In March, President Obama told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter that ???????the number of children going to the Cleveland Public Schools who are actually prepared to go to college (is) probably one out of seven or eight or ten. And that's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable for them. It's not acceptable in terms of America's future. And so we've got to experiment with ways to provide a better education experience for our kids, and some charters are doing outstanding jobs.???????
This week, the woman hired to run the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's Office of New and Innovative Schools, Leigh McGuigan , was dismissed from her post less than a year after starting her job because she was pushing too hard for reform . The types of reform she was pushing, in a district that has been battling Dayton for the title of lowest performing district in the state for decades, are exactly those being called for by the President and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Specifically, close the most dysfunctional schools, reach out to high quality charters and have them open new schools, work with innovative STEM schools, and partner wherever and whenever possible with organizations that have a legitimate shot at turning around dysfunctional schools.
McGuigan's sense of urgency was spot on when one considers that almost half of the children attending Cleveland district schools are enrolled in a school the state rated ???????F??????? in 2008 . Sadly, Cleveland is following the trend in Ohio, which is not to innovate or seek new solutions, but to simply beg for more money to do more of the same. Hopefully, the federal government will draw a line in the sand and not distribute ???????Race to the Top ??????? dollars to states, like Ohio, that are resisting the very reforms that the president himself is calling for.
