01.14.10
DEA Members Voted “NO”
Dayton Teachers met last week to discuss contract changes needed to apply for a federal grant (Race To The Top). DEA members voted no. Above is a copy of the article from the Dayton Daily News. What are your thoughts?
08.18.08
Charter School Report
Charter school report raises effectiveness issues and ???’s
In early June, a special “Ohio’s Charter School Program 2007 Report” was issued by Andy Jewell, Education Research Development Consultant for the Ohio Education Association. This annual report uses State Government data and statistics in order to provide unbiased information.
In 2007, there were 310 charter schools with nearly 77,000 pupils who came from 607 of the 610 school districts. This included Oakwood! The charter system was created for the 1998-99 school year and since then Ohio has invested about $2.5 BILLION tax dollars in these schools most of which was taken away from regular public schools like Oakwood. Almost 50 percent of those dollars went to private ‘school-management’ organizations which have also made major contributions to campaign funds for key legislators.
Key revelations from the report include the following “factoids”!
- In 2007, $110 million in state aid was redirected to charter schools and taken from Excellent and Effective public schools.
- Charter schools spent per pupil nearly twice as much (26.8 percent vs. 11.8 percent) on administrative costs as did regular public schools.
- Charter schools spent less per pupil (59.9 percent) than traditional public schools (65.9 percent) for instruction and pupil support.
- Charter school students perform significantly lower on state-administered tests than public school students.
- Public school students (80.2percent) are categorized as economically disadvantaged, but only 57.8 percent of charter school students are.
This experiment has now gone on for a full decade. The minimal accountability required of these public-funded but not public-controlled schools has been a major issue for many taxpayers - whether conservative or liberal in their political views. The apparent spending of public dollars on administration rather than on instruction combined with the lower test scores and lower SES enrollments have created a system that many taxpayers resent as poor management of scarce resources—our tax dollars.
Each voter needs to decide whether or not to continue to support the legislators who have created this situation. It is issues just like this that will be strongly considered by me as I vote next November! I hope you will do likewise.
07.31.08
Welcome
Welcome to DEA’s new Blog! I am hoping this will be another way for everyone to communicate. Just click on the register button to get started.
Another school year is about to begin and things are looking up. We have our planning periods back and we are being offered a 2% raise! I just hope we don’t have all the heat we had at the beginning of last year. Teresa Leo, DEA Public Relations