State budget enabling education industrial complex

Following up on an earlier piece by William Phillis, Ohio E & A

Remember the news articles about military contractors charging the military $100 for a $2.98 hammer and $600 for toilet seats and $3,000 for a coffeemaker? The military is a government function but the size of the defense budget attracted lots of private operators to the table. Contractors developed cozy relationships and deals with government officials which cost the taxpayers heavily.

The size of America's collective education budget has gotten the attention of private operators in recent years. Much of the charter school money in Ohio goes to for-profit operators. State officials have allowed the "nonprofit" charters to be managed by companies whose bottom line seems to be profit-at any cost.

Campaign contributions from for-profit charter operators may be the reason that Ohio's charter school laws are, for the most part, not rational.

The corporate operation of charter schools may be just the tip of the iceberg. Pearson, the world's largest education company has operations throughout the world. This company continues to commercialize education by suggesting that every teacher and student in the USA is a potential customer. Pearson has been buying up the competition. This company is engaged in all facets of education-testing of students and teachers, virtual schools, textbooks, digital texts, online learning tools, etc.

The privatization movement, (i.e.) the Education Industrial Complex, seeks to eliminate the current practice that communities, through their boards of education, operate their schools for the benefit of all their students. The greatest discovery of mankind-the public common school-is being replaced. Unfortunately, state officials throughout the nation, particularly in Ohio, are enabling the demise of the public common school system through enactment of policies that open the door to the complete privatization of education.

As the privatization movement blossoms, there will be fierce competition among the private schools, nonprofit charters, corporate charters and huge education groups like Pearson. In this environment, the losers will be taxpayers, students and all who cherish democracy.

Ohio Voters’ Checklist

Via www.866ourvote.org

Election Protection and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights have released voter rights checklists for all 50 states. These one-page guides explain polling times, what IDs may be required to vote, rights to provisional ballots and more and include the phone number for a toll-free Election Protection Hotline you can use if you encounter problems trying to cast your vote.

If you have any questions or need further information, please call the Election Protection Hotline 4842-6987-3167\2 at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) or go to www.866OurVote.org. For Spanish-language assistance, call 1-888-Ve-Y-Vota.

1. On Election Day, EACH POLLING PLACE WILL BE OPEN BETWEEN 6:30 A.M. AND 7:30 P.M. A voter in line by 7:30 P.M. HAS THE RIGHT TO VOTE.

2. Ohio law requires that each polling place be accessible to physically disabled voters, unless exempted. If exempted, the disabled voter must be required to vote curbside in your vehicle.

3. If you cannot read or write, or you are blind or otherwise disabled, and need assistance voting, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECEIVE HELP WITH VOTING and may designate someone of your choice, other than an employer or an officer or agent of your union, to provide such assistance. Election officials may also provide assistance.

4. If you do not have photo identification at the polls, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE a provisional ballot that should be counted as long as you are properly registered to vote and in the right precinct, which is where you reside on Election Day. For your provisional ballot to count, you must show, either at your precinct or at the county Board of Elections within ten (10) days either the last four digits of your social security number, driver’s license number, sign an affirmation or show a valid form of identification. To vote a REGULAR ballot, you must show: a current and valid Ohio driver’s license, a current and valid photo identification issued by Ohio or federal government, a military identification (if it can be ascertained by the poll worker that the person is who they say they are), or a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or another government document

5. If you have moved within the same precinct, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE a regular ballot upon completing a change of residence at the polls.

6. If you have moved to a different precinct in the same county prior to the election, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE at the polling place of your NEW residence upon updating your registration. If you do not update before Election Day, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE a provisional ballot on Election Day.

7. If you have moved to a different county prior to the election, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE a provisional ballot at the new polling place that corresponds to your new address in your NEW COUNTY, or at the Board of Elections, on Election Day upon completing a change of residence at the polls.

8. If you make a mistake or “spoil” your ballot, and have not cast the ballot, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECEIVE UP TO TWO REPLACEMENT BALLOT after returning the spoiled ballot.

9. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO WAIT TO VOTE (OR TO VOTE) without anyone electioneering or trying to influence your vote within the area marked by small U.S. flags, or within ten feet of you if you are in line outside that area.

10. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT to take up to five minutes in the voting booth, if all booths are occupied and voters are waiting in line. If all booths are not occupied and there are not voters waiting in line, you may take longer than five minutes.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE THIS CHECKLIST INTO THE VOTING BOOTH WITH YOU.

You can download a copy of this checklist, here.

Republicans oppose critical thinking

The 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform opposes the teaching of critical thinking skills. We had to read that twice too.

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

They appear to oppose critical thinking being taught so that it doesn't undermine propaganda being instilled in them, to wit...

Early Childhood Development – We believe that parents are best suited to train their children in their early development and oppose mandatory pre-school and Kindergarten. We urge Congress to repeal government sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development.

Early childhood education is crucial to the future success of students, to ppose pre-school and kindergarten is extreme to say the least.

Is Texas an anomoly, or leading the way in rightward education thinking?

you decide, their platform document is below, with the education pieces starting on page 11

2012Platform Final

Accountability for vouchers

On the idea of vouchers in the new world of accountability

The rise of testing-based accountability measures immeasurably complicates this argument for vouchers. Under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, public schools have to demonstrate their performance on certain standardized measures in order to receive funding. Race to the Top further centralizes educational affairs by encouraging states to adopt a nationwide core curriculum and by emphasizing a testing-driven component for teacher evaluations. The argument on behalf of such measures is that public dollars demand proof that they will be spent in a valuable way, and standardized testing is, apparently, the best way to establish this value. (Yes, this argument may be flawed in many, many ways, but let us leave that to the side for the moment as well.) If one wants to establish a centralized, federally-run public school system, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top provide a sturdy foundation for that enterprise.

If, however, one wants to support a pluralist, voucher-driven kind education reform, this movement toward standards-based accountability could prove much more problematic. If the premise of this accountability is that public dollars require proof of effectiveness, what is the reason for demanding that a school run as a public institution (that is, a public school) should be held to any different standard than a school run as a private institution? Both would receive tax dollars from state and potentially local and federal governments: why should they be held to two different standards?
[...]
Once you've bought into the idea that standardized testing establishes a school's quality, it becomes harder to resist the idea that public money ought to go only to those private entities that have demonstrated their effectiveness in teaching. Moreover, these standards for accountability will, as both Louisiana and federal reforms demonstrate, tend to come from bureaucrats working in central government offices.

Under a universalized voucher program and homogenous standards system, the federal government, which would be the engine that de facto drives education policy under this "reformist" vision, would have increasing control over private schools. Why? Over a period of years, private schools would become increasingly dependent upon government tax dollars, and he who pays the piper picks the tune. Maybe not now, maybe not a few years from now, but eventually legislators and regulators could start placing further demands upon these newly dependent private schools. After all, if education is truly in a state of crisis, shouldn't government be demanding the best from schools in exchange for the taxpayer's hard-earned dollars?

In Ohio, much of this discussion has already begun to happen.

• A 2009 newspaper report titled "Ohio voucher students must do better on tests "

But that doesn't mean these schools [voucher eecipients] — and their students — shouldn't be held accountable.

That's needed more than ever after the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that voucher students performed poorly on state achievement tests.

An analysis of about 2,900 students revealed that six in 10 did not pass math, science or social studies, four in 10 failed reading and three in 10 failed writing.

• A 2010 article titled "Voucher students' test scores lag"

Several thousand Ohio students who used Education Choice scholarships to attend private schools are doing no better than students at the public schools they left behind, state test data show.

• A 2011 report titled "Ohio Vouchers Fail to Raise Student Achievement"

The latest data from the Ohio Department of Education showed that students in the state’s voucher programs did not perform better academically than their peers in public schools. In fact, public school students outscored those in voucher schools in many cases.

• And when voucher students were compared to the much maligned Cleveland Schools, this headline was produced "Cleveland students hold their own with voucher students on state tests"

The push is on to expand school voucher programs in Ohio, but new state data suggests that students who attend private schools with the help of taxpayer-funded vouchers don't necessarily fare better academically than the children they leave behind.

Cleveland public school students often outperformed voucher students on 2009-10 state proficiency tests, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education.

As the article we opened with discusses, tax payers are unlikely to want to see their precious dollars fund private schools, in light of the overwhelming evidence that these private schools are producing results no better, and in many cases, a lot worse than their public school alternatives.

It would be reasonable to suggest that we ought to have accountability for private schools that receive tax dollars. If they cannot produce results as good as, or better, than their public school counterparts, they ought not to be able to continue to receive tax payer assistance.

If we are to continue to pursue a policy of choice, we have a duty to ensure those choices are of the highest possible quality available, and that goes for private schools too.

How to Buy and Sell School Reform

If you want to change government policy, change the politicians who make it. The implications of this truism have now taken hold in the market-modeled “education reform movement.” As a result, the private funders and nonprofit groups that run the movement have overhauled their strategy. They’ve gone political as never before—like the National Rifle Association or Big Pharma or (ed reformers emphasize) the teachers’ unions.

Devolution of a Movement

For the last decade or so, this generation of ed reformers has been setting up programs to show the power of competition and market-style accountability to transform inner-city public schools: establishing nonprofit and for-profit charter schools, hiring business executives to run school districts, and calculating a teacher’s worth based on student test scores. Along the way, the reformers recognized the value of public promotion and persuasion (called “advocacy”) for their agenda, and they started pouring more money into media outlets, friendly think tanks, and the work of well-disposed researchers. By 2010 critics of the movement saw “reform-think” dominating national discourse about education, but key reform players judged the pace of change too slow.

Ed reformers spend at least a half-billion dollars a year in private money, whereas government expenditures on K-12 schooling are about $525 billion a year. Nevertheless, a half-billion dollars in discretionary money yields great leverage when budgets are consumed by ordinary expenses. But the reformers—even titanic Bill and Melinda Gates—see themselves as competing with too little against existing government policies. Hence, to revolutionize public education, which is largely under state and local jurisdiction, reformers must get state and local governments to adopt their agenda as basic policy; they must counter the teachers’ unions’ political clout. To this end, ed reformers are shifting major resources—staff and money—into state and local campaigns for candidates and legislation.

Jonah Edelman, CEO of Stand for Children ($5.2 million from Gates, 2003-2011), sums up the thinking: “We’ve learned the hard way that if you want to have the clout needed to change policies for kids, you have to help politicians get elected. It’s about money, money, money” (Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010).*

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Rick Santorum Needs A History Lesson

In a campaign stop in Ohio, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum called the viability of the public education system into question

“Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America?” he said. “Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly — much less that the state government should be running schools — is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools.

Mr. Santorum isn't just wrong, he is absurdly wrong. The Ohio constitution enshrines the provision of public education by the state. It's a defining core value, not some new fangled government edict dreamed up by supporters of bureaucratic big government 50 years ago. This was written into our constitution before US industrialization began and factories were built, it was written in our constitution in 1851.

Mr. Santorum seems to want to take us back to before 1851.

Update

B Herringten on twitter digs into the even further distant past and notes that funding of public education in Ohio began with the Land Ordinance of 1785 before Ohio was even a state

The ordinance was also significant for establishing a mechanism for funding public education. Section 16 in each township was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. Many schools today are still located in section sixteen of their respective townships, although a great many of the school sections were sold to raise money for public education