Ohio Department of Education Turns Political, Misleads Public

I came across something truly concerning the other day as I flipped around on the Ohio Department of Education website. It was a page that seemed really odd to me. Something called "Overview of School Funding."

Here's the page:

"Next year, the State of Ohio will spend more on primary and secondary education than at any point in state history. FY 2015, State General Revenue Fund and Lottery Profit spending for primary and secondary education will exceed FY 2010 funding levels by $1.3 billion, or 17.8 percent. Even including one time federal-stimulus funding, TPP/KwH reimbursements, and property tax relief, FY 2015 funding levels will exceed FY 2010 funding levels by $317.8 million, or 3.3 percent.

The following chart discusses the elements typically associated with primary and secondary education funding in the State of Ohio.

How School Funding is Distributed

Public school districts use a combination of state funds, local sources such as property taxes (and in some cases income taxes) and federal funds.

The amount of state funds that a district receives is based on a formula that takes into account the student enrollment and the property wealth of the district.

About School Funding

The Department of Education’s General Revenue Fund budget represents the largest component of primary and secondary education.

These funds, along with profits from the Ohio Lottery are used to fund Ohio’s 612 public school districts, 49 joint vocational school districts, and approximately 370 public community schools. They also fund the activities of the Ohio Department of Education, including funding for early childhood education, pre-school special education, assessments, and the A-F report card.

In addition to state aid through the foundation program, many school districts receive reimbursements payments for lost property tax revenue caused by the phase out of the general business tangible personal property tax (TPP) and the reduction of property tax assessments rates on utility property (KwH). Finally, the state pays 10% of locally levied property taxes for residential and agricultural real property owners and an additional 2.5% for homeowners and represents property tax relief to individual property taxpayers in Ohio."

It may not seem weird to you at first, that is until you see the comparison years. Why is the Ohio Department of Education choosing to compare the last two budgets administered by John Kasich with the last one administered by Ted Strickland? I mean, that's a pretty random comparison, isn't it?

If this is an "Overview of School Funding", why not show the historic levels of funding since 1994? I mean school funding didn't start in 2010, did it? The department has the data to do that. However, it would show that the 2010-2011 school year was the only one on record where more state than local funding went into schools. And perhaps that's not fitting the narrative the page is trying to create.

Interestingly, the department removed $2 billion this year from what it had previously considered local revenue and called it "other non-tax", apparently trying to make it seem like more state than local money goes to schools. However, the "other non-tax" category was considered local revenue every year since 1994, so just add it to the local revenue category for the 2012-2013 data to get the true state-local makeup. 

Why is the department so emphatic about the "historic" levels of funding?

Perhaps because it appears this is a brand-new comparison and funding defense. According to the Wayback Machine (which traces website histories), there are 8 times in 2013 and twice in 2014 that the machine archived the website containing the "Overview of School Funding" page. The dates were June 8 and 15, July 13, August 20 and 31 and September 12. March 26 and 27 of this year were also archived. Here is the complete page on each of those dates:

Overview of School Funding

The funding of public elementary and secondary education in Ohio is a joint effort between the state and local school districts. 

Public school districts use a combination of state funds, local sources such as property taxes (and in some cases income taxes) and federal funds.

The amount of state funds that a district receives is based on a formula that takes into account the student enrollment and the property wealth of the district.

What followed were links to the most frequently requested reports.

That's it. No comparison with any prior years. No emphatic defense of current budgetary priorities. Nothing. Simple. Straight forward and accurate. And you couldn't even find it easily. You had to click through a couple pages to find it. 

Now, the Overview is on the Finance and Funding homepage and is much easier to access.

So, why is the "Overview of State Funding" page so different today? Could it be because the Governor employed the current State Superintendent of Public Instruction prior to his "appointment" as State Superintendent? Or perhaps that Kasich is tired of people repeating the fact that he has removed $515 million from Ohio's public school kids in direct aid payments compared with his predecessor?

Is it a mistake or happenstance that the page appears to have been updated on May 2, which was just a bit before his opponent, Ed Fitzgerald, announced a universal pre-school initiative in which he hammered Kasich on his education cuts?

Could it be because this is an election year?

What is most disturbing about his whole episode is that the Department is including education funding that has never, I repeat, never been seriously considered part of the state share of funding discussion (though believe me, many politicians have tried making these arguments before). 

For example, they are using over $1 billion in "property tax relief" as school funding. There is not a single dollar, that's right, not $1 more that goes to schools because of this funding pot. All the tax relief does is allow property taxpayers a small break on their property tax bill. So the district will still get $100 from local property taxes, for example, but instead of all of it coming from property owners, $88.50 will come from property owners and $12.50 will come from the state. But not a single additional dollar will go into the schools because of that chunk. Oh, and starting in November, the state stopped picking up that $12.50 for new levies. So there's that, yet, surprisingly, there's no mention of that change on the Overview page.

Next is the lottery money. First of all, the reason the lottery money is up about $250 million a year is because Kasich allowed Video Lottery Terminals at racetracks -- an idea put forward by Gov. Strickland in 2009, which was summarily opposed by Kasich's legislative allies at the time. Second of all, Lottery money is included in the state direct payment district-by-district runs generated by Kasich and his legislative allies -- runs that are included in this spreadsheet showing the $515 million cut.

Finally, the fact that the department is putting the funding baseline below what State Fiscal Stabilization Fund dollars provided to districts in the 10-11 budget suggests beyond much doubt that this ODE Overview is nothing less than an Ohio Republican Party political document.

Just so everyone understands this again: SFSF money was contained within the 2009 Stimulus Bill, but it was not stimulus! It was meant to make up the difference between what states spent in prior years and what the recession would allow them to spend in 2009. This was not money on top of what we were already spending; it was money meant to allow us to spend what we had been spending in previous years. The feds required states to run the money through the states' funding formulas. It was never meant to serve as an excuse to cut $900 million from kids. Yet that's exactly what Ohio legislators have done, arguing over and over that SFSF money should not be included in any comparative calculation.

But the fact is this: districts received that money in the 09-10 and 10-11 school years. They were promised by me and others that the money would be replaced by state funds when tax receipts returned to normal levels. Importantly, they were told not to expect any replacement of the true federal education funding stimulus from 2009 -- additional Title I and IDEA payments.

However, a new legislature came in and immediately called SFSF "stimulus", thereby justifying removal of about $900 million in funding that we had been spending prior to the recession!

The baseline considered by serious Ohio education finance analysts has always included SFSF for this reason. Yet ODE has now taken the Ohio Republican talking point and put it on a web page that -- until this election year -- was bland and banal, which was exactly what it should be.

Once you get rid of the non-direct payment portions of the new Overview page (lottery and "property tax relief"), what you see is the state is spending $524 million less over the FY14-15 budget than it spent over the FY10-11 budget -- just about what the state runs indicated in this spreadsheet.

And don't forget this either: That ALL spending is up under Kasich. However, the state's relative spending on education is way down. If the state spent the same percentage of its all funds budget on education today that it did in the budget prior to Kasich, there would be $1.3 billion more for kids.

It is no secret in Ohio education circles that ODE has been shedding staff like the Hulk sheds henchmen (sorry, I have a 5-year-old comic book reader in my house!). There is little question that politicizing ODE has contributed to this exodus. I feel for the true professionals at the Department who are being told to do things they've never been asked to do before, all in the name of misleading the public into thinking this Governor has increased money for education, when everyone knows he hasn't.

It can't be easy working in that environment. 

ODE should start improving the work environment by taking down that webpage and just hand it over to the Ohio Republican Party so it can be placed where it belongs -- on a site that is trying to convince people to vote for someone, not a site that's supposed to provide unassailable data for the public.

After all, it is the public whose dollars are paying for this.

And to those who think I'm blowing hot air, or trying to stick it to Republicans or something, all I ask is you do one thing: Ask the Ohio Department of Education to show you the district-by-district simulations of direct payments made by the state to districts for all these pots of money. See what's produced for the lottery and property tax relief pots -- the pots that allow ODE to make the claim that more money is going to schools now than before.

Then ask about my motives.

Gov. Kasich Misleads on School Funding

I really hate writing these kinds of posts -- the kind that de-bunks specious claims made by politicians. I don't want this space to become like too many other blogs and get into political back and forths.

But I couldn't let this whopper from Gov. John Kasich go.

His November opponent, Ed Fitzgerald, held an education-related event Friday. In it, he claimed that Gov. Kasich cut $2 billion from education in his first budget and replaced $1.5 billion of that in his second budget. The cut was actually $1.8 billion in the first budget, and the second budget replaced $1.3 billion of that. While in Fitzgerald's case, I can chalk up the difference to rounding, there is a much more nefarious explanation for Gov. Kasich's response.

A Kasich spokesman claimed that "Under Gov. Kasich, education funding has increased by 1.3 billion dollars and that's an increase in funding that the Democrats opposed."

This is so blatantly misleading I had to comment on it. The only way Gov. Kasich can make this claim is if he ignores about $1.8 billion in cuts to other revenue streams districts received from the state prior to his taking office -- cuts that perhaps help explain why Democrats voted against his budgets.

One of the first things Kasich did upon taking office was all but eliminate state reimbursement payments to school districts for Tangible Personal Property and Kilowatt Hour taxes -- taxes that were eliminated in 2005. However, many school districts relied on these revenue streams to fund their programs for children. So state leaders told school districts that the state’s new Commercial Activity Tax would replace those taxes until a new, permanent source of funding could be found. The state lived up to that promise ... until Kasich all but eliminated those payments in 2011. That means that the reimbursements for those taxes went from $1.9 billion over the FY2010-FY2011 biennium to $819 million over the FY2012-FY2013 and all future biennia – a cut of more than $1 billion.

Kasich’s $1.3 billion figure does not include the loss of more than $850 million districts received over the 2010-2011 biennium through the federal government's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. The SFSF money was meant to prevent massive educator layoffs during the Great Recession. It was not meant to serve as an excuse to eliminate $850 million from Ohio's children, but that’s exactly what Kasich and his legislative allies have done. They claim that this was one-time federal money that they have no duty to replace. I heard this mantra constantly when I was a state legislator. Yet the money, by federal law, had to be run through each state’s school funding formula. That's because it was meant to make up the difference between what states had been spending on education and what their depleted state revenues would allow them to spend during the Recession. When Kasich and his allies refused to replace the money, they were essentially saying that they didn't think Ohio’s children should have their pre-Recession resources.

So, when you add the $1.8 billion (rounded) in cuts to revenue streams to the $1.3 billion "increase" Kasich claims, you see that the bottom line is that kids in traditional school districts are receiving $515 million fewer over Kasich's current budget than they received in the budget I moved through the Ohio House. Here's the district-by-district spreadsheet to show the calculation. Children in about 3 in 4 school districts have less money coming from the state today than they did prior to Kasich taking office.

Kasich's claim also fails the smell test from these two angles: The state share of education funding has dropped precipitously since Mr. Kasich took office, and local property tax levies are way up. 

The chart below (from Ohio Department of Education data) demonstrates just how much the disparity between state and local revenue streams has grown under Kasich. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the last year of the budget I moved through the Ohio House (the budget prior to Kasich's arrival) was the first time on record that state money being spent on education eclipsed local taxpayer money.

So if Kasich has indeed "increased" state education funding, why has the state share dropped so deep?

One more piece of evidence: Why are levies for new operating money up so dramatically under Kasich? Again, this is just for new operating money, not capital money for buildings. 

Kasich supporters frequently mislead on this stat too by lumping operating and capital money together. Capital levy frequency was much greater under Gov. Ted Strickland because the state securitized more than $5 billion in tobacco money to put into the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which made funding through the OSFC much cheaper -- leading to more districts seeking a share of that revenue. So the reason there were more capital issues on the ballot under Strickland is because he put $5 billion more into capital funds for school buildings, not because he cut money for capital projects.

I don't begrudge politicians playing fast and loose with facts, arguing semantics, or parsing words to serve their own ends. But when they tell you up is down or down is up (rather than down is a little less down than the opponent claims, or up is much more so), then they've crossed a line in my book.

Kasich has increased state aid by $1.3 billion, that's true. But that increase has been more than offset by his drastic cuts in other areas of the state budget that children in public school districts had been using to better their futures. At the end of the day, children and parents know what Kasich is saying isn't true. 

They're the ones seeing larger classes, fewer extracurriculars, more fees and fewer additional learning opportunities.

They're the ones who have to keep approving levies to pay for the things the state used to fund. 

They're the ones who understand that when politicians turn school funding into a football, parents and kids will have to pay for the right to play the game.

And God help them if they don't, because there's no indication the state government -- whose constitutional duty it is to fund Ohio's education -- will.

More Evidence Ohio Charter Experiment Failing

Piggybacking on the evidence from yesterday's release of a report I authored at Innovation Ohio, which demonstrated again that the vast majority of kids in Ohio charter schools came from better performing traditional public school districts, US News & World Report's rankings of the country's best high schools provides another sobering picture of Ohio's 16-year-old charter school experiment.

Not a single one of Ohio's 97 charter high schools outperformed the state average in reading and math. Meanwhile, 167 of the 735 traditional public high schools did that. So that's an amazing 167-0 score. Not a single charter high school in Ohio rates in the top 115 high schools in the state -- the lowest rank given by U.S. News.

This confirms what Stanford's CREDO study demonstrated last year -- that the average Ohio charter school student loses a full marking period in math and half of one in reading to their traditional public school counterparts. And, CREDO showed Ohio is only one of four states where charter school performance has declined during the last four years, due in large part to the state not being more aggressive in closing the failing schools.

Remember that nearly every district in this state loses children and money to charter schools, including the finest districts in the state. So the argument that one should only compare charter performance with the poorest performing public schools is flawed. You can't take money and children from every district, then demand to be only compared with the most struggling. That's having your cake and eating it too, and it doesn't serve the needs of kids.

Excuses can no longer suffice. Action must be taken.

Ohio's charter schools are in desperate need of reform. There are some that are successfully educating kids. And charters have an important role to play in Ohio's educational landscape. But far, far, far too many are simply collecting taxpayer dollars and making the adults who run them wealthy.

It is incumbent upon the state's leaders and policymakers to wake up and make the changes that must be done. And do it before this $900 million program continues to grow in bloat and failure.

Our kids are counting on us.

Next Constitutional Commish Meeting Set for May 8

For all those interested in expressing their feelings about whether the state should eliminate the "thorough and efficient" clause in the state's Constitution, the next meeting for the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission's standing committee on Education, Public Institutions & Miscellaneous and Local Government (in which the change is being proposed) will be May 8 at 10:15 a.m. in Room 114 of the Ohio Statehouse.

Here is the list of committee members. Let them know what you think. For those of you who haven't read it yet, here's what I think.

Brenner Strikes Again

Remember state Rep. Andrew Brenner, who last month claimed that public education was socialism? Well, he's back at it -- pimping and making excuses for statewide eSchools (which are among the worst performing schools in the state) while saying those same excuses are not allowed for traditional public schools.

Here's the Gongwer Report where he does this (subscription required). The opening sentence is perfect irony when he excuses poor performance of eSchools because they "can be tied to the challenging population they serve." Couldn't that be said of major urban districts too?

Oh no. Not to Brenner, who happens to be the vice chairman of the House Education Committee. He claimed that the urbans hadn't made the "management decisions" other districts have made.

For the record, the Big 8 Urban districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) spent 14% of their money on administrative, non-instructional costs last year. The major statewide eSchools (the Alternative Education Academy, Buckeye Online School for Success, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, Ohio Connections Academy, Ohio Virtual Academy, Treca Digital Academy and the Virtual Community School of Ohio)? Try 23%. Perhaps eSchools should be making the "management decisions" the Big 8 have made.

And why should we be even comparing the statewide eSchools in performance or cost with the Big 8 anyway? About 80% of all statewide eSchool students come from non-Big 8 districts. So shouldn't the "apples-to-apples" comparison Brenner requested we make on performance be with non-Big 8 districts?

Anyway, remember that eSchools don't have busing, lunch rooms, buildings or any other fixed cost of a brick-and-mortar operation. Yet the average statewide eSchool still spends more per pupil than a handful of school districts, even though school districts get local revenue too. In fact, the average eSchool spends $7,266 per pupil while the average district spends $9,826 per pupil.

What's the difference?

Try operations support (busing, mostly). The average eSchool spends $78 on this category. The average district spends $1,935 per pupil. If you subtract out the districts' busing costs, the average Ohio eSchool spends more per pupil than 234 school districts, or nearly 4 in 10 districts. And they only get outspent by less than $3,000 per pupil in the Big 8.

And remember that because they're urban districts, the Big 8 are mandated to spend a lot of that money -- they have little choice. So actually, when you account for those spending realities, the average Big 8 district spends $8,490 per pupil -- not far off from the statewide eSchool average of $7,266. And remember that number includes busing. Subtract it and urbans are likely spending less per pupil than eSchools.

So how efficient are these virtual operations, really?

Which brings me to Brenner's most outrageous statement, where he claims that eSchools' performance is achieved spending "$6,000" while some districts are spending $20,000 for similarly bad results. Again, the statewide eSchools (which house nearly all of the eSchool kids) spend about 21% more than Brenner's claim -- $7,266 on average. And, for the record, there are 2. That's right, 2 school districts in Ohio spending $20,000 or more per pupil. One is Orange City Schools -- one of the state's top 5 districts. The other is Cleveland Heights, which, while struggling, is hardly as bad as, say, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow -- Ohio's oldest, largest eSchool.

That's it. And once you subtract costs for busing, etc. no Ohio district spends more than $20,000 per pupil. Not a one.

Again, Brenner is spinning the apocryphal story that public schools spend money less efficiently and get worse results. The truth, my friends, is the exact opposite. And when you look at Fleeter's analysis, the more discretionary money an Ohio school district has, the better they tend to perform. The highest performing districts in the state, in Fleeter's analysis, have the highest discretionary per pupil spending.

It wasn't that long ago that I discovered that the statewide eSchools received enough state money to pay for 15:1 student-teacher ratios and a $2,000 laptop every year for every student and still clear nearly 40% profit. I'm not the only one who's questioned why Ohio taxpayers should be forking over nearly double the per pupil amount for eSchools as they do for traditional public schools. The average online eSchool gets about $6,800 per pupil from the state (the rest of the $7,266 is mostly federal and private money). The average district gets a bit more than $3,500.

So, when kids go to eSchools, they typically remove more state money from the district than the state would have received if the kid had stayed in the district, which leaves kids not in eSchools (who are in mostly higher performing districts) with less state revenue.

It would be one thing if eSchools were rocking the socks off traditional districts on performance. But they aren't -- a fact Brenner, to his credit, acknowledged, before he made his excuses. In fact, ECOT graduates barely 1/3 of its kids. Yet they were able to pull Gov. John Kasich to speak at their 2011 graduation ceremony. Would Kasich go to to a traditional public school graduation where even 70% of the kids graduated? No way. Even though that's twice the rate of ECOT.

My biggest disappointment with Brenner is this: Our kids need guys like Brenner -- people who are strong choice proponents -- to be the fiercest proponents for excellence in choice. Brenner had an opportunity to stand before eSchools and demand they do better. The rest of the state has to do more with less. So should they. "The days of 35% graduation rates for double the state money are over," he could have said.

But he didn't.

Instead, he did that which folks in the choice movement have derided public school advocates for years: make excuses.

That constitutes a failure of leadership. And it's extremely disappointing. But I can't say it's unexpected. After all, the operator of ECOT -- William Lager -- did spend $180,000 on Republican lawmakers just in the last few weeks of the last budget. So perhaps Brenner is angling for some of that.

There's an old saying that goes something like this (PG rated version): "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, take their money, then vote against them the next day, you shouldn't be in politics." Brenner is in a great position to make much needed changes in Ohio's eSchool landscape. Instead, he excused their miserable failings by using misleading arguments.

Our kids deserve better.

Ohio Constitutional Commissioner Unleashes Nuclear Option

First off, I want to say that I am not one of these people who think that philanthropists and corporate interests want to destroy public education. I think they want public education to look vastly different than it did for you and me, and even them.

While we may disagree (sometimes vociferously) about the different elements of that reform agenda, I do think most of them do believe in public education, as Thomas Jefferson and the Founders of this country did.

But what Chad A. Readler has suggested at the most recent meeting of the commission that's re-writing Ohio's Constitution is not that. For it can be seen as nothing but a direct attack on the whole idea of public education.

It is, in fact, the Nuclear Option.

His proposal to remove the words "thorough and efficient" from the constitutional language establishing Ohio's system of public schools is an affront to Jefferson, the Founders and anyone else who gives a whip about public education. Because without those words, the state could set up one school in every community, jam all the kids into classrooms with 100 or more students, pay teachers $30,000 a year, have them teach the Earth is Flat, and there would be no recourse through the courts.

Readler's insulting claim that this whole education thing needs to be left out of the courts is particularly galling. Look at all the great Civil Rights cases (Brown v. Board, etc.). What is their foundation? Education and access to it.

African-American children in Mississippi and Alabama would still be attending legally segregated schools, but for judicial intervention. Readler has to know this. Yet he wants to pretend that somehow judicial intervention is a bad thing to ensure that children have access to high-quality education?

And here's a bit of Law School 101: Who interprets the Constitution? That's right. The courts. So if you're writing a Constitution, as Readler claims to be doing, who would interpret the Constitution? That's right, boys and girls. It's the freaking courts!

Readler has to know this too.

But he has serious baggage. He successfully argued in the Ohio Supreme Court that there are fully state funded kids and fully locally funded kids in every Ohio school district.

It doesn't take much to know that's BS.

Just look at any state funding report and try to find which kids are state funded and which are locally funded. Better yet, ask your local school district or the Ohio Department of Education whether your child is one that's fully state funded or fully funded by local tax dollars. Don't fret when you hear crickets. Because all Ohio children receive BOTH state AND local money. It's a mix.

But Readler's Charter School clients had to argue that there's a magic group of fully state funded kids. That way, they could argue that when the state removes $900 million in state money, it's not removing any locally raised money for non-Charter Schools, a reality that likely would be unconstitutional.

The Ohio Supreme Court -- many of whose members took big campaign contributions (and have for years) from big Charter School operators -- ruled with Readler.

Never mind that when that $900 million in Charter School money and the Charter School kids are removed from the system, every child in Ohio who doesn't go to a Charter loses almost 7% of their state revenue. How's that hole made up? That's right, local money that would have gone elsewhere. Or cuts.

But Readler doesn't care. In fact, his effort to put zero constitutional standards on what public education should look like is so radical that NO OTHER STATE DOES THIS. In fact, 10 other states use "thorough and efficient" as their standard, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Just so you can understand how crazy Readler's idea is, I am linking to a list of the constitutional standards of every US state here. The list was compiled by Molly Hunter at the Education Law Center in New Jersey for Pennsylvania's Constitutional Commission. Even Montana -- yes, that Montana -- has a very high standard:

"It is the goal of the people to establish a system of education which will develop the full educational potential of each person. Equality of educational opportunity is guaranteed to each person of the state."

I mean, I would love it if Readler would replace thorough and efficient with the Montana clause. But to replace it with nothing is simply a threat to my sons' (and all Ohio children's) education. Period.

According to Hunter, here are the states that actually make education a right of its citizens -- meaning they affirmatively state that public education is critical to the functioning of Democracy: Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.

Not exactly a crazy, liberal list of states. Florida calls education a "fundamental value". Texas calls it "essential to the preservation of liberties and rights." Many conclude their clause with this phrase: "adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education."

Seems to me that these states take education seriously. Readler's clause would require the state to "provide for the organization, administration and control of the public-school system of the state supported by public funds." That's it. 

Let's play What Does This Look Like?, shall we?

Want to provide three schools in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati that everyone in the state has to find their way to attend? Go ahead. Because everywhere else, you can go to a Charter School, which in Ohio perform far worse than traditional public schools.

How about creating three schools (primary, middle and high school) for every county in the state? Sure. Whoever doesn't want to go to those three can go to a likely low-performing Charter School.

How about providing $100 for Readler's system? That would seem to be fine too because all it says is the public system has to be "supported" by public funds. $100 is not much, but it's support. Think that logic's flimsy? How many of you are about to file tax returns where you claim to be supporting your church at $10 a week (or less)? 

We could get even more ridiculous here. But the point is this: Readler's proposal is one of the only things I have seen in this, or any of my other jobs dealing with education policy over the last three decades, that I can confidently say is an attempt to destroy public education. 

It's not often that someone does or says something that's ironic in two ways, but that's what Readler's done here. Let's start with the first bit of irony:

1) While Readler claims he doesn't want courts determining education policy, the Ohio Supreme Court gave up jurisdiction over Ohio's education clause in 2002. So the courts aren't involved now anyway, beyond the four High Court rulings calling Ohio's system unconstitutional between 1997-2002. Any change to that clause -- even Readler's sophomoric attempt -- would actually open up the potential for a new lawsuit based on the new language.

2) Readler is a lawyer for Ohio Charter Schools, which are, technically, public schools. So this clause would actually allow the Ohio Legislature to do horrible things to Charter Schools too. Now, given this current leadership's obsession with funding even horribly performing Charter Schools at all costs, this scenario doesn't seem likely. But it could happen, and if it did, Charter Schools would have their own lawyer to thank.

Anyone who cares about public education, including Charter Schools, must let the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission  know how awful this provision is. Make your voices heard. The next meeting is June 12. Make a ruckus. Let the commissioners know that monkeying with our children's futures is unacceptable.

And demand answers from your legislators and others running for office. Would they vote for this horrific provision? If they would, then make sure they don't get your vote.

If they're getting away with it, it's your fault. Now more than ever.

So don't let them.

Transportation: Charter Schools' Literal Gravy Train

In the Akron Beacon Journal's final installment of its three-part series on Charter Schools, the paper demonstrated how unfair school transportation is when it comes to Charter Schools. The paper reported the following:

• It costs 44% more to transport children to Charter Schools than Traditional Public Schools
• Transportation contractors charge more than twice as much per pupil to transport a child to a Charter School
• In Akron Public Schools, kids living within 2 miles of school have to walk, but Charter School kids are all but guaranteed a ride on the bus
• The cost of transportation is more than $15 million more statewide because districts are forced by the state to transport kids to privately run Charter Schools
• Meanwhile, the state has stopped helping districts buy buses and has failed to keep pace with other transportation funding, exacerbating an already tight budget crunch

The Beacon Journal series has blown the doors wide open on Charter School accountability. Day One demonstrated that even basic information -- like who's on the Charter School Board -- is mostly hidden in the Charter School world. Day Two showed how the uber-powerful White Hat Management uses state law it mostly wrote, thanks to its powerful political connections, to run for-profit schools under the guise of a non-profit. And Day Three now shows how taxpayers are being forced to pay for busing kids to Charter Schools, even though those kids simply wouldn't be allowed to be bused to their neighborhood school because of state cuts.

Again, I'm not against Charter Schools necessarily. But I am against this. I don't see how anyone could read the last three days of Beacon Journal stories and not be moved to action. How could you not be moved to reform a system that enshrines such inequities, such gross unfairness?

The Beacon Journal has promised a "multiyear" look into Charter Schools. Now that it's a $900 million a year program, and state taxpayers have spent more than $7.3 billion on these schools since 1998, the Beacon's exam is essential. It's telling that it takes a newspaper to do this. That's because state lawmakers have made it illegal for state agencies to examine Charters in depth. 

The Ohio Department of Education testified before me when I was in the legislature that they don't have the contracts between Charter Schools and their operators because ODE isn't allowed to ask for them on taxpayers' behalf. Charter Schools can give them to ODE if they want, but are under no obligation to do so. That's because these companies and their privacy is deemed more important by state legislators than the appropriate expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars.

These are your tax dollars. They are my tax dollars. We've seen the equivalent of an entire year of education funding for traditional public schools dumped into Charter Schools since 1998. And these schools perform far worse overall and spend money far less efficiently in the classroom -- the exact opposite outcome we were promised in 1998 (cheaper and better, remember?). 

I want to know how any of these outcomes reported by the Beacon Journal these last three days has improved educational experiences for children. How does hiding basic information about a school's operation help a kid learn complex math concepts? How does allowing big campaign contributors to make huge sums of money at the public trough improve our children's ability to understand Shakespeare? How does forcing districts to bus kids across cities while forcing other kids to walk two miles to a neighborhood school improve their critical thinking skills?

None of this stuff is done to help kids. It's done to help the adults who are profiting handsomely off Charter Schools. And that is about as cynical and harmful a system as I can imagine.

Today, I'm proud to be a Beacon Journal alum. On days like this, I wish I was back in that newsroom.

Well, for a minute anyway.