- I complained last week that Ohio’s whiz-bang Straight-A Day – wherein recipients of innovation fund grants got to show off their tech success to legislators and the public – was covered in the Ohio press with a single boring AP piece that included no pictures at all. The folks at Getting Smart have a far more robust round up of the event with lots of cool project details. Nice to see this get coverage via a bigger platform, but seriously, does no one carry a camera anymore? (Getting Smart)
- Evaluation of teachers and classroom practices can take place in lots of ways. Ohio has a new-ish formal process through OTES, but this story is about a “snapshot” style of classroom evaluation in Lorain – a sort of “walk-through diagnostic”. These have been conducted in Lorain middle and high schools for 10 years, says the district superintendent. They are best practices with which he says that principals can “take the pulse” of a classroom and give helpful feedback to both teachers and students to improve the learning environment for everyone. Lorain has been in academic distress and overseen by a distress commission since 2013. And all the adults interviewed hate algebra. Just sayin’. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal)
- We told you last month about the results of a performance audit conducted in Mansfield City Schools. The State Auditor identified $4.7 million in annual savings opportunities. The district is now formally disputing the audit findings, saying they didn’t take into account certain changes in the district both under the district’s control (staff reductions) and not (local charter school closure leads to enrollment – and funding – increase). The auditor’s office and ODE agree that the district was working on changes while they were being evaluated and that the report is a snapshot of a time before most of the changes took place, but let’s hope the good folks at Mansfield schools don’t take this as some sort of victory over “the man” and realize there’s still a funding issue and that the abyss is still out there waiting for them. (Mansfield News Journal)
- Youngstown City Schools – also under academic and fiscal oversight by the state – also needs to do some budget cutting. To the tune of $2 million for next school year. While this piece indicates that the entire $2 million could likely be found by cuts to staff health care, something called a “contract reopener” would be needed in order to even look at such a cut. Instead, closing buildings (“We have a lot of buildings and we just don’t have that many kids.”), eliminating duplicative programming, and privatized busing are all on the table. (Youngstown Vindicator)
- Speaking of busing, the transportation system in Chardon schools is semi-privatized. Drivers, routes, and equipment are overseen by a private company but the drivers are largely employed by the district as union employees. Calling transportation outsourcing a “failed experiment in Ohio,” the local union rep is leading a pre-emptive strike ahead of contract renewal for the bus company and asking for busing to be brought back entirely in-house in Chardon. Of particular issue is a non-union substitute bus driver whose bus ended up in a ditch last month. We’ll keep an eye on this one. (Willoughby News Herald)
RESEARCH BITES 2/24/15 – Thirty years of school funding in the “Big Eight” districts
Media pundits and policymakers are debating school-funding proposals for the next biennium (Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017). However, even as policymakers dig into the weeds on funding policy, it’s also worth keeping the forest in view. They might want to consider the extent to which public funding for schools has increased over the last thirty years. Take a look at the funding levels of Ohio’s “Big Eight” districts, shown in the chart below: They have all increased considerably from 1980 until 2013—some more than doubling in per-student funding. Dayton Public Schools, for instance, spent $7,153 in 1980 but in 2013 spent $14,410 per student. A very large increase! In fact, the funding differences are so big that it makes you wonder about what has driven the increased costs—and whether these additional costs correlate to added educational benefits. (Are urban Ohio students getting a better education today than in 1980? Maybe, maybe not.) Of course, the “Big 8” urban districts might be outliers when it comes to ballooning educational costs over the long haul. Check back on Thursday to see what the cost-changes look like in eight other Ohio school districts.
Chart: Expenditure per student in Ohio’s Big 8 Districts, 1980 and 2013
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Source: Ohio Department of Education, Cupp Reports Note: The 1980 expenditures are adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index.
