Fall 2014COMMUNIQUÉ

Publication for Members of Central OEA/NEA Adrienne M. Bowden, President

The use of standardized tests has been a part of our educational landscape since the mid-1800s, but saw a sharp increase after the initial passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. A process that was originally sold as a neces-sary tool to collect informa-tion on our underperforming students has now turned into an unreliable and unfair means to evaluate (and, pro-posed by at least one local school board, pay) teach-ers. Currently, the average student and teacher spend approximately 30 percent of the school year preparing for and taking standardized tests, time that teachers could spend actually teach-ing while students learn.

We Are Educators Not Test Giving Robots!Adrienne M. Bowden Central President & David Schottner, Former Co-President Reynoldsburg EA

The overuse and misuse of these standardized tests has led to “toxic testing”- yearly federally-mandated testing and an over-reliance on the scores to evaluate educators. The potential positives provided by these tests are now being over-shadowed by the harm they are causing students. Teachers report a range of effects from an increase in testing anxiety to physi-cal illnesses on test day. The impact is particularly harmful on students who are poor, an ethnic minor-ity, or have a special need. Many of the standardized tests require our curriculum to be trimmed down to more of a basic drill-and-

skill approach. This requires many teachers to spend most of their time

“teaching to the test.” Toxic testing is turning our teachers into test-giving robots and limiting our stu-dents’ ability to be critical thinkers and innovators.

Central OEA/NEA locals are not immune to this growing national phe-nomenon. At the July 15 Board of Education meet-ing, two Reynoldsburg students addressed the Board with poised and eloquent speeches. A part of their message was that basing teacher pay on student test scores is not only disrespectful to the work of educators and students, but also creates much stress for students. The two students, entering grades 7 and 12, expressed that the pressure placed on them to perform well on tests is great enough in this high-stakes world of accountability and data. The students speculat-ed that teachers might unknowingly place even more pressure on these

tests if they knew their live-lihood depended on it.

In Reynoldsburg, the students have been the victims of toxic testing for quite a while. Reynolds-burg was one of the early participants in the Battelle for Kids Project SOAR/T-CAP value added program. While administrators argue that multiple measures are often used to determine value-added growth, many

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Volume 42, Number 4 Fall 2014

COMMUNIQUÉPublished four times a year as a service of

CENTRAL OEA/NEA, INC.947 Goodale Blvd.Columbus, OH 43212

Adrienne M. Bowden, PresidentKevin Griffin, Vice PresidentRussell Hughlock, Communications & Organizing Coordinator

Editors Ann Eblin, Judy Furnas & Carla Noll Fiscal Manager Tim SkamferProduction Russell Hughlock Design Pam McClung

Phone 614-222-8228 E-mail aa@centraloeanea.org

of us agree that comparing one test from fall to the same test in spring is indeed not multiple measures. In the pilot year of OTES last year, REA members saw toxic testing explode all over the district. From K-2 teachers being asked to link their students for value added with no advanced notice to the adop-tion of STAR testing, the validity and methodology of which confusing to understand for even the most intelligent of educators, the use of toxic testing is not helping student growth, but it is contributing to student stress. Its proponents will claim that testing is aimed at improving learning, but the most visible effect is the weakening of teacher working condi-tions that are most importantly our students’ learning conditions.

Our members understand the need to create a system of accountability that focuses on the whole child, authentic learning, and ends toxic testing. In August, OEA members rallied downtown against toxic testing. The message was clear: “We are edu-cators, not test-giving robots!” At the recent NEA Representative Assembly in Denver, the delegates voted to create a national campaign to end toxic test-ing and to develop more effective forms of assess-ment and teacher accountability.” Our newly elected NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said it best, “Un-til we stop abusing commercial standardized tests to make decisions they were never designed to make, we will get everything wrong.”

A Message From Mark Meuser, Retiring Central Fiscal ManagerI have served as the fiscal manager for Central OEA/NEA since September 1, 2010. I am retiring from that position as of August 31, 2014. Although I enjoyed the nuts and bolts of managing Central’s finances, the best part of the job was meeting and getting to know many Central mem-bers and leaders. I also felt fortunate to have worked for two outstanding Central presidents, Scott DiMauro and Adrienne Bowden.

As a retired teacher and former local association president, I know what a great impact Central has not only on the members and school districts within its boundaries, but also on educators and policymakers throughout the state. Central’s influence is far-reaching. I feel privileged to have been a part of the organization.

New Fiscal Manager Joins the Central TeamWe’re pleased to announce that the Central Executive Board has approved the hiring of Tim Skamfer to be our new Fiscal Manager. Tim starts September 1st. Tim is a newly-retired Gahanna-Jefferson teacher and association leader. He has served on the OEA board and the Central Executive committee.

Central’s New Board MembersWe’re also pleased to announce that Central will have 6 board members in new roles this coming year: Randy Turner representing OEA Board of Directors unit 4, Dwayne Marshall representing OEA Board of Directors unit 3, Cheryl Williams as the ESP Representative, Shannon Shaver as the Student Representative, Mary Binegar as the Retired Representative, and Juliet Litzel as the Area 2 Representative.

All-Area Meeting & Delegate Briefing November 7, 2014 at the Columbus Marriott Northwest5605 Blazer Parkway, Dublin, OH 43017

Agenda5 - 6:30 p.m. Registration, Reception & Dinner6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Break-out sessions7:30 - 8:30 p.m. General Session

Registration is required at www.centaloeanea.org.

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Wil Vickery, Chillicothe EA, OEA Board of Directors

The Mile High City became home for 89 members of Central OEA-NEA for the week of July 1-6 as they joined nearly 8000 delegates from across the nation at NEA’s 152nd Annual Meeting and 93rd Representative Assembly. The Central members were one part of the almost 400 member Ohio delegation.

A highlight of this year’s assembly was a weeklong farewell to President Dennis VanRoekel, who leaves his leadership role after having served us well as secretary-treasurer, vice-president, and president (18 years). In addition to VanRoekel’s keynote, delegates heard how NEA could beat the Koch Brothers through student-centered union leadership from NEA Executive Director John Stocks. In addition to these addresses, delegates heard from Mary Kay Henry, National President of SEIU; Sean McComb, the 2014 National Teacher of the Year; and Paula Monroe, the 2014 ESP of the Year. The delegation joined in recognizing Governor Patrick Deval (Massachusetts) as NEA’s Greatest Governor who,

We Educate America Recapping the 2014 NEA RA

because of potential hurricane conditions, was unable to be present. The NEA Friend of Education was presented to Malala Yousafzai, a 15 year-old student and education advocate in Pakistan, who survived a brutal attack by Taliban militants determined to ban girls from attending school. The delegates considered 107 new business items, constitution and bylaw amendments, and elected the officer team who will lead us into the some of our greatest battles. Lily Eskelson-Garcia was elected president, Becky Pringle was elected to serve as our vice-president, and Princess Moss was elected to tackle the role of secretary-treasurer. The body acted to take on toxic testing and to call for the resignation of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Please visit www.nea.org/ra to read the texts of speeches, the content of NBI’s, amendments, and more. Talk to delegates to learn more from the participant perspective. Consider joining us in Orlando for our next RA, July 1-6, 2015.

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Kevin Griffin, Central Vice President

School Districts, teachers, ESPs, and taxpayers in general are losing out big-time due to the ECOT hide-the-money scheme. Here’s the way it works…

Legislators withhold one-hundred-million dollars a year from school districts and give that money to William Lager, the owner of ECOT. ECOT then hires two different compa-nies, Altair and IQ Innovations to do their work.Altair is a “school management” company. A recent audit from the state of Ohio found that Altair is responsible for human resources, strategic planning, public relations, finan-cial reporting, budgeting, and recruiting. So Altair is like a school district’s central office administration.

IQ Innovations is the second company ECOT hires. They supply ECOT with online curriculum. The IQ Innovations website (prior to it being taken down) said that IQ Inno-vations is “the most complete solution available for the electronic search and delivery of curriculum, courses, and other learning objects.” So by creating the curriculum and courses, IQ Innovations is essentially doing what teachers do outside the school day.

So ECOT is the “school.” ECOT hires Altair to be their cen-tral office administrators. And ECOT hires IQ Innovations to create curriculum and courses.

As stated previously, William Lager is the owner of ECOT. Mr. Lager is also the owner of Altair and IQ Innovations. So William Lager receives $100,000,000 a year to run ECOT and then hires himself… TWICE.

Now people who are in the business of business may think this isn’t so bad. They’ll claim “it’s for tax purposes” or they’ll say “this is just the way business is run” and they expect the rest of us to shrug our shoulders and blindly accept this absur-dity.

I have no problems with businesses being run however they want. If a business makes poor decisions on a daily basis or if it has a bad product it loses money and ultimately closes down. No real harm is done to the public.But when a school does a poor job, there is a ripple effect. A student who doesn’t receive the instruction, interactions, and interventions he or she needs, at that point in time, may never receive them. The ripple effect, not just for that individual,

���������but for that individual’s family, future family, and to all of society must be taken into account.

ECOT the business is highly successful. It has an advertis-ing campaign, has grown their enrollment to 15,000 stu-dents, and has lobbied for more and more money every year. The ECOT business is so profitable that William Lager has contributed over $348,000 to political campaigns since April of last year.

ECOT the school is a complete failure. Only 51% of its third graders passed the third grade reading guarantee. Only 12.5% of indicators were met on state achievement tests. According to ODE it ranks 811th out of 815 on statewide value-added ratings. The ECOT state report card contains one D and the remaining grades are F’s. And worst of all it has a graduation rate of only 35% compared to Ohio public schools, which have an average graduation rate of 81%.

Show me a business where a 35% success rate is accept-able when its competition’s success rate is 81%. The 35 percenter should be put out of business. But neither Wil-liam Lager, nor the politicians receiving his donations, are willing to turn down free money, even if it is on the backs of students, taxpayers, and public schools.

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Over the last few editions of the Central Communiqué, we have brought you stories of charter school failure and fraud. These stories are just a tiny sliver of what we are seeing being reported in newspapers and TV reports all across the state.

In order to capture the full magnitude of the state’s failed charter school experiment, we’ve decided to launch a website to high-light all these stories.

In the Ohio public education system, there are two separate yet very different types of schools: Charter schools marred by failure and fraud, and the traditional public schools being drained of resources by them. These are their stories.

You can visit the website here: www.failureandfraud.com Sign up for a bi-monthly digest here: http://www.failureandfraud.com/email-newsletter

If you see a local news story about charter schools failures or fraud, drop us a note aa@centraloeanea.org.

Grant Programs for 2014-2015Central OEA/NEA will again offer three grant programs to local associations: Growth and Development Grants, Local Emergency Grants, and the Local Participation Award.

Growth and Development Grants are designed to help a local improve its effectiveness; therefore, grant activities should be related to one or more of the Characteristics of an Effective Local. The Central budget earmarks $50,000 for the grants, with grant awards ranging from $2000 (for locals with up to 100 members) to $5000 (for locals with over 800 members). Grant awards may come with some conditions; for example, conducting a Fund for Children and Public Education (FCPE) drive. The application is on the Central website. Application deadline is October 15, 2014.

Emergency Local Grants are designed to assist locals with an immediate need; often this need is help with a levy or bond issue. While there is no application deadline, locals are encouraged to apply as soon as the need arises. The application is on the Central website.

No application is needed for the Participation Award. Just attend Central OEA/NEA events such as Area Meetings, OEA RA’s, Central RA, and others during the year.

Visit the Central OEA/NEA website www.centraloeanea.org or contact Andre Prenoveau, Central OEA/NEA Project Manager pm@centraloeanea.org for more details about each grant.

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Central Diversity Conference

Bullying: Let’s Stop It Now!Central is running an Anti-Bullying Public Service Announcement Contest

The contest will run between August 20, 2014 and October 10, 2014

You can download the rules and submission forms at www.centraloeanea.org.

Purpose of Contest:*To make children and teens aware of the negative impact bullying has on others.*To promote positive anti-bullying messages throughout central Ohio school districts.*To help young people become more aware of the bullying that happens on a daily basis.*To give children the power to prevent, detect, and report bullying.

General Information:1. The contest is open to all public schools in which Central Ohio Education Association/NEA members are a part of the faculty.

2. The contest is open to students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade. Entries may be individuals, small groups or classes. For full details see the Central website.

Central will also be hosting an Anti-Bullying Conference on November 21st at the Central office. Registration is required on the Central website. Stay tuned for more details.

We all live with the same objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. ~ Anne Frank

The Central Diversity Committee will host its annual diversity conference. The conference will be held January 31, 2015, at the Central office.

This year’s conference will offer workshops on implementing diversity programs, bullying, and LGBT Issues. The conference will begin at 9:00 a.m. and will conclude at 3:30 p.m. Lunch is included and registration is free.

Registration is required at www.centraloeanea.orgFor additional information about this conference contact Jamel C. Ammons at (614) 516-5480 or by email at ammonsjc@aol.com.

Save The Date

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South-West Licking EA: Paula Ball, SLEA Co-PresidentMy Co-President, Shelly Gardner Ballinger, and I arrived at Central’s Leadership Conference after reaching a tenta-tive agreement in the early morning. Honestly, we wanted sleep--not a conference. However, we arrived to see the majority of our executive board in the hotel lobby waiting for us.

Building Dynamic Leadership Teams Two Local Perspectives

One of the many things we value about the conference was its format, which allowed us to learn from a presenter, and then immediately have the opportunity to use what we learned. During the first day, we created three goals for the year and a communications triangle. We decided to write a grant for help with our fall operations levy and committed to do a Power Study. Through the two days, the format was the same. We learned about something in whole-group sessions, and then we used what we learned as we planned the year. In addition, we benefitted from Central OEA staff members who assisted us while we worked, provided additional trainings specific to us such as how to read our district’s five year forecast, and shared opportuni-ties available like mentoring for new presidents and Central Grants.

Our executive board members agree that what made this conference so valuable is that no one can remember ever having time set aside to create a vision for our association, create goals for the year, and develop plans for reaching them in a relaxed setting. The conference allowed us to reflect on what SLEA desires and how we want to achieve it rather than having a rushed plan-ning session for a few hours after school at the beginning of the year. We cannot recommend enough the value of taking advantage of Central OEA’s leadership confer-ence; our local is truly changed for the better because of it.

Reynoldsburg SSA: Jerri Romanyak Members of the Reynoldsburg Support Staff Association (RSSA) attended the Building Dynamic Leadership Teams workshop at Cherry Valley.

Crystal Walden, Jerri Romanyak, Tim Paris, and Julie Mor-gan, who will be serving as RSSA negotiating team next year, joined RSSA President Kathy Enyart, and Vice Presi-dent Rob Kocher; the RSSA contract ends June 30, 2014.Meeting with LRC Delores Tufaro, the group discussed ways to increase their membership and laid groundwork for their negotiations. Members of Reynoldsburg Educa-tion Association (REA) were also in attendance, and they shared information on how to reach Reynoldsburg’s clas-sified staff that are not union members. RSSA plans to host an information dinner meeting for non-members and hopes to see more staff members become active in RSSA during this pivotal year.

Besides working on their specific plans to strengthen their union, members appreciated learning from the various presentations. The group felt that the presentations on Campaign 2014 and ECOT were enlightening and found the discussions on messaging, using power words, and making plans for improving the RSSA contract were help-ful.

Central OEA Project Manager, Andre Prenoveau, assisted RSSA with a grant application. Working actively with REA and OEA, RSSA wants to be more effective for its mem-bers, and the goal for the next contract is to maintain what they have and to restore what they have lost. “We need to build confidence in our union,” said Kathy Enyart. “Our last two contracts significantly hurt our union, and we have lost members as a result. We really need more members so that we will have more strength as we move towards a new contract.” “Being together at Cherry Valley allowed us to set a plan for the year,” said Julie Morgan. “We had some fun, and we really feel like we learned a lot as a group.”

In this issue2 A Message From Mark Meuser, Retiring Central

Fiscal Manager

2 New Fiscal Manager Joins the Central Team

2 Central’s New Board Members

2 All-Area Meeting & Delegate Briefing

3 We Educate America

4 ECOT Exposed

5 Failure & Fraud

5 Grant Programs for 2014-2015

6 Central Diversity Conference

6 Bullying: Let’s Stop it Now!

7 Building Dynamic Leadership Teams – Two Local Perpectives

Central OEA / NEA

Bullying: Let’s Stop It Now!

Grant Programs for2014-2015

NON-PROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDCOLUMBUS, OHPERMIT No. 204

CE NT RA L O EA/NEA, Inc.947 Goodale BoulevardColumbus, OH 43212

COMMUNIQUÉ

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We Educate America

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Building Dynamic Leadership Teams

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Registrations for all events are available on Central’s website at www.centraloeanea.org

Upcoming Events

Nov. 7 All Areas Meeting & Delegate Briefing at Marriott Northwest

Nov. 21 Anti- Bullying Conference at the Central Office

Dec. 6 OEA RA FALL 2014 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center

Jan. 31 Diversity Conference at the Central Office