Policy Matters Ohio Report on Another Charter School Management Company

John Higgens at the ABJ digs into a timely Policy Matters Ohio report on Imagine Schools, a Virginia-based education management organization (EMO) that has set up an run charter schools in Ohio, including one in Akron near the old Rolling Acres Mall. Complaints from the operating boards of the schools sound very much like those of the White Hat schools currently suing their EMO.

From the executive summary of the report:

Imagine Schools, Inc., is privately owned by Dennis Bakke, a high-profile and outspoken supporter of education vouchers and charters. In 2004, Bakke bought an existing management company, renamed it Imagine and set out to expand. Bakke is former chairman of AES Corporation, a global energy generation and distribution company and author of the popular business book Joy at Work. He made news in 2009 when an internal memo he wrote was published in news reports; in it, Bakke told Imagine managers and school leaders that Imagine-managed schools are “our schools” because the taxpayer money flowing to the schools is “our money.” He also encouraged his employees to disregard and minimize the power of appointed school boards.

In Ohio, Imagine school board members have resigned in frustration over what they describe as corporate disregard for the governance role, mandated by law, that charter school boards are to exercise over their schools. “We finally concluded that what was desired from the administration [of the school] was for the board to be a rubber stamp rather than a governing body,” said one former board member interviewed for this study. [emphasis added.]

Higgens piece relates the report about Imagine to the situation with White Hat:

The striking similarity between the Imagine report and the White Hat lawsuit is the power that both for-profit corporations hold over the nonprofit school boards that are their employers — at least on paper.

''One huge issue is how hard it is for these school boards, these governing boards, to break away from Imagine or White Hat,'' said the report's author, Piet van Lier.

Best of all is White Hat's response:'''This is not the place to argue about the politics of charter schools,' according to White Hat's statement. 'That is properly left to the legislature.' Probably true that a legislative solution would be best, but if one is proposed you can bet on a phalanx of White Hat lobbyists working to kill it.

Personally I don't think everyone involved with charter schools is out to make a buck. Some good people work for charters and occasionally good people even start them. But it's increasingly clear that the current model in many states including Ohio is allowing some EMO operators to bilk the schools and by extension the taxpayers.

Charters Sue White Hat

Another story I'm working on is the lawsuit launched by ten White Hat charters against the company. John Higgins at the ABJ does an excellent job of laying out the issues.

This arises from a law that mysteriously passed during the '06 lame duck session that essentially gives contract protection to education management organizations (EMOs) the for-profit corporations that are contracted to run many charter schools, and in some cases (such as White Hat) appear for all practical purposes to be one and the same as the charter school.

For example the White Hat website doesn't portray the company as a management company, but gives the impression that the company owns Hope Academies and Life Skills. On the website, those schools are called "ventures" of White Hat, as opposed to, say, clients.

As Plunderbund points out, White Hat founder David Brennan has been a leading contributor to Republican candidates, including the current top of the slate. The press release accompanying the lawsuit accuses White Hat of leveraging that political capital to get the sweetheart protection law.

This is actually the second time charters have sued to have the law overturned. So one thing I'm digging into is what happened the first time.

The EMO protection law is terrible for everyone involved -- for taxpayers, for students in charter schools, charter school advocates. Hopefully this lawsuit will finally shame the legislature into getting rid of it.

Charter Schools and Unlikely Ally for Strickland

Interesting post last week on Flypaper, the blog of the Fordham Foundation, a free-market oriented, pro-charters think tank with roots in Dayton. They propose some logrolling regarding Gov. Strickland's proposal to freeze the tax cut for a year. As FP correctly notes, a ten percent cut in ed. funding would devastate Ohio charters.

The proposal is to get charter backing for the tax plan in exchange for passing/signing a Husted bill poking holes in the current charter moratorium. FB says it would allow sponsors of "high-performing" charter schools to set up new schools.

To the extent this is a real trial balloon it's something worth considering. Recall that the charter industry ran attack ads against certain legislators deemed unfriendly during the budget battle. Having the charter industry as an ally, however temporary, would be a help at a time when friends are hard to come by.

I'd be all for a little legislative logrolling, but the Husted bill has serious flaws. First off, in addition to allowing new brick-and-mortar charters the bill would also lift the lid on more e-schools. Just because. Of course the fact that eschools make tons of money despite poor performance might have something to do with it.

As for the brick-and-mortar provisions, they need to be tightened up. The current language would set the threshold at having schools in continuous improvement. That's hardly high performing. And a sponsor can open new schools for each schoolin continuious improvement, regardless of the shape of its overall portfolio. 100 school in Academic Watch and 2 in continuous improvement? No problem, open two more. Much better would be to allow only those sponsors with a generally clean bill to open new schools.

But the thought by Fordham is a nice one. The post as a whole has predictable snark coming from a Republican-leaning outfit -- it's not a tax hike if taxes don't go up and saying the fiscal crisis is Strickland's fault is laughable. But all that said, Strickland will need all the help he can get to make this work. If the charter honks are willing to reach across the aisle, it's at least worth a listen.

On Strickland's School Funding "Fix"

Up until now, I've defended Gov. Ted Strickland on school funding. Yes he promised to fix the system and no he didn't offer a fix in the first budget cycle. But it made sense for him to get on top of things and wait until after the midterms before rolling out a major initiative like that. So yesterday was it. The big fix. Here we go. And . . . not so much.

Strickland's promise, at least as proposed in his state of the state speech, is twofold. First, he promises to generally increase the state share in some manner, so the state is paying an average of 59% of K12 costs. Second, he offers a couple of phantom revenue fixes.

We won't know the particulars of the state funding until the budget is released next week, but conspicuously absent from the SoS speech was any promised reform that would make the funding changes systemic. While bumping up state funding is a good idea, it depends on Ds remaining in power. After the Supreme Court relinquished jurisdiction over the DeRolph case, the General Assembly began whittling away the gains in state funding. It's hard to get too excited about a "reform" that can as easily be undone.

More disturbing is the phantom revenue fix. For a review of what phantom revenue is, check this previous post. Strickland's proposal for a state fix is to tinker with the local share charge-off. Here's the excerpt from the speech:

In the current system, when the state calculates how much tax revenue a school district has, the state uses phony numbers. You may have heard this called ‘phantom revenue.’ For example, in many school districts, rising property values do not produce additional property tax revenue. But the state formula for school aid assumes districts do get additional tax revenue. That’s not logical, and it results in many districts being punished because the formula says they have an abundance of phantom dollars that don’t actually exist.

Under my plan, the state will no longer ask school districts to pay their bills with phantom dollars.

Instead, my plan lowers what our local taxpayers are expected to contribute to local schools from 23 mills to 20 mills. The state will assume responsibility for providing the difference between what those 20 mills raise and the cost of the full range of educational resources our students need according to our evidence-based approach.

OK, a couple of thing here. First off the 20 mill/23 mill business refers to a problem, but not the one Strickland describes. Here's what he's addressing. For a school district to receive state aid, it must have a twenty mill levy in place. Also twenty mills is the floor past which H.B. 920 will not reduce the millage further. So if a school district is down to twenty mills, those mills grow if property values grow. As a result many rural districts with low value tax bases live at twenty mills and do what they can do.

Meanwhile, the local share charge off (the amount the state deducts from its allocation as an estimate of what a district can provide) is the taxable property value times 23 mills. So by appearances the formula starts by assuming that local districts will provide 20 mills, but then takes back three mills by the time we get to the local share chargeoff. Whether the payout actually assumes 20 mills is open to debate, but the fact that the two different figures appear in the formula certainly don't bolster it's perceived credibility.

So Strickland is now reducing the local share chargeoff to 20 mills. That's certain better for districts stuck at twenty mills. The problem is that any time you tinker with the local share you run a high risk of windfalling the wealthiest districts. Everyone gets their tax base times three mills. Since Hudson's tax base is far higher than, say, Federal Hocking district in Athens county, Hudson will get far more state money than Fed Hock.

After all this time, I expected something better than a fix that disproportionately benefits the districts that need it the least. And this is before we even get into the yet- unanswered questions about where the money will come from.

As to the last bit of the phantom revenue fix -- allowing taxpayers to pass levies that grow with property values -- I need a bit of research time.

Waiting for Strickland's State o' the State

Tomorrow Gov. Ted Strickland delivers his State of the State address. Aside from the obvious (everyone's economy is now in the tank with ours! w00t!), the Governor is expected to offer at least the beginnings of his school funding fix.

While Strickland made the smart move waiting to this point for obvious political reasons, the economic mess has left him with little room to maneuver. Nonetheless, he's committed at this point. Here are some possible proposals and some of what they might mean.

• A new methodology for calculating support. This is suggestion of a new KnowledgeWorks report and plenty of others before that. Right now the state uses a formula that supposedly determines how much each school district needs, but each budget cycle the General Assembly reverse engineers the total amount of support so that it looks a lot like the amount they want to spend as opposed to the amount they actually need. The problem with a new formula is it still doesn't tell us where the money comes from.
  
• A tax shift. The basic deficiency in the current system is the overreliance on local revenue. The most basic form of school funding reform would be to raise some statewide tax -- a sales tax for instance -- dedicate the revenue to k12 education and simultaneously reduce local property taxes. Even a tax shift would be a hard sell in this economy, but it's hard to imagine a serious reform proposal that doesn't feature one.
• H.B. 920 Rewrite. The other recent think tank proposal is revisiting the no-growth rule first past in House Bill 920, then ultimately enshrined in the state constitution. By law a local school levy millage is reduced every year in order keep the amount of money charged each property static. Problem is that a fix would require a constitutional amendment. Granted, it's easier to sell growing levies at a time when property values aren't going up. On the other hand, it's a lot of political capital to spend on something that wouldn't offer much immediate help to schools.
• Gutting State Board Authority. Strickland proposed last year rewriting the State Board duties to make it essentially an advisory board. I could offer at least a post about how horrible Board is, just from governmental structure standpoint, not to mention how, um, unevolved some of its decision making has been. Now that he has some of his appointees on the Board, we'll see if he floats the idea again.
• Consolodation. Strickland has floated signals before that he would like to see something in the way of consolodating functions, if not districts. This is the sort of big fix for efficiencies that would sell best in a fiscal crunch.
• Union Concessions. When Taft put together his Blue Ribbon Commission, one recommendation was a state health insurance pool, as opposed to letting the unions bargain with each district. The savings would be significant, but the unions like being able to bargain about health care -- it gives them something of a reason for being. If Strickland is proposing pain on the administration side and pain (or at least tradeoffs) on the part of taxpayers, he may resurrect this idea or one like it to spread the pain.

This list is by no means exhaustive and is only based on ideas that have floated around for as long as I've been watching school funding. No inside info hear. If I'm able to liveblog the SOTS (or lets just call it SoS and be done) look for that. But with a possible snow day tomorrow, no promises.

Catalyst Ohio Poll re: Strickland's Education Plans

Catalyst Ohio, a non-profit magazine from which I occasionally get freelance work, is conducting an online poll regarding Strickland's plan to consolidate state education administration. As it happens, that's a central theme of my (long-delayed) take on the Guv's education town hall last week, so I'll push off that post yet again. For now, please click through the link and take the survey.

Here's the message from Catalyst:

Hello Catalyst Reader,

Here's your chance to weigh in on an issue critical to improving Ohio's schools.

What do you think of Gov. Ted Strickland's proposal to appoint a cabinet-level director of education, which would relegate the Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State School Board to the role of advisors?

Please click on www.catalyst-ohio.org. Go to Catalyst Quiz on right and take a minute to share your views.

The link pulls up your default email program with an email to the Editor with the subject line that let's them know it's a survey response.

Ted in Town Today

Governor Strickland's Conversations on Education road show comes to Akron today. It looks like I'm going, though plans can change quickly here at the House of Pho.

The event itself is invite-only. People interested are invited to stream it on the web or attend a watch party. As to the latter, the ones being held for this session are in Stark County and Coventry. For live streaming, the Gov's site offers this FAQ. The meeting will be broadcast at 10 on Time Warner, though it's not clear if on Channel 16 or 23.

For my part, I'll take notes and write a post. I'm not going to try to lug in the laptop to liveblog and have given up mobile blogging to Blogger. But I'm on Twitter now and will probably tweet a couple things. You can check that out here.

The reviews on Strickland's education agenda, to the extent we know what it is, have been decidedly mixed. I expect this will be a cagey affair, but hopefully we will have a little more clue where he is going by the end.

Strickland's Education Forum Coming to Akron

Governor Ted Strickland has announced that one of his twelve planned "education forums" will be in Akron at North High School on July 23. The Governor has started a website, Conversations on Education to facilitate/publicize the listening tour. The url embedded on Ohio dot com doesn't seem to work for the website. You can try here or here.

The Governor has gotten grief for not fixing either the schools themselves or the school funding mess as of yet. It always seemed to me that any proposal would come after the midterm elections. First, because such a proposal takes time. The Governor committed to getting input, particularly from the business community. Being pretty much a pro-business D, that's what he would have done anyway, plus anyone paying attention to the GIRFOF mess knows that the effort was doomed as soon as the business community spoke out against it.

Also, any proposal prior to midterms becomes a political football. The R's would have to oppose it regardless of merit or risk handing the statehouse over to the D's. Which brings up the third factor -- once it became apparent that generic D's would do well in the midterm, Strickland's best bet is to wait until the November smoke clears to see what kind of General Assembly he has to work with. If, as hoped, D's take the House, he will get much more of what he wants.

I've had background conversations with various sources that pretty much confirm the above. And it's pretty well known that Strickland has been meeting with various stakeholder groups, including business groups.

The forums are another step in the process. How much will be gathering input and how much will be softening the ground for the eventual proposal remains to be seen. According to the website, things are organized around the six principles outlined in the State of the State address. You remember those, right? No? Well, here's a refresher:

And I have developed six core principles that will guide our efforts to achieve that vision.

First, we cannot address our education challenges without strengthening our commitment to public education. As a practical matter, the vast majority of Ohio children are and always will be educated in the public school system.

Second, a modern education must be directly linked to economic prosperity. Ohio cannot thrive without understanding that world class schools will produce a talented workforce, and a talented workforce will attract and create jobs.

Third, we need to identify the great strengths of our schools. There are features in our education system that the rest of the world seeks to emulate, and we must build on these triumphs.

We excel internationally in our ability to foster creativity and innovation. These skills fuel a lifetime of success, especially in an evolving global economy.

Ohio schools produced the minds that created Superman, with his fictional X-Ray vision, and the mind that invented the MRI, giving doctors the very real ability to painlessly view inside the human body. Ohioans are visionaries, but practical as well. It wasn’t long after a pair of Ohioans invented the airplane that another Ohioan invented the parachute.

Our schools must teach students to think past the limits of what’s been done, and imagine what could be done.

Fourth, our best teachers can show us what works best in the classroom. We need to consult them and follow their lead.

Great teachers can be a resource not only for their students but for their fellow educators. We should support these teachers by giving them the freedom to stay in the classroom and still be rewarded for sharing their expertise with their peers. We lose a lot of new teachers – as many as half of all new teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years – but we can help keep these talented people by giving them better access to senior colleagues.

Fifth, we must strive to develop a specific, personalized education program that identifies how each individual student learns and use the teaching methods appropriate to that student’s needs and abilities.

The great educator and philosopher John Dewey described this idea many years ago. He wrote that we must shift “the center of gravity” in schools. It’s a “revolution, not unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the astronomical center shifted from the Earth to the sun. In this case, the child becomes the sun around which the appliances of education revolve.”

And sixth, testing and assessment will continue to answer accountability questions. But their most important role will be to guide personalized and individualized education through a comprehensive and ongoing understanding of a student’s capabilities and weaknesses and growth in the educational process.

Not the list I would pick, but good enough to be going forward.

Closing Charter Schools

The Education blog Quick and the Ed¹ notes a headline in today's WaPo "Charter to Close Over Academics" and notes that we don't see that headline applied to traditional public schools. Setting that aside, fact is, we hadn't seen it applied to charter schools in Ohio until Marc Dann started going after them.

Last week's Ohio Gadfly² published a piece on their experience as a charter school sponsor forced to close schools.³ It's long, but it gives a lot of detail about the difficulty closing charter schools for academics (as opposed to financial mismanagement which was the basis for all the closings pre-Dann.)

• Theory collides with reality. Closing a school seems pretty straightforward: parents will send their children to good charter schools, and the poor ones will close for lack of enrollment because parents won't send their children to a bad school. This premise doesn't necessarily hold true. And, when a school does close, the reality is a complicated, confusing, painful, and expensive process for all concerned. What makes it tough is that you're dealing with stakeholders who are emotionally and financially attached to the school. For example, parents made a conscious decision to send their child to the school and the choice is being taken away from them. Teachers lose their jobs and are tossed into a tough labor market. You're forcing people to participate in the death of something about which they care deeply.

• School closure is costly. This is true not just in terms of extra dollars spent by the sponsor and the school's governing authority, but also in terms of the amount of time that the sponsor, governing authority, and school staff need to devote to closure. The governing authority still needs to close the year out and complete all required financial reports, tax forms, and audits. Then there's the staff time associated with reviewing and submitting innumerable bureaucratic forms and documents to the state and federal governments. For the sponsor, the major expense is the time devoted to overseeing closure. This can take more than a year, and this is if the closure is done amicably and does not include costly lawsuits.

• Responsibility falls up. If the closure is mutually agreed to, the school's governing authority and sponsor work together to do a tough job well. The buck, however, ultimately stops with the sponsor. If the closure is not amicable, the sponsor is still on the hook for ensuring that teachers show up to teach and students show up to learn. The sponsor must explain to teachers, parents, students, and the state why the school is being closed. The sponsor has to pull the trigger on whether or not to close a school before the end of the year and to ensure that proper closing procedures are followed, all state and federal reporting requirements are met and assets are distributed fairly. A sponsor that chooses to close a school against the will of the governing authority is, we assume, in a very lonely spot faced with a hostile board, disgruntled staff, angry parents and students, and curious media.

• Communication is critical. The key players--state, sponsor, governing authority, and operator--must be on the same page so that all stakeholders hear consistent messages. Rumors abound, and, when you've got different people making contradictory statements or giving bad information to parents and the public, things likely will go downhill fast.

All of the above are reasons why relying solely or even heavily on the free market to ensure charter school accountability has failed in Ohio. In fact, Ohio's charter system suffers from three inter-related deficiencies.

1. For years the Department of Education did little to police the quality of the people setting up charters or their plans for doing so. As a result, dozens of charters were set up with no real chance for success.
2. The philosophy for holding charters accountable was essentially laissez faire economics -- the market would guarantee accountability. For various reasons, including those listed above, that hasn't worked.
3. The law has left it to sponsors to regulate charters, but has done little to hold sponsors⁴ accountable. In fact an number of sponsors have fallen through a legislative donut hole and are literally accountable to no one. Furthermore, sponsors get money from keeping charters open and stop getting money when they close, so the economic incentives built into the system are perverse.

There have been a couple of attempts to tighten reins on charters and, in particular, put real teeth into sponsor accountability. Unfortunately none has gone very far. More unfortunately, when Democrats start dealing with charters, they stampede to a moratorium, which does nothing to solve either the problem of bad set-ups or of holding existing charters accountable.

We need to be talking about this. Charters aren't going away in Ohio and can provide some real benefits if done right. We are far from doing this right.

¹Not necessarily conservative, but interested in reform in a way that includes general friendliness to charter schools.

²Published by the Thomas Fordham Foundation which is both charter-friendly and conservative.

³By the way, one of the charters mentioned as closing -- East End Community School -- is actually being absorbed into Dayton Public Schools, which also should have been mentioned in another piece in that issue. In fact the issue as a whole in uncharacteristically sloppy.

⁴ To review, sponsors, are separate entities from either the schools themselves, or from for-profit education management oranizations (EMOs) like the dread White Hat. The law basically privatizes regulation by vesting authority in sponsors, but without and oversight.

Susan Tave Zelman at City Club Now

Outgoing State Schools Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman is speaking at this time at the Cleveland City Club. You can catch it now on WCPN, or listen to the podcast on the City Club Website.

Texas Fixin' to Teach English Good1

This is a story in the works for one my paying gigs. If you have experience with this sort of thing, consider this fishing for background.

Anyway. The Texas State Board of Ed has been working on new language instruction standards, and things have gotten ugly:

State Board of Education members, casting aside months of work by English teachers across the state, tentatively approved new curriculum standards Thursday for English and reading classes that will be used in Texas schools for the next decade.

Led by its social conservative bloc, the board rejected a curriculum proposal written and backed by several teacher associations – including those representing English teachers – and instead adopted a Washington, D.C.-based consultant's plan that changes the way grammar is taught.

I've done a little reading on the language wars but was unaware parties would resort to political intrigue:

Some board members accused teacher groups of hijacking the process by pushing their own document instead of the one tentatively approved by the board.

"The process has become a joke and a mockery," said Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond , calling it "contaminated and a circus."

So here is what all this is about. The conservatives on the Board want a specific instruction on grammar and the teachers want grammar instruction to be part of writing instruction. And the English teachers want the standards to include reading comprehension instruction and the Board does not. The Board, being the Board, is winning. At least one teachers group has the drafts up on their website.

So here's the thing. None of the stories talk about whether there is any research on any of these approaches. Even the Fordham story I got this from talks about research. Both parties seem to be working more based on politically-based assumptions.

The idea of teaching grammar only in the context of writing is counterintutive. It sounds like teaching the fingering on a flute only in the context of playing a concerto or telling someone to make eggs Benedict without knowing how to make a Hollandaise sauce.

On the other hand, watching a daughter learning to read and doing well with a curriculum that teaches her strategies for reading comprehension, it's hard to see who would object. But I can see how that some might dismiss it as mollycoddling PC stuff.

So I know some teachers happen by on occasion. If you can shed any light on all this, I'll be in your debt.

¹A hattip to a friend who came up with the title during a conversation today. She's actually blogger Keith Woodruff's wife Marisol. And by the way if you want to mean on me for stereotyping Texans I'll point out that Appolonia is actually from Texas and you will go on about the long history of self-hating Texans and I will weep silently until you go away.

Another Sad Measure of Ohio's Charter Schools

The Newsweek school rankings came out this week. The top "non-elite"school by Newsweek's measure is BASIS Charter in Tuscon. There are a half-dozen charter schools in the top 40. And through the entire list, none from Ohio, according to the list compiled by Jill.

Charter schools shouldn't be a left/right thing, and in many states they aren't. Charter schools done right offer the right kind o choices to parents and students, and may be helping to break the dysfunctional structures that hold many districts back. That's why Barack Obama gave a recent education address at a charter school in Denver. It's why a group like Democrats for School Reform embraces charters.

But the charter system in Ohio is predicated on the belief that the market alone is sufficient to regulate schools and ensure quality. Ohio's experience is a strong indication that it is not.

Fingerhut's Soft Sell

Chancellor Eric Fingerhut of the The University System of Ohio delivered his Strategic Plan as scheduled today. The result is a painfully cautious document with many laudable goals (increased enrollment, more STEM degrees, improved quality) but few of the hard choices necessary to achieve them. You can find the Plan, along with a separate downloadable Executive Summary at the U System website.

As one example, the Plan spends considerable time examining the situation here in Northeast Ohio. We get an accurate, unblinking view of the landscape:

Yet questions about the missions of the distinct
universities do arise in Northeast Ohio. The reason
is plain – the state has four public universities in
four contiguous counties (Cleveland State in
Cuyahoga, Kent State in Portage, the University of
Akron in Summit and Youngstown State in
Mahoning), plus one of the last free standing
medical schools in the country, the Northeastern
Ohio Universities College of Medicine
(NEOUCOM), in a region that has seen its overall
share of the state’s population decline over the last
several decades. The close proximity and the lack of
population growth have made the schools
intensely competitive, a competition which has not
served the best interest of the state or the region.

Acknowledgment that no on can be happy with the current situation:

Had we started with a blank slate, we would not
have drawn so many competing institutions in
such close proximity to each other.

And a firm, decisive plan to . . . keep talking about it:

To that end, the Chancellor will
convene a public session of the trustees of the
four public universities and NEOUCOM at least
annually to review the progress toward
improving quality, increasing mission differentiation,
increasing collaboration, increasing the
contribution of the institutions to the regional and
state economy, and decreasing competition
among the institutions.

The report as a whole pretty much follows that pattern. We now have goals and a promise that Chancellor Fingerhut will follow up on those goals, but as yet only faint suggestions that the Chancellor or the Governor are contemplating bringing any big wood into the game.

Given Ohio's historically entropic universe of public institutions, simply assembling a document suggesting a single vision is itself an impressive accomplishment. This report would not have been possible were it not for the Governor's success in organizing a single system under an executive appointed Chancellor. Still, assembling the Strategic Plan is a simple matter compared to actually implementing it. One measure of how difficult this will be is the calculatedly inoffensive tone of the document. It's a soft sell. Now we see who buys in.

Fed Government May Ease NCLB

From the NYT:

The Bush administration, acknowledging that the federal No Child Left Behind law is diagnosing too many public schools as failing, said Tuesday that it would relax the law’s provisions for some states, allowing them to distinguish schools with a few problems from those that need major surgery.

“We need triage,” said Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education.

* * *

Under the new program, the federal Department of Education will give up to 10 states permission to focus reform efforts on schools that are drastically underperforming and intervene less forcefully in schools that are raising the test scores of most students but struggling with one group, like the disabled, for instance. The No Child law, which President Bush signed in 2002, was intended to force states to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. In six years it has identified 9,000 of the nation’s 90,000 public schools as “in need of improvement,” the law’s term for failing, and experts predict that those numbers could multiply in coming years.

This is a potentially big deal. While Spellings is for now proposing a pilot this could move as quickly as the "value added" pilot which is now pretty much the norm. One measure of the bigness of the deal is that edblogs have already given it a jargony name: differentiated consequences.

Digest this for now; I'll be back with more later.

State Sen. Kirk Schuring Unveils School Funding Reform Proposal

This past Tuesday, to little fanfare, State Senator and Congressional candidate Kirk Schuring unveiled a proposed constitutional amendment to reform school funding. The proposal, now before the General Assembly as Sen. J. Res. 4 creates an earmarked fund for education. To formulate the fund, Schuring essentially takes the current state funding level, and earmarks percentages from a number of funding streams so that, if those earmarks were in place today, the amount in the fund would be the same as the amount currently budgeted for education.

Underwhelming.

Yes, it is true that the General Assembly played games with funding levels for the couple of budget cycles after the Supreme Court relinquished jurisdiction in the DeRolphe case, and this would limit the legislature's ability to engage in those sorts of shenanigans in the future. But the proposal does not increase the state share and therefore will do little to get districts off the levy treadmill.

The simple, but seemingly impossible solution is to raise some state tax, earmark the hike, and simultaneously fiat a reduction in property taxes for those districts above the 20 mil floor. It's impossible because no Republican can vote for a tax hike even if it results in a tax decrease elsewhere. And even where the tax that was decreased is demonstrably less fair and/or more of a drag on the economy. If he does, he will be clubbed by the Club for Growth crowd.

Exhibit A for this proposition is the number of Republicans who ran against the Commercial Activities Tax last year. Everyone agreed that the tangible personal property tax and the corporate franchise tax were bad taxes and that the CAT is comparatively better. Nonetheless, from Blackwell on down, the tax cut crazies not only campaigned against the CAT, they dishonestly implied that it was a new, freestanding tax.

Exhibit B would be the similar attacks currently leveled against Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential primary.

Meanwhile, Shuring wants to run this onto the ballot by going through the GA, but hasn't said if he will have anything to do with a signature campaign.

And we have to consider has been talking about school funding a lot for a Republican for some time. It's possible that he would have rolled this out even if Regula hadn't retired. Nonetheless this will certainly mean something in the campaign. What exactly we can't tell since Schuring's campaign site is [still] under construction. And no response as yet from his primary opponent Matt Miller or Dem hopeful State Sen. John Boccieri.

Young Americans Reading Less

This seems like at least an annual event -- a study showing that Americans -- particularly the up and coming generation -- aren't reading. Today the National Endowment for the Arts released a meta-study examining data from the U.S. Department of Education and other sources finding that leisure reading is declining, especially among late-teens and twenty somethings. The guts from WaPo:

The NEA reports that in 2006, 15-to-24-year-olds spent just 7 to 10 minutes a day voluntarily reading anything at all.

Bad, but here's what's really disturbing:

It also notes that between 1992 and 2003, the percentage of college graduates who tested as "proficient in reading prose" declined from 40 percent to 31 percent.

Here's how it's happening:

The percentage of 9-year-olds who say they "read almost every day for fun," the NEA report notes, rose slightly, from 53 percent to 54 percent, between 1984 and 2004. During roughly the same time period, average reading scores for 9-year-olds rose sharply. But the percentage of 17-year-olds reading almost every day for fun dropped from 31 percent in 1984 to 22 percent in 2004, with average reading scores showing steady declines.

That, by the way, tracks school proficiency data generally. American kids are generally doing well in K-5, then start to lose their way in middle school and lag behind peers in other countries in high school. And why is this happening? We can't say definitively it is the obvious culprit, but:

Iyengar emphasized that the NEA's data can show correlations but cannot prove a causal relationship between reading decline and, say, the proliferation of electronic media.

The other obvious discussion point is -- what of the internet? The NEA has been criticized in the past for not acknowledging online reading. Two problems this go round. First, the decline in reading proficiency is a problem no matter what the platform.

Second, electronic communications in the late 2.0 era are less conducive to practicing reading -- and writing for that matter. This Slate story confirms what I've been noticing; that kids are not surfing and emailing so much as IM'ing, chatting and texting. The latter are basically electronic versions of verbal conversation, not actual writing and reading of what anyone would call prose. A couple friends of mine teach remedial writing to college students. They have found it necessary to teach their students that it is not acceptable to spell "you" as "u." OMG its FUBAR. Thz kds CUS.

BTW, I don't remember who to h/t -- Publisher's MarketPlace dropped it in their Lunch email, as has area blogger Keith who suggests the solution is more David Drake. At least one other non-primary source referenced it. I tip my hat to you all.

Ohio's Crappy Charter School System, Exhibit 4395

. . . is a story in today's Dispatch that millions in charter school start up money cannot be accounted for. Specifically, $2.55 million in "planning grants" went to schools that were never actually set up.

The Ohio Charter School system was set up to act exactly like a free market. OK, a free market in which the government pays for the "customers" and paid some of the set up costs of the "businesses." That kind of market. An Iraq reconstruction kind of market.

Charter school advocates try not to talk about Ohio. In other states charter schools actually work -- so much so that liberals like the purveyors of EduWonk and Quick and the Ed like them. But in Ohio the system yields one failure after another. That's why an editorial in Minnesota about charter school accountability notes that, "Ohio seems to have more problems than other states, but it is a good reminder that we need charter schools to be accountable."

So what can we learn from this? First, we can learn that the pure free market model does not work. In particular, during late-nineties and early 00's, the guiding philosophy was to let anyone who could fog a mirror set up a charter school and let the market sort them out. That has given us dozens of chronically failing schools that thus far can only be shut down when they run out of money.

And now we have another problem. Ohio apparently gave money out without vetting the recipients. Exactly no one familiar with the history of Ohio charters is surprised.

By the way, a second problem with the free market model is the cost of letting the market do its magic. Businesses in a market don't automatically succeed because they are in a market. A market works by forcing bad businesses to close. That's fine when we are talking about, say, electronics stores. When Fretter and Sun closed up shop, they did little permanent damage to the polity. But when a school closes down, it causes considerable disruption to the families involved and to the public school system that has to absorb children who have not been receiving a decent education. A third is that changing vendor involved considerable transaction costs. And a fourth is the Market for Bad Education.

Fingerhut: NEOUCOM Rootstown Campus Will Stay

In his most strongly worded statement on the subject, today University System Chancellor Eric Fingerhut stated today before the Akron Press Club that the Rootstown campus of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine is an "important institution" that will remain in place. The status of NEOUCOM's current facility in Rootstown has been the subject of speculation for some time. Fingerhut's statement appeared aimed in part at resolving those questions.

Fingerhut was in town to discuss the University System of Ohio. The System is working on a ten-year Master Plan to reform the system to encourage collaboration and to improve efficiency and capacity. Since talk of possible mergers broke, the Chancellor has been saying that all ideas are subject to discussion.

As he began his speech, Fingerhut aknowledged "the kangaroo in the room" and assured the audience that "Zippy is safe." Previewing the end point of the speech, he said that the goal is to expand the both the teaching and research capacities of schools in the University System. The overall goal is to increase the number of students in the university system by 230,000 in the next ten years. At the same time, Fingerhut spoke of individual schools "thinking in a collaborative way" instead of competing with one another.

Aside from the reassurances about Rootstown, Fingerhut offered little specific information about where the process might be going. He said that Ohio will not copy a university system model from another state, but will "create a new prototype." He also said Ohio will not create a new bureaucracy and will not "abandon the commitment to local governance."

With regard to NEOUCOM, Fingerhut said that students at the Rootstown school might benefit from expanded opportunities to study in Akron or Cleveland, but that the Rootstown facility will remain.

Referring to discussions of possible mergers, Fingerhut said that they are examining every idea as it is advanced. The philosophy of the university system is to "stop putting individual institutions and cities first." When asked why mergers are necessary, he stated that he doesn't know that they are, but that all options are being considered. He also suggested that mergers should be a last resort.

Fingerhut spoke a great deal about the importance of state universities attracting more research grants, particularly in engineering and medicine. At the same time, he said that every university must provide a comprehensive education, including liberal arts, so no university will be without humanities and social sciences departments.

The University System is now posting components of the Master Plan as they are developed. The Master Plan Forum also includes fields to allow users to leave comments. The deadline for submitting the Master Plan to the Governor and General Assembly is March 31, 2008.

Sylvester Small Retirement Announcement

As expected, today's press conference at the APS admin building announced Dr. Sylvester Small's retirement as Superintendent of Akron Public Schools. Dr. Small also sent out an email to APS employees this morning which ABJ has posted.

Dr. Small will work through July 31 to help the transition to a new administration. The Board of Ed. has begun the search process and is working on a fairly tight timeline with the goal of putting the new Super in place August 1.

Current President and outgoing board member Linda Kersker has tapped Linda Omobien to lead the search, with Rev. Curtis Walker as her assistant. The Board has agreed to contract with the Ohio School Boards Association to administer the search. Their timeline holds the board to finishing the recruitment brochure November 20, start advertising the search December 14, and closing the applications January 25. Interviews are scheduled for February and the Board is to decide on their first choice the week of February 25.

According to the press release, "The community will be asked to participate in the selection process." The timeline includes interviews with staff and community groups to be completed January 8.

After the press conference, Board President Kersker said that the search will be nationwide, but she anticipates most candidates will be from Ohio. She also says the Board hasn't discussed whether members are inclined toward an internal or external candidate.

The press conference included board member plaudits for Small. Kersker assured the audience that Dr. Small has a complete vote of confidence from the Board. Board members recounted his accomplishments -- moving from Academic Emergency, setting up the building program, improving community participation in the district, among others. Of course the trolls on Ohio dot com are happily piling on, without knowing what they are talking about and with barely concealed racist motivation.

Dr. Small apparently had promised board members that he would give them plenty of notice when he decided to retire. That's what is happening. It's now in the hands of the board, new members and all (both of whom are friends of mine, BTW.) This will be interesting to watch.

Sylvester Small Retiring?! UPDATED

Akron Public Schools announced a press conference Monday during which "board members and Superintendent Sylvester Small will 'discuss the future direction' of the district. According to the ABJ story, people have been speculating when Small, who is 60, would retire.

Interesting. Dr. Small is not a figure of imposing leadership, but he has presided over Akron rising to become the premier urban district in the state. He has benefited from a number of other people and institutions
stepping in to help, but he has also effectively managed what could have been chaos. While dumping on him is a popular sport among Ohio.com trolls, the district's record during his tenure has been impressive.

Don't like Dr. Small? Scoreboard.

All of which is to say that if the district is looking at a superintendent search, a great deal rides on it. The district should offer attractive opportunity for qualified candidate. But with two new members on the Board of Ed and no small level of political disagreement among members, a change at the top is probably not precisely what the district needs.

UPDATE: Eric Mansfield ran down sources and has the exclusive -- Dr. Small is definitely retiring. Serves me write for failing to check Eric's blog.