$9 a year or adequately fund education

Following up on our piece last week, where we pointed out that the Governor and his legislative allies would better serve Ohio by investing Midicaid savings in education, rather than more fruitless tax cuts, Ohio E&A had this to say

Senate Bill 210 would provide for a permanent income tax rate reduction of 4% for all tax brackets beginning in 2014. This bill would revise Section 5747.02 of the Ohio Revised Code.

This bill is in response to the Controlling Board's approval of the Medicaid expansion which freed up in the range of $400 million from unbudgeted savings in the state's biennial budget (HB 59). It is estimated that Senate Bill 210 would save $9 for the average income taxpayer.

During sponsor testimony, the bill's lead sponsor responded to an inquiry from a committee member about using the funds to restore cuts to local governments or education priorities. The sponsor responded that $400 million divided by 613 districts would have a minimal impact.

$400 million distributed on a per pupil basis would compute to about $230.00. If this amount would be distributed on an equalized basis, some districts would receive a very substantial per pupil increase. That amount applied to funding the Third Grade Guarantee would help alleviate some of the angst among local school officials. Other possible uses are:

Early childhood education
School bus purchase
Transportation operation
Unfunded and underfunded mandates
Scores of other programs and services

Legislators should be reminded that the state income tax law (Section 5747.02) in part states: "(A) For the purpose of providing revenue for the support of schools and local government functions..."

The state income tax was initiated in 1972 to increase state support for schools and other state government functions. The current legislative trend is to shift the fiscal responsibilities of public education to boards of education and other services to local officials.

Senate Bill 210 is being promoted as a measure to make Ohio more attractive and job-friendly. An additional $400 million invested in the public common school system would pay greater dividends than a tax cut.

Why would anyone want to continue to underfund public education for the sake of saving $9 a year for a typical tax payer? The choice seems simple.

We cannot fire our way into Finland

Via the Shanker Institute, an insightful piece on getting teacher evaluaions right

Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book, Getting Teacher Evaluation Right, is a detailed, practical guide about how to improve the teaching profession. It leverages the best research and best practices, offering actionable, illustrated steps to getting teacher evaluation right, with rich examples from the U.S. and abroad.

Here I offer a summary of the book’s main arguments and conclude with a couple of broad questions prompted by the book. But, before I delve into the details, here’s my quick take on Darling-Hammond’s overall stance.

We are at a crossroads in education; two paths lay before us. The first seems shorter, easier and more straightforward. The second seems long, winding and difficult. The big problem is that the first path does not really lead to where we need to go; in fact, it is taking us in the opposite direction. So, despite appearances, more steady progress will be made if we take the more difficult route. This book is a guide on how to get teacher evaluation right, not how to do it quickly or with minimal effort. So, in a way, the big message or take away is: There are no shortcuts.

The original inspiration for the book – says Darling-Hammond, who serves on our board of directors – was the Albert Shanker Institute’s Good Schools Seminar Series, the goal of which is to build a network of union leaders, district superintendents, and researchers by creating a safe, off-the-record space where they can work collaboratively on issues related to improving teaching and learning. Getting Teacher Evaluation Right is a response to requests from these stakeholders, and is intended to help all sides “imagine and create coherent systems for evaluating teachers in ways that support continuous improvement in classrooms and schools.”

Despite the recent, intense and controversial focus on teacher evaluation as a means to increasing student learning, “existing [teacher evaluation] systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling.” (p. 24)* One problem is that they are not really systems. Judging from the attention to teacher evaluation these days, one wouldn’t suspect that teacher evaluation is really only one small piece of the educational improvement puzzle: “Changing on-the-job evaluation will not, by itself, transform the quality of teaching.” We cannot fire our way into Finland, Darling-Hammond says:

We will not really improve the quality of the profession if we do not also cultivate an excellent supply of good teachers who are well prepared and committed to career-long learning. (p. 26)

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An opportunity for Kasich to restore his cuts

The Department of education recently announced that they had received 570 Straight A Fund applications totaling $868 million from 420 organizations, although only $100 million in grants is available this year. This should come as little surprise to anyone who has followed the Kasich administrations policies towards K-12 school funding.

His first budget slashed an astronomical $3.1 billion from local school districts, his subsequent budget left schools with a $500 million deficit compared to 2009 spending levels

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As large as these cuts have been, they don't paint the entire picture. Simultaneously to these cuts has been the imposition of large unfunded mandates.

Implementation and operation of the 3rd grade reading guarantee could cost upwards of $500 million. The Rube Goldberg Ohio Teacher Evaluation system (OTES) places a massive demand upon school resources to implement. There has been a large expansion in private school vouchers, and charter schools that directly result in almost $1 billion in transfersfrom local school district budgets to the profiteers, mostly at the expense of quality.

Perhaps the most immediate drain however is the technology requirements to implement the PARCC assessments, where every student will be taking their tests online. Before schools begin to pay $29.50 to PARCC per test, many will need to procure, install and configure hundred of computers and backend infrastructure. This, we expect, is a significant number of the Straight A Fund applications.

All told then, it is not difficult to understand why the Straight A Fund is so massively over subscribed, and why Ohio's schools are in so much financial stress

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The Governor and his legislative allies must begin to recognize the problems they have created and immediately address them. They must start by using the $400 million in medicaid savings not for more unnecessary tax cuts, but to begin to adequately fund our schools.

Except for Right-to-work states, US Ed outperforms international averages

Despite repeated claims made by the corporate education privatization movement, according to a new study by the National Center for Education Statistics, public schools in the US stack up very well compared to their intenrational "competition"

The U.S. States in a Global Context report presents results from the 2011 NAEP-TIMSS Linking Study in mathematics and science at grade 8 for 52 states (includes the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense schools) and 47 education systems (38 countries and 9 subnational education systems).

Results are reported as average scores on the TIMSS scales (0–1,000 with an average of 500) and percentages of students scoring at or above the TIMSS international benchmarks: Advanced (625), High (550), Intermediate (475), and Low (400). Three linking methods¯statistical moderation, statistical projection, and calibration¯were applied to predict TIMSS results for 43 states that had participated only in NAEP. The three linking methods produced similar results.

Mathematics
Compared to the TIMSS average, 36 states scored higher, 10 states scored comparably, and 6 states scored lower. Massachusetts scored higher than 42 education systems. Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore scored higher than all 52 U.S. states.

Science
Compared to the TIMSS average, 47 states scored higher, 2 states scored comparably, and 3 states scored lower. Massachusetts and Vermont scored higher than 43 education systems. Singapore scored higher than all 52 U.S. states.

Here's how the states stacked up

The eagled-eyed among you will notice that the poorest performing states are predominantly "right-to-work" states such as MS and AL. The vast majority of states, including Ohio, exceed their average TIMSS. There is no crisis other than in the minds of profiteers looking to manufacture one.

You can read the entire study here.

Why Do Teachers Quit?

Lots of reaosns, here's a sample

Ingersoll extrapolated and then later confirmed that anywhere between 40 and 50 percent of teachers will leave the classroom within their first five years (that includes the nine and a half percent that leave before the end of their first year.) Certainly, all professions have turnover, and some shuffling out the door is good for bringing in young blood and fresh faces. But, turnover in teaching is about four percent higher than other professions.

Approximately 15.7 percent of teachers leave their posts every year, and 40 percent of teachers who pursue undergraduate degrees in teaching never even enter the classroom at all. With teacher effectiveness a top priority of the education reform movement, the question remains: Why are all these teachers leaving—or not even entering the classroom in the first place?

“One of the big reasons I quit was sort of intangible,” Ingersoll says. “But it’s very real: It’s just a lack of respect,” he says. “Teachers in schools do not call the shots. They have very little say. They’re told what to do; it’s a very disempowered line of work.”

Other teachers—especially the younger ones—are also leaving the classroom for seemingly nebulous reasons. I spoke with nearly a dozen public and private school teachers and former teachers around the country. (I used pseudonyms for the teachers throughout this piece so that they could speak freely.) Many of them cited “personal reasons,” ranging from individual stress levels to work-life balance struggles.

“We are held up to a really high standard for everything,” says Emma, a 26-year-old former teacher at a public school in Kansas who now works for a music education non-profit. “It stems from this sense that teachers aren’t real people, and the only thing that came close to [making me stay] was the kids.”

In my interviews with teachers, the same issues continued to surface. In theory, the classroom hours aren’t bad and the summers are free. But, many young teachers soon realize they must do overwhelming amounts of after-hours work. They pour out emotional energy into their work, which breeds quick exhaustion. And they experience the frustrating uphill battle that comes along with teaching—particularly in low-performing schools.

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School levies up nearly 30% under Kasich

A new study by Innovation Ohio reveals that school levies are up nearly 30% under Gov. Kasich

• 72 new operating levies raising $260 million will be on local ballots in November;
• This brings the total number of new “operating money” requests between May of 2011 and November of 2013 to 475, and the total amount requested to $1.59 billion;
• Both figures (number of levies and amounts requested) are significantly higher than those occurring before Gov. Kasich took office. Compared to May, 2007 through November, 2009, under Kasich there have been 27.7% more requests (up from 372) for 39.1% more money (up from $1.15 billion) on Ohio ballots.

The full study is here. Innovation Ohio's Janetta King had this to say

“This analysis is proof positive that the school funding cuts enacted by Gov. Kasich and his legislative allies have simply shifted the burden to local taxpayers. Until now, the Administration has claimed that state funding cuts haven’t had an impact on local schools or local taxpayers. And they’ve preposterously asserted that despite their cuts, the number of new money levies for operations haven’t risen since they took office.

“Even now, we fully expect that they will try to confuse the issue by lumping school construction levies in with school operating levies and claim that the number of levies has held constant. But as Charlie Wilson, President of the Ohio School Boards Association, says:

‘….if you are trying to measure the impact of state funding cuts on the (schools’) main operating budget, Innovation Ohio’s measurement is better because it effectively measures the local operational impact of cuts made in the state’s operating budget.’ (emphases in the original)

“In short, the Kasich administration and its allies have played a giant shell game. They’ve cut school funding to pay for income tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Ohioans. This, of course, has only pushed the need for tax increases down to the local level where middle and low income Ohioans are being asked to hike their own property taxes in order to make up the shortfall.”'