Would You Let An Unlicensed Doctor Operate On You?

We highlighted some dangerous deregulation policies in SB3, a bill recently passed by the Ohio Senate. One of those policies would allow high performing districts to employ unlicensed "teachers". Dr. Renee Middleton, Dean of the Patton College of Education, Ohio University issued this warning:

Americans in the twenty-first century accept without question the assumption that doctors must be licensed to practice medicine. But that, of course, has not always been the case, especially in the United States. In the early 1880s, West Virginia became the first state to enact and effectively implement a genuinely restrictive medical license law.

Education and Medicine are at their best when qualified practitioners meet and exceed state standards. That is why standards are so important. When some is “licensed to practice,” it lets the public know that the individual has met a “minimal” standard of practice. While students can fluctuate in their ability, teachers and standards are a constant – or at least they should be. A high bar must be set for those who wish to be “licensed for practice.” Ohio has stood on that belief for over a century.

Unfortunately, Senate Republicans are attempting to redefine minimal or acceptable “standards of practice.” Sen. Cliff Hite (R-Findlay) and Senate President Keith Faber (R-Celina) are attempting to pass SB3, a bill that deregulates education and the need for a “license to practice.” SB3 would allow for “high-performing school districts” to be exempt from hiring teachers with licenses and credentials currently required throughout the state. Based on data involving arbitrary graduation rates and random performance indicators, roughly 20 percent of school districts in Ohio would qualify as high-performing, with another 50 districts reportedly close to exempt status.

Hite and Faber fail to realize that knowledge of a subject – or even expertise in a subject – does not in and of itself qualify someone to teach. Teaching has a pedagogical science behind it.

If the state does not allow unlicensed drivers on our roads, why would it want to allow unlicensed teachers in our classrooms? Would you, as a parent, send your child to an unlicensed doctor simply because that doctor works at a hospital that is considered high-performing? No, you would not. Teaching is not surgery, but it is brain science, and not everyone is trained or skilled to do it.

If “high-performing” school districts hire non-licensed teachers, they will not be high-performing for very long. In fact, if a district slips below the “high-performing” threshold, its exemptions would be taken away – meaning non-licensed teachers would be teaching in underperforming schools. There simply cannot be sustained excellence without a commitment to professionally licensed teachers.

Through most of the nineteenth century, anyone could call themselves a doctor and could practice medicine on whatever basis they wished. An 1889 U.S. Supreme Court case, Dent v. West Virginia, effectively transformed medical practice from an unregulated occupation to a legally recognized profession.

Teaching is a profession! Federal legislation requires colleges of education to be accredited based on a nationally based set of standards. Ohio requires teachers to be “licensed to practice.” Why? Because teaching is a profession. SB3 would take us back to the 1800s and allow anyone to teach. Do we really want to go there? Studying how individuals learn helps teacher candidates’ transition from sitting in a classroom to standing in front of one. It teaches them how to relate material to students and positively influence student-learning outcomes and academic achievement. It allows them to hit the ground running in a way in which those without the background, training, experience, and pedagogical skills simply cannot do.

Just as we have standards for our students, we must have standards for the profession of teaching. Hiring a non-licensed professional to teach a class may seem innocuous, but it would set a dangerous precedent. Hiring someone without established prerequisites allows for a subjective, “good enough” mindset that will only hurt our state and our students in the long run.

I strongly encourage our state representatives to vote no on SB3, and I strongly encourage you to call your legislator and tell him or her that teaching is a profession and that our children deserve to be taught by professionals.

Respectfully,

Renée A. Middleton, Ph.D., Dean
The Gladys W. & David H. Patton College of Education
Ohio University

Revolving Door Of Teachers Costs Schools Billions Every Year

Every year, thousands of fresh-faced teachers are handed the keys to a new classroom, given a pat on the back and told, "Good luck!"

Over the next five years, though, nearly half of those teachers will transfer to a new school or leave the profession altogether — only to be replaced with similarly fresh-faced teachers.

We've been reporting this month on the pipeline into teaching — and hearing from teachers themselves about why they stay. Richard Ingersoll, who has studied the issue for years, says there's a revolving door of teacher turnover that costs school districts upwards of $2.2 billion a year.

Richard Ingersoll is a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies teacher turnover and retention. He says the constant teacher churn costs school districts more than $2.2 billion annually.

One of the reasons teachers quit, he says, is that they feel they have no say in decisions that ultimately affect their teaching. In fact, this lack of classroom autonomy is now the biggest source of frustration for math teachers nationally.

I spoke with Ingersoll to ask him about his research and what schools can do to fix the problem.

(Read more at NPR)

Voters Everywhere Reject Vouchers

According to data compiled by Edd Doerr of Americans for Religious Liberty, voters in every state when confronted with the opportunitity to weigh in on school vouchers and tax payer funeded private school issues have rejected the idea every time. Here are the results:

• Nebraska 1970 Tax code vouchers 57-43 against
• Maryland 1972 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Michigan 1978 Vouchers 74-26 against
• Washington, DC 1981 Tax code vouchers 89-11 against
• Utah 1988 Tax code vouchers 70-30 against
• Oregon 1990 Tax code vouchers 67-33 against
• Colorado 1992 Vouchers 67-33 against
• California 1993 Vouchers 70-30 against
• Washington State 1996 Vouchers 64-36 against
• Colorado 1998 Tax code vouchers 60-40 against
• Michigan 2000 Vouchers 69-31 against
• California 2000 Vouchers 71-29 against
• Utah 2007 Vouchers 62-38 against
• Florida 2012 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Hawaii 2014 Vouchers 55-45 against
• Nebraska 1966 Bus transportation 57-43 against (%)
• Idaho 1972 Bus transportation 57-43 against
• New York 1967 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 72-28 against
• Michigan 1970 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 57-43 against
• Oregon 1972 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 61-39 against
• Washington State 1975 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 60-39 against
• Alaska 1976 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 54-46 against
• Massachusetts 1986 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 70-30 against
• Maryland 1974 Auxiliary services 56-43 against
• Missouri 1976 Auxiliary services 60-40 against
• Massachusetts 1982 Auxiliary services 62-38 against
• South Dakota 2004 Auxiliary services 53-47 against
• California 1982 Textbook aid 61-39 against

Senate Passes Contentious Testing and K-12 Deregulation Bill

On March 25, the Ohio Senate passed SB3 along party lines. This omnibus education bill has a number of components. Testing, evaluations, deregulation and some other miscellaneous provisions.

Here's a breakdown of the major components

Deregulation

• Exempts qualified school districts from several requirements of current law regarding teacher qualifications under the third-grade reading guarantee, teacher licensing, mentoring under the Ohio Teacher Residency Program, and class size restrictions.
• Qualifies a school district for the above exemptions if, on its most recent report card, the district received (1) at least 85% of the total possible points for the performance index score, (2) an "A" for performance indicators met, and (3) at least 93% and 95% for the four-year and five-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, respectively.
• Qualifies for an alternative resident educator license an individual who has not completed coursework in the subject area for which the individual is applying to teach.

The provisions are asinine. They eliminate all the regulations that made a district high performing in the first place. What parent wants to send their child to a high performing district where class sizes are very large and being taught by unlicensed amateurs? What district wants that? Even the President of the Senate admits as much in a Dispatch article

“I understand the angst of saying we’re going to open it up willy-nilly to let the superintendent hire his brother to teach physics,” he said. “The superintendent has got to be responsible. The school board that is elected needs to be responsible for that decision.”

Testing

• Limits the cumulative amount of time spent on the administration of state assessments to 2% of the school year beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.
• Limits the cumulative amount of time used for taking practice or diagnostic assessments used to prepare for state assessments to 1% of the school year beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.
• Exempts from the time limitation assessments administered to students with disabilities, diagnostic assessments for students who fail to attain a passing score on the third-grade reading guarantee, assessments used to identify gifted students, and for alternatives to certain end-of-course examinations.
• Eliminates the current requirement that school districts and schools administer diagnostic assessments to students in grades one through three in writing and mathematics, but retains diagnostic assessments for kindergarten students and reading assessments for students in grades one through three beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.
• Requires that school districts and schools administer the English language arts assessment to third graders at least once annually, instead of twice as under current law, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.

It's a pity that the Senate can't wait for their own panels investigation and recommendations on addressing the testing overload crisis before passing these vague measures.

Evaluations

• Modifies the alternative framework for teacher evaluations, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, by increasing (to 50%) the teacher performance measure, decreasing (to 35%) the student academic growth measure, and permitting districts and schools to use a combination of specified components for the remainder of each evaluation.
• Prohibits student academic growth from accounting for more than 35% of each principal evaluation, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, if the State Board of Education prescribes a state framework for principal evaluations.
• Requires the State Board, by July 1, 2015, to take the necessary steps to modify any framework it prescribes for the evaluation of principals in order to comply with the bill's provisions.
• Specifies that if the State Board prescribes an assessment for participants in the Ohio Teacher Residency Program, each district or school may (1) require the participant to pass that assessment, or (2) assess the participant using the participant's annual teacher evaluation.

These measures are heading in the right direction, but still less reliance on student growth measures is needed to create an evaluation framework that will improve educator quality.

Miscellaneous

• Requires the School Facilities Commission, by December 15, 2015, to develop and submit to the General Assembly a legislative proposal assisting school districts to receive funding under the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program.
• Increases the competitive bidding threshold for school building and repair contracts from $25,000 to $50,000.
• Removes a requirement that the State Board adopt a measure, to be reported separately from the district's or school's report card, for the amount of extracurricular services offered to students.

In Teaching Experience Counts, Studies Find

Much of the impetus for new teacher evaluation systems has been based upon the belief that teaching experience is less important than demonstrating competence via student test scores. This belief has become popular among corporate reformers for providing a potential mechanism to remove older more expensive teachers and replace them with cheaper less experienced teachers.

We have published hundreds of articles and studies here at Join the Future pointing out the dangers of relying upon student test scores for the purposes of evaluating teacher quality. Study after study has found the measures to be unreliable and unfair. Worse, it exploded that amount of testing students are having to needlessly endure, and sapped the morale of educators dealing with an unfair system to the point where an exodus of talented educators form the profession is real and happening.

Now comes evidence that the premise itself, that experience doesn't add to quality over time, is fatally flawed.

The evidence comes in the form of 2 new studies. The first in a paper published by Harvard, titled Productivity Returns to Experience in the Teacher Labor Market: Methodological Challenges and New Evidence on Long-Term Career Improvement, the researchers conclude

We find consistent evidence across models that teachers improve most rapidly during their first several years on the job but also continue to improve their ability to raise student test scores beyond the first five years of their careers. This directly contradicts the standard policy conclusion that teachers do not improve after the first three to five years of their career. Finally, we find suggestive evidence across multiple modeling approaches that teachers continue to improve even later in their careers, particularly in mathematics.

The second in a working paper, published by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), titled RETURNS TO TEACHER EXPERIENCE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND MOTIVATION IN MIDDLE SCHOOL, the author finds

We use rich longitudinally matched administrative data on students and teachers in North Carolina to examine the patterns of differential effectiveness by teachers’ years of experience. The paper contributes to the literature by focusing on middle school teachers and by extending the analysis to student outcomes beyond test scores. Once we control statistically for the quality of individual teachers by the use of teacher fixed effects, we find large returns to experience for middle school teachers in the form both of higher test scores and improvements in student behavior, with the clearest behavioral effects emerging for reductions in student absenteeism. Moreover these returns extend well beyond the first few years of teaching. The paper contributes to policy debates by documenting that teachers can and do learn on the job.

These findings should come as no surprise. The claims that experience don't count beyond the first few years was always a spurious argument, running counter to most people's own working life experience and observations.

It is past time to discard corporate education policies designed to cheapen public education, and instead embrace quality through team working, professionalization, and ongoing career training

Governor Kasich’s Tax Shift Plan Lacks Voter Support

Via One Ohio Now

Governor Kasich’s recently proposed tax shift is only supported by a quarter of Ohio voters, with support dropping and opposition increasing significantly once plan specifics are divulged. Opposition is broadest and most intense when voters learn how different the bottom three-fifths and wealthiest one percent would be treated by the plan. Resistance to the plan is also fueled, in part, by voters’ fundamental opposition to both tax shifts and cutting state income taxes for the wealthiest Ohioans. Key findings from Global Strategy Group’s recent poll of 504 registered Ohio voters are as follows:

A plurality of voters oppose the tax shift plan initially. When only provided with a brief overview of Governor Kasich’s plan – increasing the state sales tax while cutting the state income tax – a plurality of Ohioans (44%) reject the plan, while only one-quarter of Ohioans (26%) support it. An additional three-inten (31%) say they do not know enough to answer initially.

Resistance to the tax shift increases dramatically once plan specifics and implications are detailed. Opposition soars (jumping 28 points to 72% oppose) when voters learn that under the tax shift plan the bottom three-fifths of taxpayers as a group would actually see an increase in their state and local taxes while the wealthiest one percent of Ohio’s households would receive the largest tax cut. Only one-fifth of voters remain supportive of the plan (18%) after the lopsided impact of the shift is revealed.

• A majority of Democrats (80%), Independents (64%) and Republicans (65%) oppose the plan after hearing this information.
• Opposition exists across political ideologies, with liberals (82%), moderates (75%), and conservatives (65%) all opposing the plan.
• Even a majority of Ohioans with household incomes over $80,000 a year oppose the plan by a wide margin (64% oppose/27% support).

Voters do not support the policy behind the tax shift. When asked about the idea of paying for a reduction in state income taxes with an increase in the state sales tax, three-fifths of voters (62%) say they oppose the idea including majorities across political parties and ideologies, while only 27% are supportive.

Instead, Ohioans want to see taxes increased on the wealthy. Voters are clear in their rejection of the proposal’s heavy tax cuts for the wealthiest Ohioans, as three-fourths of voters (74%) believe Ohio should increase taxes on the wealthiest Ohioans and profitable businesses to ensure they pay their fair share. Only 16% said they would like to see taxes cut for the wealthiest Ohioans and profitable corporations.

And voters would rather see investment in public services than a reduction in the personal income tax rate. When presented with a variety of statements suggesting investment in various state services like public health, education, and public safety over a personal income tax cut, voters agree with all of them.

69% of Voters would rather invest in Ohio’s public schools than cut state income taxes.

All statements receive majority agreement across political party and ideology.