Teachers Digging Into Own Pockets to tune of $1.3 billion

Via

Roughly half the amount that the nation's public school teachers are spending on educational products is being covered with their own money, a new nationwide survey shows.

All told, teachers spent about $3.2 billion on various types of supplies and materials during the 2012-13 academic year, according to the survey, released recently by the National School Supply and Equipment Association. Half that total amount, $1.6 billion, came out of educators' own pockets.

The per-teacher breakdown is as follows: The average educator forked out about $198 of their own money on instructional materials, $149 on school supplies, and $139 on other classroom materials, for a total of $485 last academic year, according to the survey.

In total, nearly all teachers—99.5 percent—reported digging into their own pockets to cover the costs on classroom supplies or materials, according to the association. The portion of teachers doing so appears to have risen over time.

The report, "The 2010 NSSEA Retail Market Awareness Study," was based on a survey of 308 K-12 teachers, conducted by Perry Research Professionals.

Surprise! Charters want even more money.

In testimony before the House Finance committee, Charter school operators and their boosters expressed sadness at the Governor's education budget. Despite school districts having to deduct $824 billion this school year to fund charter schools (most of which are failing), they want more. They argued they should receive

• $5,704 per pupil, not $5,000, as the base amount (but would not answer the question of whether or not traditional public schools should receive a base amount higher than $5,000).
• Up to $1,000 per pupil (instead of he proposed $100) for buildings and that online charter schools should also receive building funds

Only 5% of Ohio's students go to a charter school, and much less than 1% go to a quality one, yet charter operators and their boosters want more than 10% of the funding. These aren't fair or tennable requests being made, it is greed at the expense of the majority of students who choose to go to a traditional public school.

10 most inaccurate ed reform axioms

The Washington post has a list of the 10 most inaccurate and damaging statements that some school reformers toss around.

Here’s the list:

1. High-stakes standardized test data produce the fairest, most reliable, and least expensive evidence of student comprehension as well as teacher ability.

2. High-stakes standardized tests are updated routinely to eliminate confusing and/or culturally biased aspects, and questions on these tests are comprehensible by any child who can read on grade level.

3. Testing anxiety is rare, affects mostly low-achieving students, and has a minimal impact on test results.

4. High-stakes tests do not take an unreasonable amount of time for students to complete and test preparation does not take an unreasonable amount of instructional time throughout the year.

5. We would coddle and ultimately damage kids who receive special accommodations if we taught and/or tested them according to their ability to read and comprehend English. The fairest way to teach and test high-needs kids is in the same classroom, with the same curriculum, and with the same high-stakes tests (in addition to other high-stakes tests) as kids who don’t receive any special accommodations.

6. Poverty and high class size don’t matter when you have high standards.

7. The Common Core State Standards will significantly increase student achievement while saving taxpayer money.

8. Charter schools are more effective at instructing kids than nearby public schools and can do so for less money without putting financial burdens on nearby public school districts.

9. Parents have more decision-making power at charter schools than at public schools and the upcoming feature film, “Won’t Back Down” accurately depicts how parents are empowered to fix failing schools once parent trigger laws are in place.

10. Business leaders should run public schools and school systems because they are usually successful when permitted to apply a corporate model to public education.

Voucher welfare for big business

State Representatives Brenner, Patmon, Driehaus, Barnes, Butler, Maag, Newbold, Henne, Yuko, Young, Sears, Wachtmann, McClain, Huffman, Boose, Adams, J., Beck, Uecker, Stebelton, and Blessing have introduced HB242 which will "authorize nonrefundable tax credits for donations to nonprofit entities providing scholarships to low-income students enrolling in chartered nonpublic schools".

According to LSC the bill will;

• Allow a nonrefundable credit against the income tax or certain business taxes for taxpayers who donate to nonprofit educational scholarship organizations that provide scholarships to lower-income students attending chartered nonpublic schools.
• Authorize annual credits of up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,500 for joint filers, if the individual or joint filer is not a pass-through entity owner, and up to $300,000 for other taxpayers.
• Limit the total amount of such credits to $20 million in fiscal year 2010, and increases the credit ceiling each year by 20% over the previous year's ceiling if the previous year's ceiling is reached.
• Prohibit credits for donations designated for a specific child.

There is nothing in the bill however the limit the institution where the money can flow to. One can easily see the scenario where a "business" donates the maximum $300,000 to a fund, and gets a full tax credit for that amount - i.e. free money - and that business donation flows right back to a specific school.

In effect this bill simply expands the pool of voucher money by another $20 million - with a provision that it can grow by an additional 20% each year after the first.

This bill is nothing more than corporate welfare for the donors and the recipient private schools. Tax payers dollars should be used to fund public schools. That is the constitutional duty of the legislature, not to dole out precious money to private enterprise.

'Value-Added' Formulas Strain Collaboration

The rapidly changing debate on how to account for student achievement in teacher evaluations is putting teacher-district relationships to the test across the country.

More than half the states now require districts to take student achievement into account when evaluating a teacher's performance. In most cases, that's calculated through a so-called value-added model that attempts to account for a teacher's role in a student's growth over the course of a year, via test scores and other performance measures. Most of the push for value-added evaluation systems has come only in the past few years, driven in part by the federal Race to the Top grants, which gave extra weight to states that included achievement-based teacher evaluations in their applications, and by the federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants, which so far have supported experiments in 175 districts in 33 states using student achievement in teacher performance-pay plans.

"Some of the fear and worries we're seeing now, not just from unions but across the board, are because we've seen an enormous amount of change and uncertainty in a short amount of time," said Christopher A. Thorn, the associate director of the University of Wisconsin's Value-Added Research Center and its director for data quality and systems innovation. Moreover, he said, "Budget pressures have actually stressed districts and pushed people to do these things. Forget about paying teachers. That's a minor part of the reforms we see in districts; they're changing who they hire, they're changing their leadership systems, they're changing professional development. They are changing everything in the system."

[readon2 url="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/16/12collab-changes.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Poll finds large opposition to voucher plan

There is a large and growing level of opposition to the plan to effectively privatize public education in Ohio via HB136.

A new poll (see below) just released finds the public overwhelmingly does not support more vouchers. The BASA, OASBO and OSBA poll found Sixty percent of voters polled said they do not think Ohio tax dollars should be used for private school tuition subsidies. The poll also found

Another topic of the survey addressed the accountability of private schools receiving tax subsidies. The survey asked whether private schools accepting voucher students should be required to maintain the same standards of testing and assessment of overall student performance as their public school counterparts. More than 85% of respondents strongly favor common assessment practices for students in all schools — whether public, private or parochial.

Following on from that, the Time-Reporter has an article titled "Superintendents blast voucher bill"

Some superintendents in the Tuscarawas Valley think a proposal to expand Ohio’s school voucher program would have a negative impact on public education in the state.

Ryan Delaney, superintendent of Claymont City Schools in Uhrichsville, termed the bill a “disaster.”

“I hope it fails,” he said.
[...]
“I’ve been watching this bill because it will have an impact — directly or indirectly — on this area and public education,” said Jeff Staggs, superintendent of Newcomerstown Exempted Village Schools.
[...]
Vouchers were originally put in place to help students coming from failing school districts, said Bob Alsept, superintendent of New Philadelphia City Schools.

“I understand that,” he said. “Now they’re looking at extending that. I don’t see how that’s not taking money away from public education.”

It isn't just Superintendents, who some might argue would naturally oppose this plan, it is also organizations that might be expected to strongly support it

While the Catholic Conference of Ohio testified in favor of HB 136, it has reservations about the legislation that was approved by the House Education Committee.

Keough said the Catholic Conference hopes the bill can be amended so it can be fair to public schools and public school students while also benefiting scholarship students.

“We want to champion school choice that can benefit the working poor and lower middle-income families without undermining the public school system,” he said.

Coupled with the initial massive expansion, over time, students whose parents would have normally paid for their children's private education will be able to take advantage of this scheme, and the money sucked from the public education system will have disasterous effects. Greg Mild at Plunderbund crunched some numbers and the results are shocking. You should check out the full analysis, but here's some snippets

• 538 out of 612 (88%) school districts have a voucher ratio greater than 1.0, meaning that the voucher amount deducted from the district and given to the private school is greater than the per pupil amount allocated to the public school district.
• 185 school districts have a voucher ratio of 2.0 or higher, resulting in a voucher payment of more than double the public funding amount.
• Of the 185 school districts with a voucher ratio of higher than 2.0, 142 achieved a rating of Excellent or Excellent with Distinction from the Ohio Department of Education for the 2010-2011 school year.
• School districts with an Excellent with Distinction, the highest rating obtainable in Ohio and a demonstration of sustained excellence, have an average voucher ratio of 2.35. This means that HB136 would make the statement that private school students in these districts should receive 2.35 times as much funding as these high-performing public schools
• The Upper Arlington City SD is reported as having a negative state school funding dollar amount, resulting in a situation where no student would have access to the voucher funding proposed in HB136
• Some of the highest performing districts will have to pay over 10x the amount they receive from the state in private school tuition

1. Rocky River City SD – 12.88 x per pupil funding
2. Olentangy Local SD – 10.47 x per pupil funding
3. Sycamore Community SD – 11.20 x per pupil funding

Ohio Survey shows voters donʼt support government subsidies for private schools

HB 136 presents a grave and present danger to the contiuned viability of public education in Ohio. You should contact your legislator immediately and strongly urge them to oppose this radical legislation.