Education News for 01-16-2013

State Education News

• Ohio adopts student restraint, seclusion policy (Canton Repository)

The Ohio Board of Education has approved a policy on how educators seclude and physically restrain students in schools…Read more...

• Allison named Canton City Schools superintendent; gets 5-year contract (Canton Repository)

Nearly 64 years after his grandfather became the first black employee hired in the district, as a janitor, Adrian Allison becomes its first black superintendent…Read more...

• Key district official in data-rigging case retires (Columbus Dispatch)

In a flurry of developments yesterday, a key figure in the investigation of Columbus City Schools’ data-rigging retired; the Board of Education gave a cool reception to Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s request to critique district business operations…Read more...

• Schools’ use of seclusion now limited (Columbus Dispatch)

State Board of Education members say their seclusion and restraint policy isn’t perfect, but they’re proud to have done something to protect Ohio’s children…Read more...

• Gov. Kasich says his comprehensive school plan will be delivered shortly (NPR)

Gov. Kasich has signed a bill into law that grades schools on an A through F grading scale. But as Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports, that’s a part of a bigger education plan that the Governor intends to release soon…Read more...

• OPATA offering free training for educators (Portsmouth Daily Times)

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says more training opportunities for Ohio’s educators have now been scheduled…Read more...

• State says former treasurer must repay school (Youngstown Vindicator)

A state audit has revealed excess payments to the retirement fund of the school district’s former treasurer…Read more...

Local Education News

• North Canton takes proactive security steps in schools (Canton Repository)

After the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Police Chief Stephan Wilder feared a copycat gunman could strike here…Read more...

• Looking at the bottom line, Heath schools open doors (Columbus Dispatch)

Less than 24 hours after the board agreed to allow open enrollment at Heath City Schools, a parent sat in the district parking lot filling out applications…Read more...

• After-school shooting sends boy to youth prison (Columbus Dispatch)

A 15-year-old boy who fired a gun outside an East Side elementary school, grazing the head of a 17-year-old girl, was committed to the Ohio Department of Youth Services yesterday…Read more...

• City schools board enters agreement for energy savings (Mansfield News Journal)

Mansfield City Schools could save “tens of thousands of dollars” in energy expenses through a new program, Superintendent Dan Freund said…Read more...

• County delays decision on school funding (Springfield News-Sun)

Clark County commissioners delayed a decision about contributing $100,000 to the Global Impact STEM Academy due in part to uncertainty about the project…Read more...

• Schools to cash in (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

Area schools are cashing out. Local school districts soon will receive the first payment of casino-tax revenue, with some districts set to take in more than $110,000…Read more...

• Columbus City Schools Hopes To Have New Superintendent In 6 Months (WBNS)

The Columbus School Board is meeting Tuesday night with the firm that has been hired to lay out the process for searching and hiring a new superintendent. The goal is to have someone hired in six months…Read more...

• Ohio school workers to carry guns have police training (WEWS)

Two of the four employees who have agreed to carry guns at a rural Ohio school apparently have law enforcement backgrounds…Read more...

• Superintendent, board respond to concerns about enrollment at Austintown (Youngstown Vindicator)

Open enrollment was the hot-button topic at the Austintown school board meeting…Read more...

Editorial

• Aiming to excel (Akron Beacon Journal)

As a national monitor for effective and high quality education, Education Week’s annual Quality Counts surveys are a valuable resource in comparative data…Read more...

Poll: Educators Support Stronger Laws to Prevent Gun Violence

Results of a new poll by the National Education Association (NEA) show educators support stronger gun laws to prevent gun violence and keep children safe. The poll comes as the White House is scheduled today to make public the recommendations of a task force led by Vice President Biden. The poll of the nation’s teachers, faculty and education support professionals comes one month after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that claimed the lives of 20 children and 6 adults, including educators. NEA polled 800 of its members nationwide during the period of January 9-10, 2013.

“The senseless tragedy in Newtown was a tipping point and galvanization for action,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “As educators, we have grieved too long and too often—for the children killed, their families and heroic educators. Now more than ever we need to do what is necessary, including enacting stronger laws to prevent gun violence, to make sure every child in our nation’s public schools has a safe and secure learning environment.”

Key Findings:

• Educators overwhelmingly support stronger laws to prevent gun violence. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of NEA members polled feel gun laws in the U.S. should be made stricter, compared to 7 percent who believe they should be less strict.
• NEA members polled support background checks and bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazine clips.
• 90 percent of NEA members favor a proposal to require background checks before people can buy guns at gun shows or from other private sellers, including 85 percent who strongly back this proposal.
• 76 percent of NEA members support a proposal to ban the sale and possession of military-style semi-automatic assault weapons to everyone except the police and military, including 70 percent who strongly favor this proposal.
• 69 percent of NEA members back a proposal to ban the sale and possession of high capacity magazine clips, which allow some guns to shoot more than 10 bullets before they need to be reloaded, including 64 percent who strongly support this proposal.
• America’s educators resoundingly reject the notion of arming school employees. Only 22 percent of NEA members polled favor a proposal to allow teachers and other school employees to receive firearms training and allow them to carry firearms in schools, while 68 percent oppose this proposal (including 61 percent who strongly oppose it.)

Education News for 01-15-2013

State Education News

• Law allows principals to skip being teachers (Cincinnati Enquirer)

When Gilbert A. Dater High School teacher Terri Wessel heard the school’s new assistant principal didn’t have a traditional license, she was nervous…Read more...

• Teachers’ pay might be linked to quality, Kasich says (Columbus Dispatch)

Schools could tie teachers’ pay incentives to their performance as part of Gov. John Kasich’s yet-to-be-unveiled funding formula, the Republican governor said yesterday…Read more...

• Leader is re-elected by state education board (Columbus Dispatch)

A united State Board of Education unanimously re-elected Cincinnati Republican Debe Terhar to a second two-year term as president yesterday…Read more...

• STEM internship program wins state funding (Columbus Dispatch)

The state Controlling Board approved $11 million yesterday for a cooperative internship program designed to help make Ohio a leader in educating students in the high-demand fields of science, technology…Read more...

• Painesville City Schools seeks grant funds to improve literacy, team up with Fairport Harbor (Willoughby News Herald)

Painesville City Local Schools will look to partner with a neighboring district in the future to improve student reading skills…Read more...

Local Education News

• Chillicothe school board faces cuts regardless of levy approval (Chillicothe Gazette)

A number of significant changes, including the closure of Tiffin Elementary School, are on the table as Chillicothe City School officials look to cut $1 million from the district’s budget…Read more...

• Ross County sheriff suggests deputy presence in schools (Chillicothe Gazette)

As schools across the nation continue to look for ways to boost their security, Ross County Sheriff George Lavender has proposed having deputies make daily appearances at all of the county schools…Read more...

• CPS board puts open border policy on hold (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Cincinnati Public Schools on Monday delayed a vote on a policy that would for the first time allow it to open its borders to out-of-district students…Read more...

• Berea, Midpark wrestlers grappling successfully with schools' imminent merger (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Imagine the carnage if St. Edward and St. Ignatius held a joint hockey practice, or if Massillon and McKinley tried to do anything together, even a clambake…Read more...

• Phila schools seek $4 million levy to help boost security (New Philadelphia Times)

The New Philadelphia Board of Education has taken the final step to place on the May primary ballot a 9.6-mill, five-year emergency operating levy, which would pay for…Read more...

• Columbus City Schools Book Purchases Come Under Fire For Alleged Conflict Of Interest (WBNS)

At Marion Franklin High School, questions are not coming from school books but instead are about school books…Read more...

• Teachers institute ‘work to rule’ plan (Youngstown Vindicator)

School officials are responding with a little surprise and a little understanding to Austintown teachers’ new efforts to have their grievances heard…Read more...

• Poland schools beef up security (Youngstown Vindicator)

The board of education agreed Monday to allow a Poland Township police officer in all school buildings and to spend up to $80,000 in security upgrades district-wide…Read more...

Editorial

• Preventable tragedy (Columbus Dispatch)

Parents who are undecided about getting their children vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, might look at the statistics and heed the experience of a surgeon…Read more...

How charter operators evade Ohio’s automatic closure law

Policy Matters Ohio issued a report on the failure of Ohio's Charter school accountability laws. The full report can be found at this link. Here's their executive summary.

Ohio law requiring the automatic closure of charter schools that consistently fail to meet academic standards has been showcased by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers in its “One Million Lives” campaign, which calls for tougher state laws to close failing charter schools. Key findings

• Ohio law requires automatic closure of academically failing charter schools.
• Loopholes in the closure law allow sponsors and charter management organizations (CMOs) to keep failing schools open despite orders to close.
• Seven of 20 closed schools are still operating, with five run by the same CMOs that first opened them.
• An eighth school avoided mandated closure by shutting down a year early, but reopened with much of the same staff.

The widespread attention given the NACSA campaign has pushed Ohio’s closure law into the spotlight as a model of accountability. Unfortunately, loopholes weaken Ohio law. Since the charter-closure law went into effect in 2008, 20 schools across the state have met closure criteria, and all are currently listed as closed by the Ohio Department of Education.

But Policy Matters Ohio has documented that of those 20 schools, seven have essentially remained intact, effectively skirting the automatic-closure law. In some cases, charter management organizations (CMOs) have expanded the charters of other schools to incorporate grade levels served by closed schools. In other cases, CMOs replaced schools facing automatic closure with nearly identical schools, managed by the same company with much of the same staff. An eighth school, Hope Academy Canton, was ordered closed by its sponsor a year before it would have been shut down by the state. Our investigation showed that by closing early and opening a new school in the same location with much of the same staff, Hope Academy’s for-profit operator, White Hat Management, bought five additional years of life – and revenue – for a low performing school. In more than half the cases we examined, the new schools’ academic performance remained the same as that of the old schools; five of the eight schools are still ranked in Academic Watch or Emergency, while their management companies and sponsors continue to take in millions of dollars in public funding. For-profit management companies – the Leona Group, White Hat, and Mosaica Education – run six of the schools, the non-profit Summit Academies runs one, and the last is independently operated. The table on the next page provides an overview of these schools.

Automatic closure Ohio’s charter-closure law, which became effective in 2008 and was revised in 2011, calls for automatic closure of schools rated in Academic Emergency for at least two of the three most recent school years. To be subject to the law, charters serving grades four through eight also must show less than one year of academic growth in either reading or math in that time period.

Ohio law holds charter school boards legally responsible for a school’s academic and financial performance, but places no penalty on CMOs when their schools meet closure criteria, even though these companies are often in charge of hiring and firing teachers, assessing academics, contracting vendors, budgeting, developing curriculum, and providing basic classroom materials. This creates a loophole to keep “closed” schools open and to continue to direct public funds to failing schools.

Weak accountability Since the Ohio legislature first established charters, the state has taken a quantity-over-quality approach to approving new schools and allowing troubled schools to continue. The closure law was meant to deal with the glut of ineffective charters that have for too long betrayed the promise of charters in Ohio. But our investigation shows that despite its seemingly strict closure law, Ohio still falls short of the meaningful oversight and accountability needed to improve the state’s charter sector. The repeal in 2011 of Ohio’s “highly qualified operator” provision gives new start-up charter schools the option of contracting with management companies that do not meet performance standards. Similarly, aside from losing revenue, sponsors are not penalized when schools are closed under their watch. Sponsors are coming under increasing oversight, and some are now prohibited from authorizing new schools, but the effectiveness of these efforts remains to be seen.

Recommendations Based on this study, Policy Matters Ohio recommends that legislators revamp the closure law, strengthen ODE’s capacity to oversee charter schools, direct ODE to refuse the kind of expansion of charter contracts that has allowed schools and management companies to skirt the law, and hold charter management companies accountable for the academic performance of their schools. Charter law in Ohio remains ineffective and weak. Until Ohio gets serious about quality in the charter sector – both by preventing operators with weak track records from opening new schools, and by creating a more meaningful charter-closure law – Ohio will continue to fall short of the goal of strengthening its public education system so that it can serve everyone.

Begone Ghosts of Reform Past!

The first few weeks of 2013 have greeted us like a trip with old Marley revisiting school reforms of the past. In the very first weeks, we have Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst lobby announce letter grades for states based on their adherence to her favorite pillars of reform policies. John Merrow provided us with a reprise of her greatest hits as the head of DC schools, along with some news regarding the cheating that accompanied her regime.

And next the Gates Foundation has provided us with another example of the perils of mixing research with advocacy. Their multi-year, multi-million dollar Measures of Effective Teaching project has once again supported their belief that we can predict which teachers will get the best test scores next year by looking at who got the best test scores this year. The practice of actually observing a teacher to see how "effective" they are does not apparently add much accuracy to the prediction, but they keep it in there nonetheless, perhaps for sentimental reasons. Then we have tossed in a new element - student surveys. And the perfect evaluation is some balanced mixture of these three elements, which will turn VAM lead into gold.

One reformer, Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation, has come right out and admitted what public school advocates have contended from the start. Many charter schools filter out difficult students, and whatever competitive performance advantages they have demonstrated are not credible evidence that they can do more with less. They can do more with more - and with fewer of the students most damaged by the scourge of poverty. Of course, Mr. Petrilli believes this ought to be celebrated, because like the Makers of Romneyan mythology, these students are "strivers," who ought to be well-served. The laggards they leave behind are of little concern. This is a frightening educational philosophy that runs counter to the main reform narrative, which has called upon civil rights rhetoric to justify school closures and charter expansion. But how can we reconcile an ethic supposedly based on equitable opportunities for all with a bare-knuckle life boat strategy that leaves many students behind to sink in under-funded public schools?

But alongside these visits from the ghosts of reforms past, we have some auspicious evidence that there may be a different future ahead.

[readon2 url="http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/01/hopes_for_the_new_year_begone_.html"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Education News for 01-14-2013

State Education News

• Teacher evaluations to be more detailed under new standards (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

The teacher on the video had clearly worked hard on her lesson…Read more...

• Past school-funding plans (Columbus Dispatch)

When Gov. John Kasich in February rolls out his formula for funding Ohio schools, he will become the fourth-consecutive governor to attempt to transform the way the state pays for education…Read more...

• Kasich’s turn for school reform (Columbus Dispatch)

Gov. John Kasich soon will become the fourth-straight Ohio governor to propose sweeping changes for financing public schools and improving student performance…Read more...

• Auditor targets 100 more schools (Columbus Dispatch)

The state auditor has identified about 100 more Ohio schools that show signs they might have “ scrubbed” student data…Read more...

• Hamilton schools: ‘A’ in frugality (Columbus Dispatch)

Hamilton schools are celebrating a milestone this year that few districts in Ohio can: They’ve gone 20 years without increasing their operating taxes. And based on current financial projections…Read more...

• School reform: Outside help likely (Columbus Dispatch)

The Columbus school district isn’t the only education game in town. It’s the biggest. But a large, mayor-appointed commission that is meeting to help improve education for Columbus children is operating on the premise that other businesses…Read more...

• Kasich appoints three to Ohio Board of Education (Columbus Dispatch)

Gov. John Kasich today made three more appointments to the Ohio Board of Education, among them a replacement for the last remaining appointee of his Democratic predecessor…Read more...

• Private schools top public in average ACT, SAT scores (Dayton Daily News)

Local private high school students averaged much higher ACT and SAT scores than their public school counterparts in 2012, according to our study of schools across the Miami Valley…Read more...

• State reports show most teacher candidates pass licensure test (Hamilton Journal-News)

Ohio has established a starting point for comparing and evaluating the college programs that train elementary, middle and high school teachers, releasing this week the first ever…Read more...

• Use of seclusion, restraint to be restricted (Marion Star)

Ohio schools no longer will be allowed to use physical restraint or seclusion as a punishment for children under a draft policy, but those techniques still would be permitted to prevent dangerous situations…Read more...

Local Education News

• Administrators tackle ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline (Akron Beacon Journal)

Claren Chandler was two months pregnant with her daughter when she threatened to stab a Garfield High School classmate with a pair of scissors…Read more...

• Teacher with fear of kids sues district (Cincinnati Enquirer)

A longtime French and Spanish high-school teacher is suing a suburban Cincinnati school district, alleging that it discriminated against her because she has a disability — a phobia of young children…Read more...

• Students praising others on Facebook (Columbus Dispatch)

Students in central Ohio have a new reason to smile. By logging onto Facebook and sending a message, teens are anonymously paying homage to fellow classmates’ good deeds and admirable qualities...Read more...

• Schools say no to old drug programs (Columbus Dispatch)

Realizing that more young people are no longer “just saying no” to drugs, local schools are changing their approaches to drug-prevention programs…Read more...

• Board votes to table charter school study (Dayton Daily News)

The Springboro Board of Education voted 3-2 to table a proposed conversion charter school study Thursday night, after dozens of Springboro parents and community members spoke out against the study and the concept…Read more...

• Armed janitors may provide school district's line of defense (Findlay Courier)

A rural school district in Ohio is drawing attention with its plans to arm a handful of its non- teaching employees with handguns this year -- perhaps even janitors…Read more...

• No new security measures for city schools (Springfield News-Sun)

Springfield City Schools will wait to see what government changes come from a national debate about guns and mass shootings before making any changes…Read more...

• Cameras, locked doors among precautions for area Catholic schools (Toledo Blade)

With new entrance procedures, an online reporting system for threats, and training for students and staff, schools in the Catholic Diocese of Toledo are beefing up security measures and reviewing policies in response to the shooting in Newtown, Conn…Read more...

• Steubenville Supt Plans Expanded Sexual Harassment, Date Rape Curriculum (WBNS)

Two 16-year-old high school football players have been charged with sexually assaulting a young girl after a series of parties in August…Read more...

• Ridge Middle School to try out Google Chromebooks in Mentor School District (Willoughby News Herald)

Mentor Schools will join neighboring school districts by adding new technology to its classrooms…Read more...

Editorial

• Put the emphasis on educate, not regulate (Cincinnati Enquirer)

In the fall of 2010, the Ohio Department of Education launched, with great fanfare, an initiative called Credit Flexibility…Read more...

• Web-utation (Columbus Dispatch)

It might be hard for parents to get this message through, but teens and young adults should be made to understand that what they put online likely will be seen by a college- admissions officer or a potential employer…Read more...

• Unwelcome comeback (Columbus Dispatch)

A malady mankind thought it had whipped, whooping cough, is again becoming a menace. More than ever, parents need to make sure that they and their children are current on immunizations…Read more...

• Decency deficit (Columbus Dispatch)

The attention surrounding an allegation of rape at a high-school party in Steubenville isn’t surprising; the ugly details attract notice…Read more...

• A first step (Columbus Dispatch)

The Ohio Department of Education’s effort to establish policies and rules for dealing with emotionally disturbed children with out-of-control behavior is welcome…Read more...

• A start (Columbus Dispatch)

One of the most-talked-about topics amid all the media coverage of the Newtown school shootings was a blog item written by a mother who sympathized with what shooter Adam Lanza’s mother…Read more...

• Schools should be instructed to be open about discipline issue (Youngstown Vindicator)

There’s a saying that when God closes a door, He opens a window. But politics isn’t divine, and experience shows that when government cracks a window, it often tries to slam shut a door…Read more...