The REAL state of school funding in Ohio
Monday, February 24, 2014 at 5:00pm, hundreds of Ohio workers gathered before Governor John Kasich’s State of the State address in Medina, Ohio to discuss the Real State of the State. Medina resident, 7th grade teacher, and President of the Medina City Teachers Association, John Leatherman, talked about the effects he’s seen in his own classroom as a result of Kasich’s drastic cuts to public education and the REAL state of school funding Ohio.
My name is John Leatherman. I am a resident of Medina County, a parent of two children who attend public schools, a veteran, a 7th grade history teacher, and the proud president of the Medina City Teachers Association. It is an honor to have this opportunity to speak before you today.
I see the familiar faces of dedicated teachers. I welcome our fellow policemen, firemen, nurses, steelworkers, AFL/CIO members — all labor groups. I welcome the Women’s Caucus, our local churches, and all community members who feel as I do today, concerned about the future of Ohio.
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time to care about families here in Medina County as well as the families all around the State of Ohio. Please give the person next to you a round of applause.
I am here today on behalf of educators. I am here today to talk about the real state of school funding here in Ohio.
In only four years, under Governor Kasich’s “careful planning,” ONE HALF OF ONE BILLION DOLLARS — that’s EIGHT zeros — have been taken from Ohio’s public schools. Our state has never seen these kinds of cuts. These cuts have drastically affected our children.
Across the state, school buildings have been shut down. Long-standing academic programs and courses, that prepare our children for tomorrow’s world, have been eliminated. Entire fleets of busses have been parked or scrapped.
What’s even scarier, these cuts have resulted in fewer school-counselors, the very counselors who are desperately attempting to reach every child in need. And now, because of decisions that are made in an office in Columbus, many good teachers have been let go, all while classroom sizes are skyrocketing.
When does common sense take hold?
When will our Governor realize that his political cuts will continue us on a path that has a very dark end?
In Medina alone, these cuts have taken the jobs of over 20% of our teaching force. Twenty percent! These job cuts, and this unrelenting assault on education, is all by a governor who claims to be a job creator and a champion of education. I know he heard, loud and clear, what happened when he attempted to force through SB5!
Recently Governor Kasich and State School Superintendent Dick Ross discussed plans to “rid the legal hoops in our public schools.” Since this Governor has taken office, he has done nothing but continue to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars from our public schools directly to his friends and campaign contributors in for-profit, low-performing charter schools.
Make no mistake, while families are struggling, and while our children’s education is being compromised, his friends are becoming very wealthy by the very dollars we work for day in and day out.
These charter schools and their investors don’t play by the same rules we do. These schools enjoy huge sums of public dollars with no real financial oversight. These charter schools continue to underperform and yet year after year they rake in the profits.
In 2012, Ohio had 326 charter schools, many of which operate under businesses like White Hat Management. White Hat Management was recently brought before the Ohio Supreme Court for refusing to open their books to the public. Once again, more money funneled and more money lost.
Last year, in Columbus alone, 17 of these for-profit charter schools failed. Those charter schools took our tax dollars, shut their doors on their students, and walked away. Our doors are open. We educate our children. We are here for them.
Not only that, in November of 2013, Ohio online charter schools were cited by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to serve students with disabilities. We serve all students. We are here for them.
Know this: our public school teachers
- are highly qualified,
- have graduated from respected colleges and universities across our state and nation,
- are constantly improving on an ever-changing school curriculum,
- and are, year in and year out, engaged in professional development — much of which is at our own expense.
I know I speak for my colleagues here and across our state. We are a highly professional, very impassioned, and sharply focused group of public school teachers with high expectations for our children.
When it comes to our public schools, I have to borrow a quote from our brothers and sisters at Ford: QUALITY IS JOB ONE!
Charter schools are a business, plain and simple. We’ve seen the business model in education. It doesn’t work!
- We don’t make a product. We create opportunities for future generations.
- We don’t produce widgets. We create community leaders.
- We’re not an assembly line. We create life-long experiences.
In the New York Harbor, it’s scripted on The Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. … I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This speaks directly to the best of our public schools. We don’t refuse any students, rather we embrace them and educate them.
You see, public schools are a melting pot! It’s that dream on which our forefathers founded this country. Yes, that’s us, the public schools.
Governor Kasich’s policies are punishing Ohio’s economy, punishing our families, and punishing our communities. Most importantly, to me, his policies are punishing our students, our children.
His policies have forced us to constantly return to our voters for more and more levy dollars. He put the strain of educating our children squarely on our families.
As the proud president of our association, I have watched many great teachers lose their jobs. We’ve been forced to cut effective programs from all schools, at all levels. Here in Medina, we’ve suffered deep cuts in the areas of Media Specialists, Gifted Teachers, Reading Intervention Teachers, and Guidance Counselors. These devastating cuts are occurring across the state.
In Medina County, we have one school in state financial receivership and another school nearly had to drop to a state minimum of 5-hour, school day. That’s not what schools should be concerned about. Ever.
In a recent story by Stephen Dyer on Jan. 30th, he stated that children in Medina County schools will have 13.7 million dollars less in state revenue in the next two years, that is, as compared to the two years prior to Kasich taking office. Medina City Schools alone saw its funding cut by 4.4 million dollars. That figure grows throughout the state.
The numbers get more staggering. All of this was taken from our county while charter school funding increased! In fact, every Medina County dollar that funded a charter school went to one that performed worse on both the performance index and the state report card.
Statewide, the story is the same. Schools are losing great teachers, programs are being cut, and our kids are getting the short end of the stick. In fact, in Ohio next year, charter schools are slated to receive a 23% increase, which is up $150 million dollars from last year. That totals $887 million dollars — close to ONE BILLION of your tax dollars!
This Governor caters to a very select group in the State of Ohio. He is very much okay with separating the “haves” and “have-nots.” What’s worse, the “have-nots” are increasing at an alarming rate. 31,000 more Ohioans are out of work as compared to last year. In fact, during his first three years, Ohio’s economic recovery has come to a grinding halt. Not only are more Ohioan’s out of work, but they are also making less money under his watch.
This governor went after educators with a nasty piece of legislation called SB-5. You all remember SB-5! Well, when SB-5 arose, so did the citizens of Ohio. Speaking out at rallies like this and taking it to the voters in Ohio is what defeated his landmark start to governing our state. A 20-point loss is not just a loss, it’s a horrific flameout.
So, what we’re doing today is a great, great thing. It’s our constitutional right. Be proud to say you were here. Give yourself a round of applause.
One last thing: for me, it’s about the kids. It always has been about the kids. I didn’t get into teaching to get rich. I became a teacher because I love working with kids. I speak for the 3rd grade teacher who, day in and day out, loves a classroom of 8 and 9 year olds. I speak for the middle school teacher who deals with a special group of children at a bizarre age. I speak for the high school teacher who prepares teenagers for adulthood. It’s what we do; it’s our passion. We just want to provide our young students’ the opportunities they deserve, those opportunities are fast being lost under this Governor’s watch.
This evening I will attend this State of the State address in our public school auditorium. It was a tough decision, one that I didn’t make until just last week. I want to be the person in the audience who represents you. I want to be the person in the audience that when Governor Kasich looks out and sees me, he sees you and thinks of our children. I want to be the person who reminds all of our public officials that we are not silent.
I respect the office of the governor. I respect the offices of our public officials. I learned that from a teacher of mine a long time ago. Respect the office and don’t be afraid to be a voice. It’s the same message that I teach my students. I can only hope that our governor will learn by our example. Give public education, our teachers, and most importantly, our students the very same respect.
Thanks. You have been a great audience.
Anti-Union to Union Activist in just 40 years
My daddy was a Teamster in the 70s when the news was full of stories about the ERA not passing, stagflation of the U.S. economy, and Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance. I didn’t really mind that the big, brash truck driver was a Teamster. It just struck me that unions were a part of everything wrong with the world.
There were a number of news stories on TV about teacher’s unions striking. I really liked school. So when I would read about legislators trying to pass laws that said it was illegal for teachers to strike, I found a lot of validity to the idea.
Fast-forward to 1983, and I had just been hired for my first teaching position in a rural school district in Central Ohio. A fellow staff member stopped by to ask me if I wanted to join the teachers’ union (it was not a “closed shop”). I asked, “Do I have to?” He said, “No, but the union does negotiate for your contract, so there will be a fee from your monthly paycheck for that anyways.”
So I told him, “No thanks.” Visions of striking teachers and Jimmy Hoffa swimming with the fishes flooded my common sense. The not-so-liberal media was awash with unflattering portrayals of the United Auto Workers making cars more expensive by earning more than $15 an hour. Commercials sang out “Look for the union label . . .” in the 1980s to counter the beating that unions were getting in the newspapers.
I accepted my second teaching position in a suburban school district in Southwestern Ohio. I was asked, again, if I wanted to join the union. I passed again. However, it was my third job, at a private school, that brought it home for me. I ended up working there for 11 years, and each year I had 8-11 preps a week. I was the science department for grades 6-12 for awhile. I felt an immense responsibility to my students, but the pay was poor compared to my colleagues in Columbus. When positions opened up in Columbus Public Schools in the late 90s, I interviewed and got in.
My yearly income immediately increased by $14,000 and I had very nice benefits. I was elated to be part of a “closed shop” and making a real living wage, but I still wasn’t a full team player when it came to union meetings and union events.
So, how is it that now I am one of the building reps for my local association? I think it has to do with several chilly afternoons spent on the Ohio Statehouse Grounds next to ASFCME, NEA, and OEA members. When SB5 threatened to make the lives of union members across the state of Ohio difficult, I discovered the power that came with a mobilized work force. I found myself asking how I could help.
I was asked if I wanted to attend an event I had never heard of called “OEA Member Lobby Day”. Karen Andermill told me that I could meet face-to-face with elected officials to discuss SB5. I thought, “I can do that? Wow, count me in.” I went with a group of teachers from CEA and some state representatives refused to even see us! I knew I had to do more.
I volunteered during the summer at the OEA office doing data entry and verifying signatures for the effort to put the issue on the ballot. And to my surprise, it wasn’t at all hard to volunteer. I was making a difference on behalf of my fellow union members. In June of 2011, I was returning home from a stone carving class downtown when I saw 6000 union members deliver 1.3 million signatures in a semi-truck. I was greatly moved because I had helped make that happen.
In the fall, I found myself sitting in the statehouse alongside firefighters and police officers and watching the disdain that some members of the state legislature had for public employees. We were from different unions, but we were unified in our efforts to stop this bill from becoming law.
One afternoon I found myself standing next to an older gentleman wearing an American flag bandana on his head with a ponytail trailing down his back. His sign said, “TEAMSTERS for TEACHERS.” I said to him, “My daddy was a Teamster too.” He smiled and said, “We are all in this together.”
We were, and we won, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other issues to discuss. That’s why I find myself serving on my building committee. Because even the smallest issue needs to be resolved.
By Linda Kennedy, Columbus Education Association
How do you create change?
OEA members are accustomed to advocating for work condition issues, but how do we advocate for professional issues that affect you and your students such as the Third Grade Guarantee?
Advocacy efforts come in all sizes and shapes. Advocacy can begin with a conversation, an editorial, an event, a call, a letter, a song … and the list goes on!
OEA encourages you to share your experiences and efforts to create change in policy, procedure and law.
What have you and your peers done at the building, district, state and national level to advocate for necessary changes in professional issues? What have you found effective or ineffective? Who or what has been your inspiration and motivation?
[quote]Post your ideas, examples and feedback in the comments below and let’s start a conversation about advocacy![/quote]Charter Ghost Schools: Money for Nothing
In fourth grade, I was healthy enough to receive a “Perfect Attendance” certificate, and for me it was a badge of honor. Unfortunately, many private charter school operators don’t seem to care that much about perfect attendance, or the honor associated with it. Attendance fraud for charter schools is a national problem and has been going on for years.
Crackdowns on charter school operators who collect big bucks for students that don’t show up for classes are few and far between. One charter school operator in Philadelphia, Curtis Andrews, was charged with wire fraud for taking $200,000 for students who no longer attended. Eventually he was convicted, received 33 months in prison and had to return the money.
But these cases are the exceptions. In another, more sensational case, an operator from Texas, Donald L. Jones, received $2.9 million for absent students. Yet despite having been convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank fraud, and other offenses related to a mortgage fraud scheme involving forty properties and more than seventy loans, he has never been charged in connection with his charter school activities.
Recent investigations have found that among charter schools nationwide, few operators are charged with anything when they are caught receiving funds for imaginary attendance numbers, and they simply have to return the cash. All too often, the taxpayers are left footing the bill. For example, the state of Florida doled out $25 million to for-profit charter schools during the 2006-2007 school year for nearly 5,125 students who never attended school.
And then there is Ohio. Ohio has some of the worst attendance records for its charter “dropout recovery schools” in the nation. In the 2006-2007 school year, reporters for the Scripps Howard News Service, found that Ohio paid $29.9 million to 47 of these recovery schools for students who never attended. A Life Skills Center campus in Cincinnati held the record in the 2004-2005 school year, where 64% of its enrolled students never showed up for class. The dropout recovery movement, an Ohio concept started in 1998, costs the state around $30 million or more a year for students who never attend school. “It’s a cash cow! We all used to sit around and joke about that,” said Mark Elliott, former principal of the record holding Life Skills Center of Cincinnati. “I spent less than $1 million on a $3 million operation. What the hell are they (executives at his former company) doing with the other $2 million?”
Yet, has anyone been charged with anything in Ohio? The Beacon Journal has questioned David Brennan, operator and founder of the for-profit Life Skills Center dropout recovery schools, as to how he can have more students enrolled in his schools than they can physically hold. The company has stated that due to high rates of absenteeism, they can enroll far more students than is normally possible, and receive payment for every student, even those that never return. The ODE has claimed that they check charters for their accuracy on attendance records, but many former employees said that they were often sent to a student’s home to get an excuse from a parent and any excuse would do. At the end of another 105 hours of absenteeism, which was the time that a student would no longer be enrolled, they would be sent again to get another excuse. I find it outrageous that our lawmakers in Columbus allow this to go on.
Diane Ravitch, education historian and educational policy analyst, refers to these charters as ghost schools, and recently wrote, “27 management companies operate charter schools in Ohio. Of those 27, 19 are for-profit companies. Of the 19 for-profit companies, half of them are out-of-state corporations; hence, they take a Brink’s truckload of school district money out of Ohio in the form of profits each year.” Charter schools, in Ohio, need to be paid for students who actually attend these schools, not for the enrollment of mere names as the law currently permits.
Even though many state legislators act as if these ghost schools are just part of someone’s overactive imagination, they have come to haunt us, and will continue to do so unless someone steps up to the plate. Any ghost busters out there?
By Susan Ridgeway, Wooster Education Association
New Year’s Resolutions For Public Education
First of all, Kudos to Ohio’s Plunderbund investigative journalist, Greg Mild, public school teacher, for his multi-article series exposing the shell games of ECOT’s 100 million dollar salary earning CEO, who only graduates 35% of his students, William Lager. Greg is brilliant!
On to New Year’s Resolutions:
Wouldn’t it be great if tens of thousands of educators, parents and other concerned community members made it their New Year’s resolution to join or start their local, grassroots Public Education group?
That is what IS turning the tide, that is what will ultimately preserve and protect our children, their futures, public education and our teaching profession for this generation and generations to come.
Yes, it would be great to have advocates for public education in Ohio’s State House, as Chiara Duggan suggests in previous comment here.
But, it is tough to get in, because the big money, corporate, for-profit, shell game charter operators are the largest contributors to the GOP. The GOP controls our state legislatures by gerrymandering district lines drastically in favor of candidates for the legislature that will craft laws straight out of the ALEC playbook which funnel our tax dollars to crooked charter school operators like William Lager of ECOT.
As 1 of the 12 public school teachers who ran for the Ohio House of Representatives last cycle, I can personally vouch for the great lengths ECOT founder, William Lager, White Hat founder, David Brennan, Michelle Rhee and other for-profit charter CEOs went to keep teachers OUT of Ohio’s State House.
We ran for the Ohio House, some of us, taking personal leave and giving up a year’s salary, to become advocates and a collective voice, for our children, public education, and our teaching profession.
ECOT’s William Lager, White Hat’s David Brennan, StudentsFirst(Last) Michelle Rhee and the GOP spent 1.5 million dollars in the last 2 weeks of the race against just my campaign, I do not have the total $ spent against all 12 teachers, but rest assured, it is in the millions.
So, what to do? Is all lost?
Do we lose our resolve to restore resources, authenticity and integrity to our public schools, the bedrock of our communities and our democracy?
NO!
Here is what I am convinced will turn the tide… along with following the incredible work being done day in and day out by Diane, Anthony Cody, Greg Mild of Plunderbund, and other bloggers across the country who are giving us resources and ammunition as warriors and patriots for Public Education:
- Join your local grassroots organization for preserving and strengthening our Public Schools, if there isn’t an organization in your area, start one.
- In Ohio, there are 3 active non-partisan groups of engaged community members, planning community wide forums and other action steps to educate the public and expose the for-profit (or non-profit, managed by for-profit) charter scam as well as the dangers of high stakes testing, A – F ranking of schools, evaluating teachers by test scores, etc. There are hundreds of other such groups across the country, you can find them on Diane and Anthony Cody’s Network for Public Education website: http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/
- Here are the Facebook links to Ohio groups:
- Central Ohio Friends of Public Education: https://www.facebook.com/COFPE
- Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education: https://www.facebook.com/NWOFPE
- Join the Diane and Anthony’s Network For Public Education, make a weekly donation of $5 to support candidates for school boards across the country who will fight for public education: http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/
By Maureen Reedy, retired teacher from Upper Arlington schools (reprinted from Diane Ravitch’s blog)
Superman Ain’t Coming
We are in a pickle, my fellow educators. Make no mistake. Our best teachers, our top ten percent, as determined by various criteria including test scores, deceive and manipulate the administration in order to produce the results they’re famous for and preserve their love of the job. But all we’ve done is adapt to a dysfunctional system.
In Star Teacher of Children in Poverty, the late Dr. Martin Haberman studied what those star teachers do in the classroom. Two of his findings are particularly insightful.
He tells us that the best teachers try to protect the learner and the learning process.
Protecting learners and learning refers to making children’s active involvement in productive work more important than curriculum rigidities and even school rules. Effective teachers not only recognize all the ways in which large school organizations impinge on students but find ways to make and keep learning the highest priority.
In other words, the best teachers value student learning more than the rules that govern the school. They know that if they go through proper channels they’ll risk being denied the things they need.
And they know that sometimes the bureaucracy gets in its own way, trips over its own feet. The giant falls, threatening to squish our young wards. Well, this only goes to show that whether it’s tornadoes or a crazed gunman or our own top-heavy administration, teachers get between them and the kids. In the latter case, we pretend to comply with their foolishness, close our classroom doors, and do what’s necessary instead.
It can be exhausting and another of the doctor’s findings regard teacher burnout. One reviewer of Haberman’s work sums it up this way:
Star teachers in large urban school districts know they work in a “mindless bureaucracy,” and that, therefore, even good teachers will burn out. Eventually, they learn how to negotiate for the widest discretion for themselves and their students without prompting the system to react punitively. They often set up networks of like-minded teachers or teach in teams.
Here we see that the top ten percent of teachers know how to work the system to get what we need without arousing the giant’s anger. We form quiet networks that know how to tiptoe around the monster. It’s a survival strategy and arguably proof that teachers know best what we want and need.
These two strategies are combined to form the best practices of our top teachers, a how-to guide.
But those are not the happiest of terms we’d like to use to ascribe to the very best of our profession. And with the rise of computerization and the constraints of shrinking budgets, it’s going to be harder to keep that extra set of textbooks or that Smart Board your contact at the board snuck you off the bean counters’ radar. Heck, my alma mater keeps track of how much energy each teacher uses over the course of the day.
Deceiving our superiors is not a good idea anyway. It’s risky. Not your building administrators, and not the state. In the past, when one of our bosses asked us to do something generally held to be impossible, what do we say? Do we tell them we’d almost certainly fail? Or do we nod thoughtfully, return to our rooms, close the door, and fake it as our mentors taught us? Then, when they asked how it was going, what’s our classic response? According to the research, we let them believe their “initiative” is working just fine. We let them believe that their stupid idea worked. In essence, when they asked us to cut down a tree with a fish, we said, “Okie dokie” and marched off into the forest. Once out of sight, we borrowed a chainsaw or stole an ax and to cut down said tree. Our bosses remember they gave us a fish, but the tree fell. That’s all they care about.
They were silly for making a silly demand, but we were just as silly for making it seem possible. Sooner or later we’re going to want the proper tools and this district is only buying herring. Even the most well-intentioned, enlightened administrator can’t make good decisions with bad data
Of course, no one is trying to get one over on the administration for some nefarious reason. It’s not something we do for sport. I think we’d all rather just plop our wishes down in front of someone competent who will fight to get them. We want someone who’ll see through the smokescreen we’ve erected, understand why it was necessary, and fix the system. Then we won’t have to sneak around anymore, we imagine.
So, we wait and hope for a hero who will advocate for our students and us.
Meanwhile we blithely go on as we have before. But folks, I don’t think we can wait and hope and hide anymore. There are experts out there that are predicting the end of public education within the next ten years.
Our deceptions will be used against us and our motives won’t matter to our enemies. We’ve got to stand up to the powers that be now and tell them what we need to successfully reach our students. If they tell us no, tell them they’ve made a mistake.
We’re going to lose from time to time, maybe even more times that not, but sometimes we’ll win. Then the smoke could clear and the men and women we’ve kept in the dark might blink their eyes, come out into the sun, and see the light. It’s possible.
By Vance Lawman, Warren Education Association – Trumbull County
How charter schools betray their students and communities
Time and time again, too many charter schools have failed our students. While the teachers in charter schools are passionate about education, their employers betray them and their students with constant administrative changes, a lack of support, and unethical practices that make the schools a disgrace.
After completing my Master’s, I was offered $26,000 to teach seventh and eighth grade social studies. Because there weren’t too many opportunities to even submit my resume that summer, I accepted the job and began planning the day I was hired, despite the many difficulties that lay ahead.
To begin with, no teacher in the building had any kind of curricular support. The principal told us to look online for copies of the state standards that were in effect at the time and then print copies for classroom decorations. Teachers had no textbooks and no reference material, not even classroom sets of books. I bought my own textbooks and then cut-and-pasted copies for students. Later in the year when a new administrator decided that teachers with 100 students would be limited to 25 copies per day, many of my teaching plans went out the window.
The school environment bordered on hazardous. The building was a former Catholic elementary school that had been vacant for some time. Because of mold problems, part of the school was closed off. Some of the classes that were used still had mold, as did the cafeteria. There were exposed wires in the hallways, torn carpets on the floors, uncovered electrical outlets in the classrooms, and even a bee’s nest in a boy’s bathroom that was never removed.
Less than a month after school started, four teachers were fired because the school’s enrollment was not as high as the school administration projected. Seventh graders were put in classes with eighth graders and taught different curriculum at the same time. It was not an ideal situation for the students but the teachers charged ahead.
The school was part of a multi-state chain based out of Chicago. Administrators throughout were all Turkish immigrants. Several teachers were also Turkish. While I understood the administrators and fellow teachers with ease given my background in teaching international students while in college, parents and students frequently complained that they were unintelligible. Only one of the administrators that I met during my time had actually studied in the United States and he was attending an online university. At first, our school had three administrators: a principal, a Director of Enrollment, and a Dean of Students. The latter two were rarely seen.
When the four teachers were fired, the charter school operator decided to simply switch our dean of students with the dean of students from the Columbus school. In December, the same thing happened to the principal. In March, it happened again with the principal position. Thus, during a few short months in the year, we had five different administrators for two positions.
During “count week,” children were given free meals, candy, and bus passes as an incentive to have them in school. This may have been great for the students, but they were otherwise treated very poorly by the various administrators who came and went. Administrators applied rules whimsically, both with regarding to student behavior and student achievement. When a particularly vociferous parent complained to one of the principals that their child’s grades were too low, the principal simply changed the child’s grades electronically, causing consternation among the other students and the staff.
I set up the school library with donated books. I made a dozen house visits. I arrived at school at 5:30 every morning and left at 4:30 in the afternoon. I received the best possible scores on my evaluations. I took students on field trips with money out of my own pocket.
When it came time for OATs, as they were called then, testing was a disaster. Several Turkish men arrived and pulled “at risk” students from their classrooms, taking them to the moldy rooms in small groups, despite the lack of written documentation allowing accommodations. The week after testing, I went to school on a Saturday morning in order to keep ahead of my planning, and I saw a dozen Turkish men sitting in a classroom with stacks of OATs on their desks. The current principal brought a cup of tea and a plate of cookies to me while I worked alone in my classroom. He said that the men were simply darkening in the answers for students who wrote too lightly.
The director of enrollment was rarely around because he was based in Columbus. He was also responsible for payroll. Sometime in April, several teachers realized that although money was being taken from our paychecks, money was not being paid to the insurance company or to the State Teachers Retirement System. The insurance company told me that my plan had been cancelled. When I inquired to the principal about the problem, I never received a response. I wrote e-mails to the members of the Board of Directors as listed on our school’s slick website; however, all but one of the e-mails bounced back. One person wrote back saying that they had worked with the school’s franchise in another city, but had resigned several years earlier on disagreeable terms.
That week, I was supposed to receive an evaluation from the principal at the time, despite having been evaluated with exemplary remarks by several other administrators, both based in Dayton and based in Chicago. When I politely asked the current principal why he missed my evaluation, he rescheduled it for the following week. The next day, he told me and three other teachers that we would not be hired for the next year. He gave no reason, although he told me that I was one of the hardest workers and best teachers he had ever seen. I inquired again about the money missing from my check and asked again why I was not being renewed. A week later, I was told not to return to school the following day.
Of the twelve teachers that started at the beginning of the year, only four remained at the end of the year, two of them were from Turkey. The other two were fired over the summer, one of the Turkish teachers was transferred to Columbus, and the other quit, telling me he wanted to complete his Bachelor’s degree in the United States. Thus, there was a 100% employee turnover within less than a year.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the charter school was that it encouraged students to swap in and out of other schools. If a student had bad grades or difficult behavior, they were literally asked to transfer to another charter school. The parents were brought in and told that their child would be expelled unless they transferred to another school. This is an endemic problem not just at the school where I taught, but at all the charter schools in the area. Children came and went, much like the administrators. By the end of my tenure, I knew several students who had been to three different schools in one year. The revolving door system meant that there was little consistency for students. Add to that the revolving door of administrators and employee turnover, and there was no consistency. This problem is disastrous for education, although it is rarely discussed and this small paragraph does not do the subject justice. The system, however, is advantageous to charter schools who are then allowed to manipulate their data more easily.
While teachers took responsibility for their students, the administrators saw them as numbers and problems. Parents often simply removed their children from school because of the administrative problems, electing to send their children back to public schools. Despite all my efforts, I can’t say that I blame the parents. They are lured with promises of science education, glossy brochures, and websites with polished clip art.
I loved being in the classroom at the charter school. I loved the students and the parents. Unfortunately, environmental problems, rotating administrators, unethical behavior on the part of the charter school and its sponsor, student manipulation, a complete and total lack of curricular support, and terrible employee relations made school difficult for students, parents, and teachers. This situation is regrettably found in too many charter schools.
By Matt Blair, Springboro Education Association
Rushed Reforms are Fantastic Failures
When my daughters came home with their first quarter report cards a couple weeks ago, I was prepared to see straight A’s for both of them. They have both consistently been among the highest in their classes in all subjects, and their teachers have always told us they are excellent students.
What I found when I did open the report cards was not what I expected.
First of all, the school has moved from a completely A-F grading system to a standards-based grade card. My wife, an elementary teacher, explained this change to me, and it sounds like a good idea. After all, what does an “A” or a “C” really mean? What does that really tell me about my child’s abilities? The new report card allowed me to see whether my daughters were “working towards,” “proficient” or “exceeding” standards.
The second thing that surprised me was the disparity in my girls’ grades. One daughter received all proficient or exceeds standards, while the other earned all working towards standards or proficient. I was confused. How could my children, who are both among the top performers in their classes, get such different marks?
After a couple of conversations with teachers, I figured out why there was such a difference in my daughters’ grades. It seems that one teacher was basing her grades on where children should be after the first quarter and the other teacher was basing her grades on where children should be at the end of the year.
With this understanding, my wife and I had to make sure to have careful, considerate conversations with both girls, explaining the differences in grades, and reassuring both kids that they are doing well in school.
This situation makes me think about the overall “education reform” movement that surrounds our schools, as students, teachers and administrators are inundated with new programs that must happen immediately, if not sooner. With any of the initiatives, proper planning, training, teacher input and resources are a necessity. Otherwise, no matter how educationally sound, the program will not succeed.
The Common Core illustrates this best. High standards for students to aspire to are good. However, the implementation has been a disaster. Districts are scrambling to find resources to prepare students and teachers for the Common Core. There are few clear answers about the link between an inordinate amount of high stakes tests and Common Core. Frustrations are mounting amongst teachers who are worried that the Common Core will reduce their classroom autonomy. Even the Tea Party is involved, with claims that the Common Core is a plan to indoctrinate students. If there wouldn’t have been such a rush to implement, and the proper resources would have been provided from the beginning, there would be a whole lot less backlash, criticism and anxiety.
OTES is another example. There’s no question that teachers want accountability and have no problem being evaluated. However, a hastily-made system developed by state-legislators, without proper teacher input and resources is not the answer. In the first few months of implementation, enough problems are arising that Senators Lehner and Gardner are introducing legislation to scale back the initiative, with less evaluations and less weight of student growth measures. While the education community applauds this proposal, much of the stress of OTES could have been completely avoided, if teachers and administrators would have been listened to from the onset and a educationally sound evaluation system would have been created from the beginning.
Then, there’s the third grade reading guarantee. There’s not a teacher around that doesn’t want all his/her students to read well and have strong literacy skills. However, the third grade reading guarantee creates more problems than it solves. School districts are scrambling to make sure they have teachers who are properly certified and trained in the right places to comply with the mandate. Administrators are struggling to find the necessary training and resources to prepare teachers. Teachers are stressed about servicing students on reading improvement plans (RIMP), and some are even looking to transfer to other grade levels. It’s hard to imagine that this program will be successful in increasing literacy, considering all the problems associated with it.
All parties in the education community are open to change that improves student learning and better prepares children for college and the world. However, it’s foolish, no matter how good the programs or ideas sound, to rush implementation, without adequate resources and scaffolding to support them.
By Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association
'Tis the season for gift giving
‘Tis the season for gift-giving, and with so many test-driven “school reform” policies being passed at the Ohio Statehouse this year, now would be a great time to present our lawmakers with gift-wrapped copies of one of the most forward-thinking children’s books ever written, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day. This thought-provoking picture book was primarily written by that great American philosopher, Theodor Seuss Geisel, but he died before he was able to finish it. Adding to Dr. Seuss’s original notes, bits of verses, and rough sketches, author Jack Prelutsky and illustrator Lane Smith finished the fable in 1991.
This insightful book is about an outside-of-the-box kind of school staffed by appropriately named workers, such as the nurse, Miss Clotte, the custodian, Mr. Plunger, and three cooks named McMunch. Diffendoofer School teachers provide knowledge-based lessons mingled with some important skills not found on any list of standards:
Miss Bobble teaches listening, Miss Wobble teaches smelling,
Miss Fribble teaches laughing, and Miss Quibble teaches yelling.
The quirkiest teacher of all is the main character in the book:
My teacher is Miss Bonkers, she’s as bouncy as a flea.
I’m not certain what she teaches, but I’m glad she teaches me.
Of all the teachers in our school, I like Miss Bonkers best.
Our teachers are all different, but she’s different-er than the rest.
One day, Diffendoofer’s worried little principal, Mr. Lowe, makes a special announcement:
All schools for miles and miles around must take a special test,
To see who’s learning such and such- to see which school’s the best.
If our small school does not do well, then it will be torn down,
And you will have to go to school in dreary Flobbertown.
Like most of the children in Ohio’s public schools, Diffendoofer students are immediately stressed at the thought of taking such a high-stakes test, and they fret about the prospect of being removed from their beloved school and forced to attend monotonous Flobbertown, where “everyone does everything the same.” They continue to agonize over the test, until Miss Bonkers reminds them:
“Don’t fret,” she said, “you’ve learned the things you need
To pass that test and many more- I’m certain you’ll succeed.
We’ve taught you that the earth is round, that red and white make pink,
And something else that matters more- we’ve taught you how to think.”
Of course, Miss Bonkers is right, and the students get “the very highest score” and pass the dreaded test using background knowledge, combined with the critical and creative thinking skills they acquired through a variety of innovative activities at Diffendoofer School.
The Ohio Legislature’s over-reliance on high-stakes testing for its public schools has forced many districts to re-focus their precious economic resources on hard copy and digital curricula that will aid them in teaching for the test. Could it be merely a coincidence that the same educational companies, that produce the tests and sell those testing resources, also contribute to the campaign coffers of some of the legislators who sponsor the “school reform” laws? One can only speculate.
In this test-driven era, Art, Music, and Physical Education programs are being slashed in many school districts. Field trips are no longer considered affordable. Schools are cutting way back on recess as well, hoping it will “give the students more time to learn what’s needed to pass the tests.” It’s sad to see the demise of activities that round out our students’ knowledge-based learning with important critical and creative thinking, yet these are desperate times for many of our public schools, and they’re trying to get the most test-score bang for their bucks. Unfortunately, this kind of programming will eventually lead to more schools like dreary Flobbertown, where everyone does everything the same.
Before another test-driven “school reform” bill is considered in Ohio, it would be wise for lawmakers to invite public school teachers from around the state to come to the Statehouse to lead a series of book-talks about Dr. Seuss’s Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, accompanied by Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Then our elected officials might begin to understand what Dr. Seuss figured out more than two decades ago- continued high-stakes testing is taking its toll on our children, as well as on the institution of public education.
Judging by the lack of teacher input requested by our legislators in recent years, that idea may be no more than another children’s fable.
By Jeanne Melvin, Hilliard Education Association
OEA Representative Assembly – ‘Tis the Season
It’s that time of year again. I’m not talking about the time where a local station plays only Christmas music or when the malls fill up with shoppers craving the best deal on the latest gadgets. I’m talking about the OEA Representative Assembly, or RA, the first weekend in December.
This is my 12th December RA. My perspective on the experience has changed a great deal since the first one I attended. I didn’t know what to expect, over a decade ago, when I walked into the auditorium with several long-time leaders from my local. The names of OEA leaders were unfamiliar. I couldn’t have picked out Gary Allen, our OEA President at the time, in a crowd. I couldn’t comprehend the importance of the FCPE drive that ran throughout the assembly. I had a limited understanding of the procedures or the relevance of the discussions that ran into the late Saturday afternoon.
But I listened…
Over the years, I became more familiar with the people and procedures associated with the RA. I looked forward to hearing the words of our OEA President, who framed our education climate and discussed the challenges we faced. I better understood the STRS update and the remarks by our Executive Director.
In recent years, with the attacks on public education peppering us, the RA has taken on extra importance to me. It’s the place where I’ve heard from elected officials, like Ted Strickland and Ed Fitzgerald, who are true friends of public education. It’s the place where teacher leaders gathered, lamented and shared ideas to get through our struggles.
The most memorable RA I attended was December 2011, right after the resounding defeat of SB 5. There were many congratulatory words and hopeful, energy-filled speeches by our leaders. There were hugs from my new friends from all over the state who fought SB 5 in their communities. There was the 10-minute video montage, chronicling our battle over the previous year, which had me and several of my friends nearby in tears. It was at that RA that I truly felt like I was a part of OEA, and I found a connection beyond my local, to the state organization.
This year, there is no SB 5. There is no campaign for OEA office. I don’t expect to see NEA President Dennis Van Roekel on the stage. Even so, this RA, just like every RA before it, matters. It will be the first time Becky Higgins addresses the RA as OEA President. There will be important legislative updates. I’m sure there will be information about the upcoming Gubernatorial race and our fight against so-called “Right to Work.”
Think RAs don’t matter? Consider our last one. I knew going into the RA that delegates would be voting for a new president and vice-president of OEA. I also knew that Ed Schultz, host of the “The Ed Show,” would be speaking as would Ed Fitzgerald. What I didn’t know was that there would be New Business Items, regarding support for Common Core, introduced by delegates. In recent months, I’ve heard from teachers, through Facebook, Twitter and in person about their Common Core concerns. Some wonder why OEA supports Common Core. My response to every one of them is the same. At the last RA, items were introduced to support Common Core, and there was not one person who spoke in opposition. The passage of the items at the RA means that OEA now officially supports Common Core.
Nobody knows, going into the RA, what New Business Items will be introduced. That’s why it’s important for every local to send delegates, so that the sentiments and opinions of teachers all across the state will be heard and considered.
I hope this weekend’s RA brings many first-time delegates who are eager to learn more about OEA. My advice to them is simple. Listen to all the speakers and reports. Don’t worry if you don’t understand all the information that’s presented. Take a break every once-in-a-while, stretch your legs and go visit the booths in the lobby, especially the one where you can contribute to FCPE. Most importantly, resolve that this will be the first of many RAs you will attend, and that, with every successive RA, you’ll be better informed and better able to make a difference on behalf of your colleagues and public education.
By Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association
[typography font=”” size=”16″ size_format=”px” color=”#005fa1″]The Fall 2013 Representative Assembly begins at 9 a.m Saturday, December 7, 2013 at Franklin County Veterans Memorial in Columbus. This year’s theme is Educators Rock! Delegates will be seated in the auditorium. Guests are welcome in the designated guest seating area in the balcony. If you’re posting from the RA, be sure to use hashtag #OEARA. If you can’t attend, you can still follow along with what’s happening on Facebook and Twitter.[/typography]