Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is expected to unveil his much-anticipated education plan during his State-of-the-State address next week. People and organizations (Fordham included ) have been offering him advice since his 2006 campaign when he hung his gubernatorial success on "fixing" school funding in the Buckeye State. Not wanting to be left out, the Ohio Grantmakers Forum weighed in this week with Beyond Tinkering: Creating Real Opportunities for Today's Learners and for Generations of Ohioans to Come , a follow-up to the group's 2006 report, Education for Ohio's Future .
Beyond Tinkering is the result of six months of hard work by 43 people from 33 different organizations across the Buckeye State. It is considered a "consensus document," but its contributors certainly don't agree on all of its 11 action recommendations. And how could they? In addition to the Ohio philanthropic community, contributors included everyone from teachers, union representatives, and principals to higher education faculty, charter school leaders, and education policy organizations.
Fordham's Ohio-based staffers were at the table throughout the development of this report, and we are enthused about some of its recommendations (like making the granting of teacher tenure an intentional--not default--process that happens seven years or more into a teacher's career). Other recommendations (like the call for Ohio to "reevaluate and revise its academic standards") left us wanting, as Checker explains in this week's Ohio Education Gadfly .