It is a headliner when a top level Stark County school official participates in the demise of the quality of public education.
This is what the SCPR believes Northwest Local School District Superintendent William D. Stetler did in making a campaign contribution to Todd Snitchler in the recently concluded election in which Republican incumbent Snitchler soundly defeated Stark County Commissioner Todd Bosley in the recent general election.
Snitchler is a strong proponent of charter schools which are known to most educators to have siphoned many tax dollars away from public schools for an education model (i.e. charter schools) that is no better, perhaps worse, in terms of performance than the Ohio's worst performing schools. What's more is that the standards for charter schools in terms of public accountability is significantly reduced for Ohio's charter schools as compared to the public schools.
There are charter schools sprinkled throughout America that are highly effective. But very few of them, if any, are residence in the Buckeye state.
The SCPR sees the Ohio effort as being more to keep Akron-based entrepreneur and Republican Party financier David Brennan (a Snitchler contributor through Go-Go PAC) and his likes in the business of making profits on the public function to educate Ohio's children, while producing a product that is largely inferior to even the poorest performing school districts in Ohio.
The Ohio/Stark County education infrastructure is about to be rendered a big blow in terms of funding during 2011.
The SCPR believes the cuts will be about 30%.
Moreover, The Report believes that 2011 is just the beginning of the cuts. More will follow as Governor-elect John Kasich scrambles to find a substitute for outgoing Governor Ted Strickland's Ohio Evidence-Based Model (OEBM). During the campaign for governor, Kasich said he would scrap the OEBM that Strickland has been working on for the better part of four years.
While The Report believes Kasich will come up with some kind of model to apparently appease Ohio's educators, his real objective will be to give charter schools and vouchers greater play as a incremental replacement of public education.
Across the nation Republican officeholders seem to be anti-public-education. Some have advocated the dismantlement of the U.S. Department of Education. Some argue that the likes of Kasich et al work to undermine public education so as to privatize it.
Although the articulation of of Strickland's defeat on November 2nd was the loss of some 400,000 jobs during his administration, it should include his failure to produce education reform in his inaugural address in January, 2007.
Only at the end of his administration did he "finally" get around to do something about Ohio's rapidly deteriorating education infrastructure. He had said in his Inaugural, that if he failed to fix public education, he would be a failed governor. Indeed, he turned out to be failed on this point of his gubernatorial agenda. Something he had some control over. It can be argued that the loss of 400,000 jobs during his watch as governor had nothing to do with his policies, but was owing to the tailspin downturn in the national economy.
As bad as the public education infrastructure fared under Strickland, look for even a greater slide under Kasich and his supporters Oelslager (a man who regularly touts his "public education bona fides", Schuring, and Snitchler.
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