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Vote NO on Issue 2

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Having broken records to be placed on the November 8th ballot, SB5 will now be known to voters as Issue 2, with a NO vote required for its repeal. This is how it will appear to the voters

Issue 2 Referendum

A majority yes vote is necessary for Amended Substitute Senate Bill No. 5 to be approved.

Amended Substitute Senate Bill No. 5 is a new law relative to government union contracts and other government employment contracts and policies.

A “YES” vote means you approve the law.
A “NO” vote means you reject the law.

The Ohio ballot board, made up of 2 Republicans, 2 Democrats and the Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) acting as chair, met for 7 hours to determine the title and lauguage of 3 issues.

Issue 2 was taken last, and the final 10 minute recess before voting turned into a 2 hour meeting, behind closed doors, amongst the Republican board members and staff members from the Republican House Caucus. Over the last hundred years, all 12 efforts to repeal legislation have required a No vote, yet Republicans lobbied Secretary of State Husted hard to try to change the voting requirements from a NO for repeal to a confusing Yes.

To his credit, Husted held fast and in the end the board voted unanimously to uphold over 100 years of precedent and the constitution.

On November 8th, 2011 voters should be urged to vote NO on Issue 2 and repeal the unfair SB5, before it hurts the middle class and creates unsafe working conditions.

A Teacher's Open Letter to John Kasich

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Elementary music teacher Kelly Riley asked us to publish her letter to the Governor and his response. Great letter, not so great response.

Dear Mr. Kasich,

I do not teach a tested subject area. I am an elementary music teacher with nearly 350 students that I work with once every 3 days for 50 minutes. I recommend that I be assessed on how I benefit my school community. My students present musical performances at least once per year for their families and the entire student body. My fourth grade students are successful recorder players, my fifth grade students produce a CD of their original compositions each year, nearly all of my students sing tunefully and beautifully, and every single one of them is an appreciative consumer of many different musical genres and a respectful audience member. I serve as a staff liaison to my building PTO, I am my school’s technology coordinator, I sit on our Intervention Assistance Team, I coordinate the afternoon car pickup, I monitor the cafeteria for 30 minutes each day, I volunteered on my district’s levy committee, I have mentored student teachers, and I regularly present professional development for my colleagues. I also hold master’s degree in literacy and a license to teach reading, and I frequently integrate other subjects and technology into my music curriculum, which helps my students perform to the best of their abilities on standardized tests.

How would you quantify all that I do for my school community? I would love to use all of the above information to negotiate my salary. I could certainly argue that I’m worth quite a lot because of my education, experience, and the myriad of essential roles I play. I was going to begin my “Idea” with stating that the average salary for an American with a master’s degree is about $65,000 (with eight years of experience and an MA I make $57,113), but that really isn’t the point. I didn’t choose a teaching career for the money; I just want to be respected for all that I do for my kids.

I’ve been teaching elementary music in central Ohio for eight years, and since January, I have been extremely disheartened by the way my colleagues and I have been treated by many of the legislators of Ohio, including you, Mr. Kasich. You say in the YouTube video that you’d like to see teachers paid $100,000 and that what we do “is so critically important.” I laughed out loud at those comments, because that is in direct opposition to all of the news coming out of the Statehouse since you’ve taken office.

SB5 is disrespectful in that teachers must be evaluated on their students’ achievement on standardized tests. Teachers have very little control over a child’s life outside the 7 hours they spend at school 180 days a year. What is a teacher to do if a child is hungry or tired or sick on the single day of the test? And when the teachers and other union members banded together to attempt to put SB5 to a referendum vote, you added the pieces on teacher evaluation to the budget bill. That’s not only disrespectful to teachers, that is disrespectful to the democratic process. I demand that my students be respectful and thoughtful to others. You’re setting a terrible example for Ohio’s youth. Effectively taking away the teachers’ collective bargaining rights undermines the hard work we put into obtaining advanced degrees and countless hours of professional development required to maintain our teaching licenses. Teachers are not stupid; in fact, many teachers are more educated than our elected officials. How is it that you can run a state with only a bachelor’s degree, but teachers are required to obtain a master’s degree by their twelfth year of teaching (ORC 3301-24-08 B)?

Not only am I an angry teacher, I am also a taxpayer and voter. I choose to live in the community where I work so that I can support the school issues that affect my students and my working conditions. I am HAPPY to pay more in taxes to create a strong and desirable community. I have always felt that PAYING TAXES IS A PRIVILEGE because it benefits everyone in the community, especially those who may not have the means to help themselves. And yet, you propose cutting taxes when Ohio is in the red, and cater to business interests. I have yet to see data that validates these policies.

I am looking forward to the opportunity to perform my civic duty and exercise my right to vote you out of office.

Sincerely,

Kelly Riley

A Canned Response

As you know, a couple of months ago I asked Ohio’s teachers for their help in building a better system for rewarding educators for the difficult and important work they do. You’re getting this e-mail today because you were one of more than 1,200 people who joined in this process and shared with me an idea, suggestion or concern. Thank you for taking the time to do that and helping to shape this important effort.

As part of this process, I tasked my staff and Ohio’s Teacher Liaison, Sarah Dove, a 4th grade teacher from the Gahanna-Jefferson school district, to collect information, conduct listening roundtables across the state, and learn more directly from teachers about how to create a system of teacher evaluation and compensation that enhances our ability to increase achievement among Ohio’s students.

More recently, this week I had the opportunity to sit down myself with a small group of teachers who sent me e-mails and showed interest in getting involved in the process to determine how teacher evaluations will be shaped in Ohio. I learned a lot. For example, there are some great school districts that have already created innovative systems of teacher evaluation that work for both educators and the kids we all want to help succeed. Additionally, I learned just how very important it is to communicate our intention to assess teachers by using a wide variety of measures. One idea that particularly interested me provided teachers a choice as to which measures best evaluate their abilities as an educator. These substantive contributions, and yours, will help all involved as we work to develop a more fair and effective system of evaluation.

The Ohio Department of Education has created a website that includes information about the benefits of teacher evaluation, a blog from Ohio’s Teacher Liaison that will keep you up to date on our progress and, most importantly, a link where you can continue to submit your ideas and encourage your fellow teachers to get involved in the process. You can visit that website by clicking here: http://teachers.ohio.gov

As we work toward creating a manageable system for evaluating, rewarding and encouraging teachers, I feel it’s important that you recognize my firm belief in developing an evaluation process fair to educators and best for those we all are here to help – our children.

Please continue to stay involved, encourage your colleagues to participate by submitting their own ideas, and together, we can continue our work to make Ohio great again.

Sincerely,

John R. Kasich

Governor of Ohio

PROFILE OF TEACHERS IN THE U.S.

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A Fascinating survey of the demographics and beliefs of US school teachers, from the National Center for Education Information.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

K-12 public school teachers in the United States are amazingly similar over time. They constitute a unique profession that has self-propagated itself for at least the last half century. But, due to an influx of individuals from non-traditional backgrounds entering teaching through non-traditional preparation programs, the teaching force may be changing.

One-third of first-time public school teachers hired since 2005 entered the profession through an alternative program other than a college campus-based teacher education program.

The findings throughout this survey illustrate striking differences between this non-traditional population of new teachers and teachers who enter teaching through undergraduate and graduate college campus-based teacher education programs, especially in attitudes concerning current proposed school reform measures and ways to strengthen teaching as a profession, such as:

  • Getting rid of tenure for teachers
  • Performance-based pay
  • Market-driven teacher pay – paying teachers more to teach in high needs schools and high demand subjects
  • Recruiting individuals from other careers into teaching and school administration
  • Using student achievement to evaluate teacher effectiveness

The findings also show amazing similarities among all teachers surveyed, regardless of their backgrounds, how they prepared to teach, their age, how long they’ve been teaching and other variables we analyzed the data by. Public school teachers surveyed:

  • Strongly support getting rid of incompetent teachers regardless of seniority
  • Are generally satisfied with their jobs and various aspects of teaching
  • Think they are competent to teach
  • Rate their teacher preparation programs highly
  • Consider the same things as valuable in developing competence to teach – their own teaching experiences and working with other teachers/colleagues top the list
  • Plan to be teaching K-12 five years from now

PROFILE OF TEACHERS IN THE U.S. 2011

August 2nd, 2011 complete levy results

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Below, sorted by county, you will find the latest provisional school levy results for the August 2nd, 2011 Ohio local elections.

As you can see it was another difficult night for school funding. with just 8 of 25 issues being approved by the voters. All renewal and replacement requests passed, along with just 4 of 21 new requests.

August 2011 Levy Results

Is election tampering of SB5 coming to Ohio

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Yesterday we read an article detailing some very troubling activity by Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers funded astroturf organization

Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.

The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk "before Aug. 11."

Those Wisconsin recall elections are central to the fight against SB5 like measures implemented by Republican Governor Scott Walker. Meanwhile, back in Ohio the Cincinnatti inquirer has a report

Americans for Prosperity-Ohio kicks off a statewide series of Taxpayer Town Halls on August 16th in the Greater Cincinnati Area. AFP-Ohio is partnering with Tea Parties, 9-12 Groups, and other liberty organizations to host these town halls, which will focus on the financial crises many local governments across Ohio are facing, how those crises could affect citizens, jobs and our economy, what local governments can do to address their financial challenges, and how Senate Bill 5 can help.

If anyone attempts to tamper with Ohio elections they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Gates: "Poverty is an excuse"

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Billionaire corporate education reformer Bill Gates has become increasingly bizarre in his public proclamations. We reported a short while ago about his slip that sounded an awful lot like an admission he would like to privatize public education.Now he seems to think poverty is no obstacle, all we have to do is hand poor students over to a charter school

Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the National Urban League on Thursday that a child's success should not depend on the race or income of parents and that poverty cannot be an excuse for a poor education.
[...]
Gates, who now runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, cited his foundation's work with charter schools as an example.

At least he has enough self awareness to know he doesn't know what he is talking about

"Let me acknowledge that I don't understand in a personal way the challenges that poverty creates for families, and schools and teachers," the billionaire said at the civil rights group's annual convention.

You can further forgive Gates, because it's not like there is very much research showing the direct ties between poverty and educational achievement.

All just excuses, right?