ECOT Under State Investigation

News came yesterday that ECOT, the failing but politically connected charter e-school, is under investigation. Here's the ABC 6 news report

ProgressOhio, that has done much of the investigating, had this to say in a press release

Political leaders close to charter school operator William Lager steered at least $2.7 million in public money to enhance IQ Innovations, a Lager-owned distance learning platform tapped by the Kasich Administration to provide online textbooks and other educational materials to Ohio schools.

While public records show that IQ Innovations consistently failed to deliver on the system’s promised functionality, it didn’t seem to matter. IQ had a powerful protector on the inside.

Former Lager consultant John Conley, appointed by the administration as Vice Chancellor of Educational Technology for the Board of Regents, was tasked with overseeing the project. Conley helped keep public money flowing to IQ Innovations and he helped to sideline whistleblowers who tried to hold IQ accountable, according to a new report by ProgressOhio.

We don't have much confidence that the IG, appointed by the Governor, will perform more than a perfunctory job, but once again it demonstrates just how out of control ECOT is in siphoning away precious tax payer dollars from students and into the back pockets of William Lager and the politicians that serve him.

If Bill Gates Just Paid His Taxes

If Bill Gates, while he was CEO, would have directed Microsoft to just pay its taxes instead of hiding profits overseas, each school district in the United States would get $2 million!

Maybe he should quit trying to implement failed corporate education polices and instead urge Congress to reform the tx code so that big business had to pay their fair share of taxes. That would help a lot more kids, but we're not going to hold our breath.

HT keving722.blogspot.com

More Proof Merit Pay Doesn't Work

The desire by corporate education reformers and anti-tax groups to implement "merit pay" has been the driving force behind the growth in onerous and ineffective teacher evaluation systems. However, study after study reveals that not only do these teacher evaluation systems not work in predicting who is, and is not, a high performer, the actual concept of merit pay itself continues to prove lacking in effect.

Bloomberg business reports on yet more evidence this is the case, in an article titled "Proof That Your Performance Bonus Is a Total Lie, Even bad workers are getting rewarded for their work, and performance reviews aren't helping." The study the article relies upon finds: 

• Only 20% of employers in North America say merit pay is effective at driving higher levels of individual performance.

• Over a quarter of employers, 26%, pay bonuses to employees who fail to meet expectations.

• Many managers and business leaders are updating their definition of effective performance management to better support changing business models.

The prescription being offered? Even more focus on trying to evaluate performance, rather than simply letting people get on with their jobs

Given the sad state of the annual performance review, many companies are again rethinking the process. Fluffier reviews followed as more aggressive "stack ranking" processes fell out of favor. Numerical rankings and bell curves are too simple and strict. Although such companies as Yahoo! still use a curve to rank and reward (or punish) employees, the ideal performance review is now a dialogue that includes clear metrics for measuring success and attaining goals. The trend is to conduct more reviews, more often. SHRM recommends that managers meet with employees at least four times a year. 

Maybe one day a realization that professionals are often more motivated by non-monetary rewards, such as better working conditions, professional development opportunities, increased responsibilities, creative freedoms and so forth.

State School Board Member Requests Federal Audit of ODE Charter Compliance Group

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) charter school oversight department came under heavy fire after the department head David Hansen, husband of Beth Hansend, Gov Kasich's chief of staff and now Presidential campaign manager, illegally excluded online online charter schools from charter sponsor ratings. He resigned in advance of being fired.

Subsequently, it was revealed he had also falsified an application to the US Department of Education (USDoE), minimizing charter school failures (by 950%!) and artificially boosting their performances in order to obtain a $71 million grant for charter school expansion.

ODE was forced to reissue the grant application to USDoE. Only now it appears they have been back at their old tricks, once again attempting to defraud the US Tax Payer by omitting online charter schools from their grant application.

What ODE is trying to hide

In light of the obvious corruption within ODE's, State School Board member A.J.Wagner has requested that the USDoE audit ODE and it's charter school compliance group. Here's his letter:

Stefan Huh, Director
Charter Schools Program
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202
(via email)

Re: Charter Schools Program; Grant Award No. U282A150023

Dear Director Huh,

In your letter of November 4, 2015 to Dr. Richard Ross, then Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Ohio, you stated, “Once we receive this information and responses to the above requests, the Department will decide whether we need further information or whether further actions or conditions are warranted. This may include requiring ODE to provide the Department with a report, on an expedited basis, from an independent auditor chosen in consultation with the department using, ‘agreed upon procedures’ to help determine, among other things, whether ODE is implementing its charter school authorizer evaluation and rating system in accordance with relevant state law, regulations, policies and procedures.”

I write you, not on behalf of the Ohio Board of Education or the Department of Education but, as the elected member to the Board of Education representing more than one million Ohio citizens to express the need for an independent audit as suggested in your earlier letter.

Since September of 2015, I have sought such an audit (by Ohio law, a study) by proposed resolution (copy attached). Although a majority of the elected members of our board, representing a clear majority of Ohio’s citizens have favored such an investigation, the proposed study has been turned back by the appointed members of the board.

Ever since it came to light last summer that an employee of ODE was falsely reporting charter school data, I have wanted to clear the name of ODE. Since then we have discovered that Dr. Ross was conducting secret meetings for the takeover of the schools in Youngstown while the board was lied to time and again about his involvement. The Cleveland Plain Dealer had significant trouble getting public records from ODE while first being told that Dr. Ross seldom uses email and then being told that his emails were too voluminous to provide. Board members have been directed to cease all direct communications with ODE employees. ODE requires sponsors to investigate any complaints to ODE against the sponsor’s schools and then blindly accepts the sponsors conclusions in the face of contradictory evidence. Now, in the responses you have received from ODE regarding their application for the subject grant, we find that almost one-third of charter students, those attending on line schools, were excluded from the disclosure of high and low performing schools.

I would love to have Ohio receive the $71 million grant awarded last fall, well performing charter schools could use the help, but not if it is based on deception. I do not want to be a part of such deceptions, and I truly believe the only way USDOE, or Ohio’s citizens can know the truth of this or future applications, and whether they will be objectively administered, is through an independent audit which our elected board members have not been able to achieve.

Sincerely,

A.J. Wagner, Member
Ohio Board of Education
District 3

VAM-Based Decisions Are Less Reliable Than Flipping a Coin

A new study of Value Added Measures (VAM) once again finds the use of this statistical tool to be inappropriate for measuring the effectiveness of teachers.

The question of stability [reliability/consistency] is not a question about whether average teacher performance rises, declines, or remains flat over time. The issue that concerns critics of VAM is whether individual teacher performance fluctuates over time in a way that invalidates inferences that an individual teacher is “low-” or “high-” performing. 

This distinction is crucial because VAM is increasingly being applied such that individual teachers who are identified as low-performing are to be terminated. From the perspective of individual teachers, it is inappropriate and invalid to fire a teacher whose performance is low this year but high the next year, and it is inappropriate to retain a teacher whose performance is high this year but low next year. 

Even if average teacher performance remains stable over time, individual teacher performance may fluctuate wildly from year to year.

After looking at numerous studies of VAM, the author concludes...

What this means is that value-added teacher rankings are insufficiently reliable for the purpose of high-stakes decisions regarding hiring and firing. High-Stakes decisions are clearly unwarranted if this volatility in the rankings is due to unmeasured variables or random measurement error. 

However, even in the unlikely event that there are no unmeasured variables and measurement error is zero, implying that all volatility is due to true variation in teacher performance, it would not be appropriate to hire or fire based on the ranking in a given year (designated “year t+1”) by such an extent as to invalidate the year t ranking. 

If VAM is used to identify and fire the bottom quartile (or quintile) of teachers, the results in Tables 1 and 2 indicate that this decision is incorrect, according to the year t+1 teacher rankings, between 59 and 70% of the time. If VAM-based culling is less reliable than flipping a coin, as these results suggest, then productive teachers would be culled more frequently than unproductive bottom quartile (or bottom quintile) teachers.

The whole notion that you could measure a teacher the same way a farmer measures a pig was always insulting and ridiculous. The ongoing science continues to prove that.

Here's the full paper

A Reanalysis of the Effects of Teacher Replacement Using VAM

What Justice Scalia's Passing Means for Teachers

Setting aside the politics of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia after his unexpected death, what of the issues already before the court that may affect public education and beyond?

The biggest case, widely reported is Friedrichs v California Teachers. SCOTUS Blog describes the issue thusly

“Issue: (1) Whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled and public-sector “agency shop” arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment; and (2) whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech.”

— http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association/

Simply put, right wing billionaires bankrolled an attack on the rights of unions to charge fair share fees for representing all members in a public sector bargaining unit - such as teachers. Without the ability to charge fair share fees, non members could simply not pay anything but still benefit from the services of the union - everything from increased pay via bargaining to better benefits, safety and training.

It was widely expected that the Supreme Court with it's 5 conservative justices would rule 5-4 against decades of precedent and deal a blow to unions. With the death of one of those 5 conservative justices it is now believed that the court would be tied 4-4.

What are the implications of this?

1. Votes that the Justice cast in cases that have not been publicly decided are void.  
2. In a 4-4 case where there is no majority for a decision the lower court’s ruling stands, as if the Supreme Court had never heard the case
3. The lower court ruled in favor of the unions (Ironically, something Friedrichs wanted so that the case could be expedited to the Supreme Court)

So as it stands right now, fair share, underpinned by the longstanding Abood decision remains the law of the land.

For this to continue to stand in the years to come, it will be important for supporters of strong unions and working people to ensure the replacement for Scalia supports the pillars of fairness that labor is built upon.