State takeovers of school districts, followed by the appointment of CEOs with power to override the decisions of elected school boards and nullify union contracts, are undemocratic, unaccountable, and unacceptable. Ohioans must educate themselves about HB 70 in order to speak out against this oppressive law.
The Board of Public Education Partners is adamantly opposed to tying high school graduation to state-mandated standardized tests. Because the Ohio General Assembly created these new graduation requirements in 2014, nearly 52,000 seniors across the state in Ohio’s Class of 2019 are now at risk of not receiving a high school diploma.
Those projected numbers are simply unacceptable.
High school exit exams tie standardized test scores to high school diplomas, but sadly, they can push students who miss the mark out of school into the streets, the unemployment lines, and the prisons.
There are no federal regulations that require tying graduation to standardized tests – Ohio is one of only 12 states that mandate high school exit exams, down from a high of 27 that had or had planned such tests. The current number is the lowest level since at least the mid-1990s.
In the last few years, 10 states have repealed high school exit exams. Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas even decided to issue high school diplomas retroactively to thousands of students who had previously been awarded “certificates of participation” because of their scores on state tests.
According to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), exit exams deny diplomas to tens of thousands of U.S. students each year, regardless of whether they have stayed in school, completed other high school graduation requirements, and demonstrated competency in other ways.
A review by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that high school graduation tests have done nothing to improve student achievement but have raised the dropout rate.
These tests give some students, who have worked hard, played by the rules, and stayed in school, the status of high school dropouts with the same barriers to future opportunities!
Adults without diplomas earn less, are less likely to be employed or have a stable family, and are more likely to be imprisoned, as exemplified by the phrase “the school-to-prison pipeline.”
Test defenders claim that end-of-course tests will benefit students with disabilities, English language learners, African American, Latino, and low-income students, but those are our children who are more likely to be denied a diploma for not passing the tests.
Test supporters say the exit exams “give value” to a diploma, but research shows the opposite is true.
Advocates of this test and punish system also insist that the assessments bring “increased rigor,” but no evidence proves that an increase in assessments can improve student performance.
A student’s transcript, not a test score, is what makes a high school diploma “worth more than the paper it’s printed on,” and it gives the most reliable picture of a student’s readiness for college and career. Two major studies confirmed that high school grades are much stronger predictors of undergraduate performance than are standardized test scores. The High School GPA remains the best predictor of college success.
Test scores should be only one part of a student’s high school record that includes credits earned, courses taken, activities, service, attendance, projects, and other indicators of academic accomplishment.
Requirements for earning a diploma should be based on evaluation by local school district educators who know the student best – not on state “cut scores.”
Last year’s 23-member graduation work group recommended that high school students who passed their required courses and took all seven state tests, regardless of score, could graduate if they met at least two of the six other requirements the committee created, and the State Board of Education concurred with its recommendations.
Public Education Partners is respectfully requesting that the Ohio Legislature do what’s right for the Class of 2019 and Ohio’s future high school students who are at risk of not receiving a diploma.
Our elected officials must pass House Bill 630 to extend the 2017-2018 alternative pathways to the class of 2019, and then seriously work on the process of eliminating state-mandated exit testing as a high school graduation requirement for the class of 2020 and beyond.
There is much more to Social Emotional Learning (SEL) than wanting to help students cope with their emotions. That goal can be accomplished by ensuring every public school has enough counselors and psychologists, and that every family has access to mental health services. There’s evidence that access to arts programs and increased time for recess and play in elementary school result in happier students.
But instead, tech companies are rolling out Class Dojo for teachers to micromanage and report student behavior and algorithms that interpret data collected with every keystroke while students are doing schoolwork on devices. The Social and Emotional aspects of students seem terribly involved with grit, cooperation, buckling down and doing what they’re told.
What about empathy? Compassion? Kindness? Taking care of the environment?
Check the blog “A Wrench in the Gears” to understand the underlying goal: data is profitable. https://wrenchinthegears.com/ Are parents comfortable with schools using computers to collect SEL information about their children, which will be available to third parties without parents’ permission? FERPA laws were relaxed to allow this. There’s no way for parents to find out what data will be collected, what the data says about their children, and how that data will be used.
There are already plans for turning SEL information into profits for investors. SIBs, (Social Impact Bonds) rely on measuring the mental health of children as young as preschoolers “before” and “after” an intervention (which will be sold to the school district to implement), and any improvement that saves the district money will go into the pockets of investors. This is yet another way Zuckerberg and Gates have cooked up to funnel school tax money into their pockets.
Years ago when psychological information was kept locked in the school psychologists’ offices, shared with only teachers who had reason to know about it, and shredded when students graduated, no one had cause to worry that information would be shared with third parties.
Years ago, all psychological data on students was created by trained psychologists who personally observed the students and who were acquainted with them — now it’s a computer algorithm, and the data will follow a student throughout out his or her life. This is not hyperbole. It’s happening because technology made it possible to do.
Tech companies are excited about “wearables” that would transmit physiological information about students directly to the algorithm that will interpret what that data “means” about a student’s ability to stay focused, persevere, cooperate, get the right answers, etc.
Let’s not put our trust in tech companies and investors rather than school personnel when it comes to assessing a child’s emotional well-being and deciding what to do to help him or her. Here’s a small example from KnowledgeWorks, based in Cincinnati, which is deeply involved in Ohio’s Strategic Plan for Education. This is a scene from a futuristic after-school program for a 4th grader.
Upon entering the building, the device on her arm automatically downloaded homework to do after a day at school, sitting with her friends who are also plugged into devices — instead of playing, for goodness sake! If she pauses too long, the device senses it and sends help in the form of the voice of her teacher (not a real human, just her recorded voice), to encourage her to stay on task.
Tech companies and profiteers should never be trusted with the mental health of our students.
Public Education Partners (PEP) is a statewide nonprofit that was created to connect and unite advocates that support public school districts and the children and families they serve. The Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding (OCEASF) was organized to challenge the constitutionality of the Ohio school funding system and to secure high quality educational opportunities for all Ohio school children.
Public Education Partners and the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding respectfully request that all Ohioans consider joining state, county, city, and school district leaders across the state in officially recognizing January 20-26, 2019 as PUBLIC EDUCATION WEEK.
Issuing proclamations provides an opportunity for all to shine a positive spotlight on the K-12 public education available for children and families in Ohio. Participants should then GO PUBLIC, and proclaim this celebration of public education with the traditional, as well as social, media!
For everyone’s convenience, PEP and OCEASF have provided some suggested proclamation language found below.
GO PUBLIC, and share the following template with state, county, city, township, and school district leaders:
Public Education Week
WHEREAS, traditional public school districts in Ohio serve more than 1.8 million students and employ more than 245,000 Ohioans; and
WHEREAS, all children in Ohio should have access to the highest-quality education possible; and
WHEREAS, Ohio citizens recognize the important role that an effective education plays in preparing all students to be successful adults; and
WHEREAS, quality education is critically important to the economic vitality of the Buckeye State; and
WHEREAS, public education not only helps to diversify our economy, but also enhances the vibrancy of our community; and
WHEREAS, Ohio has many high-quality school administrators, teaching professionals, and support staff who are committed to educating our children; and
WHEREAS, public education is celebrated across the country by millions of students, parents, educators, schools, and organizations to raise awareness of the need for effective public schools;
THEREFORE, I (or WE), ______________, do hereby recognize January 20-26, 2019 as PUBLIC EDUCATION WEEK and call this observance to the attention of all Ohioans.
Among the most important questions this election cycle is one asked by the Columbus Dispatch last month: Which side is right in the political battle over ECOT blame?
In this piece, let’s take a look at the major-party candidates running for governor, Republican Mike DeWine – who has been Ohio’s attorney general for more than 7 years; and Democrat Richard Cordray, who became director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after a two-year stint as Ohio Attorney General.
Here is what the Dispatch said about DeWine:
“Talking in May about holding ECOT accountable, DeWine campaign spokesman Joshua Eck made a debatable claim to the Wheeling, W.Va., Intelligencer: ‘Mike DeWine is the only elected official who has made real progress in this case.’
Asked to clarify, DeWine’s office emphasized that he had hired the special counsel in the ECOT lawsuit that was trying to block the state from using log-in data as a basis for funding.
To be clear, as attorney general, DeWine is required to provide representation for the Department of Education.
That said, DeWine is praised by some observers for hiring Doug Cole, a former state solicitor, as special counsel. Cole, who has argued about 20 cases before the Ohio Supreme Court, proved to be a skilled litigator who knew the value of highlighting that ECOT wanted full state funding for students even if they rarely logged in.
But Democrats say DeWine, who recently donated $12,533 in Lager contributions to charity, shares responsibility for allowing ECOT to continue operating the way it did for so long.”
One of DeWine’s main arguments for letting ECOT continue: He lacked authority to go after ECOT until recently and only had authority to go after the money once the school closed. Auditor David Yost, a Republican running for Attorney General, said that ECOT’s finances and troubles were not made clear until the Ohio Department of Education changed how it reviews funding in 2016. Comments from both were reported in The Plain Dealer.
Cordray supporters say both men are wrong.
In 2010, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that “an officer, employee, or duly authorized representative or agent of a community school is a public official and may be held strictly liable to the state for the loss of public funds.’’ In other words, eight years ago Ohio’s highest court agreed that officers, directors and others controlling charter schools are public officials who are liable if they misuse public funds. (The ruling says nothing about tolerating abuse of public money until the school is closed.)
In the same Plain Dealer analysis that is referenced above, DeWine cites the case of the Value Learning & Teaching Academy (VLT), a Cincinnati charter that was forced to close, as proof that his delayed action on ECOT was justified.
Soon after VLT closed, the school’s landlord sued over back rent and future rent. DeWine responded with a 2014 motion to intervene in the case and sought to recover “more than $1,343,000 of public funds’ that the school transferred “to family members of VLT’s insiders in ways that appear to violate Ohio’s fiduciary and ethics laws…”
Four years ago, Mike DeWine’s office filed a motion to intervene in the VLT charter school case and said the state auditor found the school transferred public funds to “insiders in ways that appear to violate Ohio’s fiduciary and ethics law….”
Four years later – three months before the election – DeWine is making similar arguments about ECOT insiders.
The same Plain Dealer article says, “Yost, a Republican who is running for attorney general, agreed with DeWine that it took recent court rulings to establish the fiduciary duty that DeWine has now highlighted.’’
That duty was established in 2010 – in a case filed by then-Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray against the International Preparatory School in Cleveland. The duty was reinforced by DeWine when he intervened in VLT case in 2014.
Since Cordray spent two years as attorney general, DeWine has been asking why Cordray didn’t do more to crack down on ECOT when he had the chance. Cordray responded by citing the VLT case as proof that he gave DeWine the tools needed to go after ECOT much sooner.
In the most recent debate, DeWine went after Cordray with a new attack, and the Dispatch did some fact-checking:
“ECOT was something that you (Cordray) could’ve taken action on. There was an auditor’s report which clearly showed that there was a problem, and you did absolutely nothing at the time,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Wait — there was a state audit that “clearly” showing ECOT’s ripoff way back when Cordray was attorney general in 2009-10?
When asked to elaborate after the debate, the DeWine campaign cited a December 2009 audit under then-Auditor and Republican Mary Taylor. Note 18 on Page 30 of the 81-page document contains this line: “IQ Innovations, LLC and Altair Learning Management I Inc. have the same principal owner.” State audits list these under the healing “Related Party Transactions.”
If that is the standard, why hasn’t DeWine sued the chronically failing Imagine schools that stick taxpayers with the cost of ridiculously high leases that benefit their for-profit real estate arm?
State audits of each Ohio Imagine school, under the headline “Related Party Transactions,” point out that “Imagine Schools, Inc. and Schoolhouse Finance, LLC are both subsidiaries of Imagine Schools Non-Profit, Inc.”
In the ECOT case filings, DeWine accuses Lager of violating his fiduciary duty to ECOT.
The federal judge who slapped an Imagine school in Missouri with a million-dollar fine said Imagine violated its fiduciary duty to the school by saddling it with excessively high rent paid to a subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. The lease arrangement is nearly identical to those found in Ohio.
The Missouri judge said:
“The duty of loyalty required Imagine Schools to put the interest of Renaissance (Academy) first – above the interest of Imagine Schools and anyone else….”
Ohio is home to several imagine schools with leases that have made news.
The most recent Imagine expose was in the Dispatch:
Ohio taxpayers paid nearly $8 million to renovate Imagine Schools’ Great Western Academy – renovations worth more than 3 times the charter school’s value.
Unlike traditional public-school buildings that are paid for with public money and owned by the public, this one was paid for with public money but owned by an out-of-state private company more interested in making a profit than educating kids. This school, like most other Ohio-based Imagine schools, gets mostly Ds and Fs on it state report card.
Regardless of who becomes Ohio’s next governor, the race has spotlighted serious problems with Ohio’s system of paying for and policing charter schools.
A recent analysis in The Plain Dealer asks this question: Did Yost, DeWine Dawdle on ECOT? After a rather detailed history lesson – the analysis gives us this answer: YES they did.
Let’s look at Auditor David Yost, now running to be Ohio’s next Attorney General.
Among the most incriminating evidence against Auditor Yost centers on his decision to negotiate the boundaries of his investigation into ECOT – with ECOT.
Critics are quick to note that the man who wants to be Ohio’s top cop should not have a history of letting those he investigates set the parameters for investigations into them.
As the PD tells us, Yost failed to take appropriate action when a former ECOT employee informed his office in 2014 that the school was playing games with its attendance.
“Yost’s office told ECOT it wanted to see detailed attendance and class participation records. ECOT objected, pointing to a 2003 ‘contract’ with ODE basing funding only on enrollment and educational opportunities “offered,” not whether students take them.
Yost accepted that contract as valid and backed down.’’
Soon after Yost backed down, his transition account received $7500 from ECOT officials.
Yost’s campaign accounts received a total of $29,000 from ECOT officials, gave them record-keeping awards and spoke at ECOT graduation ceremonies – facts featured in a new ad by his opponent, former federal prosecutor Steve Dettelbach, as evidence of Yost’s cozy relationship ECOT founder and major GOP donor William Lager.
Yost has defended the awards and speeches. But can you imagine Yost fawning over a chronically failing school that didn’t shower him with campaign cash? And had Yost acted sooner, Ohio taxpayers could have saved millions of dollars and lots of students could have been spared time in the chronically failing school.
While Yost is relatively well known on the statewide stage, Dettelbach is a making his first run for public office. He is best known as serving for six years as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.
In its endorsement of Dettlebach, the Akron Beacon Journal wrote:
“He knows organization and how to set priorities. He won praise for his conduct of the office, among the steeper challenges the federal effort to repair the Cleveland police department. In this campaign season of talking tough about the drug companies and their contribution to the opioid epidemic, he actually prevailed against the drugmaker Omnicare.’’
And then there is ECOT.
The Beacon Journal said that the ECOT baggage Yost carries burdens his candidacy, noting both the money he received from ECOT and his failure to act sooner.
“ECOT is an immense scandal. It is not easily looked past,’’ The Beacon Journal Wrote, “There is a better choice on the ballot, Steve Dettelbach.’’
Open letter to ODE about computer grading of EOC exams from English teachers. Posted by Christopher Cotton, Shaker Heights High School, Shaker Heights, Ohio
OPEN LETTER TO: Paolo DeMaria
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Ohio Department of Education
superintendent@education.ohio.gov
CC: Office of Curriculum and Assessment:
Brian.Roget@education.ohio.gov
Sarah.Wilson@education.ohio.gov
Shantelle.Hill@education.ohio.gov
Daniel.Badea@education.ohio.gov
Sarah.McClusky@education.ohio.gov
FROM: English teachers of Shaker Heights High School
September 7, 2018
Dear Superintendent DeMaria and the Office of Curriculum and Assessment,
We are English teachers at Shaker Heights High School, and we would like to voice our profound dismay over the direction that the Ohio Department of Education has taken with the End of Course exams.
In the nation’s unthinking rush to test, test, test, we have reached a new low: We are now expected to teach our students how to write for a machine to read. We have been given a document called, “Machine-Scored Grading: Initial Suggestions for Preparing Students,” produced by the Westerville City Schools “in consultation with the ODE.” According to these guidelines, “When composing text to be read by a computer, the writer cannot assume that the machine will ‘know’ and be able to interpret communicative intent.”
Imagine for a moment how humiliating it is for students to hear that what they write will be read by a machine, not by a human. Can you think of anything as pointless? Would anybody be inspired to do their best work?
The message that we send students is this: Your inner self, the ground from which all writing springs, has no value, no relevance. We do not care about the content of your mind, only that you have the mental machinery to decipher and generate informational text.
Writing for a computer is antithetical to everything that led us to become educators. Our overseers in Columbus, however, have a very different attitude. In support of machine scoring, this is from an official statement from an Associate Director of the Office of Curriculum and Assessment: “This is the only way to get to adaptive testing and to return results faster, with the goal to be eventual on demand results, which has been an extremely vocal issue by the field to legislators, ODE Leadership, etc.”
First of all, this is an appalling sentence. But once we get past the errors in syntax, grammar and capitalization, and the sloppy, confusing phrasing, we are still left with an absurdity. We teachers are supposed to set students before a computer and then wait breathlessly for the machine to tell us how well or poorly the student writes? That is the ultimate goal? And the person in charge doesn’t even know how to write? How much are Ohio taxpayers spending on this?
There are always the same three justifications for computer grading:
1. It’s fast.
2. It’s cheap.
3. It’s objective.
But we can point to a system that is faster, cheaper, and maybe even more objective. There just happens to be a group of trained professionals handy: people who are dedicated to the wellbeing and growth of Ohio’s schoolchildren, people who love writing and literature, people who are trained to the standards of the Ohio Department of Education, people who continually strive to improve their ability to provide meaningful evaluation of student writing:
Teachers.
We can do the job fast because we’re with the students every day. We can do it cheap, in fact at no extra cost to Ohio taxpayers, because it’s what we’re paid to do anyway.
You might assume that machines have us beat when it comes to objectivity. But computers are only as objective as the humans who program them. And we have good reason to distrust multinational corporations when they invoke proprietary trade secrets to hide the systems that determine the fates of millions of public school children. But objectivity may be the wrong criterion. As English teachers, we love writing because it is one of the most subjective things taught in school. We love the teaching of writing because we love to see students develop their unique voices, their sense of themselves as the subjects of their own lives.
If we begin our thinking with the assumption that standardized tests are a sacred imperative, then, surely the fastest, cheapest, most objective thing is to grade them is with a machine. However, if we begin our thinking with the belief that students should learn how to write well, then we see that artificial intelligence is not just irrelevant, but counterproductive.
Superintendent DeMaria, what is truly being tested here is the ODE itself. Are you so captive to the testing-industrial complex that you throw millions of taxpayer dollars into an unnecessary technology? Or are you so committed to educating students that you are willing to use your available human capital to do it for free?
The following Tweets were created by Ruth Spanos, a part-time School Speech Language Pathologist who works through the ESC of Northeast Ohio. She generated these Tweets in response to the ECOT scandal and subsequent social media attack on public education by ECOT Pals, that’s funded by ECOT owner Bill Lager. She did this on her own time and did not get paid or reimbursed in any way for her very clever messaging:
EVERY student in Ohio deserves a great school with caring teachers. A school shows it cares by doing things like taking attendance, and following up when children don’t show up for school. Right? It wouldn’t just keep taking money for those students…would it?
Those teachers (and teachers across Ohio) deserve to be paid fairly and have decent working conditions. They deserve to work at an ethically run school. Certainly one with decent tech support. Maybe if Lager had invested in attendance tracking instead of mansions in Florida?
Truly a shame how Lager took advantage of these dedicated teachers. He profited off creating an online education environment that didn’t even track attendance? Talk about a terrible design flaw, let alone a terrible fraud on Ohio taxpayers.
I am sorry for you that you cannot appreciate the incredible public schools we have here in Ohio, and the essential need for accountability! #Lager and his cronies were the perpetrators of a fraud that also harmed the employees and students of #ECOT.
Please list which districts did WORSE than ECOT? Did Mentor Exempted Village? They lost: $1,644,854.
Wow! That’s a lot of cash at $25/head. Let’s see, Strongsville students don’t get paid to attend, and their graduations are huge! Too bad they lost $1,117,279 to ECOT.
Delaware City Schools has positions available. And staff won’t have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Unlike the unfortunate employees at ECOT. $2,235,565 transferred to ECOT from there. https://www.dcs.k12.oh.us/Page/136
Thanks for pointing out how even small districts lost money: $363,978 in this case. And yet their Concert Band made it to State Finals! http://nelsonvilleyorkbands.weebly.com/news
Ashtabula Area Schools reveal exactly how many students they’ve had and how their money is spent. It’s pretty much a minimum of accountability: https://sites.google.com/aacs.net/districtprofile/home $2,108,851 sent to ECOT.
Sadly, students can become ill or need medications while at school. Luckily, Brunswick still has Nurses working in their district in spite of the $2,086,338 sent to ECOT. https://www.bcsoh.org/Page/48
Just read about all the initiatives at Mt Healthy City Schools. These schools are an asset that remains within their communities. The staff live nearby and their paychecks get reinvested locally. Too bad Hamilton County lost $2,007,012. https://www.mthcs.org/apps/spotlightmessages/1186
Like many districts, Troy City Schools are working with the community to decide what to do about their aging school buildings. Closed schools create a hole in local communities. Just as the $1,341,860 sent to ECOT created a hole in their budget. http://www.troy.k12.oh.us/Content2/Future
Columbus Schools have the obligation to maintain school buildings (despite sending $62,897,188 to ECOT)…and provide a quality education. Don’t ALL students need to be educated, not just those with parents who can watch their kids during the day? https://www.ccsoh.us/Page/2443
Thanks for the opportunity to read about public schools in Ohio. Like most, Licking Heights provides free breakfast every school day! http://www.licking-heights.k12.oh.us $1,896,324 to ECOT.
Every school in Ohio has its own special programs. Students at Trotwood-Madison reached out to their State Legislature to promote cross-cultural civic engagement! http://www.trotwood.k12.oh.us $1,855,996 to ECOT.
Like many school districts, Oak Hills gives back to their local community. They raised $39,888 for the American Heart Association. They lost $1,766,859 to ECOT. https://www.ohlsd.us/home/
Is the fact that some ECOT students graduated impressive to you? Or the venue? Painesville City Local Schools is one of the largest employers in Painesville. 85% of families are eligible for government assistance. They hold graduation in their gym. They sent $1,749,999 to ECOT.
“The Midview Local School District is one of only 447 districts across the United States and Canada that have been selected for the 8th Annual AP Honor Roll.” http://www.midviewk12.org/DistrictNews.aspx $1,685,996 sent to ECOT.
Bedford City 18% (596/3300) identified as Special Needs. According to their report card, 81.9% of students graduated in 4 years. https://oh50000070.schoolwires.net/bcsd $1,666,806 sent to ECOT.
Like most public schools, Madison Local Schools offer counseling services to students to help them develop life skills (and social skills) needed to enter the work force: https://www.mlsd.net/school_counseling.html $1,602,237 to ECOT.
Fairborn City Schools offers an online education in addition to traditional brick and mortar. This keeps tax dollars in the community! http://www.fairborn.k12.oh.us/FairbornDigitalAcademy1.aspx $1,587,698 sent to ECOT (to pay for Lager’s mansion in Florida?)
Ravenna City Schools is collaborating with their local parks department for the RAMP program this summer: http://www.ravennaschools.us/home $1,575,750 could have stayed in this economically distressed community, rather than being sent to ECOT.
This year’s graduating class from Winton Wood High School earned a total of $10 million in scholarships from both in-state and out-of-state colleges and universities. They also took a cool picture of their graduation! http://www.wintonwoods.org/1/News/14069#sthash.RjJM4L9F.eGb7HP3K.dpbs $1,008,302 sent to ECOT.
Green Local Schools: “We promise to care for all children as if they were our own, to treat everyone as we wish to be treated and to never deny an education to any child. Ever.” http://www.greenlocalschools.org/AboutUs.aspx $985,633 to #ECOT!
All public schools are required to help students with disabilities, and their families and include students in the regular education environment. Plus at Amherst Junior High, they have a “Healthy Mind: Small Group Support Program.” https://www.amherstk12.org/schools/ajh/guidance $981,905 to #ECOT.
Online schools are here today, gone tomorrow. $62,897,188 was sucked out of the Columbus community, and into #ECOT. By contrast, public schools are an investment in local communities. At least Briggs has a ball field for Little League games.
Ohio public schools like New Richmond EVSD prepare students for college: NRHS students earned 959 hours of college credit. NRHS graduates were offered $3.5 million in scholarships and grants. http://www.nrschools.org/QualityProfile.aspx $826,002 to #ECOT.
Ledgemont Local Schools was in a financial calamity and was forced to merge with a neighboring school district. They had much better outcomes than #ECOT. They lost $132,876 before they closed. http://www.news-herald.com/article/HR/20151003/NEWS/151009843
Student of the Month? I could share years of pictures. At my local school, they get to have donuts with the Principal. The same Principal who takes the time to greet students every morning … while doing the work of 3 people due to state cuts and diversion of funding.
Like many districts, Troy City Schools are working with the community to decide what to do about their aging school buildings. Closed schools create a hole in local communities. Just as the $1,341,860 sent to ECOT created a hole in their budget. http://www.troy.k12.oh.us/Content2/Future
There are over a hundred more school districts (with multiple schools) who were affected by the #ECOT scam. I would love the opportunity to learn and share about them, too!
The Ohio Constitution (Article VI, sections 2 and 3) requires the state to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools and provide for the organization, administration and control of the system. School district boards of education have the constitutional and statutory responsibility to administer the educational program. Boards of education have the fiduciary duty to ensure the educational needs of all resident students are met in an equitable and adequate manner.
The state’s first obligation is to ensure that a thorough and efficient system is established and maintained. The state has no right under the Ohio constitution to fund alternative educational programs that diminish moral and financial support from the common school system. Ohio’s system of school was declared unconstitutional more than two decades ago, yet since that time $11 billion have been drained from the public school system for publicly-funded, privately-operated charter schools. This egregious flaw in state policy must be addressed.
Jan Resseger of Cleveland Heights, Ohio has aptly defined state and local responsibility for education as follows:
A comprehensive system of public education, that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public, is central to the common good.
~Jan Resseger, Heights Coalition for Public Education
The education platform premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio as stated in the preamble is:
•Provide adequate and equitable funding to Ohio school districts to guarantee a comparable opportunity to learn for ALL children. This includes a quality early childhood education, qualified teachers, a rich curriculum that will prepare students for college, work and community, and equitable instructional resources. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WLdVez25ZjDzzd2irSUwUggj-GflNQuO/view?usp=sharing
•Respect local control of public schools run by elected school boards. There are different needs for different schools of different sizes, and each local school board knows what its students, families, and community values. http://www.nvasb.org/assets/why_school_boards.pdf
•Do away with the state takeovers of school districts imposed in House Bill 70. State takeovers of school districts (HB 70), followed by the appointment of CEOs with power to override the decisions of elected school boards and nullify union contracts, are undemocratic, unaccountable, and without checks and balances. http://www.reclaimourschools.org/sites/default/files/state-takeover-factsheet-3.pdf
•Promote a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools while gradually removing existing charters, which take funding and other valuable resources from public school districts. Charter schools remove funds and other resources from public school districts and need to be phased out. For-profit charter schools should be eliminated – tax dollars should never be transferred into private profits. https://knowyourcharter.com/
•Encourage wraparound community learning centers that bring social and health services into Ohio school buildings. These wraparound services ensure that the public schools are the center of the neighborhood, and they include health, dental, and mental health clinics, after school programs, and parent support programs. Cincinnati Public Schools has a very successful program of community learning centers: https://www.cps-k12.org/community/clc
•Remove high stakes mandates from schools, and abolish the practice of punishing schools, teachers, families, and students for arbitrary test scores. Do away with mandatory retention attached to the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee and high school end-of-course state tests. If parents choose to opt their children out of testing, no one should be penalized. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Dangerous-Consequences-of-high-stakes-tests.pdf
A long, long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people dance And maybe they’d be happy for a while ~American Pie by Don McLean
Dr. Yohuru Williams, an education activist and professor of history at Fairfield University, composed a powerful essay about how Ohio’s governor, in league with his party’s majority in the General Assembly, had been targeting education budgets with deep cuts, precipitating a crisis similar to other states where cuts have forced districts to make impossible choices between hiring nurses, librarians or instructors in the music and the arts.
Former state school board chair, Debe Terhar, admitted as much when she told the board that better state funding of schools would prevent the furor over the 5 of 8 rule.
Why are our public schools being starved to the point of having to make choices about vital services that students need and deserve? That can be answered with a four letter word: ALEC.
ALEC is the acronym for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a clandestine organization of corporate members and lawmakers who believe in privatization of public entities, such as our nation’s public school systems. ALEC has a very powerful legislative impact in states like Ohio, where its members control the Statehouse.
ALEC’s education bills can be seen in current Ohio policies that mandate more vouchers, charter school expansion, extensive teacher evaluations, TFA teachers and BRIGHT principals, extra online classrooms, Common Core, additional high stakes testing, and obsessive amounts of data collection.
Everyone, especially educators, should take the time to learn about ALEC’s education agenda and how it affects public education in the United States.
ALEC uses questionable research and pretentious rhetoric from its think-tanks to impact public perception. To drive its education agenda, it misleads people with nice-sounding words like reform, school choice, accountability, and local control.
The Buckeye Institute is a “think-tank” tied to ALEC and placed in Ohio to influence public opinion. The Buckeye Institute’s policy analyst, whose job is to defend and promote ALEC, wrote a 2015 op-ed that was published in a major Ohio newspaper the day before the state school board was scheduled to vote about the controversial elimination of the minimum staffing requirements. Not surprisingly, he agreed with sacking the 5 of 8 school staffing standard.
He called the 5 of 8:
*a worn-out rule
*a rigid staffing requirement
*a top-down mandate that favors and protects certain classes of employees at the expense of others
*an autocratic and outdated relic of Columbus-knows-best thinking
*the mindset of an education bureaucracy that has forced local officials to spend taxpayer dollars in ways that they would not otherwise choose and for programs and teachers
He concluded his opinion piece by saying, “Revoking the rigid staffing requirements artificially created by the 5 of 8 rule takes a good first step toward reclaiming local control and accountability in the education of our children.”
Unfortunately, the majority of the state BOE members did just that and voted to revoke the 5 of 8 rule in mid-April of 2015. No matter what false rhetoric was marketed by ALEC stakeholders, this course of action was not about reclaiming local control and accountability. Those were disingenuous words used to manipulate Ohioans into agreeing with this unreasonable and unnecessary initiative.
Eliminating the 5 of 8 minimum standards is enabling school districts to balance their depleted budgets by cutting licensed educators and contracting with private companies to provide the lost services- a calculated move to encourage privatization. Research from Policy Matters Ohio shows that the controversial elimination of the “5 of 8” rule has further strained the state’s already stressed public school system.
The change in operating procedures has also compromised the “thorough and efficient education” standard in the Ohio Constitution, which was adopted to protect school children from substandard or non-existent educational programming.
More importantly to education profiteers, it has enabled ALEC to expedite its education task force goals of further diminishing teachers’ unions and privatizing public education in our state.
In response to the 5 of 8 controversy, Yohuru Williams penned an appropriate parody of McLean’s original song:
In the three places where the music was first to go
Philadelphia, Detroit and Ohio
They drove the teachers out and left the students low
The day the music died.
On Monday, April 13th, 2015, the music died in Ohio public schools- so did art, physical education, library/media services, nursing, guidance, and other important support services.
How sad that our children’s education and health continues to be at risk – all because of a network of greedy people who continue to put profits before kids.
NOW is the time to restore the “5 of 8” school staffing standard in Ohio public school districts!
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