Kasich education team is out of control

A week after the Governor's orchestrated school funding plan announcement, we are still waiting on him to release his actual school funding numbers

Ohioans still can’t see how their tax dollars will be divided among local school districts under Gov. John Kasich’s school-funding plan.

Although Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols had said on Friday that the information likely would be released yesterday, it turns out there was a problem with some of the data and “it’s still being worked on.”

Kasich adviser Barbara Mattei-Smith compiled and used the data to help the administration formulate its funding plan, which was released on Thursday, Nichols said.

The administration initially said such a record didn’t exist, then said it was merely her “notes” and didn’t have to be made public, before now saying the information Kasich relied on in the $15.1 billion education plan apparently was wrong.

Perhaps if his hand picked Superintendent wasn't fired for serious ethics violations, and his hand picked President of the State Board of Education spent less time comparing her ideological enemies to genocidal maniacs, and perhaps if his acting State Superintendent and his deputy weren't both looking for new jobs, we might have had the numbers by now. But if all that wasn't enough, news breaks today of even more shocking failure of leadership at the Ohio Department of Education

The Ohio Department of Education said it fired its chief operating officer after learning he was under investigation for possessing child pornography and then finding such images on his work computer.

John T. Childs, 47, of 2239 Planetree Court on the Northwest Side, was fired on Nov. 2, said John Charlton, an Education Department spokesman. Childs had been on paid administrative leave since around Oct. 15.

“He was under investigation by local law enforcement for child pornography on his home computer. We put Childs on paid administrative leave until we could investigate the alleged charges and we could look at his work computer as well,” Charlton said.

The department turned Childs’ work laptop computer over to the State Highway Patrol, which found thumbnail images "of pornographic nature."

The Governor's education team is out of control. We wish we were just talking about bureaucratic incompetence, but sadly we are now well into the realm of serious failures of ethics and criminal behavior.

Survey finds parent-teacher relationships strong--Teachers given grade of "A"

Parenting magazine and the National Education Association today announced the results of a groundbreaking joint survey* of 1,000 public school parents and educators that explored the roadblocks to effective parent-teacher communication. When parents were asked to “grade” their relationship with their child’s teachers, nearly half (45 percent) gave the teachers an “A,” with the majority on both sides categorizing the relationship as “great” and “open.”

Despite the strong relationships, the survey revealed that the two sides differ on some key issues. Sixty-eight percent of teachers reported difficulty in dealing with parents. A similar percentage of parents–63 percent–reported they’d never had difficulty with teachers. More than one-quarter of parents stated their biggest challenge has been teachers’ perceived lack of understanding for their concerns, while one in three teachers cited parents’ lack of understanding of their child’s issues as their biggest challenge.

The survey also revealed that:

• Nearly two out of three parents say their child’s teachers offer a supportive response to concerns when they are expressed, and that teachers are willing to help resolve concerns; nearly 80 percent of teachers consider parents to be supportive.
• Nearly 88 percent of parents consider their child’s teacher a partner in achieving success in school, but just over half of teachers, 54 percent, feel that parents do their part at home to ensure that kids get the most out of classroom learning.
• The majority of parents, 8 out of 10, feel their child’s teachers are well equipped with the skills necessary to communicate with them.
• Although 48 percent of parents feel that their opinion is always taken seriously by their child’s teachers, only 17 percent of teachers feel their opinion is taken seriously just as often by their students’ parents.

More at the link.