Kasich Education Vetoes a Mixed Bag for Kids

While Gov. John Kasich's line-item veto of the Ohio Legislature's freeze on Medicaid has rightly eaten up much of the veto discussion, Kasich also vetoed 11 different education provisions in House Bill 49 -- the state's beinnial budget. For a complete rundown, look here. But I would like to focus on a couple things.

CHARTER SCHOOLS

In several of the vetoes regarding charter schools, Kasich said he struck the provision because it was unfair, or treated schools differently, or lowered standards. My issue with this reasoning is, well, that's kind of been the story of Ohio's charter school system. Ohio charters have been treated differently, held to lower standards and been unfairly funded at the expense of children in local public schools since 1998.

So why the sudden call to conscience? I don't know. But let me take a few of the vetoes in turn.

1) He vetoed a provision that would have allowed charters to count student growth as 60 percent of its student achievement measure rather than the current 20 percent. He claimed this was because it would hold charters to a lower standard than local schools. But that's only true if you believe that student growth is not as effective a measure as straight performance. And while there are real concerns with how student growth is calculated and used, putting more emphasis on that measure could encourage schools to spend more time with more students rather than just focusing on high fliers whose high scores would help a school's rating more than growing the lower scoring students. That's not a horrible public policy outcome. And we have always held charters to different standards than local schools -- that's been part of the point with charter law and criticism of it.

2) He vetoed a provision that would have allowed sponsors that were stripped of their ability to sponsor schools this school year to sponsor them again this year if they scored 3 out of 4 or higher on academics. His reason? Because they would still score poorly on the other bureaucratic measures under which they are now evaluated. But this is exactly the problem the legislature was trying to address -- you have some of the highest rated sponsors for academics (arguably the most important of the three charter school sponsor measures) unable to continue sponsoring schools because they don't meet the bureaucratic measures. Instead, with his veto Kasich essentially is putting a greater emphasis on whether a sponsor fills out forms correctly than whether the schools they oversee serve kids well. I fail to see how that outcome upholds quality for kids.

SCHOOL DISTRICT FUNDING

Several of Kasich's vetoes would directly harm the funding for kids in local school districts.

1) He vetoed a provision that would have helped ease the removal of Tangible Personal Property (TPP) tax reimbursement payments to districts, forcing many districts to deal with much steeper cliffs. He claimed schools have had enough time to cope with this loss. Kasich has never really understood why removing this formerly $1 billion a year payment for kids in local schools was so detrimental. I think it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding (or deliberate misunderstanding) of the 2005 law that eliminated the TPP. In exchange for the elimination of the TPP (which went mostly to kids in school districts), the state agreed to make school districts whole with Commercial Activity Tax payments until a real replacement could be developed. It's that last part of the agreement whose promise Kasich broke in 2011 when he decided to eliminate the reimbursement payments, cutting funding to kids in local school districts by $1.8 billion in that budget. The last year before Kasich, the TPP payment was $920 million. Now it's all but gone. Which is why when lawmakers claim they've increased funding to schools, they NEVER include this lost revenue. Anyway, Kasich's draconian adherence to this false narrative about TPP continues to be one of his greatest failings. And kids will suffer for it.

2) Kasich vetoed a couple provisions that would have allowed school districts to apply for state matching funds for new buildings at lower local share matches if they phased them in over time. He claimed this would have created inequities among districts. Which is a nice sentiment, but the whole reason the legislature did this is because of the current system's inequities. Some districts are caught in a nether zone where they are considered too "wealthy" for a big state match, but also too poor to fund the whole thing -- hence the current inequity. However, if they could go for a smaller bond issue, kids in those districts might be able to access the same new buildings as many other districts in the state. Again, this punishes districts who are neither wealthy nor poor, but are less wealthy than the wealthiest.

HOSING APPALACHIA. AGAIN.

Throughout Kasich's turn in the Governor's office he has found new and creative ways to hurt rural Appalachian schools. When he developed what was supposed to be his signature "Achievement Everywhere" school funding plan (a plan that was dumped unceremoniously by his own party), the plan disproportionately hurt rural Appalachian districts. He used school funding formulations that would downplay the poverty in Appalachia. And now he vetoed a provision that would allow school districts to give state tests in paper rather than computer formats. Rural Appalachian districts simply don't have enough computers to give tests over computers effectively or efficiently. We also know that kids who take paper tests tend to do better than those who take them on computers. So Kasich is forcing kids in mostly rural Appalachian districts to take more time taking tests and in a format that's biased against them. All in the name of what? "Standards"?

Part of his decision I think stems from Kasich's sharing of the school reform bias toward assessments that show kids doing worse. I've discussed this before, but just because kids to worse on a test doesn't mean that test is more accurately assessing their proficiency in a subject. Does anyone honestly believe that a test showing that only 1/3 of students are proficient readers is a more accurate read of how kids are doing than one that suggests 85 percent are?

Kasich made some decent vetoes on education provisions. His veto of a provision that would have forced College Credit Plus students (kids who take college courses in high school) to receive a C or higher to receive college credit when college students can receive credit for a D makes sense.

His veto of a provision that would have exempted some special education private schools from state assessments was generally fair.

His veto of a provision allowing Education Service Centers to sponsor schools from all over the state was also a small victory.

But overall, Kasich's vetoes were cloaked in a veneer of fairness that hides
the unfair and inequitable approach his administration has used in education policy since 2011.

Nation's Largest For-Profit School In Danger of Closing.

Well, the State School Board has voted 16-1 to recover $60 million from the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow -- the state's first and largest online K-12 school. That's because ECOT can't prove it actually educated $60 million worth of kids out of its $105 million it got last school year.

If this percentage were spread over ECOT's 17 school years and more than $1 billion paid, the state could have paid nearly $600 million in taxpayer dollars to the school for kids that were never there. The sheer amount of funding at stake here is staggering.

And it would be one thing of ECOT were doing a bang up job educating children. However, its performance is abysmal and fails to graduate more students than any other high school ... IN THE COUNTRY.

As I said on this weekend's State of Ohio broadcast, I think ECOT should close because it has failed to meaningful improve the state's educational landscape and it's fleeced taxpayers of more than a half billion dollars since it opened in 2000-2001.

But before we give credit to state policymakers for doing their jobs (finally), let's remember why ECOT's been allowed to fail: Political contributions. Its founder, Bill Lager, has given more than $1.8 million to politicians over the last 17 years -- more than $1.5 million of that to Republicans, according to FollowtheMoney.org.



Gov. John Kasich's first address to a graduating Ohio high school class was before ECOT in 2011. ECOT has hosted numerous other political heavy hitters during that time.

Only after the shame of being associated with a nationally ridiculed school like Lager's became unbearable, and their public thievery obvious, did Lager's minions gather their spines.

This is something we cannot forget as we move forward from this shameful episode in Ohio's education policy history.

Gov. John Kasich to blame for Ohio Auditor's Mockery of Ohio Dept. of Education?

Lost in Monday's announcement by Ohio Auditor David Yost that Ohio's Department of Education is "among the worst, if not the worst-run state agency in state government" is an obvious question: "Why?"

Well, may I offer an answer -- a failure of leadership in the governor's mansion. Why do I say that?

Because John Kasich is now on his 6th State Superintendent of Public Instruction -- two of whom had to resign amidst scandal. Here's the list:

1) Deb Delisle -- Kasich bullied her into resigning, which ended up OK because she was appointed the Assistant Secretary of Education at the U.S. Department of Education and became among the most respected Assistant Secretaries in history.

2) Stan Heffner -- He took over, but only lasted a few months after the state's inspector general found that he had been lobbying for a private education company he wanted to work for.

3) Michael Sawyers -- He served as interim Superintendent while Kasich searched for a replacement.

4) Richard Ross -- Kasich's former education czar, who infamously once told a room full of Appalachian superintendents that their communities weren't as poor as they claimed, was the longest serving Superintendent. His term was rocked by scandals, as it was found that he was going behind the State Board of Education's back on the Youngstown Plan and he oversaw the David Hansen scandal.

5) Lonnie Rivera -- Served for a few months as Department head, though long enough to pen a response to the federal government's questions about Ohio's charter school grant application that netted the state $71 million to increase high-quality charters here.

6) Paolo DeMaria -- Current State Superintendent who has made several questionable assertions about various education policies.

So, that's 6 superintendents in 5 years. Remember that Kasich's predecessor had two in 4 years, keeping his predecessor's superintendent for his first two years in office.

Notice I'm not mentioning the State Board of Education in this post. Technically, the superintendent works for the board. But in this era of hyper-politicization of the department, it's clear that this choice is the Governor's.

Let me ask you all out there a question: If you had 6 bosses in 5 years, how well do you think your operation would run?

Ohio Expenditure Data: Charters Spend More on Administration, Less on Instruction

Back in 2010, Gov. John Kasich claimed the state's education funding formula didn't spend enough money in the classroom. He claimed then that districts spent too much money on administrator salaries.

Yet new state spending data  for the 2014-2015 school year shows that Ohio's school districts spend less money per pupil -- and a much smaller percentage of its overall spend -- on administrators than Ohio's charter schools -- the allegedly more "efficient", business-like education answer.

In fact, the median Ohio charter spends nearly $1,000 more per equivalent pupil on administrators than the median Ohio school district. This facts is made more remarkable given that the median Ohio charter spends about $1,400 less than the median Ohio school district.

Charters spend so much more that, as in years past, if Ohio's charter schools spent per pupil on administration what Ohio's public school districts did, charters would be able to spend about the same amount of money in the classroom as districts do, despite their $1,400 less overall spend.

So, according to the data, the least efficient way of putting more money in the classroom, as Kasich professed he wanted to do in 2010, was dump more of it into charter schools. Yet charter funding has increased by about one-third since Kasich took office.

Run schools like a business indeed.

New Ohio Charter School "Sheriff" Breaking the Law?

In yet another black eye for Ohio's struggling charter school sector, it appears that the man who is supposed to oversee charter schools arbitrarily -- and potentially illegally -- decided not to count the worst scores of the state's embarrassingly poor performing virtual schools when evaluating the state's sponsors (authorizers in all other states).

After the State School Board grilled David J. Hansen (who used to run the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies and is the husband of Presidential Candidate John Kasich's chief of staff) this week, the department announced earlier today it was retracting the evaluations.

Is it an accident that Hansen decided to exempt the worst scores of schools run by the state's largest political donors?

And how does this jibe with the reputation Hansen had been trying to burnish as the state's new Charter School Sheriff?

And should Kasich be concerned that someone so close to him might be getting into serious trouble just days before his big announcement?

As I've stated before in this space, Hansen's "crack down" had yet to impress me because it only impacted a few charters that didn't have many kids. When the state's largest charter school and nation's largest for-profit school -- the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow -- gets all Fs and a D on the state report card, yet Hansen doesn't scold them, but instead decides not to count that abysmal record (which is even worse than Youngstown City Schools -- the district that's in such bad shape that the state had to take them over in a back room, last-minute effort), it speaks louder to me than taking down a few tiny schools.

Hansen always was dealing with the charter sector's weaker sisters -- small sponsors and schools with no political clout -- a far cry from the huge clout carried by the for-profit operators.

This episode also speaks to the importance of public transparency and accountability. A publicly elected (and partially appointed) body demanded answers of public officials, who then had to answer them in public, revealing potentially illegal activity that even Ohio Auditor David Yost said bore an eerie resemblance to the data scrubbing scandal that threw Columbus City Schools into the frying pan a few years ago.

Because a public body did its job and held public officials accountable, this potentially illegal activity was uncovered. Remember that as the Youngstown City Schools are turned over to an unelected board and CEO. Who knows what the public will be able to find out there. I mean, Youngstown is not exactly known for being free of public corruption.

Once again, Ohio's charter school system and the state's woeful oversight of the sector are cause for national ridicule. At what point will Ohio's leaders say, "Enough is enough"? I'm so sick of having to write about this stuff. How many backward steps must we take before we'll take one forward?

It's time to fix this so we can move on to the serious work of making Ohio's public schools work for every child in every community. We need the meaningful charter school reform in House Bill 2, as well as better closure and funding mechanisms.

The first thing we have to do, though, is make sure no foxes guard our hen houses.

First things first.

John Kasich's Trouble With Promises

Gov. John Kasich is soon to announce his run for President. Good for him. Not everyone can do that. But before anyone goes too crazy over this, I want to explain a little bit about how Kasich has displayed little regard for long-held promises made to Ohio's school children.

As a backdrop, remember that four times the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state's school funding formula unconstitutional because it relied too much on local property taxes to fund education. It was up to the state to develop a better formula that involved more state dollars.

Whether this matters is up to you. But I wanted to make a record of the many promises that have been kept by Ohio Republicans and Democrats during the last five decades that Kasich has simply undone with seemingly little thought or concern. Then blamed public schools for failing to prepare for.

I'll start with the most recent.

Tangible Personal Property Tax Reimbursement

In 2005, the Republican legislature and Governor, Bob Taft, passed House Bill 66 -- the now infamous budget that started Ohio's slow elimination of the state income tax. I'm not getting into the merits of that policy here, but in that bill, there was also the elimination of the so-called Tangible Personal Property (TPP) Tax. 

For you and me, the TPP was a state-created, locally raised tax on business that allowed local communities and schools to collect tax revenue on inventories held by businesses in their communities. It was especially hard on businesses that had lots of equipment, like car manufacturers. There was a widespread belief that the TPP was an impediment to business, and I am among them. It was a tax that tilted heavily against the very businesses our state needed to grow -- manufacturing. 

The trouble was, the tax raised about $2.3 billion for schools. So what could districts do to replace this lost revenue?

Obviously, public education advocates were concerned about this. And the state made a deal with the schools: Go along with the TPP elimination, and we'll replace it for you with a chunk from the new, broad-based Commercial Activity Tax on business until we find a suitable replacement for your lost, locally raised revenue. They put in a five-year window to come up with a replacement, but they never did. So the reimbursement payments (as this TPP replacement thing came to be called) remained in subsequent state budgets, unchanged.

Until Gov. John Kasich came into office.

In his first budget, he whacked the TPP reimbursements substantially as part of his record-breaking $1.8 billion cut to schools. And he didn't replace it with anything, nor did he ever acknowledge that that was ever a part of any deal, even though it was.

He essentially told districts that it was always meant to go away, and it's districts' fault for not preparing for it.

Two nights ago, Kasich completed his full elimination of the TPP reimbursement by line-item veto, eliminating a budget item that in 2011 was about $920 million -- about as much as the state spends on charter schools today, by the way.

Yes, state aid has increased since 2011, but it has yet to exceed the inflation-adjusted amount that was spent in the 2010-2011 budget -- the one that was developed during the Great Recession.

And don't forget that TPP payments were always on top of state aid payments, not included as part of the state aid calculation.

And whenever the governor and legislative leaders talk about "record" increases in school funding, don't forget it follows record cuts in school funding. The current leadership's baseline is the cut year when it really should be the years prior to the cut year. 

The Evidence Based Model

In 2009, Gov. Ted Strickland developed the Evidence-Based Model, with some help from yours truly. The plan, which replaced the so-called "Building Blocks" formula, called for a 10-year implementation of the model that was slated to infuse an additional $3.2 billion in state money for education. Over three years, the formula was examined, implemented and improved by a bipartisan advisory council.

It even received a national award from the Education Commission of the States for being the country's most "bold, courageous and non-partisan"education reform of the year, earning praise from Race to the Top reviewers as "trend-setting."

Kasich's first move was to blow it up, throwing districts for a loop and essentially ignoring the good, hard work put into it over three years by earnest people on both sides of the aisle. He took an extra year to develop his own funding formula that was eventually so panned that even his own political party ended up dumping it in favor of a kind of altered Building Blocks formula -- the same quasi-formula we have today.

Property Tax Rollback

In the 1970s, when Ohio passed its income tax, part of the deal to get that passed was the state said it would use some of the money to essentially pick up 12.5% of the property tax that was being paid for schools and other local community agencies.

In 2013, Kasich eliminated the rollback for future new money levies that are passed, essentially raising property taxes on all future school levies by 14.3% (a $12.50 increase on every $100 is 14.3% of the $87.50 that taxpayers would have paid). 

In all these instances, Kasich simply undid sometimes decades-long agreements between the state and public schools that kept their finances in order. And it's not like he is replacing the money. He's simply saying, "Deal with it whiners."

But I cannot abide Kasich claiming that the TPP is restoring his formula to its pure form. First of all, the state's funding formula isn't his -- it's the legislature's because they dumped his. Second of all, the TPP reimbursement payments were never a part of any formula. They were supplemental payments to make up for lost local revenue that the state promised to would replace some day.

Until John Kasich came along and reneged on that promise. 

When Strickland took office in 2007, he kept the tax package from his predecessor -- a tax package I know he didn't like, but he recognized that the people of Ohio deserved some policy stability beyond political parties. Yes, it was also for political reasons, but it did bring stability.

Kasich, on the other hand, just didn't care that people gave up their lives for three years developing a funding formula, nor did he care that districts had been promised things by his Republican predecessors, nor did he care that he wasn't replacing any of this revenue he was cutting.

He just did it, then blamed districts for not preparing for the state to go back on its word after sometimes decades of keeping it.

I don't know if the havoc Kasich has wrought on Ohio education finance will ever be repaired. Will districts ever trust what the state tells them again? Will the state ever make any more promises that they can possibly be held to beyond the elected lives of these officials?

Part of the deal when you're an elected leader is to respect, understand and work with the precedents that came before you. Yes, even ones you don't like. The people have to deal with your decisions far beyond your stay in office, just as they have had to deal with decisions made long before you ever took office. It is a solemn and serious charge.

The way Gov. John Kasich has treated past promises makes it seem he thinks the state's history began and will end with him. 

That isn't how leaders think. 

That, my friends, is how my 6-year-old thinks. 

Kasich says A-F Report Card less clear for Charter Schools

Last week, Gov. John Kasich said in his State of the State Address that 

"just because a charter school is not producing great results in grades, it doesn't mean they're failing." 

Huh? The whole reason we went to an A-F system was to tell us exactly that -- which schools and districts were failing and which weren't. Wasn't it? I'm not saying that I agree with this idea, but that was the point, right?

So I went back to Kasich's signing ceremony for the bill that created the state's A-F system.

When Kasich signed HB 555 two years ago, the placard on his signing desk said "Empowering Teachers and Parents for Student Achievement". You can watch his whole ceremony here: http://www.ohiochannel.org/MediaLibrary/Media.aspx?fileId=137961 

Go ahead. Look for the part where he says if schools get Fs, it doesn't mean they're failing. You'll look for a while.

Here's what Kasich said then: 

"We need to speak in clear language that parents can understand... it will let mothers and fathers understand how's it going in reading? How's it going in mathematics? It's going to allow them to see exactly how the school is doing. This is a big deal for our state. Academically."

Now it appears that perhaps that clarity isn't quite as clear for parents of kids in charter schools. Notice he didn't apply that qualification for local school districts, by the way.

Could Kasich's softening on A-F accountability be because Ohio's charter schools do so poorly, especially big campaign donors William Lager (whose Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow is the country's largest for-profit operation and gets all Fs and one D), and David Brennan -- who runs equally struggling schools.

I suppose if you're Kasich, you have to start explaining how you've spoken at graduation ceremonies for schools like ECOT that graduate 35% of their kids -- much lower than even the lowest local public school.

We have a chance to fix Ohio's "debacle" of a charter school sector this year -- a sector that's become a national joke. I've been greatly encouraged by what's come out so far from the legislature. But if the Governor is now saying that the "clarity" brought about by an A-F report card system is less clear for charters than public schools, well, I fear the change our kids desperately need may not happen.

And that's frightening.

Kasich Record: Largest Number of Property Tax Increases. Ever.

As part of this week's return to school for Ohio's 1.8 million schoolchildren, we at Innovation Ohio have posted what amounts to most of the education-related material it's done during the Gov. John Kasich's years.

The material is pretty damning.

However, there is an additional fact that speaks to Gov. Kasich's historic divestment from public education. Because Kasich has committed the smallest share of the state budget for education since 1997, local property taxpayers have seen more property tax increases than any first three years of an Ohio governor's regime on record.

As you can see, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation, property taxpayers in more school districts saw their property tax rates (total gross rate) go up in the first three years of the Kasich administration than at any other comparable time since 1994 -- the earliest record available.

Nearly 1/2 of all Ohio school districts have had to increase their property taxes under this governor. Meanwhile, his predecessor had the lowest number of increases on record. So in three years we've gone from the fewest to the most property tax increases on record -- a greater than 20% increase.

Remember that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that the state needed to rely less, not more on property taxes to pay for schools. As you can see, the exact opposite is occurring under this governor.

Quite a swing.

Quite a record.

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.

OH Turns Corner on Charter Schools?

One of the most important Education Policy developments coming out of this recently passed Ohio biennial budget wasn't even contained in the budget itself. It's contained in the reaction to it.

As I have reported at 10th Period, the budget disproportionately helped poorly performing Charter Schools, especially those of major campaign contributors. In fact, schools run by David Brennan and William Lager received 38% of all the increase to Charter Schools, even though they only have 9% of the schools. In addition, those two major Republican Party financiers (between the two of them, they've given about $1 million since 2008, mostly to legislative and executive branch leaders) received 19% of all the state revenue going to Ohio's Charter Schools.

A growing coalition of high-performing Charter Schools and Charter School quality advocates have had enough, though. And in the Akron Beacon Journal yesterday, they finally spoke up. Take this quote from Greg Harris, Executive Director of Students First Ohio -- the Ohio arm of conservative Education Policy darling Michelle Rhee:

"Harris has only one explanation for how funding would be distributed.

“A lot of times it has to do not with how well your school is performing but how well your lobbyist is paid,” he said.

...

We need to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on [low-performing schools] and, more importantly, we need to stop wasting kids’ lives,” said Greg Harris, a school reform lobbyist and director of the Ohio chapter of Students First, a national advocacy firm that promotes quality school choice.

Harris and other charter-school advocates lobbied Ohio senators a month ago to increase the investment in the state’s highest-performing charter schools.

The charter-school movement was meant to offer better choices for parents, who would invest in the best options by enrolling their children in high-performing schools.

“Twenty years into the [national] charter movement there are no more excuses,” Harris said. “Our funding policies have to be reformed accordingly. And that is not reflected in this [state] budget.”

Financially rewarding the lowest performing schools undermines the entire movement, Harris said.

But that’s what the next two-year state budget would do. 

 Or try this comment from the top-rated group of Charter Schools in the state:

“Not only will high-quality charters not get funding, but low-quality charters could get a boost. That can’t be right. No legislator in their right mind would get behind something like this,” said John Zitzner, president of Friends of Breakthrough Schools, the marketing and fundraising arm for Citizens Academy East and other top-performing charter schools.

I can't emphasize enough how momentous these comments are for the progress of School Choice in Ohio. I can't think of a time in the history of this state where any Charter School advocates have dared suggest that Brennan's ability to benefit from state legislators didn't also benefit those who didn't contribute millions of dollars to politicians. But perhaps enough is enough. Here's how the Beacon story concluded, perhaps nailing down the explanation for this new-found anger within the Charter School community:

The biggest winners in this budget are dropout recovery programs that cater to high school students.

Brennan operates at least 17 such facilities, with two in Summit County and one in Stark. Each of the 2,476 students who attends the centers, most of which are named Life Skills, would bring in an additional $1,438 on average under the proposed budget. That’s a $2.41 million bump, or 10.7 percent of the entire $22.6 increase in basic state aid for Ohio charter schools.

Life Skills serves about 2 percent of the state’s charter-school population.

These Life Skills facilities, like all dropout recovery programs, are also some of the state’s least regulated charter schools. They’ll be the last to receive a grade under the new report card. Academic standards for measuring these schools won’t be determined until the end of next year.

While these programs attempt to educate the most challenging of students, they often have graduation rates in the single digits.

In order to remain open, these dropout recovery programs would only need to improve graduation rates by as little as one percentage point to meet regulations added to the budget by the House.

An amendment later added by the Senate calls for dropout recovery programs to receive “separate report cards that do not include letter grades and are subject to separate closure standards.” 

Exactly. This is how it has always worked for Brennan. The difference is today, even Charter School advocates are fed up with the games. Time will tell whether that's enough to change the conversation in Ohio from one of Choice for Choice's sake to better Choices. As I've said over and over again, in Ohio we could invest heavily only in the high-performing Charter Schools and still have enough money remaining to fund universal pre-school throughout our state.

Even though it seems like this budget is miles away from that outcome, perhaps it's a lot closer than we think. Now it is up to the legislators and Gov. John Kasich to heed these reasonable calls for temperance on the investment in poorly performing Charter Schools. The chart I have inserted below shows the percentage of state funding Ohio's kids who aren't in Charters have lost to Charters since the program's inception. You'll see it's pretty much been a steady increase since 1998, topping out last year at about 6.5%.

That means every child not in an Ohio Charter School loses, on average, 6.5% of their state revenue because Charter Schools remove so much money from school districts. And the vast majority of that money goes from districts that perform better than the Charter School to which they lose the money. Yesterday, that trend may have started to change.

New Report Card: State of State School Overrated

Apparently, Gov. John Kasich's choice of State of the State venue was overrated.

Kasich caused a tizzy when he chose to move the annual speech to Wells Academy in Steubenville, citing how it is doing great things despite budget challenges -- not so subtly suggesting that money doesn't matter as much to academic performance as commitment, vision and innovative adaptability to tough budget times.

However, Ohio's proposed waiver from No Child Left Behind contains a new Report Card system that State Superintendent Stan Heffner claims will give Ohioans a clearer indication of its schools' performance. And under that new system, Wells Academy goes from an A on the report card to a B.

Is this evaluation really more accurate? Or is it the result of a ham-handed evaluation tool that hurts schools like Wells Academy, which overcome demographic challenges to be considered great enough to host an important gubernatorial address?

The new Report Card is based largely on standardized tests, which are tremendously influenced by demographics. Under this new system, a building and district's ratings are even more dependant upon their demographics than the prior system, which was pretty well dependant upon demographics as well.

Note: According to an Excel regression analysis of ODE data on the new system at the district level, demographics (poverty, income, property valuation, teacher salaries, educational attainment levels, etc.) produce an R-squared value of .48 for the new system vs. an R-squared of .45 for the previous system. The closer to 1 (or -1), the stronger the correlation.

This could explain why Wells Academy now rates a B rather than an A because its demographics are not favorable. So if the evaluation system's more dependant on them, Wells will seem less successful under that evaluation. But is Wells, in fact, less successful than the Governor and nearly every other education observer in this state thought? And if the new system made a mistake on Wells, what about the other districts and buildings?

For the issue isn't just at Wells Academy. Of the 3,409 school buildings rated under the old system, more than 77 percent rate worse under the proposed system, according to ODE projections. And that's assuming that the Excellent with Distinction buildings under the old 5-point Report Card, which equates to an A+, would rate the same under the new 4-point system the department's assuming (which doesn't include A+, just an A). So it's probably an even higher percentage.

Only 40 buildings improve, which means that barely 1 percent of buildings were underrated by the old system. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of buildings were overrated. Can that even be possible?

Meanwhile, more than 83 percent of school districts were overrated, while none, that's right, not a single Ohio school district was underrated by the previous system.

I hope folks ask a simple question: "Was the old system that off?"

Roosevelt Elementary in Springfield (right in my backyard here near Akron) was an "Effective" building under the old system, meaning it rated a B. Under the new system, it's an F. Three ISUS Charter Schools in Dayton were rated Excellent under the old system, an A. Under the new, they all get Ds.

Meanwhile, the only schools that actually improve under the new system are 40 schools that improve from Academic Emergency under the old system -- an F, to a D under the new system. No building improved more than one step. And no building rated above an F in the old system improves under the new system.

One would think if you were creating a more accurate system, there would be corrections in both directions, certainly not all in one direction.

Charter Schools' rating changes are interesting. While 83 percent of school districts saw their grade levels drop, only 55 percent of Charters saw them drop (perhaps because more of them rated poorly under the old system and had less room to drop). Meanwhile, 45 percent of Charters stayed the same or improved under the new Report Card, though improvement was relegated to previously failing charters.

One side effect of this is that fewer Charters would be up for closing under the new system, assuming the same standards that applied under the old report card are transferred to the new one.

The performance differences remain stark between Charters and Districts. Only 10 percent of Charters rate B or higher on the new system (nearly 3 in 4 rate D or F), with some of the better thought of Charters slipping from As or A+s under the old system to Bs in the current one, like Wells Academy did on the Traditional side.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of school districts rate B or better on the new report card, with about 10 percent rating D or F.

Despite these clear questions about the new Report Card's methodology, all I really care about is this question: Now what?

What's the state's plan to improve these schools, since the Ohio Constitution and State Supreme Court have found education to be a state responsibility in Ohio? Will cutting more money from the state budget help districts be more innovative? Can the improvement happen with the same amount the state's spending, just with better, more focused programming? Will local taxpayers have to tax themselves at higher rates so districts have the necessary resources to meet the tougher standards certain to come down from the state? Will districts be able to pass levies now when they are considered B and C districts rather than A and B districts?

These are just some of the many questions the state and districts now face.

Again, I would like to see a system that rates districts not so much on their proficiency rates, which are so heavily influence by demographics, but upon their relative success in overcoming those barriers. So, for example, a Performance Index score of 82 may be phenomenal in some districts, but in the wealthier ones, that would be a terrible score. So the district where 82 is great should have that score weighted to account for their greater challenges.

In other words, Wells Academy should take its rightful place as a source of pride for the community and state, not relegated to the above average. It's difficult to understand how one of the best schools in the state is now merely one of the good ones.