Education News for 05-22-2012

Statewide Stories of the Day

• Ohio's Dropout Numbers Jump At Higher Rate; Columbus Sees Decrease (WBNS 10 CBS)

CINCINNATI - Ohio's dropout rate increased between 2002 and 2009 at a higher rate than all other states except Illinois. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Ohio's dropout rate jumped from 3.1 percent to 4.2 percent in 2008-09. Columbus City Schools saw a decrease between the 2006-07 school year and the 2008-09 school year, 10TV News reported. The dropout rate was 7.4 percent in 2006-07, 5.8 in 2007-08 and 2.2 in 2008-09. Ohio's dropout numbers for 2009 are just slightly higher than the national average. Read More…

• Northeast Ohio public high schools among nation's best, Newsweek says (Plain Dealer)

Twelve Northeast Ohio high schools are on Newsweek magazine's list of the nation's top 1,000 public high schools. Chagrin Falls High School led the region at 93rd in the country and fourth among the 35 Ohio schools on the list, which was released this week. Wyoming High School, near Cincinnati, topped the Ohio list. Other Northeast Ohio high schools singled out by Newsweek for national ranking were: Orange (151), Solon (152). Read More…

• Fewer students missing graduation because of OGT (Beacon Journal)

Only 10 high school seniors in Akron Public Schools out of more than 1,300 have come up short on the Ohio Graduation Test this year and will not graduate with their classes, even though they’ve earned the required academic credits. In 2007, the first year the OGT became a requirement for a diploma, 95 seniors missed graduation, prompting many frantic and angry phone calls to board members. “It’s extremely gratifying to see that number drop the way it has,” said board President Jason Haas. Read More…

• Academic commission owes city taxpayers an explanation (Vindicator)

“In order to ensure a seamless transition, the new treasurer must have the same level of expertise and the same insight and foresight as the man who is leaving.” When we expressed that opinion last month about Youngstown City School District Treasurer William Johnson’s impending departure, we had every reason to believe he had performed his difficult job with a high level of professionalism. After all, there were no complaints about Johnson’s tenure from members of the board of education or from the state-mandated Academic Distress Commission. Read More…

Local Issues

• Westerville schools to stay in black until ’17 (Dispatch)

Westerville schools will be able to stay off the ballot two years longer than expected, district officials announced last night, largely because of an unusually high number of teacher retirements. Administrators said this year that a five-year levy voters approved in March would keep the district’s budget in the black through fiscal year 2015. But the district now will be solvent through fiscal year 2017, Treasurer Bart Griffith said. The announcement was based on a five-year forecast that the Westerville Board of Education approved 3-0 last night. Read More…

• Doubling up bus routes returns to budget talks at Zane Trace (Chillicothe Gazette)

KINGSTON - A plan to cut the number of Zane Trace bus drivers in half is back on the table. The plan initially was suggested as the district's board of education looks for ways to reduce its budget by $1.3 million over the next two years. This past week, a motion to approve staggered school hours for the upper and lower grades -- which would have allowed the district to double up on bus routes and use fewer drivers -- failed to reach a vote. Read More…

• Boardman students to pay more for meals (Vindicator)

BOARDMAN - Boardman Local School District students will pay more for a school lunch in the fall. The board of education, at a meeting Monday, approved raising the price of a school lunch by 25 cents. Currently, the price of a lunch is $1.75 for elementary students, $2 for middle-school students and $2.25 for those in high school. The raise is a result of the federal government’s Equity in School Lunch Price Act. Read More…

• School board OKs five-year forecast (Courier)

FOSTORIA - Fostoria school board approved a five-year financial forecast Monday which predicts declining revenues and increasing expenses. The district's projected cash balance declines from more than $4.1 million June 30 to a negative balance of more than $2.8 million by June 30, 2016. However, that figure does not include potential revenue from three replacement or renewal levies which are scheduled to expire during the five-year time period but could be put before voters for renewal. Read More…

• Four fired Granville teachers reinstated (Newark Advocate)

GRANVILLE - Four of 21 staff positions cut through a Reduction In Force action in March were reinstated Monday by the Granville Board of Education. Thanks to the retirement of seven teachers, a bus driver, a librarian and the school nurse in addition to two resignations, the reinstatements became possible, Superintendent Jeff Brown said. "When we enacted this Reduction in Force in March, I said that it would change probably the next day. I was right," Brown said. Six of the retirements were approved at the April board meeting. Read More…

Editorial

• Despite initial misgivings, charter school alliance supports the Cleveland Plan (Plain Dealer)

The Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS) supports the Cleveland Plan. We have long advocated for portfolio plans, like Cleveland's, that focus on improving low-performing schools and that provide parents with a range of choices that include district and charter schools. The only part of the plan that troubled us was the Transformation Alliance. As originally proposed, the Alliance would be comprised of a group of people selected by the mayor who would have veto authority on all new charter schools opening in Cleveland. Read More…

Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools

Via

– Dick DeVos: The DeVos family has been active on education issues since the 1990′s. The son of billionaire Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, Sr., DeVos unsuccessfully ran for governor of the state of Michigan, spending $40 million, the most ever spent in a gubernatorial race in the state. In 2002, Dick DeVos sketched out a plan to undermine public education before the Heritage Foundation, explaining that education advocates should stop using the term “public schools” and instead call them “government schools.” He has poured millions of dollars into right-wing causes, including providing hundreds of thousands of dollars into seed money for numerous “school choice” groups, including Utah’s Parents for Choice in Education, which used its PAC money to elect pro-voucher politicians.

– Betsy DeVos: The wife of Dick DeVos, she also coincidentally happens to be the sister of Erik Prince, the leader of Xe, the mercenary outfit formerly known as Blackwater and is a former chair of the Republican Party of Michigan. Mrs. DeVos has been much more aggressive than her husband, pouring her millions into numerous voucher front groups across the country. She launched the pro-voucher group All Children Matter in 2003, which spent $7.6 million in its first year alone to impact state races related vouchers, winning 121 out of 181 races in which it intervened. All Children Matter was found breaking campaign finance laws in 2008, yet has still not paid its $5.2 million fine. She has founded and/or funded a vast network of voucher front groups, including Children First America, the Alliance for School Choice, Kids Hope USA, and the American Federation for Children.

- American Federation for Children (AFC): AFC made headlines recently when it brought together Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Tom Corbett (R-PA) and former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee at a major school choice event in Washington, D.C. AFC is perhaps the most prominent of all the current voucher groups, having been founded in January 2010 by Betsy DeVos. Working together with its PAC of the same name and the 501c(3) organization also lead by DeVos, the Alliance for School Choice, it has served as a launching pad for school choice legislation across the country. AFC made its mark in Wisconsin by pouring thousands of dollars into the state legislative races, donating $40,000 in the service of successfully electing voucher advocate Rep. Kathy Bernier (R) and donating similar amounts to elect Reps. Andre Jacque (R), John Klenke (R), Tom Larson (R), Howard Marklein (R), Erik Severson (R), and Travis Tranel (R). DeVos front group All Children Matter also donated thousands to many of these same voucher advocates. Altogether, AFC spent $820,000 in Wisconsin during the last election, making it the 7th-largest single PAC spender during the election (behind several other mostly right-wing groups with similar agendas).

- Alliance for School Choice (ASC): The Alliance for School Choice is another DeVos front group founded to promote vouchers and serves as the education arm of AFC. In 2008, the last date available for its financial disclosures, its total assets amounted to $5,467,064. DeVos used the organization not only for direct spending into propaganda campaigns, but to give grants to organizations with benign-sounding names so that they could push the radical school choice agenda. For example, in 2008 the organization gave $530,000 grant to the “Black Alliance for Educational Options” in Washington, D.C. and a $433,736 grant to the “Florida School Choice Fund.” This allowed DeVos to promote her causes without necessarily revealing her role. But it isn’t just the DeVos family that’s siphoning money into the Alliance for School Choice and its many front group patrons. Among its other wealthy funders include the Jaquelin Hume Foundation (which gave $75,000 in 2008 and $100,000 in 2006), the brainchild of one of an ultra-wealthy California businessman who brought Ronald Reagan to power, the powerful Wal Mart Foundation (which gave $100,000 in 2005, the Chase Foundation of Virginia (which gave $9,000 in 2007, 2008, and the same amount in 2009), which funds over “supports fifty nonprofit libertarian/conservative public policy research organizations,” and hosts investment banker Derwood Chase, Jr. as a trustee, the infamous oil billionaire-driven Charles Koch Foundation ($10,000 in 2005), and the powerful Wal Mart family’s Walton Family Foundation (more than $3 million over 2004-2005).

- Bill and Susan Oberndorf: This Oberndorfs use their fortune, gained from Bill’s position as the managing director of the investment firm SPO Partners, to funnel money to a wide variety of school choice and corporate education reform groups. In 2009, their Bill and Susan Oberndorf Foundation gave $376,793 to AFC, $5,000 to the Center for Education Reform, and $50,000 to the Brighter Choice Foundation. Additionally, Bill Oberndorf gave half a million dollars to the school choice front group All Children Matter between 2005 and 2007. At a recent education panel, Bill Oberndorf was credited with giving “tens of millions” of dollars of his personal wealth to the school choice movement, and said that the passage of the Indiana voucher law was the “gold standard” for what should be done across America.

- The Walton Family Foundation (WFF):The Wal Mart-backed WFF is one of the most powerful foundations in the country, having made investments in 2009 totaling over $378 million. In addition to financing a number of privately-managed charter schools itself, the foundation showered ASC with millions of dollars in 2009. It also gave over a million dollars to the New York-based Brighter Choice Foundation, half a million dollars to the Florida School Choice Fund, $105,000 to the Foundation for Educational Choice, $774,512 to the Friends of Educational Choice, $400,000 to School Choice Ohio, and gave $50,000 to the Piton Foundation to promote a media campaign around the Colorado School Choice website — all in 2009 alone. WFF’s push for expanding private school education and undermining traditional public schools was best summed up by John Walton’s words in an interview in 2000. An interviewer asked him, “Do you think there’s money to be made in education?” Walton replied, “Absolutely. I think it will offer a reasonable return for investors.” (He also did vigorously argue in the same interview that he does not want to abolish public education).

The bait and switch of school "reform"

In recent weeks the debate over the future of public education in America has flared up again, this time with the publication of the new book "Class Warfare," by Steven Brill, the founder of American Lawyer magazine. Brill's advocacy of "reform" has sparked different strands of criticism from the New York Times, New York University's Diane Ravitch and the Nation's Dana Goldstein.

But behind the high-profile back and forth over specific policies and prescriptions lies a story that has less to do with ideas than with money, less to do with facts than with an ideological subtext that has been quietly baked into the very terms of the national education discussion.

Like most education reporters today, Brill frames the issue in simplistic, binary terms. On one side are self-interested teachers unions who supposedly oppose fundamental changes to schools, not because they care about students, but because they fear for their own job security and wages, irrespective of kids. In this mythology, they are pitted against an alliance of extraordinarily wealthy corporate elites who, unlike the allegedly greedy unions, are said to act solely out of the goodness of their hearts. We are told that this "reform" alliance of everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the Walton family to leading hedge funders spends huge amounts of money pushing for radical changes to public schools because they suddenly decided that they care about destitute children, and now want to see all kids get a great education.

The dominant narrative, in other words, explains the fight for the future of education as a battle between the evil forces of myopic selfishness (teachers) and the altruistic benevolence of noblesse oblige (Wall Street). Such subjective framing has resulted in reporters, pundits and politicians typically casting the "reformers'" arguments as free of self-interest, and therefore more objective and credible than teachers' counterarguments.

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