Will change to #Ohio5of8 hurt art, music education?

A proposed state rule change will be the beginning of the end for school music and art — or a simple bureaucratic update with no real consequences — depending on which side of the debate to believe.

The Ohio State Board of Education is slated to debate and vote Tuesday on a change to a rule that governs how many music teachers, art teachers, school nurses and other similar support staff a district must employ.

Currently, districts are required to employ five people for every 1,000 students from one of eight areas: counselor, library media specialist, school nurse, visiting teacher, social worker and elementary art, music and physical education.

The state, however, does not track district compliance with this measure and has no real penalties if a district doesn't hire enough of the specialty positions. John Charlton, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said when the rule was enacted in 1983, it was part of the school funding formula and schools lost money if they didn't follow it.

"Right now, there is no real teeth in the law that says there would be any kind of consequence," he said.

(Read more at Cincinnati.com

Bill Seeks More Charter School Transparency And Accountability

Senate Bill 329, introduced in April by Senator Joe Schiavoni, is finally getting a hearing by the Senate Education Committee this week. The bill is striking in its simplicity — it seeks to hold charter school owners & operators accountable for how they spend public dollars. The simplicity of this bill also reveals just how lax Ohio’s oversight of charter school spending has been for the last decade and a half.

Here’s the one-sentence addition to Ohio Revised Code in SB 329 that could have a drastic change in exposing how charter schools are spending public tax dollars:

Sec. 3314.031. Each nonpublic operator of a community school and each nonpublic entity that sponsors a community school shall comply with section 149.43 of the Revised Code as if it were a public office with respect to all records pertaining to the management or sponsorship of the school.

(Read more at Plunderbund)

Teacher pay rules are off the chopping block for the Ohio House

COLUMBUS, Ohio - House leaders have dropped a plan to kill the minimum pay scale for teachers across Ohio.

Provisions in House Bill 343 would have eliminated a state requirement that teachers be paid a minimum amount based on their education level and years of experience.

But House leaders this morning removed those provisions, sending HB 343 to the full House without any reference to the pay schedule. The adjusted bill - described on the House floor as a "clean-up bill" that makes many small changes to previous laws - passed, with nobody raising any objections.

(Read more at the Plain Dealer)

More Money for Low-Performing Charter Schools

Brennan strikes again: More money proposed for the drop-out recovery schools

The billion dollar charter school operator, David Brennan, is about to get a huge early Christmas gift. His charter school empire includes dropout recovery charter schools. One of his dropout recovery charter schools graduated 2 out of 155 students in four years. A provision in HB 343, which is currently sailing through the House, will allow drop-out recovery charter schools to enroll students up to 29 years old for GED or diploma programs at a cost of $5,000 per student.

This provision in HB 343 exacerbates the transfer of tax money to private hands. For decades, Ohio public schools have provided adult basic education programs with remarkable results. The Johnny-come-lately state officials may be unaware of this.

Read more at Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio’s For-Profit Charter Schools Drag State Into Group Of Nation’s Worst Performers

The paper found that:
• Charter schools that hired no company, as a group, performed the best academically; those managed by nonprofits showed the best student academic growth; and those managed by for-profits scored lowest in both categories.

• Of the 16 lowest performing networks, 14 were managed by for-profit companies.
• The online charter schools Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and Ohio Virtual Academy, which account for a quarter of all charter enrollment, averaged the lowest student growth in the state.

• Of the 12 highest-performing charter school networks, eight hired nonprofit management organizations.

• $503 million of $920 million in public funding went to charter schools managed by for-profit companies. A little over half of the $920 million went to out-of-state companies.
• Out-of-state and for-profit companies enrolled 74,458 of the 119,271 Ohio charter school students.

• The 10 highest performing companies managed schools with above-average revenue, many propped up by private philanthropists who invest in successful academic models. Others got a boost from Cleveland voters, who approved additional local aid (about $1,000 more per pupil) for high-performing charter schools. A similar local levy failed in Columbus. The state offers no financial incentive for top-performers.

(Read more at the ABJ)

Better To Stay At Athens County Schools Than Charter Alternative

When charter schools were authorized in Ohio, the idea was to give pupils a chance to go to a better school than the public school in their home district. Figures from the state proficiency tests have indicated that in general this may not be happening.

Now a compilation of figures for all 611 public school districts by the Ohio Education Association and Innovation Ohio gives more precise information. Figures for each district include the amount of money taken from that district and which charter school it went to.

The state proficiency rating based on test scores, graduation rate and attendance are shown for the public schools and the charter school. Each entry also includes average years experience for the teachers at that charter school, how much the state gives the school and the percentage of the budget used for instruction.

All this is in a very user-friendly web site called KnowYourCharter.com. You can go to any of the 611 districts very easily.

I looked at the figures for the five districts in Athens County. There are slightly more than 200 pupils from Athens County going to a charter school. More than $1.5 million is being taken by the state and given to charter schools.

This is Athens County money leaving Athens County because there are no charter schools in Athens County. We don’t really need that kind of help from the state.

Not one of the pupils from Athens County is attending a charter school with a higher performance rating than the public school in their home district.

Furthermore, 64 percent of the money and 64 percent of the pupils are going to charter schools with lower performance ratings than the school in their home district.

In short, as far as Athens County is concerned, the charter school movement is not meeting its promise. It is not improving education in this county.

Part of the reason for the charter schools is the poor performance of schools in the big cities in Ohio. Are charter schools more help there? I looked up the figures for Columbus schools. There are more than 15,000 pupils from Columbus schools in charter schools and the state takes $116 million from the Columbus district.

The performance grade for Columbus schools is a D, and 30 percent —only 30 percent — of the Columbus pupils are in a charter school with a performance rating of D.

Maybe this awesome collection of data will wake up the Ohio Legislature and the Ohio Department of Education. The charter school movement in Ohio is in big trouble.

(Via AtthensOhioToday.com)