The House Finance and Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee will wrap up public hearings this week on Gov. Strickland's education reform plan, despite disagreement about whether a Finance subcommittee is the appropriate group to consider massive changes to state education policy.
The House Finance and Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee will wrap up public hearings this week on Gov. Strickland's education reform plan, despite disagreement about whether a Finance subcommittee is the appropriate group to consider massive changes to state education policy.
The governor's budget proposal would not only change how Ohio funds its public schools but also make major changes to things like academic content standards, student assessments, teacher employment and licensure rules, and the governance of teacher preparation programs. Because of the complexity and extent of the education provisions in the budget bill, Rep. Gerald Stebelton (R-Lancaster), ranking minority member on the House Education committee, believes it is beyond the capacity of any one committee to fully explore its implications.
"The House Education committee, under the worthy leadership Rep. Brian Williams [D-Akron], a retired educator and superintendant of schools, has many members who have a great deal of experience with public education who are capable of exploring the myriad of education issues raised by this bill," Stebelton told The Gadfly in an e-mail. Stebelton believes the two committees could work simultaneously on the budget bill. "We could be working in parallel with the Finance committee, analyzing the bill, taking testimony, and reviewing proposed amendments and attempting to finalize it while the Finance committee addresses the financial issues of not only education but also the remainder of budget."
Rep. Steve Dyer (D-Green), chair of the Finance Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee disagrees. "The pieces [of the governor's plan] should stay all in one place," Dyer said. "All of these reform components are now driving money through the funding model." Because the reforms ultimately affect what the state spends on education, Dyer thinks the bill should remain in the Finance committee but pointed out that he is working with Rep. Williams on the budget.
Dyer has given the public more opportunity to weigh in on the myriad education-related budget proposals. The subcommittee held three evening regional hearings in Akron, Marietta, and Dayton that were open to the public. More than 150 people testified who might not have had the ability to travel to Columbus to testify during regular hearings.
Stebelton, who also has concerns about the constitutionality of the governor's proposed conversion levy, sent a letter to House Speaker Armond Budish (D-Beachwood) several weeks ago requesting that the education portions of the budget be moved to the Education committee. His request was denied. Other lawmakers are putting together a similar request, but with the House planning to have its version of the budget to the Senate the week of April 20, it seems unlikely their request will be honored either.
"Given the very limited time-frame we have to finalize this bill and send it to the Senate it just seems to me that the leadership of the House is not availing itself of all the talent available in the House, both Democrats and Republicans, who could be working to clarify the many confusing issues that remain to be resolved before its comes to the floor of the House," he said.
There's very little real evidence in Gov. Ted Strickland's proposed "evidence-based" education proposals, according to a review by the Ohio Academy of Science.
The Academy, which is particularly interested in science, technology, and engineering education, including STEM, examined the bibliography on which Gov. Strickland's education proposals are based.
"After a brief review of that document...it appears that most references are to political action or opinion reports; only a few articles appear to be from primary, peer-reviewed, refereed journals that the Academy would consider fundamental to understanding how children learn and how we should organize learning environments and pedagogy," wrote OAS Chief Executive Officer Lynn Elfner in a letter to the House Finance and Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee.
The governor's assertion that his plan is based on expert education research is being scrutinized. For example, University of Washington education finance expert Paul T. Hill found little merit in the governor's assurances (see here).
In his letter to the subcommittee, Elfner offered the Academy's help finding experts qualified to judge the plan.
"When we looked at the list, it lacked a lot of the references we expected. It wasn't as rigorous," Elfner told The Gadfly. "Given the priority of STEM, I would have expected to see more than the references I already knew about."
The "research-based, evidence-based" assurances given to back up the governor's proposals, Elfner said in an interview, lacked studies based on cognitive science, learning, and brain mapping. Too many of the papers cited were policy-based discussions.
"I only saw one reference that had to do with cognitive learning and how kids learn and how we teach," he said. "If it's not based on the best science of learning we're kind of wasting our time."
How science is taught and how people learn, he said, are vital to effective science teaching. For example, the governor has called for smaller class sizes. But while smaller classes can help in science teaching, they are not enough in and of themselves. Teachers who teach poorly will do so in a class of 15 students. Good teachers who teach many more students will continue to teach well and those students will learn.
"They may have 30 kids and they're still doing a great job," Elfner said.
Elfner said Strickland has not done a good job of explaining his proposals. He is particularly skeptical of how proposed the so-called 21st century skills called for in the plan will be taught in the current configuration of schools. Others also are skeptical (see here).
It appears the governor and his education advisers decided on a course of action and then went looking for "evidence" to back it up, Elfner said.
"Here's an issue and here's a solution but they didn't define the problem. The biggest fault in public policy making is a poor job of defining the problem," he said.
Perhaps the only thing related to K-12 education that Ohio's governor and lawmakers aren't talking about "fixing" is the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) (see here). That's odd, as few things are more out-dated, cost-laden and in need of reform than public pension systems.
None of STRS's problems have changed in the two years ago since we pointed them out in our report Golden Peaks and Perilous Cliffs: Rethinking Ohio's Teacher Pension System (see here). The STRS system is still opaque, costly, encourages early retirement, hinders mobility, and backloads teacher compensation from early in a career to the very end. And according to the system's latest annual report (which covers July 2007 through June 2008) the financial health of the system is worsening (see here). As the economy has melted down STRS's unfunded liability has topped $18 billion (up $3.7 billion from the previous year). As this liability has increased, so has its amortization period, up from 26.1 years in 2007 to 41.2 years in 2008 (despite state law requiring an amortization period of no more than 30 years).
STRS says its troubles are due to "investment returns being less than expected, retirees living longer and payroll growth being less than expected." The Wall Street collapse has only made matters worse. Also, retirees are not going to start dying younger and teachers are not going to willingly retire later when the incentives favor them retiring in their mid-50s.
Many individuals and families have seen the values of their 401(k)s plummet over the last year, and many of us have had to adjust our expectations accordingly. Teachers and other public sector employees do not have to do this in Ohio, or most other states, because their retirement benefits are guaranteed by the state. No matter how bad the public pension investments tank, the only ones who will take any of the hit will be taxpayers.
We wonder what taxpayers will think of a move to raise taxes and divert hundreds of millions or a couple of billion in "education" money to the STRS and other state retirement systems so folks can continue to retire in their mid-50s while the rest of us look at working until our 70s?
Public pensions are such a serious issue that economists got together last month at Vanderbilt University to discuss them (see here). Well before the financial meltdown, roughly 40 percent of the major teacher pension plans, nationally, were short of cash. Public pension funds are generally considered in OK shape when their assets are roughly 80 percent of liabilities. But Jay Greene, of the University of Arkansas, who attended the Vanderbilt meeting, points out that those supposedly solid pensions assume eight percent returns (see here).
No responsible financial manager ought to be banking on that. Greene agrees. He says it makes more sense to gauge growth, and presumably future pension payments, on the risk-free rate of long-term U.S. Treasury bonds. They are currently earning a little less than four percent. Assuming a four percent return, a teacher pension that would have been 70-percent funded at eight percent would drop to 44-percent funded.
To get a significantly higher return requires a lot more risk, but the gamble is, ultimately, with taxpayer money.
When the inevitable proposals surface for increasing pension contributions and making other changes to the system, the governor and legislature should seriously consider a redesign akin to what the federal government is starting to do for Social Security and Medicare.
According to a new report, charter schools don't produce substantially different academic results than their district peers. A longitudinal study conducted by RAND used student-level data to examine charter schools in Chicago, San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, Milwaukee, and the states of Ohio, Texas and Florida (see here). It found that charter schools do not have an effect, good or bad, on the achievement of students in nearby district schools. The study also confirms that charter schools do not "skim the cream" when it comes to recruiting students-children enrolling in charter schools have similar academic achievement levels as those attending district schools, except in Ohio and Texas, where students entering charter schools are substantially behind the achievement levels of their district peers.
The report, Charter Schools in Eight States: Effects on Achievement, Attainment, Integration, and Competition, offers two major concerns about the Buckeye State's charter schools. First, that the state's virtual schools lag far behind both district schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools in terms of student performance, and second, that the performance levels of charter schools in Ohio vary to a much greater degree than other sites.
The report's authors present two theories for why charter school performance varies so widely in Ohio: 1) The state has an unusually diverse group of authorizers (sponsors) and the quality of those authorizers varies greatly, and 2) Ohio's charter schools operate on significantly less funding than their district peers. The report suggests holding authorizers and schools more accountable for results, including closing low-performing charter schools, echoing testimony earlier this week by Fordham's Terry Ryan before the Ohio House Finance & Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee. Ryan shared with the committee Fordham's suggestions for improving the governor's education reform plan, including provisions related to charter schools (see here).
Fordham supports the governor's proposal that all charter school sponsors be under the oversight of the State Board of Education if at the same time a bipartisan Community School Quality Advisory Council is created and empowered to deal with charter school quality issues and subsequent policy matters related to school and sponsor quality on an ongoing basis. Members of the Community School Quality Advisory Council should be named by the state superintendent of instruction and the chancellor of higher education. This body would serve as an oversight and advisory body to the Ohio Department of Education.
Fordham further recommends that lawmakers ratchet up the state's "academic death penalty" for charter schools and fund all public schools, including charter schools, equally. Then, the state can focus resolutely on performance of charters by letting the closure law work to eliminate poor charter schools.
Specifically, Fordham proposes that the state should automatically close charter schools that:
Under the current charter closure law, two schools were identified to be closed based on their August 2008 report card issued by the state education department. If Fordham's recommendation had been in place then and if drop-out recovery schools were not exempted from the law, 62 charter schools would be closing their doors at the end of this school year-roughly 20 percent of the charter sector.
The House Finance and Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee will wrap up public hearings this week on Gov. Strickland's education reform plan, despite disagreement about whether a Finance subcommittee is the appropriate group to consider massive changes to state education policy.
The governor's budget proposal would not only change how Ohio funds its public schools but also make major changes to things like academic content standards, student assessments, teacher employment and licensure rules, and the governance of teacher preparation programs. Because of the complexity and extent of the education provisions in the budget bill, Rep. Gerald Stebelton (R-Lancaster), ranking minority member on the House Education committee, believes it is beyond the capacity of any one committee to fully explore its implications.
"The House Education committee, under the worthy leadership Rep. Brian Williams [D-Akron], a retired educator and superintendant of schools, has many members who have a great deal of experience with public education who are capable of exploring the myriad of education issues raised by this bill," Stebelton told The Gadfly in an e-mail. Stebelton believes the two committees could work simultaneously on the budget bill. "We could be working in parallel with the Finance committee, analyzing the bill, taking testimony, and reviewing proposed amendments and attempting to finalize it while the Finance committee addresses the financial issues of not only education but also the remainder of budget."
Rep. Steve Dyer (D-Green), chair of the Finance Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee disagrees. "The pieces [of the governor's plan] should stay all in one place," Dyer said. "All of these reform components are now driving money through the funding model." Because the reforms ultimately affect what the state spends on education, Dyer thinks the bill should remain in the Finance committee but pointed out that he is working with Rep. Williams on the budget.
Dyer has given the public more opportunity to weigh in on the myriad education-related budget proposals. The subcommittee held three evening regional hearings in Akron, Marietta, and Dayton that were open to the public. More than 150 people testified who might not have had the ability to travel to Columbus to testify during regular hearings.
Stebelton, who also has concerns about the constitutionality of the governor's proposed conversion levy, sent a letter to House Speaker Armond Budish (D-Beachwood) several weeks ago requesting that the education portions of the budget be moved to the Education committee. His request was denied. Other lawmakers are putting together a similar request, but with the House planning to have its version of the budget to the Senate the week of April 20, it seems unlikely their request will be honored either.
"Given the very limited time-frame we have to finalize this bill and send it to the Senate it just seems to me that the leadership of the House is not availing itself of all the talent available in the House, both Democrats and Republicans, who could be working to clarify the many confusing issues that remain to be resolved before its comes to the floor of the House," he said.
