ODE: Charters Spend More Per Pupil than Publics

In an email obtained by 10th Period, ODE's own analysis of its data show that Traditional Public School Districts spend an average of $10,111 per pupil. Meanwhile, brick and mortar Charters spend an average of $10,165 per pupil -- $54 more.

One of the frequent criticisms of traditional public schools from Charter School advocates is this: Traditional Public Schools spend much more than Charters. Charters, because they derive their business modeling from the private-sector are much more cost-effective, they say, and are able to obtain the same or better academic results on the cheap.

However, the Ohio Department of Education data show the exact opposite and Charter Schools actually spend more per pupil than Traditional Public Schools. Meanwhile, for the most part Charters woefully underperform academically. For example, on the state's performance index score, Charter Schools score an average of 78, which rates the average Charter School in the bottom 8% of Traditional Public Schools.

The financial numbers from ODE include the expenditure of all revenue. For Traditionals, that includes state, local and federal revenue. For Charters, that includes state, federal and private donations. Remember that the state provides $7,109 per pupil for Charter School students, including e-Schools. After Charters receive their money and children, the state provides $3,390 per pupil to Traditional Public Schools.

Charters pay teachers about 40% less than Traditional Schools, don't bus kids and don't have to adhere to about 200 different regulations that Traditional Public Schools do. In other words, Charters' expenses are much less than their Traditional Public School counterparts.

Why, then, do they end up spending more per pupil? And how much more will they spend now that they will likely be able to collect local revenue on top of what they're already getting beginning next year?

These are questions that demand answers. One only need ask the questions.

Tests or Teachers?

Fascinating story in EdWeek today about how standardized tests cost states $1.7 billion every year. I decided to take a look at what kind of scale we're talking about. At the average salary of a little more than $52,000 for a teacher, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that $1.7 billion would pay for 32,650 teachers, or an additional teacher for every 1,530 kids or so. In Ohio, that would be another 1,175 teachers.

Here's a hypothetical question: What's better for America's kids, standardized tests or 32,650 more teachers?

New Ohio Accountability System Moves Forward

Here is the latest from the Gongwer report on how the state's new accountability system will work (I copied the whole thing because Gongwer requires a subscription to read the link):

A House panel on Wednesday voted mostly along party lines to send the report card overhaul bill to the full House, which is expected to take up the measure during Thursday's session.

Democrats on the House Education Committee opposed the legislation after seeing 14 of their 16 amendments tabled by majority members. Rep. Bill Patmon (D-Cleveland) was the only minority member to vote in favor of reporting the bill, which was approved 15-8.

The committee adopted three Republican-sponsored amendments, two of which were technical changes.

Addressing concerns expressed by some Democrats Tuesday, the committee approved a change that requires the Department of Education give a presentation to the House and Senate education committees on its recommendations at least 45 days before the State Board of Education votes to adopt them.

"Given the scope of this bill, with the amount of material that's in it and everything at this point and time, we just decided - I just decided - that this would be a good idea to bring it back so that we can review it," Chairman Gerald Stebelton (R-Lancaster) said.

Rep. Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) was successful in offering an amendment to require treasurers at charter schools to be licensed.

Chairman Stebelton initially opposed the action because similar language is included in Rep. Christina Hagan's (R-Uniontown) fiscal officer accountability legislation (HB 529), saying he thinks it fit better there. About 95% of charter treasurers are already licensed, he added.Rep. Ronald Gerberry (R-Austintown Twp.) said, however, he was surprised the panel would not consider the amendment for a place in such a vast bill when it has an opportunity to pass it in the last couple weeks of the session.

"I was going to ask for someone to give a good reason not to do this and, all due respect to the chairman, I think saying that there's another bill that's pending in a legislative session that's almost sine die is not really a good argument to vote this amendment down," he said.The chairman said Mr. Gerberry's statements convinced him, and the committee unanimously approved the amendment for inclusion in the bill.

Democrats also garnered support from three Republicans allowing them to successfully defeat a motion to table and to then amend the bill on a 12-11 vote to prevent students from placement in remedial classes at the college level if there is no evidence they need remediation.

Rep. Kristina Roegner (R-Hudson), Rep. Jim Butler (R-Oakwood) and Rep. Ryan Smith (R-Bidwell) joined Democrats in support of the change, to which Chairman Stebelton objected.Rep. Debbie Phillips (D-Athens) attempted to eliminate the use of an overall letter grade for schools altogether as opposed to existing language to delay the use of the composite score for two years. It would have retained the dashboard that shows scores on a variety of measures.Chairman Stebelton said although he thinks there might be some merit to the idea - something several witnesses requested - he nevertheless negotiated with the governor's office to include an overall letter grade. The amendment was tabled on party lines.

Also rejected as being contradictory to an agreement with the governor's office was Rep. Dan Ramos' (D-Lorain) amendment to add pluses and minuses to the grading system."It would allow further distinction and more accurately describe to the district and the public how well a district is performing," he said, adding it also would allow high-achieving schools to be rated A+. Rep. Butler and Rep. Smith joined Democrats in opposing the motion to table the amendment that nevertheless passed.Tabled on mostly party lines were minority amendments to:

• Further amend the Ohio Accountability Advisory Committee by restoring a school teacher and a superintendent to the panel to be appointed by the minority leaders in the House and Senate. It would have reduced the membership from 14 to nine.

• Require nonpublic operators of charter schools to comply with public records laws and subject them to an audit.

• Require the state board to provide evidence of the validity of data used in the value-added measure on the report card before it is used as a graded measure.

• Create a three-year safe harbor for the teacher evaluation system that reduces the student growth component of the score from 50% to 25%. The move was sought by the Ohio Federation of Teachers during its Tuesday testimony.

• Create a safe harbor for districts with a grade of "continuous improvement," making them immune from any sanctions for dropping to a D or F.

• Require fees for the nationally standardized college entrance test to be covered by the state because the report card would measure participation on the test.

• Continue the moratorium on e-schools.

• Create a dashboard measure on the transient nature of students, which minority members said has an impact on the success of a school.

• Change the date for implementing the new report card t the 2013-14 school year.

• Require the state board to submit to the House and Senate a written description of all rulemaking authority it receives through the bill.

• Delay the performance rating for schools as it affects which districts are eligible for the Educational Choice scholarship.

• Require any private school receiving EdChoice vouchers be subject to the new rating requirement. Rep. Craig Newbold (R-Columbiana) joined minority members in dissenting on the vote to table.

• Require ODE to develop a methodology that does not double count students in multiple subgroups. The change was recommended by OFT during the bill's Tuesday hearing.

Several of the tabled amendments (tabling does not equal rejection, technically) I think had some merit. However, I found it telling that Chairman Stebelton responded to one Democrat this way:

Chairman Stebelton said although he thinks there might be some merit to the idea - something several witnesses requested - he nevertheless negotiated with the governor's office to include an overall letter grade.

Sounds to me like the minority party wasn't even in on the discussions, nor were any advocacy groups. This is a pure majority bill between the super majority in the House and the Governor's office, with a couple accepted provisions from the minority party that make too much sense to reject.

My major concern with this whole issue is this: I don't mind tougher standards if they have the following three components:

1) Peer reviewed research behind it demonstrating that it will actually measure a school's excellence
2) Sufficient resources for schools to improve their performance
3) Accuracy, not simply an over correction of the old system

This new system does none of this. It remains overly dependent upon test scores, which are hugely influenced by a school's demographics. It has no peer reviewed research behind it indicating it will be a good measure of a school's performance. It has zero, that's right zero money it it to support schools' adoption of the new system. And it will simply make every school district in the state seem like it's been overrated for the last 15 years.

Again, if you're trying to undo a public school system, you would do two things: 1) drain it of money, and 2) convince the public they are doing a bad job.

The General Assembly has cut $1.8 billion from education and now has implemented a system that (if the preliminary runs from earlier this year hold) will show that more than 8 out of every 10 school districts have been overrated by the new system and none were underrated. The current report card system is seriously flawed too, but is it that far off? In the words of Seth Meyers, Really???

And there is no money for schools to try to improve. They will have to make do with $1.8 billion less and the higher standards.

I'm not one to run from higher standards. But when they raised the standards in Massachusetts in the 1990s, the Massachusetts legislature increased money to schools by about $2 billion. Today, Massachusetts schools are considered the country's best.

My grandpa used to tell me that you get what you pay for. We seem to accept that truism in every part of our lives, except education

National Charter Group Praises HB 1

I read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers wants Ohio and the nation to follow the lead of former Gov. Ted Strickland through 2009's House Bill 1: Shut down bad operators.

NACSA said this was the first time it had called for such state laws, praising Ohio as an example of what happens when state legislators impose greater accountability. It said Ohio shut down 19 poor-performing charters after tougher laws in 2008 and last year.

I'm trying to figure out where exactly the tougher laws were passed in last year's HB 153, especially since the Ohio House let David Brennan literally write the Charter School law. Perhaps it's the fact that the current General Assembly didn't revert back to more lax closure standards?

No matter.

What the national organization is doing is once again demonstrating for all of us here in Ohio that the environment over Charter Schools is vastly different outside Ohio than here. Outside Ohio, Charter School advocates are calling to drum out poor performers so the good ones can thrive. In Ohio, choice for choice's sake, regardless of how good the choice is, is lauded. I have said on the House floor and in other venues that we should fight for better choices, not more bad choices.

Or, as NACSA put it:

...Bad charters give good charter schools a bad name. NACSA said that, nationally, 900 to 1,300 charter schools now rank in the lowest 15 percent of schools in their states, holding back high-end charters and impeding overall public-education reform.

I have long stated that Ohio's Charter School experience has been so corrupted by political ambition that it is nearly impossible to judge how Charters are working in Ohio. They simply weren't set up as a true reform measure; they were devised as a political wedge -- something unique to Ohio.

One of the measures in HB 1, which I helped shape in the Ohio General Assembly, was a provision that made it easier to close down poorly performing Charter Schools. I wanted to do more, frankly. Currently, every Ohio child loses 6.5% of his or her state revenue to the Charter School funding system.

I wanted to potentially see more money go to good Charter Schools (in Ohio, that's not a ton) at the expense of these poor performers (in Ohio, that is a ton). I always felt you could have far more effective Charter School system with far less money being drained from Ohio's traditional public schools if the state would take the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on bad Charter Schools, put a chunk of that into good Charter Schools, and put the rest back into the traditional public schools that are frankly cleaning most Ohio Charter Schools' clocks on performance.

If you took the 23 Charter Schools in this state that performed better than the average district Performance Index Score on the latest report card (again, there are more than 300 Charter Schools in Ohio), and added all the state money together that goes to them, it's about $50 million. Again, the state spent $771 million last year on Charter Schools. So you could probably reduce the program to $200 million, only fund really cracker jack programs that work collaboratively and cooperatively with local school districts, and provide instant property tax relief of more than 2 mills to the average school district's taxpayers.

And you could do it without raising taxes. You do it by raising standards.

However, Ohio's Charter School establishment was dead set against closing any Charters for any reason in 2009. And that was primarily because of the political power Charters have wielded for years. So we settled for making it a bit easier to close Charter Schools that were the worst of the worst. At the time, about half of all Charter Schools rated the equivalent of D or F on the state's report card, so you can imagine what the worst of the worst would be. Today the D or F rate is about 40%, thanks in no small measure to the tougher closure standards

In any case, I'm glad Ohio's being singled out for strength on this issue (for once). I hope the General Assembly takes note and builds upon Ohio's leadership role here. We'll see.

10th Period on NPR

I was interviewed for a story about shared services that ran on NPR stations today. Again, there is hope that sharing services can save some money. However, the point I have made -- and make in the NPR story -- holds true: There is only so much savings that can be gained. Ultimately, shared services is not a substitute for constitutional compliance on school funding.

According to the latest Cupp Report, if you eliminated every administrator in the state, you would save about $800 million. That's $1 billion short of the $1.8 billion cut in the last budget. And will one superintendent and treasurer be able to handle the work in Cleveland and, say East Cleveland? No. You would have to hire additional staff. Perhaps not at as high a salary as a full-blown superintendent or treasurer, but it would have to be a decent one.

Then there's the West Virginia experience where the state consolidated several schools over the years. Now kids are bused upwards of two hours each way to school over mountains and the Charleston Gazette found there was more bureaucracy and the cost of education after the consolidation plan went up, even as enrollment declined.

Shared services is part of the solution. No doubt. Let's just not label it the latest in a long line of education funding silver bullets that end up being polished tin.

For all these do is distract us from the real issue as written in the Ohio Constitution and four separate Ohio Supreme Court rulings: it is the state's responsibility to accurately calculate the necessary resources needed to educate  Ohio's kids. All while providing significant property tax relief to the overburdened Ohio property taxpayer.

Shared services address neither the calculation nor the property tax relief..

Some of HB 1 Survives

In a Columbus Dispatch story today, Chancellor Jim Petro and Interim State Superintendent Michael Sawyers trumpeted how great it was that Ohio would be eliminating its meaningless Ohio Graduation Test and replacing it with an ACT-type of college-readiness exam and end-of-course exams for graduating seniors.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This was the ACT Plus contained within House Bill 1 of the previous General Assembly when Gov. Ted Strickland introduced the idea. No mention of Strickland's role in the plan was mentioned in the Dispatch story (except in a vague reference to the number of years the plan was in the making), but make no mistake, this doesn't happen without Strickland's initiative in 2009.

For those who don't remember, Strickland's initial plan called for an ACT, end of course exams and a community project to be completed by each student instead of the OGT. (In the Ohio House, we discarded the community service project because there was reticence on behalf of some to include "soft skills" for graduation. I disagreed, but when making sausage...)

The OGT is a problem because you can have kids blowing the tops off the ACT or SAT, on a path to a great college, but not be able to get a diploma because they failed to pass the OGT. It's a ridiculous outcome. I always liked the ACT requirement because you're going to have kids who never considered going to college take the ACT to graduate and realize they could go to a pretty good school. It will help boost our number of college graduates, which has typically dragged compared with the rest of the nation.

The new plan doesn't mention the ACT or SAT by name, but those types of tests are what Ohio's "college-readiness exam" would certainly describe.

Here was Sawyer's quote:

"This is a major step forward in our reform efforts to ensure all Ohio students have the knowledge and skills necessary to leave school remediation-free and ready for their postsecondary experience in higher education or work-force training”

And Petro's:

"Our goal is to advance degree completion in the state. One of the key ways to accomplish this goal is to ensure students are college- and career-ready. Eliminating the OGT and replacing it with a better gauge of college readiness will help students to be more successful."
 

 I couldn't agree more.

Proof of Ohio's Crazy Charter System

I have told you, Dear Reader, for a long time that this whole Charter School War thing was unique to Ohio. Sure, there are issues in other states. However, this vicious Charters vs. Traditional Publics thing is not nearly as contested in other states as here.

That's primarily because Charters take so much money out of the Ohio system that kids not in Charters get 6.5% less state revenue than they would otherwise. And, of course, that means reduction in services or increases in property tax levies.

So while in other states, the issue is more of policy -- should we be privatizing education -- the issue in Ohio is that and also survival, both financial and academic, of the Traditional Public Schools.

You need look no further than a story in today's Canton Repository to understand just how radically poisonous the Charter School situation is in Ohio compared with other states.

That some here may think charter schools are plundering students from the public school system is a new concept to Believe’s (Principal LaRita) Henry. "I never dealt with that type of criticism in Chicago,” she said.

Exactly.

In Chicago, Charters and Traditionals work together much better. That's because of the state law that created Charter Schools. For example, in Illinois, Charters and Traditionals negotiate the amount the district will pay to the Charter School.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, state law determines that the transferred funds are removed by the state with zero input from the district. Understand why Traditionals are so jumpy?

Ms. Henry is about to get a rude awakening in Ohio about the relationship between Traditionals and Charters. She should remember not to take this personally. It is a function of a 15-year effort by powerful people in Columbus to turn education into a big-time political and money making scheme.

If folks like Ms. Henry want to fix this relationship, they need to start working with traditional public schools to start bridging the divide. And it begins by joining with Traditional Public Schools in the fight to systemically overhaul the way Ohio's Charter School laws and finances work.

However, the only indication coming from Columbus is that the current leadership in the General Assembly and Governor's mansion will try to widen the gulf between the sides, and raid even more money from local districts to pay for Charters (whose cost to the state is more than double and only 10% of which are rated Excellent (A) or better on the allegedly "too easy" state report card compared with more than half of Traditional School Districts).

I hope more folks like Ms. Henry, who come from other communities where the Charter School Wars are mere skirmishes, will talk sense into Ohio's leaders. Our kids don't have time, nor do they deserve, the adults constantly fighting over finite resources. Especially when they don't have to.

Lawmakers Take Heed: "Soft Skills" Count Too!

As the Ohio House Education Committee considers legislation (HB 555) that would significantly alter the way schools are judged, an interesting story appeared in EdWeek tonight that, once again, begs Ohio (and other states) to look at evaluation tools outside the current standardized testing realm when judging educational excellence.

To make it in college, students need to be up for the academic rigor. But that's not all. They also must be able to manage their own time, get along with roommates, and deal with setbacks. Resiliency and grit, along with the ability to communicate and advocate,are all crucial life skills. Yet, experts say, many teenagers lack them, and that's hurting college-completion rates.

"Millennials have had helicopter parents who have protected them," said Dan Jones, the president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors and the director of counseling and psychological services at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. "They haven't had the opportunity to struggle. When they come to college and bad things happen, they haven't developed resiliency and self-soothing skills."
 

 In speaking with post-secondary teachers, I have found that they have also noticed a disturbing lack of critical thinking in recent graduates. The students coming out of the high-stakes testing regime do great if there is a study guide and PowerPoint provided in which answers to tests can be found. However, if the students are asked to think critically about something, they are lost.

Ohio is in a great position to deal with the assessment of these so-called "soft skills" as they revamp the state's Report Card ranking system. Here's hoping they take advantage of the opportunity.

Cleveland's Massive Levy Passes. That's Good, Right?

It became clear early in the evening Tuesday that Cleveland's controversial 15-mill levy (a monster, for those of you at home) actually passed. Congratulations to Mayor Frank Jackson and his allies on acocmplishing this.

However, the real thanks goes to the folks in Cleveland, half of whom make less than $22,600 a year, because they voted to essentially double their property tax rate. Talk about Civic Patriots. I really tip my hat to the people of Cleveland. If only folks in Columbus would show the same Civic Patriotism when it comes to their constitutional obligations to our state's kids.

I digress.

What does this mean, though? Is this a good outcome?

For the kids of Cleveland, I have little doubt that the levy will help keep Cleveland afloat for the four years it has set aside the money. Here's the problem, though. It's the same problem with the stimulus and Race to the Top money. It's a potentially temporary fix, unless it leads to significant, long-term investments in things that work.

Will the citizens of Cleveland pass another 15-mill levy in four years if test scores stay about the same as they are now and the district's buildings are fewer and fewer because the district closes them in a radical restructuring?

What about if those results occur, yet all the city's 3 and 4 year olds are able to attend pre-school, and we won't know the test improvement that effort will produce until those kids are in third grade -- at least a year longer than the current 4-year levy will run, assuming the kids start pre-school next year?

See, this is why I was so concerned about the funding of the Cleveland Plan and why the state's refusal to make any financial commitment to it was so dangerous. The district is not incentivized to invest in what will produce long-term, generational results; they are incentivized to invest in what might get them votes in four years for a new levy -- dramatic school closings, teacher reassignments, curriculum changes and specialized high schools.

These are all ideas that peer-reviewed research demonstrates have little overall impact on student outcomes, but will make the district look like it's trying really, really hard. And I have no doubt they are. However, if they do that and don't invest in the efforts that peer-reviewed research actually indicates will improve student outcomes (universal pre-school, early childhood wraparound services, tutors, smaller classes in early grades), then it's just a show.

I know the folks in Cleveland really are sincere in wanting to improve their children's experiences. However, we have been told for so long that Cleveland Schools are awful (even though great people have graduated from them and gone on to do great things), that there is very little incentive for the district to tout the things it is doing well. No one will believe them. Inherent in the levy campaign was this theme: "We are bad now. But this plan will make us great."

So instead of investing in those potentially generational changes, I fear the district will make radical, cosmetic changes that have little academic impact, but will stand a better chance of convincing district residents (half of whom make less than $22,600 a year) to once again double their property taxes in four years. Let's hope these Civic Patriots remain so.

Again, schools aren't businesses. They're schools. (I can't believe I have to say that) Running schools like a business is a great sounding slogan, but the second you ask things like, "What's the product?" or "Should we run it like Enron or Lehman Bros.?" or "What about the 80% or so of businesses that fail?" people start thinking twice.

Sometimes, in order to ensure students do well, it involves making decisions that you would never make in business. And that's not a bad thing in education. In fact, it's the right thing. The moral thing, even.

That's why accountability in education (which is a huge component of the Cleveland Plan, down to the four-year levy span) is so hard to do. Because, as I've said millions of times on this blog, test scores are so driven by demographics that basing an accountability system on them will create a permanent underclass of districts that may be doing great things, but will never get credit for it. For example, a science teacher at my Middle School in the early 1980s brought a cow to school and raised it on the school grounds, making it the focus of the biology curriculum. That would definitely not be on the state tests, but I challenge anyone to tell me that's not the kind of thing we need in our schools to stimulate kids' interest in learning.

We need a system that will take Cleveland's demographic challenges into account. For example, on the Performance Index Score, the highest possible score is 120. The districts and buildings that get close to 120 are overwhelmingly wealthy and suburban. There are, of course, exceptions. However, all the exceptions prove is statistical probability, not that there's a silver bullet. There are always outliers in both directions. That doesn't mean that the 99% of districts and buildings that aren't extreme outliers can ever become so.

However, Cleveland is being compared with districts whose kids, because of their wealth and family backgrounds, will ensure those districts will never score below 100 on the PI score. Is that fair? If Cleveland scored at the state average of 99 on the PI score, isn't that more impressive than if Hudson or other wealthy district scored a 99? Yet in the current regime, those are equal results.

There would be a relatively painless way to account for those demographic differences in the PI score through weighting. Cleveland's ceiling on proficiency tests is lower not because their kids are less talented, but because the tests themselves are so heavily determined by things other than the kids' talent. So they should be judged relative to that ceiling when their proficiency test results are calcuated. Maybe, all things being equal, Cleveland's doing amazing things with their kids on these tests? But we'll never know if the comparison is not accurate.

How about trying to find an accountability system for important outcomes that aren't tested, like love of learning, strength of character, creativity, innovation, critical thinking (I could go on)? What if the state funded work into figuring out if we can ever quantify these things, which I would argue are a much more powerful indicator of true student success than any reading test.

My other major concern with the Cleveland levy is the dangerous precedent it set with allowing Charter Schools to collect local revenue (nearly $6 million). Again, the state has been forbidden from deducting any of its revenue from these Charters. So Charters will continue to collect larger state revenues than Cleveland, PLUS local revenues. Again, Ohio's school districts get less state revenue because they can collect local revenue. Why not the Charters?

This is not a dig at the Charters that will be getting the money in Cleveland. They are some of the state's finest schools, and if more Charters tried to work with school districts they way they do in Cleveland, maybe the Charter Wars would be a faint memory.

However, if the policy goes statewide (just like Cleveland's voucher program, for example) it would mean that local money would be going to schools that perform worse than the local buildings the money was meant to go to.

I will be stunned if the local revenues for Charters provision doesn't make it into the state's new school reform plan next year. And you can be assured that no Charter will receive less state revenue as part of the scheme, even though they get more than double per pupil from the state than what school districts get -- ostensibly because school districts can collect local revenue and Charters cannot.

I hope that this potentially devastating economic impact on school districts does not come to fruition.

However, I'm also realistic.

I hope the Governor and General Assembly will be inspired by the Civic Patriots of Cleveland who doubled their property taxes even though half make less than $22,600 a year.

However, I'm also realistic.