Education News for 01-24-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • Shared leader saves districts money (News-Sun)

    • MECHANICSBURG — Board members knew they were taking a risk last year when they hired Dan Kaffenbarger to serve simultaneously as the superintendent for two separate school districts in Champaign County. Several months into the job, the gamble seems to be paying off, although Kaffenbarger is less sure than before that the practice of sharing superintendents will become a common occurrence in the future. Read More…

  • Ohioan is nominated for federal schools job (Dispatch)

    • WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has nominated former Ohio schools superintendent Deborah Delisle to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Education, Sen. Sherrod Brown said yesterday. Delisle, who was named state superintendent under former Gov. Ted Strickland, resigned in March after it became clear that new members of the State Board of Education appointed by Gov. John Kasich would replace her. She had spent 2 1/2 years at the post. Read More…

  • National Park Service seeking teachers who want to spend their summer as park rangers (WEWS 5 ABC)

    • BRECKSVILLE - Teachers have an great opportunity to spend their summer outdoors learning and giving. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is seeking qualified teachers who would like to work as a park ranger this summer in the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher (TRT) program. The TRT program offers teachers eight weeks working in national parks across the country and developing lessons to connect their students to the park during the following school year. Teachers have the opportunity to earn graduate credit for the experience. Read More…

Local Issues

  • City schools brace for lean budget (Chillicothe Gazette)

    • CHILLICOTHE - Chillicothe school leaders again are taking the long view as they prepare for a series of lean budget years. The district is projecting a negative cash balance of $3.1 million in 2013. The forecast only gets bleaker after that, with projections showing negative cash balances of $7 million in 2015 and almost $12 million in 2016. The school board did its best to get ahead of the shortfall in April 2011, making $1.55 million in cuts to help stave off the projected multi-million dollar deficit in 2013. Read More…

  • Liberty BOE OKs $1.2M in cuts (Vindicator)

    • Liberty - The board of education on Monday unanimously approved $1.2 million in personnel cuts, a process Superintendent Stan Watson called “gut wrenching.” The cuts will take effect next fiscal year, which begins July 1. They include the layoffs of two administrative positions: supervisor of maintenance/transportation, and the cafeteria supervisor. In addition, seven teaching positions will be eliminated and several positions will switch to part time. Read More…

  • Lakota considers sharing services with ESC (Journal-News)

    • LIBERTY TWP. — In an effort to help address a $9 million budget deficit projected by the 2012-13 school year, the Lakota schools board of education is considering a proposal to restructure its preschool program. Under the proposal, the district’s preschool program would partner with the Head Start program, which is operated by the Butler County Educational Service Center. The restructuring of the preschool program would offer an opportunity to share services, reduce cost and generate multiple benefits, according to the district. Read More…

  • Digital academy could help city keep students (News-Sun)

    • SPRINGFIELD — More than $1.1 million in state funding follows nearly 200 Springfield students to online schools, but that could change as the district prepares to launch its own virtual school. “Drawing the students back will bring the funding with them, and that’s always a plus,” said Superintendent David Estrop. “But we also see this as clearly consistent with what the community wants to do.” A pilot program of up to 25 students will kick off the digital school this spring. Read More…

  • New Westerville levy means sports, art, band (Dispatch)

    • Westerville school officials announced last night which programs would be restored if voters approve a March tax issue. Sports, marching band and all other extracurricular activities are included, along with arts classes, electives and programs that help gifted students and programs for those who need reading help. The programs that would be restored are roughly the top half of a priority list that Superintendent Dan Good presented last week. All programs on his priority list are to be cut or reduced by next school year because of a November levy failure. Read More…

Editorial

  • Niles BOE should cut from the top (Tribune Chronicle)

    • The Niles City Board of Education will have a difficult time solving its fiscal crisis and its contract dispute with the teachers because the teachers have no incentive to settle. Employees hired before 2008 pay zero for their health care premiums and little toward their health care deductibles and co-pays. There is no way on Earth they're going to get a better deal, so continuing to work under the old contract that expired Aug. 28 suits them just fine. Read More…

Teacher evaluations years away from completion

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The state budget (HB 153) required all eligible teachers to be be evaluated using 50% student growth measures, by the 2013-14 school year.

Student growth measures may use value-added data that is calculated to determine whether a student achieves one year's worth of growth. But because the current value-added measure relies on data from statewide assessments, it can only be computed for reading and math education in grades 4-8.

That covers approximately 30% of Ohio's public school teachers. But before even those 30% can be measured, lots of training and data systems need to be put in place. By the end of this year, only 60% of those 30%, that is about 18% of Ohio's teachers, will have something in place.

72% of Ohio's teachers will not be in a position for the provisions in HB153 to be implemented by the end of this year.

It has taken significant costs, efforts and time to get to just 18% - and that was the "easy" part. Many districts have yet to begin to think about how to measure student growth for the other 70% of teachers. Social studies, the sciences, physical ed, art, and music are just some of the subject areas that will need measures developed, for all grades, in just 18 months from now.

"In areas where there are no state tests and where districts need to use local measures, you start getting down into issues around who pays for those measures, how are those measures administered, do they provide adequate information for the purposes of teacher evaluation, or are they even appropriate to use to create a growth measure from it."

That's not us saying that, that's Mary Peters, Battelle for Kids Senior Director of Research and Innovation. she raises a lot of big, important questions, to which there are no answers.

If there is a silver lining, it's that SB5 was defeated, which leaves teachers free to collectively bargain for an evaluation system that they feel can be the most fair within the framework prescribed.

We doubt that the 2013-14 year brings about a widespread breakout of effective teacher evaluations. Indeed, it is increasingly likely that there will be a patchwork system of half-baked systems throughout the state and districts will continue to struggle to fund and develop anything that is remotely workable.

On top of all that, research and evidence continues to demonstrate that teacher level value add is an inappropriate tool for making high stakes decinios such as evalautions and pay.

Education News for 01-23-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • Mobile technology brings challenges to schools (News-Sun)

    • Schools are opting for new technology like laptops and tablets over the traditional stationary computer labs. The new technology has many benefits in education but presents problems such as funding new purchases, managing the equipment and supervising student use. At the start of this school year, Springfield City School District purchased 720 iPads at a cost of $473,000, including warranties and protective cases for each device, said Stacy Parr, the district’s technology director. Read More…

  • Law now lets public schools donate excess food (News-Herald)

    • U.S. Rep. Steven C. LaTourette is encouraging public schools throughout Northeast Ohio to donate excess unused food to local food banks and pantries. A recent change in the law gives public schools the same protections as restaurants and caterers that donate to food banks under the Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. The food donation measure, which became law in 1996, protects donors to food banks from all liability — criminal and civil — yet did not provide public schools that same protection, said LaTourette, R-Bainbridge Township. Read More…

  • How much homework is too much? (Dispatch)

    • In the four years since Upper Arlington High School reduced homework loads, students have achieved more, in some respects. The rate of students who take at least one advanced course has doubled, to 84 percent. The past two years, scores on college entrance exams have been the highest ever at the high school. Principal Kip Greenhill sees a connection between the students’ success and the school’s target of no more than 21/2 hours of homework a night. Read More…

Local Issues

  • Parents shop for school options (Beacon Journal)

    • North Hill parent Gina Lang shopped for schools for her three children Sunday at an informational fair at the Akron-Summit County Public Library that brought area school districts, charter schools and private schools under one roof. She and her husband, Tony, were looking for an alternative to Akron Public Schools for their three children, who attend or will attend Harris elementary school and eventually, Jennings Middle School. Read More…

  • For some, school tax rates rise after home values fall (Newark Advocate)

    • NEWARK - Some Licking County taxpayers will pay more in taxes this year despite a decrease in home values. Because of overall decreases in values, tax rates for six school districts, including the Career and Technology Education Centers of Licking County, rose between .02 and .73 mills. Licking Heights residents will see their school taxes rise by 6.1 mills because of a combination of a replacement levy this past May and plummeting home values among the district's Franklin County residents. Read More…

  • What has Liberty ‘Learn’ed? (Vindicator)

    • It's no secret that the Liberty Local School District has been in financial turmoil for the better part of a decade. Voters have rejected five levies from 2001 to 2010. Not even the board of education members knew just how bad the district’s finances were when the state began to probe its books in 2011. Last February, the state announced the financial records were such a mess that an audit on the 2010 budget was impossible. Read More…

  • Bullying is a life and death issue, local educators say (Journal-News)

    • A Middletown teenager ingested household chemicals. A Ross senior posted a video on YouTube where she described cutting and burning her skin with cigarettes. A Talawanda student attempted to break his legs. The students gave authorities the same reason for their desperate acts — bullying. They were bullied by students at school to the point they thought they couldn’t escape it. Read More…

Editorial

  • Set the limits (Dispatch)

    • School officials throughout the U.S. will be very glad if the U.S. Supreme Court opts to hear arguments on an issue that plagues most of them: What they can and should do when students harass teachers, administrators or each other online. Like any form of bullying, cyber-bullying disrupts schools and can cause emotional harm to its victims. But the vast reach of the Internet greatly magnifies the damage when, say, a student creates a fake MySpace profile characterizing the principal as a pervert, or another creates a website portraying a classmate as promiscuous and diseased. Read More…

  • For Kasich, a State of the State road trip (Plain Dealer)

    • A State of the State speech is both a message -- and "a message." So it's notable that Republican Gov. John Kasich will give his 2012 address Feb. 7 not at the Statehouse, but at a high-performing public school in Steubenville -- a Democratic city hard by the Ohio River, and hard-hit by the economy. The constitution requires only that a governor "shall communicate at every session, by message, to the General Assembly, the condition of the state." Read More…

Massive budget cuts having massive effect

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Policy Matters Ohio have published a report titled "The state budget and Ohio’s schools: Big cuts, hard choices, local impact" based upon a survey of Ohio's school distrcits. Their findings are not a surprise to anyone following the state of education policy in Ohio. It provides more evidence governor's budget was no "jobs budget", but instead the most delivered the most draconian cuts to public education in the history of Ohio

The state budget, House Bill 153, will provide $1.8 billion less in funding for Ohio’s elementary andsecondary schools this school year and next, compared to the prior two years. Respondents to a 2011Policy Matters Ohio survey to Ohio’s school districts anticipate rough times ahead. However, theyare not going to the community for local resources: 73 percent did not plan to go to the polls through November 2012. Instead, survey respondents said they are cutting teachers and programs, boostingclass size, and requiring students to pay to participate in extracurricular activities. More than aquarter of respondents anticipate being in official fiscal distress in the coming year.

The effects can be see in 2 graphs

The graph above shows that two thirds of school districts in the survey will experience a budget shortfall, with 1 in 5 believing it to be at least 5% and upwards of 10%.

How districts are dealing with these shortfalls can be seen above. A lot of educators and support professionals are going to lose their jobs, with many positions not being filled, leading to larger class sizes, reductions in curriculum and diminuation of services.

As the legislature takes it time to ponder a school funding formula, it must, as a matter of great urgency consider additional fnding for Ohio's public schools if the state is to have any long term future. There are solutions.

The state budget and Ohio’s schools

Education News for 01-20-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • Parents, Schools Work Around Growing Food Allergies (ONN)

    • MARENGO - Doug Eckelbarger is a Social Studies teacher who has a daughter with a potential fatal peanut allergy. "It was pretty scary, hives from head down to the torso," said Eckelbarger. Eckelbarger's daughter has had close calls before which is why it is so important to monitor what she eats at home and school, ONN's Stephanie Mennecke reported. At Highland Local Schools, they do the best they can to watch 2,000 students. Food allergies and medical conditions for each student are kept electronically. Read More…

Local Issues

  • Westerville Schools Discuss Services That Could Return If Levy Is Passed (WBNS 10 CBS)

    • WESTERVILLE - The Westerville City School Board met Wednesday to discuss the possibility of reviving programs if its proposed levy passes. Superintendent Dr. J. Daniel Good, warned students and parents that while programs could come back they may not be the same as before, 10TV's Jason Frazer reported. The district is proposing a levy in March. Administrators said approval of that levy could bring back non-athletic after-school programs, gift intervention services and reading intervention teachers. Read More…

  • Monroe schools to cut 19 employees (Middletown Journal)

    • MONROE — Monroe Local Schools Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli said Thursday 19 positions will be eliminated next school year as a part of the district’s plan to cut $2.2 million from its budget. Among the cuts will be three art and three music teaching positions as a result of general music classes in grades K-6 being eliminated along with art classes in grades K-8. Those subjects will be taught by regular classroom teachers, Lolli said. Thirteen teachers, three classified staff and three administrators are expected to be eliminated. Read More…

  • School, Student Responded Right Way To Alleged Luring (WBNS 10 CBS)

    • CIRCLEVILLE - Sheriff's officials said on Thursday that both the Logan Elm Local School District and a boy who allegedly was approached by a stranger responded the right way in a difficult situation. Police said that John Guisinger, 62, approached a 12-year-old boy at a bus stop on Wednesday and attempted to lure the boy to his car. According to investigators, the boy ran and told his family. "He was very smart. Very smart kid. Took off running, got a hold of his mom and his grandma right away, and they called the proper authorizes," said Pickaway County sheriff's Detective John Strawser. Read More…

Editorial

  • Drawing the line: What happens at home is not school business (Post-Gazette)

    • It's one thing for Pink Floyd to sing: "Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!" It's another that the U.S. Supreme Court should implicitly endorse that sentiment by not agreeing to take two cases from Pennsylvania and one from West Virginia concerning free speech and school discipline. Juvenile parodies and criticism were at issue in the cases. One was about a then-Hickory High School senior in Mercer County suspended for creating a mocking Web profile of his principal. Another involved an eighth-grader suspended in the Blue Mountain School for producing a profanity-laced profile of her principal that suggested he was a pedophile. The West Virginia case was about a teen who disparaged a fellow student online. Read More…