HB136 is dead, but will return

December 13, 2011 in Article

HB136 is dead. But a watered down version is likely to reappear in the form of another bill, or tucked quietly inside a bigger bill dealing with the new school funding formula. That was the message delivered by it's sponsor Rep Matt Huffman at a news conference yesterday.

Huffman said he'll change the funding mechanism so that no voucher will be worth more than the amount of per-pupil state aid that the home district receives. In a high-wealth district, that could be as little as a few hundred dollars.

"The practical effect is that not a lot of students from that district will use them," he acknowledged.

Huffman also said he'll limit the number of available vouchers to 1 percent of the home district's enrollment, which is roughly how many he expected would participate.

Statewide, that would be up to 17,000 students - far fewer than would have been possible in the original version of the bill.

He also will change the eligibility guidelines, tying them to the income levels that qualify children for state health coverage. And he will eliminate a provision that would have allowed families to spend unused voucher money on private high schools or college.

We'd speculate that it is unlikely that this new framework would appear in a bigger bill dealing with the funding formula. With over 300 school districts continuing to oppose this privatization plan in any form, a funding formula bill having its own issues, is not going to be a welcoming place for a contentious piece of legislation to be tucked inside.

Whatever the final form and function of this privatization proposal, it remains a terrible policy to transfer public monies to private schools at the expense of the majority of students. Even more so in light of recent revelations of ODE's inability to perform its basic oversight and accountability functions of private schools already receiving tax dollars.

We're gonna need a bigger boat

April 01, 2011 in Article

There's a line in the movie Jaws, where it dawns upon Martin Brody that they are up against a serious shark and need a bigger boat. Well there's an article in the Dayton Daily News today that suggests school districts might need a bigger boat too, if they are to comply with some of the crazy provisions of S.B.5

The new merit pay system mandated in Senate Bill 5 will be applied to Ohio’s 146,000 K-12 teachers and indirectly impact 1.78 million students in 613 school districts.
[...]
Senate Bill 5 calls for teachers to be evaluated each year by April 1. The reviews would be based on: licensure level; whether teachers attain ‘highly qualified’ status; student test scores; at least two observations of at least 30 minutes each; and other criteria picked by the local school board.

Pay, firings and layoffs will be based on these evaluations.

Let's stop there just for one second. We won't dwell on licensure level, status or even student test scores. We'll get to those for sure another time.

Let's just think for a minute about these observations.

There must be 2 per year per teacher of at least 30 minutes each. 30 minutes + 30 minutes = 1 hour. 1 hour x 146,000 teachers = 146,000 hours of observation per year.

But these observers aren't just going to magically appear. They will need time to organize the observations, to get to the classes, to record their findings and to issue a report. Conservatively this adds another hour per year per teacher to the effort.

Now we are at 292,000 hours per year just for this provision alone.

If someone were to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year it would take them over 140 years to complete this task. Since these observations have to be completed annualy that means we're going to need at least 140 more administrators just for this provision alone!

Is this what was meant by providing school districts the tools they need to save money?

Ohio School Boards Association lobbyist Damon Asbury, a former school district superintendent who has assessed evaluation systems, said the best ones boil down to using multiple data points, including observations made by different observers. Asbury said high quality, annual evaluations of every teacher will put heavy pressure on administrators.

“That is not to say it can’t be done but it’ll require more time and effort,” he said. “We may find ourselves in need of more administrators.”

We're going to need a bigger boat, or at least one that doesn't have so many holes in it.