False choices in charter schools

In an interesting article pointing out some of the problems with charter school expansion, the Plain Dealer observes that in some districts, underperforming charters are sucking money away from their contemporary traditional public schools which are rated much higher.

Charter school supporters say all Ohio parents should be able to make the choice for their children, no matter how well their home districts may be doing overall. But district officials say it's unfair for their budgets to take a hit when they're doing a good job according to the state's criteria. And it's especially galling when students leave for a charter school with a lower state ranking.

"I have no problem if we're serving students with better options, but paying for a student to go from an excellent district school to a poor-performing charter doesn't seem right," said State Sen. Joe Schiavoni, a Democrat who represents Mahoning County. "It doesn't make sense."

As well as sucking money away in order to provide a lower quality education, this story also reveals one of the other major problems with "choice". Parents don't necessarily make rational choices when it comes to their child's education. Factors other than school performance play significant roles. When parents realize their mistake, the cost to their child and the district can be significant

In Parma, for example, the district gets a total of $2,030 per pupil from the state while it has to shell out $5,700 for each of the 900 or so students who attend charters.

"You can do the math," said Treasurer Daniel Bowman. "I don't care what anyone says, that is local property tax money going out that the community approved for a specific purpose and the legislature has decided to spend another way."

By Bowman's calculation, one-fourth of the Excellent-rated district's total state funding is used for fewer than 1,000 charter school students.

The picture is similar in North Olmsted, which drove school board member Terry Groden to testify in Columbus on behalf of Schiavoni's bill. Last school year, 133 students opted for charters. That was about 3 percent of the total enrollment, but they took almost 10 percent of the district's state aid with them, Groden said.

Forty-two of those students ended up returning to the district, which was rated Excellent on its last state report card.

"They came back from charter schools that were not rated at all or were rated lower than North Olmsted," Groden said. "I'm concerned with what we have to do, or undo, with these kids to get them back up to the level of performance we want to see and how that affects the children around them."

Expanding Ohio's failing charter school experiment further as HB136 would do would only serve to amplify these kinds of problems.

Scapegoats

A letter from a teacher, getting to the heart of a lot of the anger about SB5 we hear from other teachers and public employees.

Senate Bill Five is an attempt to scapegoat public workers for an economic crisis that began in the private sector with Governor Kasich’s blessing. Now, members of the Ohio legislature want to strip workers of their pay, benefits, and rights, knowing full well that the state’s economic problems are by no means related to those workers.

As a congressman, Kasich voted and lobbied for the complex laws that allowed financial institutions to destroy the national economy, including the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. Kasich and Governor Walker in Wisconsin want to scapegoat public sector workers for problems that began, with their approval, in the private sector!

Firefighters and teachers in Dayton did not peddle and trade risky mortgage securities for self-serving banks. Police and EMTs in Cleveland had nothing to do with the government bailing out financial institutions that engaged in the gross mishandling of people’s lives and fortunes. Corrections officers and nurses in Cincinnati did not develop a system of shadow banks that wrote off-balance derivatives, nor did they have anything to do with bait-and-switch predatory lending. Still, the legislature wants to blame public workers.

Rather than creating scapegoats, Kasich should reexamine his role in the financial crisis. In order to protect middle class public-sector workers, voters should vote no on Issue Two.

Sincerely,
Matthew Blair

SB5 heading for humiliating defeat

PPP has just released the final poll of the campaign and the results show that SB5 is headed for a massive defeat on Tuesday, if the We Are Ohio campaign gets all its voters out to vote.

Democrats are almost unanimous in their opposition to SB 5, supporting repeal by an 86-10 margin. Meanwhile there's division in the Republican ranks- 30% are planning to vote down their Governor's signature proposal while only 66% are supportive of it. Independents split against it by a 54/39 spread as well.

If this margin holds on Tuesday night it will be a humiliating defeat for John Kasich. Kasich continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country with only 33% of voters approving of him to 57% who disapprove.

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%
PPP Nov 6th	36%	59%

More crazy teacher evaluation ideas

It seems there's even more crazy ideas about how to evaluate teachers than we originally thought. Now, one school district wants to include chance grocery store encounters to the evaluation matrix. No, we're not joking.

A teacher who has a chance encounter with a parent at a grocery store and chats about school can earn credit toward a financial bonus.

That is the way it is in the Challis School District in Idaho, a state where nearly 30 school systems have adopted teacher evaluation systems that include as one measure how well teachers get parents involved in their child’s education.

In the five-school Challis system, teachers are supposed to make contact with the parents of each of their students at least twice every three months, according to the Associated Press.

A teacher can send a note home to fulfill one of the “contact” requirements, though the other must be face to face. It can, Challis Superintendent Colby Gull was quoted as saying by the AP, be fulfilled by a chat in the supermarket during an unexpected encounter with a parent.

That counts for official contact purposes, he said, “as long as they’re talking about what’s going on in the classroom and the parent is informed about their student.’’

Nation's Report Card' Distracts From Real Concerns For Public Schools

Imagine you’re a parent of a seven-year-old who has just come home from school with her end-of-year report card. And the report card provides marks for only two subjects, and for children who are in grade-levels different from hers. Furthermore, there's nothing on the report card to indicate how well these children have been progressing throughout the year. There are no teacher comments, like "great participation in class" or "needs to turn in homework on time." And to top it off, the report gives a far harsher assessment of academic performance than reports you've gotten from other sources.

That's just the sort of "report card" that was handed to America yesterday in the form of the National Assessment of Education Progress. And while the NAEP is all well and good for what it is -- a biennial norm-referenced, diagnostic assessment of fourth and eighth graders in math and reading -- the results of the NAEP invariably get distorted into all kinds of completely unfounded "conclusions" about the state of America's public education system.

'Nation's Report Card" Is Not A Report Card

First off, let's be clear on what the NAEP results that we got yesterday actually entail. As Diane Ravitch explains, there are two different versions of NAEP: 1) the Main NAEP, which we got yesterday, given every other year in grades 4 and 8 to measure national and state achievement in reading and math based on guidelines that change from time to time; and 2) the Long-Term Trend NAEP given less frequently at ages 9, 13, and 17 to test reading and math on guidelines that have been tested since the early 1970s. (There are also occasional NAEPs given in other subjects.) So in other words, be very wary of anyone claiming to identify "long term trends" based on the Main NAEP. This week's release was not the "long term" assessment.

Second, let's keep in mind the NAEP's limits in measuring "achievement." NAEP reports results in terms of the percent of students attaining Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic levels. What's usually reported out by the media is the "proficient and above" figure. After all, don't we want all children to be "proficient?" But what does that really mean? Proficiency as defined by NAEP is actually quite high, in fact, much higher than what most states require and higher than what other nations such as Sweden and Singapore follow.

Third, despite its namesake, NAEP doesn't really show "progress." Because NAEP is a norm-referenced test, its purpose is for comparison -- to see how many children fall above or below a "cut score." Repeated applications of NAEP provide periodic points of comparison of the percentages of students falling above and below the cut score, but does tracking that variance really show "progress?" Statisticians and researchers worth their salt would say no.

Finally, let's remember that NAEP proficiency levels have defined the targets that all states are to aim for according toto the No Child Left Behind legislation. This policy that has now been mostly scrapped, or at least significantly changed, due to the proficiency goals that have been called "unrealistic."

Does this mean that NAEP is useless. Of course not. As a diagnostic tool it certainly has its place. But as the National Center on Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) has concluded, "NAEP is better than many state tests but is still far from the 'gold standard' its proponents claim for it."

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Despite lay offs TFA circling in Cincinnati

Cincinnati public schools are experiencing the full impact of the recently passed budget and it's provisions. The district reduced its general fund budget by $8.6 million to $458.6 million this year due to state funding cuts, and the end of 2012-13, the state will have reduced its funding to CPS by $55 million.

Naturally this is causing serious budget problems for a well performing large urban district, including lay-offs that were announced earlier in the year

Cincinnati’s School Superintendent announced Friday more than 200 staff positions will be cut next year to help the district balance its budget.

Mary Ronan said in a release the reductions include 158 teachers, 33 central office employees and 17 additional school-based workers.

According to the same article, CPS has been closing schools and reducing staff for the past decade. Since 2001-2002, more than 1,100 positions have been eliminated and 17 schools have been closed.

To alleviate some of this pressure, CPS has a permanent levy on the ballot this November. Polling shows this levy to be neck and neck.

But another provision in the state's budget is also rearing its head. Teach for America (TFA).

Teach for America wants to put its teachers in Cincinnati Public Schools, possibly as early next year.

But both parties must agree. So far, the district has remained non-committal.

"We're really just looking to see if districts are interested in partnering," said Ben Lindy, who is on Teach for America's site development team.

Lindy made a pitch to CPS board Wednesday. It was the first such outreach in Ohio since Gov. John Kasich signed a law in April allowing TFA to locate here.

It might raise some eyebrows, that at a time when the district is having to lay off highly qualified and experienced educators and their support professionals, TFA is circling with promises to fill classrooms with their under prepared, inexperienced amateurs. As we wrote a short time ago, it is literally harder to become a casino card dealer in Ohio than it is to be a TFA recruit.

Cincinnati would be better served passing their levy and ensuring that they continue to have classrooms staffed with experienced professionals that have helped guide CPS to its current creditable performance levels.