AFT and OFT on Ohio’s $71 Million Charter School Grant

For Immediate Release
Sept. 14, 2016

Contact: Janet Bass 202-879-4554
jbass@aft.org  www.aft.org

WASHINGTON—Below are statements from the American Federation of Teachers and the Ohio Federation of Teachers on the U.S. Department of Education’s approval of Ohio’s $71 million charter school expansion grant. The federal government called the grant “high risk” because of questionable oversight, accountability and transparency of the state’s charter schools, and it included many accountability measures with the grant.

AFT President Randi Weingarten:  “Charter schools were supposed to be incubators of innovation and part of a larger public school system. Students attending charter schools should have similar opportunities and protections as students in traditional public schools, but due to mismanagement, fraud and waste in Ohio’s notoriously lax oversight system, too many students in Ohio do not. Charter schools should be held to the same accountability standards as other public schools for their academic, managerial and financial performance. While we wonder why the grant was given at all, given Ohio charter schools’ history of poor academic performance and assorted scandals, the grant’s restrictions are a vital step toward holding the state and its charter schools accountable to students, their families and taxpayers.”

Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper: “Ohio’s charter school system has produced an unending record of failed performance, suffered from an overall lack of meaningful state oversight and been party to numerous scandals, including a falsified application for this grant. This $71 million could be put to far better use—for example, by expanding community schools with wraparound services to address the nonacademic barriers that impact students’ ability to learn. These programs have been wildly successful where they are available for students in Ohio.”

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Duncan's grand charter give-away. Feeding the beast.

Arne Duncan has turned the D.O.E. into little more than a feeding trough for even the most corrupt and unaccountable charter school operators. His latest gift of $157M to charter privateers comes virtually accountability-free. The most stunning part is that Duncan knows and admits it, making him complicit.

"We still see too many reports of unscrupulous behavior of charter schools and their authorizers," Duncan tells reporters.

Ohio, where unscrupulous/corrupt is the name of the game and where charter operators like K12 Inc. and White Hat Management stuff millions into their own pockets, has just received another Duncan grant of more than $32M with another $40 million on the way. It's the largest single award of any state, leaving Ohio's Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan shaking his head in disbelief.

From the Washington Post:

“The charter school system in Ohio is broken and dysfunctional,” said Ryan, who sent a letter Thursday to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, asking him to “place stringent restrictions” on the federal dollars he is sending to Ohio. 

“There are people making a lot of money off schools,” he said. “Why would we send more money to schools now, when we know it’s going into the pockets of people?”

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) can't believe it. 

Ryan isn't alone. Even pro-charter Republicans are blushing.

Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost, a Republican, said he was “shocked” by Duncan’s decision to pump $32 million into Ohio charters. “Heck, my first thought when I saw the grant award was concern,” Yost said.

In a special audit this year, Yost found a pattern of charter schools inflating enrollment in order to pocket taxpayer subsidies for students who don’t actually attend their schools. Yost, a supporter of charter schools, has called the state’s charter system “broken” and repeatedly urged lawmakers to pass reforms.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

It turns out that Ohio's grand plan to stop the national ridicule of its charter school system is giving overseers of many of the lowest-performing schools a pass from taking heat for some of their worst problems. 

Gov. John Kasich and both houses of the state legislature are banking on a roundabout plan to improve a $1 billion charter school industry that, on average, fails to teach kids across the state as much as the traditional schools right in their own neighborhoods.

Illinois is running second to Ohio in Duncan's grand charter give-away. Gov. Rauner's Dept. of Ed is receiving $21.1M of a recommended $42.2M with much of of it going to politically-connected Chicago operators Noble Network of Charter Schools and Lawndale Educational and Regional Network (LEARN).

This even while IL is entering its 4th month without budget. CPS schools are facing massive layoffs, exploding class size and draconian cuts to special education and after-school programs.

Last week 42 out of 50 Chicago alderman called for a moratorium on charter school expansion.

Duncan continues to the beast.

There's no fix without fight in Cleveland

Mayor Frank Jackson, center, and Cleveland Teacher's Union president David Quolke, right, listen as schools CEO Eric Gordon talks about the agreement that was reached on the mayor's school plan.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal headline:

A School Fix Without a Fight
Cleveland Mayor Works With Governor and Teachers to Link Pay to Test Scores

By Stephanie Banchero

The Republican governor of Ohio, the Democratic mayor of Cleveland and the local teachers union have united to overhaul how teachers are hired, fired and paid, a rare example of cooperation in education that some critics warn could still face challenges in the implementation.

The overhaul, signed into law by Gov. John Kasich this month, will allow the district to link teachers' pay, in part, to student test scores, and to lay off teachers based on performance instead of seniority. It will also let the district fire teachers after two years of poor performance, based in part on test scores.

The headline is somewhat misleading. There has been a fight of sorts. Banchero notes that the union faced a “united front” of other powerful interests including local business groups, the governor and the mayor (who controls the Cleveland school board). She could have mentioned both the national Democratic and Republican Parties as well.

Despite that, some of the most draconian parts of the original plan were beaten back (see comments from "Ohio Reader" on my earlier post). Remember, this is a state that spends over $100 million/year on school voucher programs.The school district suffers from a $66 million budget deficit and announced layoffs of more than 500 teachers this spring. Those layoffs followed two years of cutbacks and $25 million in concessions from the union. Some classes are reported to have  more than 40 children.

It's also a battle-ground state in the November elections and plans like Cleveland's are favored by both parties -- especially by Obama/Duncan. The plan fits perfectly with Duncan's Race To The Top. To really stand up to it, the Cleveland Teachers Union would have to be ready to take on the weight of the entire system and buck Democratic Party and AFT leaders as the CTU is trying to do in Chicago.  AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten has been pushing hard on local unions to accept these type of deals. She and local union prez,  David Quolke hailed a similar plan in New Haven as "a model" for the rest of the county.

Kasich's attempt last year to totally crush the state's unions was defeated when the entire labor movement and national allies rallied and voters beat back his SB5 bill. This time around, he and the  corporate reformers were able to push through a plan, with help from Democrats and union leaders, that applied only to Cleveland and not the whole state. The tactic worked and is now being used in other states, especially in cities like Chicago where there's mayoral control of the schools.

The new plan shifts even more resources away from city schools, closes more of them and turns them and over to privately-managed charters. It makes it easier to fire veteran teachers without due process. Teacher pay and evaluation linked to student test scores is now embedded in the law. Union leaders, including Weingarten from the AFT signed off on this without any real Chicago-style mobilization of city teachers and community supporters. No line in the sand has been drawn -- yet.

Will public education and the union live to fight another day as a result of this agreement and the concessions made? Anti-union conservatives like Stanford's Terry Moe are worried about that. He predicted that, as details of the plan get negotiated, union leaders will “do whatever they can to water them down and make them as non-threatening as possible.”

Maybe. We shall see. But what's repulsive is the sight of union leaders hailing these plans as a national models of collaboration. It's one thing to lose a fight to a more powerful (at least for now) foe. It's quite another to call that defeat a victory. 

There can be no doubt that the city's teachers, it's 44,000 students and parents all take a big hit under the new Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools and that corporate reformers based at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Cleveland and George Gund foundations, and Breakthrough Charter Schools and others. are jubilant over this "new era of cooperation." But the plan sets the stage for a new round of struggles around implementation and further contract negotiations. Does the union have the heart for such a struggle? Are current leaders up for it? If not, there's really bad times ahead for Cleveland schools.

Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

Ohio Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hug after Jackson talked about the agreement that was reached on the Cleveland reform plan. (Plain Dealer)

Privatizers' dream, union goes along

Two things are predictable when states pass school reform laws that only apply to one city. First, that city has a largely poor, black and brown school population and second, the reform is more about privatization, charter schools and "turnaronds" than it is about anything affecting teaching and learning.

Such is the case in Ohio where T-Party Gov. Kasich just signed the Cleveland Plan For Transforming Schools into law. "Cleveland is now leading the way in school reform," Kasich said to cheers from reform supporters and groups that helped create the plan.

After much lobbying and negotiation, the plan -- which applies only to Cleveland as the state's sole district under mayoral control -- was approved by the state legislature last month. -- Plain Dealer

The new law overrides the union's contract and discards previous board-union agreements governing teacher pay and layoffs, does away with tenure, lengthens the school day and year without accompanying compensation, evaluates and pays teachers based largely on student test scores, and pushes the biggest move yet towards privately managed charter schools along the lines of the Philadelphia model. The new law is also an affront to parents, requiring them to attend meetings under penalty of law. It will take badly-needed funds away from neighborhood public schools and line the pockets of politically connected consultants.

 Calling the shots will be corporate reformers based at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Cleveland and George Gund foundations, Breakthrough Charter Schools and others.

The worst part of this mess is that it was supported by the Democrats and by the AFT and the Cleveland Teacher Union --not only supported, but hailed as "a model of collaboration" for the entire nation. The last time we heard that kind of talk from state union bureaucrats was here in Illinois after the passage of the anti-union SB-7 bill.

"May God have mercy on us..."

Lake Board votes on cuts

I'm heading back to Ohio this week to speak at Kenyon College and then on to D.C. to speak at Occupy the DOE. While at Bowling Green last Thursday, I picked up a copy of the local Sentinel-Tribune. The lead story about the devastating cuts being made in nearby Lake Township schools has stayed with me all the way back to Chicago.

It starts with the Lake Board's ceremony recognizing the accomplishments of its students.

There was a parade of outstanding basketball players, superior-rated music students and the top speller at Lake Elementary. The middle school quiz bowl team got kudos for being tops in the county.

Then the other shoe drops. The Board votes to strip $1.15 million from the district's budget. That's 43 positions, including eight teachers, and the all-day everyday kindergarten program. They blame the cuts on $1.6 million lost this year in state and federal funding, combined with a decrease in property taxes, plus the rejection of two levies last year.

"This board now has no choice but to make these deep and devastating cuts," said board president Tim Krugh before a crowd of about 200 in the middle school cafeteria. "It's heartbreaking to me that we are forced to take this action that we are compelled to take. May God have mercy on us."

Each of the five board members spoke before voting unanimously to make the cuts. There was no public commentary before the vote.

Ohio leads the way: Pay attention Obama

"Ohio voters just gave public school teachers something they haven’t received in a while — respect," writes Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet.  

Across the country, several other Republican-backed measures were also dealt setbacks, including a crackdown on voting rights in Maine. In Wake County, N.C., voters dealt a blow to the racist Republican clique that had taken over the school board by electing a progressive Democrat and educator, Kevin Hill. In Mississippi, voters rejected an amendment to the State Constitution that would have banned virtually all abortions and some forms of birth control by declaring a fertilized human egg to be a legal person. Michigan voters recalled Rep. Paul Scott who was a front man for T-Party gov, Rick Snyder and a pal of Michelle Rhee. The new law repealed in Ohio would have severely limited the bargaining rights of more than 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees.

Lots of credit for its defeat goes to the Occupy Movement and the unions for re-framing the current national political debate and turning out the troops. Big losers were the Koch Bros. and other corporate interests who spent millions to pass the union-busting bill.

While the movement is non-partisan and crosses party lines, especially in Ohio, the trend is becoming clearer. The victory in Ohio, like those in Wisconsin, is energizing the labor movement and should help Democrats in 2012. But today's Democratic Party, especially its big-city mayors, appears to be as nervous about the movement as are Republicans. In Chicago, for example, Mayor Emanuel has a similar approach towards unions, teachers and other public employees as Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey. Until last night, Obama was silent on the events in Ohio.  His achilles heel is his failed education policies which amount to little more than a Bush re-hash of austerity, privatization and mass teacher firings, while using the rhetoric of reform. There needs to be a shake up in the Dept. of Education and a rethinking of anti-teacher and anti-union Race To The Top.

This morning, in what one AP journalist called, "a signal of the issue's national resonance", White House spokesman Jay Carney issued a statement saying President Barack Obama "congratulates the people of Ohio for standing up for workers and defeating efforts to strip away collective bargaining rights, and commends the teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other workers who took a stand to defend those rights."

Remember Mitt Romney visited Ohio recently and said he was not sure where he stood on the issue. A day later, he said he stood against the labor unions and collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees. After yesterday's shellacking, Ohio's T-Party Gov. Kasich was contrite and is now claims he will throw his support the state's workers. Here's hoping Pres. Obama is watching all this closely and drawing the appropriate lessons. His road to victory in 2012 should be apparent by now.