Waiting for a Governor who gets it

Tonight's a big night for the Governor. He's having a movie night with Michele Rhee, the controversial former chancellor of D.C. schools and Margaret Spellings, the Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush for yet another showing of “Waiting for Superman”.

You would think this corporate reformers night out would be about education policy, but it's not as the Dispatch reports

John Kasich's next Waiting for "Superman" showing could have a campaign feel to it.

Kasich invited his supporters through a campaign email to host viewing parties Thursday at the time of his showing of the pro-school-choice documentary in Cleveland.

"Last year, many of you hosted house parties during the campaign and invited your friends and family to attend," the email reads. "We encourage you to consider hosting a party for this exciting event."

You do get the sense that politics always comes before education with this gang.

They are even recruiting state employees to act as movie night ushers, but as OEA reports, teachers not invited.

The Kasich plan is to hold the live event in Cleveland, plus regional screenings and events in six other Ohio cities, webcasting the panel discussion to those locations and on the internet. They’ve done this before, and they will take questions via Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, the Ohio Education Association was not asked to join the webcast panel of speakers, but we would like our members and supporters to ask questions and make comments.

When these three – Spellings, Rhee and Kasich – get together, you can expect lots of cheerleading for charter schools, private school vouchers, performance pay based on test scores and strict limits on the unions that represent public school employees.

Since you're not invited, please take a few moments to instead ask the Governor questions on his Facebook or Twitter Pages.

We also urge you to use the Educator Connector (dial toll-free 1-888-907-7309) to contact Ohio state senators and ask them to:

• Dump the anti-union provisions they copied from Senate Bill 5 out of the Ohio budget bill (HB 153)
• Start figuring out how to restore the $3.1 billion in resources lost to Ohio school districts due to this budget.

Don't be silent!

SB5, Issue campaigns and Polls

There's a long way to go before SB5 is repealed. What may currently feel like a wind to your back can suddenly reveal itself to be a maelstrom instead. With today's polling news that Ohioans overwhelmingly favor repealing SB5, we thought it would be a good idea to cover some election basics.

Right now we are collecting signatures to place the repeal of SB5 on the November 2011 ballot. We need 231,000 verified signatures, which means we need a lot more than that in reality, conservatively, 50% more. But. Each person who signs a SB5 repeal petition is almost as good as a vote, so the more signatures collected the better our chances in November.

November 2011 would be a very low turnout election year under most circumstances, with no major offices on the ballot to attract people to the polls. A similar past year, 2007 saw only 31.34% of registered voters cast a ballot, compared to 53.25% in 2006 and 69.97% in 2008.

Given this, the first thing to bare in mind is that there is a great difference between a voter and a registered voter. A lot of registered voters do not actually vote! In off-cycle election years like 2011 it could be about 2/3 of registered voters who stay home on election day. There are a few lessons to be learned from this simple and obvious fact.

1. When reading polls be careful to consider if they are of registered voters (RV), or have been screened for likely voters(LV).
   Today's Quinnipiac poll is of registered voters, as will most polls be until after Labor Day when it becomes easier to gauge a persons likelihood to vote
2. Getting your supporters to actually go vote (GOTV) is crucial to success.
   We need to turn as many registered voters into actual voters on election day in November. The best way to do that right now is to collect signatures. Lots and lots of them.

Back to polling. We all know about sampling errors and margin of error, but you should also be aware that it is very hard to accurately poll issue campaigns, and even harder to do so in low turnout elections. Two recent examples from Ohio demonstrate this quite well.

In 2005 a group of people attempted to reform Ohio's election and redistricting laws. Right before the election the Bliss Institute polled the issues and found

State Issue Two (Absentee Balloting)
Favor: 63.8%
Oppose: 36.2%

State Issue Three (Campaign Contributions)
Favor: 61.2%
Oppose: 38.8%

State Issue Four (Nonpartisan Redistricting)
Favor: 43.5%
Oppose: 56.5%

State Issue Five (Role of Secretary of State)
Favor: 42.5%
Oppose: 57.5%

The Dispatch found similar results. All 4 issues lost just a few days later by massive 2:1 margins. The polling was way off.

In 2006 a coalition similar to the SB5 coalition put a minimum wage initiative on the ballot. It won 57%-43%, but in a NYT/CBS poll just 2 weeks earlier it enjoyed over 77% support.

The bottom line -

• We have to work hard now, to collect as many signatures as possible
• We have to work hard through the summer and fall to talk to voters and convince them that repealing SB5 is the right thing to do
• In the closing month of the election get as many people to vote early as possible
• On election day, get as many supporters of repeal to the polls as possible

That's a lot of work. Ready for it?

A Columbus Teacher Testifies against HB153

OEA and CEA member Philip Hayes' opposition testimony to HB 153

Written Testimony
Ohio Senate
Senate Finance Committee, Chris Widener, Chair
Testimony in Opposition to Sub. HB 153 by:
Philip W. Hayes, Educator,
Brookhaven High School
Columbus City Schools

Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Good morning Chair Widener, Vice Chair Jones, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee. I thank you for giving me the opportunity today to speak candidly and personally regarding my opposition to Substitute House Bill 153.

I am a high school social studies teacher at Brookhaven High School in Columbus, Ohio. It is my first and only teaching assignment; I’ve taught there since 1998 and cannot imagine teaching anywhere else.

I want to tell you all that for the past four months, I wake up each morning at 5 a.m., angry. I go to bed each night, often at 10 or 11 p.m., tired, frustrated, hoarse from talking and arguing, and wake up angry again the next day, only to start the process over.

I am angry because of the various pieces of legislation that have been proposed or passed by the Ohio General Assembly that deal with education matters. This includes the items in HB 153 that threaten to change my profession, my calling, my life’s work into something much less—a job. Teaching is not what I do; it is who I am. Most importantly, the proposed changes will affect my students.

Who are my students? According to the latest state report card, each class of 30 students at Brookhaven has 25 that qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Seven of the 30 have transferred from another school. Five students have an identified learning disability. Three students were learning how to read, write and speak English as they were being instructed in that language. Roughly one student in each class of 30 was homeless.

Here are just some of the proposed “solutions” that have been included in HB 153 that will affect my students, my colleagues and their students. Why has an overall K-12 funding decrease been touted as a state foundation increase? While the promise has been made that the state will not increase taxes, the truth is that local school districts will have to put levies on the ballot at an ever-increasing rate to make up for the shortfall in state funding. This proposed budget shifts the burden from the state to local governments.

I take issue with the provision that gives teachers a $50 bonus if their students achieve more than a year’s worth of academic growth. This transforms our students from human beings into fifty-dollar bills. Why would you want to create a situation where a teacher walks into a class and sees their students with dollar signs hovering over their head? Our students are equal human beings, and should be treated as people, not profits.

I disagree with the section that calls for retesting teachers that teach in core academic areas if they work in a school that is identified as one of the lowest 5 percent statewide. We have already passed a national test, selected for use by the state’s Department of Education to establish our subject area competence. Just weighing a pig doesn’t make it fatter.

I object to the House’s inclusion of teacher evaluation provisions from SB 5 into HB 153. It is, at its best, disingenuous; at its worst, it is duplicitous, divisive and devious.

The basis of merit pay within the bill, as proposed, is completely without merit. There are many areas where state achievement test scores or growth data cannot be used to inform the evaluation process. How can anyone possibly determine the worth of an art, music or physical education teacher that inspires and motivates a student to become an artist, musician or more physically fit, enriching, changing and perhaps saving their lives?

For the past four years, I have my students pick the best teacher they’ve ever had and write them a letter, thanking them and explaining why they were chosen. Often times, those teachers write back to my students and their share stories and recollections from when my students were in their classroom.

Over the course of those four years, none of the student letters have contained the sentence “Thank you for helping me pass the test.” Not one. But these are the best teachers these students have ever had; they have made their subject come alive for them, encouraged them, inspired them, fought for them, laughed with them and cried with them. All of those are teacher attributes that cannot be tested, surveyed or measured.

Chair Widener, Vice Chair Jones, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee, I thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have at this time.

Please contact your State Senator and urge them to remove the SB5 provisions from HB153 (the budget bill).

Cincinnati Public Schools is first in Ohio to test merit pay

Without the need for SB5 provisions, but with the cooperation and agreement of teachers, Cincinnati Public Schools will become the first in Ohio to trial merit pay for teachers

CINCINNATI - After years of discussion and argument, it appears Cincinnati Public School teachers have agreed to a new system to tie pay closely to student achievement and growth.

CPS administrators announced early Wednesday morning that an agreement had been reached with the district's 2,400 teachers for a brand new pay system.

It will be the first in Ohio and one of the few in the nation to directly link teacher pay to how well their students do in class and on tests.

The Cincinnati Federal of Teachers will be hosting a Q&A session at Mayerson Banquet Room on June 1, 2011, from 4:30 - 6:00.

Here's the summary of the new evaluation and the negotiation summary

CPS Teacher Evaluation

Ohioans overwhelmingly support SB5 repeal

According to a Poll about to be released by Quinnipiac, a majority of Ohioans said SB5 should be repealed.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found 54% said they support repealing SB5, while 36% want to retain the measure.

Full poll results can be read here.

A Worthington teacher testifies against HB153

OEA member and WEA President Mark Hill's written testimony against HB 153

Chairman Widener, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee, my name is Mark Hill. I am a math teacher in the Worthington City Schools currently serving as president of the Worthington Education Association. Thank you for allowing me to offer testimony on HB153.

I come today to talk to you about the teacher accountability provisions in HB 153. I have some concerns about the structure for accountability that is in the version passed out of the House.

I would like to begin by saying that I don’t have a problem with a rigorous evaluation system for teachers nor do I disagree with the notion of removing ineffective teachers from the classroom. That may sound unusual coming from a leader of a local teachers union but I am a parent, too, and I care about access to a high quality education for my kids. The teachers I represent take a great deal of pride in teaching in an excellent school district; many of them live in the district and all of them want it to remain excellent; none of them want to work alongside a bad teacher.

HB153, as passed by the House, goes too far. It requires teachers to be rated highly effective, effective, needs improvement, or unsatisfactory based on an evaluation in which 50% of the score is measuring student growth through value added scores averaged over three years. It requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to set a minimum level value added measure for a teacher for each of the rating levels. Furthermore, it imposes draconian penalties for teachers who are rated as unsatisfactory or needs improvement including imposition of unpaid leave on a teacher rated at those levels if their principal does not consent to placing them in their building the next year effectively ending their careers.

Value added scores are a great concept but as a statistical measure, they are fraught with error. Scores fluctuate by random error; in Houston’s value added system only 38% of the top fifth remained in the top rating the next year. 23% of the top fifth in performance ended up being in the bottom fifth the next year and vice versa. Fluctuations like that defy reason; it is highly unlikely that a fourth of the top teachers in Houston one year were poor performers the next.

According to another study done for the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Evaluation found that, using three years of data, a teacher who should be rated as average has a 25% chance of being rated significantly below average. A teacher who should be rated as a top performer has a 10% chance of being rated significantly below average. This means under HB 153, 25% of the average teachers in Ohio and 10% of the good teachers in Ohio would be in jeopardy of losing their jobs due to statistical error. I hope the Ohio General Assembly would not want to add a “Wheel of Fortune” element to teachers’ careers.

Under this system, who would take care of the kids? There are teachers who ask for the students with behavior problems and learning disabilities because they care about them and believe they deserve an education. Under HB 153, these teachers would be putting their career at risk to do so. My own son has Aspergers Syndrome, which is a condition on the autism spectrum – who will want to teach him? Under HB153, math and reading teachers are far more at risk for losing their jobs than other teachers because those are the only areas with enough scores to build a value-added modeling system. Who would want to work in an area where you are constantly worrying about losing your job due to a statistical error?

I don’t come just to complain but to offer solutions. First, you’ve already passed this framework for evaluation in Senate Bill 5. There is no logical reason to duplicate it in HB153 – frankly, I don’t believe it belongs in either bill but should be a subject of debate on its own.

Second, instead of mandating 50% value added, allow the local education agency to decide how to best fit value added in their evaluations. This is the system under Race to the Top – Worthington is a Race to the Top district, so we have already agreed to rate teachers’ effectiveness through evaluation using value added modeling. A top down statewide approach will have serious unintended consequences.

Thank you for listening.

Please contact your State Senator and ask them to remove the SB5 provisions from HB153 (the budget bill).