My Top 3 Education Stories in Ohio for 2012 -2013

My Ohio predictions from last year, if nothing else, proved that I should not make prognostication a full-time career.  That being said, I think developments at the state level have the potential to be more interesting than at the national level.  That is not necessarily a good thing, as we will see in my top three stories.

The Worst Education Scandal in Ohio History – I have already written about the Columbus City Schools attendance scandal once, but I have a feeling there will be many more coming over the next several weeks.  Auditor of State David Yost is already conducting a statewide investigation of attendance practices.  Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien is looking into criminal charges because of the truancy cases that were thrown out because of the deleted records.  No doubt Attorney General Mike DeWine will be heard from in due course.  I do not agree with the author of Plunderbund very often, but I do here when he says “this is going to be big.”  It will be big because of the number of careers it will claim (Lockland’s Superintendent is already on suspension).  It will be big because of the number of districts that I believe will be discovered scrubbing their attendance data.  It will be big because of the numbers of students who will be discovered not just falling through the cracks, but rather being shoved through them.  But the biggest aspect of this scandal may well be the timing of it.  The recent resignation of State Superintendent Stan Heffner was not related to the attendance scandal (He had his own separate scandal!), but his successor will have this scandal at the top of his or her agenda.  The Ohio Department of Education has often been criticized for its inability to enforce its regulations.  A 2008 report appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer detailing similar practices being done in Cleveland, and the ODE’s response was to shrug its shoulders claiming it didn’t have the technology to follow up on the allegations.  Apparently that has been a problem for quite some time.  However, those days might be coming to a rather swift end.  Why?  Because of story number 2 . . .

It’s John Kasich’s Turn at Education Reform – When he was running for Governor, John Kasich promised to immediately do away Governor Ted Strickland’s “evidence based” funding model for education.  With the blessing of his colleagues in the General Assembly, Governor Kasich kept that promise.  But instead of putting in his own formula in place, he went back to a scaled-down of what previous Republican administrations had done with a time-table of having new plan by the summer of 2012.  In a testament to the complexity of school funding in Ohio, that time-table met a rather quick and unceremonious end (I believe that is what led to my miss on the consolidation story from last year.).   Well time is now running out.  Under state law the next biennial budget is due to the General Assembly in February, 2013 and Governor Kasich has promised a new funding formula with a greater emphasis on money following students will be in it (A possible blueprint was just introduced in that state up north).  In my relatively short career, I have learned that these budget processes are watched with fear and trembling by teachers and administrators alike.  This one will be no different.  After Senate Bill 5 there are not many teachers who will hopeful for better days in this new budget.  In addition to that Governor Kasich now gets to name the successor to Superintendent Heffner, whom he also named after forcing out Susan Tave Zelman shortly after taking office.  The politics of the moment have given Governor Kasich an opportunity not just to name the next Superintendent but to possibly remake the ODE entirely.  There is enough time between now and February to put money in the budget for more regulatory power.  He can give the new Superintendent a mandate to clean house and provide the financial backing with which to do it. Add that change along with a new funding formula, and you have the potential for the most sweeping changes in Ohio education since the DeRolph ruling.

The Common Core is Already Here and Still Coming – While Governor Kasich eliminated the financial part of his predecessor’s education reform, he hardly touched the academic part of the plan.  Much of that is due to the role Common Core plays in the new standards.  Under Strickland, Ohio became one of the 46 states to adopt the Common Core standards for English Language Arts and for Mathematics.  With the adoption of the standards come new computerized exams in those subject areas, developed at a much lower cost than what Ohio was doing alone (for fewer tests!).  Ohio’s continuing membership in Common Core was sealed with the granting of a No Child Left Behind Waiver and Ohio’s winning of a Race to the Top grant.  What you may not realize is that part of the new standards is already here and has been taught for the last year.  School districts across the state began teaching the new standards in grades K – 2 last school year.  There is no testing in those grades (may that never happen!), but last year’s kindergartners will be in the third grade when the new exams start in 2015.  Grades 11 and 12 are also free to implement Common Core, since they are not currently tested either (that also changes when end-of-course exams begin for high school courses in 2015).  So this issue that has been outside of the mainstream is already well on its way to full implementation with 25% of Ohio students learning under its standards already.  Yet you probably haven’t heard much about it in the mainstream media and won’t hear much more for at least another year.  Go figure.

The Deal is Done

The US Department of Education today granted waivers to 8 more states, including my home state of Ohio.  I have already devoted several posts to this topic, and I seriously doubt that this will be the last, but now that the deal is done the focus now changes.  It is now time to prepare for new realities for public education in Ohio.  These include:

• Letter grades for public schools – I know that the General Assembly has been a little skittish on enacting this part of Governor Kasich’s education reform, but it is going to get done.  For the general public this will make more sense than the ratings we have now, but it will not be as big of a deal as some of the other aspects.
• Tougher standards – According to The Columbus Dispatch, only 5% of school districts would have earned an A grade based on last year’s results.  This will be the big shock to the public school systems.  Schools (including mine) have become quite accustomed to only having to make a 50% cut score for tests.  Those days are over, now.  What the new cut will be remains to be seen, but it won’t so easy, now.
• Tougher evaluations for teachers – Teachers will now have their test results as half their evaluation.  Essentially it give the green light to legislation that was already passed, thus shutting out the teacher unions yet again.
• Full speed ahead on reform – In one of the most ironic twists in this tale, the Democratic White House by granting a waiver has actually given political coverage to a Republican Ohio General Assembly.  They are free to fly in Columbus to finish things up.  And we all thought bipartisanship was dead!
• Where does Cleveland fit in?  The Cleveland school reform plan has been in the works as a separate piece from the statewide reforms and it doesn’t look like it was part of the waiver application.  Yet, it has been no secret that Governor Kasich wants to expand it beyond the shores of Lake Erie.  It will be interesting to see whether or not Ohio amends its plan to include larger applications of the Cleveland plan.

Ohio’s deal with Arne Duncan is now done.  Ohio schools will now start to deal with it.

Legal Relativism in the Classroom

At the risk of sounding pretentious about this blog in terms of both its longevity and its influence this is one of the most difficult pieces that I have attempted to write.  It is not as though I haven’t written about the U.S. Department of Education’s waiver process for No Child Left Behind.  It is one of my top three stories for the school year on both the state (Ohio) and national levels.  It is one thing to follow the twists and turns to this process.  It is another thing entirely for me to stand up and say this process is wrong, especially when as a teacher I stand to nominally benefit from it.  Yet as I have followed this waiver process, I have been quite uneasy about it.  Critics have accused the Obama Administration of circumventing the constitution in its by-passing of Congress.  Supporters say it is necessary because that same Congress has done nothing to revise a bad law.  I believe there is truth in both arguments.  But I also believe that both Congress and the Obama Administration have been guilty of legal relativism and have set up the public school classroom to be a place where teaching and learning could be made much more difficult to achieve.

For a good definition of the term “legal relativism” I refer you to the April 6 podcast of The Public Square from the American Policy Roundtable.  They apply the term in relation to the Supreme Court Debate over Obamacare as well as the Ohio’s recent attempts to expand the 1973 lottery legislation to include other forms of gambling.  (Note that both Democrats and Republicans stand accused!)  In both cases, the approach is that the government attempts to define what is best for the people.  Political philosophy as defined by the parties guides the content of legislation as opposed to the Constitution.  Philosophers from Francis Schaeffer to C.S. Lewis to Frederick Nietzsche have noted the ultimate result of this is nihilism, where whoever is strongest gets to define the rules under which everyone else operates.  The result is what we see now both in Washington and in various state capitals across the country.  Gridlock when government is divided as it is in Washington and ideological oligarchy when it is not like in Ohio.  I for one am not satisfied with either situation.

So how does this term apply to then No Child Left Behind and the waiver process?  We have to start with the law itself.  You would be hard pressed to find a teacher, student, or parent to say that this is a good law.  There are many details that have been discussed ad nauseum.  But the ultimate exercise in relativism was the fact that the federal government was holding the sword of Damocles over the heads of the states and local school districts.  If you don’t hit the targets we set, then we will take your money away and in some cases take your teachers away.  Ironically, the states were allowed within the law to practice their own relativism by setting their own intermediate benchmarks along the way to meeting the goal of 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2014.  In the short term the states actually applied their own form of legal relativism by setting low cut scores on tests and employing “hockey stick” models for their benchmarks.  Local school districts got in on the act with various attempts to game the system ranging from the nominally legal to abject cheating.  As we got closer to the deadline and the benchmarks had to dramatically shoot up, the cries of foul increased until the states found a willing set of relativists to revise things in President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan with the waiver process.

The relativism of the waiver process belongs on the same level as that of Obamacare in many respects.  When Secretary Duncan first announced this, it was 2011.  We were still three years away from the 2014 deadline for 100% proficiency.  That was plenty of time for Congress to reauthorize and revise the legislation.  Of course we now know that the Republicans in Congress were in many respects playing their own games regarding the federal budget.  A couple of attempts have been made in the past year to get bills through, but they never made out of committee.  Once it became clear that the Republicans were not going to give any opportunity for the Obama Administration to claim victory in anything, the administration moved to circumvent Congress.  And so Arne Duncan offered his deal of waivers from NCLB in exchange for more testing, tougher evaluations for teachers, and essentially a commitment to the Race to the Top program.  This is not a free ride.  Duncan told Bloomberg EDU on February 17 that if states did not meet their new commitments, that “I would have no problem” sending them back under the provisions of NCLB.  There actually is a provision for the Secretary of Education to waive certain provisions of the law, but there is nothing saying that he can set conditions for those waivers.  By adding the provisions, Secretary Duncan is adding to the law, which is tacit relativism, not to mention unconstitutional.  It looks like Secretary Duncan and President Obama are going to get away with it, too.  More than half the states have applied for waivers.

What is ironic about the whole situation is that there is still time for NCLB to be revised the right way, even with a presidential election at hand!  I actually believe that it will get done in early 2013.  There is plenty of incentive for Congress to get it done.  The two sides are closer together in education than any other issue.  There will be pressure on both parties to start to work together after two years of gridlock.  2013 could be eerily similar to 2001, when President Bush wanted to use NCLB as a way to try to create a new culture of cooperation in Washington.  The question of whether or not the waivers conditions get in will depend on the electoral results, but regardless of who is in charge, we are likely to see more relativism, which will trickle its way down to individual classrooms.  What would be refreshing is an education system which would set the precedent of placing the needs of all students first, as opposed to trying to prescribe a single desired outcome for all students, and then stick to that guiding principle on subsequent reauthorizations of the law.  Given the current makeup of the federal government, that may be currently too much to ask, but having the current education law be revised in a proven constitutional fashion by Congress and not executive order would be a reasonable start.

Standard Bearing

While it has been a couple of weeks since he made these remarks, I think what Ohio superintendent Stan Heffner said does warrant some notice.  In some respects his words are tough to swallow, especially in a district like mine which earned an Excellent with Distinction rating (equivalent to an A+) for the first time in its history this past year.  Yet when I look at the data he quoted in his speech on December 6 to the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, I can see why he said it.  If you have one set of standards that say more than half of your schools are A or A+ quality schools, and you have another set of standards saying that your schools are failing, and in some cases miserably, to get elementary students to read at grade level or to prepare high school students for college, then either your good set is too easy or the bad set is too hard.  Considering the large volume of data going well beyond what Mr. Heffner alluded to, the consensus would seem to be that the state standards are too easy.

What’s interesting is his answer to that is to expedite the standards revision from the Strickland Administration.  The funding model that went with it is being scrapped (however the process has hit some snags), but the content portion has by all appearances been left untouched by Mr. Heffner and Governor Kasich.  It may be the only thing Governor Kasich hasn’t touched in his first year in office.  The main points of this reform include:

• Adoption of Common Core Standards for reading and math at all grade levels.
• Expansion of testing to include end of course exams for core high school courses
• Require all students to take the ACT
• Implementing a new teacher evaluation program that has student test results as at least 50% of the evaluation.

This is all supposed to be in place by the fall of 2014.  In the meantime school districts have a balancing act to make as they continue to bear the burden of the current system.  They are still responsible for the current standards as the current assessments will continue for another two years, and then have to flip a switch and be ready for the new system for 2014-2015.  (Grades K-2 actually start on the new standards immediately as well as high school courses for grades 11 and 12.)  The question that hangs over everyone in Ohio, then is this one.  What happens if we find out these standards are also too easy? That question will undoubtedly be left for Governor Kasich’s successor.

But What Does It Mean?

They said they were going to do it.  Now, it’s official.  The Obama Administration has set in motion their program to offer waivers to states for provisions of No Child Left Behind.  If the Washington Post is correct in their analysis, it could be a bonanza with as many as 45 states being eligible to apply this fall.  School districts and teachers will watch with interest as they consider the possibility of not having to deal with such issues as Adequate Yearly Progress and Highly Qualified Teacher.  Congress will stew over the constitutionality of the whole situation.  What does it all mean for education?  Here is a breakdown of the ESEA Waiver Program from the Department of Education.

What’s Leaving

• The 2014 Deadline for 100% Proficiency in Reading and Math –  One of the least popular parts of NCLB because of perceived impracticality, states can reset their goals for proficiency instead of having everyone proficient three years from now.  This essentially kills the Adequate Yearly Progress measurement.
• Federally Mandated Improvement Requirements – States and local districts can now implement interventions tailored to specific needs.
• Federal Mandates on the Use of Education Funds – There will be more flexibility (which was the buzzword of the day) on spending federal dollars.  Even more of that will be granted to rural districts.  Title I (economically disadvantaged students) and IDEA (special education) are not affected.

Again the buzzword was flexibility.  I counted 17 different times the word showed up in the Department of Education fact sheet.  But the federal government is not giving away free lunches here.  Check out what states and districts will have to do in exchange.

What’s Coming

• College and Career-Ready Standards and Assessments – This is essentially code for the Common Core standards in language arts and math that have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.  With it comes a new set of statewide assessments in those subjects and undoubtedly well as for subjects not covered by the Common Core, including science and social studies.
• New Accountability System for Low Performing Schools – The bottom 5 percent of schools will have to “implement rigorous interventions to turn the schools around.”  There will be another 10 percent that will have to focus on interventions if there are achievement gaps, low graduation rates, or low performance in certain subgroups.
• New Methods of Evaluating Teachers and Principals – Just like in Race to the Top, states and districts will have include student progress in evaluating teachers and principals.

To me this is not flexibility.  This is just trading one set of regulations for another as the Obama Administration tries to control the answer to the question of what is good education.  Frankly, the Republican proposal made by Tennessee Senator and former Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander is no better in its attempt to go back to Clinton era regulations.  Given the state of Presidential and Congressional politics right now, I don’t think Senator Alexander’s plan any chance at becoming law and I think he knows it.  The question of whether or not Secretary of Education Arne Duncan actually has the authority to do this without Congressional approval is troubling to me.  This expansion of the authority of the executive branch opens the door to more onerous regulations not only in education but in other areas of government.

And what has really changed for the teachers?  The Common Core promises more testing, not less.  Student progress will now be required to be part of the evaluations of teachers and principals under this plan.  Is it any wonder NEA President Dennis Van Roekel still called for Congress to act to reform NCLB?  He is no fool.  He knows that Congressional action is his only chance to get the testing and evaluation components weakened.  (Again, why did the NEA endorse President Obama for a second term?)  Of course, if Dennis Van Roekel is having to rely on Republicans to help out the NEA, then he knows he’s in real trouble.

It is in times like these where I realize just how much of God’s grace we have used up.  Hope is not lost, however.  All across the country there are still teachers who still see the students in their classrooms as God’s creation, and not a statistic.  With such an attitude, the government can make whatever rules it wants to make, and whatever tests it wants students to take.  That attitude alone will not determine success or failure, but it is a sure foundation and when proper teaching is built on that I believe success will come.  And if the success does come, then the rules won’t need to be changed any more, and that will make everyone breathe easier.

Tsunami Warning?

Uh oh!  Recent events in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and New York are showing that Atlanta is not alone with its issues of cheating on standardized tests.  Things are so serious in New York, that new State Education Commissioner John King has started a review of testing procedures.  The signs are so ominous that Peter Meyer writing on the Education Gadfly said,

The tsunami is coming.

I look on from a position of transition.  In Ohio we have standardized tests for students in grades 3 – 8, the Ohio Achievement Assessments (OAA), and in grade 10, the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT).  However, I only have a peripheral stake in this game as it currently stands, because I mostly teach juniors and seniors who have already passed the OGT.  I get a few sophomores every year, but they are advanced students, who usually pass the OGT easily without any special preparation done on my part.  They are also my best students in chemistry.  That changes in 2014-2015 when the State of Ohio will switch over to end-of-course exams for high school students replacing the OGT.  Eventually I will have all of my students taking a standardized test of some sort; either chemistry, physics, or the AP Exam in chemistry, and I undoubtedly will be evaluated based on the results.  I am already making changes to my chemistry and physics courses to prepare for these tests coming three years hence.  So, I am very interested to see the results of all of these various incidents, and how my home state approaches test security and cheating.  Obviously, I have no intention to cheat on these tests, but I realize I will be adversely affected by the unethical actions of others.    When I commented on the Atlanta scandal, I stated that we all needed to take an honest look at ourselves.   That is also true from the persepective of the state.  There are going to be people under the new sytem that are going to cheat.  That is humans being human.  The true test of whether or not the state is truly interested in having a fair system of accountability lies in how the offenders are handled.  What happens in Altanta, New York, Pennsylvania and the nation’s capital will effect how Ohio approaches its new testing system.  That will in turn effect both my current and future students and finally will affect me.

The Changing Face of Teaching

This week the National Center for Education Information released the results of a national survey of teachers in the United States.  I was most interested to find that 40% of the teachers surveyed who were hired since 2005 entered the profession through an alternative route.  That is they did not obtain a traditional 4-year degree in education.  Rather they obtained a degree (or perhaps more than one) in another field and then went into teaching.  Furthermore these alternatively licensed teachers have different views on the education profession than their traditionally trained colleagues.  These views included more openness to:

• Standardized testing of students and using the results to evaluate teacher performance
• Merit pay for teachers
• Ending the practice of tenure for teachers
• Having market-driven pay, meaning that teachers in harder to staff areas such as urban school districts, or in high demand subjects such as special education, math, and science would be paid more than other areas
• Recruiting more individuals into teaching from other fields

As a teacher who took an alternative pathway into education, I was not surprised to see that numbers of alternative pathway educators was growing, but I didn’t expect to see 40%.  I was not part of the survey, but after reading the report, which included the survey questions.  I do not believe I would have answered differently in any significant way.  I’m OK with standardized testing but I also believe that professional practice should also be included.  Why shouldn’t a teacher be rewarded for having a good year?  I earned tenure this past year, but I realize that the nature of tenure is changing and it wouldn’t kill me to not have it.  Being a science teacher, I would benefit from being paid what the market currently bears (but my school district might not).  I would absolutely love to see more alternative pathway teachers enter the field.  I am pleased to see that Teach for America is coming to Ohio this year, and I hope those who enter through that program do a great job.

These points are also of interest in that they differ, sometimes greatly, from the traditional positions of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.  They also differ from the positions of the vast majority of the education faculty who are training both the teachers in traditional education and in the alternative pathway programs.  (I had some interesting discussions with some my profs on these matters, and some fellow students, too!)  They definitely differ from those who are headlining the Save Our Schools rally happening this weekend in Washington D.C., such as Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, and Diane Ravitch.  I hope these groups are paying attention because these data show that a growing number of the people they supposedly represent may want to try some of the things they oppose.  Some of these alternative pathway teachers may end being future education professors, union leaders, or writers on the subject, opening the possibility that this changing face of teaching may also change how we view our own profession, and that is something I would whole-heartedly welcome.

The National Center for Education Information has the report on its website.

Adam in Atlanta

By now the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools is quite well known.  The majority of the reactions that I have read have taken the tack of blaming the test, in this case Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.  This included Deborah Meier (in opposition to an editorial in USA Today), the Daily Kos, Diane Ravitch, and even David Zanotti of the American Policy Roundtable, who usually does not have much in common with the other members of this list.  Kevin Carey of The New Republic has an interesting take on how teachers do not get “the dignity inherent in possessing moral responsibility for doing wrong.”  I can certainly see his point.  In trying to blame the test, or the coming merit pay systems which will be built on test results, those who criticize the system end up sounding like Adam when he was confronted in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:12.

The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it

We conveniently forget that we are fallen people.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that standardized testing is right or wrong. (A fertile topic for later posts to be sure)  Mr. Carey notes correctly that cheating occurs in all areas of life.  It then also follows that no matter what system is in place to assess student achievement and teacher effectiveness, people will find ways to cheat them.

So, what then is to be done?  Do we need better test security or independent monitors of testing procedures?  Do we need tougher punishments for those who do wrong?  Do we need a new system of assessment and accountability?  Maybe what we need is to look firmly at ourselves in an honest fashion and realize what we are capable of, both good and evil and then ask God to help us strive for the good.  That may not seem like much of an option in a public school, but I know I can sure use the help.  It sounds like it is needed in Atlanta, too.