- With typical diligence, Patrick O’Donnell took his time in covering the introduction of HB 2 – the charter reform bill. His piece came out late yesterday, including an interview with our own Chad Aldis on the significance of the bill and of the high-level media coverage that preceded its introduction. "I think they got a lot of the really important things," Chad says of the bill. "This is a great start for looking at charter reform.” Nice. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- O’Donnell also was able to garner a direct and specific response to the bill from the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee. She calls the bill “tweaking” and “window dressing”, as you might expect. She also seems to have coined a new pejorative: “educaneurs”, which I can’t find anywhere else on the internet. Kudos. I have t-shirts already on order. They'll pair well with my bright yellow scarf. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- Editors in Canton opine on the need for – and the apparent bipartisan interest in – charter law reform. They reference CREDO’s Ohio charter school performance study and the State Auditor’s recent report on charter school attendance in their argument. (Canton Repository)
- Here’s a fascinating piece covering a public forum in Cleveland Heights-University Heights titled "The Myth of Failing Teachers" and discussing “the damaging effects of high-stakes testing on children and teachers." So, not exactly a fact-finding effort. But I admit that I find myself uncertain of my position on the issue of standardized testing today, given the recent arguments of our own Robert Pondiscio on the subject. What, indeed, are we to make of the fact that at this CH-UH event, the final speaker was the 2010 Ohio Teacher of the Year, who freely notes that in the year she won her award, only half of her third grade students tested proficient in reading. Her take: the method of testing did not measure the progress some of her students had made in reading. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- The Ohio Department of Education’s data guru Matt Cohen is leading a national effort to find a better poverty indicator for students than the traditional (and flawed) Free and Reduced Price Lunch qualification. Kudos to Matt and best of luck on the effort. (NPR Ed)
- Children of Hispanic origin make up a plurality of the student body (37%) in the diverse Lorain City Schools. So it is imperative that all the district’s efforts to improve academics – and they must as they are in academic distress – include Spanish-language outreach. Here is a brief look at some of those efforts. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal)
- Elsewhere in Lorain, National School Choice Week was celebrated at a local charter school. The keynote speaker was the president of Lorain County Urban League, who urged listeners to “do what’s best for children regardless of the cost.” (Northern Ohio Morning Journal)
- Another day, another unanimous vote that moves the Berkshire/Ledgemont district merger one step closer. This time, the Geauga County ESC. (Willoughby News Herald)
RESEARCH BITES 1/28/15: Education landscape beyond the “Big Eight” – pt. 4
According to the Youngstown Vindicator, major enrollment shifts are happening in its neck of the woods. What was once the largest district in the Mahoning Valley, Youngstown City Schools has fallen on hard times: As recently as 2005, its enrollment was nearly 9,000 students but now, YCS educates only 5,000 or so students. (Youngstown’s “Big Eight” membership should be revoked.) Its neighboring districts are absorbing the students leaving YCS, with Austintown City Schools (ACS) now the largest district in the Youngstown area. Here’s the lowdown on public education in Austintown, located just west of the city limits.
Overall enrollment in ACS increased slightly in the past decade, from 5,026 in 2000 to 5,208 in 2013. Last year, the district had 669 students open enrolled from another district (584 of them from YCS). Relatively few students in Austintown attend a charter (102 students in 2013-14, mostly in online charters; Austintown has no brick-and-mortar charters), and only a handful of students attend a private school on a voucher (via the Autism and Peterson special-needs scholarships). The district operates only four schools—an interesting contrast to the other mid-sized districts we’ve looked at so far—and none of the schools overlap in grade level. As a result, the enrollment of each school is relatively large—over 1,000 students in each facility. The district schools receive decent achievement ratings (B/C in performance index and above average proficiency rates). But the value-added rating of the intermediate school, grades 3-5, should be of concern. There are no VA ratings for high-schools and the elementary school is grade K-2 (VA only applies for grades 4-8).
Kudos to Austintown for opening its doors to students from Youngstown—and the district should keep working hard to improve its education quality (how about a charter option?).
Austintown City Schools, 2013-14
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