The Big e-school rip off

The evidence is becoming clearer and clearer. E-School charters are a tax payer rip-off that delivers awful results.

At Join the Future we have focused most of our attention on the poor quality Ohio's e-schools have delivered. Providing the highest quality education is, after all, the most important aspect to schools. In article after article, we have highlighted the packed virtual classrooms, and the poor graduation rates they produce.

But now comes news that not only do they produce awful results in terms of educational quality, they are also a huge pay payer rip off. First for some context as to the scope of e-schools in Ohio

Enrollment in online schools in Ohio has passed 30,000, more than 12 times the number in 2000 when the first "virtual" school opened in the state.

Only Arizona had more students enrolled full time in online schools in 2010-11, according to an annual report by the Evergreen Education Group.
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Although scattered around the state, the online students combined would make up the third-largest district in Ohio — about the size of the Cincinnati schools. The online schools are charters, independently operated but publicly funded.
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Ohio's online schools have become a big business. The state paid online charter schools $209 million in 2010-11 to educate students, or an average of $6,337 per student.

Results are mixed at both for-profit and district-run schools. Online students have lower graduation rates than those at traditional schools. They attend college at a lower rate. At the same time, other measures have shown online students learning as much as, or more than, students in many districts.

It's a growth business. And reporting from StateImpact Ohio and the Plain Dealer indicate why

Robert Mengerink didn’t know how much an online school really costs to operate — until he started one.

When he learned this summer that the agency he heads, the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County, could offer a basic online program for less than half of what the state pays online schools per student, he was taken aback.
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The cost? About $2,980 per student for a full course load all year.

That's more than 50% cheaper than the for-profit charter operations such as ECOT, and it's not an isolated example.

TRECA Digital Academy, another publicly operated provider of online K-12 education, says it can do it for about $3,600 per student.

That potential savings highlights questions that critics of online schools have been asking for years: What really happens to that taxpayer-provided money? Is most of it going to educate students? Or are schools pocketing a large profit while cutting corners for students?

That's a really good question. For a Governor and legislature that talks about reducing government spending so much, we are left wondering why they continue to allow such a laissez faire attitude to these terrible schools.

We recommend you read the full State Impact report, it really should open some eyes.

Where the polls stand - as voting begins

With two days to go before the first debate, the national and statewide polling continues to show President Obama in a very strong position.

In the Electoral College, Real Clear Politics calculates that the President has expanded his lead to 265 votes to Mitt Romney's 191, an increase of 28 votes for the President over the last 2 weeks.

The NYT polling analyst, 538, also shows President Obama with an increased projected win in the electoral college

In Ohio, the Presidents polling average lead is now outside the margin of error at 5.6%.

This spate of positive polling in Ohio, has President Obama now projected to have a 86.1% chance of prevailing - a full 10% higher than last week

Of further concern to the Romney campaign will be that early voting in Ohio and elsewhere is either about to begin, or already underway. There are going to be fewer and fewer opportunities to change voters minds before their vote is locked in.

Talking Points Memo also notes that the weakening situation Mitt Romney is finding himself in, is having an effect down ticket too. Republicans were favored to take control of the Senate earlier in the year, that chance appears to be receding, as Democrats have now taken leads in a number of swing Senate races.

An Open Letter to Ohio Women

Playing fair and playing by the rules are two of the most important lessons we teach our children. Unfortunately, Ohio politicians don’t want to play fair and they want to make their own rules. The system is rigged to allow the majority party to draw Statehouse and Congressional district lines to protect their own seats and their political party. Drawing district lines that determine who gets elected is how the politicians hold on to their power. In effect, they have turned our government from “We the People” into “We the Politicians”.

Passage of State Issue 2 will establish a system that takes the power away from politicians and gives good, decent people who want to fix our problems a real chance to compete against career politicians and win. We all want an impartial process AND WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN! The choices we make on November 6 will have a profound effect on the lives of our children and grandchildren.

Politicians will come and go, but the passage of State Issue 2 will help ensure that neither party can unfairly dominate state politics. When elections are fair and balanced the people of Ohio win.

In this election, you will have an opportunity to take a stand and vote YES on Issue 2. The system that decides who our elected officials are should be open to the public, transparent and without partisan manipulation.

As women, one a Republican and one a Democrat, we invite you to unite with us around issues of fairness and accountability. There is much wrong with politics but how we choose our elected officials should not be one of those wrongs. We can fix this problem once and for all.

Collectively, we must stand up and be heard. We must do this for our communities, our children, our values and our future. We have the chance to make a big difference in this election. Not in one politician’s life–but in the lives of all Ohioans.

Please help us by talking with your friends and neighbors about this important issue and share this message on Facebook, Twitter and your other social networks. To volunteer or learn how you can become more engaged on this issue, please email women@votersfirstohio.com and a Voters First representative will get back with you right away.

Leave a legacy. Vote for fairness, vote for our future, and vote YES on ISSUE 2.

Sincerely,
Joan Lawrence
Former Member Ohio House of Representatives
League of Women Voters of Ohio, since 1957 State of Ohio

Frances Strickland
Former First Lady, State of Ohio

Some Choice

ODE has just released their partial school report card. It doesn't contain any final grades, but it does tell us whether schools made adequate yearly progress, and the news isn't pretty for Ohio's charter school movement.

Of the 352 charter schools listed, 58.2% of them failed to meet their adequate yearly progress (AYP) metrics.

If a student attends a school in any of Allen, Warren, Erie, Hancock, Lake, Madison, or Tuscarawas counties, not a single charter school made adequate yearly progress. Indeed, out of the 36 counties that have charter schools, 24 counties had schools that combined for more than half their charters failing to meet their adequate yearly progress.

County	Not Met AYP	Met AYP
Allen	100.0%	0.0%
Warren	100.0%	0.0%
Erie	100.0%	0.0%
Hancock	100.0%	0.0%
Lake	100.0%	0.0%
Madison	100.0%	0.0%
Tuscarawas	100.0%	0.0%
Stark	83.3%	16.7%
Trumbull	75.0%	25.0%
Summit	73.3%	26.7%
Montgomery	72.4%	27.6%
Mahoning	71.4%	28.6%
Hamilton	67.9%	32.1%
Richland	66.7%	33.3%
Clark	66.7%	33.3%
Fairfield	66.7%	33.3%
Morrow	66.7%	33.3%
Franklin	65.3%	34.7%
Butler	60.0%	40.0%
Lucas	58.8%	41.2%
Lorain	54.5%	45.5%
Marion	50.0%	50.0%
Columbiana	50.0%	50.0%
Greene	50.0%	50.0%
Cuyahoga	42.0%	58.0%
Portage	40.0%	60.0%
Licking	25.0%	75.0%
Muskingum	25.0%	75.0%
Seneca	25.0%	75.0%
Champaign	0.0%	100.0%
Wayne	0.0%	100.0%
Scioto	0.0%	100.0%
Coshocton	0.0%	100.0%
Hardin	0.0%	100.0%
Jackson	0.0%	100.0%
Van Wert	0.0%	100.0%
Grand Total	58.2%	41.8%

There's a lot of students in a lot of schools, in a lot of counties not being served by the "choices" they are being presented with.

Research-Based Options for Education Policy Making

The first in a new series of two-page briefs summarizing the state of play in education policy research offers suggestions for policymakers designing teacher evaluation systems.

The paper is written by Dr. William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Teachers are important, and policies mandating high-stakes evaluations of teachers are at the forefront of popular school reforms. Today’s dominant approach labels teachers as effective or ineffective based in large part on a statistical analysis of students’ test-score performance. Teachers judged effective are rewarded, and those found ineffective are sanctioned.

While such summative evaluations can be useful, lawmakers should be wary of approaches based in large part on test scores: the error in the measurements is large—which results in many teachers being incorrectly labeled as effective or ineffective;1 relevant test scores are not available for the students taught by most teachers, given that only certain grade levels and subject areas are tested; and the incentives created by high-stakes use of test scores drive undesirable teaching practices such as curriculum narrowing and teaching to the test.

Summative initiatives should also be balanced with formative approaches, which identify strengths and weaknesses of teachers and directly focus on developing and improving their teaching. Measures that de-emphasize test scores are more labor intensive but have far greater potential to enrich instruction and improve education.

The paper goes on to give some key research points and advice for policy makers

• If the objective is improving educational practice, formative evaluations that guide a teacher’s improvement provide greater benefits than summative evaluations.
• If the objective is to improve educational performance, outside-school factors must also be addressed. Teacher evaluation cannot replace or compensate for these much stronger determinants of student learning. The importance of these outside-school factors should also caution against policies that simplistically attribute student test scores to teachers.
• The results produced by value-added (test-score growth) models alone are highly unstable. They vary from year to year, from classroom to classroom, and from one test to another. Substantial reliance on these models can lead to practical, ethical and legal problems.
• High-stakes evaluations based in substantial part on students’ test scores narrow the curriculum by diminishing or pushing out non-tested subjects, knowledge, and skills.
• Teacher evaluation systems necessarily involve trade-offs, and specific design choices are controversial, so it is important to involve all key stakeholders in system design or selection.
• To be successful, schools must invest in their teacher evaluation systems. An adequate number of highly trained evaluators must be available.
• Given the wide variety of teacher roles and the many factors that influence learning that are outside the control of the teacher, a wide variety of measures of teacher effectiveness is also indicated. By diversifying, the weakness of any single measure is offset by the strengths of another.
• High-quality research on existing evaluative programs and tools should inform the design of teacher evaluation systems. States and districts should investigate balanced models such as PAR and the Danielson Framework, closely examine the evidence concerning strengths and weaknesses of each model, and never attach high-stakes consequences to teachers which the evidence cannot validly support.

The paper can be read in full below

Research-Based Options for Education Policy Making

New study - Charters cut costs to make money

Seems obvious that charter school teachers work longer hours and are less experienced. How else can charter school management companies make a profit?

Charter school teachers tend to have fewer years of experience, and work longer hours than their counterparts in public, non-charter schools, a new analysis suggests.

Yet by another measure—the hiring of teachers from "highly selective" colleges—both charters and traditional public schools lag well behind the private school norm.

Many of those findings are consistent with past research, notes the author of the paper, Marisa Cannata of Vanderbilt University, whose work is included as part of a newly published book, Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations. But the analysis provides fresh insights into who goes to work in public and private sector schools, and what kinds of conditions they encounter when they get there.

Some are even going to crazy lengths to maximize profits, as Stephen Dyer discovers

There is an amazing story out of Florida now posted here and here that delineates just how outrageously high K-12, Inc. schools' student-teacher ratios are. K-12, Inc. runs Ohio Virtual Academy, with educates about 10,000 Ohio students.

Just a few tidbits. The heads of schools are told that they should have the following ratios in the following grades:

K-8: 60-72:1
9-12: 225-275:1

That's right. K-12, Inc. thinks it's a good idea to have kindergartners in classes as high as 72:1 and high school kids in 275:1 classes.

We really don't need research anymore, just look at any of these companies 10k financial filings.