School districts' plea to Columbus: Slash the number of tests our students have to take

The sheer number of state tests that Ohio students face each year is stifling creative learning, some educators say, and a coalition of Greater Cincinnati districts is lobbying state lawmakers to cut the number of mandated tests.

Mason, Deer Park and West Clermont school districts are among those lobbying to reduce the number of tests for students in grades 3-12 from two or three a year – depending on the grade level – to one. They recommend staggering English, math, science and social studies testing so that none take place in the same year. Some also want to eliminate Common Core-based testing for high schoolers, replacing those exams with the ACT college prep test for juniors.

"It would allow our teachers to be more innovative, creative and engaging with their instruction," Deer Park Superintendent Jeff Langdon told WCPO. "We're assessing our kids more than we ever have. And we're doing less teaching."

(Read more at WCPO.com.

More charter school controls wanted by the left and by Auditor Yost on the right

Charter school reform proposals are gaining broad support in Columbus, but there are voices on both the left and the right who say the $1 billion charter school movement in Ohio needs even stronger controls than what has been proposed.

Both Gov. John Kasich and Republicans in the Ohio House have made separate proposals to change the oversight and management of charter schools - public schools open to anyone, but which are privately-run.

A third proposal is coming soon from the Ohio Senate.

While both proposals so far are receiving praise for taking on some important issues, some want them to go further.

Auditor Yost wants clearer rules

State Auditor Dave Yost, also a Republican, said he plans to give the legislature his own suggested changes early next month. Those will include requiring more financial reporting by charter schools and the private companies that often run them, along with better definition of the role of those companies.

"I don't think that what needs to happen is on the table yet," Yost told The Plain Dealer.

Among Yost's concerns: that Ohio has no clear definition of when a charter school is acting as a private organization or when they take on a governmental role in educating children. That leaves private organizations receiving large amounts of tax money that don't have much accountability to the public.

The complaints from the left, coming this week from the Innovation Oho think tank and the Ohio Education Association, are mostly predictable. Both are groups that have been critics of charter schools.

But while they both want bad charter schools closed faster and want better financial reporting, they and most Democrats aren't fighting to shut down the charter movement, just the worst schools.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Ohio must stop increasing taxpayer subsidies for ill-regulated charters at expense of Ohio's public schools

There has got to be a better way to fund K-12th-grade charter schools than Ohio Gov. John Kasich's latest budget proposal that would further rob traditional public schools of millions of dollars in order to subsidize poorly regulated charter schools. The governor's plan would continue the cannibalization of Ohio's public schools.

That's especially so since the Ohio General Assembly itself has been all too willing over the years to pick the pockets of public schools to pad the pockets of the private interests behind for-profit charters and the lobbyists who represent them -- and far too unwilling to tighten Ohio's shamefully lax regulatory framework for charters.

This year, it appears charter reform supported by Kasich finally will emerge in the General Assembly. Increasing charters' taxpayer subsidy should await the results of that reform effort; pumping nearly $1 billion into their coffers, as the governor's plan envisions, is not the answer.

The Ohio General Assembly should also change a state law that puts traditional public school systems such as Akron on the hook for millions of dollars to provide special bus transportation to private and charter school students even beyond what they can afford to offer regular public students.

But let's go back to House Bill 64, the governor's two-year budget proposal. According to the Legislative Service Commission, a nonpartisan research group for state legislators, Kasich's budget would give charter schools nearly $1 billion in 2016 and 2017 by increasing the amount of state funding charters will receive for operating, base pay per student and facilities.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Legislators will change Gov. Kasich’s school-funding plan

Legislators are going to change Gov. John Kasich’s proposed school-funding plan. The only question is how.

House Republicans have turned to a soft-spoken veteran legislator and former Supreme Court justice to take the lead in deciding which levers to pull inside a complex proposal that would spend an additional $459 million over two years but leave more than half of all school districts with a funding cut.

“We are in the very preliminary stages,” said Rep. Bob Cupp, R-Lima, who served on the state’s high court from 2007 to 2012. “The (district funding) printouts we’ve seen have some anomalies. Until you pull it apart to see why it’s doing that, it’s hard to say whether it’s working properly or not.”

For example, of the new money in Kasich’s proposal, 74 percent would go to midsize and large urban districts, while rural districts as a group would see almost no new money.

The governor’s plan would provide maximum 10 percent annual funding increases to some relatively wealthy districts such as New Albany, Westerville and Indian Hill near Cincinnati, but it would cut funding for every district in Appalachian Ohio’s Perry and Adams counties.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times starting in 1997 that Ohio’s system of school funding relied too much on local property taxes, to the point that it left some students with an inadequate education. The court dropped jurisdiction of the case (before Cupp became a justice), and disagreement remains over whether the order was ever met.

(Read more at the Dispatch).

5 Reasons Charters Schools Need Real Reform

A recent Gongwer report serves to highlight the influence the charter school sector still holds over the Legislature, dominated by law makers who have taken political contributions from charter operators for almost 2 decades. In recent weeks it has become apparent that the Charter school lobby has been on a full court press, hiring the likes of former staffers for GOP House Speaker Batchelder to lobby law makers, and crisis communications companies like the one ran by Mark Weaver, a former high level GOP staffer.

The chair of the House Education Committee said Wednesday he is open to expediting the closure of failing charters, but also thinks failing traditional public schools ought to be addressed.

The comments from Rep. Bill Hayes (R-Harrison Twp.) followed testimony from the Ohio Education Association on charter overhaul legislation (HB 2*), which garnered additional support and has yet to draw an opponent.

Ohio Education Association President Becky Higgins said the measure is a starting point for strengthening charter laws. She outlined three principles that OEA and Innovation Ohio had laid out Tuesday as necessary for overhauling the community school sector. (See Gongwer Ohio Report, February 17, 2015)

She called for the accelerated closing of failing charters; making them subject to the same public records laws as other public entities; and a charter funding model that does not penalize district schools.

Chairman Hayes said after the meeting he would support faster closure if the state can identify when a school is definitely failing.

"But I'm also interested in...what are we doing about (district schools). Are we doing the same thing there?"

The effort to find equivalency between the crisis in the Ohio charter school sector and traditional public schools as a means to distract people from meaningful reforms has been a talking point promulgated by charter boosters since reform became a very real proposition. Parents, tax payers and law makers would be wise to ignore these efforts to distract from meaningful reform for a number of reasons.

1. There is no equivalency

Charter schools receive substantially more state aid than traditional schools, while being exempt from over 150 laws that traditional schools are subject to - all while picking and choosing their own students.

2. Measures to address struggling traditional schools have been taken

In 2012 we have the Cleveland plan to address Cleveland City Schools. In 2013 we had the Columbus Plan to address Columbus City Schools. Now, in 2014 we need a Charter School plan to address Ohio's charter school sector.

3. Ohio's Charter Schools are MUCH worse than Traditional Schools

According to the latest performance data from ODE, 80% of Ohio's Charter schools are failing - scoring a D or F on their performance Index score. Meanwhile, over 80% of traditional school buildings are rated C or higher. There simply is no quality equivalence here. Talk of such is nonsense designed to distract from necessary and meaningful reforms.

4. Ohio's Charter Schools are a criminal enterprise

Charter schools in Ohio have felons sitting on their unaccountable boards, and executives going to jail for theft and fraud on a constant basis. These are situations that simply do not exist in traditional public schools. There is no equivalency.

5. Ohio's Charter Schools have shady financial practices

Traditional public schools do not spend the majority of their revenues on rent, unlike a large number of charter operators, who are paying excessive rent to shell companies they control. Nor do Traditional public schools make profits so that the administrators can buy lavish Florida vacation homes, nor do traditional public schools spend money on trips to Turkey to further political causes. There is simply no equivalency to be had here.

Given just how much failure and fraud has been uncovered and reported, the days of giving the benefit of the doubt should be over. Anything less than directly addressing these very real problems is a failure on all our parts to protect the students who attend these schools and the tax payers who are paying for them.

Law makers need to ignore the rhetoric of the charter school lobby and deliver real meaningful reform that will banish the charlatans and incompetents from the Ohio educational landscape forever.

Charter legislation is welcome, but more reform is needed

Via wwwKnowYourCharter.com

HB 2 Analysis

Summary

We welcome the introduction of HB 2. Strengthening the laws on charter sponsors is certainly needed. But there is more work to be done to make sure that comprehensive charter school reform that benefits Ohio’s students and taxpayers is achieved. One of the problems with the current system is that too much money is going to poor performing charters at the expense of kids in traditional public schools. We look forward to working with lawmakers to ensure meaningful accountability and transparency for Ohio’s charter school system.

Provision-by-Provision Analysis

• After July 1, 2016, the calculation of a school district’s report card rating will no longer exclude the academic performance of conversion charter schools that primarily enroll dropout prevention students age 16 to 22.
  • Good: More analysis of impact is needed before determining.
  • Bad: This may create a disincentive for school districts to create dropout prevention conversion charter schools. If so, it may lead to increased student enrollment in non-conversion charter schools focused on dropout prevention (White Hat).
• Says conversion dropout recovery schools have to be included in report card data starting next school year.
  • Good: More transparency and accountability
  • Bad: Going after conversion Dropout Recovery schools means only dropout recovery programs run by school districts.
• Says fiscal officers have to be employed by the school.
  • Good: Operators can’t employee the people looking over the money anymore, as is typically done.
  • Bad: Can still be independent contractor, so could still be connected with operators in some fashion
• Un-grandfathers fiscal officers from having to be certified. Any that didn’t have to be certified have to be certified by a date certain.
  • Good: All charter fiscal officers have to be certified the same as public school fiscal officers
  • Bad: None really
• No employee of a school district, vendor, or ESC can sit on the board.
  • Good: Greatly reduces conflict of interest issues
  • Bad: Not clear if operators are vendors. Could see ways of creating business relationships that would let operator employees (or ICs) sit on the board. Also, if trying to build bridges between districts and charters, why would excepting school district people from the board? Appears to only apply to membership on a governing authority for a charter school sponsored by a school district or ESC.
• Board members have to file annual disclosure statements showing where they may have family members or business associates working with operators or sponsors of school.
  • Good: Reveals the web of relationships between operators and charters
  • Bad: None really
• Requires the financial reports and enrollment records of the school be filed with the sponsor, board and fiscal officer on a monthly basis.
  • Good: Somewhat better transparency
  • Bad: Doesn’t mention the public, whose money funds these things. Should also require filing of these documents with ODE, where the enrollment records could be linked to funding on a monthly basis.
• Sponsors have to file annual reports with ODE detailing how they spend money providing oversight of their charters
  • Good: Will let the public see how sponsors do or don’t provide oversight
  • Bad: No real consequences. Department should establish standards and fines or punishment for failing to follow them. This disclosure/reporting requirement should also apply to operators, where the vast majority of funding often goes.

• Requires the sponsor and charter contract that’s filed with ODE include information about the leasing and purchase of the school building, including mortgage, lease, annual costs of each and the name of the lender
  • Good: This is the Imagine provision, which makes public all leases and purchases of charter buildings
  • Bad: It’s just a reporting requirement, no punishment for excess payments. Information about facilities should also include disclosure of whether the purchase/lease involves close relatives or companies associated with any individuals who are sponsors, governing board members or the operator/employees, i.e. self-dealing.

• The school’s financial plan is subject to review and approval by ODE. Current schools have to submit the last two plans
  • Good: More transparency on financial statements
  • Bad: None really

• ODE in consultation with Auditor shall provide guidance and assistance to charters for internal financial controls
  • Good: Provides more uniform and tighter controls over a charter’s internal finances
  • Bad: No consequence for failing to follow them

• ODE by December 2015 will have a list of operators and all their contracts with schools
  • Good: Much needed transparency on charter school operators
  • Bad: None really. Should confirm that these would be considered public records held by ODE.

• ODE will establish a report card for charter school operators
  • Good: Finally be able to establish which charter operators are doing good and bad jobs
  • Bad: No specific delineation of which are for profit or non-profit. Should require a minimum performance benchmark before an operator is allowed to renew or enter new contracts to operate schools.

• Any new or renewed contract between school and operators have to lay out how early termination of the operator works, establish procedures dealing with it, and delineate which property is owned by the operator and which by the school.
  • Good: Makes the operation of the school clearer and more transparent
  • Bad: This is the Brennan provision and tries to deal with consequences of the current White Hat Supreme Court case. The issue is not which private entity (either for profit or non-profit) owns the furniture. The issue is that the property purchased with taxpayer dollars should be owned by the taxpayers who bought it, not the private entities. Should be on guard for the potential that contract termination guidelines could also be used by operators to “fire” their sponsors in order to link up with a more lenient sponsor. Also, there should be additional elements required for contracts between a governing authority and an operator, such as disclosure of financial expenditures, profit margin projection/caps, salaries, etc.

• Any charter that gets a D or F on report card for performance index or value added (or dropout recovery that fails to meet standards) has to get ODE approval before it can switch sponsors.
  • Good: Prevents sponsor shopping and would force low performers to get in shape. This provision holds the greatest hope for eliminating poor performers.
  • Bad: Not clear what the ODE standard for approval for new sponsorship would be. Could be strong. Could be weak.

• Requires sponsors of schools using a blended learning model to review to review these plans, including attendance requirements and how the school will document participation in learning opportunities.
  • Good: This seems to be targeted at the attendance findings of the Yost investigation, where some charter schools claimed that missing students were part of a blended learning program (even though the school had no documentation that such a plan was in place).
  • Bad: This is merely an additional sponsor “assurance” required by ODE, which are rarely corroborated or enforced. Blended learning protocol in charter schools should be substantially the same as in traditional public schools, especially with regard to student attendance.

• Definition of “sponsor” includes an “independent contractor of the sponsor.”
  • Good: While a statutory definition of “sponsor” is useful, including “independent contractor of the sponsor” is problematic.
  • Bad: Allowing a sponsor to outsource its duties and responsibilities to an “independent contractor” can be used as a simple mechanism to avoid accountability. Using an independent contractor may render meaningless the sponsor approval process and other sponsor accountability provisions in law. In essence, independent contractors can go “sponsor shopping.” The phony sponsor knows ahead of time that no work will be required; they’ll just collect the fees and pass most of it along to the independent contractor.

• Prohibits a sponsor from selling any goods or services to any community school it sponsors.
  • Good: Important provision that reduces conflicts of interests.
  • Bad: This does not prohibit the conflict of interest whereby operators use the school’s operating funds buy goods and services (e.g. curriculum) from related companies the operator has established, i.e. self-dealing.

• Requires the State Board of Education to make recommendations by December 31, 2015 regarding a) performance standards for charter schools with a majority of students who are children with disabilities receiving special education, and b) the feasibility of removing the exemption from closure for these schools.
  • Good: This is a step toward protecting these students and addressing the lack of meaningful accountability for these schools.
  • Bad: This will be a long process.

Summary

There are positive things in this bill. The strongest provision is probably the ODE approving all sponsor swaps. But there’s a lot that’s not in it that could undermine much of this, such as what the approval standard will be for ODE to allow sponsor swapping. We’ve seen how weak they are now as the Cleveland Transformation Alliance debacle over charter approval worked its way out. There are good steps on transparency, but there’s little accountability attached to the transparency. And the Brennan provision seems like a pretty weak response to the White Hat case. Ideally, the state says the public owns the property; it’s not owned by the private entities using it.