Wall Street ♥ charter schools

Call them cynical, but the widespread involvement of financial firms in the charter school movement raises suspicion among many public school advocates.

The map below illustrates just a few entanglements of big league investors in national school-choice organizations.

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Working together for effective reform in America's public schools

Organized Parents, Organized Teachers - Working together for effective reform in America's public schools. Current national and local education policies often pit teachers and parents against each other, trapping them in a cycle of blame and mistrust. But in one Minneapolis community, parents and teachers decided to work together to make their schools better – with great results. This is their story.

Organized Parents, Organized Teachers - Working together for effective reform in America's public schools from Annenberg Institute on Vimeo.

For more, visit www.realparentpower.com

New School Year - New Cuts in Funding

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) have just issued a report that details the sad fact that most states have begun the new school year with more cuts to funding.

States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession and, in many states, those cuts deepened over the last year. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the 2012-13 school year than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels — often far below.

Ohio has fared particularly poorly under current Governor John Kasich, with the 7th largest per student cut in the nation

The “cuts-only approach” hasn’t worked, and many municipalities will have to raise revenue or cut needed services, said Jon Shure, the center’s director of state fiscal strategies. “What you’re seeing is that the jurisdiction-of-last-resort is now the one that has to honestly confront the situation because the buck has been passed.”

We're now seeing tax increases in local government to offset the local budget raid perpetrated by the Governor to balance his own budget. A website, www.cutshurtohio.com details a county-by-county breakdown of effects the budget has had. For example, in Cuyahoga county - where Cleveland schools reside, the cuts dwarf the $65 million budget hole the district is trying to plug

With rising tax revenues and the ability to close loopholes, there is no reason the Governor and his legislature cannot reverse this harmful trend, and use the next biennium budget to increase funding for Ohio's public school to adequate levels.

1,560,379

If you are a corporate education reformer, with the requisite pathological desire to want to fire educators, having educators stand in your way, blocking this deep seated desire is something that must be overcome.

We therefore see a secondary policy preference expressed by those wanting to privatize and corpratize public education. Policies designed to remove the collective voice of educators.

SB5 is a very clear example of this, and while publicly it was couched in "reform rhetoric", the governor has already expressed his desire to "break the back of organized labor in the schools". Scott walker in Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels in Indiana, and the legislature in New Hampshire have all tried similar approaches to removing educators voices.

But even with SB5 massively defeated, corporate education reformers like the Fordham Institute continue to push for such approaches

Teacher unions are among the most powerful political actors in America on a wide range of issues (just ask Terry Moe, Paul Peterson, or Mike Antonucci). It’s not a given that that should be so, however, or that union intervention in partisan elections is always (or even often) good for teachers as a whole. Rhee and other education reformers would do well to add paycheck protection to their toolkit of reforms to increase parent power over education policy – and protect the rights of teachers to spend their paychecks on political issues they believe in, not on the agenda of labor leaders.

We left the following comment on their post "this is a very ill informed post.

Teachers can opt out of funding unions and pay only fair share to cover the costs of professional services. Political advocacy of candidates is NOT paid out of any dues, but instead is paid by VOLUNTARY contributions by educators, typically into the Fund for Children and Education (FCPE).

One would hope that a "policy fellow" would at least avail themselves of some basic facts and understandings before espousing an opinion on a topic they clearly have no understanding of.

But the folks at Fordham aren't the only ones who would like to see educators slip quietly into the background. The Columbus Dispatch often published opinion pieces that echo these desires, and did, publishing a piece by Pat Smith, titled "Expert panel could revamp education in Ohio"

An expert panel in Ohio could identify similar savings and direct them where they’d do the most good. Such a panel ought to include certified public accountants, economists, futurists and technologists and perhaps be chaired by Ohio’s state auditor.

We're not sure what a "futurist" is, but we are sure educators are not on that list, indeed educators get a special mention - "It should welcome input, but not control, from educators..."

We asked Ms. Smith "Curious why you do not include any teachers/educators in your list of people who would serve on your proposed expert panel?". She was kind enough to respond, and her response included this

No one is more supportive of teachers than I am. I come from a family of teachers: mother-in-law, aunts, sister-in-law, my daughter and, of course, my own experience - four different systems under five different principals. But, I think the kind of expertise we need to improve the productivity of the entire state system has to come from those with different sets of skills: technology gurus, numbers crunchers, data experts, demographers, futurists, etc. Yes, as I said, they need to have input from educators (the editor edited out the adjective "strong" before "input.") But, you know as well as I do, much of the decision making in education circles revolves around ideology and not about what really works. Also, the educators tend to wear down others on panels. My worry is that there is only a finite amount of resources that is going to go into education and that we must make the very best use of those resources and that educators don't know or agree how to do that. For example: should we fund early education or lower class size? Yes, a surgeon has the expertise to operate, but not to run the hospital where he performs the surgery.

We're not sure what's more insulting, the mistaken belief that educators have no expertise in these matters, or that they constant pointing out of ill-conceived ideas wears the purveyors of those ideas down. But at least in this exchange we can see why educators simply must be silenced.

According to ODE statistics, Ohio teachers have an average of 15.08 years experience, giving them a combined 1,560,379 total years of experience. Each day they add almost a million hours of experience to this massive total. Who else in the state has this amount, depth, and level of expertise in public education?

Anyone who doesn't recognize that educators have earned a central role in education policy reform isn't serious about reforming education, they are instead more interested in partisan politics.

Dublin city schools town hall report

Last night Dublin City Schools held a budget town hall, to a packed auditorium, as you can see from this 10 second video clip

A number of state legislators were in attendance, Rep. Carney, Rep Duffy, Rep Brenner's aide, Sen. Gillmor, Sen. and Sen. Jordan. Each spoke for a brief few minutes. None broke any new ground, with Republicans making their case for no tax increases and the lone Democrat, making the case that the budget was not balanced nor fair. While each received polite applause from the crowd, Carney received numerous instance of raucous applause and a standing ovation from many when he concluded. The crowd clearly preferred a more balanced approach.

The School treasurer and superintendent then went through the district's budget and presented the following power point

Dublin City Schools Budget Presentation - May 11th, 2011

Obviously not good news, so much so people are urged to contact the legislators and express their concern with the current budget proposal. We echo that request.

State Representatives
John Patrick Carney (D)
District:  22
77 S. High St
10th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 466-2473
Fax: (614) 719-6961
Can be contacted via web. http://www.house.state.oh.us

Cheryl Grossman (R) (Southern portion of district schools)
District:  23
77 S. High St
14th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 466-9690
Fax: (614) 719-6962
Can be contacted via web. http://www.house.state.oh.us

Andrew Brenner (R) (Delaware Co.-Pinney)
District:  2
77 S. High St
12th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 644-6711
Fax: (614) 719-0002
Can be contacted via web. http://www.house.state.oh.us

Mike Duffey (R) (Far northeast portion of district)
District:  21
77 S. High St
13th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 644-6030
Fax: (614) 719-6960
Can be contacted via web. http://www.house.state.oh.us

David Burke (R) (Union County)
77 S. High St
12th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Phone: (614) 466-8147
Fax: (614) 719-6983
Can be contacted via web. http:www.house.state.oh.us

Ohio Senate
Jim Hughes (R)
District 16
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-5981
Email: SD16@senate.state.oh.us

Karen Gillmor (R) (Union Co.-Jerome,Glacier)
District 26
Senator
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, Ground Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-8049
Email: SD26@senate.state.oh.us

Kris Jordan (R) (Delaware Co.-Pinney)
District 19
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, Ground Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-8086
Email: SD19@senate.state.oh.us

Kevin Bacon (R) (Far northeast portion of district)
District 3
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, Ground Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-8064
Email: SD03@senate.state.oh.us

School district field-tests 52 (yes, 52) new tests on kids

To see where public education is being driven, let’s look at a school district in North Carolina where students in every grade were used as guinea pigs this spring to help field-test a total of 52 -- yes, 52 -- new standardized tests this spring, kindergarteners included.

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