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Administration destroying jobs to create phantom ones

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One thing that hasn't changed in the Senate's budget revisions are the cuts. While they did manage to find another $100 million or so, that still leaves schools across the state suffering from an estimated $3 billion shortfall over the next 2 years. The results of which we are starting to see now as districts cut, cut, cut, cut and cut some more.

One of the plans the administration has in the budget was to lease the state liquer business and use those receipts to fund its new economic development program, "JobsOhio". The plan had been to lease it for $1.2 billion. Now it turns out that a people are starting to question whether that's a low ball number, and that maybe this valuable state asset could be worth a lot more. Hundreds of millions of dollars more in fact.

The state of Ohio needs to jack up the $1.2 billion price on its state liquor operations before selling them off to the newly hatched JobsOhio economic development board later this year.

That's the conclusion of Republican Sen. Tim Grendell and the Center for Community Solutions, a public policy think tank. Both have popped up in recent days with criticisms that the proposed $1.2 billion price tag for the state's liquor monopoly is far too low.

By some estimates the price might be $800 million too low. Sen. Grendell wants to amend the budget to increase the price to $1.5 billion and divert that extra $300 million to education. The Governor, through his spokesperson is having none of it.

Nichols also responded in an e-mail that creating jobs was more important than expanding government.

"For those who really understand that job creation is Ohio's greatest need right now, then the right focus is on making sure JobsOhio has every resource it needs to help create jobs and revive Ohio's economy," he wrote. "Ensuring a fair transaction on the liquor enterprise is a given, but a preoccupation with that to the detriment of JobsOhio's success is just another example of people failing to realize that creating jobs is more important than growing government."

This is nonsensical. Getting more money from the sale of a state asset in order to preserve thousands of middle class education jobs is economic development. To block this move and call it "growing government" is incomprehensible, and should cause everyone to pause and consider what the administrations true motives are.

Ohio Budget Watch has more on this privatization scheme.

Budget merit pay - gone but not forgotten

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When the Ohio Senate's preferred version of the budget was released on Tuesday, it was quickly noted by many that the administration and House's policies to asses teacher compensation and employment, primarily on high stakes testing, had been removed. Legislators have been hearing from teachers and others how unworkable, unreliable, and unfair such a system would be. In light of the fact that many of these budget provisions mirrored those in SB5, it looked like a backdoor effort to circumvent the will of the voters. The elimination of these provisions was welcome news then.

But the budget process isn't over, and these provisions may yet return.

The Senate President held a press conference on the day of the budget release had had this to say on the issue

Senate President Tom Niehaus (R-New Richmond) said during a press conference, however, the performance pay provisions were removed from the budget because of confusion about how they related to collective bargaining legislation (SB 5) and the state's Race to the Top plan.
[..]
"We removed the provisions that were confusing some people that thought it was related to Senate Bill 5 and instead we're working on language to clarify that we want to make it consistent with what they're doing with Race to the Top," Sen. Niehaus said.

"So we want to support the statewide initiative that people have to put excellent teachers in the classroom, but we want to make sure we're not confusing them, that they think it has something to do with Senate Bill 5. They're two separate issues."
[…]
The Senate president said he expects to have some provision in the Senate version of the bill related to performance pay. "So we're having those conversations, but in order to get the conversation focused on the right area and that is this is about Race to the Top, we thought the easiest thing to do was take out the part that was confusing."

This didn't make a whole lot of sense to us. Ohio's RttT grant includes teacher evaluation provisions, which teachers agreed to - but furthermore - it relies upon collective bargaining to implement, the very method the legislature and administration continually seeks to eliminate. This ODE fact sheet lays out these issues succinctly.

FACT: Through RttT, districts may augment or otherwise revise compensation systems at the local level. Such changes must be made in collaboration with teachers and local unions.

The Senate President isn't the only actor in this play however, and today comes news that some of the other antagonists are not happy with these provisions being stripped out. The Speaker of the House and the Governor himself appear unhappy

Batchelder told reporters he was disappointed by the removal of those performance-pay provisions.

"My thought is that's crazy," the Republican leader said.
[...]
Senate Finance Chairman Chris Widener had said some senators were confused why the merit pay language was in the bill, and it was being further scrutinized.

The topic came up in a Wednesday meeting that Batchelder said he had with Republican Gov. John Kasich and Niehaus, R-New Richmond.

"The governor and I are in agreement and the Senate feels differently, so we'll just have to discuss it and work it out," Batchelder said.

The House leader said he thought it would go back into the bill.

We know the Governor is keen, and most likely receiving outside advice, to insert these cooperate education reforms in the budget. After all, he was successfully lobbied by Michele Rhee to place the same provisions in SB5. Furthermore, yesterday in testimony, and today in a Dispatch Op-Ed, Terry Ryan, Ohio VP of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, implored the Senate to put these corporate reform ideas back in. This despite his own Executive VP writing in the NYT recently that the use of high stakes testing for the purposes of teacher evaluations was like "attacking a fly with a sledgehammer. There’s already a ton of testing in our schools. Isn’t there another alternative?"

There is an alternative. It's called collective bargaining. Teachers have already agreed to innovative evaluation systems through the RttT application and in Cincinnati Public schools.

The budget simply isn't the place for such complex policy that requires study, broad consolation and agreement to be successfully implemented. And it certainly should not be done as a backdoor effort to circumvent voter efforts to repeal SB5.

We urge you to keep calling your state legislators and tell them that.

Teach For America: From Service Group to Industry

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One of the best articles written on Teach for America

Although Teach For America began twenty years ago as a well-intentioned band-aid, it has morphed into what is essentially a jobs program for the privileged, funded by taxpayers and wealthy individuals. TFA was originally designed it to serve a specific need: fill positions in high-poverty schools where there are teacher shortages.

A non-profit organization that recruits college seniors primarily from elite institutions to teach for two-year stints in high-poverty schools, preceded by five weeks of training. TFA has grown from 500 teachers to more than 8,000 teachers in thirty-nine rural and urban areas.

As TFA is expanding, it is no longer just filling positions in shortage areas; rather, it’s replacing experienced and traditionally educated teachers. To justify this encroachment, TFA claims that their teachers are more effective than more experienced and qualified teachers, and that training and experience are not factors in effective teaching. TFA supporters also defend the explosive growth of TFA as an indication that TFA is elevating the status of the teaching profession for ambitious high-achieving college students.

Unfortunately, while Teach for America has been very effective at elevating the status of Teach for America, it has not had a similar impact on the status of teaching as a profession.

[readon2 url="http://allthingsedu.blogspot.com/2011/05/teach-for-america-from-service-group-to.html"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Bringing Out the Me in Team

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A great first person account of how high stakes test based evaluations destroys team work in schools

Test scores are the new epicenter for the war over education. On one side are politicians and reformers advocating test scores to evaluate teachers. On the other side are teachers and unions arguing for more comprehensive evaluations rather than relying on scores alone. In a society that values results, reformers are gaining the upper hand. In report after report, districts and states have adopted evaluations primarily based on student achievement on end of grade tests. The results, the reformers argue, will retain the best teachers while removing the bad ones. It is a system that has worked in the private sector and could revolutionize our schools.

Despite the mountain of evidence against using test scores in this way (a nice summary here), I have to admit, there seems to be a bit of logic to the argument. A talented teacher like my wife would be rewarded in a system like this, while lesser teachers would soon be removed. In theory, it seems reasonable. . . until I saw it in action.

[readon2 url="http://killingclarkkent.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/bringing-out-the-me-in-team/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

SB5 Supporters go live with their astroturf campaign

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The corporate backers of SB5 have an official organization, with a not-so-originally named website.

Gov. John Kasich, Senate President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, and House Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, also will be involved with the group, which filed its paperwork with the secretary of state this morning.

The group's website, www.betterohio.org, says, "It's a grassroots coalition of Ohioans who support the effort to reform Ohio and to restore fairness and flexibility to middle class taxpayers, while getting the cost of government under control."

Plunderbund has already dispelled most of the untruths this astorturf organization has published. But let's take a look at their other claim - that of being a grass roots organization in favor of SB5. Let's ask a simple question. Is there any real grassroots support for SB5?

Back in February, the leading Pro-SB5 facebook group had 373 likes, today that same group still only has 1,530 likes. Compared to the leading Anti SB5 facebook group which has grown from 11,008 in February to over 17,075. The Anti-SB5 group is 10 times as large and growing 10 times as fast. And "Bulding a Better Ohio"? - it has a meagre 59 friends on the day of its launch.

Corporate backers might be able to provide the millions of dollars to be spent on attack ads, but they can't buy genuine grassroots citizen support. The kind of support that has over 10,000 on the ground volunteers who have colected over 200,000 signature in just 1 month. If further proof were needed of where the true majority opinion lies on this bill that attacks the middle class, we need look no further than poll after poll