BuckeyeBlog

National Review Online has posted an interview with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.  Since leaving office, he has remained involved in education reform through the Foundation for Excellence in Education.  One part of the Q&A caught my attention in particular: 

NRO: In your opening remarks at the conference, you said that our education system is like “an 8-track system living in an iPod world”? What changes do you think need to be made to bring our education system into the 21st century?

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Youngstown teacher union boss Will Bagnola should be credited for candor in revealing the YEA’s true interests in thwarting kids from getting the education they need from a charter school. According to the Youngstown Vindicator:

Will Bagnola, teachers union president, said the Youngstown Education Association’s chief concern was that sending city kids to the charter school could result in job losses for teachers in the regular system.

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We read with disappointment the progress of teacher (and nurse, and janitor, and lunchroom employee) union contract negotiations in Hilliard, Ohio which concluded earlier this month. 

The Hilliard union employed the usual tactics of industrial era labor conflict including ’work-to-rule’ and filing harrassing unfair-labor-practices charges, all of which only reinforce how obsolete and obstructionist teacher unions are in the 21st Century. (more…)

As S.B. 57, passed by the Ohio Senate, gears up in the Ohio House, there’s little doubt that the teachers unions, Democrat party and Gov. Ted Strickland will be angling toward the veto. The bill would establish scholarships for students with disabilities.

Strickland’s view is, “Funding private schools with public tax dollars deprives the state and its taxpayers of proper oversight .”

Yep. Proper oversight.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, a few free individuals are allowed to do what actually works, rather than report to bureaucracies and do the happy dance when their ignorance ratios move from 56 percent to 55 percent. Teachers, students, parents and those who care about getting actual things done for actual children have opened a school that avoids patterns in the decoration, installs obscuring, movable screens over mirrors – all things that are important to autistic students.

Autistic students gained their ability to benefit from funds spent for them several years ago, thanks to efforts by many people, including state Rep. Jon Peterson, R-Delaware.

Too bad students with other disabilities won’t be able to do the same.

Parents, kids and the principle of freedom won a victory in the Ohio Senate today, although by a narrow margin. The vote on SB 57, the Special Needs Scholarship was 17 to 15 in favor. All Democrats voted against the bill, along with Republican Senators Stivers, Schuring and Grendell. Now SB 57 moves to the Ohio House.

Kudos to Senate Education Chair Joy Padgett, Senate President Bill Harris and SB 57’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin Coughlin for their leadership in shepherding the measure to passage.

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Up for a vote today in the Ohio Senate Education Committee is a bill giving families of children with disabilities new options for their education. The provisions of Senate Bill 57, also known as a special needs voucher, were passed by the General Assembly last year as part of the budget bill but were vetoed by Governor Strickland.

The Governor gave two reasons for his veto: first, school choice programs lack accountability; and, second, school choice programs harm public schools and the children who remain in them. (more…)

In justifying his veto last year of a voucher program intended to help disabled children achieve better in their educations, Governor Strickland offered up two of the teacher unions’ tried and true critiques of school choice. One was the fallacy that regulatory accountability is both effective and the only tool for conforming public expenditures to public goals. We’ll explode this notion elsewhere on BuckeyeInstitute.org in a couple of days or so.

Strickland then offered the familiar assertion that school choice hurts the children who remain in public schools, through draining resources in a way that would harm “…the vast majority of students, including disabled students, who attend public schools.”

Unfortunately, the facts don’t back the Governor up on this assertion.

The Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have looked at the Florida McKay Scholarship, the program model for Ohio’s special needs voucher, and found that:

Public school students with relatively mild disabilities made statistically significant test score improvements in both math and reading as more nearby private schools began participation in the McKay program. That is, contrary to the hypothesis that school choice harms students who remain in public schools, this study finds that students eligible for vouchers who remained in the public schools made greater academic improvements as their school choices increased.

Disabled public school students’ largest gains as exposure to McKay increased were made by those diagnosed as having the mildest learning disabilities. The largest category of students enjoying the greatest gains, known as Specific Learning Disability, accounts for 61.2% of disabled students and 8.5% of all students in Florida.

The academic proficiency of students diagnosed with relatively severe disabilities was neither helped nor harmed by increased exposure to the McKay program.

Strickland has threaten to veto SB 57, Sen. Coughlin’s and Rep. Peterson’s latest version of a statewide special needs scholarship.

If he follows through on his threat, we’re wondering exactly how the Governor will explain to the parents of disabled children across Ohio, both those who would have taken advantage of the voucher and those who wouldn’t have, why he chose to ignore the facts about a special needs voucher and favored the prerogatives of teacher unionists and other adults over the needs of their children.

For a fuller briefing on the special needs voucher, visit BuckeyeVoices.org where a podcast with report author Winters has just been posted.

It is not very often that I run across a New York Times editorial that I agree with, but today is an exception. Apparently, a small provision was inserted into the state’s pending education budget bill which “bars school administrators from considering student test scores when determining whether a teacher deserves to get tenure.” The folks on the editorial board are against the measure, and blame the state’s teacher union for trying to thwart better school management.

“To judge whether a teacher elevates the class or sets students spiraling backward, administrators should look at the biggest possible picture. That includes the teacher’s education and experience, of course. But what about the students’ work, including their performance on standardized tests? Shouldn’t that also be considered before giving a teacher a virtually permanent job in New York State? The ban is so nonsensical that lawmakers clearly decided that the only way to get it passed was to keep it hidden deep in the budget documents.”
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The News-Herald of Willoughby provides some examples of local government initiative in truly improving efficiency and productivity.

However, this follow up suggestion will run into the reality of public employee collective bargaining:

[School districts] should be open to ideas such as sharing teachers or other personnel whose strengths can help neighboring districts.

We encourage school officials to find ways to trim expenses and remember that doing so helps taxpayers.

The News-Herald should turn the bright light of its investigative reporting on the teacher union contracts as they are negotiated in its communities. The paper will find how school officials – complicit though they may be in negotiating the contracts the way they do – have their hands tied when it comes to really significant cost savings and productivity improvement.

The Buckeye Institute will not be intimidated by union bullies who seek to silence those who speak truth to power. The CEA attacked us today because we have facts showing how teacher union contracts in Ohio shortchange children, and especially disadvantaged children.

The Buckeye Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit think tank that engages opinion leaders, policymakers, media and the public with scholarly analysis and commentary. We promote free market solutions, not candidates. We support ideas, not political parties. We have nothing to hide. Sadly, the CEA cannot say the same.

Read the report and once you notice that Columbus schools aren’t even mentioned in the study, you’ll realize how groundless and politically motivated the CEA’s actions are.