The Education Gadfly Weekly

State Senator Tom Roberts Tuesday introduced three bills he said were designed to strengthen transparency and accountability standards in charter schools (S.B. 331, S.B. 332, and S.B. 333). Roberts outlined the bills at a news conference, where he was flanked by representatives of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio School Boards Association, the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, and Buckeye Association of School Administrators.

One bill would extend public-records and public-audit laws to charter-school sponsors and operators and would prohibit charter sponsors from renewing contracts with schools owing money to the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation. A second bill would repeal the requirement that gives community schools the right of first refusal on unused school buildings, while a third bill would require that community schools and public district schools hire teachers using the same teacher-qualification standards. The bill also would require school districts to learn why students, formerly enrolled in charter schools, switch back to district public schools.

The Dayton Democrat, in response to a question from The Gadfly, said it also would be nice to know why students left the district schools for charters in the first place. He said the bill would be changed to reflect that. He also said he does not know how many charter schools may be in arrears for workers compensation payments.

Separately, in the House two bills to entice Ohioans to live in the state's urban areas had hearings recently. House Bill 26 proposes "urban homestead zones" in which residents spending $120,000 or more to purchase or improve property would be eligible for tuition vouchers to send their children to private schools. The Ohio Education Association (OEA) opposed the bill in testimony as they see this as an effort to expand vouchers. The OEA also objects to the bill because it believes property taxes intended to pay for the vouchers would not adequately cover their cost. A separate bill (H.B. 162) would provide an income-tax credit for teachers living and working in a Big Eight district (that is, Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown) and grant an additional tax credit for STEM teachers in those districts.

Other legislation before the House education committee would eliminate the Praxis III as a condition for receiving a professional educator license. Under H.B. 347, beginning in July 2010, eligibility for a professional license would be based on a teacher's rating on an assessment to be approved by the State Board of Education. The assessment would require demonstrated application of Ohio's teaching and academic-content standards. The bill also requires the Ohio Department of Education to develop standards for mentoring programs for new teachers.

The Senate education committee on Tuesday adopted a substitute version of S.B. 57 to establish a state special-education scholarship program for parents of special-education children to send their children to alternative public or private special-education providers. As with the autism scholarship program, parents opting for the special-education voucher would forego certain rights, such as protesting to the state education department if a parent is unhappy with the school's program.

Governor Ted Strickland is gathering ideas from businesses, academics, various interest groups, and even some ordinary Ohioans on K-12 education reform. At a recent regional Northeast Ohio "shareholder" meeting, everything from a single, uniform statewide property tax to making teachers work 12 months a year was suggested.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on some of the ideas:

• Have property owners, statewide, pay a uniform 22-mills school tax instead of the range of taxes set by voters in each school district. 
• Use median income to determine local school taxes or a combination of median income and property valuation to determine the local share. This would affect cities like Cleveland (and presumably all large and medium-sized cities in the state), where the average income of residents may be lower but the number of businesses makes the school district seem wealthier.
• Eliminate the Ohio Graduation Test and base graduation on a combination of ACT test scores, high school grades, a senior project, and a community service project. 
• Create a statewide teacher-pay regime scaled to new, mid-career, and senior teachers. 
• Make teachers work year-round teaching, tutoring, and taking summer and professional development classes.

It's unclear whether the regional meetings are intended to gather real input or whether they are window dressing. But, there is no doubt he is serious about pushing his education agenda, the details of which we still wait to see.

Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher is right. Ohio is engaged in an "economic development arms race" with other states and nations for investment and jobs. But the state is also in an arms race to educate its children to compete successfully with young people in other states and countries. Yet, we are struggling and Ohio, like the rest of the United States, has no chance of winning the economic development race if we don't at least win a silver medal in the education race. This point was hammered home in the highly regarded Achieve, Inc. report Creating a World-Class Education System in Ohio (see here).

Considering the scale of the challenge, it is frustrating that Governor Strickland and his allies in the Statehouse and in the professional education lobby groups seek to kill the state's voucher program outright while freezing charter schools in their tracks.

The governor recently told the Columbus Education Association's Voice newsletter (see here) that, "I believe the court of public opinion regarding vouchers is beginning to change. They're destructive to our students and wasteful of our tax dollars." The governor also challenged charter schools when he referenced his first State of the State address, "I wanted a lull in the for-profit management charter companies and a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools." The governor has promised to veto the Special Education Scholarship Program currently working its way through the Senate.

Comments that vouchers are "destructive" and "wasteful" will no doubt sting many of the philanthropists in Dayton and elsewhere who have invested more than $10 million dollars in the past decade in private vouchers allowing thousands of children in troubled schools to opt out for private schools.

Three words bear repeating from the preceding paragraph: "troubled schools" and "children" and let us hope the governor remembers them. Vouchers aren't for students in any school. They're for children trapped in persistently failing public schools. Bad schools. What does the governor plan for them instead? We actually don't know. We're still waiting on his ideas, which won't be revealed until next March.

The effort to place an ironclad moratorium on charters also will likely surprise community leaders in Columbus who are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and much of their time and personal commitment, to help open high-performing KIPP schools in Columbus in 2008 and beyond. Stopping the growth of decent charter schools also would create a bind for philanthropists and business leaders in Cleveland who are investing millions to help the Cleveland Metropolitan School District partner with high-performing charter models.

Contrast the efforts to curtail choice in Ohio with the efforts of Democrats like D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. Fenty is asking Congress to invest $18 million in the District's Opportunity Scholarship voucher program (see here). In Newark, N.J., Democratic Mayor Cory Booker is working with leading national and Newark-based foundations to raise $25 million to support and strengthen Newark's 12 high-performing public charter schools. The mayor summed the effort up thusly, "I'm not concerned if they are charter or traditional public schools, my concern is that they are schools of excellence" (see here).

When it comes to urban-school reform, thoughtful philanthropists and business leaders are diversifying their investments. They support vouchers, charter schools, and other reforms because they're innovative public-private partnerships that leverage state dollars to create quality school-choice options. Savvy education investors know there is no silver bullet for fixing troubled urban schools. Therefore, they invest in both promising district reform efforts and promising choice efforts. Hundreds of millions have been invested over the past decade in trying to turn around troubled public district schools in America. A few efforts have shown success, many others have not. Millions of private dollars have also been invested in Ohio's charter and choice programs since the late 1990s.

Fordham, for one, has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Dayton-area charter schools. Some are succeeding. Others have struggled and some have closed. This trial and error is the way innovation works. We've learned much and we are now far more selective in what and whom we invest in. We also have supported improvements to the state's charter law that have focused on results and improved accountability.

Now is not the time for state government or Ohio's private investors to turn their backs on school choice. Do we need to work smarter and hold these schools accountable for results? Yes, but giving up on school choice completely would be akin to a unilateral disarmament in the effort to help all children succeed educationally. It would result in putting all of our hopes in fixing what ails public education into the sporadic reform efforts of long-suffering, traditional public schools. In troubled times, investors are smart to diversify their bets.

After months of jockeying with control-freak Governor Ted Strickland, Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Tave Zelman is on her way out, perhaps to the University of Oregon as ed-school dean (see here).

She toughed it out for a while but the handwriting went onto the wall for her once key members of the State Board of Education decided that placating the governor was more important than retaining Dr. Z, as she is known at the Ohio Department of Education. It must also be said that Zelman didn't try very hard to placate him herself, seemingly more determined to demonstrate independence than to make nice with Bob Taft's successor and his agenda. She can, in truth, be ornery, strong-willed, and mercurial, in addition to very bright, boundlessly energetic, and quite creative. But there was no way that a principled educator with her track record could have accommodated the Strickland education agenda, such as it is. Much of it, alas, simply involves seizing control of the system, reorganizing the deck chairs rather than repositioning the ship (see here).

Strickland has recommended changes that Dr. Z could not and should not be expected to stomach, much less preside over. Ohio's standards and accountability system leaves much to be desired -- but the governor's goal is to weaken it, not strengthen it. The state's charter-school and voucher programs also have their flaws -- but the governor's goal is to kill them, not fix them. Indeed, the only way Zelman could, in conscience, have stayed in Columbus was if she retained independent control of the education department. Once that became unrealistic, her fate was sealed. That's a pity. I like her personally, admire her pluck and her ‘what's-good-for-the-kids-not-necessarily-the-grownups orientation' and have enjoyed my various dealings with her. Far more important, Strickland is going to be freer to cripple these vitally important policy domains once she's out of the way. We'll miss you, Dr. Z, and the state owes you a far greater debt of gratitude than it's ever likely to pay.

State Senator Tom Roberts Tuesday introduced three bills he said were designed to strengthen transparency and accountability standards in charter schools (S.B. 331, S.B. 332, and S.B. 333). Roberts outlined the bills at a news conference, where he was flanked by representatives of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio School Boards Association, the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, and Buckeye Association of School Administrators.

One bill would extend public-records and public-audit laws to charter-school sponsors and operators and would prohibit charter sponsors from renewing contracts with schools owing money to the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation. A second bill would repeal the requirement that gives community schools the right of first refusal on unused school buildings, while a third bill would require that community schools and public district schools hire teachers using the same teacher-qualification standards. The bill also would require school districts to learn why students, formerly enrolled in charter schools, switch back to district public schools.

The Dayton Democrat, in response to a question from The Gadfly, said it also would be nice to know why students left the district schools for charters in the first place. He said the bill would be changed to reflect that. He also said he does not know how many charter schools may be in arrears for workers compensation payments.

Separately, in the House two bills to entice Ohioans to live in the state's urban areas had hearings recently. House Bill 26 proposes "urban homestead zones" in which residents spending $120,000 or more to purchase or improve property would be eligible for tuition vouchers to send their children to private schools. The Ohio Education Association (OEA) opposed the bill in testimony as they see this as an effort to expand vouchers. The OEA also objects to the bill because it believes property taxes intended to pay for the vouchers would not adequately cover their cost. A separate bill (H.B. 162) would provide an income-tax credit for teachers living and working in a Big Eight district (that is, Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown) and grant an additional tax credit for STEM teachers in those districts.

Other legislation before the House education committee would eliminate the Praxis III as a condition for receiving a professional educator license. Under H.B. 347, beginning in July 2010, eligibility for a professional license would be based on a teacher's rating on an assessment to be approved by the State Board of Education. The assessment would require demonstrated application of Ohio's teaching and academic-content standards. The bill also requires the Ohio Department of Education to develop standards for mentoring programs for new teachers.

The Senate education committee on Tuesday adopted a substitute version of S.B. 57 to establish a state special-education scholarship program for parents of special-education children to send their children to alternative public or private special-education providers. As with the autism scholarship program, parents opting for the special-education voucher would forego certain rights, such as protesting to the state education department if a parent is unhappy with the school's program.

Governor Ted Strickland is gathering ideas from businesses, academics, various interest groups, and even some ordinary Ohioans on K-12 education reform. At a recent regional Northeast Ohio "shareholder" meeting, everything from a single, uniform statewide property tax to making teachers work 12 months a year was suggested.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on some of the ideas:

• Have property owners, statewide, pay a uniform 22-mills school tax instead of the range of taxes set by voters in each school district. 
• Use median income to determine local school taxes or a combination of median income and property valuation to determine the local share. This would affect cities like Cleveland (and presumably all large and medium-sized cities in the state), where the average income of residents may be lower but the number of businesses makes the school district seem wealthier.
• Eliminate the Ohio Graduation Test and base graduation on a combination of ACT test scores, high school grades, a senior project, and a community service project. 
• Create a statewide teacher-pay regime scaled to new, mid-career, and senior teachers. 
• Make teachers work year-round teaching, tutoring, and taking summer and professional development classes.

It's unclear whether the regional meetings are intended to gather real input or whether they are window dressing. But, there is no doubt he is serious about pushing his education agenda, the details of which we still wait to see.