What's in your portfolio?

A reader pointed out this exchange and segment on CNBC, a business channel. There can be no doubt that the financiers that brought us the great recession see education as the next area ripe for looting

Anchor: Charter schools have become very popular... But are charter schools a wise addition to your investment portfolio? Well let’s ask David Brain, President and CEO of Entertainment Properties Trust. David, why would I want to add charter schools into my portfolio?

DB: Well I think it’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools, the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. So it’s a high-growth, very stable, recession-resistant business. It’s a public payer, the state is the payer on this category, and if you do business with states with solid treasuries then it’s a very solid business.

Anchor: Well let me ask you about potential risks, here, to your charter school portfolio, because I understand that three of your nine “Imagine” schools are scheduled to actually lose their charters for the next school year. Does this pose a risk to investors?

DB: Well, occasionally—our Imagine arrangement’s on a master lease, so there’s no loss of rents to the company, although occasionally there are losses of charters...In this case it’s a combination of relationship with the supervisory authorities and educational quality; sometimes the educational quality is very difficult to change in one, two, or three years. It’s a long-term proposition, so there are some of these that occur, but we’ve structured our affairs so this is not going to impact our rent-roll and in fact you see this is maybe even a good experience as the industry thins out some of the less-performing schools...

I don’t—there’s not a lost of risk...the fact is this has bipartisan support. It’s part of the Republican platform and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, has been very high on it throughout their work in public education. So we have both political parties are solidly behind it, you have high demand, high growth, you have performance across the board...it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.

Education News for 04-10-2012

Local Issues

• Cleveland City Council supports Jackson's school plan (Plain Dealer)

The Cleveland City Council approved Monday night a resolution in support of Mayor Frank Jackson's plan to overhaul the city's schools -- while urging the Cleveland Teachers Union and state legislature to follow suit. Jackson and the union are still locked in negotiations over certain aspects of the plan. Read More…

• Hilliard to create learning hub for students (Dispatch)

Hilliard students will soon be able to gather at one site to take online classes, college courses and participate in after-school clubs and programs. School officials announced at the school board meeting tonight plans to convert the district’s central office, at 5323 Cemetery Rd., to a learning hub for all students districtwide. Read More..

• Westerville schools plan would restore 80 of 204 jobs cut (Dispatch)

Westerville schools would restore about 80 of 204 jobs that were cut after a November levy failure, under a proposal that administrators presented to the school board last night.

But district officials still plan to eliminate the remaining 124 jobs next school year, of which about 80 are teachers. Read More…

• Newark schools looking to give students laptops or iPads (Newark Advocate)

Newark City Schools leadership can envision a time -- maybe just a few years away -- when every high school student is carrying a laptop or tablet in lieu of textbooks. The district plans to make that transition starting next school year and is deciding between Apple MacBooks and iPads for a specified subset of students. Read More…

• New court dates set for accused Chardon High School shooter T.J. Lane (Plain Dealer)

A Geauga County judge today set two key hearing dates that could decide when and where T.J. Lane is prosecuted in the slayings of three students at Chardon High School in February. In a brief hearing today, Juvenile Court Judge Timothy Grendell set a competency hearing for May 2. He also set a hearing for May 12, a Saturday, to determine whether Lane, 17, should be charged as an adult. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• The test comes later (Dispatch)

Children aren’t born knowing how to manage money and many have parents who are equally befuddled, so Ohio schools have a formidable task ahead as they fulfill a state requirement to teach basic financial literacy to all graduates starting with the Class of 2014. In Columbus, the district has had programs for decades to teach students starting in grade school concepts that some children might absorb from observing their parents balance checkbooks, compare interest rates, manage credit-card debt and squirrel away savings. But even stable family finances are no guarantee that children will learn these lessons: Suburban children can be equally unprepared. Read More…

• Think out plans for windfall (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

Mathews and Southington schools are wisely taking advantage of Trumbull County's oil and natural gas boom. Now the trick will be to spend the windfall wisely. Mathews Local Schools authorized a lease agreement with BP for the mineral rights to 87 acres that the board of education owns. The district should reap about $339,000 for giving BP the right to tap into the Utica / Point Pleasant shale formation to extract oil and natural gas from under the board's property near Baker and Currie elementary schools. Read More…

Education News for 04-05-2012

Statewide Education News

• Money questions surround Kasich's education reform plan (Dayton Daily News)

COLUMBUS - So many third-grade students are reading below grade level that Ohio Gov. John Kasich is proposing requiring school districts to provide summer school or retain struggling students. But some lawmakers and educators had one question: Where’s the money to pay for the changes? Read More…

Local Issues

• Schools chief: ‘This is about kids’ (Tiffin Advertiser Tribune)

The leader of Ohio's public school system visited Tiffin Wednesday to introduce a new phase of school improvement set to begin in the 2014-15 school year. Stan Heffner, superintendent of public instruction for Ohio Department of Education, spoke during Rotary Club of Tiffin's meeting Wednesday afternoon. "This is about kids," he said. "My goal is to put kids ahead of institutions." Read More…

• Backers of e-schools protest state’s new grading system (Dispatch)

About 100 parents and students of Ohio e-schools relayed a message to lawmakers today that they should oppose Gov. John Kasich’s proposed school-grading system “until it is fair for all schools.” Instead of the current grading system, in which 92 percent of traditional schools get the equivalent of an A or B, Kasich proposed tougher accountability standards that measure performance on state tests, graduation rates, student progress and how well certain categories of students are doing. Read More…

• CMSD Proposes Cuts to Reduce Budget Deficit (WJW-Cleveland)

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is considering laying off teachers as one of several ways to reduce its $66 million deficit. At least 600 teacher and 50 staff member positions are at stake under the proposed cuts, as well as implementing an employee separation incentive program. Selling district owned buildings no longer needed is also under consideration. Read More…

• Teays Valley principal was fired illegally, Ohio Supreme Court rules (Dispatch)

The former principal of a Teays Valley Local elementary school must be rehired because school-board members denied her the opportunity to meet with them before she was fired, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The 7-0 decision, written by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, said the Pickaway County school district broke state law in 2008 by improperly firing Principal Stacey Carna of Ashville Elementary School. Read More…

• Disputed schools legislation filed in Columbus as Cleveland Teachers Union and Mayor Frank Jackson plan to continue talks tonight (Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Teachers Union and Mayor Frank Jackson plan to resume negotiating a deal on Jackson's school improvement plan tonight, even though legislation that the union objects to was filed at the Statehouse today. CTU and Jackson had planned to meet after Easter, both sides said yesterday, but they have called a meeting at 7 p.m. tonight at City Hall. If they can reach agreement on one of two remaining sticking points - how to handle staffing at struggling schools - Jackson has hinted that he may not see a need for the other disputed point - his push to start contract negotiations from scratch, throwing out all previous contracts. Read More…

• Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, teachers union make progress on school reforms plan but don't reach final deal (Plain Dealer)

The Cleveland Teachers Union and Mayor Frank Jackson met for more than seven hours in a last-minute negotiation session Wednesday night trying to reach agreement on the last two disputed points in Jackson’s school improvement plan. The sides broke up about 1:30 a.m., saying they continued making progress and that lawyers would work on language for them to review early next week. Read More…

• Students learn science to a different beat (Beacon Journal)

Sitting on the floor in Karen Grindall’s room at Portage Path elementary school on Tuesday afternoon, two cheery first-graders tapped an iPad with enviable ease and laid down their own hip-hop beats. Jullian Lopez and Claire Haidet grinned widely listening to their songs with headphones. They were eager to share them with their teacher, John Bennett. The next step was to write lyrics expressing science concepts in their own words. Read More…

• Sheriff: Olentangy H.S. Student Told Others Bomb Would Be Set Off Thursday (WBNS-Columbus)

A student who told another student that a bomb would be set off at Olentangy High School Thursday was being sent to a juvenile detention center, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Walter Davis said Wednesday. The freshman student said that he was leaving the country for the Middle East and that a bomb would be set off at the school at 11 a.m. Thursday, Davis said. Read More…

• Green athletic director, attorney still considering course of action (Beacon Journal)

GREEN: Canton attorney Randolph Snow and Green schools Athletic Director Mark Pfaff said they still are considering their next moves following the nonrenewal of Pfaff’s contract last week. “We’re still reviewing the matter to determine what course of action we’ll take,” Snow said in an interview Wednesday. Snow said there is nothing in Pfaff’s personnel file to suggest that the recommendation of Green High School Principal Cindy Brown that Pfaff receive a two-year contract renewal “shouldn’t happen.” Read More…

• Lancaster teacher accused of hurting girl, 6 (Dispatch)

A first-grade teacher accused of slamming a student against a locker over homework has been charged with assault and removed from the classroom. Tara W. Graham, 42, pleaded not guilty to the first-degree misdemeanor on Friday in Fairfield County Municipal Court. She teaches at West Elementary School in the Lancaster district. Read More…

Editorial

• Building block (Dispatch)

Gov. John Kasich is right to resurrect the idea of the so-called third-grade reading guarantee, this time with more help to prevent kids from falling behind. Lawmakers who are fretting about its cost should work with the administration to develop a plan and then figure out how to fit it into state and school-district budgets. Few academic goals are as important as having children reading at grade level by the end of third grade, because that’s roughly the point at which lessons become complex enough that children can’t master them without good reading-comprehension skills. Read More…

The weakest "linkage"

Many changes are starting to ripple down to the classroom level as Ohio moves forward with its efforts to implement corporate education reform. One of those changes is the creation and increasing use of teacher level value add reports. We provided some basic background on value add here if you need a refresher.

One of the most important steps in producing these complex reports for each teacher is to know which teacher taught which student, in which subject, and for how long. We need to know this for every student and every teacher. It's a process called "linkage". Without this linkage teachers could not be credited with the instruction they provided to each student.

By 2013, it will not be just RttT districts and Battelle for Kids’ projects that will require this linkage to occur, but all school districts must “implement a classroom-level value-added program (HB 153; Section 3319.112(A)(7)).

These teacher-level value-added reports will be used to determine teacher effectiveness and will be a significant factor in teacher evaluations. So it is clear that being able to accurately link student to teacher per subject is going to be critical if this system has any hope of working fairly.

If one imagines common scenarios such as students moving, teachers getting sick and having a sub, and one multiplies that by over 120,000 teachers in Ohio and almost 2 million students - the opportunity for linkage error is simply massive, only surpassed by the sheer magnitude of the administrative effort needed to keep this whole enterprise from unravelling.

Battelle for Kids has spent part of the summer providing some training and webinars on this issue.

In spring 2010, more than 125,000 rosters were verified by educators in South Carolina, Texas, Ohio and Oklahoma. Recent analyses of linkage results from schools across the country yield alarming results, including

Everytime a student moves, someone will have to go into a computer system and remove them from each teacher's roster, and then when that student enrolls in a new school, someone will have to go into a computer system and add them to each of their new teacher's rosters. Ditto for students changing classes, ditto for teachers needing to be replaced and on and on. Hundreds of thousands of changes throughout the school year will need to be performed, and all this on top of hoping the initial set up of millions of teacher/student linkages is error free each year to begin with!

Because Value add is longitudinal, i.e. results from previous years are used to make current year calculations, any errors from previous years will also be carried over, so it isn't like each year allows for a fresh start either. Indeed, as time rolls by, the errors may be compounding.

According to Battelle's own presentation this system hasn't worked to date in South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, nor Ohio - which is set to expand it to every school district.

How much confidence can anyone have in a system that will be used for high stakes decisions such as pay and employment, that relies on such gargantuan administrative tracking that has proven to be as utterly unreliable as this?

Link Before You Leap

What teachers are telling the Governor: Day 1

The Governor and his education Czar, Bob Sommers, have been requesting teacher input via a web form as they attempt to design a teacher evaluation and merit pay system. We here at JTF continue to believe the best way to achieve this isn't through random submissions via the web, but in a more deliberative and collaborative manner with stakeholders and subject matter experts.

But since this common sense approach has been set aside, we thought we should share the input teachers and others are providing the Governor through is website governor.ohio.gov/Contact/Teachers.aspx. We obtained these responses via a public records request. We'll publish a representative selection of responses each day. We have decided not to publish the names or contact information of any respondants.

Subject: "Merit Pay"
Dear Governor Kasich,
My first suggestions is to create a team of teachers and administrators to head this committee. We need people with a background and degree in education. A qualified person would have to have been in a classroom setting in their adult life. A person with a business degree would not be qualified to discuss this issue. A set criteria would need to be developed based on a set number of students in the classroom. You can not judge someone who has 20 students in a classroom verses a teacher with 30 students in the classroom in the same manner. The amount of students who are at risk or have special needs would need to be spread out evenly throughout the teachers at each grade level. That way the test scores would be more even throughout the grade level. This is just my first few thoughts concerning "fair" merit pay. I will continue to send emails concerning this issue.
Thank you,
----- -------
Highland Local School District
Medina, Ohio

Subject: Evaluate this...
I'd like to ask the Governor to take on a typical American class of 45 low-income mixed grade junior high students in an inner city school himself for at least one month and allow a panel of senior teachers (20 years+ experience) to evaluate his ability to lead in this situation and to bet his governorship on getting success for learning with this underfunded class of kids while on a teacher's wage.

Subject: fair method to pay teachers fairly
Governor, I am a retired teacher in Ohio after a 31 year career in Trumbull County. Considering all they do, much of it "off the clock", teachers have never been paid what they are worth and probably never will. But, for the largest majority, teachers are quite intelligent, tending toward altruism, and fair minded folks. The best way to come close to making sure they are payed fairly is to KEEP AND CONTINUE USING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING.

Maybe the process needs a bit of an overhaul, but to get rid of it totally is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Collective bargaining may not be in our country's constitution, but intelligent people over a long and intense history hammered out this process and it is a good one, very much in keeping with democratic principles. All people in this country have the right to speak for themselves in order to be treated fairly. All people of the world have this right whether it is honored or not. Most especially in the USA, that right should always be honored.

Collective bargaining for all public employees, including teachers, needs to be maintained in Ohio and restored or instituted in all other states where the process either doesn't exist or is being threatened. Thank you,

Subject: Fair pay for teachers
Governor Kasich,
“Fairness” cannot be legislated. The complexities are too subtle, and too large, to be encompassed in any law. The fair way to arrive at fair compensation and fair benefits for teachers is through collective bargaining.
That’s all!
Sincerely,

Finally for today,

Subject: No Subject
Funding for public education has been identified as illegal for years. You should be doing something to make funding more equitable so students' have the same advantages in their schools across the state; instead you want to increase salaries in salary heavy districts. Teachers who usually have the highest success rate also usually work in the wealthiest districts. The rich will get richer and we poor will stay poor.

We'll bring you more thoughts and comments tomorrow - we have over 1,300 to go through...