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Investment loser

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Via the Public Education Network

In a costs-benefit analysis of testing mandates under NCLB and Race to the Top, Peter Smagorinsky on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post writes accountability is profitable for publishing companies and school superintendents who cheat, and expensive for everyone else. The expense isn't merely the $20 billion annually in taxes to support the testing apparatus.

Teachers increasingly dislike their jobs, and according to one survey, 40 percent of new teachers nationwide are likely to leave within five years. For students, education has been reduced to the ability to fill in bubble sheets. Smagorinsky would invest the same $20 billion in a nursing staff in all schools, so kids in poverty can undertake studies with a reasonable degree of health and balance. He would expand free and reduced-price meals, and work to improve the healthiness of the offerings under these services. He would also staff school libraries with knowledgeable, helpful media specialists to direct students to books that benefit their educational development.

In general, he would invest in school infrastructure, so schools aren't falling apart at the seams. He notes he offers this proposal entirely for free, unlike in Colorado, where 35 percent of federal education money goes to consultants.

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Education By the Numbers

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Via.

Delivering lower costs, higher quality

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Innovation Ohio recently published a study that showed that states, like Ohio, that had collective bargaining for educators produced lower costs and higher quality than states that had weaker collective bargaining laws.

In fact, research shows that eliminating or effectively crippling the state’s collective bargaining system will be as likely to add to state and local budget woes as cure the
[...]
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Ohio’s kindergarten, elementary, middle school and high school teachers saw their salaries, on average, drop 3.8% between 2008 and 2009, the latest year BLS’s Occupational Employment Statistics are available. The national average was a 2% increase.
[...]
Even though states that limit teachers’ rights to collectively bargain make up less than one-third of all the states, they make up half of the top 10 salary increases in the contiguous 48 states, with reduced teachers’ rights states taking the top three spots (Wyoming at 11.2%, Texas at 7% and Louisiana at 5.9%).
[...]
In Education Week’s annual K-12 Student Achievement rankings, NO reduced teachers’ rights states scored in the top 10 states. In fact, the top 13 K-12 Achievement states were all states that require collective bargaining for its teachers. Meanwhile, Ohio scored better than 75% of the reduced teachers’ rights states on the K-12 Achievement measure.

While none of the top 10 achieving states were reduced teachers’ rights states, they did make up 7 of the bottom 10 K-12 Achievement states. That means that almost half of all reduced teachers’ rights states ranked in the bottom 10 states on their students’ achievement.

The results revealed by this report should come as no surprise to anyone who has been involved in, or observed, the collective bargaining process across Ohio's school districts. Teachers and education support professionals have consistently demonstrasted a commitment not only to delivering a quality education to their students, but to the communities they serve. Eliminating this important voice eliminates the ability to deliver these results.