introduce students to Transcendentalist literature and thought. Write a unit to introduce and distinguish between fantasy and science fiction. Post-Common [sic] Core [sic], the instructions from all the publishers were, “Write instruction and exercises to teach Common Core Skill x. Write instruction and exercises to teach Common Core Skill y.”
Random freaking skills instruction. Precisely the opposite of what Petrilli and Finn say they want. Certainly the opposite of what E. D. Hirsch, Jr. called for. And this has been the way it is and how the specs for assignments look from almost every educational publisher since the Common [sic] Core [sic] was foisted on the country with no vetting whatsoever by qualified researchers and scholars and no real debate.
The facts that a) the Common [sic] Core [sic} in ELA is an almost content-free skills list and b) this list was made all-important are the worms at the core of the Core. If people in these Deformy Think Tanks did some freaking thinking, they would see this.
yes: when ‘content’ implies that an independent, creative thinking will be needed and ‘skills’ implies that only a non-creative command following will be allowed
Agreed. Thinking uses knowledge. You can’t think clearly or carefully without it.
The worst part of the voucher expansion is how cynical it is. They tested public school students, designated half of them as (newly) “failing” and it was all to expand vouchers.
They completely used our kids. Public school students get absolutely nothing out of the deal- except a brand new state designation that they’re all failing.
The public school students in the state were used solely as a mechanism to expand vouchers. They weren’t considered at all.
It is breathtakingly cynical. There’s been a lot of opposition to it and there should be. Every public school student in the state came second to ed reform’s ideological agenda.
They’re STILL not offering public school students anything. In fact, the entire legislative agenda now revolves around vouchers. They get nothing else accomplished.
I know very few ed reformers attended public schools or send their children to one, but this is ridiculous. Please stop using our public school students as a tool to jam thru your private school subsidies. It’s not fair to treat them so shabbily.
Please note, too, how cavalier they are about our schools and students. They put in this massive expansion with NO consideration how it affects public schools or public school students. They’re ONLY doing this 11th hour sloppy quick fix because there was huge public opposition.
They just didn’t care.Public school students were not part of anyone’s plan. They were concerned ONLY with meeting the demands of the voucher/charter lobby. The people who actually live in this state and pay them? No one was working on our behalf.
Public school students- under the old ed reform bus. Again.
“The goal of this amendment is to make sure we fix the report-card system,” said Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chargin Falls.
That’s how schools get on Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship list. Schools get graded on a variety of things, such as the reading level of third graders and graduation rates. It makes sense in theory, but Republicans and Democrats both say the report-card system was executed poorly.
“Most of our schools are not underperforming, but because of our metric system it appears that way,” Dolan said.
Can someone call the Fordham offices in DC and ask why they put such a garbage ranking system into my state?
The public school kids were unfairly ranked to expand vouchers, correct? That’s how half our kids ended up with the “failing” label slapped onto them.
Is there some reason the 90% of parents in this state who send our kids to public school should accept this cynical political tactic, where our kids were tested and ranked solely to expand vouchers?
Dolan’s amendment would increase the income guideline from 300% of the federal poverty level. That’s about $64,000 a year for a family of three and $72,000 for a family of four.
Families earning up to $100,000 would get a percentage of their original voucher.
So much for the ed reform argument that this is about “low income kids”
Another lie they told the public. I don’t know about DC, but 100k a year isn’t “low income” in Ohio. Maybe that’s low income in Betsy DeVos’ circles.
Meanwhile, back in the unfashionable public schools that have been ignored for the last decade, ed reform delivers nothing to our students. Our kids got nothing last year out of Columbus and it looks like they’ll get nothing this year.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, 51% of the schools are scheduled to be labeled “EdChoice schools. This decision is made by the A-F Report Card metrics from three non-consecutive years. The Report Cards are a sham. One of the report card metrics that condemns these schools is the infamous EVASS value added formula, proprietary from SAS, Inc., and thus beyond public view. Otherwise known as a value-added metric or VAM, this method of evaluation school performance is known to be invalid.
Cincinnati’s EdChoice options are a scam. Cincinnati’s last enrollment count was 34,615 students. Of these students, 17,774 attend EdChoice schools. Of the approved private schools theoretically available for these students, only eight of the approved private “high schools” are for grades 9-12. All are Catholic schools and three are limited to girls, three to boys. Tuition in these schools ranges from $9150 to $14,425. A ninth high school requires students to work for part of their tuition (among other special requirements).
Among the choices of state approved private “elementary” schools, CPS voucher-eligible students will also find choices constrained by the actual grade-levels in these schools, and their focus. Most are Catholic (32), “Christian (6), a specific Christian denomination (3), or Jewish (3).
Non-denominational options are few: Childcare, Pre-K and Kindergarten (3), Waldorf (2). Montessori (1). Eight of these choices are also for schools with grades K-12. That span of grades may influence which voucher students are accepted.
The local press treatment of the options for CPS students who are eligible for vouchers has focused on the potential reductions in funds at the district level.
The press has not been diligent in reporting information such as this:
Voucher-eligible students are chosen by private schools first, then the voucher goes to the private school. The funds for EdChoice vouchers come from the CPS budget. Cutbacks in programs are likely and some schools may close. Students who move to private schools will not have IDEA, privacy, and other protections in public schools.
Much of the press about Edchoice comes from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute offices in Columbus Ohio, and from articles and twitter feeds from Aaron Churchill.
Since 2012, Aaron Churchill has served as the Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He publishes in Ohio newspapers and contributes to the Ohio Gadfly Daily, and the Fordham’s Ohio blog. He also writes reports that support the Fordham’s charter-sponsorship efforts in Ohio. Arron has a biography free of any teaching experience. He is an accomplished data-monger and shill for Ohio’s branch of the Fordham. This, for example, is a recent publication praising the EdChoice program and attacking the teachers union. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2019/12/26/opinion-teachers-union-misleads-link-between-poverty-and-school-ratings/2709584001/
I also suspect that Aaron heard about Diane’s forthcoming book back in December. Otherwise I have no explanation for his “commentary” which places the Fordham’s work as if it is a proud and worthy Goliath that “sneers” at critics of EdChoice. Aaron seems to think that Goliath-cum-Fordham is honorable, a defender of all good in education and fair things for parents and students. His attitude and claims can also be tracked on twitter, or in more concentrated form here:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/goliath-sneers-edchoice-kerfuffle
I speculate there’s a placard on Fordham’s wall, ” It is a principle of human nature to hate those who you have injured.”- Tacitus
GOP politicians are patient and do nothing while the local democracies and the Main Streets of their constituents’ communities are sacrificed to the oligarchy.
As George Granville said, “Patience is the virtue of an ass, that trots beneath its burden, and is quiet”. Ohio politicians know they are owned and behave as the asses they are.
More Graft Than Grovel — just leave the money on the dresser.
The vision of Slaying Goliath on the coffee table in the anteroom of the oligarchy’s Fordham- thanks Diane