Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I have to give Governor Bruce Rauner credit for not taking long to show his hand and publicly attack the Higher Education system in Illinois. It has only been a few weeks since he was inaugurated and he recently unveiled his budget. A budget plan that slashes over $200 million just from the University of Illinois alone.
At the very time Gov. Rauner announced he wants to slash the Higher Education budget for all universities in the State of Illinois by almost a third, he claimed that his budget makes education a priority!
“Higher education is set to take a major hit in Illinois.
Following similar announcements by the Republican governors of Wisconsin and Louisiana, newly-sworn in Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner released what he called a “turnaround” budget, that would slash nearly $209 million from the University of Illinois.” Think Progress
“It’s time to make education our top priority again – and that’s what this budget does,” he told lawmakers Tuesday night, touting his plan to give about $25 million more to early childhood education. “With reform, we will be able to invest more in education and give our kids world class schools.” Think Progress
While the proposed budget increases some funding for K-12 education, the University of Illinois system will lose one-third of its state financing under this budget. This very same proposed budget makes absolutely no mention of any increased revenue sources or plans. What will happen to the University system if these cuts are retained in the final budget?
One can expect the cuts to cause increased fees being charged to students as well as the loss of many educational programs. The result of these massive reductions in state financing will be to transfer the costs to students who are already paying high tuition and fee costs. The loan balances of many students already into the 6 figures and Gov. Rauner’s actions will make sure that student debt will continue to climb in Illinois.
So often the claims that all areas of the State have to share in the burden of digging out of a financial hole ends up with some of the most vulnerable bearing the brunt of that burden. If the Governor is convinced that we all have to sacrifice in this job to balance the budget, why wouldn’t new tax sources be considered along with reasonable cuts?
Will these draconian cuts make it more difficult for students from poor and middle class families to obtain a college education? In this very same budget proposal, Gov. Rauner biggest cuts are aimed directly at those who are least able to afford them.
“Yet the state would spend $400 million less on higher education, $600 million less on local governments, and $1.5 billion less on Medicaid, which handles health care costs for poor residents. University leaders and mayors said they were worried, and advocates for the poor said they feared medical needs would go unmet under deep cuts to Medicaid.” New York Times
When the cities, counties and municipalities raise their taxes to pay for basic services for their residents, who has to pay for those increases? “In many cases, Rauner’s state budget cuts could simply end up shifting costs: local governments could choose to raise property taxes, state universities could raise tuition and the CTA could increase fares.” Chicago Tribune
For a man who spent at least $37 million of his own money to get elected governor, he sure has no problem making the middle class and poor pay more for a college education and for health care and local taxes and transportation costs.
Rauner seems to be following the economic model that worked so “well” for Gov. Brownback in Kansas and Gov. Walker in Wisconsin.
Just how has that austerity approach worked out for Kansas and Wisconsin?
Additional Sources: Examiner.com; Crains Chicago Business
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Paul,
TPS have an annual budget. They can’t give teachers raises whenever they choose. Raises have to be negotiated by the teachers’ representatives and school board…and accounted for in the following year’s budget. TPS are under budget constraints just like charter schools.
Charter schools also get to keep the money that follows children to a charter school even if those children decide to return to their district schools during the course of the school year.
Paul,
In the area where I worked: TPS are under the supervision of administrators hired by a school board, the members of which are elected by residents of the school district. School boards schedule regular public meetings that residents can attend. Residents can speak to the board and school administrators, express their concerns, ask that action be taken on certain issues. Screening committees that make recommendations for the hiring of new teachers and administrators include parents, teachers, and an administrator or two.
The school budget is made public every year. Every one knows where the money is going…how it’s to be spent. Administrators are required to present and defend their annual budgets before the school board in a public meeting. Teachers are regularly evaluated. Tenured teachers who may be having problems are put on a special supervisory plan and are evaluated more frequently. They are required to address certain areas where they are falling short.
In our state, the salaries of public school administrators and teachers are published in the newspapers/made public.
Everything is pretty much out in the open. The residents have a good idea of what’s going on in the schools in their district.
How does the charter review process work in Arizona?
Elaine – at those public meetings all personnel items are held in closed sessions. No one is allowed to speak for longer than 3 minutes. If a lot of people want to speak on the same topic, they will limit it to a minute or 2 minutes.
Charter schools in Arizona have to submit their complete detailed curriculum, pedagogy, finances, etc. and then convince the board they should be allowed to open. If the board has problems with any part, it has to go back to be revised. They also have to set the maximum number of students they intend to take (this can be modified later).
Paul
The only 50% I could find was a figure FOR THE FIRST FIVE YEARS. You said it was for the first year. Big difference. Many articles note that a higher rate of turnover is a problem for charter schools.
Elaine, you know this stuff better than I. Can you verify my impression?
Wadewilliams – .
Let’s talk turn over in charter schools. Most charters that I am aware of handle a teacher population with a maximum of about 20-25. My local TPS has several hundred. Turnover is higher for charter schools because their is a point at which they can no longer give them raises. They cannot go to the tax payers for more money for salaries, buildings or books. They have a set price coming in for each day the student appears in school. When you have 100 students and 10 are missing that day, that is 10% of your income stream. That is money they cannot use for raises. If I have 3500 students (my local TPS) you rarely reach 10% and you still have the tax payers for extra money.
So, since I cannot give you raise or put you on a salary schedule, you start looking to the TPS for a more secure better paying job. And, from experience, I can tell you there is a certain amount of poaching of math teachers from one charter to another.
Wade, I’ve wondered the same thing. Your 7:44 comment.
Elaine
Forgive me, I must object. He doesn’t ‘dabble’. He wallows up to his neck in it.
Wade,
Paul dabbles in “truthiness.”
Paul
Please provide support regarding your assertion that 50% of teachers quit after their first year. I believe you are very mistaken.
The Atlantic has the figure as 9.5% for the first year.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-do-teachers-quit/280699/
How is it that you are so often mistaken on your assertions – particularly in matters regarding your field? First the ridiculous assertion that all state HS graduates must be accepted at their land grant colleges, and now this 50% figure.
Wadewilliams – got the 50% from an article that Elaine linked. Look to her stuff for the info.
Paul,
You had some bad teachers in public school…so all public school teachers are bad/enemies of their students? I already wrote up thread about one horrendous teacher that my daughter had her senior year of high school. I and a number of other parents filed complaints with the principal. That teacher was gone the next year…and she had tenure.
I had a number a bad experiences in grammar and high school–but I attended parochial schools.
Paul,
Fifteen years is a LONG time for a charter school to be allowed to operate before coming up for its first review.
Elaine – how long does it take for a TPS to come up for review?
Special Report: Class Struggle – How charter schools get students they want
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-usa-charters-admissions-idUSBRE91E0HF20130215
Excerpt:
(Reuters) – Getting in can be grueling.
Students may be asked to submit a 15-page typed research paper, an original short story, or a handwritten essay on the historical figure they would most like to meet. There are interviews. Exams. And pages of questions for parents to answer, including: How do you intend to help this school if we admit your son or daughter?
These aren’t college applications. They’re applications for seats at charter schools.
Charters are public schools, funded by taxpayers and widely promoted as open to all. But Reuters has found that across the United States, charters aggressively screen student applicants, assessing their academic records, parental support, disciplinary history, motivation, special needs and even their citizenship, sometimes in violation of state and federal law.
“I didn’t get the sense that was what charter schools were all about – we’ll pick the students who are the most motivated? Who are going to make our test scores look good?” said Michelle Newman, whose 8-year-old son lost his seat in an Ohio charter school last fall after he did poorly on an admissions test. “It left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Some charter schools work like AP schools. They accept only the top students (like UW – Madison). If a kid doesn’t get in, whose fault is it? The school’s? The test? The parents.? Inclement weather?
How Charter Schools Fleece Taxpayers
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/110355/charter-school-officials-are-enriching-themselves-public-funds
Excerpt:
In government, if I help myself to taxpayer dollars, we call that embezzlement and I go to jail. In the private sector, if I help myself to taxpayer dollars, we call that innovation and I get hailed as a visionary exponent of public-private partnership. That’s the lesson of a Nov. 17 investigation by Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic into the state’s charter schools.
In her examination of Arizona’s 50 largest nonprofit charter schools and all of Arizona’s nonprofit charter schools with assets exceeding $10 million, Ryman found “at least 17 contracts or arrangements, totaling more than $70 million over five years and involving about 40 school sites, in which money from the non-profit charter school went to for-profit or non-profit companies run by board members, executives or their relatives.” That says to me that in Arizona, at least, charter-school corruption isn’t the exception. It’s the rule. And that’s just in the nonprofit charter schools. Documentation for the for-profit schools is not publicly available. What are the odds that charter-school proprietors operating in the dark are less inclined to enrich themselves at public expense?
The self-dealing is entirely legal. All you have to do is get yourself an exemption from state laws requiring that goods and services be bid competitively. Clearly these exemptions aren’t difficult to acquire, because 90 percent of Arizona’s charter holders—not 90 percent of the charter schools surveyed by the Arizona Republic, but 90 percent of all the state’s charter schools—have acquired permanent exemptions from state competitive bidding requirements. No exemption has ever been withdrawn by the state. If you are a charter-school officer and you stand to benefit personally from some financial transaction with the school, you may not vote on whether to make the purchase. But that’s about the only rule.
Here is a case where the TPS had a deal with a local business and 4 million went missing.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/asset_gallery/1065906/
Education for Profit: The Darker Side of Charter Schools
http://rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/education-profit-darker-side-charter-schools
Excerpt:
EMOs have developed over time as a result of the charter school movement. While charter school supporters often envision them as non-profits run by a single Board of Directors with an innovative idea for student achievement and curriculum, the reality is that running a charter school is hard work and often requires more dedicated support and management expertise. Successful non-profit charter schools have developed into non-profit EMOs that use similar methodologies in all of their schools – KIPP is an example. However, EMOs have also sprouted up in the for-profit sector.
How does it work? A non-profit group decides to form a charter school, submits its charter to the state, and gets approved. In Michigan, all charter school Boards of Directors are required to be registered as non-profits. Once the school receives its charter authorization from the state, the school then hires out educational services to for-profit or non-profit EMOs. EMOs can provide anything from occasional reading tutors, to administrative staff, to the full-time teaching staff and organization of a charter school.
What’s the problem? A charter school hiring a for-profit EMO is entirely legal under the laws of most states. In fact, for-profit EMOs have become prolific in Arizona, Florida, and Michigan, in particular. By contrast, in my home state of Massachusetts, there are only two charters schools run by a for-profit EMO. The issue arises when the line blurs between the non-profit charter school organization and the for-profit EMO. There is a good reason that public schools are run by state and local governments rather than for-profit businesses. As a society, we expect government programs to be tailored to serve the needs of citizens and create common standards for the betterment of all. If we blur the line between private businesses and public schools, we may wind up diverting public funds to support a company’s bottom line rather than our shared educational goals and values.
Elaine – the closest high school to me has a principal and three asst principals. That is 500k in salary right there. Don’t talk to me about waste.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corruption-public-schools-market-is-answer
Paul,
Maybe the other teachers perceived you as an enemy.
Elaine – I was a student, not a teacher. However, I think some of them did think of me as the enemy.
Mixed Results for Arizona’s Charter Schools
11/16/15
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/11/06-chalkboard-arizona-charters-chingos-west
Excerpt:
Arizona’s charter school law is unique in allowing charter schools to operate for 15 years before coming up for review. Because the most rapid expansion of the Arizona charter sector occurred around the turn of the 21st century, many charters are poised to come up for review in the next few years. This provides an opportunity for rapid improvement through careful attention to quality in the reauthorization process, and the fact that lower-quality charter schools have been more likely to have their charters revoked in recent years is encouraging in this regard. But our evidence also suggests that a 15-year period with little oversight of academic quality may be too long to wait to intervene and potentially close schools that are producing subpar results. A shorter authorization period accompanied by vigorous efforts to measure quality along the way may strike a better balance between autonomy to innovate and accountability for results.
Elaine – I think TPS should go through the same process. You have to go before a board and defend your school and how it has done for the last 15 years. My last school was one of the first to be chartered, so it was one of the first for the new renewal process. It passed with flying colors. Other schools were not as lucky.
“That is more financial oversight then a TPS has.”
I think you meant to write: “That is more financial oversight than a TPS has.”
Can you explain how you know that to be a fact? Is it true that the charter schools in Arizona have more financial oversight than all the TPS in the state?
Elaine – yep. BTW, the Arizona Republic is the Huffington Post of Arizona. The only thing I follow are the times for the movies. The Repulsive as it is locally known is very pro-teachers’ union and anti-charters.
Prairie Rose,
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/09/07/should-the-high-teacher-turnover-rate-in-charter-schools-be-a-cause-for-concern/
Excerpt from the Vanderbilt report titled Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools:
Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this “turnover gap” lies in the differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools.
A second reason is that attrition is highest among teachers that are new to the profession. Past research found teachers make important gains in effectiveness in their first three years and smaller gains over the next few years (McCaffrey, Koretz, Lockwood, and Hamilton, 2003; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2005). Given that almost 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003), many teachers are leaving the classroom before they have developed into optimally effective practitioners. Moreover, exiting new teachers are often replaced by similarly inexperienced teachers and consequently students in schools with high turnover may rarely be exposed to experienced teachers.
Third, turnover affects many of the organizational conditions important to effective schooling, such as instructional cohesion and staff trust. Effective schools hold shared beliefs in similar instructional goals and practices (Fuller & Izu, 1986; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988). Schools with high turnover are challenged to develop a shared commitment towards the same goals, pedagogy, and curriculum. The constant churning of teaching staff makes it difficult to collaborate, develop standard norms of practice, and maintain progress towards common goals. This can lead to fragmented instructional programs and professional development plans that must be adapted each year to meet the needs of a teaching staff in constant flux (Guin, 2004). High turnover also makes it difficult for teachers to build relational trust, which is critical towards productive collaboration in schools (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Guin, 2004).
Prairie Rose,
Look at the reports on charter schools and how many years most teachers spend teaching in them. It’s not just the charter schools with lots of at risk students. The main problem with many proponents of the school reform movement is that they declared that public schools in American were failing. Some were; most weren’t. Instead of looking at the failing schools to find out what the major problems were so they could be addressed, we went about reforming all the schools–including the ones that were successfully educating their students. Why reform something that is working well? The original mission of charter schools was a good one–but it morphed into something else. Instead of TPS and charter schools working in collaboration, charter schools have now become competitors. That isn’t what is best for our children and education in this country. Vilifying public school teachers serves what purpose? Public school teachers are not the enemy.
Elaine – Public school teachers are not the enemy.Some of my public school teachers were clearly the enemy. I had one teacher where I was sure only one of us was going to survive the class.
Paul,
“Prairie Rose – a local school district has defined boundaries in Arizona. An Arizona charter school has no boundaries, except the boundaries of the state. So, should the whole state meet to decide how the funds are spent? ”
I did not know that. That would be awkward. What are your thoughts on making sure the funds are being spent as intended?
Prairie Rose – in Arizona (which has learned from experience) all charter schools are audited every year by the same firm and they all use the same accounting firm. That helps. It is not perfect, but it helps. That is more financial oversight then a TPS has.
Elaine,
“The privatization of public schools is linked to the issue of charter schools. … Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year on public education. That money should be spent on public schools and on our children’s education. It should not be going to profiteers.”
I agree that funds intended for education should not be going to profiteers. Aside from preventing charter schools from even existing, is there a way to prevent profiteering from public funds?
Elaine,
I think veteran teachers are invaluable.
“One has to wonder how schools where teachers stay for just two or three years can develop their own culture and institutional memory—as well as a sense of stability and community. One has to wonder how children feel when their teachers come and go so frequently and rarely show evidence of a commitment to their schools and the student population.”
This is definitely detrimental for students. However, isn’t this also a problem in many of the failing public schools? The problem of high turnover is not restricted to charter schools. In the successful charter schools, do they have a turnover rate similar to that of good public schools?
“There are charter school advocates who think it’s great that most of their teachers have no more than two, three, or fours years of experience. I fail to see how that is good for a school, for the students, or the educational process.”
I agree. Paul, what are your thoughts? Is this a systemic perspective in the charter system, or noisy outliers?
“Who mentors, helps, and gives advice to new teachers in such charter schools? How does a school culture develop in these institutions?”
Good questions.