It looks like there will be a big effort by Ohio Democrats to repeal SB5 — the bill curtailing rights of government workers — via a statewide ballot issue in November. Progressives are urged to work to reverse this high-handed union busting legislation.

The problem is, saving public unions doesn’t fit into any general or guiding progressive philosophy. The aim of progressives is that government find ways to operate effectively to best accomplish its aims. Progressives, for example, very much want public education to be effective. Repealing SB5, it seems, is a battleground that philosophically advantages the other side — if the issue is framed in terms of making government more effective. The case for repealing SB5 must be that repeal is in the public good.

Progressives need to push for a battle where progressive ideas can be sharply delineated and advanced. We need a battle that will create more interest in progressivism, more grassroots discussion concerning progressives ideas, more interest in finding and supporting progressive candidates.  A debate on public workers’ unions is not a debate that will stir the passions of potential progressives. I would like to see a second ballot issue — one that creates a debate concerning a core progressive issue.  I would like to see a ballot issue giving Ohio voters the privilege of reversing parts of the 2005 Tax Reduction Act, the law that made Ohio’s tax system more regressive and gave huge tax reductions to the greatest incomes.

The debate worth having is: How do we make the system more fair?  A proposal to give public unions more say-so is a crummy way to frame the debate.  A proposal for a change in Ohio tax code to make the tax system more progressive would be a great way to frame the debate.  If the two issues could be on the same ballot, then the tax reform issue might motivate progressive leaning voters to participate who otherwise would not see the public union issue as worth the effort.  A “tax the rich” ballot proposal would most likely dominate the debate and turn attention to where it should be — the big picture of fairness.  A side benefit would be that a focus on the tax advantages of the wealthy would put attacks on the “privileges” of government workers in perspective.

See:

1. Solutions To Ohio’s $8 Billion Budget Gap Should Be Focus Of Ohio Assembly Election Campaigns — July 20th, 2010
2. Ohio’s Budget Crisis: Ohio Must Find A Way To Make Its Total Tax System More Fair, More Progressive — December 17th, 2009
3. How Much Revenue Would Ohio Gain, If Ohio’s 2005 Tax Reduction Act Was Rescinded For Top Incomes? — March 31st, 2009
4. Governor Strickland Fails To Explain Impact Of 2005 Tax Reduction Act On Ohio’s 2009 Budget Shortfall — January 28th, 2009
5. Ohio’s 2005 Tax Reduction Act Was Predicted, By 2010, To Result In Yearly State Budget Shortfall of Billions — December 15th, 2008
6. Assembly Candidates Should Take Stand: Will Ohio Raise Taxes Or Will Ohio Cut State Services? — October 25th, 2008
7. Twelve Tax Loopholes Ohio Should Close To Generate $270 Million Additional Revenue Each Year — October 15th, 2008
8. Chris Widener, Republican Senate Candidate, Boasts About Tax Cuts, But How Will He Solve Ohio’s Budget Crisis? — October 8th, 2008
9. Ohio’s 2005 Tax Reduction Law Diminished, By 21%, The Progressivity of Ohio’s Tax Code — August 6th, 2008
10. Study Says Ohio Should Raise State Revenue $817 Million By Revising 2005 Income Tax Reduction Act — August 4th, 2008

I attended the Montgomery County Democratic Party’s annual rally / fund raiser last night at the Dayton Convention Center. Ted Strickland was the special speaker.

Strickland looked fit and trim. He gave a rousing speech that responded to  Ohio’s SB5 — landmark legislation that curtails the bargaining rights of public employees that Governor Kasich had signed earlier in the day.

I wish I would have taken my video camera. The videographer recording the event, I hope, eventually will post the speech — and if so, I will link to it.  I took notes as best as I could — and below are some of the key sentences and phrases from Strickland’s speech that I noted.

• SB5 is the most mean spirited, antifamily legislation ever passed.
• We are facing the greatest threat to middle class since the days of Franklin Roosevelt.
• Conservative and libertarian think tanks have been plotting for years and are mounting a united effort in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan.
• If they can break organized labor, there will be no restraint on corporate control of everything.
• They think they are winning, but people have had their eyes opened.  The radical right has taken off its mask and now everyone can see the ugliness they have been hiding.
• Kasich’s plan attacks public education and will deprive public education of $3.1 billion  over the next two years.
• What they (the radical right) really want to do is to repeal the New Deal and in so doing decimate the middle class.
• If ever you have been willing to fight, determine to fight now.
• Our  values and principals are are risk.  Our country is at risk.  This is a political Armageddon and we must win.

I took a lot of pictures, but, didn’t know how to use the camera I borrowed — I’m looking for a new one — and so most of the pictures I took didn’t come out.  But here are a few:

County Treasurer Caroline Rice

Rhine McLin, recently the mayor of Dayton. I'm sorry that I didn't catch the name of the handsome couple standing with Rhine.

 

John Murphy, President of our South of Dayton Democratic Club, received a special award. Here he is with his daughter, Gen, who is also the administrator of the MCDP headquarters.

Dayton City Commissioner, Matt Joseph, with an award recipient.

Clayton Luckie represents Ohio's 39th House District.

Me and Ted -- We both graduated from Asbury College -- separated by a number of years. You wouldn't know by this picture, but this youthful looking former governor is eight years older.

County Auditor Karl Keith did a great job as "Master of Ceremonies." Here, shown congratulating President Murphy.

Jim Mims is a recently elected member of the State Board of Education. I had a good conversation with him. He has a lot to say. At some point in the near future I hope to do an extensive interview with him.

It was a great evening -- at $125 per person, it raised money to fund the headquarters and other expenses of the Montgomery County Democratic Party. The South of Dayton Democratic Club bought two tickets to raffle off -- And, wow, one of them came to me.

The video below shows a program organized by the Fordham Foundation and conducted at Cleveland State University on March 14.  The title of the program was “Doing More With Less In K-12 Education — A Timely Discussion For Ohio”

Doing More with Less in K-12 Education: Cleveland State University from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.

After opening remarks by Chester Finn, President of the Fordham Foundation, the first speaker, Nate Levenson, a “strategic planning management consultant,” formerly Superintendent of Schools for Arlington Public Schools in Massachusetts, stated that the goal of public education is clear — we know what we are trying to accomplish — we simply need a good strategy establishing clear priorities of what most contributes to accomplishing that goal.

This basic structure of Levenson’s proposition seems valid, but his foundation — we know what we are trying to accomplish — to me seems weak, because in the current setting, the bottom line thinking that directs what districts are trying to accomplish emphasizes producing results on objective tests. In Ohio, school districts put all of their energy into getting high marks from the Ohio Department of Education — on tests of minimum competencies.  Without a better vision of aim / purpose of public education, the effort to “accomplish more” is certain to be misdirected.

Levenson says that the quality of teachers is what matters most, yet, in a time of budget cuts, districts are tempted to stop funding effective programs for teacher development and teacher mentoring.  He says that in a time of decreasing dollars, school systems must invest even more in generating and analyzing data.  He says, “Information is power, and during tough times we need more information, not less.” Levenson urges his listeners to study effective districts. He says some districts have figured out how to have high achievement, while at the same time making cuts in staff members and making other cuts as well. “We can learn from them,” he says.

The second speaker Steven F. Wilson is founder and president of Ascend Learning, a charter school management organization in New York City, and a former executive vice president for product development at Edison Schools.  Wilson says that today’s education reformers have a rare opportunity. He says, “Maybe once a century we have an opportunity to completely change what we do in schools. … we need to break what we do now and start over again.”

Wilson says, in education, we are spending huge amounts of money on teachers, but what we are buying — seniority and advanced degrees — has no relation to teaching efficacy.  He says we need to “get rid of the least effective teachers — with gusto. … We’ve been running an employment system, not an education system, for the last 40 years. We need to change what we do and put students first.”

The biggest current strategy for improving education — reducing class sizes — according to Wilson, has been proven wrong and much money can be saved by modestly increasing the number of students in each class.  The plan Wilson advocates is for schools to increase class size and dramatically change how teachers are compensated.  He says, as it is now, the teaching profession is riddled with incompetents who themselves were poor students, graduating at the bottom of the high schools and colleges they attended. To attract better candidates to teaching, Wilson says schools must pay higher salaries, sooner, based on merit.

Missing from Wilson’s point of view, it seems, is a vision of what professionalism should mean for teachers — and the structure of a system that would empower teachers with the status and responsibilities of professionals.  As I hear Wilson, he would see even the more qualified and more highly paid teachers he advocates, as remaining basically blue collar workers in a hierarchical organization in which they would have few professional prerogatives. To attract better candidates to teaching, it seems to me, there must be a restructuring of the system of education that gives teachers more responsibility, more freedom to meet that responsibility, and more opportunity for the expression of individual creativity.

See: Does Ohio’s Low Standard For School “Excellence” Hinder Authentic School Improvement?