"Education Reform" process must change

William Phillis, Via the mailbag

The recently adopted "education reform" process seems to follow these steps:

· State officials assume that any deficiencies in student test scores, behavior, work force readiness, college readiness, etc. are due to the lack of competence and dedication of boards of education, administrators, educators and staff in the public common school. (Of course, some of them believe poverty and home environment do not influence test scores, behaviors, etc.)

· State officials are provided model reform legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and seek advice from corporate leaders and others not working in the public common school system. A token representation of public education personnel may also be consulted.

· "Reforms" such as the parent trigger, vouchers, charter schools, mayoral control of schools, appointed commissions to assume part of the functions of boards of education, tuition tax credits, third grade guarantee, high stakes testing, replacement of teachers and administrators in "failing schools", A-F report cards, etc. are enacted with the expectation that these quick fixes will work wonders.

· In all cases the local education community typically attempts to comply with the state's reforms.

· When local educators and administrators don't fully embrace these untested "reforms", they are considered to be stuck in their old ways, resistant to change and not fit for the position they hold.

· Some state officials attempt to intimidate those who don't "buy-in" to the ever changing "reform" ideas. Then local education personnel are told that they would buy-in if they really would take the time to understand the "reform." · When the "reform" measures don't produce extraordinary results, the local education personnel are to blame and thus the system should be farmed out to the private sector.

We'd just add that by the time corporate reform ideas are proven to be failures (such as NCLB) the politiciand responsible for them are long gone and educators are left to pick up the pieces.

Education Profiteering: Wall Street's Next Big Thing?

The end of the Chicago teachers' strike was but a temporary regional truce in the civil war that plagues the nation's public schools. There is no end in sight, in part because -- as often happens in wartime -- the conflict is increasingly being driven by profiteers. The familiar media narrative tells us that this is a fight over how to improve our schools. On the one side are the self-styled reformers, who argue that the central problem with American K-12 education is low-quality teachers protected by their unions. Their solution is privatization, with its most common form being the privately run but publicly financed charter school. Because charter schools are mostly unregulated, nonunion and compete for students, their promoters claim they will, ipso facto, perform better than public schools.

On the other side are teachers and their unions who are cast as villains. The conventional plot line is that they resist change, blame poverty for their schools' failings and protect their jobs and turf.

It is well known, although rarely acknowledged in the press, that the reform movement has been financed and led by the corporate class. For over twenty years large business oriented foundations, such as Gates (Microsoft), Walton (Wal-Mart) and Broad (Sun Life) have poured billions into charter school start-ups, sympathetic academics and pundits, media campaigns (including Hollywood movies) and sophisticated nurturing of the careers of privatization promoters who now dominate the education policy debate from local school boards to the US Department of Education.

In recent years, hedge fund operators, leverage-buy-out artists and investment bankers have joined the crusade. They finance schools, sit on the boards of their associations and the management companies that run them, and -- most important -- have made support of charter schools one of the criteria for campaign giving in the post-Citizens United era. Since most Republicans are already on board for privatization, the political pressure has been mostly directed at Democrats.

[readon2 url="http://www.alternet.org/print/education/education-profiteering-wall-streets-next-big-thing"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

A Democratic Crisis in Cleveland

Is there a democratic crisis in Cleveland? Three issues suggest there might be.

Issue 1

Just over 4 months ago, 2,202,404 voters in Ohio voted to repeal Senate Bill 5 (SB5). SB5 being the draconian assault on working people and their ability to collectively bargain for fair and safe working conditions and pay. In Cuyahoga county the repeal vote was even more overwhelming - 69.2%. Yet the Mayor of Cleveland continued to introduce a plan that has widely been criticized for containing significant provisions of SB5

Introducing a plan that contains provisions that voters have overwhelmingly rejected is an incredibly undemocratic move. No matter how strongly one might believe that certain policy goals are needed, in a functioning democracy the will of the voters should be seen as sacrosanct, not something that can be conveniently ignored, as appears to be the case with Mayor Frank Jackson and his "Cleveland plan".

Issue 2

The "Cleveland Plan" seeks to undermine democratically elected school boards by creating a Cleveland Transformation Alliance, that

will be a public‐private partnership charged with ensuring accountability for district and charter schools in the city, communicating with parents about quality school choices, and serving as a watchdog for charter sector growth.

Why is such an entity required? The vast majority of Ohio's school districts are highly rated while being governed by elected school boards. It's a model that works. Why does Cleveland need to create an unelected non-profit body that would lack the same level of accountability voters demand, while simultaneously adding another expensive layer of bureaucracy? Education leadership and decision making is already byzantine in Cleveland, being the only school district in Ohio that is controlled by a Mayor. Observers might ask why it was ever a good idea to place Mayors, who typically have no educational expertise, in charge of education to begin with.

Issue 3

Creating an unelected body to manage the "Cleveland Plan" is bad enough, but the plan also seeks to make that body secretive and have its deliberations not be subject to public records.

The package of new legislation Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson says will once again “transform” Cleveland’s schools would create a new nonprofit group to make significant changes to the school district, including drawing together both traditional public schools and charter schools.

But unlike school boards for both traditional public and charter schools, that new group would not be subject to state public records and open meetings laws. That means that residents would not have the right to attend the new group’s board meetings, for example, or to see records about the new group’s financial operations or decision-making process.

It appears that the whole purpose of this proposed entity is so that it can be obscured from public view, unaccountable to tax payers and voters alike.

Reading many of the central aspects to this "Cleveland Plan", one gets the impression that its architects believe one of the major problems with Cleveland schools is too much democracy, when the opposite is clearly true.

Issue 2 Early Vote Rally

Early Vote Flyer

In other early voting news, it appears that the effort to collect enough signatures to delay the implementation of HB194 has been succesful. HB194, among other things would have reduced the early voting period from about 5 weeks to 3. This naturally would have impacted the effort to repeal SB5 by voting NO on issue 2.

Ohio officials are preparing for early voting to begin on Tuesday for the Nov. 8 general election because a challenge to a new election-reform law is expected to put the law on hold today.

Even though House Bill 194 is scheduled to become effective on Friday, county boards of election have girded for the possibility that it will be delayed and the election will be conducted under current state law, which permits more time for absentee and in-person voting.
[...]
Once the signatures are turned over to the Ohio secretary of state, the new law automatically will be put on hold. The signatures then will be sent to the 88 county election boards to be validated, a process estimated to take 10 to 15 days. If Fair Elections Ohio comes up short after the county boards’ count, it would have 10 days to gather more signatures.
[...]
Among other things, the law cuts early voting from 35 days before the election to 21 days by mail and 17 in person. It also limits in-person voting before the election by barring it on Saturday afternoons, Sundays and the three days prior to the election. If House Bill 194 were to take effect on Friday, voting by mail would begin on Oct. 18; in-person voting on Oct. 22.

Why Vote Absentee?

By voting absentee you can

• Avoid lines on election day, which may discourage others from voting
• Avoid the cold and rain, or unexpected events that may make it harder
• Avoid any voting machine mishaps
• Let the We Are Ohio campaign concentrate on getting less enthused voters to the polls on election day

Once you have voted, it’s time to ask those in your friends, family and neighbors team to vote absentee! Locking in as many No on Issue 2 votes as early as possible is critical to success on election day!

You may request an Absentee Ballot by…
Using the application form prescribed by the Secretary of State (Form 11-A) to apply for your absentee ballot.

You may return your absentee ballot to the Board of Elections by…
U.S. Mail: the return envelope containing your marked ballot must be postmarked no later than the day before the election and received by the board of elections no later than 10 days after a special, primary or general election.

In person, either by you or an eligible family member: your marked ballot, which must be sealed in the completed and signed identification envelope provided with the ballot, must be delivered to the board of elections office no later than the close of polls on Election Day.


Note: No voted ballot may be returned to a board of elections by fax or email. If a voted ballot is returned by fax or email, it will not be accepted, processed, or counted.

Your absentee ballot must be received by the Board of Elections for your county before 7:30 PM on Election Day to be counted!

Full instructions for absentee voting can be found on the Ohio Secretary of State's website, here. A list of all the county boards of elections, their addresses, phone numbers and emails can be found here.

Union-Management Collaboration Can Help Public Schools

For most of the past decade the policy debate over improving U.S. public education has centered on teacher quality. In this debate, teachers and their unions have often been seen as the problem, not part of the solution. Further, current discourse often assumes that conflicting interests between teacher unions and administration is inevitable. What is missing in the discussion, however, is a systems perspective on the problem of public school reform that looks at the way schools are organized, and the way decisions are made. Most public schools today continue to follow an organizational design better suited for 20th century mass production than educating students in the 21st century.

"Reforming Public School Systems Through Sustained Union-Management Collaboration," a paper by Saul A. Rubinstein and John E. McCarthy, offers an alternate path in this debate—a counterstory that looks at schools as systems. It focuses on examples of collaboration among stakeholders through the creation of labor-management partnerships among teachers’ unions, school administrators, and school boards. These partnerships improve and restructure public schools from the inside to enhance planning, decision-making, problem solving, and the ways teachers interact and schools are organized.

[readon2 url="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ideas/2011/07/071311.html"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

$3.1 billion in education cuts will force levies, larger classes

Gov. John Kasich recently stated he thinks Ohio public schools can adjust to the loss of $3.1 billion in state and federal stimulus funds this budget cycle without putting local levies on the ballot. He further stated that school boards and administrators need to make tough decisions.

The truth is that publicly elected school boards have been making difficult decisions for years. In many cases, public school districts have nothing left to cut. Districts across Ohio have made drastic reductions. They have laid off administrators, teachers and other staff. They've cut programs, transportation and extracurricular activities. They've even been forced to close schools. Local leaders have little left to cut, and the reductions in state funding will require them to go back to their communities' taxpayers for more money.

Many districts that are on the ballot this May have cut all they are legally allowed to cut and still do not have enough money to keep their schools open. We have seen districts across the state announce teacher layoffs and cuts in programs the same night they discuss the need for a levy. Unfortunately, levies will not bring back programs and teachers but merely allow districts to meet the state minimum requirements.

[readon2 url="http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20110430/OPINION02/104300316"]Continue reading...[/readon2]