Ohio Charter schools bilking taxpayers for students that don't attend

Before we get to the details of the Auditor of States report titled "Report on Community School Student Attendance", we want to acknowledge the Auditor for carrying out these surprise visits to charter schools to determine the legitimacy of their reported student attendance counts.

The substance of the Auditors report should alarm everyone. A random inspection of 30 schools found that a majority of them are significantly over reporting their student attendance, and consequently receiving significantly more money than they are entitled to. Money that is being drawn from local school districts.

Just how bad is this problem?

One school literally had no students in attendance, despite reporting to ODE that they had 152! When questioned about this, according to the report, "The Director indicated the Academy was engaged in a set of weeklong practice tests for the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) the week of October 1, 2014. Once the testing was completed each day that week, students were permitted to leave."

The Auditor did another follow up visit a month later, the result indicate fraud on a massive scale

*The Academy’s calendar did not indicate practice testing for the OGT would be taking place the week of October 1, 2014.
*The Auditor of State’s office made an unannounced follow up visit on Monday, November 3, 2014.
*AOS reviewed the OGT practice test documents and related answer sheets from the week of October 1, 2014. AOS noted that the test booklets were from 2004. Each booklet had a student’s name on it along with the answer sheet.
*The number of students present did not correspond to the number of tests given on each day.
*AOS also performed a head count at 10:15 a.m. accounting for 37 students.

The report goes on to detail dozens of charter schools massively over-reporting their attendance in order to receive more money than they are entitled to, many of them giving all manner of weak excuses.

AOS also identified one community school whose educational plan in the sponsor agreement did not authorize a blending learning program; however, management informed AOS during an interview that the school was in fact employing a blended learning curriculum with some student learning opportunities provided in the classroom and some provided online.

Lastly, AOS identified one community school operating a blended learning program as authorized by the sponsor in the educational plan; however, there was no evidence that the community school provided the blended learning declaration to ODE required under Ohio Rev. Code §3302.41(A).

This indicates that not only are the schools themselves operating in a very questionable manner, but their sponsors are asleep at the wheel, and not actively monitoring them.

The magnitude of the potential fraud is staggering, and would be the largest financial scandal in the history of Ohio. Steve Dyer did the math

Yost came up with several recommendations, including more frequent counts, better reporting and practices that allow sponsors and the state to better flag potential issues. But the point is this: We've had charters for 16 years in Ohio. We've spent now about $8.3 billion on them (through the first January payment report). If the headcounts have been as off as they were during this random audit, which was an average of 28%, during the life of the charter school program, then we've paid $2.3 billion for kids that weren't even in the charter schools.

This level of potential fraud requires a statewide investigation and referrals to county prosecutors. Both Charter operators and their sponsors should be held liable to repay all monies they have received for students they have not taught.

Any doubt that the charter experiment in Ohio is out of control can be vanquished. Reform cannot come soon enough.

Here's the Auditors report.

Report on Community School Student Attendance Counts

Toxic Testing. Hyperbole or Actuality?

Submitted by a Hilliard City School teacher

Toxic testing. Hyperbole or actuality? You decide. Merriam-Webster defines toxic as “containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation.” Students have taken tests since the invention of school. So what’s with the “toxic” label you’ve heard recently? It cannot be understated that teachers do not abhor tests. Tests are an integral part of the learning process, helping teachers to understand where their students are with presented concepts and helping to inform continuing instruction. Assessment is essential to a teacher’s purpose. We want to know whether students “get it” or not.

However, children today face a barrage of tests, both standardized and teacher-created, that reaches a level of absurdity. Beyond the tests teachers create for their students, there are: Common Formative Assessments (in each core subject with Pre and Post tests), district level diagnostic tests (MAP, SRI, etc.), SLO tests (in every “non-tested” subject with Pre and Post tests), and who could forget the impending PARCC Assessments? This year, students will face two testing sessions of PARCC in Reading and Math, while some grades also face PARCC-like tests in Science and Social Studies. This grueling testing schedule leaves precious little time for the learning that is supposedly being measured.

It is not just the increase in the number of tests, but the lack of valuable, if any, information useful to teachers sounding the alarm. Teachers receive a Scaled Score (in the case of OAAs) that tells them nothing more than whether a student passed or failed, and whether by a little or by a lot. Even this useless information does not arrive until the summer after the students have moved on to yet another year of testing. If the results did tell teachers something of value, there is nothing they could do to help those students. It is an exercise in futility.

Despite the lack of instructional value in state test results, students are subjected to high-stakes decisions based upon them. School districts, forced to comply with mandates, assign students who scored below a set Scaled Score (again in OAAs) to remedial classes or in the case of third graders, retention. There are high-stakes for high achieving students as well. Often, cut-off scores are used as prerequisites for placement in advanced classes. Additionally, high school students are required to reach a minimum score to be eligible for a diploma. These stakes are real, and their toll is high.

Within this toxic sludge of tests, students are being smothered and their education is being stolen from them.

When public schools get more money, students do better

Beginning 40 years ago, a series of court rulings forced states to reallocate money for education, giving more to schools in poor neighborhoods with less in the way of local resources. Critics such as Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution, argued these decisions were simply "throwing money at schools." His research found that there was little correlation between how much schools spent and how well their students performed on tests.

It's a view still held by many politicians today, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.). "We spend more than any other state in the country," he said a year ago. "It ain't about the money. It's about how you spend it -- and the results."

More recent research, however, has found that when schools have more money, they are able to give their students a better education. A new study on those who went to school during the school-finance cases a few decades ago found that those who attended districts that were affected by the rulings were more likely to stay in school through high school and college and are making more money today.

The authors, Kirabo Jackson and Claudia Persico of Northwestern University and Rucker Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley, released a revised draft of their as-yet-unpublished paper this week. The benefits were most obvious for students from poor families. They found that a 10 percent increase in the money available for each low-income student resulted in a 9.5 percent increase in students' earnings as adults. A public investment in schools, they wrote, returned 8.9 percent annually for a typical pupil who started kindergarten in 1980.

The findings are evidence that public schooling can be a way for children who grow up in poverty to overcome their circumstances, Johnson argued.

(Read more at the Washington Post).

Incorporating Stakeholder Feedback when Developing Value-Added Models

In light of the ODE report suggesting we're over-testing students, this study titled "Anticipating and incorporating stakeholder feedback when developing value-added models" offers further means to address the explosion in testing.

Abstract: State and local education agencies across the United States are increasingly adopting rigorous teacher evaluation systems. Most systems formally incorporate teacher performance as measured by student test-score growth, sometimes by state mandate. An important consideration that will influence the long-term persistence and efficacy of these systems is stakeholder buy-in, including buy-in from teachers. In this study we document common questions from teachers about value-added measures and provide research-based responses to these questions.

The study found four key issues that consistently came up with regard to the use of value-added for teacher evaluations:

1. Differentiated Students. How can the model deal with a teacher who has students who are different for some reason (e.g., poverty, special education, etc.)? Will that teacher be treated unfairly by the model?
2. Student Attendance. Will teachers be held accountable for students who do not regularly attend class?
3. Outside Events and Policies. How can the model account for major events (e.g., school closings for snow) or initiatives (e.g., Common Core implementation) that impact achievement?
4. Ex Ante Expectations. Why can’t teachers have their predicted scores – the target average performance levels for their students – in advance?

These questions still persist today, and are larely unanswered.

Here's the full report.

ODE thinks we've been over-testing kids by 20%

The Ohio Department of Education was tasked with producing a report detailing the amount of testing being performed in K-12 public schools. You can read the report itself, below.

The report find the following: Total Testing Time for the Average Student in a School Year, in Hours

Kindergarten	11.3
1	11.6
2	13.6
3	28
4	24
5	22.6
6	22.3
7	21.1
8	23
9	20.4
10	28.4
11	18.9
12	12.2
Total	257.4
Average	19.8

That's a lot of testing, and is not fully comprehensive as the report notes.

ODE goes on to provide 8 action steps being taken, and ends with a number of recommendations, including

This report includes a comprehensive package of legislative recommendations to shorten the amount of time students spend taking tests. These recommendations place limits on the overall time students spend taking tests each year, eliminate unnecessary tests and modify the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System. The following recommendations are contingent on each other and would require implementation as a comprehensive set of reforms. If this package of recommendations is adopted, the state can reduce the amount of time students are taking tests by nearly 20 percent.

A clear admission that the testing regime in Ohio has gotten out of hand by at least 20%

To get there ODE lays out the following recommendations

Recommendation 1: Limit the amount of time a student takes tests at the state and district levels to 2 percent of the school year, and limit the amount of time spent practicing for tests to 1 percent of the school year. These limits will encourage the state and districts to prioritize testing and guarantee to students and parents that the vast majority of time in the classroom will focus on instruction, not testing.

[...]

Recommendation 2: Eliminate the fall third-grade reading test and administer the test in the spring. Students who do not reach the required promotion score on the spring test will have a second opportunity to take the test in the summer.

[...]

Recommendation 3: Eliminate the state’s requirement that districts give mathematics and writing diagnostic tests to students in first grade through third grades.

[...]

Recommendation 4: Eliminate the use of student learning objective tests as part of the teacher evaluation system for grades pre-K to 3 and for teachers teaching in non-core subject areas in grades 4-12. The core areas are English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. Teachers teaching in grades and subject areas in which student learning objectives are no longer permitted will demonstrate student growth through the expanded use of shared attribution, although at a reduced level overall. In cases where shared attribution isn’t possible, the department will provide guidance on alternative ways of measuring growth.

That last recommendation is a huge admission. Teachers and administrators have been hugely burdened developing and deploying SLO's and students have received little to no benefit from them. Here's the full report

Supt Ross Report on Testing

On Charter Schools, Auditor Yost Makes Promising Noises

During his swearing in, Auditor Yost had this to say

Charter schools will remain a major focus in Auditor Dave Yost's second term, the Republican announced Monday.

Mr. Yost, who was sworn in during a morning Statehouse ceremony, told reporters that while he plans to also prioritize public records, board accountability and data integrity, charter schools will be "front and center" during the first year of his new term.

"We audit every charter school now, if the legislature chooses to give us additional tools or greater responsibility we'll do that - we'll be part of that discussion too," he said. "I think there's some things that need to be addressed. There's multiple ways of doing it and that debate will unfold and I'll be part of it over the next few months."

The auditor launched an investigation into 19 charters managed by Concept Schools last year. (See Gongwer Ohio Report, October 14, 2014)

In addition to charter schools, Mr. Yost said he intends to focus on board accountability, saying he's "very concerned about the uneven quality of the unpaid boards that we charge with supervising various public functions."

"I'm not sure the lines of responsibility are sufficiently clear or that boards are being given the tools they need to succeed," he said. "And that goes from a small charter school board acting in a public behalf all the way up to large institutions spending millions of dollars."

That's good to hear. However, we are still waiting for his report on Horizon schools. He seemed much swifter, and public, with his investigation of data tampering at Columbus City Schools than he has been with this important investigation. A quick look at recent campaign finance reports show that Yost has been a significant beneficiary of contribtiuons from the charter sector, taking in almost $50,000 from David Brennan (White Hat) and William Lager (ECOT) alone. Only time will tell whether that was a sound investment by the for profit charter folks.