Education summit to gauge Kasich

By Darrel Rowland

and Jim Siegel

Columbus Dispatch

Gov. John Kasich is taking part in an education summit this week in New Hampshire with several other Republican presidential candidates, and he should have plenty to say.

Former NBC and CNN journalist Campbell Brown said the idea behind Wednesday’s event is to go in-depth with the candidates – in individual question-and-answer sessions lasting 30-45 minutes – on an issue that virtually all voters agree is important but is often given short shrift.

“None of us want to hear talking points, and we’ve made that clear to the candidates,” said Brown, co-founder and editor-in-chief of debate sponsor The Seventy Four (named for the 74 million school-aged children in America), a nonprofit news site that covers education-reform issues across the country.

“My expectation about the summit is that there will be some playing to the crowd. My goal is to get past that and get to talk in depth about the issues,” she said.

Brown said she is aware of the controversy over the Ohio Education Department’s now-departed school-choice administrator, who quit after it was revealed he was scrubbing charter-school evaluations to make them look better.

She also knows that Kasich has dismissed calls for an independent investigation of the official, David Hansen, the husband of Kasich’s presidential campaign manager, Beth Hansen, and said it could be a campaign issue.

“If the governor believes in promoting charters, then you have a responsibility to address failures in the system,” Brown said. “Otherwise, it will hurt the entire effort.”

Also scheduled to appear are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, California businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Bush and Kasich are virtually deadlocked in the latest New Hampshire GOP poll, behind Donald Trump, who isn’t appearing.

Where Kasich stands on key education issues:

Charter schools

Kasich and a Republican-dominated Legislature have greatly expanded school choice. More than $1 billion in state money flows to charter schools, which enroll a record 120,000 students.

And the number of available school vouchers – state funding that allows students to attend private, mostly religiously backed schools – has leaped from 14,000 to 60,000, although as of Monday, fewer than 29,000 applications for EdChoice scholarships had been submitted.

Still, Greg Harris of StudentsFirst said, “In Ohio now, no child is forced to go to a failing school. That’s pretty substantial.”

Ohio’s laws regarding charter-school operations and oversight have been sharply criticized both here and nationally for allowing bad schools to remain open while requiring too little transparency and accountability.

Kasich publicly acknowledged the problem in late 2014, promising to put reforms in his budget bill.

“We strongly support options regardless of a family’s economic background, but they have to be quality options. He’s been very serious about that,” Harris said.

But GOP lawmakers stripped Kasich’s charter reforms out of the budget and instead worked on a separate bill. They didn’t finish it before the summer break, meaning another school year will go by without reforms in place.

“We are wasting so much money on failing charter schools right now,” said Keary McCarthy, president of the liberal Innovation Ohio.

McCarthy said Kasich has been saying the right things regarding charter school reform, but he hasn’t pressed lawmakers to act. The former Democratic legislative staffer noted that when the administration wanted a controversial plan in June to allow a takeover of the Youngstown schools, it passed both chambers in one day.

Many critics say the millions in campaign contributions from charter-school figures mostly to the Republicans have long held-up needed reforms.

School funding

“While we might not always agree with his priorities, I think he is supportive of education,” said Barbara Shaner of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

Kasich cut K-12 school funding by an unprecedented amount shortly after taking office in 2011, though there has been a substantial rebound in the past two budgets. But only recently did Ohio schools start getting more than they did in 2010.

Total K-12 spending will reach about $8.3 billion in 2017 – about $370 million more than in 2010, according to veteran school-funding analyst Howard Fleeter, who does work for the state’s major public-education organizations.

Ohio’s current funding setup largely is a product of the Legislature, which has significantly altered Kasich’s past two proposals.

Even with the state budget flush with money, Kasich has not hesitated to tell districts they need to survive with less, while pouring billions into income tax cuts and the state’s rainy-day fund.

His initial budget proposal for 2014-15 left 60 percent of school districts with no funding increase over two years, including every district in Ohio’s 12 Appalachian counties. His latest two-year budget plan introduced in February called for more than half of traditional districts to get a funding cut, while every charter school would get an increase.

In both cases, GOP lawmakers added money and made significant changes to Kasich’s formula.

“There is more money in the formula, and that’s good,” Fleeter said. “The question is, is it going to the right places? We still have a problem where rural districts still don’t have the resources.”

Kasich has stressed the need to drive money to districts that can’t raise enough themselves.

The Education Trust, a national nonprofit that promotes closing achievement gaps for low-income and minority students, ranked Ohio the best in the nation when comparing the difference in resources between states’ highest- and lowest-poverty districts.

Fleeter said that is largely a result of urban funds, including capital money.

“Ultimately, there has been no effort by the administration to determine what is the right amount to fund an adequate education,” Fleeter said. “They have made improvements to the formula and it is better-funded. It’s still not where it needs to be.”

Common Core

“When it comes to education, it’s real simple, I’m for local control and high standards,” Kasich said last week in New Hampshire.

That’s how he attempts to frame the debate over the controversial curriculum that is hotly opposed by many Republicans as an overreach of the Obama administration. However, Kasich did approve ditching the PARCC tests that created so much consternation.

Brown noted that Kasich and Bush are the “last men standing” in the GOP field supporting Common Core, and she appreciates Kasich’s directness.

“Whether you support Common Core or oppose Common Core, he has been more blunt, straightforward and honest about what Common Core really is than some of the other candidates who’ve played politics with this issue,” she said.

Teachers unions

Kasich threatened in the 2010 campaign to “break the back” of teacher unions, pushed Ohio Senate Bill 5 in 2011 which would have stripped most collective-bargaining rights from teachers and other public employees, backed tough teacher evaluations and supported teaching slots going to non-licensed professionals.

Kasich’s support of Senate Bill 5 put him at war with unions, and the bill was successfully overturned on the ballot.

Melissa Cropper, Ohio Federation of Teachers president, remembers it well. But when asked about Kasich’s education record, she praised his support of Common Core, enhanced career-tech programs and a student-mentoring program called Community Connectors.

“If we’re going to have a Republican as president, I’d rather it be John Kasich,” Cropper said, stressing she still thinks Hillary Clinton has better ideas for education.

Cropper admits she is surprised she is able to talk about Kasich in such terms.

“Three years ago, I had no love for the man at all,” she said. “I’ve seen a slow evolution. He surrounded himself with smart people and learned a lesson from what he did with Senate Bill 5. We have been able to talk with him about things.”

Cropper remains concerned about Kasich’s support of privatizing education and worries what happens if he faces anti-union pressures at a national level. She also doesn’t think he does enough to bring in teachers and other experts at the start of a process.

“I do think he has a genuine, heartfelt belief that he needs to help children and the poor.”

Kasich also has backed a third-grade reading guarantee, more access to college courses in high school, additional funding for early-childhood learning, and plans to radically alter operations of the failing Cleveland school district and take over the Youngstown schools.

U.S. Education Department

As a congressman back in the 1990s he advocated the elimination of the federal Department of Education, but now so as not to be regarded as anti-education he merely wants to defang it and send most federal cash straight to the states.

“I happen to believe when it comes to the federal Department of Education, they have so many programs ... the system’s not right,” Kasich told a New Hampshire town hall last week.

“Washington can have goals, but it shouldn’t be running our K-12 education system.”