My Kasich Education Plan Preview

Gov. John Kasich promised in 2011 to deliver the country's best school funding system by the end of the year. Two years later, the day is approaching.

It appears (again) that Gov. Kasich is playing favorites by giving exclusive briefings on the plan this week to those whom he likes -- Charter School operators and Superintendents. No treasurers, school board members, principals, teachers, parents, students will get the exclusive peek.

But, thanks to today's social media, it is likely that some details will emerge from Thursday afternoon's meeting with Superintendents. Which may explain why Kasich is scheduled to do a social media rollout soon after.

I don't know what's going to be in the plan. And in a lot of ways, it won't really matter until we see the district-by-district simulations. However, there are a few things Kasich must to in order for this plan to be truly great.

1) It MUST reduce the need for property tax levies in this state. Without property tax relief, our local taxpayers are going to be asked again and again to raise their own taxes. This Kasich Tax Burden resulted in a record $1.1 billion put before voters since his last budget cut $1.8 billion in education funding. If there is no property tax relief (or at least a commitment to some in the near future), it will be just another unconstitutional school funding system. And truth be told, nothing else really matters.

2) It MUST address Charter School funding. Brick and mortar Charter Schools are now the most expensive schools in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Education's own analysis. Meanwhile, only 23 of the 300+ Charters in this state rate above the state average on the Performance Index Score.

Charter Schools have a role to play in our public education system. No question. However, the over-investment in a widely failing program makes little sense, especially after a year in which education funding was cut by $1.8 billion, but money moving to Charters grew at a faster rate than any year in nearly a decade. They should be paid for what it costs to educate kids at the Charter School, not at the kid's district of residence. The state could actually increase funding to good Charters, provide them with much-needed capital money, and provide upwards of 2 mills in property tax relief to the residents of Ohio -- about $60 per $100,000 home.
 

3) It MUST fund elements that actually will improve student outcomes. There are a few elements of education that peer-reviewed research has determined actually helps student outcomes. Let's fund and incentivize those, not things like merit pay, which has very little evidence it improves outcomes. Investing in ideas that are driven by ideology rather than the scientific method will lead to failed programs and our kids falling further behind.

4) It MUST not punish districts, but incentivize them to improve. Using a carrot rather than a heavy handed stick is a better approach. Forcing districts to have to meet performance goals in order to receive a fraction of what they received in the 2010-2011 school year is NOT an incentive. It is a punishment.

5) It MUST compare funding levels to those received prior to the $1.8 billion cut. Establishing the funding levels after the cut as the new normal would be a wildly dishonest comparison. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that relying too much on property taxes to pay for schools is unconstitutional. What is clear is that cutting $1.8 billion, as the Governor and General Assembly did last budget cycle, made the overreliance worse, not better. If there is no substantial property tax relief in Kasich's plan, then the plan will simply continue the problems enunciated more than a decade ago.

6) It MUST not substantially alter the charge off. The charge off is the amount of money the state says each district can raise locally. It's what allows the state to provide less money than the formula says the district needs because, the state reasons, if the locals can raise a certain amount, the state should only be responsible for what the locals can't raise. However, the only way to move money around to different districts without new money being put into the plan is through a charge-off manipulation. This manipulation could lead to serious hardships for districts that can't raise much local revenue, and even force them into consolidation. Not only that, but changing the charge-off does NOT make the system more constitutional. It just makes some districts more happy than others.
 

I have not been encouraged by things I've been hearing out of Columbus about the Governor's plan, especially on property tax relief. I am encouraged by the talk around early childhood education, though. I also like giving locals some measure of autonomy, though I want the state to be careful not to allow a Balkanization of our education system -- creating great extremes of education excellence and failure -- by giving away too much oversight. It is a state, not local, responsibility to fund education. I would hope Superintendents remember that if they are offered greater autonomy in exchange for far less state support.

We'll see what happens tomorrow. Hold on to your hats.

This is What Unconstitutionality Looks Like

Innovation Ohio today put out a report that demonstrates just how much of the funding burden for education has been shifted by Columbus leaders onto the backs of local property taxpayers -- in direct violation of the Ohio Constitution.

Since Gov. John Kasich's first budget was introduced in 2011, Ohioans have seen a record $1.1 billion in just new operating levies on the ballot. This doesn't include the myriad other types of levies that districts use to offset operational costs. This is just operational money needed to fill in the $1.8 billion Kasich cut from the previous two-year budget cycle.

Of that, only about 40% passed, or $487 million.

Clearly, this path is unsustainable. As Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick wrote in the fourth and final DeRolph school funding opinion that ruled Ohio's system unconstitutional:

“. . . until a complete systematic overhaul of the [Ohio school funding] system is accomplished, it will continue to be far from thorough and efficient and will continue to shortchange our students. The overreliance on local property taxes is the fatal flaw that until rectified will stand in the way of constitutional compliance.”
 

I am still trying to figure out exactly how shifting the funding burden even more onto the backs of local taxpayers, as Kasich and the General Assembly have done, fulfills this constitutional duty.

This property tax burden-shift is why no matter what Kasich reveals this week on his new school funding plan, if there is no property tax relief in it, it will remain unconstitutional. And our kids will suffer for it.

Texas House Zeroes Out Funding for Tests

Count this as a potential turning point in the trend of testing to determine excellence. The Texas  House of Representatives (that's right; the crazy, liberal Texas House) has introduced a budget that eliminates all funding for statewide proficiency tests.

According to a piece by Valerie Strauss (the Washington Post's great education writer), the Texas Speaker of the House, “To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing, the Texas House has heard you.”

However, the Texas Senate has money for the tests in its budget, so there's probably going ot be some money for testing. What this means, though, is even in a staunchly conservative state, outcry over the dominance of our test culture has reached a breaking point.

As someone who voted to bring Common Core to Ohio, I am growing increasingly concerned about the impact of these "standards". My son is not even 8 years old and he's doing beginning Algebra, Venn Diagrams and learning how to spell "ennui". And he has two tests a week. Now, I'm thrilled he's doing all this, but should he be? Is it normal for a 7-year-old to have test anxiety? Two hours of homework at night?

I like that my son is clearly receiving a more intense educational experience than I did. We all want what's best for our kids, though. And I'm wondering if my admiration of his advanced learning at this point is best for his long-term learning. Can he sustain this for the 20 years he will need to in order to succeed? Will it burn him out?

Maybe it's time for the rest of us to take a lesson from Texas and Seattle. As Strauss points out in her story:

Texas over the last year has been in the forefront of growing protests across the country against standardized testing, which has become the main metric in school reform, used to assess schools, students, teachers, districts and states.

Last year about this time school districts in Texas started passing resolutions saying that high-stakes standardized tests were “strangling” public schools, and hundreds of districts representing nearly 90 percent of the state’s K-12 students have followed suit. Then Robert Scott, the man who was then state education commissioner, said publicly that the mentality that standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a quality education should be.

Texas schools and students are strongly impacted by the testing schedule; during the 180-day school year, high school students now spend up to 45 days taking various standardized exams. Recently 23 members of the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium asked state officials for waivers from testing mandates while they devise a better accountability system, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Meanwhile, the standardized testing revolt that is spreading around the country has gotten some publicity in Seattle, where teachers at Garfield High School have said they would refuse to give the state’s standardized test because, they say, it is flawed. The Garfield teachers are attracting support from teachers and education advocates around the country.

Ohio Dept. of Ed..: Charters cost more than Publics

Innovation Ohio is now giving Charter Schools the "Taxpayer Ripoff of the Week Award" to Charter Schools based on an email obtained by 10th Period. The email contained an analysis from the Ohio Department of Education that showed brick-and-mortar Charter Schools in Ohio costing $54 more per pupil than traditional public schools.

As IO mentions, Charter Schools were sold as being able to do the job better and cheaper. Now they are doing it worse on the whole (only 23 of the 300+ Charters score above the state average on the Performance Index Score), and more expensively.

Of course not all Charters are poor performers. There are a few, exceptional Charter Schools in the state. However, they are far too few.

IO also asks an important question: If Charter expenses and accountability are lower that traditional schools, why do they cost so much more?

It's an important question on the eve of Gov. John Kasich's expected expansion of the $774 million a year Charter School program in this state.

Casinos: Lottery Redux

Once again, reality has fallen way short of expectations on another additional revenue stream for schools. The state's new casinos have only contributed $38 million to schools -- a relatively paltry amount considering that every year Ohio spends between $14-16 billion (depending on how you calculate it) on schools -- add in the federal amount and it's $16-18 billion. So, $38 million represents about .2% of money spent on education.

Or, it's the amount of A-Rod's Miami mansion -- the House that Steroids Built.

Even worse, it represents only 2% of the $1.8 billion cut from education in the last budget. So if you hear anything from lawmakers and officials claiming that Casinos will save school budgets, don't believe them. The Akron Beacon Journal editorialized about this in today's paper.

Ohio's education groups analyzed the Casino money and showed that more than 3 out of 4 districts in this state will receive money from Casinos that represent less than 1% of their budgets. And now that Ohio's fracking boom isn't nearly as boom-y as once thought, the potential additional sources of revenue for the state's financially desperate schools is fast dwindling.

What lawmakers and Gov. John Kasich cannot escape is this: Without the state providing property tax relief, Ohio's property taxpayers are going to be left to foot more of the bill. And that has been deemed unconstitutional.

Wonder if our lawmakers will notice? Or care?

Kasich and Rhee Make it Official: They're an Item!

Today's Columbus Dispatch reported on an exclusive sit-down it had with education reform firebrand Michelle Rhee.

Absent from the interview was any mention of the extremely problematic state rankings Rhee's group put out last week, or the devastating Frontline piece that ran this week questioning how much student cheating on achievement tests occurred under her watch as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. schools because the results were tied to teacher pay. Or how StudentsFirst claims bipartisan bona fides, yet all the Democrats hired at the organization are dropping like flies.

As a former reporter, I understand that sometimes in order to land a big interview, you have to agree to certain conditions. So I'm not going to bang the Dispatch reporters too hard for failing to ask those obvious (and damaging) questions. But I sure hope a reporter at some point will.

The Dispatch did get Rhee on the record as supporting greater transparency and accountability for Charter Schools. That's a plus. Whether it's enough to overcome 15 years (and millions of dollars) of David Brennan influence remains to be seen. The lame duck education bill that created a huge loophole for Brennan's awful Life Skills schools (that graduate a horrific 11% of its kids every year) would give me less hope that the legislature and governor are willing to take him on, despite Rhee's recent largesse.

However, Rhee's also on the record now supporting local revenue going to Charter Schools. Again, the problem with that proposal is the way Ohio's Charter Schools are funded now (without local revenue) costs every kids not in a Charter School 6.5% of their state revenue, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education. And the way it was done in the Cleveland Plan made it illegal for the state to offset Charters' state revenue with any locally collected revenue.

That would make brick-and-mortar Charters even more expensive than they are today -- $54 per pupil more expensive than traditional public schools, according to a recent Ohio Department of Education analysis.

Again, I'm not a knee-jerk Rhee basher. But in Ohio she and her group have displayed no real bipartisanship, even supporting the Senate Bill 5 effort in 2011 -- perhaps the litmus test issue for any group wishing to curry favor with Democrats. And despite some encouraging statements from her Ohio organization about trying to determine whether we can quantify other measures of school success outside the heavily demographically tainted standardized test, Rhee has not talked about it at all. Instead, success is determined by notoriously inaccurate tests and volatile Value-Added Measures.

And, once again, she's going with the Merit Pay canard that has simply not shown to be successful to this point at producing better test scores. I'm not necessarily opposed to using test scores on teacher evaluations, if they help teachers get a better sense of where their kids need to improve. But tying it to pay is extremely problematic, as Rhee should know given her experience in D.C.

I'm also confused by her statement that more money doesn't mean better success, yet she advocates paying good teachers more. If money doesn't matter, then how could incentivizing success through more money succeed?

Again, here in Ohio, the issue hasn't necessarily been more money; it's been that too much of it comes from local property taxes, as the Ohio Supreme Court told us four different times. Property tax relief from the state is essential for any school funding system to work. I will be interested to hear Rhee's take on that issue.

All in all, it will certainly add some spice to the School Funding soup that's brewing here in Ohio to have Rhee involved. And it will make Ohio an epicenter of education reform this year. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I welcome Rhee's involvement.

Kasich Plan: Merit Pay

The Columbus Dispatch has written a story today, largely following an Akron Beacon Journal story yesterday, about how Gov. John Kasich will "encourage" schools to include performance-based pay in his new education plan set to be released this month.

How many times do people have to be shown that merit pay does not improve student test scores before they'll believe it?

The single largest longitudinal, peer-reviewed and experimental study of the topic in Nashville showed it had zero, that's right ZERO, impact on student achievement to give bonuses of up to 33% for improvement. And you can guarantee Kasich won't be freeing up the state's pursestrings to have schools be able to fund that ambitious of a program.

But that's not the only piece of evidence. Here's a piece from the Harvard Education Review calling it "a poor prescription for reform". Or this piece, again from HER, that describes why the vast majority of these schemes fail.

As the pretty non-partisan Education Writers of America put it:

In the United States, merit pay exclusively focused on rewarding teachers whose students produce gains has not been shown to improve student achievement, though some international studies show positive effects. Research has been mixed on comprehensive pay models that incorporate other elements, such as professional development. Scholars are still examining whether such programs might work over time by attracting more effective teachers.
 

Despite this paucity of evidence, apparently in Ohio this is what passes as "bold" and "innovative." It is neither bold nor innovative to do something that has no evidence behind it suggesting it will succeed. 

 

Oh, and by the way, I think Kasich tried this before. It was called Senate Bill 5. And we all know how that worked out.

Canton Loses $7.25 Million to Charters

As the Governor and Legislature prepare their new education funding and reform plan, one thing that's been a constant is their desire to make it easier for more Ohio kids to go to Charter Schools.

Aside from Charter Schools' generally weak academic performance compared with their traditional public school counterparts (only 23 of the 300 or so Charter Schools in Ohio rate higher than the average traditional public school on the state's Performance Index Score), the huge problem in Ohio is that the Charter Schools drain so many state resources from local districts.

As I've been saying for months now, the average traditional public school child loses 6.5% of his or her state revenue to Charter Schools. The Canton Repository reported this weekend that the Canton City Schools lose $7.25 million a year to Charter Schools.

In Canton, that $7.25 million lost costs every child in Canton who does not attend Charter Schools about 3% of their state revenue every year. In an era where no additional state money is going to flow back to local districts to make up that difference, and when tax levies go down faster than a submarine on an emergency dive, these are real cuts to real kids.

More troubling is the talk out of Columbus of not just allowing this system to continue unchanged, but to exacerbate it by potentially allowing Charter Schools to collect local revenue on top of their state revenue.

As I have said thousands of times before, I'm not necessarily against the idea of Charter Schools offering potential education solutions for children. But when their funding costs every child in the state (including mine) opportunity, that's a fatal flaw.

Until Ohio Charter Schools are funded so that every child not in a Charter School receives the same amount they would have received otherwise, and until Charter Schools are held to greater account, I'm afraid they will continue receiving plenty of opposition.

Oh, and they have to solve the "Charters aren't really public schools" issue that recent court and regulatory cases have determined. Otherwise, things like 14th Amendment protections may not be applicable to Charter Schools. But that's another topic for another day.

EdWeek: Ohio Drops in Ratings

Ohio has fallen back to 12th place from 10th in the Quality Counts report annually put out by Education Week. In 2010, after years of slow improvement, we ranked 5th nationally.

What is interesting is this is the first ranking that accounts for a full year of the most recent budget, which cut $1.8 billion in education funding.

I will take a bit of time to mull over the latest ratings, but the trajectory for Ohio is not what it should be. For what it's worth, on Standards and Early Childhood Education we rated A and A-, respectively. Given our historically low commitment to Early Childhood Education -- the lowest spending per pupil in the country -- I'm wondering how that ranking was calculated.

As a side note, Louisiana once again received one of 3 Fs in the nation on K-12 Achievement, along with Mississippi and West Virginia. This week, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst rated Louisiana as the nation's best state for education laws, without accounting for the state's bad performance ratings.

However, isn't is awfully curious that the worst performing states on K-12 Acheivement happen to be three of the historically poorest states in the nation? Once again, testing is so tied to demographics, that's to be expected. Which, once again, points out the deeply flawed system of measuring success we've currently adopted as a nation.

Ohio Charters Again Get Around the Law

Every time it seems that perhaps the Ohio Charter School movement makes overtures to better accountability, more fair funding, etc., somthing like this happens.

Policy Matters Ohio came out with a report today demonstrating how Ohio Charters are able to remain open, despite automatic closure laws. Seven of 20 schools that were automatically closed remain open, taking money from higher performing traditional public schools and fooling parents and children. They simply open under a different name.

The Policy Matters report follows up on similar kinds of allegations that have floated around for years about Charters -- that Charters who are shut down just change names and re-open.

This kind of stuff is what makes the Charter School War in Ohio so intractable. We must figure out a way for Charter accountability to mean something. After all, all children in Ohio receive 6.5% less state revenue than the state says they need because of how Charters are funded. The least we should do is make sure the bad charters that everyone agrees shoud be shut down remain shut down.

Rhee's Group Issues Curious Report

I've been tweeting back and forth with StudentsFirst (Michelle Rhee's controversial ed reform group) this week about an awfully curious report they recently issued. Most odd to me is given Ms. Rhee's and StudentsFirst's insistence on having achievement on standardized tests count for, well, everything (during their recent testimony in the Ohio House, they wanted to build performance bonuses into the state's funding formula), why did it count for nothing in their report?

The best state for education laws, according to StudentsFirst is Louisiana, which has consistently received Fs on the EdWeek Quality Counts report  for K-12 Achievement -- the benchmark report of the nation's state of education. And Massachusetts, which routinely is rated the finest state in the country, gets a "meh" from StudentsFirst.

This should come as a shock to David Driscoll, the former head of Massachusetts' education department who now works for Fordham. In the 1990s, with huge financial backing from the state, Driscoll raised standards, and was able to turn the state into the highest performing in the country. It routinely outperforms international counterparts.

I should reiterate that the performance improvement came with higher standards AND increased funding in Massachusetts. Raising standards and cutting funding (as Ohio has done) will probably NOT produce the same results.

Am I saying that Louisiana can't be the best at something? Of course not. And my reluctance to measure achievement by test scores alone, which are nearly completely determined by demographics is well known.

What I am saying is if your group is built on the idea of closing achievement gaps, improving student performance and increasing opportunities for all, how can you issue a report that does not include a state's performance on ANY of these things?

I have not been a knee-jerk Rhee basher. Her group's insistence that Charters and Traditional public schools have the same accountability was one of the more reasonable notions put forward during the recent, heavily conservative education testimony before the Ohio House.

However, StudentsFirst is walking a fine line here. If they want to be the bringers of educational justice to all America's children by insisting that achievement gaps must be closed (a worthy goal), then when they rate states, those states' achievement scores should at least count for something. Don't you think?

The fact they didn't in this report has left me scratching my head.

Does the 14th Amendment Apply to Charters?

Charter Schools are a fascinating creature legally. They take state money. Yet they are exempted from about 200 state regulations. Their advocates call them "public", yet any money given to for profit operators is shielded from public view.

So what are Charters anyway? Are they really public schools or not? This matters tremendously because if they are not considered public schools, then they could be exempt from protections afforded by the 14th Amendment; protections afforded to minorities and other traditionally discriminated against groups. The 14th Amendment only applies to "state actors", not private entities.

This conundrum has resulted in several courts around the country finding Charter Schools exempt from 14th Amendment protections. The quoted section below comes from this article:  Green, P., Frankenberg, E., Nelson, S., & Rowland, J. (2012). Charter schools, students of color and the state action doctrine: Are the rights of students of color sufficiently protected? Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice, 18(2), 254-275.

A recent federal appellate court decision suggests that students of color should also be concerned about the legal protections that charter schools might provide to students.¹⁸

Because state authorizing statutes consistently define charter schools as “public schools,”¹⁹ it would appear that charter school students are entitled to constitutional protections.²⁰ Students attending public schools have challenged deprivations of federal constitutional and statutory rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which establishes a cause of action for deprivations of federal constitutional and statutory rights “under the color of state law.”²¹ Students have sought damage awards pursuant to § 1983; “actions for injunctive or declaratory relief are [also] a major portion of the case law.”²² However, in 2010, the Ninth Circuit concluded in Caviness v. Horizon Learning Center²³ that a private, nonprofit corporation running an Arizona charter school was not a state actor under § 1983.²⁴ The Ninth Circuit specifically rejected the assertion that charter schools were state actors because they were defined as “public schools” under the state statute.²⁵

Although the Caviness case was an employment case, it is important to recognize that a similar analysis could lead to the conclusion that charter schools are not state actors with respect to student constitutional issues. Students attending public schools are guaranteed constitutional protections.¹⁵⁶ There are constitutional safeguards for student expression.¹⁵⁷ Public school students are protected from unreasonable search and seizure.¹⁵⁸ The Constitution also requires public schools to provide procedural due process safeguards when suspending or expelling students.¹⁵⁹ Of the seven states in the Ninth Circuit with legislation authorizing charter schools,¹⁶⁰ only Oregon guarantees that all federal rights apply to charter schools.¹⁶¹ With the exception of Oregon, state legislatures do not compel charter schools to follow constitutional guidelines with respect to due process. California and Idaho merely require potential charter school operators to disclose their disciplinary policies in their initial charter application.¹⁶² Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, and Nevada do not even demand that charter schools disclose their disciplinary policies at the time of application.¹⁶³

Students of color attending charter schools should be concerned about the potential lack of constitutional due process protection. Studies of data at the national, state, district, and building levels have consistently found that students of color are suspended at two to three times the rate of other students.¹⁸⁰ African-American students should be especially concerned about the possible lack of due process protection.¹⁸¹ According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, in the 1970s African-Americans were two times more likely than white students to be suspended from school.¹⁸² By 2002, the risk of suspension for African-Americans increased to nearly three times that of white students.¹⁸³ Further, a study of office discipline referrals in 364 elementary and middle schools during the 2005-06 school year found that African-American students were more than two times as likely to be referred to the office for disciplinary issues as white students.¹⁸⁴ The same study found that African-American students were also four times more likely to be sent to the principal’s office than white students.¹⁸⁵

Because of their foci on autonomy and accountability, supporters of charter schools have argued that they are the perfect vehicle for addressing the educational needs of students of color. This article points out, however, that charter schools may not be state actors under federal law with respect to student rights. Consequently, students of color may be unwittingly surrendering protections guaranteed under the Constitution in order to enroll in charter schools.
 

The Ninth Circuit is traditionally the most liberal federal appellate court in the country. And if that court finds that Charter School students are free from 14th Amendment protections, what does that portend for Ohio's?

To be fair, Ohio has made provisions to fulfill the state's Charter School advocates claim of Charter Schools' public nature. However, legislators defined Charters as "public" in California too. And the most liberal court in the country found that they were not, in fact, public. It is critical that the state make absolutely clear that Ohio's Charter Schools are public, not just in name, but in fact.

One easy way to do that is to have them adhere to the same accountability standards as traditional public schools, or have their records as open for public inspection and public audit as traditional public schools. After all, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it will likely be considered a duck.

Let's hope that the legislature, when it returns in a few weeks, will take heed and ensure that the 108,000 Charter School children in this state are afforded the same constitutional protections as the other 1.7 million kids in Ohio's traditional public schools.

Even if it means upsetting big donors.