Dispelling the myths of charter schools

Someone in my own small town of Doylestown, Ohio had the idea that they might want to start a little charter school.  The Gilcrest Wellness Center already houses a daycare center, a senior daycare facility, a fitness center, and a rehabilitation center.  The planning commission recently approved a conditional permit (pending a detailed site plan) for 2-3 modular units with two classrooms per unit.  Oh my!


This prompted the Chippewa School Board, the Chippewa Education Association, and even the local Catholic school, Saints Peter and Paul, to move swiftly and decisively to eradicate this menace to our bucolic way of life. Within days, the village council had 25 letters of opposition to the dreaded mini-charter school that threatened to suck the life out of our public and private schools.  


The Chippewa School board's unanimous letter to Council President Anthony Lindeman said the school would, "divert local taxes to a for-profit company," and that charter schools "are not held to the same standards as public schools and often lack highly qualified teaching personnel."


The Chippewa Education Association's (CEA) letter said,

"We understand that some communities need to develop charter schools to offer an alternative to a failing system. However, Chippewa Local is not failing....This is a time for the community to rally its resources around what is best for our children, not take them away...We are also concerned that our children may not receive instruction from someone highly qualified...There are too many unanswered questions for this school to be effective."

[for an explanation of how little it takes for a school to receive an "Excellent" rating see my previous blog post]

These are common concerns and arguments against charter schools.  Unfortunately, they're not factual.  Let's look at them one by one.  


First, let's get a couple terms right.  In Ohio,  charter schools are legally called "community schools."  And they are public schools.  The state pays for them, the students take state-mandated tests and the state has the authority to close them if they fail. 

The first assertion is that they "divert local taxes to a for-profit company." The fact is that community schools receive their funding from the state through the per-pupil foundation allocation.  Many also receive funding through grants and other government and private sources.  The formula amount for FY 2010 was $5718 per pupil.  Some students came with additional funding due to IEP's, special education designation, poverty-based assistance, etc.   There is no funding formula or per pupil funding that "diverts local taxes to a for-profit company." That statement by the Chippewa Board is simply untrue. Surely Superintendent Higgins, who has been a very outspoken critic of state budget cuts and lack of local funding, is aware of the flow of local dollars and is also aware that local tax dollars are not sent to charter schools. 


The only possible "local taxes" that could be used on behalf of community school students would be transportation costs if the parents insist that their children be transported to the new school at district expense, as is their right.  Of course, if the child decides to attend a community school or private school 29 minutes away from Doylestown, the district must also pay for that transportation, so that's probably not the expense the school board is complaining about here, since choosing a community school in Doyestown over an out of town school might save the district money. 


The second allegation is that community schools "are not held to the same standards as public schools and often lack highly qualified teaching personnel." Wrong and wrong again.



All Ohio certification and licensing requirements do apply to community schools, with the exception that teachers may teach outside their areas of certification.  Teachers must be highly qualified. 


As for the standards, community schools are required to follow the Individuals with Disabilities Act, No Child Left Behind, Ohio Core graduation requirements, and students take all state-required assessments.  Community schools are identified for improvement based upon performance and required to participate in the Ohio Improvement Process, just like every other public school in Ohio.  They are subject to closure criteria based upon ratings of performance. 


The main difference is that the teachers have more freedom in curriculum development and implementation. 


The letter from the Chippewa Education Association (the union) said, "This is a time for the community to rally its resources around what is best for our children, not take them away." [emphasis added] 


This is the biggest myth of all - that teachers, school personnel, bureaucrats, government officials, that anyone but the parents know what is best for their own personal children.  In fact, this is the very reason that many families choose alternative forms of education, including homeschooling, because they want want to be the ones influencing and making decisions for their children.  


I have no doubt that the Chippewa School Board and the CEA believe that they are providing an education far superior to anything a community school could ever provide. And perhaps they are.  But you don't prove that by bullying the little competitor out of town and shouting down any voices with alternatives ideas.  We live in an exciting time when education is exploding in a hundred different directions across many platforms.  We should encourage expansion rather than limitation in the best interest of the children and the community.  This isn't about building kingdoms, it's about the building kids. 

Rick Perry is right - the feds should stay out of education

The Fordham Institute, a generally conservative-leaning education think tank wrote an opinion piece critical of Texas governor (and possible presidential candidate) Rick Perry's education policy.  In "Good for Texas. Good for  America?" Chester Finn first blamed "cocky" Texans (in general) for saddling the rest of us with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which ended up being a costly, regulatory nightmare that emphasized testing, testing, and more testing with a patchwork of state standards trying to conform to burdensome federal regulations.  By the time this federal  bureaucracy trickled down to the local level, school boards and teachers were left "teaching to the test" with the threat of harsh penalties from the Feds always looming.  


Finn acknowledges that the biggest flaw in NCLB was the loss of state control:

"NCLB tried. It tried harder than any federal education law in history. Its shortcomings are due in large measure to its architects’ failure to distinguish between what a state government in a place like Austin can make happen in K-12 education and what Uncle Sam can bring about."

He then goes on to criticize Perry for acknowledging that very thing - for saying that Texans wanted to take matters into their own hands do education their own way, without interference from the federal government:

"Governor Perry heads into his presidential quest with a different blind-spot, in some ways the obverse of Bush’s. He is best known in education (and several other domains) for his adamant refusal to let Texas be pushed or pulled at all by Washington or other forces outside the Lone Star borders. That’s why he vehemently refused to seek Race to the Top funding. (Texas’s share could have been $700 million.)

About RTTT he said:“We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington.”

But Uncle Sam isn’t the only education scarecrow in Perry’s wheat field. Consider the Common Core standards for reading and math. Several months before the draft product of that initiative was even ready for inspection, he declared that “I will not commit Texas taxpayers to…the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standards and tests."

I say good for Texas!!  More states should stand up and refuse to take the carrots the federal government is dangling because those carrots have mighty long strings attached. 

Finn goes on to say that many states are desperate for federal handouts and it's not fair to deprive them of this money.  Apparently, Rick Perry is setting a bad precedent - or a bad example for other governors.  He even goes as far as to say that in "gravely ill jurisdictions such as Ohio and Michigan...Uncle Sam might help reformers duke it out with entrenched unions."  


Really?  The Obama Department of Education is going to let Governor Kasich use NCLB and RTT money to battle unions?  The National Labor Relations Board is having the vapors as we speak. 


Finn continues:

"Yes, one can pledge allegiance to the tenth amendment and declare that such challenges are the states’ problems to solve if they want to and can. But is that the best thing in the twenty-first century for a big modern country that is being outpaced in education (and economic growth) by nations around the planet? And is it the best thing for 55 million kids, many of whom today face dim futures that could be brightened by a better education? Few deny that today’s federal role in K-12 schooling needs major surgery. But with a deft scalpel, not a cleaver. If Perry brings only a Texas chainsaw to the task, it could turn out that projecting another set of Lone Star precedents upon all of American education would be one more mistake."

Yes, pledging allegiance to the tenth amendment is the best thing!  The Federal government has no business meddling in education. It is a state function and the sooner we send it back there,  the better we'll be.  The Federal government is the problem, not the solution.  Part of the reason education is so expensive is the myriad of rules and regulations imposed by programs such as NCLB and RTTT.  Once you gut all those regulations, cut all those jobs at the Department of Education, cut all the jobs of people who must administer all those rules and regulations, states won't need all those carrots the Feds are dangling. 


I don't agree with Rick Perry on every issue, but on this one he gets an A+ in my book.

Chinese vs. U.S. Education

Last week I posted my thoughts about Governor Kasich's screening of Waiting for Superman and the discussion that followed with Michelle Rhee. This garnered a couple of comments from people who think   that other countries are surpassing us in education and both cited the creativity of the students from those countries.  I wanted to flesh that out a bit, so I've posted the comments below, along with my thoughts about them:  

One reader commented...

How many countries see their best and brightest attending American colleges to be doctors, engineers, and researchers? More than most of us would expect.

Why is that? Obviously, they want creative thinkers and problem solvers. Not people who can fill in a bubble on a standardized test.

__________________________________________________________________

My response (expanded from my original blog comment):

I disagree with you that countries are sending their best STEM students here because they are the most creative and the best problem solvers. On the contrary, countries like China prepare their students to be champion bubble-fillers. Read  this article, for example, about the differences between the Chinese and the Western styles of education. For the Chinese, it's all about rote memorization and the result is 'teaching to the test' on steroids: 

"China has a long history of standardized tests, beginning with the ancient imperial exams initiated during the Sui Dynasty (581-618). Used for over 1,300 years as a method of selecting government officials, some suggest that official exams should be counted as one of China’s major ancient inventions alongside gunpowder, paper money, printing and the compass.

Today, national tests determine which elementary, high school and university a student will attend. They are still the single most important factor in deciding one’s general career path.

"The testing period — especially of the college entrance exams — is a major event throughout the Chinese mainland. In Shanghai, government regulation has established “green protection zones” around exam sites where construction projects are suspended and traffic is redirected.

Taxi companies offer thousands of cars to be reserved in advance. Oral test questions are played out over the radio — and there are even stories of late students receiving police escorts to get them to the exams on time.
However crucial in the cities, the nationalized tests are even more important in the countryside, where they are seen as the only way to escape an otherwise dismal social fate."

As a result of the pervasive, high-stakes testing, the entire system is built upon rote memorization:

"China’s emphasis on memorization and rote learning has significant consequences. Students are taught that all questions have but one right answer and there is little room for debate and original thought.

Subjects like history and politics are focused solely on dates and names. Even the Chinese language exam, which requires students to write essays, allocates grades according to how well one can quote classical texts and idioms...

...Yet, when they go abroad many of these students find they are ill-prepared for Western education. Chinese students with phenomenal TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores are often incapable of taking part in simple English conversation.

At least one graduate school in one of America’s most elite universities has now become wary of accepting students from China for this reason...Assumed skills such as in-class participation, seminar presentations and individual research projects, common practice in elementary schools in North America, are largely unheard of in the Chinese classroom — even in most universities."

The author of the article (who, incidentally is sending her child to a Chinese school) tells how this translates into real life:

 "Arriving late for the set breakfast at a five-star hotel in Chengdu, for example, I, along with a group of other foreigners, found that the coffee had run out. Our request for more threw the staff into crisis.

It was not until a series of meetings had been held and permission sought from senior management that a fresh pot could be brewed.

Passing even trivial problems up the management hierarchy in this way is simply impossible in a sophisticated post-industrial society."

___________________________________________________________

Another reader's comments with mine (expanded from the original blog comment) interspersed: 


Anon said, "In China, they have discovered the HARD way that their system is failing their national interests. Their students come out of school with NO critical thinking skills, no creativity to use when solving real world problems.

My response: On the contrary, their system is highly successful at promoting China's national interests! Children are trained from a young age that their purpose in life is to serve the state. Training children in critical thinking would be completely counterproductive to that Communist system. Because of their highly industrialized society, they need to train factory workers, not innovators.

Anon said, "Most all [Chinese students] entering the work place require years of remedial work to over come this"

My response: Putting aside for a moment that a third of U.S. college students need to take remedial classes to be able to handle college work and 4 out of 5 of those had at least a 3.0 GPA in high school....

Anon said, "China has turned it's back on what they used to be doing, what so many corporate powers who see our education system as a profit center are proposing. They made an easy decision, based on the evidence, to change direction. 

My response: I'm not sure what you mean by this. China is and has been, since 1949, a Communist country. It's only been recently that they've begun to reform their education system. They've only had compulsory attendance since 1989 and illiteracy rates approaching 20% in some areas.  The situation is grim in rural provinces:

"Educators were recently shocked by a scandal in Minqin County, Gansu Province, where authorities mobilized 40,000 secondary- and primary-schoolchildren to collect the season’s cotton crop. One student died when a tractor driven by his classmate accidentally rolled over him. Yet, despite the number of brutal accidents, it is not uncommon for administrators in poor, remote areas to ask students to “contribute to the common good” by spending several hours a week working in factories, including those that lack proper industrial-safety standards. Moreover, given the near-universal gender discrimination, it is routine for rural families to keep their girls at home, rather than send them to school. Minister Zhou admits that in particularly impoverished villages, the dropout rate in junior high schools can be as high as 10% (Lanzhou Morning Post, December 1; Xinhua, April 27)

Teachers in rural areas often have to farm on the side because the pay is so low. Check out the movie "Up the Yangtze" sometime to see the desperate circumstances in rural China. 


And what does any of that have to do with "corporate powers," other than the fact that this nameless entity is always to blame for everything?

Anon said: "China is going to leave us in the dust if we let the deformers who spokes model Rhee is fronting for have their way."

It's very frustrating to have discussions with people who insist on name calling.

China may very well leave us in the dust, but not because they have a superior education system - they don't. They are able to produce an impressive number of students who are able to ace our standardized tests and are super-students. But will they be the innovative thinkers, the creators, the people who invent things and the thinkers of great and lofty ideas? Their education system and their culture are not designed to produce such students.

If they do leave us behind, it will because we are in debt up to our eyeballs to China, not because their system built upon prolific testing, one-size-fits-all rote learning and student tracking is superior to what we have here in the United States, even in it's current state.  The truth is that we do know how to deliver a quality education in this country.  It happens in quality schools across the country.  There are public, private, charter, and homeschools that are successfully educating students and preparing them for post-secondary education and life beyond school.  We're just not doing it consistently for all students in every school, which is why we need to give parents more choices in education so they can evaluate the quality of a school and choose the best one for their children.  When we do education well, complete with critical thinking, the Chinese are not in our league.

April 13, 2011

Did a Michigan Town Ban Tea Party Signs in Public Parks? | The Blaze: 

"The Common Sense Patriots of Branch County–a tea party group–has filed a lawsuit in federal court objecting to the city of Coldwater’s ordinance prohibiting the posting of signs in a public park."

"A federal lawsuit claims a Branch County tea party group was denied the right to display banners and signs at a tea party rally at a public park in Coldwater because it was “too political” and “too controversial.” The Coldwater City Council then passed a resolution banning all banners and signs in that park.

The Thomas More Law Center law firm filed its lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Attorney Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center alleged that Coldwater City Manager Jeff Budd objected because the Common Sense Patriots of Branch County were “too political” and “too controversial.”

Coldwater, MI is about 30 miles west of Hillsdale, where my son attends college.  Nothing against the good folks in Coldwater, but we spent a couple terrifying nights in a Super 8 Motel there.  The hotel we originally booked had some sort of "mechanical problems" so they moved us to the Super 8.  When we arrived,  they didn't have us on "the list" and had no rooms.  No worries,  the front desk clerk walked down the hall to "look in a few rooms to see if any were empty. " I am not making this up!  She found a room for us and the next day we returned to the hotel to find that the room below us had been sealed by the police - apparently it was a meth lab. When my key card didn't work in our room, the nice tattooed and pierced desk clerk was happy to re-program it for me, no name or ID required,  I simply told him what room number I wished to enter.   At the breakfast "buffet" there was a sign that said (all caps),  "ONLY ONE DOUGHNUT PER PERSON!!"   Apparently, someone didn't heed the sign, as there were no doughnuts at all when we arrived.  In fact there was no food whatsoever.  Or coffee.   Our room also featured a toilet that leaked onto the bathroom floor and a security lock that was broken, as if someone had broken the door down from the outside.  


On the plus side,  Coldwater does have a mighty fine BW3's and a fantastic thrift store.   I hope these Tea Party folks prevail in their fight for free speech in a public park.  


While we're in the netherlands of Michigan,  Roll Call had a nice story about Hillsdale's College and it's new Kirby Center for Constitutional studies in D.C.:


‘Conservative Citadel’ Comes to Capitol Hill : Roll Call Around the Hill: 

"The Michigan college that National Review once touted as a “citadel of American conservatism” is making its mark on Capitol Hill...

...Late last year, the private college opened the Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship at 227 Massachusetts Ave. NE, a stone’s throw from the Capitol, to hold classes for students in its internship program and host public events and lectures....

... The Hill is already turning to the center as a resource, [Kirby Center Director David J.] Bobb said, thanks to the newfound fervor for the Constitution. With the reading of the document at the start of the 112th Congress and the new Constitutional Authority Statement required for bills in the House, Bobb said Hillsdale is looking forward to using its D.C. location to engage with Members.

“This is precisely what we exist to do — to foster debate and to make an argument that the Constitution means something,” Bobb said. “There’s a tendency for some Members to say that you have to be an attorney or a judge to weigh in on the Constitution, and we think that is contrary to the understanding the founders had and what we ought to have today.”...

 ...According to Hillsdale spokesman Joe Cella, about 20 alumni work on the Hill in positions ranging from legislative assistant to chief of staff.

They bring with them an education steeped constitutional principles, limited government and individual liberty — a decidedly conservative take on the typical liberal arts education. 

In keeping with its mission, the college operates completely without federal or state funding. Students take a core curriculum modeled on a classical liberal arts education with a required course on the Constitution, keeping with its mission statement of “maintaining inheritance from the Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman culture....

...[Bentley] Graves, a 2005 graduate who studied political economy and moved to D.C. for a Heritage Foundation internship before joining King’s team, said he credits Hillsdale with developing his political ideology. He noted, however, that the college’s educational experience focuses on the intellectual side of conservatism rather than a political agenda.

“One thing that people always think about when they hear conservative college is Republican factory, but honestly, over my time there I became much more conservative than I was knee-jerk Republican,” Graves said. “And I think a lot of kids come out of Hillsdale that way, with a much greater appreciation for what it means to be a limited government, constitutional conservative and more motivated by that than pure politics.” 

Economic Liberty and the Constitution
Hillsdale College's Allen P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship will be hosting an Online Constitution Town Hall on "Economic Liberty and the Constitution" on Saturday, April 16, 2011.  It's FREE, FREE, FREE!!  All you have to do is register online to watch the event live (it will also be archived on the website a few days after the event if you miss it).  Most of us won't have the opportunity to attend Hillsdale College, but these online events give us a chance to learn from Hillsdale professors and scholars and experience what the students hear each and every day in their classes.   Here is the schedule for the event:
   
Saturday, April 16, 2011        
10 - 10:15 a.m. (EDT) 'Choosing Liberty': Welcome and Introduction
The Honorable Mike Pence
U.S. Representative, Sixth District of Indiana
Today citizens must choose whether they will live as citizens, or subjects.


10:15 - 11: 15 a.m. (EDT) 'How Our Economic Liberty Has Been Diminished'
Dr. Paul Moreno
Grewcock Chair in Constitutional History, Hillsdale College
Economic liberty was revered by the Founding Fathers, who enshrined its principles in the Constitution. A hundred years ago, those tenets were attacked by the Progressives, who saw property rights as the protection of special interests, and our Constitution's structure as an impediment to progress as they defined it.

11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (EDT) 'How Our Economic Liberty Can Be Restored'
Dr. Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College
Economic liberty can be restored as decisively as it has been lost, but a restoration of constitutional principles cannot happen without citizen understanding and vigilant defense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.


David Cameron brands 'all white' Oxford University a disgrace - Telegraph: 

"On a visit to the north of England, the Prime Minister singled out Oxford for criticism when he accused elite institutions of having a 'terrible record' of enrolling teenagers from state schools.

Senior officials at the university described the figure as 'highly misleading' as it related only to British students who described themselves as black Caribbean. They said Oxford admitted another 27 students who described themselves as black African and another 14 who were mixed race."

Oxford defended itself, saying that only 452 black students across the country had met it's rigorous admissions standards.  So should Oxford lower its standards?

"Graham Stuart, the Conservative chairman of the Commons education select committee, suggested that the Government's approach was wrong. 'The problem we have with various minority groups in this country who don't get into the best universities is that they don't receive a sufficiently good education in the first place,' he said.

'You don't solve that by forcing institutions with high standards to lower their intakes, you deal with it by improving the standards of state education for all. That's the betrayal and the scandal here – we don't provide good enough education in our schools. 

'We let down the poorest and those from ethnic minorities and that's what we have got to put right, not blame Oxford for the situation we've got ourselves into."

The larger issue seems to be the state of "state schools" in the country:

"The Prime Minister, who studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, said leading universities did not have a good record when it came to admitting state school pupils, claiming the numbers had gone down in the past 20 years. “That is a terrible record,” he said. 

An Oxford spokesman said the university was “fully committed” to admitting the most able students regardless of background. “The fact remains that there is a real issue around attainment in schools,” she said."

Britain has a fledgling school choice movement and is now experimenting with "Free Schools" in response to parental demands. 

"Free Schools are all-ability state-funded schools set up in response to what local people say they want and need in order to improve education for children in their community."

As of September 2010, only 16 free schools had won approval from the government.  

  "The group behind the King's Science Academy, a free school due to open in Bradford, is driven by a vision of liberating inner city children from 'ghettoisation'. Sajid Hussain, a science teacher and assistant head who hopes to lead the new secondary school, said: 'We hope to teach good manners. We're looking at a sense of responsibility, social conduct, sitting down and dining. Independent schools are quite good at this kind of stuff.'...

...James Turner, projects and policy director of the trust, said the group was aiming for a school which is 'very academically focused' and encouraged pupils to apply for elite universities.

'We want to be clear that coming from a poor background does not preclude success – students from these areas can get good qualifications in valued subjects and gain access to top universities. We're addressing the inverse snobbery which says that 'people like you' don't go to certain universities or follow certain career paths or achieve at the highest levels.'"

Of course,  the teacher's unions and education establishment types are all for these innovative schools because they'll go to any lengths to raise student achievement.

Ha! You didn't fall for that, did you?

 "The new schools, many more of which are expected to be approved in coming years, could also pose a challenge to the teaching unions because they emphasise raising standards through longer hours and more flexible teaching. Both methods could prove contentious."

 The approval process is now getting bogged down in building codes and disagreements about whether profits should be permitted.  


As an aside, I think the whole concept of counting people by their skin color is offensive.  As a Christian, I believe we are all "one blood," descended from Adam.:

"And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26).

 The rest is just variations in pigment and melanin. 

How good is your "Excellent" Ohio school?

You live in Ohio and you send your kids to a school district with an "Excellent" designation. They're getting an excellent education, right?  Not so fast. Most parents understand that the designation has something to do with test scores, but we often feel like we're looking at the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"  We're not really supposed to know what's going on back there - the professionals know what they're doing, and if they say the school is "excellent," then surely it's true.  But sometimes when we pull back the curtain, we find that it's all been an illusion. From the Columbus Dispatch (HT: Colleen Grady):   

"Examining schools' passing rates on state exams often leads to debate about whether Ohio asks enough of teachers and students. Is the bar too low when, as in the case of the sixth-grade reading test, students must earn only 15 of 49 points (31 percent) to pass?

The minimum number of points to pass is called a 'cut score.'
Third-graders must earn at least 31 of 49 points to pass their reading exam and 33 of 52 points to pass math (in both cases, about 63percent). The third-grade tests are easier, which is why students are expected to correctly answer more questions than on other tests. No other Ohio exam requires students to earn that many points to pass.

On the flip side, no other Ohio exam requires students to earn so few points as the sixth-grade reading exam."

The chart below (from the Ohio Department of Education via The Dispatch) shows the "cut scores" required to "pass" the tests at various grade levels.  "Proficient" is considered passing in Ohio.  For example, on the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT), which tests students' 10th grade skills  - yes, you read that right...the Ohio Graduation Test is a 10th grade proficiency test -  students must get 20.5/46 correct, or 45.4% to pass the math section.  For reading, they only need 41.4%; science, 46.9%; social studies, 48% and writing, 55.2%  (if you're having difficulty reading the chart, you can try pressing ctrl+ on your keyboard to enlarge it).  

To receive an "Excellent" designation, a high school must meet benchmarks in attendance, graduation rates, and proficiency test scores.   Here's an example of a state report card from Chippewa High School, my district, which has had an Excellent rating several years running.   The requirement for "Excellent" is that 75% of  10th graders must achieve "Proficient" status on the OGT (85% by the time the students reach 11th grade).  Those would look like pretty rigorous standards if we hadn't seen the cut scores above and we didn't know that "Proficient" means getting an average score of 47% on the individual test sections! 

Another factor The Dispatch article discusses is the disparity that often exists between different schools with the same rating.  Two schools with "Excellent' ratings can look very different when we pull back the curtain and examine the test results further.  Looking at the chart above, we see in the first example, two schools with a 65% passing rate on last year's third grade reading test.  However, the first school, Ecole Kenwood, had an average composite score of 414.4, which is nearly in the "Accelerated" category.  The second school, Maybury Elementary, had an average composite score of 399.3, which falls into the "Basic" category, which is below "Proficient."  Furthermore, Ecole Kenwood had 52.2% of its students in the "Accelerated" and "Advanced" categories.  Maybury?  34.7%.   Yet in the school report card system, these schools look exactly the same. If you had the choice, which school would you send your child to?

How did we get here? 

Colleen Grady was on the State Board of Education (SBE) when this system was adopted.  She gave us some insight into the process on her State of Ohio Education blog yesterday:

"There are a couple of things left out of this story. First, when the state board adopted the original cut scores, the resolution included a requirement that the cut scores to [sic] reviewed and raised. (Some board members argued vigorously for higher standards to no avail. All we could get was a commitment to come back in the third year and revise cut scores upward.) It never happened. Second, the cut scores were set in the first year of test administration when scores and passage rates were expected to be lower.

That's right. Everyone in the room knew the bar was set very low and that proficiency was an illusion. We were complicit in a cruel hoax perpetrated on students, parents and taxpayers.

And the excellent and effective banners that hang in schools and districts around the state? Don't they signal quality education? Unfortunately, they often mean nothing of the sort."

I can tell you that Colleen was one of the board members who "argued vigorously for higher standards."  Unfortunately, she was outnumbered on the board. 

Now let me add a huge disclaimer before I go on:  Test scores aren't the only way to assess a student's abilities, skills, and proficiency. For some students, it's a terrible measure of what they know because some kids are just poor test takers.  And some kids are born knowing how to test well.  In a perfect world, each child could receive a comprehensive assessment that would include multiple factors, some of them not test-related.  However, when we're talking about the public schools and public tax dollar accountability and millions of students in the state of Ohio, testing of some sort is probably a necessary evil.  


The good news is that Ohio is most likely heading to a new assessment system, at least for the high school level.  Within the next few years, the Ohio Graduation Test will probably be replaced with....something....most likely a test aligned to national standards, which means it will be completely different than the OGT.  I do feel for the poor teachers who have to continually make major changes in their curriculum and teaching methods in order to comply with the "flavor of the month" from the State.  I can't imagine how frustrating that must be. 


In the meantime,  if you're interested, you can do some further checking into your child's school by running a power user report at the Department of Education site.  Click on "Begin," then "Test Scores," then "Proficiency Levels (building)," then select the year and school and run the report.  You'll be able to see the breakdown of student test scores for the school by proficiency level.  


Why is all this important?  First,  it's always good to make informed choices when it comes to our children's education.  In Ohio, we do have options available to us; there are public schools, private schools, homeschools, charter schools, and open enrollment. If you live in a district with a poorly performing school, you may be eligible for the EdChoice Scholarship, which may provide a tuition voucher for your child to attend a private school.  If you're armed with information, you can feel more confident in your educational choices. 


Second, it's a reminder to us that elections have consequences - state and local school board elections are important! How many of us can name our representative on the state school board?  How about our local school board members?  I know I've been guilty of walking into the booth on election day and wishing I had taken the time to find out who these people running for the school board were!  It's often difficult to find information about school board candidates, but our children's education is has to be made a priority and we need to elect school board members who will adopt high standards and won't settle for dumbed-down test scores. 


Third, it's important to let our current legislators know that we want rigorous standards in Ohio. In the coming months Governor Kasich and the Ohio legislature will making decisions about which direction to go  in the area of testing. The details will be hashed out at the State Board of Education.  If you don't believe that a school with a 47% pass rate should be designated "Excellent" and you want more meaningful assessments for your children, then demand it from our elected officials.  A stunning 39% of Ohio students must enroll in remedial courses in their first year of college.  In other words, their high schools did not adequately prepare them for college. We must demand and expect more for our children. 


I hope I've been able to demystify Ohio's state report card system a bit.  I'd love to hear your thoughts. 


[updated 3/21/11 12:47 PM]

March 16, 2011

Welcome to readers dropping by from Dan Phillips' Biblical Christianity blog, which is one of my favorites in the blogospere.  He also blogs at Pyromaniacs, another of my faves, and (allegedly) the #9 Christian blog on the earth with almost 200K hits per month!  Thanks to DJP for sending his esteemed readers my way!

Fed instructs teachers to Facebook creep on students  
The Daily Caller

"Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students...."...Facebook is developing new features that will make it harder for principals to miss episodes of online “harassment,” and so will increase the likelihood of government action against the teenage users of Facebook and other social-media..."...The leading advocate for the expanded rules is Kevin Jennings, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings founded the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network advocacy group, and raised at least $100,000 for the Obama campaign in 2008..."...Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based school-safety consultant, says the administration is so determined to focus on gay and lesbian teens that it is asking Congress for $365 million to conduct bullying-related school surveys in 2012..."...The primary purpose behind the administration’s initiative is to “create a social and political climate where it is impossible to express conservative moral beliefs” about sexuality, even when research data shows those beliefs help many people live prosperous and happy lives, said Laurie Higgins, the school-advocacy chief of three-person Illinois Family Institute, in Carol Stream, Ill...."

As schools begin to rely more and more on technology, parents will need to be vigilant about protecting the privacy rights of their children.  Many schools are now issuing school-owned laptop computers to their students, which will give the schools many new avenues for "creeping" on their students.  In addition to the inherent loss of privacy with Facebook, the new threat of school district retaliation against unpopular viewpoints is chilling. 


A Note to House Republicans Patting Themselves On the Back
Red State - Erick Erickson

"I hope John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Jeb Hensarling, and the rest of the House Leadership and those Republicans who supported the 3 week continuing resolution “cutting” $6 billion realize this:
The daily amount of interest we will accrue on our national debt is greater than the $6 billion saved over three weeks. In other words, these cuts have done nothing to save us any money."

I'm extremely disappointed that my congressman, Rep. Jim Renacci, went along with the House leadership and voted for the continuing resolution, which didn't remove the Obamacare slush fund, didn't defund Planned Parenthood, and didn't do a thing to solve the towering deficit problem. Congressman Renacci campaigned on a platform of repealing Obamacare and reducing the deficit, but on fourth and one, he punted the ball back to the Democrats' side of the field.  I applaud brave GOP members like Michelle Bachman, Mike Pence, Allen West, and Louis Gohmert who are serious about tackling these enormous problems that are jeopardizing the future of our country. 


Judge Convicts Nurse: Free Speech Does Not Cover Encouraging Suicide | The Blaze:

"Freedom of speech is no defense for a former nurse who engaged in “lethal advocacy” when he encouraged an English man and Canadian woman to kill themselves after searching for depressed people over the Internet, a Minnesota judge said in delivering a guilty verdict against the man.
"The judge found William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, guilty Tuesday of two counts of aiding the suicides of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008...
"...Melchert-Dinkel was not merely expressing ideas about suicide The court finds that defendant’s speech imminently incited the victims to commit suicide, and can be described as ‘lethal advocacy,‘ which is analogous to the category of unprotected speech known as ’fighting words‘ and ’imminent incitement of lawlessness,’” Neuville wrote."

Forget flashcards! Watch reality TV and get into college | Los Angeles Times: 
The L.A. Times reports that students were given the following essay prompt on a recent SAT test:

“Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular ... How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment?”

I've had this complaint about SAT questions for years.  They generally focus on some aspect of pop-culture, much of which is unfamiliar to students who don't spend their evenings in front of the TV as well as those who don't attend public school. There was a time that students were tested on a common body of knowledge that was rooted in study of the traditional liberal arts. While the question above is a writing prompt, designed to test the student's ability to write a coherent essay, taking a position and defending an argument, assigning such a silly topic - what educator Charlotte Mason would have called "twaddle" - demeans and dumbs down the the integrity of the test as well as those being tested. 


Is a Tsunami an “Act of God”? | The Daysman:

"There is a lot of controversy right now about whether or not hell is real.
But there is much less doubt about whether or not tsunamis are.
This raises a couple of questions. Is a tsunami an “act of God,” as the insurance companies tell us? And if so, is his role active or passive?
Assume for a minute that he is passive. Then we want to know why he didn’t prevent the tragedy in Japan. And if he is active, we want to know why he caused it.
We can safely say he cares about it, which makes it harder to argue he is passive about such things. No one wants, or needs, a passive God. And clearly the scripture says he is not:
You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,like grass that is renewed in the morning:in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;in the evening it fades and withers.For we are brought to an end by your anger;by your wrath we are dismayed.(Psalm 90:5-7 ESV)" 

Read the whole thing. It's a great response to an immeasurable tragedy. 


After all the doom, despair, and agony this week, I needed a little cheering up, so I turned to one of my favorites: Rhett and Link's Buffet Song. This just never gets old for me...

Sprint and the Beauty of Competition and the Free Market

Last night we finally gave up waiting for our family's cell phones to auto-update for daylight savings time and I made the call to Sprint customer service.  After waiting through the obligatory "Para Espanol, marque cinco" and several other prompts, I was directed to a very nice man who noted I was a "Premier Customer" and indicated that he would be especially enthusiastic about resolving my issue.  


After I explained my problem to him and he offered a solution that he was not sure would work, he let me know that I would be receiving a survey about his customer service by e-mail.  He asked me if I would be comfortable answering that yes, he had resolved my issues.  "Yeah....I guess," I mumbled, not quite willing to commit, not knowing yet if my problem was going to be resolved, yet knowing he had been polite and seemed to be trying his best to fix my problem.  "Ma'am....I can see you are hesitant about answering "yes."  Is there anything I can do to help you that would make you more likely to answer "yes" to the survey question?"  I told him that I understood there was nothing else he could do at this point and that I felt he had done his best.  He seemed mostly satisfied with this answer, but reminded me he would be sending me an e-mail with further information and that I should feel free to e-mail him if I had further questions or needed any more help.  We said, "I love you" and "goodnight" and hung up.  OK, that last part didn't happen, but you get the idea.


Before I go on, I have to say that I have had some completely lousy service from Sprint.  I feel like I have wasted entire days of my life on the phone with inept customer service reps in foreign countries who did not have a good grasp of the English language.  However, almost to a person, they have been almost desperate to do whatever it took to keep me as a customer and get a good rating on their surveys.  They've offered me free minutes, discounts on my bill, and even gave us an Airrave when I let them know we were thinking about taking our business (with our four phones) elsewhere because we had such a poor signal at our house. 


This is what happens when the free market and competition are at work - people work harder and give better service.  Contrast this to step-increases or seniority pay, where there is little incentive to improve one's performance or go above and beyond the minimum requirements.  Certainly, there are decent people whose work ethics propel them to give excellent service, whether or not there is an incentive, but the majority of employees will work harder and give better service when their pay and promotions depend upon it.  It's clear that these Sprint employees are rewarded for good reviews from customers.  An ad for a Sprint call center representative says:

• Starting base pay rate is $10.38 - $12.99 per hour ($21,600 - $27,000 per year), plus commission.  Pay is based on related customer service experience.

• Commission is based on meeting goals for customer retention and selling products and services. Individuals meeting their goals can earn up to $3,000 per month in incentives, in addition to the base pay.

Prices and innovation are also affected by competition. I grew up in Ohio in the 70's where you could use any phone service provider you wanted, as long as it was Ohio Bell, which was in cahoots with long distance provider AT & T.  At that time, Ohio Bell had a monopoly on phone services and equipment in Ohio.  You rented your phone from Ohio Bell when you ordered your service.  If you wanted an extension in another room, you paid extra for it.  If you wanted to upgrade from a rotary to a push-button phone,  you had to pay an extra monthly charge.  Mechanically inclined customers knew the tricks to disabling the ringers on the extra lines so the phone company didn't know you had an extension.  Don't ask me how I know this.  And our younger friends might not realize that all of our phones were tethered to the wall.  We had an extra long cord that would stretch halfway around the house and out onto the back patio, but even that would only get you about twenty feet, max.  Some families, to save money, had a "party line."  This meant that you shared a line with a neighbor - it worked like an extension.   My friend across the street had a party line and I always thought there was something exciting and mysterious about picking up the phone and hearing the voice of the neighbor across the gully.


If you wanted to call long-distance, everyone knew that you called on Sunday nights after 8:00 p.m. because the rates were cheaper.  In 1970, the price of a 3-minute (unassisted!) call was 70 cents on Sundays.  Adjusted for inflation, that would be $3.82 in 2009 dollars.  When I was away at college,  I was allowed to call home once a week, on Sunday nights.  All the girls in my dorm would line up at our floor's only pay phone to call their parents.  Because most of us didn't have ten dollars or so in change to plunk into the pay phone, we called collect.  Our family had a "code."  I would call the operator and ask to make a collect call to my parents. The operator would get my parents on the phone (as I listened in) and they would refuse to accept the charges.  The operator would apologetically inform me that my parents refused to take my call and after hanging up, my parents would call me back on the pay phone.  Of course, for this system to work, my parents would have to be at home, waiting for my call. We'd talk fast because it would cost over $10.00 to make a 30 minute call.  My parents liked me well enough, but they just wanted to know I was alive and that the 1976 Ford Maverick was still running.  This was the world before the deregulation of the telephone monopolies. 


A lawsuit in 1982 ultimately resulted in splitting the Bell companies from AT & T and began the process of  breaking up the government-supported phone company monopolies. This opened the door to lower prices for consumers and paved the way for innovation we couldn't begin to imagine in 1984. 


While it's still not a completely free market (take a look at your phone bill sometime and see all the state and federal regulatory fees),  it's a vastly different world than 1982, when I started college.  My son started his freshman year at Hillsdale College this fall and he carries a cell phone everywhere he goes.  In fact, everyone in our family does.  Long distance is included in our plan so we can call anytime and talk for as long as we want.  Of course, we all know that actually talking on the phone is so 1982!  Most days, the best I can hope for is a text or a  Facebook message from my busy son, but still, if he wanted to call home and chat for two hours, we wouldn't have to take out a second mortgage on the house!  
  
In addition to cell phones, there is, of course, e-mail, and a magical thing called Skype, where  I can have a live video chat with my son using the little spy camera that came pre-installed on my Google Chrome OS Notebook computer.   I can look into his eyes and see how clean his dorm room is (or not). The other night, my friend, whose son is also a college freshman, was able to "watch" him online via his cell phone's GPS tracking feature as he traveled back to school across several states.  Don't judge her. We still worry about our boys!  If not for the deregulation in the 80's, we might still be tethered to the walls rather than enjoying the fruits of the technological boom that was unleashed in the aftermath. 


The bottom line is that competition tends to make things better.  We need competition in education, healthcare, and technology. None of these areas are properly the domain of the federal government.  As we saw with the phone companies,  when the government stopped playing favorites and got out of the way, amazing things happened.