STRS Board retreat scheduled for January 25-26, 2012

From STRS, January 20, 2012

*REVISED*

PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE

A special meeting of the State Teachers Retirement Board will be held on Jan. 25 & 26, 2012, for the purpose of a planning retreat and any other matters that may arise. The meeting will be held at the STRS Ohio offices in Columbus, Ohio.

The business agenda will begin at 9 a.m. on Wed., Jan. 25, and Thurs., Jan. 26, 2012.

*The Staff Benefits Committee will meet Wed. afternoon when the special Retirement Board meeting recesses.

Ohio Primary Election Tuesday, March 6, 2012

To request an absentee ballot click here.

For other election information click here.

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Bill Gates, ALEC and public education

From John Curry, January 18, 2012

According to Underwood, "ALEC's agenda includes":

• "Introducing market factors into teaching, through bills like the National Teacher Certification Fairness Act."

• "Privatizing education through vouchers, charters and tax incentives, especially through the Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act and Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, whose many spinoffs encourage the creation of private schools for specific populations: children with autism, children in military families, etc."

• "Increasing student testing and reporting, through more "accountability," as seen in the Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One-to-One Reading Improvement Act and the Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind."

• "Chipping away at local school districts and school boards, through its 2009 Innovation Schools and School Districts Act and more. Proposals like the Public School Financial Transparency Act and School Board Freedom to Contract Act would allow school districts to outsource auxiliary services."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1112/S00117/gatess-foundation-helps-alec-undercut-public-education.htm

Gates's Foundation Helps ALEC Undercut Public Education

Bill and Melinda Gates's Foundation Helps ALEC Undercut Public Education

By Bill Berkowitz
December 13, 2011

Gates Foundation Enables ALEC's Project to Privatize Public Education

In the war being fought over the very survival of public education, the privatizers are forging the future. Is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aiding and abetting them?

I don't know how you feel about Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, and one of the world's richest men. Many people appreciate what he's accomplished. Many think that Gates' wife, Melinda, is doing wonderful work aiding the poor in underdeveloped countries. Gates' dad, who has taken the lead in advocating higher taxes for the wealthy, has always seemed really likable.

In philanthropic circles, the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives some $3 billion annually, especially in fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and mother-child deaths in underdeveloped countries around the world, is highly regarded.

However, there are critics concerned about what Edward Skloot, director of Duke University's Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, recently characterized as the foundation's "brass-knuckle philanthropy." (It should also be noted that Skloot has indicated he thinks the foundation's methodology was "pretty close to the ideal.")

At a recent Hudson Institute-sponsored panel titled "Living with the Gates Foundation", Tim Ogden, editor of Philanthropy Action, said that Gates is "creating the ball, building the team, hiring the referees," and "funding the instant replay." According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Caroline Preston's report, Laura Freschi, of New York University's Development Research Institute, "said it's not out of the question that one day a reader might devour an article about a Gates-supported health project, printed on the pages of a newspaper that gets Gates money, reported by a journalist who received media training paid for by Gates, citing research by scientists financed by Gates."

Gates recently told Christiane Amanpour, the host of ABC's "This Week With Christiane Amanpour," that while he favored raising taxes on the wealthy, he didn't think that would solve the "deficit gap." He also said that he didn't think President Obama was waging class warfare on the rich, joking that as far as knows, there are no barricades in the streets being manned by the wealthy.

Gates does have a legion of critics. In his new biography of the late Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson reported that Jobs told him that Gates is "basically unimaginative, has never invented anything ... he just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Last year, I wrote a piece about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's relationship to the chemical company Monsanto and the agribusiness giant Cargill. The gist of the story was that the Foundation had bought 500,000 Monsanto shares worth around $23 million in the second quarter of 2010. Critics pointed out that amongst other things, Monsanto has for years had a negative impact on small farmers, especially in Africa.

And some critics are highly skeptical about some of the Gates Foundation's choices, particularly as it relates to education in the United States. According to the Gates Foundation website, their education mission in the U.S. is pretty straightforward: "... to dramatically improve education so that all young people have the opportunity to reach their full potential. We seek to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and career and prepared to complete a postsecondary degree or certificate with value in the workplace."

Would it surprise you to learn that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently gave more than $300,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a shadowy right-wing organization that has inordinate power in state legislatures across the country.

In November, the foundation announced that it has awarded the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) a grant of $376,635 earmarked for ALEC's work on an assortment of education projects, over a 22-month period. The Gates Foundation's official description of the grant reads: "to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement."

Robin Rogers is an associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), and the author of "Why Philanthro-policymaking Matters" in The Politics of Philanthrocapitalism, Society 2011, The Welfare Experiments: Politics and Policy Evaluation (Stanford University Press, 2004). In a recent piece at The Education Optimists titled "Billionaire Education Policy," Rogers pointed out that the Gates Foundation's grant to ALEC was aimed at "influenc[ing] state budget making - where the rubber hits the road on education policy." Rogers noted that after the grant's announcement, "Twitter was buzzing with the news" and the debate revolved around "whether this constituted a Republican takeover of the state budget process, a Gates Foundation takeover of ALEC or both. No one suggested it was a victory for democracy."

Since its founding nearly 40 years ago, the raison d'etre of the American Legislative Exchange Council has been to influence state legislatures on behalf of corporations and so-called family values advocates, but mostly corporations. As The Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" project points out, the organization is "not a lobby" and "not a front group": "It is much more powerful than that."

Primarily funded by corporations, corporate trade groups, and corporate foundations," and populated mainly by Republican office holders, ALEC is a non-profit organization made up primarily of a "who's who' of the extreme right."

As I reported in late March of this year, "while the Washington, D.C.-based ALEC may not be responsible for all of the mayhem going on in such states as Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Florida, and Michigan (with more states certain to follow), it has historically played an extraordinary role in shaping pro-corporate legislation in a number of states."

According to ALEC Exposed, ALEC-sponsored "bills would privatize public education, crush teacher's unions, and push American universities to the right. Among other things, these bills make education a private commodity rather than a public good, and reverse America's modern innovation of promoting learning and civic virtue through public schools staffed with professional teachers for children from all backgrounds."

As Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education and a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, pointed out in a piece in The Nation, ALEC's mission is "to defund and redesign public schools." Underwood detailed how ALEC has been promoting "choice" and "vouchers" for more than 20 years.

However, Underwood wrote: "ALEC's most ambitious and strategic push toward privatizing education came in 2007, through a publication called School Choice and State Constitutions, which proposed a list of programs tailored to each state." Several states, including Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Indiana enacted ALEC-suggested legislation.

"ALEC's 2010 Report Card on American Education called on members and allies to ‘Transform the system, don't tweak it,' likening the group's current legislative strategy to a game of whack-a-mole: introduce so many pieces of model legislation that there is "no way the person with the mallet [teachers' unions] can get them all." Underwood wrote.

According to Underwood, "ALEC's agenda includes":

• "Introducing market factors into teaching, through bills like the National Teacher Certification Fairness Act."

• "Privatizing education through vouchers, charters and tax incentives, especially through the Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act and Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, whose many spinoffs encourage the creation of private schools for specific populations: children with autism, children in military families, etc."

• "Increasing student testing and reporting, through more "accountability," as seen in the Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One-to-One Reading Improvement Act and the Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind."

• "Chipping away at local school districts and school boards, through its 2009 Innovation Schools and School Districts Act and more. Proposals like the Public School Financial Transparency Act and School Board Freedom to Contract Act would allow school districts to outsource auxiliary services."

Admittedly, the $376,635 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is just a drop from the foundation's bucket, and it will not guarantee ALEC's success in achieving its goals. It certainly will help. As Underwood pointed out, "ALEC's real motivation for dismantling the public education system is ideological-creating a system where schools do not provide for everyone - and profit-driven."

What the foundation's grant might contribute to is another in a series of ginned-up reports produced by ALEC's education team. Robin Rogers wrote recently that there's a danger to extrapolate conclusions from education experiments - as it was in welfare reform: "Our measurements are imprecise at best and meaningless and misleading at worst. Most educators, advocates, researchers, philanthropists, and policymakers are well aware of the problem of measuring complex outcomes. That awareness disappears when we talk about policy experiments. We act as if testing these programs will lead to some empirical, objective truth about what works best."

Rogers added: "Policy experiments are supposed to tell us empirically how good a program or approach is. They don't do this very well. Randomized experiments are expensive, difficult, and rare. Most policy ‘experiments' aren't really experiments. They are a trial run of a program with data collection. Even then, the data is often collected haphazardly or to highlight program success and minimize failures. Politics and research also operate in different time frames - solid evaluations often take years. In short, well-funded policy evaluations take too long to actually affect policy, and ad hoc evaluations don't produce reliable findings."

In the final analysis, ALEC will take Gates money. It will likely come up with another report touting the success of charter schools and voucher programs, and more reasons to bust teachers unions. It will design sample legislation for its members to introduce in state houses across the country. The privatization of public education will move forward. This is not a project that Bill or Melinda Gates should be proud of.

ODE to charter school sponsor: Stop taking the money!

From John Curry, January 16. 2912

http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/01/16/ohio-dept-of-education-to-charter-school-sponsor-stop-taking-the-money/

Ohio Dept of Education to charter school sponsor: 'Stop taking the money!'

By Greg On January 16, 2012

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has come out with some strong words for one of Ohio’s charter school management organizations that has the audacity to turn a profit — a practice that has existed since the for-profit charter school process was enacted in Ohio many years ago.

The management company believes it is entitled to redirect the $700,000 profit into the company’s other operations, in the same way that other for-profit companies such as White Hat Management and Altair Learning Management (ECOT) have been doing without state intervention.

But ODE disagrees:

That money is supposed to benefit the at-risk kids at [the charter], an online high school… Since 2010, the Ohio Department of Education repeatedly has told [the management company] to stop taking the money and to start letting the online high school make its own decisions.

Now, the state is trying to decide how to make sure the charter-school students receive the money meant to fund their education.

“We’re going to keep pushing this until, hopefully, we get a resolution,” said Joni Hoffman, director of the state’s office of community schools.

[Columbus Dispatch, 1/15/2012]

This is a rather confusing situation, of course. I was unaware that charter school management companies weren’t supposed to be turning a profit. In fact, I thought that premise has been a key facet of the argument against charter schools since their inception — they are redirecting public money to private entities. That’s not much of a secret, is it?

During the recent coverage of a lawsuit by some charter schools against White Hat Management in an effort to get the company to open its financial records, a letter by White Hat CEO David Brennan was released to the public. In the letter, Brennan makes it clear that he is trying to run a profitable business and, upon releasing the figures, they must honestly reveal their profits.

Clearly we have a problem in that we have not met a forecast for the bank in the last 5 years. PNC does not trust our numbers because of this failure. We must increase our enrollments and show profitability. To meet the required payments on our loan, we must show an excess of 2 million every year for the next 5, while still covering our on-going necessary capital and operating needs.

Much as we would rather not, we need to sound a cautionary note. When both financial and test result stresses are high, there may be a temptation to ‘fudge the numbers.’ This must not happen. It would be contrary to everything we are fighting for. It would give credence to all the lies that our opponents tell about us.

In the first paragraph, Brennan implies that the profits for White Hat are on the decline and that the profits must be at least 2 million per year in the 5-year forecast. But is ODE troubled by this blatant admission of profits? If so, they are keeping it a secret. The only involvement by ODE is to support the jurisdiction of Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge John Bender in the charter schools’ lawsuit against White Hat, but nothing about the profit.

David Brennan is also a fan of the legislature, gaining access this year to rewrite much of Ohio’s charter school rules through the state budget — hardly an indication that anyone is troubled by the profitability of this company by revenue from taxpayer dollars. I suppose the fact that David Brennan and his immediate family members gave $431,721 to Ohio Republican politicians in the last election cycle doesn’t hurt, either.

But back to the management company that is incurring the wrath of ODE. They haven’t been tithing to the GOP, so they’re being punished. The worst part of the whole situation is that they have had the gall to direct the profits toward the education of other public school students!!

That’s right the London City School District is the target of ODE. London is the sponsor/management agency for the London Digital Academy, an online high school. According to London, the profit is theirs to disperse as they see fit.

The treasurer for both the charter school and the district, Kristine Blind, said officials plan to continue the “revenue sharing” method. The London district’s lawyer, Susan B. Greenberger, said it’s really not that unusual. The school was started by the district and by definition must be overseen by it.

The best part about the Dispatch article is the litany of quotes that document the indignation (and hypocrisy) of those mad that the public school district is profiting:

Now, the state is trying to decide how to make sure the charter-school students receive the money meant to fund their education.

Right, as opposed to the private companies running charters that are specifically called “for-profit.” Perhaps if London City wasn’t trying to reinvest the money in the education of their children…

In one of its letters to the district, state officials said London “seems to be operating as though the community school exists solely to increase revenues to the district.”

Replace “district” with for-profit management company and there is no investigation by ODE, no newspaper story.

Some former members of the charter school’s governing board and a former London Academy principal say the charter-school students are being cheated. “It’s a very sad situation. The bottom line is, kids aren’t getting served,” said Pete Bartkowiak, whose job as Academy principal was eliminated in December 2010.

This one is shocking. Ohio charter school students being cheated – not getting served? Who knew? If only we had a state ranking system that would provide us some measures that would expose poor-performing charters schools. Damn – if only!!!

Because London Academy is an online school, it has lower costs than a brick-and-mortar school might. That’s why it makes a profit.

Time out. Read that sentence back slowly. Online schools have lower costs and that’s why they make a profit. So, the school has lower costs, resulting in a profit, but ODE is claiming that London should be spending all of the revenue on the school. Right. So if online schools have lower costs, resulting in a profit, why is Ohio continuing to fund more and more online schools every year, including 2 that rank in the top 20 districts in the state? It couldn’t have anything to do with Kasich’s good pal William Lager’s ECOT being the largest, could it?

The Education Department might have left the situation alone if London Academy was a high-performing school, Hoffman said. But it has an F grade. Officials wonder if the school would have improved if more money was going directly to it.

Do you think ODE officials also wonder:

• if ECOT’s graduation rate would be higher than 41% if CEO William Lager cut back on business profits?
• if White Hat management schools would have a higher average graduation rate than 12% if he wasn’t focused on earning $2 million in annual profits?
• if the other 70 charter schools assigned “F” grades by ODE would have improved if they weren’t operated by for-profit companies?
• if Ohio’s PUBLIC schools would improve if more was going directly to them?

This episode still has me shaking my head. We have hundreds of charter schools in Ohio being operated by private companies receiving revenue from the state with the clearly stated intent of turning a profit for the owners. And yet, as this article clearly indicates, the Ohio Department of Education is arguing that the London City School district should not be afforded the same option, despite the fact that they are taking the “profit” and reinvesting it into the public education system.

Maybe if the London superintendent and treasurer were donating some of the profits to our elected officials this would be a non-story.

Seriously - Officials wonder if the school would have improved if more money was going directly to it.