Education News for 05-31-2013

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State Education News

  • Ohio's school spending could shoot up (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • Ohio public school funding would grow by 11 percent over the next two years versus 2012- 2013 spending levels, the largest percent increase in education spending in at least a decade, under the proposal Senate Republicans…Read more...

  • School aid would be boosted under Ohio Senate proposal (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • Ohio Senate leaders this afternoon proposed boosting basic state aid to districts from $6.3 billion this school year to more than $7 billion…Read more...

  • Ohio Senate ups education funding in budget (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Most Franklin County school districts would see state funding increases averaging nearly 9 percent per year under Senate-proposed changes to the new two-year budget…Read more...

  • Schools challenge families to scale back on tech use (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Her daughter yearned for the television, her son for his iPod. Both parents felt disconnected without phones and computers. But for one week they left electronics untouched.Well, at least the kids did…Read more...

  • ODOT grants will help kids get to school more safely (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The Ohio Department of Transportation has approved $7.2 million in projects to improve safety for students getting to and from school…Read more...

  • Senate funding plan aims to assist Ohio education system (Lorain Morning Journal)

    • A substitute version of Ohio’s school funding plan proposed by the Senate would increase aid for state education $717.4 million over the next 10 years…Read more...

  • Bill with similarities to "Cleveland Plan" could soon pass for Columbus schools (Ohio Public Radio)

    • It’s been a rough school year for Columbus City Schools. The district is under investigation by the State Auditor’s office and the FBI for tampering with student attendance data and grades. And the struggling district has a history of less-than-stellar…Read more...

  • Senators say their school funding plan is constitutional (Ohio Public Radio)

    • Ohio Senators are calling their new budget plan “a work in progress” but they are touting it as a major improvement in funding for Ohio’s public schools…Read more...

  • State Senate plan for 2-year budget not as good for TPS (Toledo Blade)

    • Senate Republicans on Thursday said they will pump $717 million more into basic aid for K- 12 schools during the next two years in the budget they plan to approve next week…Read more...

  • School funding plan in the works could increase dollars for some districts (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • Senate Republicans unveiled a new school-funding formula Thursday that likely will change as it moves through committee deliberations and passage in the Senate…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Clear Fork to improve school routes (Mansfield News Journal)

    • The Ohio Department of Transportation said Thursday it will dole out $7.2 million for 58 different Safe Routes to School projects in Ohio communities…Read more...

  • Brecksville-Broadview Heights educators hoping to expand EdCamp (Sun Newspapers)

    • A pair of Brecksville-Broadview Heights educators once again are teaming to host a free conference about education…Read more...

The Arbitrary Albatross: Standardized Testing and Teacher Evaluation

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On Chicago's streets and Hollywood's silver screens, education reform has been cast as a false dilemma between students and teachers. Reputable actresses and liberal mayors have both fallen prey. At the center of this drama lie teacher evaluations. A linchpin of the debate, they weigh especially heavily around the necks of educators like me.

Think: Shaky Foundation

With the arrival of spring, testing season is now upon us: America's new national pastime. I believe student results from standardized tests should not be used to evaluate teachers because the data are imprecise and the effects are pernicious. Including such inaccurate measures is both unfair to teachers and detrimental to student learning.

As a large body of research suggests, standardized test data are imprecise for two main reasons. First, they do not account for individual and environmental factors affecting student performance, factors over which teachers have no control. (Think: commitment, social class, family.) Second, high-stakes, one-time tests increase the likelihood of random variation so that scores fluctuate in arbitrary ways not linked to teacher efficacy. (Think: sleep, allergies, the heartache of a recent breakup.)

High-stakes assessments are also ruinous to student learning. They encourage, at least, teaching to the test and, at most, outright cheating. This phenomenon is supported by Campbell's law, which states statistics are more likely to be corrupted when used in making decisions, which in turn corrupts the decision making process itself. (Think: presidential campaigns.)

As a teacher, if my livelihood is based on test results, then I will do everything possible to ensure high marks, including narrowing the curriculum and prepping fiercely for the test. The choice between an interesting project and a paycheck is no choice at all. These are amazing disincentives to student learning. Tying teachers' careers to standardized tests does not foster creative, passionate, skillful young adults. It does exactly the opposite.

[readon2 url="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/standardized-testing-and-teacher-evaluation-aaron-pribble"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

The cheating will continue until morale improves

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Atlanta wasn’t an isolated incident. Neither was El Paso, or Washington, DC, or Columbus. A new General Accounting Office report demonstrates that cheating by school officials on standardized tests has become commonplace despite the use of security measures the report recommends. The only solution is one that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has so far refused—removing the high stakes attached to standardized testing.

The latest embarrassment is in Columbus, where this month Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost seized records at 20 high schools. This is part of a two-year-old investigation into “scrubbing” 2.8 million attendance records of students who failed tests. Yost has recently widened his investigation to look into whether school administrators also changed grades to boost graduation rates.

A GOA reportreleased May 16 recommends adopting “leading practices to prevent test irregularities.” However, the report reveals that while all states and the District of Columbia use at least some of the recommended best practices, 33 states had confirmed instances of test cheating in the last two school years. And states where the worst offenses are occurring already have adopted most of the practices identified in the report, making it unlikely that greater security will improve test integrity.

Ohio employs five of the nine security plans recommended by the GOA report. Atlanta, where the superintendent and 34 other educators were recently indicted for changing test answers, has adopted eight of nine security practices, as has Texas, where the former El Paso superintendant is now in federal prison for a scheme to encourage low-performing students to drop out. And Washington, D.C., where 191 teachers at 70 schools were implicated in a rash of wrong-to-right erasure marks on tests, uses every single security measure.

The Department of Education responded to the GAO’s findings by holding a symposium on test integrity and issuing a follow-up report on best practices and policies. But the federal government convening a meeting and issuing yet another report might be even less effective at stopping cheating than increased security.

The report also noted that linking awards and recognition to improving test scores and threatening the jobs of principals for low test scores “could provide incentives to cheat.” But at a conference of education writers in April, Sec. Arne Duncan denied that linking test scores to career outcomes could drive educators to criminally manipulate the system.

“I reject the idea that the system forces people to cheat,” he said.

Maybe so, but cheating now seems inherent in the system, and our Education Secretary seems incurious as to why. It’s even hard to get him to admit there is an epidemic of test cheating. Asked about the Ohio investigation, Duncan said, “I almost don’t know of another situation like this.”

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Senate budget - good, bad, ugly

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The much anticipated Senate budget, when it comes to education policy, could be titled "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". We've already discussed the ugly, let's take a look at the good and the bad.

The Good

The statewide parent trigger, proposed by the governor and eliminated by the house, is not proposed by the Senate either and appears dead, for now.

The Senate also includes a fix to HB555 and the onerous teacher evaluation provisions it contained. Here's what the fix proposes

Prescribes that the student academic growth factor must account for 35% (rather than 50% as under current law) of each evaluation under the standards-based state framework for evaluation of teachers developed by the State Board of Education and permits a school district to attribute an additional percentage to the student academic growth factor, not to exceed 15% of each evaluation.

Specifies that, when calculating student academic growth for a teacher evaluation, students who have had 30 or more excused or unexcused absences for the school year must be excluded (rather than excluding students with 60 or more unexcused absences as under current law).

Ohio Revised Code labels a student as a chronic truant if they are absent 14 days, so 30 days is still a high number of absences to allow, but it is certainly better than the ridiculous 60 days in current law. The reduction in the use of VAM to 35% from 50% is a welcome improvement.

The Governor proposed eliminating the single salary schedule, and the House concurred. The Senate however strikes this proposal from their budget. We suspect there will be pressure applied to put this back in. Educators and support professional should continue to apply their own pressure on legislators to keep it out.

The Senate also eliminated the home-school freeloading provision the House added that would have allowed home schoolers to participate in district extra-curricular activities at no expense.

The Bad

The Governor proposed a massive statewide voucher expansion effort, the House concurred, and the Senate has left the proposal in too. With massive opposition to this proposal we were a little surprised the Senate left this unnecessary proposal in their budget.

Charter schools get a number of additional free passes from the Senate, including an e-school exemption for phys ed., an additional qualifying condition for vouchers, and a provision that would make charter school closures more difficult as LSC notes it "May be more difficult to close community schools after July 1, 2013 (compared with current law after that date).". The Senate also eliminates a charter school teacher quality provision for charters populated primarily with students with disabilities. A number of other smaller provisions setting charter schools on a longer path to failure are also propsed by the Senate, such as:

Exempts students of chartered nonpublic schools accredited through the Independent School Association of the Central States from passing the end-of-course examinations as a prerequisite for graduation from high school.

The Charter school business doesn't contribute millions of dollars a year to Republican politicians for nothing.

The challenging

The Senate adds a new levy type aimed at school safety

Authorizes school districts to levy a property tax exclusively for school safety and security purposes. Requires the levy to comply with the same requirements that apply to general school district levies in excess of the 10-mill limitation.

A good intentioned proposal aimed at lowering violence in schools, but there should be concern that a safety levy might reduce local taxpayers appetites for funding levies for normal school operations, the core purpose of schools themselves. School districts will have to be mindful in how they approach this issue.

Here's the full comparative document of the education section of the budget

Senate Sub HB59

Education News for 5-29-2013

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State Education News

  • Columbus school-levy bill advances in legislature (Columbus Dispatch)

    • After hearing testimony from two Columbus school-board members and others, the Ohio House Education Committee voted 16-3 yesterday to send a bill to the full House that would require a school district property-tax issue…Read more...

  • Gender split proves positive in Hamilton schools (Hamilton Journal-News)

    • The lunch period at any school can sometimes be a chaotic scene of boys and girls vying for each other’s attention…Read more...

  • Lorain Superintendent Tucker outlines comprehensive academic recovery plan (Lorain Morning Journal)

    • On the same day Superintendent Tom Tucker outlined his comprehensive academic recovery plan for Lorain City Schools, its treasurer presented a gloomy financial forecast…Read more...

  • Greenon follows trend on all-day kindergarten (Springfield News-Sun)

    • Kindergartners entering Greenon schools next year will get more time to learn as the district moves to all-day classes, following a state and national trend…Read more...

  • School Nurses Want Law To Help Them Save Students From Deadly Allergic Reactions (WBNS)

    • As the school year comes to an end, state lawmakers will be getting a bill backed by school nurses within the next few weeks. Nurses want to save the lives of students who have allergic reactions to food for the first time while at school…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Columbus board mum on hiring provost (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The Columbus Board of Education met privately at noon yesterday to discuss hiring Ohio State University Vice President and Provost Joseph Alutto to become acting superintendent…Read more...

  • Hancock School board to rescind some layoffs (Steubenville Herald-Star)

    • Three months after announcing teacher and other staff layoffs, the Hancock County Board of Education is poised to call some of those people back…Read more...

  • Struthers considers drug tests for athletes (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • The Struthers City School District may begin drug testing its student athletes in grades seven through 12 as soon as the 2013-14 academic year…Read more...

Rejected Kasich formula coming back?

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The Ohio Senate revealed its version of the Budget, and it contained a number of changes to education policy proposals proposed by the Governor and the House. What it didn't contain was a school funding formula, for that we are told we will have to wait another week. A familiar story.

Based upon reporting, there should be some serious cause for concern. The Toledo Blade reports

A huge chunk still missing from the budget is how the chamber plans to deal with K-12 schools, preventing lawmakers from putting a total price tag on the two-year spending plan for the moment. Talks continue, but Mr. Faber predicted that the final product is likely to be closer to what Mr. Kasich initially proposed than what the House put forth.

Mr. Kasich’s school funding plans, particularly his promise that more money would flow to poorer schools, were initially greeted with optimism by school superintendents across the state. But that mood quickly soured when the administration released numbers showing that some 60 percent of school districts would see no funding increases while some wealthier, fast-growing, suburban districts were in line for large increases.

The House, in turned, capped the growth in subsidies to those suburban schools, resulting in more districts being in line for increases, including Toledo Public Schools. Mr. Faber would not speculate what the Senate’s total K-12 pot of funding would be larger or smaller than in the House version.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a reaction

Senate Minority Leader Eric Kearney, D-North Avondale, said the small business tax cut wouldn’t provide business owners with enough money to create new jobs. He also lamented the budget’s lack of additional funding for local governments and schools.

“Our schools and local communities have suffered drastic cuts since Governor Kasich took office and today’s amendments by Senate Republicans to (the budget bill) did nothing to change that,” he said in a statement. “That’s not good news for local taxpayers who’ve been forced to pick up the slack from state funding cuts by voting for more local levies.”

Senate Republicans said they won’t have education funding numbers until next week, when they plan to reveal their final K-12 funding plan.

The Governor promised that poor districts would receive more, which should not have been a difficult task after he cut education funding by $1.8 billion in his last budget. But even that promise turned out to be empty as almost 400 school districts were set to receive flat funding. The House promised to fix the Governor's mess, and attempted to do so by returning to the Taft era building blocks formula - only they cut school funding by a further $200 million in the process. Now the Ohio Senate wants to return to the Governor's rejected formula. As we predicted, we have a school funding disaster on our hands, unless the Senate is also going to attach significant amounts of additional money to the plan to make it workable.

School administrators were not kind about the Governor's funding formula the first go-around, and here's the graph to demonstrate why

Will Ohio's media be bamboozled a third time by Republican legislators?