Did State Budget Cut Lead to Prisoner Escape?

I know I typically write about education policy here. However, I was moved to write about something else just now. For those who aren't familiar with what happened in Chardon not long ago, T.J. Lane shot up the high school, killing three people, and eventually was convicted of his crimes.

Late last night, he escaped from the Allen County Oakwood Correctional Institution. And here's where I started getting interested. That's because in the most recent state budget, the Allen County and Oakwood prisons consolidated. Let me take the language directly from the Ohio Legislative Service Commission description:

"The Department also plans to consolidate operations of the Allen Correctional Institution and the Oakwood Correctional Facility, which are also adjacent to each other in Allen County. These consolidations will allow the Department to eliminate duplicate functions and create administrative efficiencies. Over the course of the biennium, the approximately 40 staff will be cut from the Department's payroll, and the Department will save an estimated $6 million."

That's right. The facility that held Ohio's most reviled criminal didn't exist prior to Gov. John Kasich deciding to "consolidate" operations -- or lay off 40 staff. All to save $6 million. What's more amazing is the overall budget for institutional operations went up under this budget, from  $1.76 billion to $1.81 billion over the biennium. So it's not like it was done as part of a system wide cost cutting effort. No. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections specifically targeted this facility as a way to wipe out 40 jobs and save a few bucks ($6 million out of $1.81 billion is 3% of the cost).

Is there any way to prove that the decision to consolidate these prisons led to T.J. Lane's prison break? Not really. But I know that eliminating 40 corrections officers probably didn't help.

This is a cautionary tale about cutting budgets. There are consequences. Whether it means students miss out on educational experiences, or one of the country's most notorious mass murders escapes from prison. Budgets matter. Money matters. Cuts matter.

Because, ultimately, educating and protecting people matter. Yes, even more than saving a few bucks when you've got more money than ever.

Ohio Report Card: Urban Schools Face Bigger Challenges, Outperform Charters

In further analyzing the Ohio Report Card data released today, schools in Ohio's Big 8 urban centers (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) scored higher on their performance index score (the closest thing Ohio has to an overall performance assessment at this point) than Charter Schools, despite having substantially higher percentages of children who were economically disadvantaged. A staggering 51% of Big 8 urban buildings have more than 95% of their students designated as economically disadvantaged (the Ohio Department of Education only says buildings have ">95.0" if their economic disadvantaged number is higher than 95%).

So, despite having more than half their buildings with, for all intents and purposes, all their kids economically disadvantaged, Ohio's Big 8 urban buildings actually perform better, on average, than Ohio's Charter Schools, which were originally intended to "save" children from "failing" urban buildings.

I'm not saying I'm happy with the Big 8 results. What I am saying is the Big 8, despite their struggles, are doing better with more challenges than Ohio's Charter Schools. $914 million should buy us taxpayers more, I think.

Building Type	% Economically Disadvantaged Per Building	% of Schools >95% Economically Disadvantaged	Average Performance Index Score
Big 8	86.5%	51.0%	79.08
Charter	81.9%	38.2%	78.058

Ohio Report Card: Ohio Charters Get More Fs than As, Bs, and Cs COMBINED

The Ohio Report Cards are now all out, and the news is worse for Ohio's embattled Charter Schools than it was last year. Charter Schools received more Fs than As, Bs and Cs combined. Their percentage of Fs went up from about 41% last year to nearly 44% this year.

Meanwhile, Ohio's public school districts saw their As jump to the largest percentage and number of grades. This chart shows the breakdown:

As can be seen, Ohio's Charter Schools continue to struggle with their performance, with now nearly 62% of their report card grades registering D or F. Remember that Ohio school districts lost $914 million to these schools last school year.

Will Ohio's policy leaders take note?

New Report Cards: Ohio Districts Get More As Than Any Other Grade

The new Ohio Report Cards came out today. Detailed spreadsheets aren't available until this afternoon, but the initial District Report Cards were released. What they showed is that this year, districts received more As overall than any other grade. Last year, As were the third-largest grade. And the As outdid other grades by a large margin, nearly 3%. Last year, it was a tenths of a percent difference between As, Bs, and Cs.

This year also saw a slight increase in the number of Ds and Fs, but there are still fewer Ds and Fs combined in Ohio's public school districts than there are As, Bs, or Cs singly.

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.

Ohio Charter School Advocates Say More Public Scrutiny is a Bad Idea

For years now, Ohio's charter schools have insisted they are public schools. They bristle when you don't distinguish between "traditional" public schools and public charter schools.

However, in a brief filed August 4 before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education (OCQE) -- the most radically pro-charter advocacy group in the state (whose president, Ron Adler, is actually defending the horrors at Horizon Science Academies) -- argues that considering for-profit and non-profit charter school operators who collect as much as 97% of the taxpayer money sent to charters as "public officials" would irreparably harm kids.

No joke.

What's more is that Chad Readler -- the chairman of the subcommittee examining education policies in the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission -- wrote this, bringing his objectivity on public school funding into clear question.

Here is their whole argument, just so I can't be accused of taking it out of context (though I will add emphasis to spare you having to read the whole thing):

"4. The public official theory would have damaging consequences forcommunity schools.

Holding management companies to be public officials would also have substantial detrimental effects on the operation of community schools in Ohio. If management companies are considered public officials, they unexpectedly would be subjected to a number of additional rules and regulations, posing additional costs and efficiency problems. Management companies would generally be subject to audit by the State Auditor for all of their revenues and expenses.
See R.C. 117.10. Management companies could be open to public records requests regardless of whether the records requested are related to the operation of a public school. See R.C. 149.43. And officers of the companies may be subject to public employee ethics obligations. See generally R.C. 102.01, et seq. 

There are undoubtedly other unforeseen consequences of the trial court's decision as well.

All of these new judicially imposed legal requirements would not only impose new compliance and other regulatory costs on management companies, but they would also change the business model under which management companies have operated in this State (and nationally) for years. 

The proposed rule of law would essentially rewrite the management agreements as public contracts. Inevitably, management companies will need to alter the way they structure their agreements and, ultimately, run their businesses, potentially leading to inefficiencies, if not an undermining of the quality of education available at community schools.

Indeed, the Schools' theory threatens not only the quality of community schools, but also the viability of the entire community school program. The additional costs and responsibilities imposed on management companies as public officials may well dissuade them from offering their services to Ohio public schools. Many new charter schools would never get off the ground without the assistance of a management company, and current schools may be forced to close, if their management companies terminate the relationship. At the very least, declaring management companies to be public officials would upset the carefully balanced statutory scheme that establishes the respective roles of community schools, management companies, and others. The end result is a reduction in school choice in Ohio, with Ohio's schoolchildren the ultimate victims."

I look at this in utter amazement. I want to know simply this: does anyone other than the for-profit management companies think it's bad policy for companies that receive 96% of the money sent to a charter school to have to be subject to public audit, public records, or public ethics laws? Charter school operators have never been accused of not being brazen, but this is amazing.

I know there are responsible charter school advocates who feel these provisions -- holding operators to the same level of public scrutiny as public schools -- are absolutely essential to improving charter school performance. So I won't attribute OCQE's position to the entire sector, but someone in that sector needs to publicly disagree with this position. Like now.

And the "efficiency" argument? Bunk.

White Hat Management (the subject of the lawsuit) receives more state money per pupil than any other for-profit charter school operator (could it be because its founder, David Brennan, has contributed nearly $4 million to Ohio Republicans since the program began?). In fact, the $7,793 per pupil it receives is more than all but 10 of Ohio's 613 school districts receive from the state -- districts that have to comply with all the provisions White Hat and OCQE claims would be a "detriment" to their success.

Oh, and charter schools spend nearly 24% of their money outside the classroom -- the average district only spends 13% outside the classroom. It seems to me that (using OCQE's logic) having more public scrutiny makes schools more efficient, not less so.

And remember that the Stanford Credo study found that Ohio's charter school kids are, on average, a full marking period behind their public school brethren in Math and a third of one in Reading.

So I ask you, would it be so terrible if charter school operators that caused this failure were forced to change the way they've previously done business in Ohio, and to actually be accountable to the taxpayers, whose money they have been eagerly taking with little consequence for 16 years?

Anyone?

More Horizon/Charter Test Questions

After the allegations at Horizon Science Academy's Dayton campus were raised a couple weeks ago, I decided to look at Horizon's other schools to see if there was any evidence of test manipulation, similar to what was alleged to have gone on at Horizon's Dayton campus.

The way I looked at it was to compare the school's Performance Index (PI) score (it's state test results) with its ACT score (it's college entrance scores, which are handled through the College Board). The idea was that the school should score about the same on each. And, in fact, that's what happens in Ohio school districts. The correlation coefficient between a district's PI and ACT results is .79, which by most measures qualifies as a "strong" positive correlation, meaning the higher the PI, the higher the ACT, and vice versa. That .79 is about the same strength of correlation as exists between education level and income, just to give you a sense of scale and strength.

So in Ohio school districts, the state tests and ACT track pretty closely with one another.

Here's the pertinent info from the report I authored for Innovation Ohio:

"According to the latest State Report Card data, Horizon Science Academy Columbus scored a 98.6 on the state’s Performance Index (PI), placing it just below the state average score of 98.9 for all public school districts. The score was the highest of the four Horizon academies we reviewed. However, the average ACT score at Horizon Columbus was just 17, placing the students who took the test near the bottom in the 28th percentile."

Adding complication to the Horizon Columbus issue is that they are a National Blue Ribbon Award winning school. The Blue Ribbon school program was started in 1982 and recognizes the top performing schools in the country. The issue is that the award is based on test scores. If Horizon Science Academy Columbus fudged their scores, as is being alleged in Dayton and which their comparative test data suggest may be happening in Columbus, what does that do to the award?

And to go one step further, in Ohio's Charter Schools, those two data points are decidedly less strongly correlated, with a coefficient of .41. (The closer to 1 the correlation, the stronger the relationship) There remains a positive correlation, it's just much weaker in Ohio's Charter Schools. To be fair, there are only 18 of 281 Charter Schools on the Ohio report card that report having ACT scores, while all 612 school districts do. So with fewer datapoints, the Charter School data is more susceptible to being influenced by extreme examples.

However, Charters are all over the place on the two scores. Take the Arts and College Preparatory Academy in Franklin County. Their PI of 108.3 rivals the best Ohio school districts. Yet their 19 average ACT score (41st percentile nationally) is about 5 points lower than the 23.9 average ACT for the 10 school districts whose PI scores are between 108 and 109. The lowest district ACT score was 21 (55th percentile), the highest average ACT was 26 (84th percentile).

There were 543 school districts that scored better than Arts and College Prep on the average ACT, yet only 21 school districts scored higher on the PI. However, remove Arts and College Prep, and the correlation in Ohio's Charter Schools jumps to .46. Still not as strong as OHio's traditional public schools, but still stronger. And you can see what an influence extremes can have when you have fewer data points.

However, now that Auditor of State David Yost will be looking into the test disparities in the Horizon Columbus school as a result of our report, will he expand that to the other Charter Schools whose disparities are so striking?

As I made clear in our report, test disparity does not prove any funny business. But it sure merits examination by state regulators. And that should include traditional public schools too, by the way. However, the overall trend in traditional schools' scores suggests less funny business than the overall trend in Ohio's Charter Schools.

So stay tuned.