Tri-Valley Super Blasts PARCC and ODE

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Here's a copy of a letter the Superintendent of Tri-Valley schools is sending to parents

We have started to receive some calls regarding the school district’s position on whether or not parents should consider opting out their children from PARCC testing. I know that many schools around the state have been dealing with this issue for a while, and it appears to have now reached Tri-Valley.

While I am not (and never have been) an advocate of the PARCC Testing, Ohio got into this testing debacle with little to no input from local school officials. Therefore, I feel no responsibility to stick my neck out for the Department of Education by defending their decisions. What’s happening now... in my opinion, is that parents have figured out what is being forced upon their children, and the proverbial rubber... is beginning to meet the road. However, it is not our goal to discourage nor undermine the laws of our governing body.

Therefore, our position as a school district is that we do not discourage nor encourage a parent’s decision to opt out their child. We must respect parental rights at all costs. This is the very reason I advocate for local control. Our own Tri-Valley Board of Education is in a much better position to make sound decisions for the families of our school district, than are the bureaucrats in Columbus and Washington. I say that with no disrespect toward our own legislators, whom have worked diligently behind the scenes to address the over-testing issue. The unfortunate reality is that the parents who have contacted the school district up to this point, are the parents of high achieving students who undoubtedly would do well on these assessments. We will effectively be rating school districts and individual teachers based on test scores that do not include many of their highest achieving students.

I heard a speaker make the following statement recently, and I think it is a perfect way to illustrate the issues with PARCC testing and over-testing in general:

“When you have a low birth weight baby, you don’t solve the problem by weighing the baby more often” I am quite confident that reason will ultimately prevail. In the meantime, we will respect the rights of our parents to make the best decisions for their children while simultaneously following the laws and policies of the Ohio Department of Education.

Sincerely,
Mark K. Neal
Superintendent
Tri-Valley Local School District

Things are getting heated in the real world.

Technology Test Trouble Plaguing Ohio

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We're getting reports from multiple sources of technology related problems with tests. Here's just one screen shot sent to us by a educator administering a MAP test

Rather than more tax cuts benefiting the few, the Governor needs to invest in school technology

Gov. John Kasich wants to add teeth to charter school oversight rules and let charters seek local tax levies

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Gov. John Kasich's budget proposal Monday would offer charter schools in Ohio two new potential funding sources -- a $25 million facilities fund and the ability to seek local tax levies from voters -- while putting a greater focus on charter school sponsors, or authorizers, as a way to improve school quality.
[...]
-- Charter schools sponsored by an "exemplary" sponsor can seek a property tax levy from voters to pay for operations.

This change is similar to a major piece in the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, the 2012 state law that allows the district here to share a property tax with charter schools that it sponsors or otherwise signs a partnership agreement with.

Since voters in Cleveland passed a 15-mill levy that fall, the district has split one mill of that levy -- a little over $8 million total -- with 14 charter schools in the city.

Voters in Columbus rejected a similar proposal in 2013.

As in Cleveland, charters cannot put a levy on the ballot by themselves. Charters will have to go to the local school board and make a case for the district to put the tax on the ballot.

Charter schools could ask for a tax as a single school, or as a group of schools.

"The proposal would give the community the choice to partner with charter schools and help those schools that are positively contributing to the public education of the students in their communities," Ross said. "Voters should have the opportunity to provide local funds to support the education of students who attend charter schools."

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Charter bill is just "tweaking" and "window dressing" that ducks real issues with charter schools, says key Democrat in Ohio House

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The new House Bill 2 is just window dressing and a distraction while the core issues with charter schools in Ohio aren't touched, State Rep. Teresa Fedor said today.

Fedor, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, said the bill isn't the major charter school reform bill it's being trumpeted as. Instead, she said, House Republicans are avoiding taking on tough issues because many receive significant campaign donations from charter management companies, like White Hat Management of Akron.

"We need to put their feet to the fire," she said, using a play on the word entrepreneur. "These educaneurs are feeding Republicans million of dollars into their campaigns to keep their heads in the sand."

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

What's in the new House charter school bill?

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The new House Bill 2, introduced Wednesday as a charter "reform" bill, has several detailed changes in how the charter schools are managed and operated, as well as how finances are to be reported.

We discussed the bill with State Rep. Kristina Roegner, a Hudson Republican, who is co-sponsoring it.

To understand the proposed changes, remember how charter school management is organized in Ohio. Sponsors, known as authorizers in most states, help charter schools start and then oversee them. Sponsors have primary responsibility for policing schools to make sure they meet standards.

Then a governing board acts like a typical school board and decides how the school should be run. The governing bodies are required to be non-profit, but many hire for-profit companies to manage the schools.

That's the case with some of the statewide online schools and with all of the schools run by White Hat Management -- the local boards hire the companies to provide education in the schools.

In recent years, there have been complaints that sponsors or management companies control the governing boards, that schools cannot easily fire management companies and that finances of private operators are kept secret.

Roegner said she divides the changes in the bill into three categories: Accountability, transparency and responsibility, with several changes for each.

Accountability:

• Roegner said she hears complaints of school districts creating dropout recovery charter schools just to "off-load" struggling kids into them. Then the kids with low test scores don't drag down district report card results.

The bill calls for district-created dropout recovery schools to be included in report cards.

"If you've got students who aren't performing very well, you can't prop up your report card by offloading students."

• Contracts between schools and their sponsors, or authorizers, must include more detail about expected academic performance of the schools and details about schools facilities, rental or loan costs.

• Poor charter schools can't "hop" from one sponsor to another if a sponsor, the organization respoinsible for making sure they do a good job, cracks down on them.

"Schools that are failing...they do what's called sponsor hopping," Roegner said. "They switch from one sponsor to another."

The law requires any charter with a D or F grade for its "performance Index" score and a D or F grade on its overall value-added score showing student academic progress to receive approval from the Ohio Department of Education to change sponsors.

Transparency:

• To make conflicts of interest known, the bill requires members of charter school boards to disclose if they have any family members or business associates doing business with the school.

• Charter school sponsors receive three percent of a school's revenue to monitor the school, advise it and make sure it meets standards. The bill would require sponsors to report annually how it spends that money.

• Starting in 2016, the state would start reporting the performance of charter management companies or organizations, not just the results of individual schools.

Right now, for example, there is no state measure of how well all the Breakthrough charter schools in Cleveland or all the Constellation charter schools are doing as a group. While there are state report cards for individual schools, the management groups are not rated.

Responsibility:

• The bill prohibits charter school sponsors from selling goods or services to the schools they oversee.

• Employees of school districts or vendors serving a school district may not sit on the governing board of a charter school sponsored by the district.

• Treasurers of charter schools can no longer be hired by the schools' sponsor. A school's governing board will have to do those hirings, under the bill.

(REad more at Cleveland.com)