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Teachers Digging Into Own Pockets to tune of $1.3 billion

in

Via

Roughly half the amount that the nation's public school teachers are spending on educational products is being covered with their own money, a new nationwide survey shows.

All told, teachers spent about $3.2 billion on various types of supplies and materials during the 2012-13 academic year, according to the survey, released recently by the National School Supply and Equipment Association. Half that total amount, $1.6 billion, came out of educators' own pockets.

The per-teacher breakdown is as follows: The average educator forked out about $198 of their own money on instructional materials, $149 on school supplies, and $139 on other classroom materials, for a total of $485 last academic year, according to the survey.

In total, nearly all teachers—99.5 percent—reported digging into their own pockets to cover the costs on classroom supplies or materials, according to the association. The portion of teachers doing so appears to have risen over time.

The report, "The 2010 NSSEA Retail Market Awareness Study," was based on a survey of 308 K-12 teachers, conducted by Perry Research Professionals.

Kasich escalates public ed defunding

in
Ohioans would see income taxes fall, but would pay for them through higher sales and property taxes in the final Republican proposal

That's how the Cincinnati Enquirer opens its report on the massive last minute tax plan the Ohio GOP are planning to dump on the state, after months of internal disagreements.

Of particular concern to those who support public education, the budget conference committee decided not to restore the historic school funding cuts they made in the previous budget, but instead build upon it. Here was their starting point

FY12 (2011-2012 school year), which was the first year under Kasich's budget, saw a total of $7.52 billion in total state revenues. That's an 8% cut in total state revenue -- easily the largest cut since ODE started keeping these total state revenue figures in 1995.

And the bad news for districts is that FY12 won't represent the entire state divestment from education during Kasich's first budget. That's because the governor's budget phased down the Tangible Personal Property and Killowatt Hour tax reimbursement payments over two years. So the cut will be likely continued in FY13, pushing the total revenue figure down even lower.

As it stands, that $7.52 billion is the lowest amount provided by the state since the 2007-2008 school year.

Where they have ended up is even worse. In order to pay for their income tax cut, they have decided to eliminate the 12.5% property tax rollback.

The elimination of the property tax rollback will make future school levies harder to pass and more expensive, further shifting the burden from the state to local communities already struggling to support the needs of their students.

Eliminating the 12.5 percent property tax rollback for new taxes could make school levies harder to sell to voters. For example, without the rollback, last year's 15-mill Cleveland school levy would have cost $263 a year instead of $230 for the owner of a $50,000 home, and $525 a year instead of $459 for the owner of a $100,000 home.

The Governor and his legislative allies continue to shift the burden from millionaires to working people and their communities. We're going backwards at a time when the state can afford to move forward.

Voucher demand falls

in

We have previously reported how the last budget expanded the availability of vouchers from 14,000 a year to 60,000, and how little demand there was for them. This year demand for vouchers has fallen even further.

The Department of Education received nearly 600 fewer applicants to the Educational Choice scholarship this spring compared to last year
[...]
The 16,848 students whose families submitted applications by last Friday's deadline comes in short of the 17,438 who did so a year ago and still far below the 60,000 limit on vouchers. ODE also held a second application window last fall that brought the total applications to 17,516 for use in the present school year.

Let's look at the graph

If parents in school districts that are struggling are rejecting the voucher option, why would the legislature think expansion of vouchers into districts where schools are excellent, prove to be any more popular?

School choice proponents need to begin to understand that the vast majority of parents choose public schools, and that choice deserves the same vigorous support for-profit education receives from the "choice" community and Ohio's current crop of legislators.

A decade-long crisis of democracy

in

We highlighted that despite Ohio voters in the aggregate preferring Democrats over Republicans in the 2012 election, the Republicans will hold a probable super majority 60-39 as a consequence of extreme partisan gerrymandering. The Dispatch was prompted by this result to produce an article about redistricting

Issue 2 is dead, buried deep by Ohio voters last week.

But over and over again, opponents of the redistricting plan, be they Republicans or editorial-page writers, noted that their opposition was not based on the belief that the current system of drawing legislative and congressional districts is good.

In fact, most acknowledged that it remains badly in need of an overhaul.

But if was this paragraph in the article that prompted us to take an even deeper look

Republicans now control 75 percent of the U.S. House seats and nearly two-thirds of the legislative seats in a state that has leaned Republican but is a key battleground state

We analyzed Ohio House of Representative results for each of the past 6 election cycles. By aggregating the votes for Democrats and Republicans in contested races we found a systematic, and extreme disenfranchising of Democratic representation in Ohio

Year Democratic Republican D Seats R Seats
2012 2,418,815 2,362,310 39 60
2010 1,447,949 1,696,064 40 59
2008 2,296,678 1,982,281 53 46
2006 1,832,548 1,605,801 46 53
2004 1,869,051 2,036,398 38 60
2002 1,243,671 1,364,656 36 63
Total 11,108,712 11,047,510

Based upon the preferences of voters, Democrats should have controlledthe General assemblies after the 2012, and 2006 elections - but were denied by partisan gerrymandering. Furthermore, the majorities that Republicans did earn in all of their successful years should have been much, much smaller - and never reacher super majority status.

Indeed when one looks at the sum total of votes in contest races over the past decade, rather than being center right, the results indicate a center to center left leaning electorate.

It is simply not possible to conclude that Ohioans have been legitimately represented in the 21st century by their preferred choices, either in actuality or in scope. We have a crisis of democracy in Ohio.

Some Choice

in

ODE has just released their partial school report card. It doesn't contain any final grades, but it does tell us whether schools made adequate yearly progress, and the news isn't pretty for Ohio's charter school movement.

Of the 352 charter schools listed, 58.2% of them failed to meet their adequate yearly progress (AYP) metrics.

If a student attends a school in any of Allen, Warren, Erie, Hancock, Lake, Madison, or Tuscarawas counties, not a single charter school made adequate yearly progress. Indeed, out of the 36 counties that have charter schools, 24 counties had schools that combined for more than half their charters failing to meet their adequate yearly progress.

County Not Met AYP Met AYP
Allen 100.0% 0.0%
Warren 100.0% 0.0%
Erie 100.0% 0.0%
Hancock 100.0% 0.0%
Lake 100.0% 0.0%
Madison 100.0% 0.0%
Tuscarawas 100.0% 0.0%
Stark 83.3% 16.7%
Trumbull 75.0% 25.0%
Summit 73.3% 26.7%
Montgomery 72.4% 27.6%
Mahoning 71.4% 28.6%
Hamilton 67.9% 32.1%
Richland 66.7% 33.3%
Clark 66.7% 33.3%
Fairfield 66.7% 33.3%
Morrow 66.7% 33.3%
Franklin 65.3% 34.7%
Butler 60.0% 40.0%
Lucas 58.8% 41.2%
Lorain 54.5% 45.5%
Marion 50.0% 50.0%
Columbiana 50.0% 50.0%
Greene 50.0% 50.0%
Cuyahoga 42.0% 58.0%
Portage 40.0% 60.0%
Licking 25.0% 75.0%
Muskingum 25.0% 75.0%
Seneca 25.0% 75.0%
Champaign 0.0% 100.0%
Wayne 0.0% 100.0%
Scioto 0.0% 100.0%
Coshocton 0.0% 100.0%
Hardin 0.0% 100.0%
Jackson 0.0% 100.0%
Van Wert 0.0% 100.0%
Grand Total 58.2% 41.8%

There's a lot of students in a lot of schools, in a lot of counties not being served by the "choices" they are being presented with.