Education News for 03-12-2013

Local Education News

• Columbus schools' cuts won't be so deep (Columbus Dispatch)

The Columbus school board will have to cut $15 million -- not the $25 million it thought it needed to reduce -- from its budget, the district announced this afternoon…Read more...

• Dublin schools’ new leader gets less pay, benefits (Columbus Dispatch)

The Dublin school district will spend less on its new superintendent than on his predecessor, even with a benefits package that equals about half of the new superintendent’s salary…Read more...

• Columbus schools cancel big cuts as $25 million error found (Columbus Dispatch)

A week ago, Columbus schools Superintendent Gene Harris warned that the budget ax might chop the length of the school day, eliminate bus rides…Read more...

• Board gets high school busing update (Newark Advocate)

High school busing has been more popular with students then previous estimates, Transportation Supervisor Jason Kee told the Newark Board of Education…Read more...

• Wauseon schools to eliminate 4 teachers (Toledo Blade)

Wauseon Exempted Village Schools Board of Education members on Monday approved almost $400,000 in budget cuts, which includes the elimination…Read more...

Why No Rights At Work Is Wrong

Borrowed totally from OEA.

OUR OPPONENTS ARE ATTACKING WORKING AND MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE AGAIN

Our out-of-touch opponents are trying to deceive voters again like they did last year. This is worse than SB 5. It doesn’t have to be this way. The so-called, trick-titled “right to work" is WRONG because it is an unsafe and unfair attack on workers' rights, good jobs, families and the middle class. We call it No Rights at Work is Wrong and we don’t need it.

IT'S UNFAIR

If you work hard and play the rules, you should be treated fairly You should be able to earn a fair wage for a hard day’s work RTW is unfair because it degrades the value of hard work and the worker

IT IS AN ATTACK ON WORKERS' RIGHTS

RTW strips workers of their collective bargaining rights Voters have spoken on this issue: they support collective bargaining rights Workers should be able to speak up for themselves, their coworkers and their community on the job

IT HURTS JOBS/COMMUNITY

RTW means lower wages and fewer benefits for you, me, all of us We need good paying jobs for working and middle-class Ohioans Communities thrive and grow when Ohioans have good paying jobs

IT'S UNSAFE

It makes it harder to collectively bargain for life-saving equipment, staffing and other safety issues for the brave men and women that protect us, like police officers and firefighters It takes away the professional voices of those we trust to take care of our children and families, such as teachers and nurses It is wrong because it means less money, lower wages and fewer benefits for you, me and all of us in the middle class. Communities thrive and grow when Ohioans have good paying jobs. Let's stand up together and stick together for a decent standard of living.

We Deserve It.

The Long-Run Impact of the Reduction in Classroom teachers

A recent study, by The Hamilton Project, looked at the impacts of cuts to government employment rolls, including educators. Their findings should open a lot of eyes.

One area where there is a sound body of literature to draw upon is the returns to education – specifically, the impact of class-size on student achievement and lifetime earnings. Drawing on this evidence, we quantify the impact of reductions in the number of public school teachers on our country’s future.

In 2011 there were over 220,000 fewer teachers in America’s classrooms than in 2009, a reduction accounting for nearly forty percent of the decrease in public-sector jobs during this period. This decline in the number of teachers increased the student-teacher ratio by 5.9 percent.

To determine the consequences of these reductions, we assumed that class-size increases were applied equally across all grades in K-12 schools. We then drew from recent research that links future earnings with class size to assess the wage impacts for today’s children, when they become working-age adults.1 All of this is explained in more detail here, but the bottom line is that this research suggests that the Great Recession will live on for decades through the lower future wages for our children.

Of course, an important test for the efficiency of government spending is whether the benefits exceed the costs. The savings from these cuts, in terms of teacher salaries and benefits, are $11.8 billion per year nationwide. While a significant figure, it is substantially smaller than the estimated present value in foregone earnings of $49.3 billion dollars for the children, whose education is affected by larger class sizes. To put a fine point on these findings, this translates into a per-student, per-year loss of nearly $1,000 in future earnings. In summary, the foregone benefits are more than four times larger than the current budget savings!

Investing in classroom teachers then, not only improves the economy today, but vastly improves the economy of the future. There's hardly a better return on investment that can be made. Someone ought to tell columbus lawmakers.

Politicians Ignore Research, Say Smaller Class Size Makes No Difference

Class size matters.

In examining both Project STAR and SAGE, experts found that students in the smaller classes performed better than those in larger classes. Minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students made the most gains, according to the Center for Public Education (CPE).

Haimson said those disadvantaged students, who may not receive as much academic support outside of the classroom as white, middle-class students do, will only improve if placed in small classes in which a teacher can give students the specific attention and support they need.

“We will never successfully narrow the achievement gap without smaller class sizes,” she said.

Furthermore, despite previous research that suggests small class sizes only make a difference in students’ education in Kindergarten through the third grade, CPE reported that students placed in smaller classes have higher scores through the beginning of high school than do their peers consistently placed in larger classes.

And because reducing class size produces such academic benefits, Haimson said keeping classes small is ultimately the more cost-effective option.

“Many studies have shown that class size reduction will pay for itself many times over with better healthcare, increased earning potential and lower crime rates,” Haimson said. “With education spending, the point is not to be as cheap as possible, it’s to be as smart as possible.”

Overpaid? Hardly

The National Education Policy Center debunks that ridiculous AEI report on teachers being overpaid by 52%, and finds evidence to the contrary

This report compares the pay, pension costs and retiree health benefits of teachers with those of similarly qualified private-sector workers. The study concludes that teachers receive total compensation 52% greater than fair market levels, which translates into a $120 billion annual “overcharge” to taxpayers. Built on a series of faulty analyses, this study misrepresents total teacher compensation in fundamental ways. First, teachers’ 12% lower pay is dismissed as being appropriate for their lesser intelligence, although there is no foundation for such a claim. Total benefits are calculated as having a monetary value of 100.8% of pay, while the Department of Labor disagrees, giving a figure of 32.8%—a figure almost identical to that of people employed in the private sector. Pension costs are valued at 32%, but the real number is closer to 8.4%. The shorter work year is said to represent 28.8% additional compensation but the real work year is only 12% shorter. Teachers’ job stability is said to be worth 8.6%, although the case for such a claim is not sustained. In sum, this report is based on an aggregation of such spurious claims. The actual salary and benefits for teachers show they are in fact undercompensated by 19%

TTR TchrCompens Heritage 0

A teacher schools the Dispatch

When we read this article in the Dispatch by senior editor Joe Hallet, we were taken aback a little by how fawning it was, and how it seemd to suffer from quite a lot of selective amnesia. One Worthington school teacher thought so too, and forwarded to us his email to Mr. Hallet.

Joe

I read your column on Sunday and came across this line:

(Kasich) used Senate Bill 5 to take on public-employee unions, whose pay and benefit packages were growing unsustainable for taxpayers, in part because their local government and school officials had forgotten how to say no.

I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. The front page article ("Public, private compensation in the same ballpark.") in the Dispatch on Sunday demonstrated that public employee salaries and benefits are on par with those in the private sector. By your logic, combined with the article on pg 1 Sunday, you could say that private sector salaries have also grown unsustainable since private employees have a slightly richer salary and benefit package than public employees.

No discussion of the impact of public employee salaries on budgets is complete without pointing out that, since 2005, the income tax was cut 21%, the estate tax was eliminated, and the locally collected tangible personal property (TPP) tax was replaced with the state collected commercial activities tax (CAT). The income tax cut resulted in a sustained decrease at the state level in tax revenue which was evident even prior to the recession even with the addition of new CAT revenues. In 2005 total state revenue was $56.5 billion - by 2011 that had fallen to an estimated $50.5 billion which is $43.5 billion in 2005 dollars!

On the local level, governments and school districts were literally robbed of tax revenue by the state legislature's elimination of the TPP and estate tax. All of this has dealt a crushing blow to the ability of local governments and school districts to sustain services by starving them of local revenue as well as state aid.

These tax changes were heralded in 2005 as essential to economic growth in Ohio with the promise that the reforms would result in job growth in our state. I think the record on this score shows that tax reform in Ohio has not achieved the promised results and has instead put incredible stress on the state and local governments' ability to provide vital and expected services.

It is disingenuous to say that public salaries and benefits are unsustainable while ignoring the impact tax reform has had on Ohio's ability to fund its government. Furthermore, the front page of the Dispatch on the same day as your column refutes the notion that public salaries and benefits are out of line or unsustainable.

Mark Hill, Worthington school teacher
Columbus OH

We previousy wrote about this issue in an article titled "GUTTING EDUCATION FOR A CUP OF CHEAP COFFEE"