Education News for 01-17-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • Getting students ready for college is shared goal of Ohio Board of Regents, Department of Education (Plain Dealer)

    • COLUMBUS - A marriage between Ohio's K-12 and higher education systems isn't imminent, but the two are preparing to move in together. The Ohio Board of Regents, which oversees the state's public colleges and universities, plans to move its offices less than half a mile to the Ohio Department of Education's building this spring, said higher education Chancellor Jim Petro. Petro told the regents at a meeting last week that he and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Stan Heffner have developed a significant partnership that had not existed in the past between the two agencies. Read More…

  • What are state rules on school inspections? (WKYC 3 NBC)

    • OHIO - A Cleveland school was recently closed when concerns arose over the structural integrity of the 100-year old school. So we wondered, what are the rules for inspections? Local health departments are required to inspect schools twice a year, mainly focusing on sanitary conditions but some are more thorough. Fire departments also need to make sure alarms are working and exits are open. As far as structural integrity, school custodians are expected to look for any changes in the building and report any problems. Read More…

  • Kids can't learn if they're not in class (Repository)

    • CANTON — With her six children at home, Crystal Brownfield wasn’t expecting company Friday. But a knock on the door came from Canton City Schools Superintendent Michele Evans. Evans, along with Tim Henderson, Compton Learning Center principal, was one of 20 teams of educators and Family Court employees who staged a friendly blitzkrieg of visits to homes where school attendance is an issue. The district has noticed a sharp increase in the number of truancies at the kindergarten and first-grade levels — a trend that both has puzzled and surprised school officials who typically see the problem with older students. Read More…

  • Fiscal emergency may solve Niles schools’ financial woes (Vindicator)

    • Not only is the Niles City School District facing a major financial crisis, but the teachers’ union has rejected the board’s “last, best and final” contract offer. To describe the situation as dire is to state the obvious. What is not so obvious is a solution that at first glance may seem counter intuitive: State imposed fiscal emergency. Such a declaration by state Auditor David Yost would trigger the appointment of a state fiscal oversight commission. The entity would the take control of the school system’s finances, and would also have the power to set aside all labor contracts. Read More…

  • Parents Concerned About Cyber Bullying (WBNS 10 CBS)

    • CHILLICOTHE - A mother said on Monday that she is concerned that online anonymous attacks could lead to problems. According to Melissa Tyler, a mother of two, Ross County middle and high school students are using a website called Topix to create discussion threads about people in town. “These are damaging things to kids,” Tyler said. “If you’re called something for so long, you’re going to believe that you are.” Tyler and other parents alerted Chillicothe City School District officials, who blocked the site from inside school buildings, 10TV’s Ashleigh Barry reported. Read More…

  • State wants London to let charter keep profit (Dispatch)

    • The London school district is certain it’s right: It can funnel the $700,000 profit from an affiliated charter school into the district’s general fund. The state is certain that London is wrong: That money is supposed to benefit the at-risk kids at London Academy, an online high school that is both sponsored and run by the district. Since 2010, the Ohio Department of Education repeatedly has told London City Schools to stop taking the money and to start letting the online high school make its own decisions. Read More…

Local Issues

  • Columbus school board may raise time for public to speak (Dispatch)

    • Three minutes is too little. Five? Too much. But four minutes to say your piece at a Columbus City Schools board meeting might be just right, according to a proposal being considered tonight. The Columbus Board of Education is considering adding a minute to its per-speaker allotment during the public-comment portion of each meeting. It’s currently capped at three minutes, which speakers have complained isn’t enough time to make their point, said board member Mike Wiles. Read More…

  • More city kids ready for rigors of school (Enquirer)

    • More youngsters came to Cincinnati Public Schools ready for kindergarten this fall than in prior school years, a report on kindergarten readiness scores shows. About six in 10 students who enrolled in CPS’ 42 elementary kindergarten classes scored 19 or better on the state-issued Kindergarten Readiness Assessment-Literacy, often called KRAL. The average score for CPS’ newest kindergartners was 19.3, making this the first year the average score exceeds the 19-point benchmark. Read More…

  • Districts work to keep student-athletes eligible (Journal-News)

    • Just as high school basketball season entered its second half, many school districts also began their second semester. This marks the close of a grading period and the release of grades that could determine a student athlete’s eligibility for the rest of the season. A JournalNews analysis of the minimum academic requirements across Butler County’s public school districts found a wide range of standards. Data shows the minimum grade-point average requirement for eligibility at each of the high schools range from 2.0 to 1.0. Read More…

  • Elgin consolidation puts future of LaRue after-school program in question (Marion Star)

    • LARUE - Children gathered around the table, their puddings and juice approaching the end. Their energy? Not so much. That's part of the excitement for a free after-school program that aims to give students a safe place while extending learning beyond the end of the school day. Community members launched the LaRue After School Area Program, a state-licensed child care program, more than a decade ago. Administrator Becky Kibler said, at the time, a state inspector told her it would never last because parents weren't asked to pay. Read More…

  • Vasquez reflects on two tough TPS years (Blade)

    • Bob Vasquez has faced life-and-death emergencies in his work as a child-abuse investigator. But he says nothing else he has done caused him as much stress as his service over the past two years as president of the Toledo Board of Education. "Everything was fast-moving, intense, high-pressure decision making," Mr. Vasquez told me last week. Citing the district's troubled finances, he added: "I would go to bed every night thinking, when is the state going to take over?" Read More…

  • Twitter, Facebook helped students at Westerville North (Dispatch)

    • The day after Spanish teacher Leroy Gilkey was killed, Westerville North High School was in mourning. Teachers fought tears as they gave lessons. Hallways were silent. Grief counselors were stationed in the auditorium and near Gilkey’s classroom. Many students were glued to their cellphones, plugging into Twitter and Facebook to write what they couldn’t bear to say out loud. Read More…

Editorial

  • Open the evaluation (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • When parents decide their neighborhood public school is not the best fit for their child, they have an option: They can apply for enrollment in some other public school in their home district, or they can seek enrollment outside the district. All districts are required to have policies permitting within-district, or intra-district, open enrollment. But they have a choice whether or not to take students from another district, inter-district enrollment, the tuition per pupil transferred from state aid to the home district. Read More…

  • Education reform proposals, including charters, could improve Washington state (Seattle Times)

    • A SLEW of education reforms proposed to the state Legislature signal a chance to get real work done this session. Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, and Sen. Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, provide a bipartisan and bicameral approach for smart reforms. Their proposals would allow charter schools, establish a process to intervene when schools fail and continue strengthening principal and teacher performance reviews. Expect contentious debate. In particular, the teachers union sees charter schools as a threat. Read More…

Lesson Learned?

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Just a few short days ago we wrote

Their difficulties will certainly have been further complicated by severe funding cuts as a result of HB153 raiding school budgets, and alienating most school districts and communities with bills like SB5 and HB136. It's hard to collaborate with hundreds of stakeholders when the previous 12 months have been spent attacking them and their mission.

If the administration have learned this lesson we should expect to see more outreach and consultation, and eventually arrive at a funding formula that works for most. Otherwise the administration is going to find itself having traveled a bridge too far.

any signs that the administration is going to take a more collaborative, friendly approach? Erm, no.

That's a recent tweet of the governor's education Czar, Robert Sommers. The last sentence he refers to?

What happened at the OSBA is a warning to old-school traditionalists: Adapt to the public's call for meaningful school reform or be left on the sidelines.

Sounds a lot like the old rhetoric of get on the bus or be run over by it. Lessons can be hard to learn.

Straight Talk on Teaching Quality

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The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University recently published a paper titled "Straight Talk on Teaching Quality: Six Game-Changing Ideas and What to Do About Them" , described this guide as being "about game-changing strategies for improving teacher effectiveness".

The six headlines (organized around "The problem, what needs to happen, who is doing something good, and what can I do) are:

  • Follow Your Bliss: Career Pathways for Teachers
  • Evaluation Nation: Multiple Ways of Measuring Performance
  • Support for Teachers, Not Just Rewards and Sanctions: Why Firing Teachers Won't Lead to Large-Scale Improvement
  • Environmentally Friendly: Why School Culture and Working Conditions Matter
  • No Teacher is an Island: the Importance of In-School Partnerships and Teacher Collaboration
  • No School Is an Island: Partnerships with Parents and Community

It's a short read, and worth the time.

Straight Talk on Teaching Quality: Six Game-Changing Ideas and What to Do About Them

Education News for 01-13-2012

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State Education News

  • Ohio education in top 10 nationally despite a so-so grade – (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Ohio’s grade on a national report card this year slipped to a C-plus, down from a B-minus, but the state inched up to the 10th best school system in the nation. Ohio was 11th in last year’s report. For the fourth year, Maryland was the top-ranked state, earning the highest grade, a B-plus. The nation as a whole got a C, the same as last year’s report. Read More…

  • Vice President Talks Education Cost – (Ohio News Network)

    • Vice President Joe Biden brought the administrations message of affordable education to students and faculty at Gahanna's Lincoln High School. "There was a bargain in place for the last 50 years that if you worked hard, played by the rules, you helped increase productivity in America, you got a piece of the action," Biden said. Read More…

Local Issues

  • TPS eyeing Head Start management – (Fox-Toledo)

    • Toledo Public Schools are looking to get involved in a child's life even before they're enrolled in the district. Wednesday evening district board members gave the go ahead to Dr. Jerome Pecko to start researching whether the district would be able to assume management of the program. If all works out, Dr. Pecko says it will major, positive impact on kids before they ever start school. Read More…

  • Publishing Co. sues TPS over copyright – (Toledo Blade)

    • A Worthington, Ohio-based publishing company has sued Toledo Public Schools in federal court, claiming the district "engaged in massive infringement" of its copyrighted work. Align, Assess, Achieve entered into a copyright license agreement with TPS for company books and materials that provide teacher guidance in meeting the Common Core education standards, a voluntary multistate effort to have uniform curriculum standards in schools. The company claims in its lawsuit, which it filed Jan. 6 in Columbus, that the agreement specified TPS could only use the works to prepare pacing guides for the teachers for whom the district had bought the company's book. Read More…

  • Big cuts are coming to schools in Lorain City Schools – (WOIO-Cleveland)

    • Board of Education members in Lorain have approved close to $5 million in layoffs and program cuts. School officials are trying to reduce more than $10 million deficit for next year. In fact by the end of the year they will cut 150 more staff from Lorain City Schools and kindergarten will go to half days. The sports department will see big cuts as well. Read More…

  • Cleveland schools encouraging students to seek financial aid for college – (Plain Dealer)

    • Filling out a college financial aid application can be intimidating, so the Cleveland schools are nudging students along gently - offering much more counseling than ever before. Read More…

  • Defunct Legacy Academy $376K in arrears, audit says – (Vindicator)

    • The latest audit of a now-closed community school says the school owes more than $376,000 in taxes and Medicare costs. State Auditor Dave Yost’s office released on Thursday the audit of Legacy Academy for Leaders and the Arts, covering fiscal years 2006 through 2010. The school, which operated inside Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church on Oak Hill Avenue, closed last June, citing declining enrollment. Read More…

  • Richmond Heights school officials finish investigation into Superintendent Linda Hardwick – (News Herald)

    • The Richmond Heights investigation of Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick has come to a close, although information is not ready to be released. Former board President Joshua Kaye — replaced by Linda Pliodzinskas this week — sent Hardwick a letter in December to inform her that discussion of her termination would soon take place. Read More…

Editorial

  • First exam – (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • Ohio was one of 11 states and the District of Columbia that made big promises to win competitive grants in 2010 to reform their school systems. A full year of the four-year grants has been completed, which offers time enough to assess how well the states are delivering. Read More…

  • Only time will tell who wins the $4 billion Race to the Top – (Vindicator)

    • After the first year, a Washing- ton assessment of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant program gives Ohio high marks on its participation. States and individual school districts had to compete for extra federal funding aimed at improving student achievement, closing achievement gaps, improving high school graduation rates and better preparing students for success in college and careers. Read More…

Rhee cloaks her partisan agenda

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Michelle Rhee was in Ohio yesterday, and had a Q&A with StateImpact. A few of her answers raised eyebrows.

Q.What are your thoughts on Gov. John Kasich; do you think you have his support in these efforts?

A: It’s very interesting. John Kasich is a Republican, I’m a Democrat, so we certainly don’t agree on all issues. But as it pertains to education and education reform, I have found Gov. Kasich to be a very, very strong proponent of reform.

What people label themselves as is a matter of personal preference, but one isn't hard pressed to notice that Rhee spent the better part of 2011 working very closely with Republican governor's and finding so few friends in the Democratic party that her lobbying front group "StudentsFirst" had to go out and hire a PR flack. You don't have to take our word for it though. Leaked in a memo, Rhee spoke of her "Waiting for Superman" event with the governor being designed to boost the governor's flagging approvals

2:00-6:30pm
Drive to Cleveland!
@ 6:10 Governor Kasich will start the viewing of Waiting for Superman. Margaret Spelling will give a pre-taped special message at the beginning. Mafara will be on site.
(NOTE: WFS will be broadcast via webcam to six other town hall meetings through out the state. The locations were chosen based on districts where we need to sure up support for the Governor’s budget. It’s also being broadcast via webcam for house parties that were put together by the Partnership for Ohio’s Future.)

Did we also mention that Rhee's lobby group helped craft parts of SB5? They did. So when she talks about how popular her agenda is, being reminded it was defeated 62%-38% isn't being unkind, it's being truthful.

This, however, wasn't the Q&A that raised our eyebrows the most.

Q. It seems that some of the things that you stand for (like tying performance to teacher pay and opposing last-hired, first-fired) have really come to be synonymous with the Republican Party’s reform efforts and anti-union, anti-liberal (agenda) in Ohio. How did that develop in your own personal belief system?

A: For example last-in, first-out basically says that if you’re the last teacher hired, you must be the first teacher fired at the time of a layoff. Makes absolutely no sense. Nobody wants layoffs to occur, but if they do have to occur then we have to do our best to ensure that the best teachers, the most highly effective teachers are maintained in the system. So I don’t see that as a Republican point of view, I don’t see that as a Democratic point of view, I see that as a pro-kid stance.

When asked about how she balances her claims to be a Democrat with her alliances with Republican governor's, she avoids the question altogether. Given how easy it is to document her Republican bona fides, that come as no surprise.

Rhee could have pivoted away form that uncomfortable question with all manner of responses. But as if to further prove our point that corporate education reformers all have a fetish for teachers losing their jobs, Rhee couldn't help herself and responded with an answer wholly about teachers losing their jobs. It's seems pathological.

The fact that Rhee and her lobby group have to resort to such contortions so early in their efforts is no surprise. We've long ago documented how deceptive they are about their agenda, and SB5's massive defeat by actual voters demonstrates they might be wise to keep their corporate education reform agenda cloaked - because when that agenda is exposed, people really don't like what they see.

Mayor Jackson has a secret Ed plan

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The Plain Dealer has a report that hints at Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson having a education reform plan.

Mayor Frank Jackson is working on a plan to make the Cleveland schools academically successful and financially stable, a task that will require changes in state law and that Gov. John Kasich said "could set a standard for the whole state."

We don't know what this plan is however, because Jackson isn't saying.

Jackson declined Wednesday to discuss details of his plan, saying that would be premature.

We do know a few things though. Like most corporate education reformers, Jackson isn't collaborating with educators.

Cleveland Teachers Union President David Quolke, whose members would be most affected if the plan renews Jackson's earlier push for changes in teacher rules and contracts, said Wednesday that he has "absolutely no knowledge" of Jackson's plans.

He said CTU is always willing to discuss changes and collaborate to improve the schools, but has not been included.

It is no surprise that the Governor seems delighted by this new, as Jackson had previously stated he supported SB5 like education reforms, even while denying he supported SB5. The fact that the plan is currently secret and no educator discussions have taken place provides more than a clue as to the direction Jackson wishes to take Cleveland schools.

The very real problem facing Cleveland schools isn't a lack of corporate education reform, but instead the state having raided its budget.

The district is facing tight financial restrains with the existing $13.2 million deficit, the recent recall of more than 400 teachers and state funding cuts totaling $14.5 million.

Jackson is now having to plan a local levy push, along with lay offs and service recutions in order to compensate for this massive loss of revenue. Perhaps Jackson should spend a few minutes talking to the Governor not about corporate ed reform, but school funding reform - the administration is looking for ideas on a new funding formula.