Revolving Door Of Teachers Costs Schools Billions Every Year

Every year, thousands of fresh-faced teachers are handed the keys to a new classroom, given a pat on the back and told, "Good luck!"

Over the next five years, though, nearly half of those teachers will transfer to a new school or leave the profession altogether — only to be replaced with similarly fresh-faced teachers.

We've been reporting this month on the pipeline into teaching — and hearing from teachers themselves about why they stay. Richard Ingersoll, who has studied the issue for years, says there's a revolving door of teacher turnover that costs school districts upwards of $2.2 billion a year.

Richard Ingersoll is a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies teacher turnover and retention. He says the constant teacher churn costs school districts more than $2.2 billion annually.

One of the reasons teachers quit, he says, is that they feel they have no say in decisions that ultimately affect their teaching. In fact, this lack of classroom autonomy is now the biggest source of frustration for math teachers nationally.

I spoke with Ingersoll to ask him about his research and what schools can do to fix the problem.

(Read more at NPR)

Voters Everywhere Reject Vouchers

According to data compiled by Edd Doerr of Americans for Religious Liberty, voters in every state when confronted with the opportunitity to weigh in on school vouchers and tax payer funeded private school issues have rejected the idea every time. Here are the results:

• Nebraska 1970 Tax code vouchers 57-43 against
• Maryland 1972 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Michigan 1978 Vouchers 74-26 against
• Washington, DC 1981 Tax code vouchers 89-11 against
• Utah 1988 Tax code vouchers 70-30 against
• Oregon 1990 Tax code vouchers 67-33 against
• Colorado 1992 Vouchers 67-33 against
• California 1993 Vouchers 70-30 against
• Washington State 1996 Vouchers 64-36 against
• Colorado 1998 Tax code vouchers 60-40 against
• Michigan 2000 Vouchers 69-31 against
• California 2000 Vouchers 71-29 against
• Utah 2007 Vouchers 62-38 against
• Florida 2012 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Hawaii 2014 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Nebraska 1966 Bus transportation 57-43 against (%)
• Idaho 1972 Bus transportation 57-43 against
• New York 1967 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 72-28 against
• Michigan 1970 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 57-43 against
• Oregon 1972 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 61-39 against
• Washington State 1975 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 60-39 against
• Alaska 1976 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 54-46 against
• Massachusetts 1986 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 70-30 against
• Maryland 1974 Auxiliary services 56-43 against
• Missouri 1976 Auxiliary services 60-40 against
• Massachusetts 1982 Auxiliary services 62-38 against
• South Dakota 2004 Auxiliary services 53-47 against
• California 1982 Textbook aid 61-39 against

Ohio charter-school-reform bill does not go far enough

This is the year when key officials -- from Gov. John Kasich and Ohio Democratic and Republican state lawmakers to opponents of charter schools and even some charter-school proponents -- had promised to reform the state's troubled charter-school system.

But the recent passage of House Bill 2, which allows sponsor-hopping among established charter schools and rejects Ohio Auditor Dave Yost's proposal that operating management companies should have to report some of their finances signals that, for all of the grand talk, Ohio's charter school reform may end up being far from comprehensive or significant.

The Senate should rise to the rescue. Ohio Sen. Peggy Lehner, a Republican from the Dayton-area, will present her bill soon and it must do what HB 2 has failed to do: Rein in charter schools so that youngsters get the best education possible and so that taxpayers can see where their money is going.

HB 2 does have some decent provisions -- it limits school leases to no more than 5 percent above market value, and forbids charter sponsors with the lowest ratings from the state from overseeing schools.

But it doesn't get to the core of the problems of Ohio's charter school system -- a system that spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars per year on schools subject to little public scrutiny or oversight and that are, in most parts of the state, even weaker academically than their public-school counterparts.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

House passes bill to reform Ohio charter schools

Attention on overhauling Ohio’s oft-criticized charter-school laws now turns to the Senate, where Democrats, state Auditor Dave Yost and charter supporters hope to see additions made to a bill that the House passed on Thursday with broad support.

House Bill 2 includes roughly three dozen changes aimed at transparency, accountability and oversight of charter schools that are spending upward of $1 billion a year in state taxpayer money to educate 100,000-plus students.

“There is no such thing as a perfect bill. But this is a good bill that moves us in the right direction,” said Rep. Mike Dovilla, R-Berea, a prime sponsor.

Dovilla said the bill is the most-comprehensive charter-school legislation in a dozen years. A wave of recent studies and media reports have highlighted issues with charter-school academic performance, attendance counts, lease deals and lack of transparency.

In addition to the House bill, Gov. John Kasich included charter-school provisions in his two-year budget, and Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, has held informal meetings with experts to craft legislation likely to be introduced early next week.

(Read more at Dispatch)

How money is corrupting charter school purpose

The new charter school movement is a compilation of money, marketing and the mistaken use of the free market theory, which is suppressing the schools’ founding ideology that supported innovative, energetic educational think tanks and lab schools to enrich and inform public education.

The new charter school movement lacks innovation, has minimal quality control, promotes conflicts of interest, is a breeding ground for fraud and makes for-profit corporations wealthy on our tax dollars.

I supported the creation of charter schools. However, the charter school movement has morphed into a money machine and is bad for altruistic charters as well as traditional public schools. I think parents deserve choice. However, I also believe we should strive for quality choice, which means we need a strong authorizing board that values quality and sets high standards.

The word has gotten out that charter schools are huge money-making machines. Corporate and education management companies are raking in millions from taxpayers. Taxpayers, regardless of whether they have children in schools, might want to start paying attention to the huge amount of taxpayer dollars these companies are consuming with absolutely no transparency and no accountability. Hard-earned dollars are disappearing into a black hole.

Read more here

Some fixes still needed

State lawmakers are on the verge of enacting significant, much-needed reform to Ohio’s weak and ineffective system of charter-school regulation.

A strong version of House Bill 2 could be remembered as the turning point at which the legislature got serious about making charter schools a high-quality educational alternative, rather than just an opportunity for certain donors to make hay.

Unfortunately, the bill, despite a number of excellent provisions, was set back on Tuesday by an amendment that reopens a loophole through which failing charter schools for years have clung to existence. The bill as introduced had language aimed at stopping “sponsor-hopping”; that’s when a bad school with a responsible sponsor knows the sponsor is about to shut it down for its poor performance and, to avoid that fate, quickly finds another, less-ethical sponsor.

The original bill would have stopped this by requiring a poorly performing school to seek approval from the Ohio Department of Education before changing sponsors. But that provision was removed. The amendment says that ODE permission to change sponsors would be required only in a school’s first four years of operation, or if it had changed sponsors any time in the previous five years. This means that a school established longer than four years could change sponsors at will, no matter how poorly the school is performing.

That could allow a badly run charter school to continue spending tax dollars to ill-serve students for years.

If this change isn’t undone by the House before it votes on the bill, the Senate should be sure to do so.

(Read more at the Dispatch).