Tom Curtis to Senator Oelslager re: SB 5 and fracking

From Tom Curtis, June 3, 2011

Senator Oelslager,

Thank you again for your recent phone call in response to my concerns about the 2 + 2 wording that Gov. Kasich would like placed back into the budget bill. Your efforts to keep that language out of the budget bill are to be commended and greatly appreciated by every public employee in this state.

I also wish to thank you for not supporting SB5. The fact that you were temporarily removed from the committee because you opposed the bill is deplorable and showcases politics at its worst. That blatant act is just one more indicator that this kind of politics is bringing this state and our country to its knees. What are the people supporting this bill thinking?

As you know, last week the Ohio House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", in our state parks. This risky drilling process will turn our pristine state parks into industrial parks and will pollute the landscape and possibly the aquifers that pass under them.

You may remember that I attended both of the "fracking" meetings held at Glenoak Middle School earlier this year. After hearing what was presented and what those that have been victims of such a process stated, I am adamantly against such drilling. The risk of polluting the aquifers that are so vital to our very existence is far too high. In my opinion, if our aquifers were to become polluted, due to the "fracking" process, that problem cannot be reversed. From my understanding, it is a fact that the chemicals they use pollute the landscape and will pollute the wells they will use to discard the toxic waste this process produces.

Once again, I ask that your common sense will permit you to help halt this action in the Senate.

I am hopeful that thousands of Ohioians will write their Senators and ask them to vote against the bill allowing "fracking" in our state parks.

Looking forward to your response,

Sincerely,
Thomas Curtis
N. Canton, OH

Lettter to the Editor: In defense of teachers

From John Curry, June 4, 2011

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/may/22/in-defense-of-teachers/
vindy.com, May 22, 2011

In defense of teachers

Well, the time has come for someone to stand up for the legions of wonderful educators in this area. Lately this profession had been maligned, cursed and accused of sending this country into its economic woes. The paper makes accusations that make my head spin. And it accuses anyone who dares to question it as not being intelligent enough to ask appropriate questions.

Yes, I am an educator and have been for 35 years. I am proud to say that my family has combined experience in education of over 127 years. We have worked in grades K through 12 and in administration. Most of us came into this profession when business was booming and companies were providing their employees with generous annual increases, free medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, employer donations to a pension fund and matched contributions to 401ks. Most of them received two to six weeks vacation or more and 11 paid holidays. Which means that they worked on average 15 days more than teachers did — and they didn’t have to go to school nights or summers to keep their jobs. I know that well because my husband was one of these people for many years.

At that time, teachers were working for far less than most other professions. There was minimum insurance and we have always paid into our pension fund. We had summers off, but most had to work other jobs to be able to provide for their families.

The profession has finally reached the point that is comparable to livelihoods of other professions. Unfortunately, this has come at a time when businessmen have made a mess of the economy. We are not responsible for this, but we are being attacked constantly. I invite any of you to spend an entire day with 24 kindergartners or 4th graders or be responsible for 150 high school English students and then decide if we are in fact not paid enough for what we do. This nation has been served well by the public school system and its teachers for generations. Who do you think educated the people who are throwing darts at us now?

Carmella Smallhoover, Poland

Bernie...you gave hell to BOTH the D's and the R's and...you are right!

From John Curry, June 3, 2011

Note from John....and some people call this guy a "radical?" Give me a break!

"Instead of ending Medicare as we know it and making savage cuts to community health centers and children's health care programs, we must ask the top 2 percent of income earners, who currently pay the lowest upper-income tax rate on record, to start paying their fair share of taxes. Instead of making it harder for working families to send their kids to college, we must end the foreign tax shelters that enable the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying tens of billions in U.S. taxes. Instead of making major cuts in job creating programs in infrastructure, public transportation and sustainable energy we must do away with a wide variety of loopholes that allow Wall Street executives, whose profits and compensation packages are soaring, to have a lower tax rate than middle class workers."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/02-10

June 2, 2011

CommonDreams.org

Sen. Sanders Calls Out GOP and Dems on Corporate Tax Rates, Breaks for Wealthiest

Statement and Senate Floor Remarks by Sen. Bernie Sanders

WASHINGTON - Congress and the White House are now focused on how we deal with our huge deficit -- a crisis brought about over the last 10 years by two wars, tax breaks for the rich, the Wall Street bailout and a prescription drug program -- all unpaid for. The deficit also increased as a result of the declining tax revenues during a current recession, caused by the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street.

The debate over deficit reduction comes at an unusual moment in American economic history. While the middle class is in rapid decline and poverty is increasing, the wealthiest people in our country and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. Over the last several decades almost all new income created in this country has gone to the top 1 percent, who now earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. Further, the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country with the top 400 individuals owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million.

[YouTube video: Bernie Sanders: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1G5mPMB4WM]

Given the reality of record-breaking corporate profits and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, it should be a surprise to no one that every recently published poll suggests that the overwhelming majority of the American people want the deficit to be addressed through shared sacrifice. They do not believe that the deficit should be reduced solely on the backs of working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor -- many of whom are already suffering as a result of the recession. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Republicans have proposed.

The Republicans passed a budget in the House that is breathtaking in its degree of cruelty. It would end Medicare as we know it by giving senior citizens inadequate vouchers to buy health insurance from private companies. The result is that seniors would, on average, see their out-of-pocket expenses more than double -- increasing by over $6,000 a year. It would also cut, over 10 years, $770 billion from Medicaid, vastly increasing the number of uninsured Americans, and threatening the long-term care of the elderly who live in nursing homes.

The Republican budget would also make savage cuts in education, nutrition, affordable housing, infrastructure, environmental protection and virtually every program that low- and moderate-income Americans depend upon.

Amazingly, while the Republican budget writers waged a vicious and unprecedented attack on the needs of working families, they do not ask the wealthiest people in this country, whose tax rates are now the lowest on record, to contribute one dime more for deficit reduction. Nor do they propose to do away with any of the loopholes that enable extremely profitable corporations (like General Electric, Bank of America, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and many more) to pay little or no federal income taxes. Quite the contrary! The Republican budget actually provides $1 trillion more in tax breaks over the next 10 years for the very rich.

Further, at a time when defense spending has more than tripled since 1997 and now consumes more than half of the discretionary budget, the Republican budget does nothing to reduce unnecessary military spending.

The Republican House budget is the most radical right-wing extremist budget ever passed in the modern history of our country, and the more the American people learn about it the more they are rejecting it. The question is, however: Where are the Democrats? Where is President Obama?

Will the president remain strong in his demand that any deficit reduction agreement include an end to Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy? Will he really fight to eliminate corporate tax loopholes? Will he end the absurd policies which allow the rich and large corporations to avoid paying tens of billions in taxes by establishing phony addresses in off-shore tax havens? Or, as he has done within the last year, will he give Republicans almost everything they want at the expense of ordinary Americans.

As Vermont's senator and a member of the Budget Committee, I will not support a plan to reduce the deficit that does not call for shared sacrifice. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction plan must come from increased revenue from the wealthy and large corporations.

Instead of ending Medicare as we know it and making savage cuts to community health centers and children's health care programs, we must ask the top 2 percent of income earners, who currently pay the lowest upper-income tax rate on record, to start paying their fair share of taxes. Instead of making it harder for working families to send their kids to college, we must end the foreign tax shelters that enable the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying tens of billions in U.S. taxes. Instead of making major cuts in job creating programs in infrastructure, public transportation and sustainable energy we must do away with a wide variety of loopholes that allow Wall Street executives, whose profits and compensation packages are soaring, to have a lower tax rate than middle class workers.

The deficit crisis is real and must be addressed. But it cannot be solved on the backs of the weak and vulnerable. Every segment of our society, including those who have money and power, must contribute and must sacrifice.

Former charter school manager Kasich's golden boy for state super's job!

From John Curry, June 2, 2011

"Before being named by Kasich to his current post, Sommers headed a charter-school management company in Detroit and previously oversaw the Butler Technology & Career Development Schools in southwest Ohio."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/06/02/ohio-school-superintendent-candidates-sommers-leads-list.html?sid=101

Kasich adviser is top candidate for Ohio schools superintendent

Columbus Dispatch, June 2, 2011

By Catherine Candisky

Robert D. Summers

Gov. John Kasich's chief education adviser tops the list of about 40 applicants to be Ohio's next schools superintendent.

Robert D. Sommers, Kasich's hand-picked director of the Governor's Office of 21st Century Education, would appear to have an advantage.

The 19-member Ohio Board of Education -- which includes seven Kasich appointees -- will hire a replacement for Deborah Delisle, who in a tearful resignation announcement in April said the new Republican administration told her she had to go.

At the time there was much speculation that the job was being cleared for Sommers.

Before being named by Kasich to his current post, Sommers headed a charter-school management company in Detroit and previously oversaw the Butler Technology & Career Development Schools in southwest Ohio. He also spent 15 years with the Ohio Department of Education.

Other applicants include Reynoldsburg Schools Superintendent Stephen Dackin, professors from Columbus State Community College and Otterbein University, and people working elsewhere in education and the private sector.

Resumes were to be submitted to the board this week. The panel is scheduled to conduct telephone interviews with about 10 applicants Tuesday at its monthly board meeting in Columbus.

Former Super give the legislators an earful

From John Curry, June 2, 2011

http://www.akron.com/akron-ohio-opinions.asp?aID=12632

Former super questions legislators' statements

West Side Leader (Akron), June 2, 2011

To the editor:

Re: Senate and House legislative bills regarding State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) and the School Employees Retirement System (SERS).

1. The governor and legislature have considered who pays and how much into the above retirement systems “to save state of Ohio general fund money.” This is invalid as the state of Ohio general fund pays nothing directly into those funds. This statement is derived from lack of information, lack of research or intended propaganda.

2. The voters of Ohio need to know the Ohio general fund does not and has never paid any direct funding into those retirement systems. These systems are funded by 10 percent from an employee’s salary (after they pay federal tax, state income tax, local income tax) and funds from the board of education where they are employed (14 percent) and income earned from investment of those funds.

3. The state of Ohio funds Ohio schools with the State School Foundation Program. This is calculated on a formula adopted by the legislature that considers, among other things, student enrollment, assessed valuation of the property in the district, the millage voted by the residents of the school district, transportation cost, special education allotments, plus eligible employees in specified areas. This program has nothing in it for retirement.

4. Each board of education places this money in the general fund. A board of education general fund has money from local property taxes (voted by district residents) and monies from the state foundation program. The percentage of those funds differ in each district. This general fund pays for all costs of a school operation. Those costs are for operating expenses, including employee salaries, fringe benefits, employee retirement, inclusive of all other costs.

5. STRS and SERS are not state agencies. They are created as an independent retirement system and do not have an allocation of state funds.

6. The Ohio School Boards Association, each board of education, the Ohio Retired Teachers Association and every superintendent in Ohio should immediately let their elected senator and representative know the above. The legislature sets the state budget, but they do not set local school budgets. This is the legal responsibility of each school board, as supported by Ohio school law. It is the responsibility of elected representatives to know proper funding laws.

7. As a former superintendent in Ohio for 22 years, I challenge those persons responsible for the above statement on saving state funds to show me where the state of Ohio has ever paid funds from the general fund as a direct expense to either of the above retirement systems for retirement benefits.

Roger Goddard, Norton

Mr. Super, you forgot to tell the Senate something, didn't you?

"Stan Heffner, Interim Superintendent for Ohio, provided testimony to the Senate expressly supporting a provision that would direct over 2.2 million dollars annually to ETS, the company that announced his hiring just three weeks earlier. He provided opinions that contradict previously published documents from the Ohio Department of Education. While it is true that he will not actually cast the votes to make this law, he has used his position as Superintendent to represent himself as an expert in this area. Nowhere in his testimony did he declare his existing financial relationship with ETS."

http://www.plunderbund.com/2011/05/29/interim-superintendent-of-schools-hides-personal-interest-deceives-senate/

Interim Superintendent of Schools Hides Personal Interest, Deceives Senate

By Greg On May 29, 2011

We've already posted articles here and here about the Teacher Testing provision that is still hanging on in the budget bill. A brief update: the current version would require that ALL of the core subject area teachers in the lowest performing 10% of school districts across the state will be required “take all written examinations prescribed by the state board of education for licensure to teach that core subject area and the grade level.”

In Ohio, this means teachers would be retaking (remember these tests are a component of the initial licensure process) the Praxis II tests that are administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS). You can view everything about the Ohio requirements here.

Using 2009-2010 school year data to calculate the effect of the law results in 351 buildings employing a total of 7,369 teachers, with 6,504, or 85%, teaching in a core subject area. Each of these 6,504 core teachers will be required to retake the Praxis II tests.

Depending on the subject, grade level, and teaching assignment, these teachers will be required to take between 2 and 10 exams each for a grand total of 23,804 total written examinations. And at what cost? ETS charges an annual fee of $50 and exams average $80 each for a grand total of $2,229,520 being paid out by teachers to the N.J.-based company.

And what about the reliability of these assessments?

According to the Ohio Department of Education in January 2011:

The Praxis II tests are not designed to predict performance on the job nor can passing the licensure examination(s) guarantee good teaching. The tests are built to represent knowledge and skills imparted in educator preparation programs in the United States.

And even more damning is the information in the ETS manual: Proper Use of The Praxis Series™ and Related Assessments:

Improper Uses of the Praxis Series and Related Assessments

As noted above, proper assessment use is defined as acceptability of the intended use combined with evidence to support the intended use. Two specific examples of misuse are listed below but are not inclusive of all possible instances of misuse.

• Employment Selection or Hiring. The Praxis program believes it is inappropriate for a state, district, school, or other local agency to differentiate among candidates who have all met or exceeded the state’s passing score on a Praxis Series test or related assessment for purposes of making a selection or hiring decision. These assessments were designed and intended to be used for credentialing, not for rank-ordering candidates or for making decisions that otherwise presume a predictive relationship between performance on these assessments and performance on the job.

• Employment-Based Decisions Affecting Fully Licensed and Employed Educators. The Praxis program defines a fully licensed educator as one who has met all state licensure requirements and, therefore, is not practicing under a probationary, emergency, or provisional license. The Praxis program believes it is inappropriate for school districts or other local agencies to use The Praxis Series and related assessment scores for terminating fully licensed educators, determining salaries, promoting or demoting educators, or completing performance appraisals/evaluations.

So with all of this evidence that seems to point to the removal of this provision, why has it made it this far?

Interim Superintendent Stan Heffner, please stand up.

In his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on May 11, Heffner praises the work of Ohio’s progressive practices:

Ohio’s system of teacher licensure is a national leader in connecting teacher practice and certification,and ODE processes 100,000 licensure and endorsement applications every year. Established in 2009,Ohio’s tiered professional licensure system consists of four levels that require a progressive demonstration of professional practice. It incorporates a multi-year residency program for beginning teachers to provide intensive mentoring and support, the first state program of its kind. Licenses have already begun to be issued under the new system.

And then, for some reason, he regresses into support for virtually every new educational provision contained in the bill, succinctly doing so in a single paragraph:

New programs in HB 153 are geared toward attracting, rewarding and promoting good teaching, including the Teacher Incentive Payment Program, performance-based compensation requirements, revisions to the process for alternative licensure, and retesting teachers working in the schools at the bottom 10% of performance index scores.

Right there at the end. Let’s clean that sentence up to see what he is saying:

New programs in HB 153 are geared toward attracting, rewarding and promoting good teaching, including . . . retesting teachers working in the schools at the bottom 10% of performance index scores.

Say what? What would cause the Superintendent of Public Schools to choose to ignore statements that clearly refute this component of the bill, including one by his own organization?

Make that two by his own organizations.

Yep, on April 20, ETS released this statement:

April 20, 2011 — Educational Testing Service (ETS) today announced the hiring of two outstanding assessment leaders to guide the company’s work in supporting the consortia of states planning to develop common assessments.

Kit Viator will join ETS the beginning of May and Stan Heffner will join the company at the beginning of August.

Stan Heffner, Interim Superintendent for Ohio, provided testimony to the Senate expressly supporting a provision that would direct over 2.2 million dollars annually to ETS, the company that announced his hiring just three weeks earlier. He provided opinions that contradict previously published documents from the Ohio Department of Education. While it is true that he will not actually cast the votes to make this law, he has used his position as Superintendent to represent himself as an expert in this area. Nowhere in his testimony did he declare his existing financial relationship with ETS.

And this is not his only conflict of interest between ODE and ETS.

In the beginning stages of the development of the Common Core curriculum, Heffner clearly stated that Ohio wouldn’t participate. And yet his latest ODE Profile states that “Heffner is an innovative leader in the national effort to create model curricula and common assessments aligned to the national Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics.”

Heffner has reversed course to the benefit his future (current) employer and has been collaborating with ETS’s newly formed department since as early as January when this “leader in the national effort” began promoting ETS as his primary source for information about the development of common assessments. You can see his work in action:

• In this PowerPoint presentation on January 4, at the Lorain County ESC
• In his Powerpoint as a leading presenter at the invitation only ETS Research Symposium on Through-Course Summative Assessment on February 10, in Atlanta.

And what would that have to do with his new job at ETS?

As senior executives with ETS’s new K–12 Multistate Assessment Programs group, Viator and Heffner are eminently qualified to guide ETS’s support of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), should ETS be fortunate enough to be awarded contracts by either consortium in a competitive procurement process.

It sure would be helpful in that “competitive procurement process” if ETS had some connections in the State Education Departments.

Stan Heffner should recant his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee and resign his position as Interim Superintendent immediately. These types of undisclosed relationships lead to biased information and misinformed legislators and we simply cannot allow these violations to go unchecked. Our Senators and Representatives rely on experts in the field to provide them with purely factual information that is not colored by personal interest. Stan Heffner betrayed that trust and needs to be called out for doing so.

And they think teachers are wrong for wanting unions to protect their interests. THIS is why teachers need advocates in the statehouse.