Friday, November 16, 2018

MASSILLON PERRY!!! NOT LAKE, NOT NORTH CANTON, NOT JACKSON BEST OVERALL STARK COUNTY SCHOOL?


MEDIAN INCOME ADJUSTED

Most Stark Countians might think that Jackson Township Local School System is the very best public school system of Stark County's 17 districts.

Actually the "best bang for the 'educational' buck" is Massillon Perry.

Median income is roughly correlated with the primary source of local education funding (the property tax) in terms of  higher income districts are generally presumed to have more valued overall property tax units and therefore a key indicator what financial resources a given school district has.

The Perry Local School District is 9th out 17 Stark County school district in "median income" and 4th out of the 17 in Performance ranking therefore by Ohio Department of Education (ODE) formulated evaluation Stark County's best overall education in terms of efficient use of financial resources (i.e. "more bang for the buck")

Jackson (the most wealthy by "median income")  is not rated No.1 on Performance.


(SOURCE:  ODE MEDIA PAGE)

Lake Local Schools (this blogger is pleased to say being a resident of Lake from which three daughters graduated) is the top Stark County school system in a category which The Stark County Political Report (SCPR, The Report) is the most meaningful; namely,  PERFORMANCE INDEX!



For any who wants a thorough understanding of the significance of the Performance Index (PI), here is a LINK to an Ohio Department of Education website page which is the gospel on how state of Ohio education officials arrive at a PI for each and every Ohio public school system which currently total 659 districts.  Another source for information of the Report Card is to be found in this LINK to a recent Cleveland.com (Cleveland Plain Dealer) article.

While the SCPR (of course) prefers the "Performance Index," it appears that the Louisville City School have an arguable claim to have the very best district in all of Stark County.

Perry Local Schools rank 369 in median income and yet a 59 in Performance yet achieves an overall ODE Report Grade of "C"."

Of course, a "C" is not all that impressive by most measuring standards, but one must remember that ODE grading in Ohio has gotten much tougher of late with "no" Stark County districts achieving an "A."

A school officials across Ohio are screaming at the ODE to modify Ohio's Report Card.

At the November 11-13 Ohio School Boards Ass'n, Superintendent Paolo DeMaria indicated that the Report Card will stand for the next school years with, perhaps, some tweaking.


Many educators and parents believe that public education should  not be political.

But the "Stark" reality is that politics is very much political.

The SCPR has run a series of blogs detailing that Stark County (among 88 Ohio counties suffering the same problem in varying degrees) has lost millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to charter/charter online (for profit) schools.

Stark County's Republican legislators (Schuring, Oelslager, Snitchler and Hagan) since  circa 2000 have been "all in" in bringing "for profit" charter schools and funding them by taking away dollars from public schools.

Here is an example from the Hagan, Oelslager and Schuring era as to how many millions of dollars that Stark County alone (not to speak of the other 87 Ohio counties) has lost to the for profit charter schools.


We now know that the quality of K-12 education has not improved with for profit charter schools and charter schools have for the most part over the past 18 years or so not had to deal with strict/demanding state of Ohio ODE oversight due to the intervention of the likes of Hagan,
Schuring, Oelslager and Snitchler.

Charter schools as a panacea are largely a matter of Republican political/economic philosophy that nearly everything can be done more efficiently/effectively and productively than government.mb

The Republicans (in supermajority control of the Ohio General Assembly) have been correct on a number of human activities but NOT on undermining public schools with the for profit charter school movement.

And yet Kirk Schuring has the political gall to advertise himself as doing good things for public education, to wit:


"Standing up for ... taxpayers?"

Give me a break Senator-elect Schuring.

This taxpayer wants $0 to go to for profit charter schools at the expense of public schools.

Charters are fine so long as the pay their own way.  But what Schuring et al are doing now is nothing short of engaging corporate welfare.

Of course, Schuring refuses to return calls/respond to e-mails initiated by this blogger.

Something he is not entitled as an elected official to do.

A man with a pleasing demeanor but as a politician a pretty arrogant guy,  no?

To add insult to injury, former state Rep (the 50th), unsuccessful candidate for Stark County commissioner, and former Marlboro Township trustee John Hagan (a Republican) ran for (on November 6th) and won the 8th District "elected" (note:  there are a "majority" of governor appointments) State Board of Education (S/BOE).


The Report has been told that Hagan's primary reason for running was to get healthcare insurance coverage which he lost when he lost his trustee position in November, 2017.

It appears to the SCPR that this guy will just be a "wallflower" on the S/BOE vegetating there until he is eligible for Medicare.

In the assessment of the SCPR John P. Hagan has always been a political hanger-oner with very little if anything to offer to the public well being.

Either of his November opponents would have, if elected, had some constructive input on the S/BOE.

Hagan seemingly played the "Hagan" name game apparently hoping that Mahoning County voters would confuse his with former 8th District S/BOE member Bob Hagan who is a liberal Democrat in contrast to the right-wing Republican John Hagan.

Hopefully, John Hagan is the exception rather than the rule with respect to the "education" preparedness to be on  the State Board of Education.

The Ohio Report Card is largely a Republican political leader fascination with quantifying everything in sight.

Those of us who have lived on this planet for a number of years know that quantification in human endeavors does not nearly capture the achievement and value of persons.

Until recently, the Cleveland Browns were into "quantification" in endeavor to select "quality" football players.  With a 3 win, 31 loss and 1 tie record of late; need the SCPR say more?

At the OSBA Capital Conference this year, a intriguing workshop was held, to wit:

Voltolini Bio LINK
Podojil Bio LINK

The workshop is further evidence that "politics" is everything when it comes to education in Ohio.

There is a fight going on in the Ohio Republican Caucus as to whether Ryan Smith or Larry Householder, and, of course, there is the overlay of Mike DeWine becoming Ohio's new governor come January 1, 2019.

You can take the "What to expect" aspect of the workshop as being meaningless as Voltolini and Podojil had not insights and only concluded that it will make a pronounced difference.

While the politicos Ohio public education degrades.

Take a look of the following US News ranking of Ohio's K-12 education infrastructure remembering that Ohio population wise ranks 7th among the 50 states:


When will Ohioans and the education community in particular have have had enough and start punishing the likes of Hagan, Oelslager and Schuring at the polls?


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