New Charter Website Compares Charter And Public Schools
“KnowYourCharter.com” – New Website Provides Detailed Comparison of Charter and Traditional Public Schools; Improves Data Transparency OEA, Innovation Ohio Unveil New, Easy to Use Online Tool for Parents, Educators, Policymakers and Taxpayers
Columbus – The Ohio Education Association and Innovation Ohio today announced the launch of a new website for parents, taxpayers and educators that will allow detailed comparisons between charter schools and traditional public school districts. The new on-line tool – KnowYourCharter.com – not only provides access to the state’s most recent Report Card information, but improves transparency by aggregating this and other relevant data at a single, easy-to-use website. Previously, locating this data required visiting multiple sites and extracting the information from numerous and often confusing spreadsheets. At KnowYourCharter.com, visitors will be able to compare schools in a particular geographical area across a wide variety of indices, including State Report Card grades, the amount of state money the schools receive, the percentage spent on classroom instruction, and the average number of years of teacher experience. [Read more…]State expands charter investigation after IO raises questions about testing
Charters Make Up Most of Bottom Spots on State Performance Index Rankings
State Report Card: Ohio Charters Get More Fs than As, Bs, and Cs Combined
More Ohio Districts Get As on State Report Card Than Any Other Grade
Common Core Myths
There has been much talk recently about a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would remove the Common Core as Ohio’s standards for its 1.8 million children. While there are serious questions about the Common Core, its assessments and their use for accountability purposes, there are also several pieces of misinformation that have made it into the debate. We at Innovation Ohio felt it necessary to clear up some of the misconceptions about these standards so that a more informed discussion of their merits and demerits could occur.
- Common Core is “Obama-Core”
One of the more popular Tea Party talking points is that Common Core is an attempt by the federal government to take over education: Obamacare for education, so to speak. However, the standards were developed before Obama ever became President by State Superintendents beginning in 2007, who interestingly first broached the topic at their annual conference in Columbus, of all places.
- Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) Program Forced Ohio To Adopt Common Core
The Race to the Top application included a section on “Standards and Assessments” which made up 70 out of a total of 500 points. Forty of those points were awarded for “Developing and adoption common standards.”
Ohio won its Race to the Top (RttT) grant in the second round of applications. Despite having been singled out for its adoption of Common Core standards in its Round Two application while there was no mention of Common Core by reviewers in Round One, Ohio received the same score on the Standards and Assessment section in both rounds: a perfect 70. In other words, the state’s lack of Common Core adoption in Round One of RttT did not cost Ohio the grant.
So, while the RttT application did require the development and adoption of “common standards”, it did not specifically require Common Core to meet that requirement.
- Common Core forces every school to use the same curriculum
Standards are not curriculum. Standards state what students should know at each grade level. Curriculum is “how” they gain that knowledge. There aren’t Common Core curricula, per se. Each district, just like now, decides for itself the curricula that will help its students to reach the standards. And they will continue to pick all textbooks and other materials.
As for the standards, it is difficult to disagree with the standards when you read the plain language. For example, here are the standards 4th graders should be able to meet in reading literature:
Key Ideas and Details: 1) Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. 2) Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text. 3) Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
Craft and Structure: 4) Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean). 5) Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text. 6) Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: 7) Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text. 8) Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity: 9) By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
It is difficult to find fault with these. Are they perfect? No. No standards are. But all these expectations are just that: Expectations. They do not prescribe how to teach kids to “compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated,” for example, but simply mandate that students must be able to perform that task, regardless of the curriculum used.
- Common Core Leads to More and Worse Tests
Common Core requires the same number of tests. But the test are actually much better than the current crop (whether testing should be so elemental to our educational structure is a matter of real, fierce debate). The tests require students to show their work and think critically and attempts to measure critical thinking skills. The tests are rigorous and represent a vast improvement over the current round of OAAs.
The issue has been the tests are more involved and require greater state investment than they’ve so far received. But the tests themselves are an improvement over the old testing structure.
While there remain serious issues about how they’re used (teacher evaluation, school rankings, etc.), those issues would be there with — or without — Common Core.
- Common Core is Being Pushed by Extremist Elements
In fact, Common Core has enjoyed remarkable, bipartisan support from Barack Obama to Jeb Bush, as well as support from teachers unions and free-market reformers. It has been, in fact, one of the few major issues which unite the disparate sides on education reform.
Below is a sampling of organizational supporters of Common Core:
- Achieve
- ACT, Inc.
- Alliance for Excellent Education
- American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
- American Council on Education
- American Statistical Association
- Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE)
- Association of State Supervisors of Mathematics (ASSM)
- The Business-Higher Education Forum
- The College Board
- Coalition for a College and Career Ready America (CCCRA)
- Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE)
- Council for Exceptional Children (CEC)
- Council of the Great City Schools
- Hunt Institute
- Military Child Education Coalition
- National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
- National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)
- National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM)
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
- National Education Association (NEA)
- National Higher Education Organizations
- National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
- National School Boards Association (NSBA)
- Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO)
- The United States Army
This is not a list of crazy, radical organizations. And, in fact, many represent the teachers and administrators who have to most directly deal with the fallout from the change in standards. Does this mean that the standards are perfect? No. But folks whose job it will be to instruct and implement the standards have pretty much all been on record supporting the Common Core.
News Release: The Kasich Record: 5 School Funding Facts All Ohioans Need to Know
The Kasich Record: 5 School Funding Facts All Ohioans Need to Know
Columbus — With a new school year now underway, Innovation Ohio today highlighted “five facts” it says all parents and taxpayers should know about education funding in the Buckeye state. Documentation for all the facts below are available on the IO website. Fact # 1: Traditional public schools, which educate 90% of Ohio’s kids, now receive $515 million less state funding than before Gov. Kasich took office. The Governor and his allies have repeatedly blamed this shortfall on the “one-time stimulus money” Ohio received from the federal government during the recession, which they imply was “extra” money they had no duty to replace. In truth, federal law required that stimulus funds be run through the states’ existing school funding formulas, and was intended to make up the difference between what states had been spending and what their lower tax revenues would permit them to spend during the recession. It was always anticipated that states would replace the federal money once their economies recovered. Fact # 2: Ohio’s school funding system remains “unconstitutional” because of its over-reliance on property taxes. Although the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four separate times that Ohio’s school funding system is unconstitutional, Gov. Kasich and his allies have not only refused to fix the problem, but their most recent state budget devotes, according to the non-partisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission, the smallest percentage of overall state spending to schools since FY 1997 — the year before the first Supreme Court ruling. Fact # 3: The cost of local school levies has jumped 34% under Gov. Kasich. To offset state funding cuts, local taxpayers have been forced to pass levies raising 34% more new operating money than was required before Gov. Kasich took office. And thanks to Gov. Kasich’s elimination of the 12.5% property tax roll-back, those levies have already cost local taxpayers $10 million more than they otherwise would have. Fact # 4: Charter school funding has increased by 27% and charters now receive more state money per pupil than do traditional public schools . While Gov. Kasich and his allies slashed state funding for traditional public schools, they simultaneously increased state funding to privately-run Charter schools by $193 million, even though many have performance and graduation rates that are worse than urban school districts. In fact, nearly 1 out of every 4 state dollars paid to Charters since their inception have gone to poorly performing charters operated by David Brennan or William Lager who, together, have contributed over $5.4 million to Republican candidates and causes. Fact # 5: Private school vouchers have doubled under Kasich. State funding for vouchers at private schools (over 90% of which are religiously affiliated) has risen from $99 million the year before Kasich took office to over $200 million this school year. And under Kasich, the original rationale for vouchers (to allow desperately poor children to escape “failing” public schools in a few urban districts) has been turned on its head. Today, middle class kids from districts rated “excellent” receive private school vouchers. And since voucher money is deducted from the amount public school districts would otherwise receive, the end result is that taxpayers are now subsidizing religious and private school educations at the direct expense of the traditional public schools attended by their own children. Said IO Communications Director Dale Butland: “When it comes to schools, Gov. Kasich and his allies have flunked the test. Traditional public schools are now receiving less money, and poorly performing charters are receiving more. Local school levies have jumped dramatically, as have private school vouchers. And Ohio taxpayers are being forced to foot the bill for the entire fiasco.”The Kasich Education Record
Research Overview
As school begins this week for many of Ohio’s 1.8 million school children, Innovation Ohio felt it important to remind parents and taxpayers how dramatically funding and policy have changed under Republicans, led by Gov. John Kasich. Key Findings- Traditional Public Schools, which educate 90% of Ohio’s kids, now receive $515 million less state funding than before Gov. Kasich took office
- Ohio’s school funding system remains “unconstitutional” because of its over-reliance on property taxes.
- The cost of local school levies has jumped 34% under Gov. Kasich.
- Charter School Funding Has Increased by 27% and Charters now receive more state money per pupil than do traditional public schools.
- Private School Vouchers have doubled under Kasich.
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