IO Exposes How Ohio's Charter Funding System Hurts Kids

Innovation Ohio has released a report that details how the way Charter Schools are funded in Ohio has hurt kids both in Charters and in the schools that lose children and money to Charters.

As I've said many times before, I'm not against Charters. I do not like how they're funded in Ohio. And I don't like how poorly they've performed overall.

It is unfair that 90% of the money going to Charter Schools that are rated in Ohio go from better performing school districts to poorer performing Charter Schools on the Performance Index. Or that every kid in this state not in a Charter receives $235 less in state aid because of how Charter Schools are funded.

We must fix this. For all our kids.

Further Exploring Kasich Plan's Fatal Flaw

In an earlier post, I tried to explain how flawed it is for Gov. John Kasich to bet his education plan on per pupil valuation. I thought explaining how it would take 191 years for folks in Noble County to catch up to Olentangy's capacity to raise a mill of revenue, if Noble County continued growing its property wealth at 66% every five years.

Yet today in the Ohio House of Representatives, Kasich's Education Funding Czar Barbara Mattei-Smith called Olentangy "Property Poor". That's right. A district that raises $3.2 million on a mill is property poor, according to Mattei-Smith. That's why a district as property wealthy as Noble (which raises $125,000 on a mill) should sacrifice state funds so kids in Olentangy can get over 320% increases. Or so went the argument.

Since apparently I was unable to make my case effectively with the 191 year thing, here are two charts. The first shows the difference between Olentangy and Noble's per pupil valuation, which is what Kasich is trying to "equalize" (and not very well at that). The second is a graphic showing the difference between Olentangy and Noble's ability to raise money on one mill of property tax.

Which do you think, dear reader, best describes the property wealth disparity in this state?

I'll let you decide.

White Hat Associate Now Ohio House Ed Policy Aide

Last week, when I attended a House hearing on education funding, I picked up information that Colleen Grady, who was a State Rep for about 2 months in 2008, was now the Education Policy Aide for House Republicans who was setting up all these hearings.

I didn't think much of this, until I re-read the story the Columbus Dispatch wrote last year detailing how cozy House Republicans are with David Brennan, the notorious owner of White Hat Management and the single largest donor to Ohio Republicans over the last decade. The head of White Hat is Thomas Needles, who was Gov. George Voinovich's Education Czar who turned his work creating Charter Schools under Voinovich into a lucrative career serving as Mr. Brennan's right hand man within days of leaving Voinovich's administration in 1998.

House staff members ran a number of charter-school-related amendments by Brennan's lobbyists. On April 19, nine days before the initial House budget changes were unveiled, lobbyist (and Needles associate) Colleen Grady sent Lisa Valentine, the top education policy adviser for the House Republicans, her opinion of 11 different amendments. Among the responses:

"Definitely no. Operators would object vigorously. Looks like more breakthrough schools stuff," she wrote, referring to a group of Cleveland-area charter schools. (Note: The Breakthrough Schools are among the finest Charter Schools the state has, by the way.)

"This one is good."

"Thank you. This is great."

"Might be nice to delete the Senate amendment starting at line 307. We could fix what they messed up."

So Brennan has been able to put one of his own as a top policy person in the Ohio House, less than one year after his cozy relationship with the Ohio House caused such a furor that even Charter School advocates blushed. Here's what Terry Ryan of the Fordham Institute said of Brennan's changes to Charter School oversight in last year's budget:

"What (the House) is proposing isn't a charter school. It's a corporate, private school, and the state simply funds it," Ryan said.

Then, I looked at Grady's LinkedIn profile and discovered she has been on staff with the Ohio Republican House Caucus since April, confirming the information I was told last week.

Grady has done work around Columbus since her 2008 defeat by Matt Patten for various education policy shops, including Fordham and even on her own, penning a report with the Ohio Association for Gifted Children (a group that gave me their service award in 2009) last year. That report basically said that excellence was too easy for schools to achieve in Ohio because how could a school be excellent if it wasn't serving every child?

I think that's a good question, actually.

However, the report did not mention that despite this supposedly "easy" school rating system, nearly half of all Charter Schools rate D or F on the report card. The Grady-OAGC report, I think, gave the Ohio Department of Education and others who have been complaining about how well public schools rate the ammunition to develop House Bill 555, whose most recent simulation indicates that as many as 85% of school districts were overrated by the prior system.

After the Grady Report, no one would bat an eyelash at that result, depsite its highly dubious outcome. However, if more schools are poorly rated, more districts would be opened up for Charters and Vouchers, further draining money from local school districts, who then must pass more levies to make up the difference.

Remember that every child in Ohio who does not attend a Charter School receives 6.5% less state revenue because of how Charter Schools are funded in this state.

The development is troubling because Grady, judging from the earlier Dispatch story, is hostile toward Breakthrough Schools, but is supportive of David Brennan's schools. Again, the Breakthrough Schools are among the finest Charters (or any schools, for that matter) in the state. Their excellent track record is, in many ways, what gave comfort to some people about allowing local revenue to go to the Cleveland Charters because Breakthrough would be getting the money, not the shadier Charter outfits. If Brennan's schools are able to get local revenue in next year's budget (which I'm sure will be attempted), he can actually thank Breakthrough for setting the precedent.

Ohio's trouble is not Breakthrough; it's that not enough Charters here resemble Breakthrough. Too many resemble Brennan's Life Skills centers -- a dropout recovery school operation which graduates 11% of its kids on average. The average of the state's other Charter dropout recovery schools is more than four times that.The dropout recovery standards currently in House Bill 555 (about 7 years after they were first ordered by the General Assembly) would allow dropout recovery schools to remain open as long as they improve by 10% per year (for at least 2 consecutive years) their graduation rates and percentage of kids who pass all high school testing before they are 22 years old. In Life Skills' case, that would entail about a 1% increase in graduation rates. So Life Skills would have about 20 years or so to catch up to the average Charter School dropout recovery program, assuming the law remains in place that long.

If the House's top education policy person is as hostile to some of the best Charter Schools in this state as her previous work indicates, it throws a wet blanket on the positive statements made last week by Students First about how Charters and Traditional Public Schools should be held to the same standards.

Amstutz Delivers

I have to admit something. When Ohio House Finance Chairman Ron Amstutz announced earlier this year that he would be heading up a committee that would hear testimony about how to develop a new school funding formula, I was extremely skeptical. I know Amstutz a little bit. He gave my farewell speech from his side of the aisle when I left the House (much to his enjoyment, I imagine).

I've always known him to be a good, trustworthy guy. But I figured his leadership team wouldn't let him hold the hearings, especially close to an election, allowing people all over the state to remind everyone about the $1.8 billion in education cuts Amstutz passed through the General Assembly last year.

But I was wrong. Amstutz has held hearings. They have been more scripted than ones I held during the House Bill 1 debate in 2009. But that's a matter of style, not necessarily substance. I like letting people talk and speak their mind, even if it means I have to stick around for hours and hours. Amstutz, being, shall we say, wiser, prefers succinct expedience.

From one former journalist to another, I have to say that Amstutz has delivered a substantive series of hearings. Yes, they have been overwhelmingly dominated by one side of the argument. There has been no real counterpoint to the Eric Hanusheks, Rick Hesses, and other conservative education reformers, which would have really given the hearings much needed balance. During the House bill 1 debates, the conservatives would not testify before my committee, except for Terry Ryan from Fordham Institute, even though I invited them to do so. Paul Hill, from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, met with me in my office and spent about an hour eviscerated my work on the EBM. But ultimately, Mr. Hill, like the others, chose instead to testify publicly only in the Senate.

Yes, there have been several extremely misleading pieces of testimony during Amstutz's hearings, especially from former Ohio Department of Education official Paolo DeMaria about how Charter School funding works. But you know what? It's been done in public and Amstutz has not been afraid to stick his neck out there.

As the only one in this state who can really relate to Amstutz's current responsibility of overhauling a school funding system, I applaud his willingness to face the scrutiny like an adult. I really respect him for it, though I strongly disagree with much of what's been put forward at these hearings.

I think Amstutz really wants to get this right. I think he is a grownup in the room, especially about being sensitive to the number of property tax levies state budget cuts have caused. However, I also know his leadership team and their feelings toward public education. I hope Chairman Amstutz's methodical, thoughtful approach wins out next year as the new funding system is shaped.

Again, I find myself extremely skeptical.

However, Ron Amstutz has surprised me before.

Perhaps he will again.

National Charter Group Praises HB 1

I read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers wants Ohio and the nation to follow the lead of former Gov. Ted Strickland through 2009's House Bill 1: Shut down bad operators.

NACSA said this was the first time it had called for such state laws, praising Ohio as an example of what happens when state legislators impose greater accountability. It said Ohio shut down 19 poor-performing charters after tougher laws in 2008 and last year.

I'm trying to figure out where exactly the tougher laws were passed in last year's HB 153, especially since the Ohio House let David Brennan literally write the Charter School law. Perhaps it's the fact that the current General Assembly didn't revert back to more lax closure standards?

No matter.

What the national organization is doing is once again demonstrating for all of us here in Ohio that the environment over Charter Schools is vastly different outside Ohio than here. Outside Ohio, Charter School advocates are calling to drum out poor performers so the good ones can thrive. In Ohio, choice for choice's sake, regardless of how good the choice is, is lauded. I have said on the House floor and in other venues that we should fight for better choices, not more bad choices.

Or, as NACSA put it:

...Bad charters give good charter schools a bad name. NACSA said that, nationally, 900 to 1,300 charter schools now rank in the lowest 15 percent of schools in their states, holding back high-end charters and impeding overall public-education reform.

I have long stated that Ohio's Charter School experience has been so corrupted by political ambition that it is nearly impossible to judge how Charters are working in Ohio. They simply weren't set up as a true reform measure; they were devised as a political wedge -- something unique to Ohio.

One of the measures in HB 1, which I helped shape in the Ohio General Assembly, was a provision that made it easier to close down poorly performing Charter Schools. I wanted to do more, frankly. Currently, every Ohio child loses 6.5% of his or her state revenue to the Charter School funding system.

I wanted to potentially see more money go to good Charter Schools (in Ohio, that's not a ton) at the expense of these poor performers (in Ohio, that is a ton). I always felt you could have far more effective Charter School system with far less money being drained from Ohio's traditional public schools if the state would take the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on bad Charter Schools, put a chunk of that into good Charter Schools, and put the rest back into the traditional public schools that are frankly cleaning most Ohio Charter Schools' clocks on performance.

If you took the 23 Charter Schools in this state that performed better than the average district Performance Index Score on the latest report card (again, there are more than 300 Charter Schools in Ohio), and added all the state money together that goes to them, it's about $50 million. Again, the state spent $771 million last year on Charter Schools. So you could probably reduce the program to $200 million, only fund really cracker jack programs that work collaboratively and cooperatively with local school districts, and provide instant property tax relief of more than 2 mills to the average school district's taxpayers.

And you could do it without raising taxes. You do it by raising standards.

However, Ohio's Charter School establishment was dead set against closing any Charters for any reason in 2009. And that was primarily because of the political power Charters have wielded for years. So we settled for making it a bit easier to close Charter Schools that were the worst of the worst. At the time, about half of all Charter Schools rated the equivalent of D or F on the state's report card, so you can imagine what the worst of the worst would be. Today the D or F rate is about 40%, thanks in no small measure to the tougher closure standards

In any case, I'm glad Ohio's being singled out for strength on this issue (for once). I hope the General Assembly takes note and builds upon Ohio's leadership role here. We'll see.

EdWeek Column Re-Print, Expanded Version

Last week, a column of mine ran with three other education policy experts in EdWeek. However, while the EdWeek editors did a fine job boiling down my column (and my colleagues'), I wanted to provide you the expanded version, which did not appear in EdWeek. But it will appear here. You should also remember that I wrote this prior to the Chicago strike being settled, in case the timeline in it confuses you. For those who are interested, I have also linked to my fellow authors' expanded versions on their websites at the bottom of the column.

The Fast and the Furious

By: Stephen Dyer

"I look at the Chicago Teachers Strike and really feel bad for Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago’s teachers and especially the kids of that great, proud city. I only lived in Chicago for a year, but it was the first place I ever fell in love with.

While the strike is a terrible thing for everyone involved, I think if folks in Chicago had taken a lesson from our experience in Ohio, especially on teacher compensation, it could have been avoided.

In 2009, I was the lead legislator on a comprehensive, statewide education reform plan that dealt with teacher compensation, accountability and a brand-new school funding system. It earned the 2010 Frank Newman award from the Education Commission of the States for being the country’s most bold, innovative and non-partisan education reform of 2009.

I learned much during the development of that plan. But most importantly, I learned that many well-meaning education reformers make three basic mistakes that lead to all kinds of headaches when trying to implement the reform.

Many reformers move too fast, too unilaterally and too confidently. As a result, they alienate people who could be their greatest allies: Teachers.

If teachers buy in to what you are doing as a reformer, it enhances the reform rather than weakens it – a claim many reformers have made to me over the years. Cleveland reformers didn’t even engage its teachers on that city’s recent reform plan until after they introduced it to the non-profit and business communities. Somehow, teachers unions are seen as the roadblock to reform, despite the fact that the centerpiece of most reformers’ efforts – Charter Schools – came from a teachers union.

In 2009, Ohio took a different approach. We gave teachers a broad framework in which to develop a new evaluation system, but it was they who developed the details. The plan they developed even had test scores count up to 50% of a teacher’s evaluation.

By the way, I’m still not sold on using tests that were designed to measure the level of student knowledge to also measure teacher excellence.  There are evaluation tools that do this, like observation and peer-review, but a student test is not one of them. Yet.

While certainly some of a child’s test success can be attributed to teaching, much can also be attributed to demographics. I analyzed Ohio test data and found that I could predict test scores in nearly 3 out of 4 school districts based on a few demographic measures like poverty and education attainment levels of parents. Others also have demonstrated that demographics or any one of a host of other issues other than teaching impact these scores.

Does this mean that the test scores of their students should not be considered in the evaluation? No. Does it mean we maybe should use sophisticated statistical analysis to try to control for demographics when calculating test scores so we find the true value of those results? Yes. We’ll find examples (as I did in Ohio) of children doing less well than their demographics indicate they should be doing, and we’ll find examples of students soaring in some of the most traditionally ridiculed districts.

Many teachers, and even their unions, have bought into the idea that test scores should count for something, just not everything. And this brings me back to the mistakes many well-meaning reformers make: moving too fast, too unilaterally and to confidently.

If reformers listen to teachers and seriously include them in the discussion over the change in their profession, they can become the reformers’ greatest allies – look at Denver’s experience. In Ohio, the statewide teachers unions bought into the teacher compensation system that they helped developed, and as a result it is serving as a blueprint around the state.

But this buy in won’t be instant. The state’s Educator Standards Board (made up of teachers and administrators) took about 2 years to develop the standards, but the result was an incredibly rich, detailed evaluation system that has a real hope of improving the profession.

And because the system was developed with teachers, not dictated to them, the chances of this system being successful rather than resented is much greater. Yet despite all these attributes, some Ohio reformers weren’t satisfied. They wanted teachers to have tests count for “at least” 50% of an evaluation, not “up to” 50%. Which brings me to the issue of reformer confidence.

I am still looking for the peer-reviewed, objective, longitudinal study that demonstrates tying teacher compensation to student outcomes substantially improves those outcomes. The first study done in Tennessee showed zero impact on student outcomes, and they offered up to a 33% bonus for high test scores.

So why the fascination with the “at least” 50% idea?

This allegiance to ideas that may or may not end up working to improve education is perhaps many reformers’ greatest blind spot.

While many reformers seem bent on blaming teachers for the system’s “failures”, nearly all those reformers were taught by a public school teacher how to think creatively and critically enough to want to reform education.

And there are many ideas that peer-reviewed research has shown would have a great chance of working, like smaller classes in early grades, which could increase the likelihood of graduation for kids in poverty by more than 100%.

Many reformers forget that teachers are proud people who want to be great at what they do. Dismissing their ideas, or worse yet, not even entertaining them, is a terrible mistake because it alienates a proud, committed group of people.

Mayor Emmanuel knows how to negotiate. His experience in Congress and the White House should give him the direction to work this out.

Treat it like a budget: resolve what you can now, and on the issues that cannot be resolved today, pledge to work with Chicago’s teachers on workplace and compensation reforms. Set up a commission where teachers have a strong voice. Give them 18-24 months to meet several broad goals on compensation and workplace changes that are based on peer-reviewed, objective research. Then commit to implementing and, most importantly funding those agreements.

While the development of this kind of plan could take longer initially, with the teacher buy in this process promises, the district likely will be farther along in 5 years than it would be if terms were dictated.

Chicago reformers will be surprised just how willing Chicago’s teachers are to be part of the solution. So both sides should end this thing and move forward together."

Here is Dr. Paul Thomas of Furman University's expanded take.

Here is Dr. Andrea Kayne Kaufman's expanded take.

 

I Speak in Cleveland. Car Gets Broken Into.

It's not too often that irony truly enters our lives. Tonight was one of those nights for me.

I was speaking about school funding to a group of folks at a church on Cleveland's east side this evening. After a great night of talking and sharing ideas with one another about how to improve education for folks who have little hope in their lives, I walked out into the parking lot and noticed my car's dome light was on.

I could have hit myself in the head for leaving a door ajar for two hours, I thought. Now I'd need a jump. Then I came around to the driver's side window.

It had been smashed three times, my door opened and my GPS stolen.

I could have been angry, I suppose, though I felt more stupid than anything else. How many stories have I heard about people's cars being broken into for GPS devices?

But then my thoughts turned to the (likely) kid or kids who did this. They weren't born wanting to break into my car in a church parking lot so they could steal a $100 TomTom. Something drove them to it. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe it was an initiation. Maybe it was a desire to have a GPS.

Whatever it was, it was desperation.

There is too much desperation in Cleveland and communities around my state and in my country. Desperate acts from desperate people. This is beyond politics. No tax cut, no program can wipe out this kind of desperation.

The only things that stand a chance are a parent's love and an education.

That's it, my friends.

This is why I fight for states like Ohio to properly fund public education. This is why I rail against the who want to destroy what Alexis de Tocqueville called the "originality of American civilization" -- Public Education.

Because the only hope the kids who broke into my car tonight have lies in Jefferson's dream for Ohio and the rest of America -- the idea that all of us, regardless of where we live, have access to a great public education.

We failed our kids tonight. I failed our children tonight. For when children choose to break into cars parked in church parking lots, that's my problem. It's your problem. It's our problem. We failed these kids.

This is why we must fight, fight, fight, fight to get the funding and services kids like those who broke into my car tonight need. For then, perhaps, their desperation can turn to hope.

And that, my friends, is our greatest gift.

Not the TomTom.