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.

White Hat Exemplifies Ohio Charter Issues

The Akron Beacon Journal is really just blowing the lid off the whole Ohio Charter School scheme, as it was envisioned by those who created it 16 years ago. In its latest installment, the paper speaks with board members at schools run by the infamous White Hat Management.

White Hat Management is run by David Brennan. Since 1998, schools operated by the for-profit White Hat Management have collected $1.07 billion in state revenue. That represents about 15% of all the $7.3 billion that has been sent to Ohio Charter Schools since their inception. White Hat has collected about one out of every seven dollars sent to Ohio Charter Schools. Meanwhile, White Hat Management (mainly through David and Ann Brennan) has sent more than $2.7 million to Republican politicians and campaigns since 1998.

To all my readers outside Ohio, this arrangement is exactly why Ohio's Charter School operations have ended up being a cynical ploy in far too many instances. The core of the issue is this: the for-profit management companies (like White Hat) get 97% of the taxpayer money that's sent to the "non-profit" Charter School, yet neither the State Auditor, nor the Ohio Department of Education can find out how White Hat spends that money.

A recent court case in Columbus ruled that Ohio Charter School Boards can find out how the money was spent, but the public (whose money it is, after all) still cannot. And, oh, by the way, if the for-profit company doesn't like the board nosing through their operations, as the Beacon Journal put it: "state law allows private companies to throw out nonprofit boards that challenge them."

Can folks outside Ohio finally recognize that this is a horrible arrangement in which to try educating kids? Does anyone think, "Yeah, you know I think it's a great idea to have one person collect one out of every 7 taxpayer dollars we spend on this without any way of finding out how that money was ultimately spent, and if folks do get interested, the company can just replace them. Yeah, that'll give kids better educational experiences."

Perhaps this is why White Hat schools are among the very worst performing schools in the state. Life Skills Academies -- White Hat's dropout recovery arm -- graduates an average of about 6.6% of its kids. The average non-Life Skills dropout recovery Charter graduates 27.3% of its kids. The average non-Life Skills Dropout Recovery Charter School has a 53.6% proficiency rate. The average Life Skills? 35.4%. But don't worry, White Hat will be able to keep running their "schools" just fine.

That's because in the state's new Dropout Recovery "standards", a huge exception was granted for Dropout Recovery Schools. If their graduation and proficiency rates improve by 10% a year for two years, they get to remain open. So Life Skills just needs to improve their graduation rate to 8% and their proficiency rate to about 42%, they can stay open. Want some real outrage? Look at Life Skills Columbus North. Their proficiency rate is 8% and their graduation rate is 6%. So if they improve to about a 10% proficiency rate and a little more than 7% graduation rate, they be considered to "meet standards" by the state.

Does anyone think that a school that graduates 7% of its kids, barely 10% of whom are proficient, is really educating anyone?

Do you see now, dear non-Ohio reader, why Ohio Charter Schools are generally such a disaster?

It is frankly a miracle that any Charters in Ohio are successful. But there are a few that do actually provide excellent educational experiences for children. However, far, far, far fewer taxpayer dollars find their way into these schools' coffers. Meanwhile, Mr. Brennan has received one third as much taxpayer money as Delaware spends statewide in a year.

And the taxpayers whose money it is cannot even find out how that money has been spent.

Because the state made it that way.

Why Ohio Charter Schools are Different

Whenever I talk about Charter Schools with people outside Ohio, they always ask me why I'm so "anti-charter." The truth is, I'm not. I just think that the way many of Ohio's Charter Schools operate is so cynical that Ohio's Charter School laws must be changed. Now.

The Akron Beacon Journal today published the first of what promises to be a significant series of reports detailing just how outside the frame the vast majority of these schools operate. Remember that nearly $900 million in taxpayer money is going to these Charter Schools. That's our money. Yours. Mine. The same money that would otherwise have gone to our local public schools.

Now it is true that sometimes it's tough to get information out of traditional public schools. As a former reporter, I remember many rounds I'd go with districts about whether I could get information. But I never remember failing to receive this kind of information:

• Who runs the building?
• Who is that person's supervisor?
• Who is the management company in charge?
• How does one contact the school board?
• When does the board meet?

Only 1 in 4 Ohio Charter Schools answered these five basic questions. That's right. Only 1 in 4 Charters told members of the public, who pay $900 million a year for these schools, when the school board meets. And these schools are called "public schools" throughout the Ohio Revised Code. Perhaps this is why courts around the country are finding that Charter Schools aren't actually public schools? Because they act like private schools? 

Look, Ohio taxpayers fork over $900 million a year for Charter Schools. They deserve to know how that money is being spent. Because they would be able to find the answers to these five questions on every single traditional public school website. You wouldn't have to set up phone banks to find out the answers to these basic five questions, the way the Akron Beacon Journal did for Charters.

Can you imagine if the Beacon called Akron Public Schools and they refused to tell them who the Superintendent was, or when the board met, or how to contact the board? I mean, that is just beyond imagination, right? But Charters, we are told, are just as public a school as APS. So why do they operate under such a shadow?

Ohio's Charter School system is a disaster. It needs serious overhaul. 

Ohio's Charter Schools take far more kids from school districts that outperform the Charter than the other way round. They spend nearly 3 times as much on administration than the average school district. They spend more per pupil  overall than traditional school districts. And because the state pays about twice as much per pupil for the typical Charter School kid than the typical traditional public school kid, kids not in Charters get several hundred dollars less in state revenue than the state says they need. So what's the bottom line for Ohio's Charter Schools in comparison with traditional public schools, overall?

1. They perform far worse academically
2. They cost the state far more
3. They spend more per pupil
4. They spend far more on administration
5. They are far less transparent

Can Charter Schools work in Ohio? I simply don't know. That's because Ohio's Charter School law has been cynically put together over the years, not designed to really improve educational opportunities for kids. There are a few examples of Ohio Charter Schools that perform the way we were told they would -- as incubators of innovation that can provide needed opportunities for kids who may not be able to receive those experiences otherwise. 

But the fact that only a couple handfuls of Ohio Charter Schools fit this description, while the remaining 350 or so Charter Schools do not, proves to me that the system was never designed to grow these high-performing Charter Schools. 

All I can conclude is it was designed to allow the poor performers to thrive. 

Why? 

Because they do. 

And they do so largely in the dark.

I hope people around the country take note of Ohio's issues. They are unique, deeply entrenched and will be very difficult to change. 

But I'm hopeful they will because I know there are folks around Ohio's education community, regardless of school type or political stripe, who recognize how desperate is Ohio's need for reform. Perhaps what Ohio needs is a "Network" moment about Charter Schools.

So who will be Ohio's Howard Beale?

RtT Report: Ohio's 3rd Grade Unfunded Mandate a Significant Challenge

Ever since Ohio won its $400 million Race to the Top (RttT) grant in 2010 -- about a year before the current regime took office -- the federal government has generated annual progress reports. This year's just came out today.

Nothing in Ohio's progress report was particularly noteworthy as excellent, unlike other states' (only Ohio's inability to get district buy-in on equitable distribution of teachers caught EdWeek's eye). However, I noticed something interesting on page 4 of the report. Here's how it reads under the overall "Challenges" section:

Legislative changes throughout Year 3, including changes to the Third Grade Reading Guarantee and modifications to State requirements for the student growth component of educator evaluation ratings, posed significant communication and implementation challenges for the State.

 As you, dear reader, know, the Third Grade Reading Guarantee in Ohio has been one of the hallmarks of Gov. John Kasich's plan for education reform. And it sounds good, right? I mean, who doesn't think that all kids should be reading by the end of Third Grade?

Well, instead of investing about $1 billion in the initiative during the preliminary phase, as Florida did when it instituted the guarantee in 2002 (during a recession, I might add), which put reading coaches in every K-3 classroom in the state, Ohio put $13 million into it during the first year. That amount, even House Education Chairman Gerald Stebelton agreed, was "inadequate."

In Gov. John Kasich's new school funding formula, there is about $100 million a year earmarked for early reading. However, because the state now includes several line items in the formula that used to be on top of the formula amount, that $100 million is, in effect, much less.

There is little doubt, though -- even assuming the full amount set aside is spent on early reading -- that the investment in ensuring student success is much less in Ohio than it was in Florida, which still has kids repeating Third Grade, by the way. However, that number has been cut in about half since the initiative began.

By the way, there remain serious questions about whether retaining kids will actually hurt them in the long run, leading to higher dropout rates and other serious consequences.

Irrespective of that, though, what the RttT report demonstrates pretty clearly is that the current leadership's decision to implement one of the most potentially onerous unfunded mandates ever thrust upon school districts (estimates place the number at nearly 20,000 Third Graders being retained ) poses significant challenges to districts that are already struggling with significantly fewer resources than they had two biennia ago, as well as significantly more money going out the door to less successful charter schools and, increasingly, private schools.

So there is more required of schools, and far fewer resources with which to accomplish those very laudable requirements. If even federal program reviewers recognize the enormous challenges these unfunded state mandates pose to Ohio's educational system, I hope that Ohio's leaders recognize the potential issue they have created as well. That way they can actually fund the initiative so it has a reasonable chance of success, or do a phased-in implementation to allow the program to grow slowly into success.

Otherwise, I fear all lawmakers have done is set up schools and, more importantly, children for failure.

Ohio School Districts Get By With Same State Aid as They Got 12 Years Ago

One aspect of school funding that has always driven school districts crazy has been the fact that the state tells them they're getting a certain amount of state support, but the amount of state support districts end up getting is often far less.

How can this be so? Simple. School Choice programs. And as these School Choice programs have increased in size and scope, the relative amount of state money going to the school districts for which the money was originally designated (and districts were told to expect) has also dropped. 

Significantly.

In the 1998-1999 school year, when the only real school choice option was open enrollment because Charter Schools and Vouchers were in their infancy, districts received 98.4% of the funding the state said they needed.

In this school year (2013-2014), that number has dipped to 82.7% -- an amount essentially unchanged from last school year. In fact, the percentage has been dropping every year except one -- 2010 when the percentage increased by .4%, and this year's .1% bump.

Today, school districts receive at the end of the day about the same amount of money they received in the 2002-2003 school year. Last year was the lowest amount since the 2001-2002 school year.

And the difference is even more striking when accounting for inflation. The three lowest net foundation payments on record occurred during the last three school years under Gov. John Kasich's two recent state budgets.

If the state had kept pace with inflation since the school year during which the last Ohio Supreme Court school funding ruling was made (2002-2003), there would be $1.5 billion more going to Ohio's school districts. Instead, they are receiving 21.2% less than that inflationary increase.

This is the result for more than $1 billion annually going out the door to Charter Schools and Vouchers, the vast majority of which perform far worse than the public school districts.

It is time to examine the quality of these programs that have left school districts operating with essentially the same revenue they had 12 years ago.

As the state continues to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into "solutions" that have provided no better results and children in traditional schools with far less revenue with which to succeed, it is imperative that state leaders take a hard look at these programs' efficacy. 

For what matters is what works for kids, not what works for the adults. 

Source: Ohio Department of Education SF-3, PASS, Bridge and SFPR Reports. FY2014 Report based on March #1 Payment.

Study: Teaching has one of Worst ROIs of Any College Degree

For some, teachers are paid too much. The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Studies has made its name by publishing teacher salaries for years. Heck, even I have used their salary database from time to time. During the Senate Bill 5 fight in 2011, much of the argument from that bill's proponents consisted of proving that public workers are living high on the hog.

However, there were more than a few of us who looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics data for Ohio and found that the vast majority of its teachers weren't exactly living on Easy Street.

Now comes a study from Salary.com -- an imprint of IBM. What they found was that teaching has the sixth-worst return on investment of any college degree. Here's what they say:

Ah teaching. One of the noblest professions. And while it stands to reason we'd pay great sums to the chosen few who shape the minds of future generations, it doesn't quite work out that way.

What the study found was that the average elementary and high school teacher in this country will only receive about an 85% return on their college investment, if they attend a public university. If they attended a private college, that return will be as little as 24%.

There are many in the education policy and reform community on all sides of the debate who believe that teachers need significant pay increases. How those different people want to achieve that salary hike diverges, though. There are those who say we should pay only the best teachers like rock stars. However, without any additional revenue, that will mean driving down the pay for the vast majority of teachers.

Teacher pay is an intensely debated issue that needs addressed. I agree with Secretary Arne Duncan that we need to pay teachers like we pay doctors and lawyers. Teachers in other countries receive huge sums of money and entrance into the profession is highly coveted and competitive. Not surprisingly, student performance is among the highest in these countries.

However, moving toward higher teacher salaries requires more investment in education by state, local and federal governments. And right now, I am not seeing a huge push to infuse school coffers to the point that young men and women who choose our country's most important profession will receive a better return on investment than 25-85%.

Until we make teaching a highly regarded and compensated profession, we may continue to struggle to attract the best and brightest of our youth into the profession. So much of what we need to do in the classroom hinges on the quality of the classroom leader. As a parent, I want that leader to be someone who had to fight to be a teacher just as hard as someone who fought to be a doctor.