How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance

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Local control has historically been a prominent principle in education policymaking and governance. Culminating with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), however, the politics of education have been nationalized to an unprecedented degree, and local control has all but disappeared as a principle framing education policymaking.

This brief examines what the eclipse of local control means for our democracy. It distinguishes two dimensions of democracy that are at issue—democratic policymaking and democratic education—and concludes that the effect of NCLB has been to frustrate our democracy along both of these dimensions.

Pb Localcontrol

Fordham losses its bearings

The Fordham Foundation, despite their pro corporate education agenda can often be depended upon to at least present their case in a fair and honest manner. That is until their animosity towards education unions is put on display, as was the case with their support of SB5. But, few posts on their website have lost their bearings quite as much as a post titled "Unionized teacher salaries", by Aaron Churchill.

In this piece, the author seeks to compare the salaries of union teachers in 2 Springfield City elementary schools to a charter school in the same city. Cherry picking 3 schools from Ohio's thousands is a suspect endeavor to begin with, but even with that, the results go awry quite quickly.

First let's take a look at the 3 schools presented to us

Type	Charter	District	District
Name	Springfield Academy of Excellence	Fulton Elem.	Perrin Woods Elem.
% White	16.5	40.8	26
% Black	61	43.3	53.1
% Hispanic	10.9	8.2	2.7
Rating	Academic Watch	Academic Watch	Academic Watch
PI	77.9	79.5	76.8

I’ve selected these schools because of their similar demographics and academic performance (table 1).

Pretty similar: SAE, Fulton, and Perrin Woods all have a majority Black and Hispanic students in their school. (These represent 3 of the 4 elementary schools in Springfield that have a majority minority population.) In addition, table 1 indicates that they had nearly indistinguishable academic results for the 2011-12 school year. All received an “Academic Watch” rating from the state and they all had performance index scores—a weighted proficiency rate—between 77 and 80 (the state goal is 100).

So, that's the rationale for selecting these schools. We're perplexed why racial demographics were the primary matching criteria chosen, especially when they aren't even that similar at all. We're certain it is not racism, as what difference does the racial makeup of the schools matter? So is the author using racial demographics as a proxy for poverty in this analysis?

If one were to look directly at the poverty levels of these 3 schools (which is in the ODE spreadsheet just one more column to the right!), these cherry picked schools suddenly don't seem similar at all. Let's add that data point in.

Type	Charter	District	District
Name	Springfield Academy of Excellence	Fulton Elem.	Perrin Woods Elem.
% White	16.5	40.8	26
% Black	61	43.3	53.1
% Hispanic	10.9	8.2	2.7
Rating	Academic Watch	Academic Watch	Academic Watch
PI	77.9	79.5	76.8
Percent Economically Disadvantaged	85.1	95.4	91.7

As you can see, the traditional schools have up to 10% more poverty than the charter school they are being compared to. Nothing highlights the all too common situation of charter school selection leading to traditional schools being left with more disadvantaged students than this. But the dissimilarities don't end there. Let's add another important indicator into the mix that the author omitted - students with disabilities

Type	Charter	District	District
Name	Springfield Academy of Excellence	Fulton Elem.	Perrin Woods Elem.
% White	16.5	40.8	26
% Black	61	43.3	53.1
% Hispanic	10.9	8.2	2.7
Rating	Academic Watch	Academic Watch	Academic Watch
PI	77.9	79.5	76.8
Percent Economically Disadvantaged	85.1	95.4	91.7
Percent Student with Disabilities	7.1	20.6	17.5

Clearly then, the traditional schools have far larger populations of students with disabilities. Why would anyone be surprised that teachers in schools with higher levels of poverty, and disabilities be more seriously challenged?

The problems with the Fordham piece goes even deeper, and becomes more troubling than simply looking at very bad analysis. Fordham must of intentionally cherry picked schools to use for their performance/salary comparison. Fulton and Perrin Woods are not the only elementary schools in Springfield City.

Why did they not use Lagonda Elementary School, for example, in their analysis? When we add that schools data in, the answer becomes obvious

Type	Charter	District	District	District
Name	Springfield Academy of Excellence	Fulton Elem.	Perrin Woods Elem.	Lagonda Elem.
% White	16.5	40.8	26	67.3
% Black	61	43.3	53.1	14.9
% Hispanic	10.9	8.2	2.7	4.7
Rating	Academic Watch	Academic Watch	Academic Watch	Excellent
PI	77.9	79.5	76.8	90.4
Percent Economically Disadvantaged	85.1	95.4	91.7	87.4
Percent Student with Disabilities	7.1	20.6	17.5	11.4

A school with a similar poverty and disability levels as the charter school selected, but it is obvious why no attention was drawn to Lagona Elementary school - that school is rated excellent. It's hard to argue that teachers are somehow overpaid when your comparison falls down on the criteria of quality and true meaningful demographics.

Before we move away from school demographics, we do want to chastise the author for this nasty, and incorrect comment

This wage premium is nice for unionized teachers, but not so nice for the district they work in—or for the students they (purportedly) educate.

"Purportedly". If the piece he wrote had been dripping in less bile and contempt for unionized educators, he might have noticed that both these traditional schools he erroneously choose to use for his analysis, met their value add - that is - the teachers in these schools didn't "purportedly" educate their students, they simply did.

Mr Churchill owes an apology to these hard working teachers for suggesting they are not educating their students adequately.

But let's address the salary comparisons directly.

The author points out that the traditional school teachers in these 2 elementary schools earn more than their charter school counterparts (which even he characterizes as "pitifully low"). This is true, it's one of the reasons why corporate education reformers want to attack unionized teaching forces, they want to maximize their own profits by underpaying teachers for their work. If quality were a genuine concern surely the argument would be to increase teacher pay in disadvantaged schools in order to attract high quality educators. You will never see a corporate education reformer make this argument.

That aside, Mr Churchill once again fails to compare apples to apples. While teachers in all 3 schools he selected have bachelors degrees, only 10.2% of teachers in the charter school have a masters, whereas 33.3% in Fulton and 42.3% in Perrin Woods have advance masters degrees. Is Mr. Churchill arguing that employees with more advanced educations should not receive higher pay? This flies in the face of all economic theory.

Indeed, Mr. Churchill goes even further

Second, I’m struck by the considerably higher salaries of Fulton and Perrin Woods’ teachers relative the local median income. 22 out of 24 of Perrin Woods’ teachers make more than 1.5 times the local median; and 13 out of 23 of Fulton’s teachers make more than 1.5 times the local median.

You know who else is paid more than their community median - Fordham employees who make over $90,000 a year for part time work, but that aside, are we being told that the median education in the Springfield community is a masters degree? Or is Mr Churchill arguing that everyone should be paid the same in a community regardless of education, experience and the job they are performing? It's a very strange economic argument being made.

We should also consider, as Mr. Churchill tries to pit the Springfield city community against its teachers, that in just 2011, voters of the city overwhelmingly supported their school levy with 67.1% of the vote. That doesn't sound like a community dissatisfied with their teachers or their pay. Quite the contrary.

But finally, what this Fordham piece does demonstrate, beyond the obvious ideological agenda, is a total lack of understanding of how salaries are negotiated. They are not negotiated at the school level, between teachers and the principal, instead they are negotiated at the district level with the democratically elected board. So one should look at the district performance as a whole to make serious judgments as to the quality of education being delivered by Springfield City Schools and its teachers.

Springfield City Schools, despite its many demographic challenges is rated Effective.

Strong Schools - Strong Communities

Another pro-public education organization is joining the fray in Ohio. Strong Schools - Strong Communities. ABC 6 News reports on their announcement

Deb Papesh, a Dublin City Schools parent, had this to say about the groups formation

"I believe Strong Schools, Strong Communities is looking at that to see what they can they borrow from what we did to help on a more global level," she said following the press conference.

Papesh thinks communities across the state can help each other with campaigns that center on funding issues.

Right now those involved with Strong Schools, Strong Communities say their job is to keep an eye on and testify for or against any new legislation that affects public education in Ohio.

They also say they’re prepared to activate their network in the same way the grassroots organization We Are Ohio mobilized in 2011 to push back against a legislative effort to limit collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Teacher Donna O'Connor had this to say

“We believe a child’s ZIP code should not hinder their access to a high-quality public education. We will advocate for a fair and sustainable and equitable funding formula and educate the public as to next year’s budget and policies that come out of our next session.”

We encourage you to follow them on Facebook, here at www.facebook.com/StrongSchoolsOhio. You can also receive a weekly text message update by texting "SSSC" to 51555.

Here's a video fo the press conferecne event

Part one

Part two

Part three

There's a growing resistance in Ohio, to the corporate education movement.

Partisan purges

Fresh of their electoral defeats that produced a large majority thanks to partisan gerrymandering, the extremists in the Ohio House are not done with their partisan purging. Now they are going after the Ohio Accountability Task Force, according to a report in Gongwer

The task force, which first met in December 2003, was tasked with examining how to implement the value-added report card measure in ways that are most useful for improving student achievement, according to ODE documents.

With its name changed to the Ohio Accountability Advisory Committee, the panel's membership would see "substantial" changes including the removal of: the ranking minority members of the House and Senate education committees, a teachers union representative, a school district board of education member, and a school superintendent, Mr. Stebelton said.

It instead includes three members of the public each appointed by the Speaker of the House and the Senate President, two appointed by the governor and one appointed by the state auditor, he said. The superintendent of public instruction would be a nonvoting member.

"It sounds like from this list that what's been removed from this group, from this board is representation of folks who have experience in education," Rep. Nickie Antonio (R-Lakewood) said.

When Republicans are questioning the merits of the partisan purge you know there must be something wrong. Rep Stabelton, who is sponsoring the legislation (HB555) revealed his partisan purpose when he had this to say

"This will work both ways. Someday when you get back in the majority, our people won't be on it and you folks will."

Of course, due to extreme gerrymandering, Rep Stabelton knows full well that Democrats can never be back in the majority no matter how many Ohioans vote for them. The other real problem with this ridiculous proposal was also repeatedly noted

She (Rep. Denise Driehaus) also raised issues with the lack of presence of local education officials on the panel. "As the committee stands now there are some guarantees that some local representative and folks with education backgrounds, people that are participating in our system now" will be on the committee.

The Ohio General Assembly needs more not less expertise advising it, they have been making an awful mess of education policy these last few years listening to partisans with no education expertise like Rep Stabelton.

Teacher Turnover Affects All Students' Achievement

In light of the Kasich education cuts, and the looming sequestration that will lead ot large education cuts, this article appearing in Education Week should be bourne in mind by law makers.

When teachers leave schools, overall morale appears to suffer enough that student achievement declines—both for those taught by the departed teachers and by students whose teachers stayed put, concludes a study recently presented at a conference held by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

The impact of teacher turnover is one of the teacher-quality topics that's been hard for researchers to get their arms around. The phenomenon of high rates of teacher turnover has certainly been proven to occur in high-poverty schools more than low-poverty ones. The eminently logical assumption has been that such turnover harms student achievement.

But a couple years back, two researchers did an analysis that showed, counter-intuitively, it's actually the less- effective teachers, rather than the more- effective ones, who tend to leave schools with a high concentration of low-achieving, minority students. It raised the question of whether a degree of turnover might be beneficial, since it seemed to purge schools of underperforming teachers.

When reporting on that study, I played devil's advocate by pointing out that it didn't address the cultural impact of having a staff that's always in flux. The recently released CALDER paper suggests I may have been right in probing this question.

Written by the University of Michigan's Matthew Ronfeldt, Stanford University's Susanna Loeb, and the University of Virginia's Jim Wyckoff, the new paper basically picks up on the same question. Even if overall teacher effectiveness stays the same in a school with turnover, it's well documented that turnover hurts staff cohesion and the shared sense of community in schools, the scholars reasoned. Could that have an impact on student achievement, too?

To find out, they looked at a set of New York City test-score data from 4th and 5th graders over the course of eight years. The data were linked to teacher characteristics.
(All the usual caveats about limitations of test scores apply, of course.)

Among their findings:

• For each analysis, students taught by teachers in the same grade-level team in the same school did worse in years where turnover rates were higher, compared with years in which there was less teacher turnover.
• An increase in teacher turnover by 1 standard deviation corresponded with a decrease in math achievement of 2 percent of a standard deviation; students in grade levels with 100 percent turnover were especially affected, with lower test scores by anywhere from 6 percent to 10 percent of a standard deviation based on the content area.
• The effects were seen in both large and small schools, new and old ones.
• The negative effect of turnover on student achievement was larger in schools with more low-achieving and black students.

Read the whole piece here.

A decade-long crisis of democracy

We highlighted that despite Ohio voters in the aggregate preferring Democrats over Republicans in the 2012 election, the Republicans will hold a probable super majority 60-39 as a consequence of extreme partisan gerrymandering. The Dispatch was prompted by this result to produce an article about redistricting

Issue 2 is dead, buried deep by Ohio voters last week.

But over and over again, opponents of the redistricting plan, be they Republicans or editorial-page writers, noted that their opposition was not based on the belief that the current system of drawing legislative and congressional districts is good.

In fact, most acknowledged that it remains badly in need of an overhaul.

But if was this paragraph in the article that prompted us to take an even deeper look

Republicans now control 75 percent of the U.S. House seats and nearly two-thirds of the legislative seats in a state that has leaned Republican but is a key battleground state

We analyzed Ohio House of Representative results for each of the past 6 election cycles. By aggregating the votes for Democrats and Republicans in contested races we found a systematic, and extreme disenfranchising of Democratic representation in Ohio

Year	Democratic	Republican	D Seats	R Seats
2012	2,418,815	2,362,310	39	60
2010	1,447,949	1,696,064	40	59
2008	2,296,678	1,982,281	53	46
2006	1,832,548	1,605,801	46	53
2004	1,869,051	2,036,398	38	60
2002	1,243,671	1,364,656	36	63
Total	11,108,712	11,047,510

Based upon the preferences of voters, Democrats should have controlledthe General assemblies after the 2012, and 2006 elections - but were denied by partisan gerrymandering. Furthermore, the majorities that Republicans did earn in all of their successful years should have been much, much smaller - and never reacher super majority status.

Indeed when one looks at the sum total of votes in contest races over the past decade, rather than being center right, the results indicate a center to center left leaning electorate.

It is simply not possible to conclude that Ohioans have been legitimately represented in the 21st century by their preferred choices, either in actuality or in scope. We have a crisis of democracy in Ohio.