BuckeyeBlog

The Brookings Institution has a new study out on identifying teacher effectiveness in the classroom.  As we noted in our recent report on merit pay, and as has been noted by others, teacher quality is the single most important determinant of student success or failure that is within the control of schools.  The Brookings study examines ways to distinguish high and low quality teachers.  They find that the test scores of a particular teacher’s students (value-added, not absolute) in the previous two years is an efficient indicator.  Whether a teacher is certified, however, is not.

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The Ohio State Board of Education has just released a report with its recommendations for reforming school funding.  The bottom line, according to the Columbus Dispatch:

The plan would establish a per-student base cost of providing an education, with additional money to meet the needs of poor youngsters, those with special needs, gifted students and those with limited English proficiency. It also calls for expanding all-day kindergarten statewide and providing special-education services for preschoolers.

 

Had the proposal been in place last school year, it would have boosted state aid to primary and secondary schools by nearly $1 billion.

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Public charter schools have been under attack in Ohio since their creation in the ’90s. People and organizations who benefit from the status quo have worked overtime to either regulate or intimidate charters out of business. With the new anti-freedom, big government candidates that voters swept into office in Ohio and nationwide, expect the attacks against charter schools to increase with fervor.

In light of this expected negative climate for school choice, a new and timely report from the Buckeye Institute was unveiled last Friday. Matthew Carr and I have researched the numbers from the Ohio Department of Education’s own documents and found that, contrary to opponents’ claims, charters are INCREASING per pupil funding in each of the Big 8 schools. Additionally, if anti-school choicers succeed at their ultimate goal, eliminating charters altogether, property owners can expect substantial tax increases in Ohio’s urban districts.

The report includes data showing:

• Local property tax dollars do NOT fund charter schools;
• Each of the big 8 districts gain in per pupil funding for each child who leaves for a charter because while the state dollars go to the charters, the local dollars that remain are higher than the state dollars they lose, resulting in net per pupil gains;
• Property owners in the Big 8 districts can expect to see attempts to raise their taxes in order to maintain current per pupil funding levels if charters fail and kids return to the public schools; and
• Tax increases just to maintain funding would range from $300 to over $3,000 a year for a $100,000 home.

To see the complete report, look here.

Mike Maurer uses below the “F” word - fascism - in describing comments of the incoming superintendent of public education, Deborah Delisle.

For some of you this may come as a shocking and/or irrelevant epithet.  How could such outrageously liberal and statist views be described in far-right terms, you might ask.

I would have thought so as well, except for having recently attended a lecture  by Jonah Goldberg and reviewing a new book by him.

In his “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” Goldberg shows how the ideology of fascism and the American Left have so much more in common than conventional wisdom or the usual sources on US history from 1910 through 1941 would lead us to believe.

Spend some time with “Liberal Fascism”, and take another look at incidental accounts of the era (see here, for example, on how Woodrow Wilson would have hid the fact of 1918-1919 Influenza epidemic from the American people, if not for the overflowing morgues).

After that, I think you’ll agree that the F word applies to Ms. Delisle’s way of thinking after all.

Gongwer, a legislative news service ($) reports on an interview with the incoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, Deborah Delisle. Ms. Delisle, whose resume of school administrative leadership stretches from Mantua to Cleveland Heights, had this to say about two strategies freeing parents from the tyranny of failing assigned-by- and run-by-government schools (vouchers and charters):

“When you provide opportunities for people to escape what is viewed as a problem, without looking at what the source of that problem is and fixing the problem, you’re going to create a further divide among individuals across the population and you’re going to create a greater sense of haves and have-nots,” she said.

“You’ve given some kids an opportunity and you’ve allowed other kids to just wallow behind in a failing school,” she added. “It just is not as simplistic as, ‘Let’s send somebody somewhere else.’”

So what you’re saying Ms. Delisle, is every child assigned to a failing public school must suffer their fate of an inadequate education all in the name of equality of peoples’ senses of having or having-not?

According to your line of thinking, Ms Delisle, rather than boarding the lifeboats, Titanic survivors should have been forced to sit on deck and drown, happily hoping for the crew to repair the hole, since there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone?

Leadership of Ohio’s schools is going to demand of you better thinking than this.

While Governor Strickland travels around Ohio asking how to improve education, Terry Ryan and the Fordham Institute have developed 5 policy suggestions he should seriously consider.  Mr. Ryan sat down with the Buckeye Institute’s David Hansen for a podcast to discuss Fordham’s new report “Accelerating Student Learning in Ohio”.  The policy suggestions would move Ohio’s public schools toward Fordham’s goals of 1) maximizing the talents of every child; 2) producing graduates as good as any in the world; and 3) closing the persistent academic gaps that continue between rich and poor, and black and white and brown.”

Listen to the podcast here,and read the report in its entirety here.

It’s time to try something that actually works instead of putting more lipstick on the education pig.

“Most elementary schools in California will fail to meet proficiency requirements by 2014”

Indeed. Meanwhile, in the rest of the United States, all the children are above average.

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Senator John McCain received some of his loudest applause last night after lauding school choice for all children nationwide.  He proclaimed the need for the right to attend public schools, private schools or charter schools, while slamming the union-dominated system that has failed far too many of our kids.

Where’s Barak Obama on this issue?  Well, “He was for it before he was against it,” but he was against it before he was for it.  Earlier this year when discussing the successful Milwaukee voucher program, Obama remarked to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that “…my attitude is you do what works for the kids.”  His campaign quickly followed that suggestion of support with a strong denial: ”Throughout his career, he (Obama) has voted against voucher proposals and voiced concern for siphoning off resources from our public schools.” And they noted that Mr. Obama’s education agenda “does not include vouchers, in any shape or form.”

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Buckeye Institute Education Policy Director Matthew Carr spoke to 1370 WSPD’s Brian Wilson yesterday about Toledo Public Schools’ state report card, and a recent PDK/Gallup poll on America’s view of public education.

Click the player to listen.

From School Choice Ohio:

August 20, 2008

Study finds EdChoice Scholarship Program spurs public school improvements
Friedman Foundation Study of EdChoice program August 2008

A study of the new Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship (EdChoice) program’s effect on public schools has found academic gains among students in designated public schools.

This suggests that, far from harming students in public schools, scholarship programs like EdChoice can actually spur improvements in student learning for those students who remain in the low-performing public schools.

The study, commissioned by the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, is the first empirical analysis examining the effects of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program, which was enacted by the Ohio state legislature in 2005.  The program began serving students in the 2006-07 school year.

“We believe that competition – or the threat of competition – has spurred these schools to get their act together and better serve their students,” said Robert Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. “What we are seeing is, after just one year, some modest academic gains in several grade levels are taking place.  No negative effects were detected in any grades.”

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