When Governors Talk Education, It's About the Economy, Stupid

Interesting.

Most governors are fond of talking about education—why it needs to be improved, how they're going to improve it, the consequences of not improving it, and so on.

But when governors attempt to use the bully pulpit to sell their ideas about education to the public, what are their favored rhetorical themes? A new analysis examines that question, and finds that governors overwhelmingly choose to frame education as important for economic reasons, rather than for the development of individual abilities, or as a matter of civic responsibility. And that political strategy has implications for society and its schools, the researchers say.

The analysis, published in the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership, is based on a detailed review of governors' "state of the state" addresses between 2001 and 2008. Why focus on those speeches? Because they're the most widely reported examples of gubernatorial rhetoric, and, the record shows, they typically provide an accurate roadmap of where governors' policies are headed, according to the authors.
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Over the time period studied, the authors found that governors defined the importance of education in economic terms much more often—62 percent of the time—than they did in other ways.

Governors touched on the importance of education for self-realization only 27 percent of the time. And they connected education to civic responsibility just 7 percent of the time.

Teacher evaluations are becoming big business for private companies

New education reforms often translate into big money for private groups. Following the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, states paid millions of dollars annually for companies to develop and administer the standardized tests required under the law. Companies also cashed in on a provision mandating tutoring for students at struggling schools.

Now, a movement to overhaul the teaching profession is creating another source of revenue for those in the business of education. More than half of states are changing their laws to factor student test scores into teacher evaluations and adding requirements for the classroom observations used to rate teachers. The main intent of the new laws is to identify which teachers are doing a good, bad, or mediocre job and to help them improve. One early outcome of such recent legislation, however, is a booming market that sells services and products to help states and school districts scrambling to meet the new standards.

“It’s an incredibly heavy lift for states,” says Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. “Some have contracted out big pieces of it, whether it’s someone internal in the state or an outside provider.”

Nonprofit groups and for-profit companies alike are vying for contracts to design evaluations, train teachers and principals to use them, and set up online platforms to help sort the data that schools will be collecting. Private foundation money is subsidizing some of the contracts, but districts are also spending millions of public dollars, much of it from the Obama administration’s $4.3 billion “Race to the Top” initiative.

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Do Teacher Quality Initiatives Impact the Wrong Teachers?

Three anectdotes.

so, what do these three have in common?

In the first, the teacher (rightfully) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better. But it was the best student (I'd like to think) who was mortified, not the worst ones. Many years later, I found out my Mom had relayed my reaction to the teacher, who had sighed, shaken her head, and said something like "it's always the wrong ones who get scared."

In the second, I (rightfully, I sure hope) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better. But the only reaction I got was from possibly the best student in the class -- the one who doesn't need to spend any time fretting about what the end of term report card will say.

In the third, the district (rightfully, I think) wanted to scare the worst teachers straight (and/or just fire them) and push the mediocre ones to do better. I can't say how the other teachers responded, but the model teacher I know is the one who's been scared, despite being straight as an arrow to begin with.

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SB5 Opposition beginning to crush extreme law

A new Quinnipiac poll has terrible numbers for supporters of the extreme SB5 law. Voters are rejecting the law by a margin of 25%, double the margin the same poll measured just a month ago. Voters now support repeal by 57% - 32% - the worst showing of any poll taken to date.

Across nearly every demographic, there is widespread opposition to this law. Even 32% of Republicans oppose SB5

• Men, 54 - 38 percent, and women, 58 - 27 percent;
• Those without college degrees, 56 - 30 percent, and those with degrees, 57 - 37 percent;
• Whites, 54 - 35 percent, and blacks, 76 - 15 percent;
• Voters making over $100,000, 52 - 42 percent, those who earn less, 59 - 30 percent;
• Voters in union households, 70 - 24 percent, non-union households, 52 - 35 percent.

Voters also disagree 57 - 34 percent with Gov. Kasich's argument that the limits on union power are needed to balance the budget.

With just 2 weeks left to go, the Pro SB5 campaign might have to turn to even greater desperate measures, or try to rely on the partisan Issue 3 campaign to at least hold its minimal base of support. One thing is for certain, with so much on the line, those favoring the repeal of SB5 are not going to let up in the final two weeks.

Poll	For SB5	Against SB5
PPP Mar 15th	31%	54%
Wenzel Apr 12th	38%	51%
Quinnipiac May 18th	36%	54%
PPP May 25th	35%	55%
Quinnipiac Jul 20th	32%	56%
PPP Aug 18th	39%	50%
Quinnipiac Sep 27th	38%	51%
PPP Oct 19th	36%	56%
Quinnipiac Oct 25th	32%	57%

Delivering lower costs, higher quality

Innovation Ohio recently published a study that showed that states, like Ohio, that had collective bargaining for educators produced lower costs and higher quality than states that had weaker collective bargaining laws.

In fact, research shows that eliminating or effectively crippling the state’s collective bargaining system will be as likely to add to state and local budget woes as cure the
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According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Ohio’s kindergarten, elementary, middle school and high school teachers saw their salaries, on average, drop 3.8% between 2008 and 2009, the latest year BLS’s Occupational Employment Statistics are available. The national average was a 2% increase.
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Even though states that limit teachers’ rights to collectively bargain make up less than one-third of all the states, they make up half of the top 10 salary increases in the contiguous 48 states, with reduced teachers’ rights states taking the top three spots (Wyoming at 11.2%, Texas at 7% and Louisiana at 5.9%).
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In Education Week’s annual K-12 Student Achievement rankings, NO reduced teachers’ rights states scored in the top 10 states. In fact, the top 13 K-12 Achievement states were all states that require collective bargaining for its teachers. Meanwhile, Ohio scored better than 75% of the reduced teachers’ rights states on the K-12 Achievement measure.

While none of the top 10 achieving states were reduced teachers’ rights states, they did make up 7 of the bottom 10 K-12 Achievement states. That means that almost half of all reduced teachers’ rights states ranked in the bottom 10 states on their students’ achievement.

The results revealed by this report should come as no surprise to anyone who has been involved in, or observed, the collective bargaining process across Ohio's school districts. Teachers and education support professionals have consistently demonstrasted a commitment not only to delivering a quality education to their students, but to the communities they serve. Eliminating this important voice eliminates the ability to deliver these results.

Michele Rhee's own contract betrays her rhetoric

Earlier this month, discredited advocate of corporate education reform, Michele Rhee, was invited to speak at Kent State University. Her contract for participating in this event has now been leaked, and its quite the eye opener. It seems, rather than putting "StudentsFirst", Ms Rhee likes to put herself first.

On top of the $35,000 speaking fee, she also requested up to another $5,000 for a first class plane ticket, VIP hotel suite, coverage for all “incidentals” and a “town car” driven by a “professional”.

As one education blog notes, that's more money that a lot of teachers get for a whole years worth of work. But the story doesn't really end there

I’m not an attorney, just a simple education professor. But I will say that the proceeds, excessive as they are, are apparently going to something called Rhee Enterprises, LLC and care of a creative artists agency. So, like a talent agent? I mean, I get it: you make huge bank on the road as some hard-ass former education czar whose ideas have been debunked on numerous occasions. I guess you’re going to need someone to manage your “talent.” But, this whole LLC thing: it’s operated by her brother. So then Rhee Enterprises, which is really funny by the way, needs to pay her brother for managing the whole show. What’s his cut? Hey, wait, what are the students getting out of this? I thought they were first? I don’t know, reeks of nepotism to me, but I don’t know the family situation there.

Rhee would have everyone believe that merit pay is the way forward, and such systems would never lead to any kind of favoritism, nepotism or corrupt bargaining, yet as can been seen quite plainly, that's not how she operates her very own business, a business she claims puts "StudentsFrist".

Here's the Kent State Contract

Rhee Contract