Education News for 03-21-2013

Local Education News

• Jefferson Area School District employees may face layoffs (Ashtabula Star-Beacon)

Educators and staff of the Jefferson Area School District could be facing layoffs as board members unanimously approved the intent for a reduction in force for the 2013-2014 school year…Read more...

• Academic measures may be altered (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Elementary school report cards could have more detail, the grading scale could change and more classes could help boost a student’s GPA…Read more...

• T.J. Lane's 'Killer' T-shirt stirs debate over defendants' statements in court (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz said Wednesday that he was shocked when T.J. Lane showed off his "Killer" T-shirt at his sentencing, but he didn't point it out during the proceeding because he believed the judge would take care of it…Read more...

• Huber schools could restore $1.6M in instructional programs (Dayton Daily News)

Officials with Huber Heights City Schools are considering restoring $1.6 million in instructional programs if the district is able to generate additional revenue by passing a levy in August and receives an increase in state funding…Read more...

• Impacts of Heights tax levy success, failure outlined (Newark Advocate)

Licking Heights schools superintendent Philip Wagner laid out the good news and bad news Tuesday surrounding the success or failure of the district’s proposed new 8.9-mill tax levy…Read more...

• Strike spills into Beachwood, Parma as Strongsville teachers picket at board members' employers (Sun Newspapers)

Picketers for the Strongsville Education Association took their message to the Western Campus of Cuyahoga Community College March 20, where David Frazee, president of the Strongsville School Board…Read more...

• Superintendent Hathorn wants to meet with charter school parents (Youngstown Vindicator)

City schools Superintendent Connie Hathorn wants to meet with parents of students attending charter schools to tout what the city district has to offer…Read more...

• Student fees hot topic at Austintown BOE (Youngstown Vindicator)

School board members spoke out Tuesday about fees that are charged yearly to all students, saying that some parents and teachers have been vocal in their opposition to them…Read more...

Editorial

• School aid do-over (Toledo Blade)

When Gov. John Kasich first outlined his plan to reform Ohio public school funding, there was hope it would lead to a more equitable, more adequate system. As details of the proposal have emerged, that hope largely has been dashed…Read more...

SB21 - Brings changes to 3rd grade reading law

Earlier this week, the Ohio Senate passed SB21 (30-1), a bill that would alter requirements of the 3rd grade reading guarantee. The changes were a positive step, and will make it easier for schools and educators to meet the standard, that previously were nearly impossible to meet.

According to a Gongwer report

The bill would eliminate language that required teachers to "be actively engaged in the reading instruction of students for the previous three years," which was seen as a roadblock to hiring new teachers or other qualified educators and was considered a very difficult or nearly impossible standard to meet.

"Given the importance of the third-grade reading guarantee to the future of our children, we listened very carefully" to the suggestions of principals and superintendents, sponsoring Sen. Peggy Lehner (R-Kettering) said.

The bill also includes

• Closing the loophole whereby a child could avoid being held back by skipping the test.
• Exempts students who have significant cognitive disabilities
• Removes "credential" and replaces it with "completion of a program" which would cover programs, such as Orton-Gillingham, that do not produce a credential upon completion.
• Replaces a value-added score requirement when the teacher is an effective reading instructor, as determined by criteria established by ODE.
• Allows schools the authority to get a waiver by resolution for their action plan required when the district is unable to hire sufficient teachers with the approved credentials.

The lone no vote was Sen. Joe Schiavoni who said he voted against the bill because, although he supports the policy, the lack of funding is a problem.

"We need to put the $130 million, the $100 million-dollar tag on this to help schools pay for this," he said.

Sen. Gardner, who will chair the subcommittee that will hear the K-12 portion of the budget bill, said he expects to see bicameral, bipartisan support to provide more funding to support the goals of the TGRG in that legislation.

Let's hope so. It's not often we get education bills moving in the right direction. This bill still needs to pass the House.

You can read the full text of the bill, here. For those who would prefer a more plain english explanation, here's LSC's analysis.

SB21 - 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee Changes by

Some Choice

ODE has just released their partial school report card. It doesn't contain any final grades, but it does tell us whether schools made adequate yearly progress, and the news isn't pretty for Ohio's charter school movement.

Of the 352 charter schools listed, 58.2% of them failed to meet their adequate yearly progress (AYP) metrics.

If a student attends a school in any of Allen, Warren, Erie, Hancock, Lake, Madison, or Tuscarawas counties, not a single charter school made adequate yearly progress. Indeed, out of the 36 counties that have charter schools, 24 counties had schools that combined for more than half their charters failing to meet their adequate yearly progress.

County	Not Met AYP	Met AYP
Allen	100.0%	0.0%
Warren	100.0%	0.0%
Erie	100.0%	0.0%
Hancock	100.0%	0.0%
Lake	100.0%	0.0%
Madison	100.0%	0.0%
Tuscarawas	100.0%	0.0%
Stark	83.3%	16.7%
Trumbull	75.0%	25.0%
Summit	73.3%	26.7%
Montgomery	72.4%	27.6%
Mahoning	71.4%	28.6%
Hamilton	67.9%	32.1%
Richland	66.7%	33.3%
Clark	66.7%	33.3%
Fairfield	66.7%	33.3%
Morrow	66.7%	33.3%
Franklin	65.3%	34.7%
Butler	60.0%	40.0%
Lucas	58.8%	41.2%
Lorain	54.5%	45.5%
Marion	50.0%	50.0%
Columbiana	50.0%	50.0%
Greene	50.0%	50.0%
Cuyahoga	42.0%	58.0%
Portage	40.0%	60.0%
Licking	25.0%	75.0%
Muskingum	25.0%	75.0%
Seneca	25.0%	75.0%
Champaign	0.0%	100.0%
Wayne	0.0%	100.0%
Scioto	0.0%	100.0%
Coshocton	0.0%	100.0%
Hardin	0.0%	100.0%
Jackson	0.0%	100.0%
Van Wert	0.0%	100.0%
Grand Total	58.2%	41.8%

There's a lot of students in a lot of schools, in a lot of counties not being served by the "choices" they are being presented with.

Shady group secretly plots against voters

According to Gongwer, a "by-invitation-only" meeting of lobbyists and political insiders was held Tuesday morning at a private club in Columbus by a group seeking to oppose the Voters First Amendment.

The meeting was sponsored by Protect Your Vote Ohio. Voters First responded to this new revelation

"Today's backroom meeting at a private club is yet another example of the broken political system where politicians, lobbyists and insiders rig districts for their own benefit-and exactly why we need this reform," Ms. Turcer. "The hosts of this meeting are the same people who spent months in a hotel room they called 'the bunker,' drawing political boundaries to benefit themselves. It's no surprise that they'll say or do anything to protect their own power."

The Dayton Daily News gets the scoop on who some of the people are who are forming this shady group

Protect Your Vote solicited the help of state lobbyists Tuesday during a private event at the Capital Club in Columbus, according to an invitation obtained by the Dayton Daily News. The campaign organizers listed on the invitation include fundraisers and others with ties to the Republican elected officials who had a hand in drafting the new boundaries.

Campaign Manager Brandon Lynaugh declined Tuesday to comment on the fundraiser and other Protect Your Vote activities.

One of the finance consultants listed on the invitations, Ray DiRossi, was paid $105,000 to assist elected officials in drawing the boundaries last year. Another consultant, Pamela Hashem, is a major fundraiser for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp.

Secrecy is no stranger to these people and the politicians they serve to keep the political system working for everyone but voters.

According to the Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report released this afternoon, Republican lawmakers at the state house implemented a strategy of deliberate secrecy to withhold information from the public about redistricting efforts. The documents paint a picture of lawmakers who purposely operated in a legal gray area to prevent their actions from ever being made public.

For months, Republican lawmakers and staff meet in secret to work on redistricting efforts in possible violation of Ohio’s open meetings law. The documents show a Republican party that are so obsessed with privacy that they used taxpayer dollars to rent a secret hotel room in Columbus that was used as a location to meet on redistricting issues.

You can read the report and all the shady secret dealings that went into drawing Ohio's new political boundaries, here.

Could collective bargaining prevent cheating?

Yesterday we brough news of the massive cheating scandal unfolding in Atlanta. The full report to the Governor is now out and it's an absolute doozy.

Teachers, in many cases, were bullied and subjected to intimidation and fear in order alter tests to boost school performances. Indeed the report's findings even has a section titled "Culture of fear". The report cites

Many principals humiliated teachers in front of their peers for failing to meet goals. For example, at Fain Elementary School, the principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table in a faculty meeting because that teacher’s students’ test scores were low.

Pressure from the district's administration was intense

Virtually every teacher who confessed to cheating spoke of the inordinate stress the district placed on meeting targets and the dire consequences for failure. Dr. Hall articulated it as: "No exceptions. No excuses." If principals did not meet targets within three years, she declared, they will be replaced and "I will find someone who will meet targets." Dr. Hall replaced 90% of the principals during her tenure.

You can read the report here:
Report Vol. 1
Report Vol. 2
Report Vol. 3

The report also finds that Atlanta Could Have Averted Its Cheating Scandal If It Had Listened To Its Local Teachers Union. But in Georgia there is no power of collective bargaining so teachers were helpless and unable to apply pressure on the administrators to stop the abuse and cheating. When they tried, they were subjected to retribution and retaliation. Instead of this problem being dealt with early and decisively, the high stakes environment with no employee protections led to widespread cheating, and now serious repercussions for the Atlanta Public Schools system and the children who have been hurt by it.