State Board of Education

The Dispatch has an article on the State Board of Education elections that will also take place on November 6th

The state board consists of eight appointees of the governor and 11 elected to four-year terms. Seven are up for election on Tuesday.

Perhaps the most-important work ahead for the board will be to hire the next state superintendent. The office has been vacant since early August, when Stan Heffner resigned after the release of a politically charged ethics probe. The board also must deal with data rigging by school districts, implementation of Ohio’s new third-grade reading guarantee and more-rigorous Common Core curriculum standards, and oversight of the new school-funding formula that Gov. John Kasich plans to unveil next year.

Elections for these offices typically appear quite low down on the ballot, so voters should be mindful to go through their entire ballot. As the Dispatch notes, lot of important issues go through the State Board of Education.

A quick look at some of the pro-public education candidates

Ann E. Jacobs
District 1 (Northwest Ohio)
As an elected member of the State Board, Ann e. Jacobs is an attorney and owner of Jacobs Law Offices, LLC, in Lima. She has worked as a trial attorney for the equal employment Opportunity Commission and as assistant attor- ney general for the Attorney General of Ohio.

Previously, Jacobs served as president, vice president and member of the Shawnee Local School Board, and as a member of the Apollo Jr. Vocation Board. her professional and civic member- ships include the California Bar Association, the District of Columbia Bar Association, the Ohio Bar Association, the South Carolina Bar Association; member of the Senior Citizens Board; Board of Trustees member of the YWCA; Board member of Marimor Industries; and elder and deacon of Market Street Presbyterian Church. Jacobs earned her bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and her Ju- ris Doctor from Catholic University.

Richard Javorek
District 5 (exurban Cleveland)
Richard Javorek is a retired teacher living in Chippewa Lake, Ohio. he taught social stud- ies in the Brunswick City School District for over 30 years and was an adjunct faculty member at Bry- ant & Stratton College in Cleveland. he has served as Chair of the Ohio Social Studies Resource Cen- ter and was an advisor to both the Ohio Center for Law Related edu- cation and the Ohio Department of education. Javorek received the Ashland Oil Golden Apple Award and, in 2000, he was named Teacher of the Year at Willetts Middle School. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Baldwin Wallace College and his master’s degree from Kent State University. he is an ordained minister and an Assistant District Commissioner in the Boy Scouts.

Michael L. collins
District 6 (Columbus Metro)
As an elected member of the State Board, Michael L. Collins currently serves as president of Promotions One, Inc., a marketing agency, with ex- perience directing regional events including first Night Columbus, Waterfire Columbus, the Columbus Marathon and the Columbus Race for the Cure. As an educa- tion advocate, Collins has served as a member and president of the Westerville City Schools Board of education; a member of the Westerville City Schools liaisons, business operations, student activities, levy campaigns and long-range planning committees; and chair of the Westerville City Schools Levy Cam- paign. his two collegiate degrees in education have helped him be effective in these roles. he is also ac- tive in the community. His service includes work with the Westerville Chamber of Commerce, Westerville Rotary Club, Westerville Parks & Recreation Advisory Board, and Columbus events Council, Metro Denver health and Wellness Commission and various committees for the Ohio School Boards Association. He has also volunteered as a coach for youth football and wrestling.

James J. collum
District 7 (Northeastern Ohio)
James J. Collum is an Ohio native and a product of strong public schools. After graduating from Glen Oak high School, Collum earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at The University of florida in 1995. he then enrolled at The Ohio State University College of Law and received his Juris Doctor in 1999. Collum has been in private practice since 2000, maintaining his law office in the Belden Village area of Canton. During the past decade, he has dedicated his practice to advocating for individuals and their rights—representing them against large companies in Title VII discrimination cases, unemployment claims, severance negotiation as well as numerous other employment- related cases. he also represents individuals in other types of civil matters, including personal injury, business formation and litigation, real estate and wills and trusts.

Stephanie Dodd
District 9 (Southeastern Ohio)
Stephanie L. Dodd, a native of Zanesville and resident of Licking Township, owns SLD Consulting, a small business that works with candidates, organizations and issue-based groups to achieve maximum fundraising results. Dodd possesses a strong understanding of the need for innovative strategies, the ability to analyze data and the commitment that is essential for success. “The parents, students and taxpayers of the 9th District need a representative who is 100 percent dedicated to improving Ohio’s schools,” Dodd said. As a small business owner, taxpayer and parent, Dodd brings a unique perspective to the State Board of education that will emphasize the role of Ohio’s schools in the state economy.

Todd Book
District 10 (Southern Ohio)
Todd Book is a product of the West Portsmouth Public Schools in Scioto County, Ohio. he graduated from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He obtained his law degree from the nation’s oldest law school at the College of William and Mary and then returned to Portsmouth to begin his law practice. In 2002, Book was elected to the Ohio house of Representatives, serving four terms before term limits forced him to leave the legislature. While a state representative, Book was known as a hard-working member who focused on policy over politics. He held the positions of assistant minority leader, caucus chair and chairman of the Rules Committee. He was one of the few members that voted against No Child Left Behind. Book is heavily involved with his community and is a member of the Portsmouth Civic forum.

Mary Rose Oakar
District 11 (Cleveland)
As an elected member of the State Board representing District 11, Mary Rose Oakar serves approximately two-thirds of Cuyahoga County. She was elected to her current four-year term in 2008. Oakar served in three legislative bodies. She was a Member of the Cleveland City Council, a 16-year Member of the United States Congress and a Member of the Ohio house of Representatives. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Ursuline College and a master’s degree from John Carroll University. Oakar taught at Lourdes Academy and east high and, from 1968 to 1975, at Cuyahoga Community College. For 6 1⁄2 years, she was president of the American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which describes itself as the largest Arab-American grassroots civil rights organization in the U.S. Active in the community, Oakar is a member of the housing Board for Project Afford, a volunteer at the West Side hunger Center, a member of the Ohio farm Bureau, and a member of the “former Members of U.S. Congress.”

Schedule Conflicts

As most people know, the majority of public school teachers are paid based on salary schedules. Most (but not all) contain a number of “steps” (years of experience) and “lanes” (education levels). Teachers are placed in one lane (based on their degree) and proceed up the steps as they accrue years on the job. Within most districts, these two factors determine the raises that teachers receive.

Salary schedules receive a great deal of attention in our education debates. One argument that has been making the rounds for some time is that we should attract and retain “talent” in the teaching profession by increasing starting salaries and/or the size of raises teachers receive during their first few years (when test-based productivity gains are largest). One common proposal (see here and here) for doing so is reallocating salary from the “top” of salary schedules (the salaries paid to more experienced teachers) down to the “bottom” (novice teachers’ salaries). As a highly simplified example, instead of paying starting teachers $40,000 and teachers with 15 years of experience $80,000, we could pay first-year teachers $50,000 and their experienced counterparts $70,000. This general idea is sometimes called “frontloading,” as it concentrates salary expenditures at the “front” of schedules.

Now, there is a case for changes to salary schedules in many places – bargained and approved by teachers – including, perhaps, some degree of gradual frontloading (though the research in this area is underdeveloped at best). But there is a vocal group of advocates who assume an all-too-casual attitude about these changes. They seem to be operating on the mistaken assumption that salary schedules can be easily overhauled – just like that. We can drastically restructure them or just “move the money around” without problem or risk, if only unions and “bureaucrats” would get out of the way.**

Salary schedules aren’t just one-shot deals. When teachers and districts negotiate salaries, they don’t start with a blank slate. Schedules are, in many respects, evolving systems, which emerge over time as a result of continuous negotiation (and, in bargaining states, approval) by both parties.

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Teacher Pay: U.S. Ranks 22nd Out Of 27 Countries

A few months ago, the widely respected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development released Building a High Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from Around the World, which analyzes how high-performing countries have created highly professional and effective teaching forces. Included in this report is a telling chart which shows that American teachers are paid less than teachers in many other countries.

For each participating nation, OECD calculated the ratio of the average salaries of teachers with 15 years' experience to the average earnings of full-time workers with a college degree. The U.S. ranked 22nd out of 27 countries on this measure. In the U.S., teachers earned less than 60% of the average pay for full-time college-educated workers. In many other countries, teachers earn between 80% and 100% of the college-educated average.

Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession

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Let's Say You're a Teacher

So--let's say you're a teacher.

Not "just a teacher," but one of those special teachers we hear about in news and policy discussions-- the supposedly rare educator who has passionate disciplinary expertise, a toolbag full of teaching strategies and genuine caring for their students. You're in education because you want to make a difference, change the world, raise the bar. You actually love teaching, finding it endlessly variable and challenging. You plan to spend a long time in the classroom.

So you begin pursuing a graduate degree in education. You notice that getting a masters degree in education is scorned in policy world as having little impact on student learning. A few of your classes are tedious. But some of them are genuinely interesting and valuable, pushing you to think more deeply about the work you do and increasing your content knowledge. Even though pundits declare your advanced degree does not correlate with increased student achievement, you press on. You're enjoying the intellectual stimulation and--let's face it-- accruing credits is another way to increase your salary and you need the money.

You're fascinated by new instructional strategies and curriculum ideas. You're eager to learn. But your district--which just replaced all its computers in the past two years--has no money for professional development. So you burn two of your business days, pay your own registration fee and mileage, and travel with three colleagues to a conference across the state, where--being a teacher type--you attend every single session and collect tons of free stuff to take back to your classroom in a canvas bag (which you will later give to a student as a reward for reading 25 books). The four of you share the $200 hotel room, and split a pizza. The high life.

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A Teacher's Open Letter to John Kasich

Elementary music teacher Kelly Riley asked us to publish her letter to the Governor and his response. Great letter, not so great response.

Dear Mr. Kasich,

I do not teach a tested subject area. I am an elementary music teacher with nearly 350 students that I work with once every 3 days for 50 minutes. I recommend that I be assessed on how I benefit my school community. My students present musical performances at least once per year for their families and the entire student body. My fourth grade students are successful recorder players, my fifth grade students produce a CD of their original compositions each year, nearly all of my students sing tunefully and beautifully, and every single one of them is an appreciative consumer of many different musical genres and a respectful audience member. I serve as a staff liaison to my building PTO, I am my school’s technology coordinator, I sit on our Intervention Assistance Team, I coordinate the afternoon car pickup, I monitor the cafeteria for 30 minutes each day, I volunteered on my district’s levy committee, I have mentored student teachers, and I regularly present professional development for my colleagues. I also hold master’s degree in literacy and a license to teach reading, and I frequently integrate other subjects and technology into my music curriculum, which helps my students perform to the best of their abilities on standardized tests.

How would you quantify all that I do for my school community? I would love to use all of the above information to negotiate my salary. I could certainly argue that I’m worth quite a lot because of my education, experience, and the myriad of essential roles I play. I was going to begin my “Idea” with stating that the average salary for an American with a master’s degree is about $65,000 (with eight years of experience and an MA I make $57,113), but that really isn’t the point. I didn’t choose a teaching career for the money; I just want to be respected for all that I do for my kids.

I’ve been teaching elementary music in central Ohio for eight years, and since January, I have been extremely disheartened by the way my colleagues and I have been treated by many of the legislators of Ohio, including you, Mr. Kasich. You say in the YouTube video that you’d like to see teachers paid $100,000 and that what we do “is so critically important.” I laughed out loud at those comments, because that is in direct opposition to all of the news coming out of the Statehouse since you’ve taken office.

SB5 is disrespectful in that teachers must be evaluated on their students’ achievement on standardized tests. Teachers have very little control over a child’s life outside the 7 hours they spend at school 180 days a year. What is a teacher to do if a child is hungry or tired or sick on the single day of the test? And when the teachers and other union members banded together to attempt to put SB5 to a referendum vote, you added the pieces on teacher evaluation to the budget bill. That’s not only disrespectful to teachers, that is disrespectful to the democratic process. I demand that my students be respectful and thoughtful to others. You’re setting a terrible example for Ohio’s youth. Effectively taking away the teachers’ collective bargaining rights undermines the hard work we put into obtaining advanced degrees and countless hours of professional development required to maintain our teaching licenses. Teachers are not stupid; in fact, many teachers are more educated than our elected officials. How is it that you can run a state with only a bachelor’s degree, but teachers are required to obtain a master’s degree by their twelfth year of teaching (ORC 3301-24-08 B)?

Not only am I an angry teacher, I am also a taxpayer and voter. I choose to live in the community where I work so that I can support the school issues that affect my students and my working conditions. I am HAPPY to pay more in taxes to create a strong and desirable community. I have always felt that PAYING TAXES IS A PRIVILEGE because it benefits everyone in the community, especially those who may not have the means to help themselves. And yet, you propose cutting taxes when Ohio is in the red, and cater to business interests. I have yet to see data that validates these policies.

I am looking forward to the opportunity to perform my civic duty and exercise my right to vote you out of office.

Sincerely,

Kelly Riley

A Canned Response

As you know, a couple of months ago I asked Ohio’s teachers for their help in building a better system for rewarding educators for the difficult and important work they do. You’re getting this e-mail today because you were one of more than 1,200 people who joined in this process and shared with me an idea, suggestion or concern. Thank you for taking the time to do that and helping to shape this important effort.

As part of this process, I tasked my staff and Ohio’s Teacher Liaison, Sarah Dove, a 4th grade teacher from the Gahanna-Jefferson school district, to collect information, conduct listening roundtables across the state, and learn more directly from teachers about how to create a system of teacher evaluation and compensation that enhances our ability to increase achievement among Ohio’s students.

More recently, this week I had the opportunity to sit down myself with a small group of teachers who sent me e-mails and showed interest in getting involved in the process to determine how teacher evaluations will be shaped in Ohio. I learned a lot. For example, there are some great school districts that have already created innovative systems of teacher evaluation that work for both educators and the kids we all want to help succeed. Additionally, I learned just how very important it is to communicate our intention to assess teachers by using a wide variety of measures. One idea that particularly interested me provided teachers a choice as to which measures best evaluate their abilities as an educator. These substantive contributions, and yours, will help all involved as we work to develop a more fair and effective system of evaluation.

The Ohio Department of Education has created a website that includes information about the benefits of teacher evaluation, a blog from Ohio’s Teacher Liaison that will keep you up to date on our progress and, most importantly, a link where you can continue to submit your ideas and encourage your fellow teachers to get involved in the process. You can visit that website by clicking here: http://teachers.ohio.gov

As we work toward creating a manageable system for evaluating, rewarding and encouraging teachers, I feel it’s important that you recognize my firm belief in developing an evaluation process fair to educators and best for those we all are here to help – our children.

Please continue to stay involved, encourage your colleagues to participate by submitting their own ideas, and together, we can continue our work to make Ohio great again.

Sincerely,

John R. Kasich

Governor of Ohio

An Open Letter to Gov. John Kasich

A great letter from an Ohio teacher to Governor Kasich in response to his request for merit pay feedback (brought to our attention by another teacher).

Dear Mr. Kasich,

I do not teach a tested subject area. I am an elementary music teacher with nearly 350 students that I work with once every 3 days for 50 minutes. I recommend that I be assessed on how I benefit my school community. My students present musical performances at least once per year for their families and the entire student body. My fourth grade students are successful recorder players, my fifth grade students produce a CD of their original compositions each year, nearly all of my students sing tunefully and beautifully, and every single one of them is an appreciative consumer of many different musical genres and a respectful audience member. I serve as a staff liaison to my building PTO, I am my school’s technology coordinator, I sit on our Intervention Assistance Team, I coordinate the afternoon car pickup, I monitor the cafeteria for 30 minutes each day, I volunteered on my district’s levy committee, I have mentored student teachers, and I regularly present professional development for my colleagues. I also hold master’s degree in literacy and a license to teach reading, and I frequently integrate other subjects and technology into my music curriculum, which helps my students perform to the best of their abilities on standardized tests.

How would you quantify all that I do for my school community? I would love to use all of the above information to negotiate my salary. I could certainly argue that I’m worth quite a lot because of my education, experience, and the myriad of essential roles I play. I was going to begin my “Idea” with stating that the average salary for an American with a master’s degree is about $65,000 (with eight years of experience and an MA I make $57,113), but that really isn’t the point. I didn’t choose a teaching career for the money; I just want to be respected for all that I do for my kids.

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