U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is visiting Van Wert’s public schools on Thursday. As DeVos is one of the nation’s top proponents of school choice options like charter schools and vouchers, it is important for the people of the City and County of Van Wert to understand just how much these options have hurt the overwhelming percentage of children who attend the local public schools in Van Wert County.
Since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for the children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools has instead gone to privately run brick and mortar and online charter schools, which generally perform worse on state metrics than Van Wert schools do.
Because the amount the state spend on charter schools is so much greater than the state provides to Van Wert’s local public schools, local taxpayers in Van Wert (which include income taxpayers in some of the districts), have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million – money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.
Overall, the vast majority of funding to charters from Van Wert County schools comes from Van Wert City Schools. More than 3 out of 4 charter dollars sent from Van Wert County schools comes from its city schools. However, it remains significant that nearly $500,000 has gone to charters from Lincolnview and nearly $400,000 from Crestview.
As if on cue, local property taxpayers in Van Wert County schools are paying $3 million more in property taxes in 2015 (the most recent available data from the Ohio Department of Taxation) than they did in 2013, which is increasing those communities’ reliance on property taxes to pay for education – a result deemed unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court.
When the federal government re-authorized the Every Student Succeeds Act (formerly known as No Child Left Behind) in 2015, the hallmark of the law was the freedom it granted states to develop their own accountability systems, among other things. This meant that for the first time in two decades, states could actually reduce the reliance on test scores to drive evaluations of schools, districts and even teachers.
During the intervening year plus, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has held town hall-type meetings around the state, as well as an online survey. The major takeaways from the surveys and input was simple: fewer tests, stop changing the testing regime every year, and more state resources for teachers and support staff. This test focus reflected the fact that only 8% of respondents thought that standardized test scores were the most important measure of student success. About 58% felt that goal-based measures would be a better method.
Given this backdrop, folks in the field were stunned that, when the draft report came out, they learned ODE had proposed to keep the same level of testing. As Akron-area superintendents put it in their protest letter, “we are alarmed that the feedback gathered during these stakeholder meetings does not appear to have been included in Ohio’s plan.” They and others want the state to adopt the minimum testing required under ESSA authorization — reading and math testing for 3-8 grades, and science in 5-8. That would reduce the amount of testing from the current 31 tests to 20, or 21 if the ACT is required.
Instead, ODE has reasoned that keeping the same number of tests is keeping in line with the feedback they received that told them to stop changing tests each year — the last three years, the state has required a different state test each year, thanks to legislative meddling.
There are other concerns the superintendents voiced, including eliminating student testing as a teacher evaluation tool, investing more in pre-K education and wraparound services. But it is the testing concern that has driven the strong reaction to Ohio’s ESSA plan.
Take Action
Tomorrow, the Joint Education Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the draft plan. The hearing is open to the public, and public testimony is welcome (details below). Or, you can submit your comments online.
Hearing on Draft Ohio ESSA State Plan
Joint Education Oversight Committee
Thursday, March 2, 2:30 pm
Senate South Hearing Room.
To testify, contact the committee at 614-466-9082.
It’s been 20 years since the Ohio Supreme Court first ruled that Ohio’s school funding system was unconstitutional because it didn’t adequately calculate the cost of schooling Ohio children, and relied too much on local property taxes. Since Gov. Kasich took office, the local-state funding disparity has grown after years of shrinking and was even wiped out the year before he took office.
Local property taxpayers are now paying more than ever before to fund our kids’ education – the exact opposite of what the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state needed to do 20 years ago.
Gov. John Kasich’s proposed budget continues to exacerbate the unconstitutional nature of our state’s funding system and we don’t know the full potential cost to kids in our local school districts[1]. Despite that, district by district estimates show that Kasich plans to remove money in vast swaths from kids in Ohio’s most rural, poor districts – 83 percent of whom would be cut under this budget – and give increases to suburban and urban districts.
Removing even a little bit of state revenue from rural districts can cause great hardship for those kids because they cannot raise local revenue in the amounts that urban and suburban districts can. For example, the districts receiving flat funding or increases in Kasich’s budget can raise property taxes at 116 percent the rate of districts that received cuts.
Here are 5 questions we’d like to see administration officials answer during tomorrow’s education funding hearing:
How will this budget reduce reliance on property taxes to pay for our kids’ education in all districts, as the Ohio Supreme Court ordered us to do 20 years ago?
Why weren’t the cuts to tangible personal property tax reimbursements or any potential increases to charters and vouchers included in the district by district estimates?
Why do 83 percent of Ohio’s rural school districts receive cuts?
Why was the state guarantee eliminated if population drops 5 percent? Isn’t that awfully low considering a 5 percent drop, especially in smaller districts, might only be a handful of students, which would have a minimal impact on school staffing and infrastructure?
Why was ability to pay such an important factor in Local Government Funding, but ability to pay seems to not governing the funding going to our 1.8 million school children?
[1] We have yet to learn how Kasich’s decision to cut the state’s tangible personal property tax reimbursement by another 1/3 and any potential increases to privatization options, which also remove state money from kids in local public schools
Amid much fanfare, Gov. John Kasich announced this week that his just-introduced budget provides a $200 million increase to Ohio’s schools. However, as with most plans, the devil is in the details. That’s because Kasich rarely gives additional money to schools. As we have learned with past budgets, funding increases are often offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.
Once again, in the latest budget, we see multiple instances of this practice. For instance, when Kasich claims unprecedented levels of funding for schools, he is only talking about one line item in the budget — the state foundation line. However, he has all but eliminated a different line item — reimbursement for the loss of tangible personal property tax levy proceeds once enjoyed by school districts. Prior to his administration, TPP reimbursements provided more than $1 billion a year to schools. In this budget, they are less than a fifth of prior funding levels.
TPP replacement funding to schools has declined from over $1 billion to less than $200,000 under Kasich
Indeed, the same holds true for other cuts in the budget, which combined more than erase the much-touted $200 million increase. Below are 8 line items in the budget that amount to a $227 million cut to schools:
Total of 8 statewide education cuts that effectively offset Governor Kasich’s $200 million increase to school foundation funding.
Separately, Kasich promises to phase out “guarantees,” or funding to districts based on past levels, protecting districts from funding losses when enrollment shrinks. Depending how the policy is implemented, this change could mean more than half of all Ohio school districts will see reductions in direct aid, disproportionately impacting low-wealth districts.
We have that analysis to look forward to later this week when the Ohio Department of Education provides district-level information on funding for schools.
Take Action
Want to do your part to advocate for school funding policies that actually help? Here are a few things you can do today:
Contact your State Representative and let them know what priorities they should fund instead of providing another income tax cut that mainly helps the rich.
The evidence is clear that the more and better educated a state’s population, the more healthy and prosperous our state will become. Yet, over the last six years, thanks to moves by Governor Kasich and state legislators, the State has consistently cut funding to local public schools while increasing funding to worse performing, privately run options, all while overseeing a precipitous drop in national education rankings. All while local property taxes are $1 billion more today than six years ago.
As we await the release of Governor Kasich’s budget proposal Monday, we reflect on these recent trends and maintain our hope Ohio will reinvest in education to create a better future for our kids and communities.
Past Budgets: Cuts are Cuts
Ohio has struggled with education funding since the 1990s, with four rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court that the way Ohio funds its schools is unconstitutional, primarily because the funding scheme is not based on actual costs and relies too much on property taxes to pay for it.
Governor Kasich’s first budget in 2011 cut $1.8 billion from K-12 education, a loss that was not fully restored until 2015, but there remain winners and losers, namely:
Children in 110 districts have less funding in the 2016-2017 school year than they did in 2014-2015.
Children in 317 districts will receive less than they did in the 2010-2011 school year, adjusted for inflation
Meanwhile, Ohio’s nationally ridiculed charter school system has continued raking in the dough – each year receiving more state funding than the year before.
Charters put additional strain on children in local school districts because, when state funding is transferred from a local district along with a student, 92 percent of districts have been forced to find local revenue to replace it. And spending for the state’s private school voucher programs has exploded at an even greater rate, further eroding the state funding left for kids in local public schools.
Current Challenges: Local Property Taxpayers Stand For Kids
Facing historic state cuts, Ohio’s local property taxpayers stood up admirably to fill the void. After six years of Kasich budgets, Ohio’s property taxpayers are paying more for education now than they ever have, with the average owner of a $100,000 home now paying nearly $1,200 a year in property taxes – a 22 percent jump from 10 years ago.
This increase in local funding means that Ohio property taxpayers are paying $1 billion more for their children’s education today than they did the year before Kasich took office. Remember the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times that relying too much on property taxes to pay for schools violated the state Constitution … 20 years ago.
Unsurprisingly, at the same time, Ohio’s national ranking has dropped to new lows. In 2010, Ohio was rated 5th in the nation for quality by Education Week. Today, Ohio ranks 22nd.
What’s Next: Will Local Taxpayers Have To Keep Paying For State Failures?
Going into the next two-year budget, Kasich is warning the state is on the brink of a “recession” as tax collections dwindle, thanks in no small part to his addiction to tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and well-connected.
Will that mean less revenue to children in Ohio’s school districts? Gov. Kasich has already told his department heads to prepare to once again reduce budgets. In addition, he has promised to eliminate funding guarantees and caps in the state’s funding formula. Eliminating those tend to help kids in wealthier districts and hurt kids in districts losing students, which tend to be lower-income communities.
Will Kasich and his allies will finally develop a funding formula that is based on the costs of providing a world-class education to Ohio’s 1.8 million students, and commit to relieving the burden of funding it currently overborne by local taxpayers? Will they find a way to fund Ohio’s many privatization options without fundamentally hurting children whose parents do not choose those mostly worse-performing options.
Until the state fulfills its constitutional obligation to properly and adequately fund our children’s education, it is difficult to see the state leading the world into a new century of prosperity.
Last week, Ohio legislators demanded that President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, repay an historically massive Ohio Elections Commission fine her advocacy group had levied against it in 2008.
The OEC, which is made up of equal parts Republicans and Democrats, voted unanimously in 2008 to fine All Children Matter PAC $5.2 million for “laundering” campaign money for Ohio’s Charter School Godfather, David Brennan, among others.
How did this work? Well, back in 2006, it was a pre-Citizens United world where PACs had to adhere to different spending limits and different rules in different states. Brennan, whose political largess in Ohio is legendary, was struggling to get his candidates elected in 2006 because the Republican flag-bearer, Bob Taft, was polling below 10% approval — the worst polling numbers ever recorded for a sitting Governor.
So he hatched a scheme to funnel $870,000 into Ohio Republican coffers. And he went to All Children Matter PAC — a group formed by Betsy and Richard DeVos to push for more charter schools and vouchers — to do it. The PAC was registered in Virginia, which in 2006 had no campaign spending limits. So the Virginia PAC took $200,000 from Brennan and shipped another $670,000 to its unregistered Ohio PAC.
Who got the money? According to the Columbus Dispatch, “a number of Ohio Republican statewide and legislative candidates, both though individual donations — such as $10,000 each to Speaker Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell — and campaign advertising for candidates including Rep. Kevin Bacon, R-Minerva Park, and Sen. David Goodman, R-New Albany.”
Blackwell is heading up Trump’s domestic policy transition team.
Here’s a a complete list of all the candidates that received direct contributions from All Children Matter, according to FollowtheMoney.org. You’ll notice a few candidates who are currently serving in various Ohio elected posts, including the sitting Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor, Secretary of State Jon Husted, State Treasurer Josh Mandel, and Senate President Keith Faber.
Trouble for All Children Matter was their Ohio PAC wasn’t registered, and it was a clear money laundering operation. So the commission fined them triple the amount of the illegal spending, which was $2.6 million. They were dinged twice: once for raising the money in Virginia and again for spending it in Ohio. Hence the $5.2 million total fine. The amount has grown, over time, to $5.3 million because part of the fine included a daily, small, accumulating fine.
All Children Matter sued to kill the fine, but lost. In 2012, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine sued to get the money and won, but has yet to collect a single penny. Why?
Because DeVos essentially closed down All Children Matter PAC and opened up the American Federation of Children.
As longtime Director of the OEC Philip Richter put it: “it’s like trying to get blood out of a turnip.”
But that doesn’t mean that appointing Ohio’s greatest political money launderer to the top education post in the country shouldn’t come without a demand that she at least make good on her group’s malfeasance. After all, Richard and Betsy DeVos are worth an estimated $5.1 billion, which would make the $5.3 million Ohio fine worth about 0.1 percent of the couple’s fortune.
Senate Bill 3, the state’s so-called “Education Deregulation” bill, was passed by lawmakers in last week’s Lame Duck flurry of activity and contains several interesting education provisions.
First, the bill exempts the state’s 22-highest ranked school districts from requirements including the use of specially-qualified reading teachers to comply with the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee, teacher licensing rules, and state mandated maximum class sizes. Currently, the Ohio Department of Education limits schools to a maximum 25:1 student-teacher ratio. Under SB3, Ohio’s highest performing school districts could legally operate with unlicensed teachers and 50:1 student-teacher ratios.
The following districts meet the prescribed bill criteria for these exemptions, according to the 2015-2016 state report card. District median income is also included, as well as the statewide median income rank:
With an average income of $57,563, it is clear that these districts are wealthy, at least when compared to the other 589 school districts in Ohio, where the median income is just $33,429. Because student poverty tracks so closely with student performance, it’s equally fair to say that the state is exempting high-wealth school districts from regulation.
Other provisions in SB3 include:
A school or district eligible for performance-based private school vouchers will remain eligible for vouchers through the 2018-2019 school year, even if its performance exceeds any other building or district in the state. Prior to SB3, if a school or district is eligible for vouchers because of poor performance, they would be removed from the voucher-eligibility list if that performance sufficiently improved. No longer.
Allowing charter schools to admit students of school employees over other students, which is a system employed by most private schools, but not at the public schools that charter school proponents claim to be.
Does not provide safe harbor to the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, so the politically connected but now politically toxic outfit will need to find another way to avoid repayments to the state for the $60 million it was paid to educate students that it cannot prove actually attended.
Eliminates requirement that Ohio Department of Education rate school and district extracurricular activities
Eliminates requirement of sign-off from the local superintendent for homeschool students to be issued a diploma
Limits to 2 percent of school time spent on state assessments, and 1 percent on test preparation
Interestingly, no Ohio charter school would qualify for the exemptions contained in SB3 under the standards listed in the bill. Three charters would qualify under the report card components in which they receive grades, but as none are high schools, they couldn’t meet the high school graduation rate requirements to receive the exemption. There are about 400 charter schools in Ohio.
Our latest report examines the progress that the Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD) has made since the state legislature passed the so- called “Cleveland Plan” and voters approved a new levy in 2012.
Make no mistake, there has been progress. For the first time in decades, enrollment in CMSD has increased. Graduation rates have also increased, disciplinary actions have decreased, and proficiency test scores have improved relative to other large urban school districts.
However, many challenges still remain. The successes mentioned above are only relative to other challenged school districts. The district’s national fourth grade reading and math scores have improved since 2012, but remain mired in the bottom of districts nationally – as they have over the last decade.
Our report also discusses the education supports created in The Plan such as efforts to expand early childhood education, the formation of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance to establish greater local control and a better informed community about its schools’ quality, and the implementation of wraparound services to create a broader support network for students and schools.
If the Ohio Department of Education tries to verify that students at the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow are online 5 hours a day, ECOT Superintendent Rick Teeters told email recipients, “they would likely force us and other e-schools to close our doors.”
Exactly.
It’s called accountability.
At issue is ECOT’s whole business model — getting paid $7,127 per student (more per pupil state funding than 85 percent of Ohio’s traditional school districts) to simply offer 920 hours of curriculum to kids, not actually prove they are educating them. ECOT received $108 million last school year from the state, and has been paid nearly $1 billion since it opened in 2000.
This is nothing less than an existential fight for the nation’s largest for-profit charter school.
ODE wants to verify that the kids it’s sending taxpayer money to educate actually logged on and off enough to justify the $108 million expenditure. ECOT claims in a lawsuit filed last week that ODE doesn’t understand its technology, which is so apparently groundbreaking that it allows kids to be educated effectively without logging in.
As Special Counsel to the Ohio Attorney General Douglas R. Cole put it in his filing responding to ECOT’s complaints,
“Under a plain, common-sense reading of the community school (charter school) funding statutes, ECOT is required to track. and ODE to reimburse for, actual student participation. Finding otherwise would render numerous (Ohio Revised Code) provisions … meaningless, and, as a more fundamental matter, the statutory scheme would not make sense.”
How else do regulators determine student participation in online educational experiences except through logging in and out of the system? It’s sort of like saying that a student in a traditional setting is “participating” even if the student shows up to school for a few minutes every so often. ECOT is arguing, essentially, that it should be paid in full for educating kids that barely show up simply because ECOT would let them in if they ever did show up.
It’d be one thing if ECOT’s performance indicated this novel approach actually worked. However, as has been documented over and over again, ECOT’s performance is among the worst of any school in the state, and it can’t even graduate 4 out of 10 kids.
So the returns aren’t great.
According to the Dispatch article about the ECOT lawsuit, we may have a hearing as early as today to decide whether ODE can proceed with its quasi-audit of ECOT’s kids. So we may have clarity about whether this count moves forward very shortly.
But if ECOT is forced to close because ODE is simply checking to make sure the school is educating students the state has already paid to educate, that says something about how ineffective ECOT has been.
And it explains, once again, just how lacking Ohio has been on charter school oversight. For it appears that all ODE had to do to overcome ECOT’s significant political clout was to simply ask them to prove their kids actually participate in an educational program.
And you wonder why Ohio’s charter school regime has been so mocked.