The second letter here shows exactly what our public schools are up against with these burgeoning charter enterprises. Why do you think an observer from Miamisburg, wherever that would be, would be so interested in the local schools?
He represents the "Ohio Coalition for Quality Education", yet another association of charter schools.
If he was more familiar with our area, he might have realized that Youngstown City Schools can raise very little funding through local property taxes. Only about 30% of Youngstown funding is local, and that is offset by their increased costs of (forced) transportation of charter school students across town.
In addition, in the exact time period cited by the author, the city schools have been required by the state and federal governments to provide all sorts of expensive intervention programs to their students because of lagging test schools. Those lagging scores are not a low of course as the local charter school scores -- though the charter schools have no such consequences attached to performance.
As a working teacher, it is impossible for me to spend my days spinning data as these hired guns for Charter Associations do. I am left with the conclusion that the whole testing circus, costing by the way, millions more than the yearly budget of YCS, was only implemented in the first place to secure a footing for charter schools to establish themselves in our state. The potential profits of charter schools as they replace public schools seems to be great enough to justify great amounts of investments in political campaigns, in charter school associations, and in propping up the funding of the pioneer schools. Before voters get excited about the lower cost per pupil provided by charter schools, they need to investigate their funding a little more closely. The larger charter schools receive extra funding from the federal government grants, grants from conservative foundations like the Fordham Foundation here in Ohio, and contributions from private sources, like the Christian school supporters of Eagle Heights. When the public schools are gone -- there will be no longer be a need to supplement the funding. It will come from the taxpayer. Wouldn't you like to attend a charter school board meeting? – although of course board members are not elected, and owe their loyalty to the company, not the citizens. Good luck finding one. Eagle Heights is at 10 A.M. and after you take the day off, is likely to go into "executive session." I have to trust that someday the voters will become aware of the game that Taft's administration and legislature has played in education “improvement”. But my gut feeling is that this will take place as they remember public schooling with nostalgia. Sincerely, Peggy Palma
Even better -- why not look at all Ohio districts? One of the biggest mistakes the Alliance for charter schools made was to ignore completely the actual scores of the students. In school districts with the highest scores across the state, like Canfield and Poland, the students did not show a gain. How could they? Their performance was already excellent.
Remember, the charter schools "outperformed" the urban public schools only in the gains their students made compared to last year. Unfortunately their students scores last year and this year continue to be low. This data should NEVER NEVER have been used without revealing that the public school students actually passed the test at a higher rate than the charter school students. At least I can use this story to illustrate the idea of "propaganda" in class. It's the best example I've ever seen of clearly twisting the facts.
This story must be the grand winner of the ORWELLIAN PRIZE for journalism.
(note: George Orwell's book, 1984, drew a frightening picture of a future totalitarian state in which Big Brother's official language of "Newspeak" created its own truths: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." In a less grim but equally trenchant 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, Orwell decried the "euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness" characteristic of political speech.)
In the case of the Vindicator story, "bad" is "good" because the "bad" schools met the "expectations" for them set by the state, but the state had higher expectations for the good schools, and if they did not meet these "expectations" this report characterized the good schools as deficient. The fact that the good schools actually had better scores seems to be unimportant. Getting weird enough yet? The "Alliance" for charter schools sent this press release to trumpet its members' success versus public schools. The Vindicator dutifully reports that 57% of 7 charter schools met expectations!!! (That's 4 to those of us who can multiply). This was compared to "only" (Vindicator's words) 38% of 16 public schools. (That would be 6). In this world in which 4 can be explained to be better than 6, I guess the following statistics make perfect sense: I worked at West Side Upper Elementary in Youngstown last year, where about half of the kids in the sixth grade passed the Ohio Achievement Tests in reading and math (the data being considered by the article). This did not meet the expectations of the state, abd indeed, our students could certainly have done better. Meanwhile at Youngstown Academy of Excellence, about a fourth of the kids passed the tests, and at Legacy Academy, less than a fifth of the students passed the tests, but the article argues that this proves the superiority of charter schools because these levels of success EXCEEDED the state's expectations for these students. Some charter schools are actually good schools. At Youngstown Community School, 68% of sixth graders passed the reading test. But, sorry. This does not meet the state expectations for their students. In this article, that makes them bad.
Teachers in Canfield and Poland have been anxious about the advent of this "Value-Added" scoring. It looks like their fears will be realized. In this weird world, a student who receives a close to perfect score in the first year of the two-year cycle has nowhere to go but down the next year. A score of 90% would then be said to indicate a lack of efficacy at his school, when at an inner city charter school, a child's score might rise from 40% to 55%, a positive gain of 15 points. This failure would then be celebrated. Bad is Good. We’re all totally confused. But according to George Orwell, that would be the intent of the state government.
More from Strickland: We should have in place definite standards regarding fiscal responsibilities so we know how the money is being used [and] who’s benefiting. We need very definite criteria regarding how the boards are formed, who serves on them and the requirements. [We also need] health and safety standards regarding the adequacy of the building; standards for those who teach in these schools; well understood procedures for assessing the performance; and criteria that would lead to the closing of those that are not living up to their responsibilities. Something that I didn’t realize when I became governor is that a significant percentage of our charter schools were grandfathered in, in such a way that deprives the Ohio Department of Education from exerting any authority or control over them.
From Governor Strickland in Catalyst Ohio Magazine http://www.catalyst-ohio.org/news/index.... Catalyst: Your proposals to prohibit for-profit charters and limit them in other ways didn’t go over well with the legislature. What lessons did you learn?
Strickland: Special interests have huge sway in our legislative bodies and [among] our political leaders. I called attention to what I think are intolerable practices and will continue to hold charter schools to fair and equitable standards just as we apply those standards to public schools. I’ve said that the concept of a charter school is in fact defensible. I have not said that all charter schools are failing. But I have said that the way the charter school movement has been implemented in Ohio is shameful. Many of our charter schools are managed by for-profit companies and their performance is dismal. They have not been held to either fiscal or academic standards that I think are necessary to justify the diversion of last year about $20 billion out of our public school system.
Posted on January 29 at 7:37 a.m.
The second letter here shows exactly what our public schools are up against with these burgeoning charter enterprises. Why do you think an observer from Miamisburg, wherever that would be, would be so interested in the local schools?
He represents the "Ohio Coalition for Quality Education", yet another association of charter schools.
If he was more familiar with our area, he might have realized that Youngstown City Schools can raise very little funding through local property taxes. Only about 30% of Youngstown funding is local, and that is offset by their increased costs of (forced) transportation of charter school students across town.
In addition, in the exact time period cited by the author, the city schools have been required by the state and federal governments to provide all sorts of expensive intervention programs to their students because of lagging test schools. Those lagging scores are not a low of course as the local charter school scores -- though the charter schools have no such consequences attached to performance.
As a working teacher, it is impossible for me to spend my days spinning data as these hired guns for Charter Associations do. I am left with the conclusion that the whole testing circus, costing by the way, millions more than the yearly budget of YCS, was only implemented in the first place to secure a footing for charter schools to establish themselves in our state. The potential profits of charter schools as they replace public schools seems to be great enough to justify great amounts of investments in political campaigns, in charter school associations, and in propping up the funding of the pioneer schools. Before voters get excited about the lower cost per pupil provided by charter schools, they need to investigate their funding a little more closely. The larger charter schools receive extra funding from the federal government grants, grants from conservative foundations like the Fordham Foundation here in Ohio, and contributions from private sources, like the Christian school supporters of Eagle Heights. When the public schools are gone -- there will be no longer be a need to supplement the funding. It will come from the taxpayer.
Wouldn't you like to attend a charter school board meeting? – although of course board members are not elected, and owe their loyalty to the company, not the citizens. Good luck finding one. Eagle Heights is at 10 A.M. and after you take the day off, is likely to go into "executive session."
I have to trust that someday the voters will become aware of the game that Taft's administration and legislature has played in education “improvement”. But my gut feeling is that this will take place as they remember public schooling with nostalgia.
Sincerely,
Peggy Palma
Posted on January 21 at 10:57 a.m.
Even better -- why not look at all Ohio districts? One of the biggest mistakes the Alliance for charter schools made was to ignore completely the actual scores of the students. In school districts with the highest scores across the state, like Canfield and Poland, the students did not show a gain. How could they? Their performance was already excellent.
Remember, the charter schools "outperformed" the urban public schools only in the gains their students made compared to last year. Unfortunately their students scores last year and this year continue to be low. This data should NEVER NEVER have been used without revealing that the public school students actually passed the test at a higher rate than the charter school students.
At least I can use this story to illustrate the idea of "propaganda" in class. It's the best example I've ever seen of clearly twisting the facts.
Posted on January 19 at 9:24 a.m.
It's about time.
Posted on January 17 at 9:05 p.m.
This story must be the grand winner of the ORWELLIAN PRIZE for journalism.
(note: George Orwell's book, 1984, drew a frightening picture of a future totalitarian state in which Big Brother's official language of "Newspeak" created its own truths: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." In a less grim but equally trenchant 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, Orwell decried the "euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness" characteristic of political speech.)
In the case of the Vindicator story, "bad" is "good" because the "bad" schools met the "expectations" for them set by the state, but the state had higher expectations for the good schools, and if they did not meet these "expectations" this report characterized the good schools as deficient. The fact that the good schools actually had better scores seems to be unimportant. Getting weird enough yet? The "Alliance" for charter schools sent this press release to trumpet its members' success versus public schools. The Vindicator dutifully reports that 57% of 7 charter schools met expectations!!! (That's 4 to those of us who can multiply). This was compared to "only" (Vindicator's words) 38% of 16 public schools. (That would be 6). In this world in which 4 can be explained to be better than 6, I guess the following statistics make perfect sense:
I worked at West Side Upper Elementary in Youngstown last year, where about half of the kids in the sixth grade passed the Ohio Achievement Tests in reading and math (the data being considered by the article). This did not meet the expectations of the state, abd indeed, our students could certainly have done better. Meanwhile at Youngstown Academy of Excellence, about a fourth of the kids passed the tests, and at Legacy Academy, less than a fifth of the students passed the tests, but the article argues that this proves the superiority of charter schools because these levels of success EXCEEDED the state's expectations for these students.
Some charter schools are actually good schools. At Youngstown Community School, 68% of sixth graders passed the reading test. But, sorry. This does not meet the state expectations for their students. In this article, that makes them bad.
Teachers in Canfield and Poland have been anxious about the advent of this "Value-Added" scoring. It looks like their fears will be realized. In this weird world, a student who receives a close to perfect score in the first year of the two-year cycle has nowhere to go but down the next year. A score of 90% would then be said to indicate a lack of efficacy at his school, when at an inner city charter school, a child's score might rise from 40% to 55%, a positive gain of 15 points. This failure would then be celebrated. Bad is Good. We’re all totally confused. But according to George Orwell, that would be the intent of the state government.
Posted on January 9 at 7:48 p.m.
This is a problem. There are probably a dozen students to a teacher in Youngstown when you consider all of the schools students are attending.
Posted on January 8 at 12:49 a.m.
More from Strickland: We should have in place definite standards regarding fiscal responsibilities so we know how the money is being used [and] who’s benefiting. We need very definite criteria regarding how the boards are formed, who serves on them and the requirements. [We also need] health and safety standards regarding the adequacy of the building; standards for those who teach in these schools; well understood procedures for assessing the performance; and criteria that would lead to the closing of those that are not living up to their responsibilities.
Something that I didn’t realize when I became governor is that a significant percentage of our charter schools were grandfathered in, in such a way that deprives the Ohio Department of Education from exerting any authority or control over them.
Posted on January 8 at 12:43 a.m.
From Governor Strickland in Catalyst Ohio Magazine http://www.catalyst-ohio.org/news/index....
Catalyst: Your proposals to prohibit for-profit charters and limit them in other ways didn’t go over well with the legislature. What lessons did you learn?
Strickland: Special interests have huge sway in our legislative bodies and [among] our political leaders. I called attention to what I think are intolerable practices and will continue to hold charter schools to fair and equitable standards just as we apply those standards to public schools.
I’ve said that the concept of a charter school is in fact defensible. I have not said that all charter schools are failing. But I have said that the way the charter school movement has been implemented in Ohio is shameful. Many of our charter schools are managed by for-profit companies and their performance is dismal. They have not been held to either fiscal or academic standards that I think are necessary to justify the diversion of last year about $20 billion out of our public school system.