Education News for 05-14-2012

Local Issues

• Cincinnati success studied by Toledo (Toledo Blade)

As Toledo Public Schools finds itself in the midst of a political battle over who should run the federally funded Head Start program, it also finds itself in uncharted waters. For years, Head Start, a program for 3 to 5-year-olds from low-income families, has been run locally by the Economic Opportunity Planning Association of Greater Toledo. Read More…

• What's behind Walnut Hills' No. 1 ranking? (Enquirer)

Walnut Hills High School and its graduates have won countless accolades and awards over the years. This week, the Evanston-based institution was ranked the top high school in Ohio by U.S. News & World Report magazine. It ranked No. 90 in the nation. What makes Walnut Hills distinctive? Read More…

• Xenia Board of Education expected to OK outsourcing (Dayton Daily News)

The Xenia Board of Education is tonight expected to approve agreements that would permanently outsource its transportation, custodial and maintenance and information technology services departments. “None of us ever thought this would be happening,” said Vickie Jones, Xenia bus driver and president of the Xenia Education Support Professionals union. “We were always told there would be (jobs in) public education.” Read More…

• Providence neighborhood center faces closing (Toledo Blade)

A South Toledo neighborhood center could have to close its doors in a matter of months, depriving an underserved community of essential services, its leaders fear. The Providence Center, formerly known as Aurora Gonzalez Community and Family Resource Center, faces the June 30 expiration of a two-year, $75,000 grant from United Way of Greater Toledo. Read More…

• Lisbon school officials pleased with sophomore mini-laptop program (Salem News)

School officials like what they have seen so far of a program begun last November to place a mini-laptop computer in the hands of every sophomore. Technology Director Steve Stewart reported at this week's school board meeting the response has been nothing but positive to the program, although it is still a learning process for the staff and administrators. Read More…

• Columbus schools may offer health care (Dispatch)

Columbus City Schools could open five school-based health clinics under a plan a consultant is to craft over the summer. The “wellness centers” would provide health services to students, district staff members and maybe the public, officials said. “The main focus is our students,” said Debbie Seastone, a school nurse who coordinates the district’s wellness initiative. “We know that healthy children make healthy learners.” Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Faulty warranty (Dispatch)

In a dispute with fellow Republicans over how to approach important public-school reforms, Gov. John Kasich is taking the more difficult, but wiser course: Changes shouldn’t be put off or watered down, even if they’re painful. Tops on the governor’s list is the so-called third-grade reading guarantee: a policy to closely watch the reading ability of children in kindergarten through third grade, give extra help to those struggling and to no longer promote to fourth grade children who can’t read at the third-grade level. Read More…

Education News for 05-10-2012

Statewide Education News

• Ohio Senate approves of changes to education reforms despite Gov. Kasich's objections (Plain Dealer)

The Ohio Senate on Wednesday approved a plan to hold back some third-graders not reading at grade level. But Gov. John Kasich, who originally proposed the concept, said the Senate’s version undermines his vision to improve education. Read More…

• Members of community gather to look at ways to prevent bullying (Chillicothe Gazette)

Educators, community members and presenters at a seminar on bullying Wednesday agreed the response to the problem shouldn't be a response at all, but rather a strategy of education and prevention. About 40 people attended the three-hour session at the Ross County Service Center, which was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's office in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education, the Ohio Department of Education, the Anti-Defamation League and several other governmental and non-governmental agencies. Read More…

• Senate passes education bill it revised (Dispatch)

Downplaying complaints by Gov. John Kasich that legislators had weakened his education package, the Senate yesterday overwhelmingly approved legislation establishing a new third-grade reading guarantee and tougher report-card grading system for schools and districts. “I don’t think we are that far apart from the governor’s legislation,” Senate President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, told reporters after the vote. “We share the same goal.” Read More…

• Senate rewrites reading proposal (Springfield News Sun)

Ohio’s General Assembly approved several bills Wednesday that aim to improve education, crack down on illegal prescription use and reform state gambling laws. The Senate passed a revised version of Gov. John Kasich’s education reform bill in a 30-2 vote, despite his vocal opposition to changes made to the “third-grade reading guarantee.” Read More…

Local Issues

• No questions please: Embattled director of local Autism school calls a press conference (Canton Repository)

The director of Dragonfly Academy claims local school districts owe her more than $500,000 in billed invoices and says disgruntled parents are harassing her through social media. Brianne Bixby-Nightingale held an invitation-only news conference Wednesday afternoon at the school, but refused to answer questions from The Repository, the only media to attend. Read More…

• College at high school (Marietta Times)

By the time the 23 seniors in Waterford High School teacher Deana Dye's sixth-period calculus class graduate, they will have three college math courses under their belts. "It's been tough, but you know it's going to be helpful, so that's why we did it," said Waterford senior Shane Kern. The year-long calculus class covers a trio of courses offered at Washington State Community College, where the students will also receive credit for their work. Read More…

• Monroe school district placed on fiscal emergency (Middletown Journal News)

The Auditor of State Dave Yost placed the Monroe Local School District on fiscal emergency Wednesday, a first for a Butler County school district. “We need to focus really on what is at hand,” Monroe Board of Education president Brett Guido said. “This does not need to define us. It doesn’t have to be a deciding factor as to what defines us as a district and a community. We’ll pull through.” Read More…

• Countdown: Central Ohio high schools at top of the class (Columbus Business First)

A recent ranking of more than 20,000 high schools around the country has given high marks to some in Central Ohio. The region is home to five of Ohio’s top 10 high schools, according to U.S. News & World Report. The company analyzed data on 21,776 high schools, including more than 860 in Ohio, to compile the ranking. Read More…

• Mother wants son to have chance to walk with class at Licking Valley graduation (Newark Advocate)

Susie Ryan knows her son, Cory Ryan, is two years away from fulfilling the requirements he needs to graduate from Licking Valley High School. But she doesn't want him to walk across the stage at graduation two years from now with students he doesn't know. Susie wants her son to have the opportunity to have a social graduation and walk across the stage with his friends at Licking Valley's commencement May 27. Read More…

• North Baltimore considers shared administrative duties (Findlay Courier)

North Baltimore school board is exploring the idea of having the district's superintendent handle some of the responsibilities of principal at Powell Elementary School on a regular basis. No decision has been reached, school officials said this week. Last March, elementary Principal Patty Landenberger informed the North Baltimore school board she was leaving her post after two years, citing personal reasons. Read More…

• State will get East Side church’s charter-school application again (Dispatch)

The Ohio Department of Education must reconsider a Columbus church’s application to sponsor charter schools but not before adopting a rule to help guide the decision, a Franklin County judge has ruled. Brookwood Presbyterian Church’s application was denied by the state agency in 2008, prompting the church to launch a legal battle. The department issued its denial after deciding that the church is not “an education-oriented entity.” Read More…

• Youngstown school officials: Moving students will help (Vindicator)

City school district officials hope that moving some students to different buildings next academic year will bolster student achievement. Last week, the schools academic distress commission approved plans by Superintendent Connie Hathorn to move ninth-graders from P. Ross Berry Academy on the city’s East Side to East High School. The district also plans to move second- through fifth-graders from University Project Learning Center to Kirkmere Elementary School. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Take time with school regulations (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

There are those who believe that children who attend school at ages 3 and 4 have an enormous head start over those who wait until kindergarten or first grade. That's why many states, including nearby West Virginia, established ''pre-K'' school programs. The National Institute for Early Education Research cites West Virginia's pre-K program as one of the nation's best. That's one of the reasons that on our side of the border, complaints are mounting that Ohio lags far behind in emphasis on pre-K education. Read More…

Tea partiers threaten public education

Not content with the Governor's $3 billion dollar state budget assault on public education, tea partiers, supported by the far right "1851 Center for Constitutional Law" - an offshoot of the right wing Buckeye Institute, are seeking to assault public education funding at the local level too.

Taxpayers for Westerville Schools, a group that opposed a 6.9-mill levy that voters approved in March, has begun collecting signatures to repeal an equal portion of an 11.4-mill levy approved in 2009.

The group is reaching back to that levy because state law bars the repeal of temporary tax issues, such as the five-year levy passed this year. The 2009 tax issue is permanent.

This is a move so radical and extreme that it has only ever been proposed once in the history of the state. If the "Center for Constitutional law" really cared about the Ohio constitution and public education it would be lobbying for a constitutional funding formula for our schools instead of trying to defund them. But rather than do that, they have published a document that contains the broad tactics groups can use to defund public education, a document that contains such information as

Warning: if you follow the advice in this guide, proponents of higher spending and taxation will assert, as always, that children will suffer unless new levies are enacted, while current revenue sources are maintained. However, if you’ve read this far, you and your neighbors (1) have likely already heard and dispelled this argument; (2) are aware that your local school district has a spending problem, not a revenue problem; and (3) simply want to keep more of what you have rightfully earned, and want to this seemingly endless cycle of tax hikes to stop.

Clearly they think every district has a spending problem, and every citizen is over taxed - regardless of whether voters in places like Westerville disagreed by passing a levy just months ago. Their roadmap even includes this nugget:

(6) Keep a low profile. Remember, only once every five years can an attempt be made to reduce any given levy. If your school district’s teachers union gets wind of your plans too early in the process, they may quickly gather signatures and place a .000001 mil reduction of the levy tax on the ballot before you are able to gather and submit signatures for your more significant reduction.

Wanting to operate in the shadows was evident yesterday when confronted over twitter

@jointhefutureOH @DispatchEteam @dougcaruso @cbinkley We are all WCSD residents concerned about our schools' future-NOT a tea party group.

We responded

@TFWS1 Really? All just a coincidence you're involved with the 1851 center? Same agenda as the tea party, same support. Same, same.

As did others

@TFWS1 @jointhefutureOH Sounds like the tenets of the Tea Party? Why fight the association to Tea Party? What's the difference?

At this point, this tea party group tried to make ridiculous claims about the 1851 Constitutional Law Center

@ascheurer @jointhefutureOH They're a non-proft, non-partisan legal ctr dedicatd to protctng the constitut rights of Ohioans from govt abuse

A quick survey of their agenda and their board of directors quickly dispels any notion this is a non-partisan group.

What is striking about this recent move by the tea party to attack public education is their unwillingness to embrace their agenda. Instead, as the 1851 center urges, they want to "keep a low profile". We're going to see to it that that doesn't happen.

Education News for 05-09-2012

Statewide Education News

• Kasich upset education plan altered (Dispatch)

Again at odds with fellow Republicans, Gov. John Kasich blasted Senate leaders yesterday for altering his third-grade reading guarantee, arguing the changes “weaken efforts to improve education for Ohio’s children.” Kasich said he was “troubled by moves under way in the Senate,” specifically efforts to delay for a year a requirement that third-graders pass the state reading test before moving up to the fourth grade, and dropping the cut score so that fewer students are affected. Read More…

• Biometric Scanner Use At Schools Prompt Parent Concerns (WBNS, Columbus)

Central Ohio schools’ use of new technology has prompted safety concerns for some parents, 10TV’s Tanisha Mallett reported Tuesday. Biometric scanners store information that can be accessed when a finger touches a scanner. Tina, a mother of a middle school student, said that she was concerned about privacy rights. Read More…

Local Issues

• Cleveland School Board Considers Selling Administrative HQ (Fox 8, Cleveland)

The Cleveland School Board considered a resolution Tuesday night to put the district’s administrative headquarters up for sale. The idea is part of a plan to consolidate six buildings used for administrative purposes into one building, possibly leasing space in a downtown building. Read More…

• Cleveland schools will bus more students next year while saving money (Plain Dealer)

Thousands more Cleveland schoolchildren will have bus rides to school in the fall under a new busing plan presented to the school board Tuesday night. Elementary school students would have to walk no more than a mile, instead of the 1.75-mile maximum now, under the plan. And high school students won't have to walk up to three miles to school anymore. Their walks would be cut to a mile and a half at most. Read More…

• School Cracks Down on Prom Dress Code (Fox 8, Cleveland)

With necklines plunging lower, and hemlines getting shorter, are dresses too sexy for prom?
No matter the answer to that question, sexy dresses will not make it through the dance doors at Jefferson High School come prom night. “Over the past years, there were a lot of comments about the dresses the students were wearing,” said Principal John Montenaro. Read More…

• Springfield teachers authorize call to strike (Toledo Blade)

Negotiations that have stretched for a year could spiral out of control between the Springfield Board of Education and its teachers' union, which has passed a strike authorization measure. Members of the Springfield Education Association unanimously voted Monday to allow negotiators to serve the school board with a 10-day strike notice. That notice could come as soon as Friday, union President Marty Perlaky said, if district negotiators don't give the union a counterproposal. Read More…

• Teen bullied to point of suicide, Mentor hosts seminar to combat bullying (WEWS, Cleveland)

Sen. Sherrod Brown hosted a seminar at Mentor Memorial Junior High School Tuesday night aimed at helping schools address bullying. The goal of the event was to teach administrators, staff, bus drivers and educators to recognize and report bullying and the harassment of students. The seminar focused on promoting healthy, safe and productive schools for students. Read More…

• Walnut Hills rated top Ohio high school (Enquirer)

Several local schools placed well in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 Best High Schools rankings, which came out Tuesday. Walnut Hills High School was ranked the top school in Ohio and the 90th best in the nation. Others in Ohio’s top 10 included Indian Hill (3) and Wyoming (4) high schools. They ranked 104 and 143 nationally. Read More…

• Teacher’s aide grabs student, is fired (Dispatch)

A teacher’s aide for special-needs students at Livingston Elementary School was fired last week because she grabbed a girl who was spitting at her face. The child had been spitting on aide Linda M. Finch for days before the March incident for which she lost her job, documents show. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Schools in crisis (Akron Beacon Journal)

Policy Matters Ohio released early this year findings from a survey of Ohio school finance officials showing “alarming levels of fiscal distress” in districts across the state. The Cleveland-based think tank found that roughly two-thirds of the respondents face budget shortfalls, and those projecting shortfalls above 5 percent had almost tripled since 2010. Hard-pressed rural, urban and suburban districts planned to manage the budget gaps by cutting staff, programs and extracurricular activities, freezing wages and reducing spending on benefits, supplies and equipment. Read More…

Voucher expansion pressure

There's some good news being reported today. It appears Columbus lawmakers have listened to the out-pouring of dissent at a number of the Governor's education policy proposals, and are considering changes and delays

Republican leaders in the Senate plan to slow down Gov. John Kasich’s initiatives for holding back third-graders who aren’t proficient in reading and for a tougher report-card rating system for schools and districts.

Under the Senate plan, new report cards would be issued by Sept. 1, 2013, for the 2012-13 school year, not this summer for the current school year. And the so-called reading guarantee would start in the 2013-14 school year, instead of this fall.
[...]
School district officials, teachers unions and state education groups have urged lawmakers to hold off on the plan so they can better inform parents and teachers of the coming changes.

Under the amendment, a new report-card rating system planned for this school year would be put off, and a task force would be established to provide recommendations to lawmakers by Oct. 1 about the new letter-grade rating system.

The new school rating proposal had come under specific attack, from many diverse groups, as it would have lowered the ratings on the majority of Ohio's schools. One of the unintended consequences of this would have been to expand the geographic eligibility of the state's private school voucher program

The EdChoice program could also see a significant change not only in the number of schools and students eligible for a voucher, but also where these schools are located under the newly proposed A-F system. Under the proposed A-F system more schools would be rated D and F, resulting in an increase in the number of eligible schools. Using performance data from 2010-11 the Ohio Department of Education ran a simulation to demonstrate how schools might fare under the new system (you can read more about the proposed A-F system here). Using that data 273 schools and approximately 105,000 students would now be eligible for the EdChoice program. A majority of eligible schools still remain in Big 8 districts but a couple of new districts such as Hamilton City and South Western City would now have eligible schools on the list under the new A-F system.

With the state's voucher program massively undersubscribed, expanding the geographic availability would be a boon to the profiteers and their advocates. Not something to be considered while there is a push for greater accountability for private schools that take tax payer funded vouchers.

Given the recent news of the Dragonfly Autism school suddenly shuttering its doors, there's never been a more urgent need for oversight and accountability of these types of schools

Dragonfly Academy, a local private school for autistic children, unexpectedly closed its doors Thursday morning amid allegations from parents that promised services were not being provided.

Parents were notified via text message from the school’s executive director, Brianne Bixby-Nightingale, at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday that the school would be closed Thursday and today for “restructuring,” several parents confirmed.

Dragonfly’s six-member board of directors apparently resigned last month.
[...]
Among the parents’ claims are that the school failed to provide required therapies and that it did not have enough qualified staff.

Gallaway confirmed Thursday that both of the school’s intervention specialists had quit.

Former Governor Ted Strickland recently blasted the expansion of Ohio's voucher program Strickland said Ohio's voucher program, which allows students in struggling districts to receive funding to attend private schools, is damaging the quality of Ohio public education.

"Vouchers simply is a way to enter into a private situation where the majority of our students are left behind and a few students may be able to benefit using public tax dollars and I think that's wrong and it's harmful to society," Strickland said.

It's good that lawmakers are now slowing down these corporate reforms and listening to stakeholders. We can only hope this proposed task force takes a long hard look at some of the unintended consequences of the Governor's ideas that might harm public education by increasing further the amount of unaccountable privatization.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

“As a policy wonk, I push for high academic expectations for all students,” writes Scott Joftus in Education Next. “As a father, however, I find that what matters most to me is that my daughters are happy in school.”

“Over more than 20 years in the field of education—including two with Teach For America—I have helped promote state standards, the Common Core, the hiring of teachers with strong content knowledge, longer class periods for math and reading, and extra support for struggling students, to name a few. I have recently discovered, however, that what I believe as an education policy wonk is not always what I believe as a father.”

Joftus’s wonk side believes “student learning flourishes in classrooms that include students with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds.” However, as a Dad, he admits to getting angry when a troubled kindergartener disrupts his daughter’s class and forces the “talented, but inexperienced” teacher to spend more than half of her time trying to keep this boy on task.

“I feel for children like him; my company works with schools and districts to improve outcomes for these kids. But I was angry. The other children were clearly uncomfortable. His disruptions reduced learning time for my daughter, and seemed to steal some of her innocence and excitement about school.”

Commenters on the Ed Next blog offer both praise and criticism for Joftus. “Teachers have been fighting policy wonks who have been destroying the happy learning environment for decades,” writes one. “But you don’t listen, it is only when it becomes personal that you reconsider your opinions and admit the possibility that teachers have been right all along.” “Had you guys listened twenty years ago, and respected our wisdom on safe and orderly schools, this educational civil war would not have had to happen,” observes veteran teacher and ed blogger John Thompson.

Rocketship schools CEO John Danner admits to similar cognitive dissonance when sending his kids to school. “However, I would challenge you as your kids grow to think more about how those skills jibe with rigor,” he writes. “Rigor is actually a form of compassion. A teacher who expects a lot of their students prevents them from feeling the frustration your children feel now, but much later in their school career. The real problem you are seeing is that your child’s teacher has high expectations but doesn’t understand how to differentiate.

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