Education News for 03-01-2012

Statewide Education News

• ODE Files Waiver From No Child Left Behind Act – NBC-4, Columbus

The goal of the “No Child Left Behind Law” was to have 100 percent of all students proficient in math and reading at every grade level by 2014. But is it working in Ohio? Ohio is now joining 25 other states filing a waiver with the U.S. Department of Education saying the standards need to be updated. The states are also asking to be allowed to develop their own standards. View and Read here…

• State wants to drop parts of No Child Left Behind Act - Lorain Morning Journal

The state has is requesting a waiver to key portions of the No Child Left Behind Act that it said would give school districts more realistic goals. On Wednesday, the Ohio Department of Education stated it sent an application to the U.S. Department of Education asking for a waiver of key portions pertaining of the law, according to state Superintendent Stan Heffner. Read More…

National Stories of the Day

• 26 States Plus D.C. Apply for NCLB Waivers in Second Round – Education Week

Twenty six more states, plus the District of Columbia, are applying for waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, which would free them from many of the core tenets of the law in exchange for adopting key reforms backed by the Obama administration. Already, 11 states have won this new flexibility. Read More…

Local Issues

• Teachers, Staff Return To Chardon High School – Ohio News Network

Wednesday marked the first day back for teachers and grief counselors at Chardon High School. One staff member said it would be hard to be in the building with books and papers still on the floor from the shootings on Monday, reported ONN's Cristin Severance. Read More…

• Firm to highlight district – The Vindicator

The Austintown School District is rolling out a plan to retain current students and bring back ones who have left for open enrollment or charter schools. The district hired The Wixey Network, a marketing firm based in Toledo, to bring district highlights and accomplishments to the forefront, Superintendent Vince Colaluca said Wednesday during a luncheon with local media representatives. Read More…

• School District to Send Parents to Collection Agencies – ABC 6, Columbus

Columbus City School District parents who rack up debt on their children's school lunch accounts could be getting a call from debt collectors. The district says any parent more than $50 in debt will be reported to a collections agency. Read More…

• More school threats in wake of Chardon High School shooting – WKYC, Cleveland

Schools across Northeast Ohio are reporting threat incidents involving students in the wake of the Chardon High School shooting. In North Royalton, a 9th grader has been removed from the high school after a girl overheard the boy making threats and talking of possessing weapons. Counselors at the school called police who secured the building and removed the boy from the grounds. A search of the school turned up nothing. Police continue to talk to the boy. Read More…

• City schools get some good news for future building plans – Chillicothe Gazette

After climbing more than 100 spots on the Ohio School Facilities Commission's equity list in the past nine years -- and with favorable legislative changes possibly on the horizon -- the Chillicothe City Schools could receive school construction funding sooner than expected. Read More…

• School shooting suspects usually fit profile – New Philadelphia Times Reporter

Students who have gone on shooting rampages at schools and universities in the past have often displayed similar behaviors, area mental health professionals say. Those behaviors can include an inability to fit in with others, a preoccupation with violence or weapons and a change in their normal behavior — becoming more aggressive or more withdrawn. Read More…

• Panel: Government savings are in shared services

Local officials were warned Wednesday not to expect Ohio to rapidly restore funding taken away after the state budget crunch. More than 50 city leaders, township trustees and county officials met at Longview Center for a session on coping with the loss of state revenue. The panel discussion was sponsored by the Richland Community Development Group. Read More…

• TPS, agency square off in bid to run Head Start – Toledo Blade

A night's sleep didn't seem to cool tempers a day after the growing dispute over who should run Toledo's Head Start program took a public, confrontational turn. The Toledo Board of Education voted 5-0 Tuesday to authorize Superintendent Jerome Pecko to apply for the $13 million grant to run Head Start, a move that dozens of supporters of the grant holder, the Economic Opportunity Planning Association of Greater Toledo, protested. The planning association 's supporters criticized what they consider an attempt to dismantle one of the few remaining black institutions left in Toledo. Read More…

• Walsh aims to raise city IQ – Canton Repository

Walsh University will be the first international Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) Institute in the area of education. The announcement was made at Wednesday’s 46th annual Business and Communications Club luncheon in the Barrette Center. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Free the Cleveland schools from weight of bureaucracy: Plain Dealer

So, it's not just theoretical. There really does come a time when an organization gets so thoroughly mired in rules and bureaucracy that it can no longer do the things it was established to do. There really does come a point at which the mission shifts so profoundly that the original purpose of the organization is lost entirely. Read More…

• New approach – Columbus Dispatch

Congress’ failure to fix fundamental flaws in the No Child Left Behind law leaves states little choice but to seek relief from its unrealistic demands, but those states should not weaken the accountability requirements that are at its core. Ohio has joined the parade of states seeking waivers from the 2002 law, which has been up for renewal since 2007 but has remained unchanged. Add to Congress’ many failures its inability to agree on how to improve this far-reaching law. The U.S. Department of Education so far has granted waivers to 11 states; 37, including Ohio, have applied. Read More…

• Chardon shooting – Columbus Dispatch

Parents in Chardon saw their teenagers off to school on Monday morning, believing it was a typical start to a typical week. How heartbreaking that several of those youngsters never came home. The Dispatch sends condolences to the victims’ families and to the entire community. Read More…

Union members spotlight - day 3

This is day three of our spotlight on union members who have decided to run for the Ohio general assembly. Candidates spotlighted on day one, can be found here, and day 2, here.

It should be noted that the districts listed below are new as a consequence of the legislative redistricting process that happened last year.

House district 61 - Susan McGuinness (D)

Susan McGuinness is a member of the Ohio Nurses Association (ONA). A Registered Nurse and Chair of the Lake Health Board of Directors, she has said, “Lake County deserves a vigorous voice in Columbus. A voice that, like the people of the county itself, doesn’t address issues from only a political perspective. We need a voice that speaks for the people, not just the party in power. I will be that voice.”

McGuinness added, “We have had our fill of out of touch career politicians who don’t answer to their constituents. I will build on our great assets and work to improve economic, educational, and health opportunities for every citizen of Lake County. I will make sure our government works for us, not against us.”

She is unopposed in the primary and will face Rep. Ron Young who was one of those voices against middle class people when he cast his vote for SB5 and HB153.

House district 68 - Brad Schaff (D)

Brad is a member of the United Steel Workers (USW). If he is successful in the primary he is likely to face Rep. Margaret Ruhl who herself is facing a primary contest. Rep Ruhl voted for SB5 and the budget bill (HB153). You can learn more about Brad Schaff, here.

House district 69 - Judith Cross (D)

Judith Cross is a member of OEA (Ret.) and former Common Pleas Judge. Judy taught elementary school in Brunswick for 12 years. During that 12 year period Judy became involved in the Brunswick Education Association and helped to secure collective bargaining rights for public employees.She will challenge Republican Batchelder, who is speaker of the House. Both are running unopposed in the March 6 primary.
Learn more about Judith Cross, here.

House district 71 - Brady Jones (D)

Jones has been a pipefitter for 17 years and a member of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local Union 189. “I’m tired of seeing the middle class get beat up,” he has said, "someone needs to be in office who will represent the core values of the people who elected them."

He is unopposed in the primary and will face incumbent Jay Hottinger, a career politician who supported SB5 and the budget bill that slashed school finances.

House district 73 - Eric Spicer (R)

Eric is a member of the FOP, and running in the Republican primary to replace disgraced Rep. Jarrod Martin. In addition to volunteering as a firefighter and medic, Eric Spicer has served as a police officer for over 21 years. He currently serves as Captain of the Greene County Sheriff’s Criminal Investigative Services Unit.
Eric is endorsed by Sheriff Gene Fischer and Treasurer Dick Gould, Sheriff Richard K. Jones – Butler County, Sheriff Brent Emmons – Champaign County, Melissa Litteral – Beavercreek City Councilwoman, Dona Seger-Lawson – Bellbrook City Councilwoman, James Hapner – Fairborn City Councilman, Robert Wood – Fairborn City Councilman, Ralph Fussner – Retired Bellbrook City Council, Phil Oakley – Fairborn Ambassador, Jay McDonald – State FOP President, Chuck Canterbury – National FOP President, Mark Sanders – Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters.

His opponent, Rep.Martin, along with his voting for SB5 and HB153 has been dubbed "America's drunkest legislator".

You can learn more about Eric Spicer, here.

Tomorrow we will spotlight 4 more union members who are running for the Ohio general assembly.

Education News for 02-29-2012

Statewide Education News

• Ohio Gov. John Kasich encourages thousands at Chardon vigil to comfort, support grieving families (Plain Dealer)

CHARDON - A crowd of thousands, swathed in Chardon red, holding candles and hugging, gathered in and around St. Mary Catholic Church on Tuesday night, near where five high school students had been shot a day earlier. Three have died, including Demetrius Hewlin, 16, and Russell King Jr., 17, whose deaths were announced Tuesday. Daniel Parmertor, 16, died Monday. He will be buried after a funeral Mass at the church Saturday. One woman held a wood-framed picture of him. Read More…

• Chardon High School shooting, Vigil draws thousands (WKYC 3 NBC)

CHARDON - Community prayer vigils are being held in the aftermath of the Chardon High School shootings. On Monday night, more than half a dozen vigils were held at churches in Chardon and surrounding communities. Those somber observances included a candle light gathering on the Chardon Square. Students and community members came together to remember the five victims. On Tuesday night, thousands of people attended a memorial and vigil at St. Mary's in Chardon. Gov. John Kasich was among those attending. Read More…

• Ohio school shooting, Drills, cell phone use paid off (Plain Dealer)

Nobody expected Monday's school shooting in Chardon. You wouldn't expect one in communities like Bay Village, Avon Lake or Orange either. But all of them plan for it. Over the past two decades and increasingly since the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado, school districts and law enforcement authorities have worked together on strategies to respond to violence in schools. Read More…

• Recent U.S. Secret Service study looks at trends in school attacks (News-Herald)

When there is an incident that involves the loss of life at a school, people tend to ask why did it happen. A recent study by the U.S. Secret Service looked into 37 incidents involving 41 school attacks that occurred between 1974 and 2000. The review was conducted to identify and to highlight information that in some cases may have been known or knowable prior to school-based attacks and to aid in the prevention of future attacks. Read More…

• Chardon High School shooting witness describes scene inside of cafeteria (WEWS 5 ABC)

CHARDON - Jason Suhadolnik still can't believe there was a shooting inside of his school. He is a first-year student at Chardon High School and was inside of the cafeteria when gunfire erupted. Suhadolnik was sitting at a lunchroom table with a few friends about 10 feet from the shooter when he opened fire. Suhadolnik said he doesn't know the alleged gunman, TJ Lane. He said at first the gunfire sounded more like a toy gun. Read More…

• Latest school tragedy mimics others in its senselessness (Vindicator)

It happened again. And again the expressions of condolences are mixed with expressions of disbelief that one high school student could open fire on others, taking their lives. This time, it’s relatively close to home, in Chardon in Geauga County, a community not unlike many other Northeastern Ohio suburban communities. Many Vindicator readers would have visited its town square for the annual maple syrup festival at the end of April. Which makes the harsh reality even more difficult to grasp. Read More…

• House of Representatives has moment of silence for Chardon shooting victims (Plain Dealer)

The U.S. House of Representatives held a moment of silence on Tuesday to honor the victims of yesterday's shootings at Chardon High School. The gesture was a request from Bainbridge Township Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette, whose district includes Chardon. It occurred at around 3:45 P.M. in the midst of a series of votes. "I would indicate that, in these tragedies there are also items of heroism," LaTourette said on the House of Representatives floor. Read More…

Local Issues

• Youngstown School-board president seeks help with determining cuts (Vindicator)

Youngstown - The city school-board president says everything must be considered in the decision of where to make cuts and he’s asking the community for help to make those determinations. “Something has to be done with our finances,” said Lock P. Beachum Sr., school board president, during a school board meeting Tuesday. “Where are we going to save the money?” The district learned this month that because of a loss of more than 500 students as determined by the state’s official October enrollment count, it would receive about $4 million less. Read More…

• TPS aims to run Head Start (Blade)

The dispute over who should control Toledo's Head Start program escalated Tuesday night at the Toledo Board of Education meeting. Dozens of supporters of the Economic Opportunity Planning Association of Greater Toledo and members of the union that represents Toledo Head Start employees attended the meeting to show opposition to a possible competing application by TPS for the $13 million grant to run Head Start. Read More…

• McDonald schools Panel disbands as district is released from fiscal emergency (Vindicator)

McDONALD - The state Finance and Planning Commission for McDonald schools disbanded Wednesday, after the district was informed by the state auditor’s office that it was released from fiscal emergency. The commission requested the release in November 2011, after the local school board made the same request in September. “Coming back after fiscal emergency is an uphill battle for any entity, and each community must make the difficult choices that work best for them,” state Auditor Dave Yost said. Read More…

• Licking Heights switches ESCs (Dispatch)

The Licking Heights Board of Education voted 5-0 last night to sever its ties to the Licking County Educational Service Center, which provides services, such as special-education programs, curriculum support and teacher training, to several school districts. The move takes advantage of a new state law that gave districts until March 1 to decide whether to switch Educational Service Centers or wait another year. Read More…

• Liberty BOE votes to reinstate open enrollment in district (Vindicator)

Liberty - The Liberty school board voted unanimously to reinstate open enrollment, leaving to a future meeting approving the exact number of students it would allow under the program. Superintendent Stan Watson told the board there are likely slots for 10 open- enrollment students per grade but would return to the board with a solid figure in the future. The district would not be responsible for transporting the out-of-district students. Read More…

• Strongsville Student Arrested for Threats Made to School, Students (WJW 8 FOX)

A Strongsville High School student was arrested on Tuesday morning for allegedly making a threat to the school and its students. According to an official with the Strongsville Police Department, the juvenile was arrested for inducing panic. The official tells Fox 8 News that the student was using social media to alarm other students that there would soon to be an act of violence committed at the school. Read More…

• Other schools report threats in wake of Chardon shootings (Beacon Journal)

Several Akron-Canton school districts reported threatening messages Tuesday and one district confronted a student after he posed on Facebook with a rifle and made comments that officials perceived as menacing in the wake of the Chardon killings. Green High School evacuated classrooms shortly after 11 a.m. Tuesday and excused students from afternoon classes after a student found a bomb threat scribbled on a restroom wall. Summit County sheriff’s spokesman Bill Holland said the message read: “There’s a bomb in the building.” Read More…

• Portage County student charged with inducing panic following postings on Facebook (Plain Dealer)

MANTUA - A day after the shootings at Chardon High School, Portage County sheriff deputies arrested a 17-year-old Crestwood High School student who school administrators felt was a threat to other students. On Monday, the boy wrote on his Facebook page, "Who agrees with their friend that it is a good idea to shoot up a school?" He also had posted a picture of himself holding an assault rifle. School officials told the sheriff's office that on Feb. 22, the teen posted on Facebook, "I'm close to going on a stabbing spree. I can't take some of these people anymore." Read More…

Editorial

• 3 young lives lost, countless others forever changed in Chardon High School shootings (Plain Dealer)

For just a few moments early Monday morning, gunshots rang out in the cafeteria of Chardon High School. Those shots were the last sounds Daniel Parmertor, 16; Russell King Jr., 17; and Demetrius Hewlin, 16, would ever hear. But for those who remain, the echoes are unlikely ever to fully fade. People who loved them are trying to cope with something they probably had never dreamed of: the life of a child, a grandchild, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, a friend, wasted suddenly, needlessly, senselessly. Read More…

• Reasonable step (Dispatch)

Dunning parents for unpaid lunch money isn’t likely what Columbus City Schools administrators had in mind when they went into education. But with nearly $1 million owed, it’s a problem that shouldn’t be ignored any longer, and the district is taking a reasonable approach to collecting: focusing on the biggest debtors, while not denying lunch to any child. Read More…

• Cleveland teachers should be on the same reform team (Plain Dealer)

We in the Cleveland Teachers Union agree with Mayor Frank Jackson that every child in our city should attend an excellent school and every neighborhood should offer our families a multitude of great schools from which to choose. No fair-minded person can dispute the notion that our union has always been willing to work with others to achieve those goals. Read More…

U.S. School Shootings data, 1979-2011

Via Jessie Klein, The Bully Society: school shootings and the crisis of bullying in America’s schools, this graph deserves attention

The report details all the incidents, and provides some insight into motives and demographics.

Data on School Shootings

The NEA has a very useful crisis guide, which can be found here, detailing steps that can be taken before, during and after a crisis.

Union members spotlight - day 2

This is day two of our spotlight on union members who have decided to run for the Ohio general assembly. Candidates spotlighted on day one, can be found here.

It should be noted that the districts listed below are new as a consequence of the legislative redistricting process that happened last year.

House district 37 - Tom Schmida (D)

Tom is a member of OFT and has been President of Cleveland Heights Teachers Union for 20 years. Tom started his teaching career at Wiley Junior High School in 1972. He taught social studies there until 2005, when he became a social studies teacher at Cleveland Heights High School. He will be facing an incumbent Rep of former district 42, Kristina Roegner in November. Rep. Roegner voted against the middle class when she cast he vote for SB5 and HB153.

House district 45 - Teresa Fedor (D)

Rep. Teresa Fedor currently represents district 47. A member of OFT, she attended the University of Toledo, received a Bachelor of Science in Education and spent 18 years as a classroom teacher. She has no opponent in the primary of the general election. You can read more about Rep. Fedor, here.

House district 47 - Jeff Bunck (D)

Jeff is a member of OEA. Jeff is a retired high school government teacher and said the Republican attempt to thwart collective bargaining sparked his decision to run for a seat in the Ohio House against a GOP incumbent in suburban Toledo. The debate will still be fresh in the minds of voters next year, he said.

"It will level the playing field a whole lot even in gerrymandered districts like the one I'm running in," said Bunck, who's 59 and never run for office before.

With no opponent in the primary will be facing incumbent Rep. Barbara Sears who was a vote in favor of SB5 and HB153.

House district 57 - Matt Lark (D)

Matt Lark is now running unopposed in the primary and will face incumbent Rep. Terry Boose who voted for SB5 and HB153, and against the middle class. Matt is a member of OEA, and has spent the last twenty years working as a high school science teacher in Ohio. The first six years of his career were with the Toledo Public School system while the last fourteen years he has worked at Norwalk High School. Matt is currently the President of the Norwalk Teachers Association. You can learn more about Matt LArk, here.

House district 58 - Bobby Hagan (D)

Rep. Hagan was first elected to District 60 in 2006, but is running for re-election in District 58 in 2012. He is a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. He is unopposed in the primary and general election, as incumbent Terry Boose has decided to run for reelection in district 57.

Tomorrow we will highlight 5 more union members who are running for the Ohio general assembly.

Shame, errors and demoralizing

Shame, errors and demoralizing, just some of the emerging rhetoric being used since the NYT and other publications went ahead and published teacher level value add scores. A great number of articles have been written decrying the move.

Perhaps most surprising of all was Bill Gates, in a piece titled "Shame Is Not the Solution". In it, Gates argues

Value-added ratings are one important piece of a complete personnel system. But student test scores alone aren’t a sensitive enough measure to gauge effective teaching, nor are they diagnostic enough to identify areas of improvement. Teaching is multifaceted, complex work. A reliable evaluation system must incorporate other measures of effectiveness, like students’ feedback about their teachers and classroom observations by highly trained peer evaluators and principals.

Putting sophisticated personnel systems in place is going to take a serious commitment. Those who believe we can do it on the cheap — by doing things like making individual teachers’ performance reports public — are underestimating the level of resources needed to spur real improvement.
[...]
Developing a systematic way to help teachers get better is the most powerful idea in education today. The surest way to weaken it is to twist it into a capricious exercise in public shaming. Let’s focus on creating a personnel system that truly helps teachers improve.

Following that, Matthew Di Carlo at the Shanker institute took a deeper look at the data and the error margins inherent in using it

First, let’s quickly summarize the imprecision associated with the NYC value-added scores, using the raw datasets from the city. It has been heavily reported that the average confidence interval for these estimates – the range within which we can be confident the “true estimate” falls – is 35 percentile points in math and 53 in English Language Arts (ELA). But this oversimplifies the situation somewhat, as the overall average masks quite a bit of variation by data availability.
[...]
This can be illustrated by taking a look at the categories that the city (and the Journal) uses to label teachers (or, in the case of the Times, schools).

Here’s how teachers are rated: low (0-4th percentile); below average (5-24); average (25-74); above average (75-94); and high (95-99).

To understand the rocky relationship between value-added margins of error and these categories, first take a look at the Times’ “sample graph” below.

That level of error in each measurement renders the teacher grades virtually useless. But that was just the start of the problems, as David Cohen notes in a piece titled "Big Apple’s Rotten Ratings".

So far, I think the best image from the whole fiasco comes from math teacher Gary Rubinstein, who ran the numbers himself, a bunch of different ways. The first analysis works on the premise that a teacher should not become dramatically better or worse in one year. He compared the data for 13,000 teachers over two consecutive years and found this – a virtually random distribution:

First of all, as I’ve repeated every chance I get, the three leading professional organizations for educational research and measurement (AERA, NCME, APA) agree that you cannot draw valid inferences about teaching from a test that was designed and validated to measure learning; they are not the same thing. No one using value-added measurement EVER has an answer for that.

Then, I thought of a set of objections that had already been articulated on DiCarlo’s blog by a commenter. Harris Zwerling called for answers to the following questions if we’re to believe in value-added ratings:

1. Does the VAM used to calculate the results plausibly meet its required assumptions? Did the contractor test this? (See Harris, Sass, and Semykina, “Value-Added Models and the Measurement of Teacher Productivity” Calder Working Paper No. 54.)
2. Was the VAM properly specified? (e.g., Did the VAM control for summer learning, tutoring, test for various interactions, e.g., between class size and behavioral disabilities?)
3. What specification tests were performed? How did they affect the categorization of teachers as effective or ineffective?
4. How was missing data handled?
5. How did the contractors handle team teaching or other forms of joint teaching for the purposes of attributing the test score results?
6. Did they use appropriate statistical methods to analyze the test scores? (For example, did the VAM provider use regression techniques if the math and reading tests were not plausibly scored at an interval level?)
7. When referring back to the original tests, particularly ELA, does the range of teacher effects detected cover an educationally meaningful range of test performance?
8. To what degree would the test results differ if different outcome tests were used?
9. Did the VAM provider test for sorting bias?

Today, education historian Diane Ravitch published a piece titled "How to Demoralize Teachers", which draws all these problems together to highlight how counter productive the effort is becoming

Gates raises an important question: What is the point of evaluations? Shaming employees or helping them improve? In New York City, as in Los Angeles in 2010, it's hard to imagine that the publication of the ratings—with all their inaccuracies and errors—will result in anything other than embarrassing and humiliating teachers. No one will be a better teacher because of these actions. Some will leave this disrespected profession—which is daily losing the trappings of professionalism, the autonomy requisite to be considered a profession. Some will think twice about becoming a teacher. And children will lose the good teachers, the confident teachers, the energetic and creative teachers, they need.
[...]
Interesting that teaching is the only profession where job ratings, no matter how inaccurate, are published in the news media. Will we soon see similar evaluations of police officers and firefighters, legislators and reporters? Interesting, too, that no other nation does this to its teachers. Of course, when teachers are graded on a curve, 50 percent will be in the bottom half, and 25 percent in the bottom quartile.

Is this just another ploy to undermine public confidence in public education?

It's hard to conclude that for some, that might very well be the goal.