Absurdity of Ohio VAM

The criticism of the Plain Dealer and NPRs Value-added series is beginning to pile up. Via Diane Ravitch's site

Fifty years ago Johns Hopkins sociologist James S. Coleman documented the most powerful factors affecting student achievement: the socio-economic background of children’s families and the concentration of poverty in particular communities.

Two years ago Duke economist Helen Ladd wrote: “Study after study has demonstrated that children from disadvantaged households perform less well in school on average than those from more advantaged households. This empirical relationship shows up in studies using observations at the levels of the individual student, the school, the district, the state, the country.”

A year and a half ago Stanford educational sociologist Sean Reardon documented that while in 1970, only 15 percent of families lived in neighborhoods classified as affluent or poor, by 2007, 31 percent of families lived in such neighborhoods. Reardon documents a simultaneous jump in an income-inequality achievement gap between very wealthy and very poor children, a gap that is 30-40 percent wider among children born in 2001 than those born in 1975.

Surely we can agree that poverty should not be an excuse. But blaming school teachers for gaps in scores on standardized tests, as the Plain Dealer does in “Grading the Teachers,” is not only cruel to the teachers singled out when scores are published—for example, Euclid’s Maria Plecnik, a previously highly rated teacher who will leave the profession this year— but foolish as public policy. Who will want to teach in our poorest communities with the system of Value-Added Measures that the Plain Dealer acknowledges, “do not account for the socioeconomic backgrounds of students as they do in some other states.”

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville critiques the logic of those who would blame school teachers: “Some want to make the absurd argument that the reason low-income youngsters do poorly is that, mysteriously, all the incompetency in our education systems has coincidentally aggregated around low income students. In this view, all we need to do is scrub the system of incompetency and all will be well.”

Blaming teachers certainly gets the rest of us off the hook. If we can just fire teachers, we won’t have to fund schools equitably or adequately. We won’t have to address the impact of economic and racial segregation or the shocking 22 percent child poverty rate in America, the highest in the industrialized world.

Ms. Jan Resseger
Minister for Public Education and Witness
Justice and Witness Ministries
700 Prospect, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
216-736-3711

Right To Work Is A Lie — It's No Rights At Work

More on "Right to work" being a lie.

Supporters of so-called “right to work” laws argue that they advocate for a cause whose noble aim is to advance personal liberty and promote economic growth. They wield buzz words like “freedom” and “choice” for their messaging. They opine that too many workers needlessly suffer because corporate America cannot free itself from the shackles of greedy labor unions. A non-critical eye may see a movement that champions freedom and offers hope. However, if you look just beneath the surface of the “right to work” cause, you will see a campaign that is built on distortions and predicated on lies and whose unstated purpose would undermine workers’ safety, economic security and well-being. The true goal of right to work is to put more money into the pockets of corporate shareholders. The consequence of these purposes, whether intended or unintended, is a diminished middle class.

Right to work (RTW) does not provide a financial benefit to workers. It hurts them – financially and physically. A viable labor movement is the best way to advance the wellbeing of the middle class. Here’s what the empirical research shows in terms of worker compensation and workplace safety:

• The average worker in a RTW state earns about $1,500 less per year than a person working in a non-RTW state.
• Unions raise worker pay by roughly 20 percent.
• In Ohio, teachers working in non-union charter schools receive annual salaries that are about $16,000 less than those paid to traditional public school teachers. The gap is even larger when compared to what for-profit charter schools pay their teachers.
• The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance and pensions is lower in RTW states.
• Worker fatalities in the construction industry are 34 percent higher in RTW states.

Economic development is not enhanced by RTW legislation. In fact, the enactment of RTW laws almost certainly hinders growth and prosperity:

• Research finds no relationship between the presence of a RTW law and state unemployment rates, per capita income or job growth.
• When asked what influences their plant-location decision process, RTW is not an important criterion for small manufacturers.
• Low-wage workers result in lower tax revenues, putting infrastructure needs and education and other publicly funded services at risk.
• Lower wages also mean less spending by consumers, which stunts economic expansion.
• States with the lowest percentage of workers in unions have relatively weak middle classes.

In addition to fewer, lower paying, less safe jobs and an erosion of infrastructure and decreased levels of public services, RTW robs our country of its democratic principles. Research shows that a weakened labor movement results in lower voter turnout and less participation by ordinary citizens in the political process. Maybe that is exactly what the RTW folks want; a means of keeping the political cronies of the richest in power so their interests will be forever served. Right to work is a carrot for a select few at the top of the economic food chain and a stick for everyone else.

The (real) looming teacher crisis

“Reform movements in education are notorious for their tendencies toward presentism–for painting the past in the darkest possible light in order to stress the urgent need for rapid and major transformation of the status quo”–Sedlak & Schlossman, 1987

Unfortunately, economic decline has opened policy windows for educational reformers to wreak havoc on public education, impacting all public school educators. In this environment, there are clear winners and losers; individuals who are losing during this time are recent college graduates. From the Economic Policy Institute:

As more and more teachers are cut from the public sector, public schools are left with a teacher shortage. During typical decline, student enrollment decreases which sparks school closings and teacher cuts. However during current decline public school enrollment is projected to increase nationally, by about 6%. Consequently, classroom student-teacher ratios are at risk of increasing if jobs continue to be slashed. More importantly, preservice and beginning teachers are being stranded on the sidelines without employment opportunities. I wonder how teacher certified college graduates have managed to stay current with educational trends if they have not found full time teaching jobs over the past 2-3 years? Will these recent graduates ever be able to find jobs in education if they haven’t found full time employment in the past two years? I suspect that college graduates who were aspiring to become teachers but who have no found full time employment have moved onto other professions. For public schools teachers who are in the profession, I predict the following will be important to keep in mind going forward:

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How corporate tax loopholes defund the American Dream

Note: This is the first installment in a series on how corporate tax loopholes undermine the middle class—and what can be done about it. You can read the second article in the series here, and read the third article here.

By Amanda Litvinov and Dwight Holmes

As more middle class Americans than ever before wring their weary hands over whether to pay down their student loans or make their next mortgage payment, corporations are also experiencing a history-making moment. They’re sitting on record profits, and are taxed at historically low rates.

Between 2001 and 2010, corporate profits in America increased by 125%. Meanwhile, the median family income went down by 4.6% in the same time period. How was such growth in corporate profits possible, given the economic meltdown that started in 2007? Here’s the quick and dirty answer: They stacked the deck.

For decades, some of the nation’s most successful companies and CEOs have financed and lobbied enough politicians to curry a shocking level of influence over how laws are written and which ones pass. They’ve molded a system in which they can keep an ever-increasing share of profits for themselves, stunting the paychecks of working Americans and putting more burden on small businesses.

See the sources for the information used in this graph.

On top of that, corporations are contributing less in taxes to the federal government and to the communities where they conduct their business, meaning less money for serving the public good through education and other services. (A recent report shows 30 of the most profitable Fortune 500 companies pay more to their lobbyists than they do in federal taxes.)

“The middle class is being harmed by the structure of the economy, the structure of the tax burden, and the erosion of social services, including education,” said Robert Kuttner, a co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute and distinguished senior fellow at the non-partisan public policy center Demos.

When corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes, Kuttner said, there are only three alternatives: “You either cut the services, you add to the deficit, or you make someone else pay—in this case, the middle class.”

We’re not talking chump change here. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that in the past three years, the federal tax revenue lost through corporate tax loopholes is $222.7 billion, which represents a loss of as much as $9.8 billion to public schools. State tax revenue from just the 265 largest companies saw losses of $42.7 billion in three years, roughly $15.4 billion of which would likely go to public schools if the loopholes were closed (see source 1 below).

Our economy was once much more balanced. Between 1948 and 1973, as productivity increased, worker wages grew at the same pace—in other words, American workers got a fair share of the growth. Between that and programs like the G.I. Bill and Social Security, America’s thriving middle class and vibrant public education system astonished the world. Then things changed. It’s more accurate to say that things were changed, by small but powerful groups, including ALEC and other right-wing organizations, and business leaders who wanted to see their companies’ already healthy profits grow exponentially.

To be clear: The concentration of power now in the grips of corporate America and the resulting unprecedented economic inequality we see today is no accident. For the past 30 years, we’ve all been trudging down a path that was carefully plotted for us by those who bought political influence for the express purpose of putting business profits above the well-being of America’s middle class.

They promised us tax cuts would lead to more revenues, greater investment and more jobs. Instead we have unprecedented deficits, falling family incomes, and four job-seekers for every open position.

Americans’ optimism about their children’s futures has reached an all-time low for good reason. Working hard and playing by the rules just doesn’t pay off like it used to; in past eras, greater equity in the distribution of income made for an economy that worked better for everyone. Our best hope for restoring balance is to demand change from our elected leaders.

“We need adequate levels of public spending that are not financed by taxes that come out of the pockets of the middle class,” says Kuttner. “And there are two sources to get those revenues: From wealthy people in their role as individual tax payers … and corporate income taxes.”

Raising our collective voice is the only hope we have in countering the other voices lawmakers hear every day—those of corporate lobbyists and influential business execs who are asking for even more tax breaks. Do you think they have your sons’ and daughters’ educations in mind?

Stop Tying Pay to Performance

The evidence is overwhelming: It doesn’t work.

That's the headline from a Harvard Business Review article. If the HBR can conclude that pay for performance doesn't work for big business executives, it's not a giant leap to understand it won't work for the teaching profession where there is no profit motive, but instead relies on collaboration and teamwork.

Time frame: next week | Degree of difficulty: operationally easy, psychologically hard | Barrier: greed, economic theory

We’ve talked about this since the financial meltdown. Now it’s time to do it: Unlink pay from performance. The evidence keeps growing that pay for performance is ineffective. It also may induce executives to take company-killing risks. There are other ways to motivate employees that yield better results at lower cost.

It may take a while before actual evidence and research finally convinces corporate education reformers they have it wrong, but month after month the moiuntain of evidence grows.

Scapegoats

A letter from a teacher, getting to the heart of a lot of the anger about SB5 we hear from other teachers and public employees.

Senate Bill Five is an attempt to scapegoat public workers for an economic crisis that began in the private sector with Governor Kasich’s blessing. Now, members of the Ohio legislature want to strip workers of their pay, benefits, and rights, knowing full well that the state’s economic problems are by no means related to those workers.

As a congressman, Kasich voted and lobbied for the complex laws that allowed financial institutions to destroy the national economy, including the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. Kasich and Governor Walker in Wisconsin want to scapegoat public sector workers for problems that began, with their approval, in the private sector!

Firefighters and teachers in Dayton did not peddle and trade risky mortgage securities for self-serving banks. Police and EMTs in Cleveland had nothing to do with the government bailing out financial institutions that engaged in the gross mishandling of people’s lives and fortunes. Corrections officers and nurses in Cincinnati did not develop a system of shadow banks that wrote off-balance derivatives, nor did they have anything to do with bait-and-switch predatory lending. Still, the legislature wants to blame public workers.

Rather than creating scapegoats, Kasich should reexamine his role in the financial crisis. In order to protect middle class public-sector workers, voters should vote no on Issue Two.

Sincerely,
Matthew Blair