FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS IMAGINE SCHOOLS TO PAY $1 MILLION FOR “SELF-DEALING”

A federal judge in Missouri blistered Imagine Schools, saying the lease it forced on a local school it managed constituted “self-dealing.” The judge ordered Imagine to pay the school more than $1 million.

School board members at the now-closed Missouri school sued Imagine, insisting that it acted in its own best interest, not the best interest of the school.

The facts of the case mirror arrangements in Ohio and other states where Imagine schools pay exorbitant rent to an Imagine subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. The high lease payments leave little money for classroom instruction and help explain the poor academic records of Imagine schools in both states.

(Read more at ProgressOhio)

Student Testing Time in Ohio May Drop

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSPD) -- The time students spend taking standardized testing could soon be dropping in Ohio.

A report from the Ohio Department of Education included recommendations to reduce testing by nearly 20 percent. Many of the changes would require the Ohio General Assembly to act.

"I am committed to improving testing efficiency and reducing the testing burden on students while maintaining accountability in our schools," said Richard Ross, superintendent of public instruction at the Ohio Department of Education.

ODE surveyed several districts, teachers, and stakeholders and found that the average Ohio student spends nearly 20 hours each year taking tests. Students use up another 15 hours doing practice tests.

"Testing serves an important purpose for monitoring and improving student learning," Ross said.

Under the proposal, students would spend no more than 2 percent of their school year on testing and 1 percent on practice tests. The state would also do away with the fall third grade reading test, but test students over the summer if they are found to need it. Students would also no longer be mandated to take math or writing diagnostic tests before third grade.

(Read more at wspd.com).

Cash-strapped Field district will cut ties to charter school

In 2010, with a depleted budget and waning local support for new taxes, the cash-strapped Field school district heeded a state suggestion to cut costs and boost revenue — or be taken over.

Following the state’s advice, the board sponsored a charter school, Falcon Academy of Creative Arts. The board found the charter school a home in a vacant elementary school on the other side of the high school’s football field.

The arrangement allowed the largely property-tax-funded rural school district, as a sponsor and landlord, to collect some of the charter school’s state aid and charge rent on an unused asset.

The catch?

The charter school’s per-pupil funding would be taken from the school district, with Field schools essentially recording a cash loss for each kid who chose the academy.

Today, amid record enrollment at Falcon Academy, the state aid flowing away from Field schools has topped $1 million. That dwarfs the $112,000 the district collects in rent and a 3 percent sponsorship, or oversight, fee.

(Read more at Ohio.com)

Groundbreaking fight to unionize two Cleveland charter schools is delayed while the schools and union negotiate

The Ohio Federation of Teachers and the I Can charter school network have put their legal fight on hold over unionization efforts at two schools while the sides try to negotiate a settlement.

The groundbreaking attempt to make the schools the only charter schools in Ohio with a union stalled last spring before employees could take a vote.

The sides were scheduled for a hearing Tuesday on charges that I Can improperly blocked organization efforts last spring and fired teachers active in the push. If an administrative judge for the National Labor Relations Board found I Can guilty of unfair labor practices, teachers could automatically have been unionized.

Such an order would be a major step in Ohio, where only one charter school -- public schools that receive state tax dollars, but are privately run -- has been unionized before. That school has since closed.

Instead, the sides delayed the hearing indefinitely to continue negotiations.

Unionization efforts started last year

I Can operates seven schools in Cleveland, Akron and Canton and has close ties with the Cleveland school district, even receiving some local tax money.

The unionization efforts focused on two of the schools: Northeast Ohio College Preparatory School in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood and University of Cleveland Preparatory School at East 40th Street and Chester Avenue.

Organizing votes scheduled last year were canceled.

Teachers at the two schools and the Ohio Federation of Teachers, which hopes to unionize several charter schools in Ohio, filed complaints this summer that I Can fired seven organizers and took other steps to intimidate employees against organizing.

Among accusations against I Can were that employees were led to believe they were under surveillance, employees were pressured to reveal who was leading organizing efforts, and that pay and benefit improvements were made just before the scheduled vote to discourage union membership.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

When public schools get more money, students do better

Beginning 40 years ago, a series of court rulings forced states to reallocate money for education, giving more to schools in poor neighborhoods with less in the way of local resources. Critics such as Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution, argued these decisions were simply "throwing money at schools." His research found that there was little correlation between how much schools spent and how well their students performed on tests.

It's a view still held by many politicians today, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.). "We spend more than any other state in the country," he said a year ago. "It ain't about the money. It's about how you spend it -- and the results."

More recent research, however, has found that when schools have more money, they are able to give their students a better education. A new study on those who went to school during the school-finance cases a few decades ago found that those who attended districts that were affected by the rulings were more likely to stay in school through high school and college and are making more money today.

The authors, Kirabo Jackson and Claudia Persico of Northwestern University and Rucker Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley, released a revised draft of their as-yet-unpublished paper this week. The benefits were most obvious for students from poor families. They found that a 10 percent increase in the money available for each low-income student resulted in a 9.5 percent increase in students' earnings as adults. A public investment in schools, they wrote, returned 8.9 percent annually for a typical pupil who started kindergarten in 1980.

The findings are evidence that public schooling can be a way for children who grow up in poverty to overcome their circumstances, Johnson argued.

(Read more at the Washington Post).

New House education committee chairman wants to cut the "glut" of testing, have less "toxic" talks about the Common Core

State Rep. Bill Hayes expects to have a busy first year as chairman of the education committee of the Ohio House, with legislation on the Common Core, standardized testing and charter schools all likely to come before the panel.

"Mostly I've been getting condolences," joked Hayes, 71, a Licking County Republican.

He replaces Gerald Stebelton, a Lancaster Republican, who left office at the end of 2014 because of term limits and returns to his law practice.

The Plain Dealer talked with Rep. Hayes last week about his background and his views on several major issues expected to come up this year. Here's a quick look at the newest major player in education policy for the state.

Who is he? Hayes has been a member of the legislature and the House Education Committee since 2010, after losing two earlier bids for the House.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)