Invest in Public Education

Think Tank, Policy Matters Ohio, recently released a report titled "State of Working Ohio 2012. The Report has many interesting findings, but we wanted to parse out 2 of the major ones, especially as it related to education and working people.

Education pays, but Ohio isn’t passing that test. Over the past generation Ohioans have dramatically increased their education levels. This is a good thing, because compensation at lower education levels is shrinking. But other states are investing much more and reaping bigger rewards. And in the most recent state budget, we cut both K-12 and universities, keeping our students back.

Instead we should invest in education, from pre-K through college and beyond.

The graph below highlights this findings and recommendation

This becomes especially important, given the news we reported on just a few days ago, namely, the new school year bringing yet more cuts. This short-sighted policy by the Governor was highlighted by an editorial in the Plain Dealer

Ohio's economic prospects depend on a well-educated work force -- hard to achieve when budget cuts force schools to lay off teachers and shorten the school day.
[…]
Gov. John Kasich, whose administration is working on a long-delayed revamp of the state's school-funding formula, should make sure his approach offers extra money and other incentives to superintendents and school boards willing to create efficiencies through radical restructuring, as in Cleveland, or via mergers or the sharing of services or personnel with other districts.

Which brings us to the second finding and recommendation that the Policy Matters report includes

Unions give workers leverage and a voice. Aggressive employer anti-union practices and public policy that discourages organizing have taken their toll. As unions have eroded, so have worker wages and benefits and family well being. States with the lowest levels of unionization have the worst wages, states that combine union friendliness and education investments do best. Ohio voters spoke loud and clear last year in retaining collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Ohio should retain and expand policies that help workers organize and preserve a collective voice.

The differences are quite stark

Destroying collective bargaining was another misguided policy choice made by the Governor. Unlike his radical defunding of education however, voters were able to overturn and repeal his union busting efforts.

The evidence is in abundance - we need to strengthen the middle class by investing in public education, the results will lead to a strong more vibrant Ohio.

The bait and switch of school "reform"

In recent weeks the debate over the future of public education in America has flared up again, this time with the publication of the new book "Class Warfare," by Steven Brill, the founder of American Lawyer magazine. Brill's advocacy of "reform" has sparked different strands of criticism from the New York Times, New York University's Diane Ravitch and the Nation's Dana Goldstein.

But behind the high-profile back and forth over specific policies and prescriptions lies a story that has less to do with ideas than with money, less to do with facts than with an ideological subtext that has been quietly baked into the very terms of the national education discussion.

Like most education reporters today, Brill frames the issue in simplistic, binary terms. On one side are self-interested teachers unions who supposedly oppose fundamental changes to schools, not because they care about students, but because they fear for their own job security and wages, irrespective of kids. In this mythology, they are pitted against an alliance of extraordinarily wealthy corporate elites who, unlike the allegedly greedy unions, are said to act solely out of the goodness of their hearts. We are told that this "reform" alliance of everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the Walton family to leading hedge funders spends huge amounts of money pushing for radical changes to public schools because they suddenly decided that they care about destitute children, and now want to see all kids get a great education.

The dominant narrative, in other words, explains the fight for the future of education as a battle between the evil forces of myopic selfishness (teachers) and the altruistic benevolence of noblesse oblige (Wall Street). Such subjective framing has resulted in reporters, pundits and politicians typically casting the "reformers'" arguments as free of self-interest, and therefore more objective and credible than teachers' counterarguments.

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Are radical school funding changes ahead?

We will have to wait to see the actual details, but if this report from NPR StateImpact is any guide, the Governor's proposed school funding formula is going to look a lot more like a public school defunding effort.

A new school-funding model being developed by Governor John Kasich’s administration could allow local property tax dollars to follow students to charter schools or be used to fund vouchers for private-school tuition. Right now, only state tax money can do that.
[...]
other key changes under serious consideration:

• Changing how the state calculates the amount of money local school districts must raise. Currently, this calculation is based on property values. The new funding model could take into account student poverty levels, local income levels and other factors;
• Creating financial incentives for school districts to shift some instruction online; and
• Simplifying the way that school districts collect taxes to make it more understandable to taxpayers.

Other possible changes include providing increased funding to districts with high-performing schools and structuring funding to encourage regional collaboration in areas like transportation, Mattei Smith said. While a separate study of school district consolidation is underway, consolidation is not part of discussions on a new school funding model, Mattei Smith said.

The Board of Education has expressed a strong desire for significant public input, which is to be applauded, because these proposals, albeit with limited detail, appear quite radical.

The reform movement is already failing

In my nearly four decades as a historian of education, I have analyzed the rise and fall of reform movements. Typically, reforms begin with loud declarations that our education system is in crisis. Throughout the twentieth century, we had a crisis almost every decade. After persuading the public that we are in crisis, the reformers bring forth their favored proposals for radical change. The radical changes are implemented in a few sites, and the results are impressive. As their reforms become widespread, they usually collapse and fail. In time, those who have made a career of educating children are left with the task of cleaning up the mess left by the last bunch of reformers.

We are in the midst of the latest wave of reforms, and Steven Brill has positioned himself as the voice of the new reformers. These reforms are not just flawed, but actually dangerous to the future of American education. They would, if implemented, lead to the privatization of a large number of public schools and to the de-professionalization of education.

As Brill’s book shows, the current group of reformers consists of an odd combination of Wall Street financiers, conservative Republican governors, major foundations, and the Obama administration. The reformers believe that the way to “fix” our schools is to fire more teachers, based on the test scores of their students; to open more privately-managed charter schools; to reduce the qualifications for becoming a teacher; and to remove job protections for senior teachers.

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News for March 9th,2011

As the first House committee meeting for SB5 got underway, the Dispatch reports that it is expected to easily gain passage, that of course would eventually setup a referendum to overturn this radical law that upsets decades of collective bargaining. To gain that "easy passage" however, more radical steps were taking by the majority

House Speaker William G. Batchelder replaced two Republicans on the committee: Reps. Richard Adams of Troy and Ross McGregor of Springfield. Unlike in the Senate, where committee changes were made to get the bill passed, House GOP leaders said the changes were made because the two need to focus on the Finance Committee, which will start budget hearings next week.

Business Journal Daily has some of the political implications of this radical legislation

Republicans might have made a mistake by using a sledgehammer when a scalpel might have been more appropriate, Sracic said. Rather than going after collective bargaining rights, which recent poling shows Americans largely support, Republicans could have gone after retirement contributions or other issues, "things that would have been acceptable," he said. "The problem [for Republicans] is unions have been very good about making this about their right to collective bargaining," he remarked.

Swing voters in the middle also tend to act as governors in the system, "so any sort of extreme action is going to be resisted," he added.

In response to Governor Kasich's first state of the state, a crowd of over 3,000 people protested this ongoing assault on working people, as the Latern reports

Thousands of protesters flooded the lawns in an attempt to drown out Gov. John Kasich as he gave his State of the State address.
After encouragement from protest leaders, hundreds of protesters filed into the Statehouse at about noon today. The protesters were in opposition of Kasich and Senate Bill 5.

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