This year’s Quality Counts evaluates state efforts to create education systems whose curricula are aligned from preschool to adulthood. The result is a host of state rankings, many of them tied to the report’s Chance-for-Success Index, which includes 13 indicators spanning a student’s lifetime.
This year’s Quality Counts evaluates state efforts to create education systems whose curricula are aligned from preschool to adulthood. The result is a host of state rankings, many of them tied to the report’s Chance-for-Success Index, which includes 13 indicators spanning a student’s lifetime.
Ohio earns a “C”, ranking 27th overall on the index. High marks were awarded in K-12 academic achievement (the Buckeye State ranked 10th among the 50 states), mainly due to fourth- and eighth-graders’ achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--as well as the state’s average graduation rate, 76.5 percent, as computed by EPE. And Ohio’s 25 percentage point gap in performance between poor students and their more affluent peers on the 2005 eighth-grade NAEP math assessment was slightly smaller than (but equally appalling as) the national average of 26.7.
Cited areas of weakness include the state’s achievement gap, early-childhood education and adult educational attainment. Ohio ranked 37th for its percentage of three- and four-year olds enrolled in preschools (40.6 percent), and 48th for the percentage of eligible students enrolled in kindergarten (69.7 percent). Meanwhile, just 33.4 percent of Ohioans hold a two- or four-year degree, while only 49.2 percent of adults earn an income at or above the national median.
Absent from the report is some inkling as to where states should score on such indicators (perhaps that’s asking for too much). Yet EPE’s report offers a useful snapshot of the educational and financial well-being of Ohio’s (and other states’) citizens, one that should hopefully urge state policymakers to push Ohio beyond mediocrity--and on to greater educational attainment and increased economic prosperity.
The report is available here .
Members of the 126th Ohio General Assembly recently packed up their bags and went home—some of them for good. But not before a flurry of activity, sometimes extending late into the night, with Republican legislators scrambling to take full advantage of the final weeks of Governor Taft’s tenure.
Perhaps the most noteworthy, and certainly the most publicized, accomplishment of this lame duck session was passage of the Ohio Core (see here and here), which toughens curriculum standards for Ohio’s high school students to better prepare them for work or college. But with so much of the spotlight on the Core, several intriguing pieces of legislation have gone largely unnoticed. Take House Bill 276 and House Bill 79, parts of which should help improve the oversight of Ohio’s charter schools. House Bill 79, among other things, established academic criteria under which the poorest performing charter schools must permanently close by July 2008. The criteria are primarily based on report card ratings of individual school performance, but factor in value-added assessment whenever possible. Such bold legislative action (much of it prompted here) was long overdue; charter schools failing to deliver academic results need to be held accountable. (Were that public schools also so held accountable.) Unfortunately, the law does not grant sponsors the ability to make a final judgment about the fate of their schools’ performances by looking at a richer set of data (see Fordham’s Sponsorship Accountability Report).
House Bill 276 allows charter schools operated by highly successful organizations such as KIPP to serve children in Ohio (in Columbus beginning in 2008-09, to be exact) by expanding the definition of charter school “operators” to include those that provide programmatic oversight and support to the school (operator status was previously granted only to groups that run the day-to-day operations of a school). The bill also creates an incentive for districts to offer high-quality charter school facilities by allowing districts to include the academic performance data of a charter school located in the district on the district’s report card. The result is a win-win situation, whereby high-performing charter schools can obtain facilities--and districts can benefit academically, by counting charter students test scores, and financially, by putting unused facilities to good use.
Several bills that didn’t survive the legislative session will almost certainly get another shot in the 127th General Assembly. Most notably, Ohio Speaker of the House John Husted is vowing to create a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) school system (see here). Also look for action on school funding, teacher retirement healthcare costs, and charter school accountability--as well as efforts to modify the state’s accountability system.
Yet to make any of these priorities a reality, lawmakers will have to account for one ingredient absent in December's lame duck soup: newly inaugurated Governor Strickland. While the governor is pledging his cooperation on a number of issues, education among them, one can only hope this addition won't spoil the batch.
Collective bargaining agreements between school districts and teacher unions have rarely made it into the public spotlight—at least until now. The Washington-based National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently launched its new online database bursting with details about union collective bargaining agreements, school board policies and teacher handbooks for the country’s 50 biggest school districts. NCTQ director Kate Walsh contends the site will help stakeholders--from parents and taxpayers to lawmakers--understand teacher contracts and working conditions, including salary and benefits information. The one Ohio district featured is Cleveland Municipal Schools (CMS), which turns out to be a wonderful place for the sick and ailing. Teachers receive 18 sick days per year under their collective bargaining agreement (and unused days carry over to subsequent years). Union leaders are understandably disconcerted by the new database. National Education Association’s Bill Raabe is concerned folks could draw “erroneous conclusions” from the information (for instance, CMS teachers may not be sickly, just easily fatigued). “The contract is really just a piece of the picture,” he added. Perhaps, but for taxpayers (especially Ohioans facing perennial school tax levy votes), any piece of the picture is better than none at all.
“Online Database Opens a Window for Parents to Compare Schools,” by Greg Toppo, USA Today, January 3, 2007.
This year’s Quality Counts evaluates state efforts to create education systems whose curricula are aligned from preschool to adulthood. The result is a host of state rankings, many of them tied to the report’s Chance-for-Success Index, which includes 13 indicators spanning a student’s lifetime.
Ohio earns a “C”, ranking 27th overall on the index. High marks were awarded in K-12 academic achievement (the Buckeye State ranked 10th among the 50 states), mainly due to fourth- and eighth-graders’ achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--as well as the state’s average graduation rate, 76.5 percent, as computed by EPE. And Ohio’s 25 percentage point gap in performance between poor students and their more affluent peers on the 2005 eighth-grade NAEP math assessment was slightly smaller than (but equally appalling as) the national average of 26.7.
Cited areas of weakness include the state’s achievement gap, early-childhood education and adult educational attainment. Ohio ranked 37th for its percentage of three- and four-year olds enrolled in preschools (40.6 percent), and 48th for the percentage of eligible students enrolled in kindergarten (69.7 percent). Meanwhile, just 33.4 percent of Ohioans hold a two- or four-year degree, while only 49.2 percent of adults earn an income at or above the national median.
Absent from the report is some inkling as to where states should score on such indicators (perhaps that’s asking for too much). Yet EPE’s report offers a useful snapshot of the educational and financial well-being of Ohio’s (and other states’) citizens, one that should hopefully urge state policymakers to push Ohio beyond mediocrity--and on to greater educational attainment and increased economic prosperity.
The report is available here .
