We're not saying it is hypocritical, but

We're not saying it is hypocritical, but when you pass legislation saying that teachers are to be evaluated on their ability to do the job, then you turn around and hire your own partisan political appointees for a job they have no experience to do, it does make one wonder.

After a months-long search for someone with regulatory experience to ride herd on Ohio’s four casinos, a state panel yesterday chose someone with none.

Matt Schuler, chief of staff for the Republican president of the Ohio Senate, was appointed executive director of the Casino Control Commission. Commission members recruited the 44-year-old Gahanna resident after having trouble enticing regulators from other states to take a similar job in Ohio.

Maybe Mr. Schuler ought to at least take a test?

Matt Schuler was recently at the center of the controvesy over Senate staff getting massive retroactive pay rises.

Every member of senior staff in our caucus was approached about leaving, and we almost lost several other key staff members, Niehaus said. "It became obvious when I heard what some of the offers were that they were in part leaving because of money, so I asked our chief of staff, Matt Schuler, to do a review of salaries."

We guess after his salary review Matt Schuler decided he needed a wee bit more, but even that doesn't appear to be enough as he's now headed for the door to collect what is expected to be a windfall salary of $146,286. He may want to talk to his wife, school board member Jill Schuler. Mrs. Schuler has been a very vocal proponent of "sared sacrifice"

Board member Jill Schuler said she struggles with placing the tax request on the ballot unless all employees make a commitment. She cited no flexibility with personnel costs that make up 80 percent of the district's budget.

"The sacrifices some are making need to be made by the whole," Schuler said.

Like we said, We're not saying it is hypocritical, but...

When endorsements go wrong

Toledo Mayor Mike Bell (I), is probably regretting his ill-conceived endorsement of SB5 right about now. No sooner had his claims about the benefits of SB5 been debunked as nonsense, and it revealed he was laid off as a firefighter before collective bargaining existed, now the attention he has brought himself has landed him in some ethical hot water.

The chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party has asked the Ohio Ethics Commission to investigate the $656,000 in federal grants and loans the city of Toledo has awarded to a development company owned by Mayor Mike Bell's niece.

In a brief letter yesterday, Chris Redfern, the party's chairman, formally requested the ethics commission "to commence an investigation into the contractual relationship that exists between the City of Toledo and Shayla Bell."

Ms. Bell, 27, started Fort Industry Development shortly after her uncle took office in January, 2010. Since then, the city has awarded Ms. Bell's company five contracts to buy, rehabilitate, and sell foreclosed homes. The rehabilitation work itself is performed by a general contractor. Fort Industry also is to receive two more contracts, which would bring the total close to $1 million.

"I think it's clear that Shayla Bell wouldn't have received one penny if her last name wasn't Bell," Mr. Redfern said.

City officials dispute that claim. Mayor Bell has said his niece earned the contracts on her own initiative with no assistance from him. She had to qualify with the city's neighborhoods department to begin receiving the contracts.

She had no prior construction or development experience, but she teamed up with two businessmen from an established commercial and industrial glass company in creating Fort Industry. That gave the firm the experiences and financial wherewithal to qualify for the program, neighborhoods department staff has said.

Is it any wonder that people are sick and tired of politicians taking care of themselves and their special interests while attacking hard working people?

Vote NO on Issue 2

HB136 The Privatize Public Education Bill

HB 136 pass out of the House Education committee yesterday 12-10, a party line vote with just one Republican voting no. But what is HB 136?

The bill replaces the ʺEd Choiceʺ and "Cleveland Scholarship" voucher programs, and replaces them with a voucher program instead based on family income, and calls it the "Parental Choice and Taxpayer Savings Scholarship Program" or ʺPACTʺ.

So it's a statewide voucher program with the amount of the voucher deducted from a studentʹs school district, with no limit on the number of PACT vouchers that can be awarded. Of course these vouchers can be used at any eligible nonpublic school.

So here we have a bill that allows unlimited amounts of money to be taken from any school district and sent directly to private institutions, effectively gutting public education for the majority of citizens students, The Governor and the Department of Education must have some thoughts on this? Gongwer

Speaker Batchelder, an architect of the Cleveland Voucher Program, said he has yet to review the final version of the measure, which won't be taken up by the full House until at least next week.

"It's had a lot of deliberations" in committee, he said. "It's a very important bill."

Nevertheless, the speaker said he would "have to see if the administration, which is going to come forward with a new plan on primary and secondary (education), whether they're friendly, unfriendly or what."

"I have not talked with the state superintendent either at this point, so I think we have a little more work to do while it's in Rules (Committee)."

Rob Nichols, spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, said the governor strongly believes in school choice but has not taken a public stance on the measure. ODE also said it has no formal opinion.

How can a bill the effectively provides the means to privatize public education have had a "lot of deliberations" if the Governor, ODE, and State Superintendent not taken any position?

Greg Mild at Plunderbund walks through just one scenario to highlight how destructive this bill would be

If a parent in Dublin finds a private school, enrolls their child, and receives the HB136 funding, the Dublin City School district suffers a net loss of $3,757. Doesn’t sound too bad in isolation, does it? Well, keep going….

Assuming Dublin parents can find private schools to take their children, this could continue until every student has taken their private tuition money out of the Dublin pool and the entire district is privatized. Except that would be impossible because the pool of money can’t sustain the model in the legislation. Honestly, it’s just basic arithmetic at this point.

District funds remaining: $12,089,366
[Divided by] private tuition voucher: $4,626
[Equals] Number of vouchers available for funding: 2,613
Number of total students in Dublin City Schools: 13,910
So, after student number 2,613 has taken their tax money and run, I’m left with two questions for the “financial experts” down at the Statehouse:

Who pays for number 2,614?
Who funds the remaining 11,000+ students?

As Greg notes, HB136 would destroy a public school that is graded excellent with distinction and leave over 10,000 students out in the cold.

Here's the LSC synopsis of HB136, you'll note we haven't even touched upon the education savings accounts aspect to the bill.

HB136 Synopsis

The Debate over Teacher Merit Pay

The term “merit pay” has gained a prominent place in the debate over education reform. First it was D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee trumpeting it as a key to fixing the D.C.’s ailing public schools. Then a handful of other cities gave it a go, including Denver, New York City, and Nashville. Merit pay is a big plank of Education Secretary Arne Duncan‘s reform platform. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has just launched his own version of merit pay that focuses incentives toward principals. There’s just one problem: educators almost universally hate merit pay, and have been adamantly opposed to it from day one. Simply, teachers say merit pay won’t work.

In the last year, there’s been some pretty damning evidence proving them right; research showing that merit pay, in a variety of shapes and sizes, fails to raise student performance. In the worst of cases, such as the scandal in Atlanta, it’s contributed to flat-out cheating on the part of teachers and administrators. So, are we surprised that educators don’t respond to monetary incentives? Is that even the right conclusion to draw?

[readon2 url="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/20/the-debate-over-teacher-merit-pay-a-freakonomics-quorum/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Van Roekel: The NEA Plan for Teacher Accountability

By Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association

This summer, the National Education Association took a historic vote and adopted a new policy statement. It put us on the record, for the first time, as calling for a comprehensive overhaul of both teacher evaluation and accountability systems to improve professional practice and advance student learning.

Why now?

The myopic focus of the current education reform debate promotes lowering professional standards, finding quick and cheap ways to rate teachers based solely on tests, and making it easier to fire “bad” teachers while lowering the bar to enter the profession.

The irony is that teachers themselves have long complained that evaluation systems are broken. They have been some of the most forceful advocates for better evaluations linked to meaningful feedback and support. What’s been missing is sufficient guidance – developed by and for teachers – to help navigate this challenging and complicated environment.

The policy statement is an opportunity for NEA and our members to assert ourselves in a debate that has been raging for years. We know that current systems for teacher evaluation and accountability can be improved, but too often in the past we have simply taken a defensive posture, trying to prevent damaging policies instead of promoting those that will actually raise student achievement.

We have heard all of the bad ideas. Now it’s time for us to take the lead, and draw on our experience to propose policies that will actually work for students. This is our profession and our responsibility.

Our new policy statement lays out rigorous standards and delineates the multiple indicators of teacher practice that must be taken into account in an evaluation and accountability system. It clearly articulates the link between teacher accountability and student success and defines an appropriate evaluation system. And it signals a commitment to a new, more prestigious profession of teaching:

• It includes student learning and growth indicators as one of three key components of evaluation systems.  
• It calls for a well-designed system for improving a struggling teacher’s practice, and should that teacher not improve within a specific time, the policy statement provides for a fair and expedient dismissal process. 
• It calls for support for beginning teachers so that they will not just stay and survive, but thrive in the profession.

In adopting this policy statement, our members said loud and clear that we want to raise standards for the teaching profession, not lower them. And we want to provide leadership on one of the toughest education issues today.

Now the real hard part begins, as we start to translate this policy into action. We have a chance to define the teaching profession for the next generation, and we will not let that opportunity slip through our grasp.

Dennis Van Roekel is president of the National Education Association and a 23-year teaching veteran.

How unemployed parents might affect your job

A recent paper titled "Short-run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children's Academic Achievement", found the following

We study the relationship between parental job loss and children’s academic achievement using data on job loss and grade retention from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find that a parental job loss increases the probability of children’s grade retention by 0.8 percentage points, or around 15 percent. After conditioning on child fixed effects, there is no evidence of significantly increased grade retention prior to the job loss, suggesting a causal link between the parental employment shock and children’s academic difficulties. These effects are concentrated among children whose parents have a high school education or less.

Parents becoming unemployed affect their children's academic achievement. Here's the unemployment trend for Ohio

As you can see, in recent years, unemployment in Ohio has escalated alarmingly to around 10%. That's a lot of students who have potentially been academically impacted by this trend.

We mention this because this is just one variable of many that isn't captured through student/teacher linkage, or the Value Add calculation, yet could critically affect student achievement and hence their teacher's evaluations.

What happens to these teacher level value add scores when a large local employer has mass layo-offs? Will it lead to lower performance evaluations for teachers in that area? Would that be fair?

These kinds of questions are going to need to be investiagted, and having silly web forms isn't going to cut it.