Archives for category: Ohio
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Why Does Ohio Give More Money to Lowest-Performing Charters?

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2013 //
3

Innovation Ohio, which keeps a close watch on the education budget and policy issues, reports that the state increased the budgets for charter schools operated by men who are generous donors to Republican elected officials.

The point:

“Republican mega-donors David Brennan (White Hat Management) and William Lager (ECOT) saw major increases in their funding. Meanwhile, Charter Schools that actually do a far better job educating children received far less additional revenue.

“To give you an idea of just how much better Brennan and Lager’s schools do, take a look at this statistic: Brennan and Lager run 33 of the state’s 369 Charter Schools, or 9 percent. Yet according to the Ohio Senate’s Charter Schoolsimulations, Brennan and Lager’s schools will receive $8.6 million additional over last school year. That represents 38 percent of all the increases to the rest of the 336 Charter Schools. So 38 percent of the increase to Charters went to 9 percent of the schools.”

This is called rewarding political friends, not rewarding excellence.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Ohio

Ohio Charters Spend More on Administration than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2013 //
25

One of the claims of charter advocates is that could supply better education for less money.

These claims have not panned out. When charters enroll the same kids, they usually get the same results. Charters range in quality across a wide span, and some achieve “success” by high rates of attrition or excluding difficult kids.

Now we know that charters don’t save money either. Nor do they direct more resources to the classroom.

The latest report from Innovation Ohio shows that charters in that state have higher administrative costs by far than public schools. The weaker the charter, the more it lends on administration.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Jan Resseger on Absurdity of Ohio VAM

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2013 //
5

This just in from an advocate for children who live in poverty:

This week the Cleveland Plain Dealer has a new series, “Grading the Teachers.” It is basically an endorsement of the new Ohio Value Added Measures (VAM) program by which teachers will be rated. Scores are being made available on-line. Ohio’s VAM formula, according to the news account, does not consider the socioeconomic information about the children.

Here are the articles thus far in the series:

· Grading the Teachers, Part I ‘Value-added’ ties teacher ratings to pupils’ test scores.
· Grading the Teachers, Part 2” Value-added scores show no link between performance and salary.

I just sent the following to the paper for use as either a letter or op-ed. I suspect it won’t be published, which is why I’m sending it around now. Usually I would wait to see if it gets published, but this time I’m not going to, because this is so important.

Fifty years ago Johns Hopkins sociologist James S. Coleman documented the most powerful factors affecting student achievement: the socio-economic background of children’s families and the concentration of poverty in particular communities.

Two years ago Duke economist Helen Ladd wrote: “Study after study has demonstrated that children from disadvantaged households perform less well in school on average than those from more advantaged households. This empirical relationship shows up in studies using observations at the levels of the individual student, the school, the district, the state, the country.”

A year and a half ago Stanford educational sociologist Sean Reardon documented that while in 1970, only 15 percent of families lived in neighborhoods classified as affluent or poor, by 2007, 31 percent of families lived in such neighborhoods. Reardon documents a simultaneous jump in an income-inequality achievement gap between very wealthy and very poor children, a gap that is 30-40 percent wider among children born in 2001 than those born in 1975.

Surely we can agree that poverty should not be an excuse. But blaming school teachers for gaps in scores on standardized tests, as the Plain Dealer does in “Grading the Teachers,” is not only cruel to the teachers singled out when scores are published—for example, Euclid’s Maria Plecnik, a previously highly rated teacher who will leave the profession this year— but foolish as public policy. Who will want to teach in our poorest communities with the system of Value-Added Measures that the Plain Dealer acknowledges, “do not account for the socioeconomic backgrounds of students as they do in some other states.”

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville critiques the logic of those who would blame school teachers: “Some want to make the absurd argument that the reason low-income youngsters do poorly is that, mysteriously, all the incompetency in our education systems has coincidentally aggregated around low income students. In this view, all we need to do is scrub the system of incompetency and all will be well.”

Blaming teachers certainly gets the rest of us off the hook. If we can just fire teachers, we won’t have to fund schools equitably or adequately. We won’t have to address the impact of economic and racial segregation or the shocking 22 percent child poverty rate in America, the highest in the industrialized world.

Ms. Jan Resseger
Minister for Public Education and Witness
Justice and Witness Ministries
700 Prospect, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
216-736-3711
http://www.ucc.org/justice/public-education
“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone, March 31, 2000

Categories Ohio, Teacher Evaluations

Ohio Teachers Subjected to Junk Science Ratings

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2013 //
30

Now it is teachers in Ohio that have been rated by a secret value-added formula.

Teachers in affluent schools were twice as likely to score well as those in low-income schools.

Here is the key language:

“The details of how the scores are calculated aren’t public. The Ohio Department of Education will pay a North Carolina-based company, SAS Institute Inc., $2.3 million this year to do value-added calculations for teachers and schools. The company has released some information on its value-added model but declined to release key details about how Ohio teachers’ value-added scores are calculated.

“The Education Department doesn’t have a copy of the full model and data rules either.

“The department’s top research official, Matt Cohen, acknowledged that he can’t explain the details of exactly how Ohio’s value-added model works. He said that’s not a problem.”

Think of it. The person at the Ohio Department of Education in charge of the ratings doesn’t understand how the model works. He says it is not a problem.

Well, it is a problem for excellent teachers who were told they were “least effective.”

These models,based on standardized tests, are inaccurate and unstable.

Do not trust the ratings. They are garbage. No high-performing nation is rating teachers this way. It is mean-spirited, mechanistic, and meaningless.

Categories Ohio, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Teacher Explains How to Save U.S. Education

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2013 //
11

This is a terrific article, written by David Patten, an Ohio teacher of history and government.

Patten begins this way:

“I have found it! After little thought and less reflection, I have found the answer to the problems of American public school education. Best of all, my solution will cost no money, save the taxpayers millions of dollars, and produce a well-educated citizenry. The solution is simple: eliminate any and all high-stakes proficiency testing and unleash the power of the teachers to do what they do best — educate our children.”

It gets better and better.

This is David Patten:

“From the moment I was hired to teach history and government in the North Olmsted schools to the moment, years later, when I walked away, I had the audacity to believe that I had been hired for my expertise. I taught the entire range of students, seventh through 12th grades. No matter what the age or ability level, I actually believed that I had something to convey to my students and that I could truly refine thought and inspire learning. And why not? I graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA in two majors. I was already a published writer and had traveled extensively. Given those brazen assumptions, to me the textbook was a mere afterthought, a reference. State and district curriculums were only skeletons, and I would flesh them out. My students would learn through hundreds of pages of highly detailed learning packets that I wrote. I also created slide shows and, later on, PowerPoints, which dovetailed with the information contained in the packets. These tools formed the basis of class discussions, thus touching all the learning styles. The students read the packets, learned visually and learned orally. It did not stop there. Projects that I created became a hallmark for many of my classes. My students would write historical fiction along with modern and historical position papers. They would participate in “great debates,” their own teaching projects, a historical magazine project and a world geographic magazine project. Last, there were the required reading books. Books such as “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” “Son of the Morning Star,” “The Prince” and “Treblinka” were read and thoroughly analyzed through lengthy class discussions.”

Please read it. You will be glad you did.

.

Categories Accountability, Ohio, Testing

How ALEC Sets the Agenda in Ohio

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2013 //
1

Ohio leaders–Governor John Kasich and the Legislature–are determined to privatize public education, demoralize teachers, and generate profits for entrepreneurs and campaign contributors. Here is the latest from Bill Phillis, who is leading a campaign to stop the destruction of public education in Ohio. A former deputy commissioner of education, he leads the Ohio Education and Adequacy Coalition.

Phillis writes:

FY2014-FY2015 State Budget Proposal: “Education Reform” process must change

May 23, 2013

The recently adopted “education reform” process seems to follow these steps:

· State officials assume that any deficiencies in student test scores, behavior, work force readiness, college readiness, etc. are due to the lack of competence and dedication of boards of education, administrators, educators and staff in the public common school. (Of course, some of them believe poverty and home environment do not influence test scores, behaviors, etc.)

· State officials are provided model reform legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and seek advice from corporate leaders and others not working in the public common school system. A token representation of public education personnel may also be consulted.

· “Reforms” such as the parent trigger, vouchers, charter schools, mayoral control of schools, appointed commissions to assume part of the functions of boards of education, tuition tax credits, third grade guarantee, high stakes testing, replacement of teachers and administrators in “failing schools”, A-F report cards, etc. are enacted with the expectation that these quick fixes will work wonders.

· In all cases the local education community typically attempts to comply with the state’s reforms.

· When local educators and administrators don’t fully embrace these untested “reforms”, they are considered to be stuck in their old ways, resistant to change and not fit for the position they hold.

· Some state officials attempt to intimidate those who don’t “buy-in” to the ever changing “reform” ideas. Then local education personnel are told that they would buy-in if they really would take the time to understand the “reform.”

· When the “reform” measures don’t produce extraordinary results, the local education personnel are to blame and thus the system should be farmed out to the private sector.

Meaningful education reform involves a serious confrontation with all of the issues, particularly those associated with poverty and dysfunctional households. True reform is usually a costly endeavor which many state officials wish to ignore; thus, quick fixes-vouchers, charters, parent triggers, etc.-are put forth as the solution in lieu of dealing forthrightly with the funding necessary to effectuate improved outcomes.

In 1850 and 1851 some selected Ohio citizens came together as delegates to the Constitutional Convention that revised the 1802 Constitution. A majority of the delegates determined that the legislature had neglected public education and crafted the “thorough and efficient” mandate to state government.

In 1912 some selected citizens came together as delegates to another Constitutional Convention. The delegates crafted the “for the organization, administration and control of the public school system” constitutional provision which reinforced the “thorough and efficient clause.”

Subsequent to the 1912 amendment Governor Cox recommended and the legislature authorized the Ohio State School Survey Commission to study the public school system. This citizen commission issued a 300-page report laced with numerous recommendations. Governor Cox proclaimed November 14, 1913 as School Survey Day and convened the Educational Congress on December 5 and 6. The Congress was comprised of citizens from throughout the state. Four major “school reform” bills were passed in January 1914 as a result of these citizen-driven discussions and activities.

This citizen-driven process of “reform” served as a model in Ohio throughout the decades since 1912. However, in recent years, state officials have seemingly consulted an array of self-proclaimed experts and anti-public education activists but have neglected to seek counsel from those affected by state education policy decisions- Ohio citizens and public school personnel. It’s time to disengage ALEC and the advocates of privatization and engage Ohio citizens in education reform efforts.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

This email was sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net |
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street |Columbus, Ohio

Categories ALEC, Ohio

How Cyber Charters Waste Taxpayer Dollars

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2013 //
20

Cyber charters are profligate in wasting taxpayer dollars. A recent article on the Huffington Post reported that they spent nearly $100 million on advertising over a five year period. The biggest cyber charter, K12, spent more than $20 million in the first eight months of 2012.

In Ohio, home of rapacious and ineffective cyber charters, it costs the cyber operator $3,600 per student. But the corporation collects $6,300 per student. This leaves lots of dollars for profit and advertising.

Would it surprise you to know that the owners of the Ohio cyber charters give major campaign contributions to the governor and legislators?

Categories Charter Schools, K12 Inc., Ohio, On-Line Education, Pennsylvania

Does Cincinnati Have the Right Formula?

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2013 //
16

People often wonder if there is any district or state that is working to support children and to strengthen public education. In the age of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, it is difficult to find districts that manage to keep their focus on students instead of carrots and sticks.

But there are success stories.

One is Cincinnati. When I visited there a couple of years ago, I met with the community leaders working together in a collaboration called Strive. They used data to mark needs and progress on key indicators, not to fire educators and close schools. I saw impressive collaboration between the teachers’ union and other community agencies.

In this article, Greg Anrig explains why Cincinnati has taken a different course from the rest of the nation.

He explains:

“What can other urban school districts do to replicate these results, and move away from the highly confrontational reliance on market-based incentives that have dominated educational policymaking in recent years? First, it is vital to build trust between school administrators and teachers unions. It is no accident that Cincinnati Superintendent Ronan and the city’s teachers share mutual respect. Ronan, 59, spent her entire career in Cincinnati, beginning as a middle school math and science teacher in 1976. Later she became an elementary school principal and climbed the administrative ladder while forming strong relationships along the way. Julie Sellers, the president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, told Education Week: “[Ronan] probably knows more teachers than any superintendent. I think it has been beneficial for her to get buy-in. Teachers feel comfortable talking to her. There’s nothing we don’t do in Cincinnati. These are the best urban, high-poverty schools in the country.”

Yes, there is hope.

Categories Ohio, Support for public schools

Cleveland Charter Officials Accused of Stealing $1.8 Million

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2013 //
69

The scandals at charter schools keep happening, and no one seems to care.

Here is the latest: officials at a Cleveland charter accused of stealing $1.8 million.

It happens because charters are deregulated and unsupervised. Deregulation invites plunder and fraud.

Isn’t that what we learned when Wall Street nearly collapsed the economy in 2008? Isn’t that what we learned from the Madoff scandal?

Charter defenders will send an article about a principal who pocketed $2,000 in loose change.

But I defy them to find an example of a public school where the people in charge wrote themselves checks for nearly $2 million.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Kasich Budget Cuts Ohio Public Schools Again

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2013 //
4

This just in from Bill Phillis of the Ohio Education and Adequacy coalition.

Bill served as Deputy Commissioner of Education in Ohio and is a stalwart advocate for adequate funding for public schools.

He helped create a community-based organization called Strong Schools, Strong Communities. If you live in Ohio, you should join the movement to save public education.

Bill Phillis writes:

FY2014-FY2015 State Budget Proposal: Amended Substitute House Bill 59 voted out of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee

April 16, 2013

The administration proposed a state budget that would continue the downward financial spiral of school districts. The per pupil base cost was $732 lower than the FY 2009 amount. Administration officials firmly stated that the per pupil amount was not based on adequacy. It was a disaster to most school districts. The House committees heard heart wrenching testimony requesting substantial changes in the budget proposal for public K-12 education.

A substitute bill rearranged the chairs; creating a new set of school district winners and losers and provided $373 million less. The amended version passed today continues the same flawed school funding structure.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

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Categories Budget Cuts, Ohio
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