A difficult year

The Shanker Institute has a very comprehensive look at the year in corporate education reform research. It covers 3 basic areas

• Charter schools
• Performance pay
• Value-added in evaluations

All topics we have covered in some length at JTF. You can view a lot of the research we have brought forward at our document center at SCRIBD.

If 2010 was the year of the bombshell in research in the three “major areas” of market-based education reform – charter schools, performance pay, and value-added in evaluations – then 2011 was the year of the slow, sustained march.

Last year, the landmark Race to the Top program was accompanied by a set of extremely consequential research reports, ranging from the policy-related importance of the first experimental study of teacher-level performance pay (the POINT program in Nashville) and the preliminary report of the $45 million Measures of Effective Teaching project, to the political controversy of the Los Angeles Times’ release of teachers’ scores from their commissioned analysis of Los Angeles testing data.

In 2011, on the other hand, as new schools opened and states and districts went about the hard work of designing and implementing new evaluations compensation systems, the research almost seemed to adapt to the situation. There were few (if any) “milestones,” but rather a steady flow of papers and reports focused on the finer-grained details of actual policy.*

Nevertheless, a review of this year’s research shows that one thing remained constant: Despite all the lofty rhetoric, what we don’t know about these interventions outweighs what we do know by an order of magnitude.

Alas, the piece concludes with much the same problem we have been documenting all year long, the headlong, unreasoned, non collaborative rush to implement corporate education reform policies whose impacts at best are unknown and at worst are highly damaging to student achievement and the public education system

Overall, then, it was a productive research year in the three areas discussed above, and it might have been even more productive but for the fact that, in too many cases, the policy decisions this work could have guided had already been made.

It has been a difficult year for those seeking to defend public education from the plethora of corporate reform policies, and next year is bound to see the continuation of this struggle. But once where there were few voices opposing these damaging policies of privatization, there are now many more.

The corporate education reformers are going to have to work a lot harder and be more accountable than they have ever have.

State budget decisions severely harming communities

When the governor and legislature passed the buck on balancing the state's budget, the effects rippled down through hundreds of schools districts, districts like Dublin city schools.

Dublin city schools are excellent with distinction. You don't get any better than that. Now being threatened by the reckless budget, this school district is scheduled to lose $10.9-million of state funding over the next two years. Like so many other districts, Dublin has to choose between damaging cuts, or asking the community for their continued support.

Two central Ohio school districts gave glimpses last night of what might be cut if their tax issues on the November ballot fail.

Potential cuts in Dublin schools include “well over 100 teachers,” among other jobs, Superintendent David Axner said at the district’s Board of Education meeting.
[...]
Those cuts would vary depending on whether board members decided to dip into reserve funds. The plan that officials presented last night assumes the board would use about half of the $15 million reserve. But the district still would eliminate about 150 jobs, limit transportation and reduce elective classes.

Although officials haven’t decided on exact numbers, they would eliminate more than 100 teaching jobs from all grade levels, Axner said.

High-school students, who now choose from six foreign languages, would have fewer options. Bus routes would have fewer pickup areas, Deputy Superintendent Mike Trego said. Class sizes would increase.

Not only would an excellent school district be harmed if this levy fails, but at a time when the governor is talking about creating jobs, thousands of quality, important jobs are being lost in school districts like Dublin all over the state.

The budget that passed is now having a three pronged negative effect on the quality of Ohio as a place to live, work and study.

1. It is hurting our future by making it harder to educate our state's children. Less teachers, greater class sizes, less academic choice, less extra curricula activities. Students don't get a second bite at their childhood education.

2. It is hurting our economy. At a time when job creation is hard to come by, we have purposefully decided to destroy thousands of quality jobs that help fuel local economies.

3. Passing the buck to the local level causes either cuts in school quality which adversely affects property values, or causes increases in local taxes to help offset the reckless budget cuts made by the state.

The legislature didn't need to make these choices, other options were open to them, it's hard to imagine a more damaging policy choice than the one that was made.

ps. If you live in the Dublin city school district, vote yes on issue 15.