Ohio charter school sponsors are required by law to submit a report about their sponsorship activities and the performance of their sponsored schools to the state education department by the end of November each year.
Fordham's annual charter school accountability report, "Seeking Quality in the Face of Adversity," is now out! As many of you know, Fordham authorizes (called "sponsoring" in Ohio) six charter schools in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Springfield.
The deadline for the first round of Race to the Top applications is just two months away.??
William G. OuchiSimon & Schuster2009
Like other states, Ohio has committed to applying for federal Race to the Top (RttT) dollars. If the state’s application is selected, it will receive $200 to $400 million for education innovation that targets six criteria:
Last week, Laura flagged a useful interactive map that grades states on their level of educational innovation in areas ranging from school finance to a state's reform environ
For the last month, we've been wondering whether Ohio would truly adopt the NGA/CCSSO Common Core State Standards , or whether the Ohio Department of Education would forge its own path in revising academic content standards so
The latest issue of the Ohio Education Gadfly came out yesterday, and features an excellent piece by Terry on the stark decline in student enrollment in Fordham's hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
On October 29, the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Frank M. Tait Foundation, and the Fred and Alice Wallace Memorial Charitable Foundation hosted an education forum in Fordham's hometown of Dayton to talk about the state of education in that city as well as Ohio and the nation.??
Ohio has made official its plan to adopt common national academic standards for mathematics and English language arts in an effort to take advantage of opportunities to partner with other states and also better-position Ohio to tap a few hundred million dollars in federal Race to the Top education grants.
Editor’s Note: Last spring Fordham released a report examining Ohio’s brain drain, Losing Ohio’s Future: Why college graduates flee the Buckeye State and what might be done about it (see here).
Standards-based reform in education is imperfect. The ways that states and districts assess kids, design tests, and attempt to hold teachers and schools accountable are bound to be flawed, lead to unintended consequences, and create many enemies along the way. But I wish the opponents of standards-based reform in Ohio would at least get a little more creative.
An editorial in today's Columbus Dispatch hits the nail on the head.
Standards-based reform in education is imperfect. The ways that states and districts assess kids, design tests, and attempt to hold teachers and schools accountable are bound to be flawed, lead to unintended consequences, and create many enemies along the way. But I wish the opponents of standards-based reform in Ohio would at least get a little more creative.
By guest blogger and Fordham's Director of Charter School Sponsorship Kathryn Mullen Upton
Education policy wonks (and I can speak as an outsider, having come to Fordham after a long career in journalism) can get so wrapped up in their great ideas for saving the nation's schools that it's easy to forget there are other people with ideas that are far removed from the most timely education reform debates.
Ohio education policymakers seem to have a split personality when it comes to what they say they care about and what they fund. The frequency and impact of this disconnect make it all the more frightening.????????
A bill has been proposed in the Ohio House of Representatives (HB 319) that would require parents of students who attend school districts rated Continuous Improvement (a "C" rating) or lower to attend a parent-teacher conference.
This week's edition opens with a timely look at Senate Bill 180 - a pending piece of legislation that would make Ohio more competitive for Race to the Top dollars (you'll definitely want to check out Terry's testimony, as well as testimony from two dynamic Teach For America alu
I'll take??Emmy's bait. I have no objection to churches working as authorizers, if they can do it well.
This conversation about churches authorizing charter schools has raised my hackles.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and others voiced support yesterday for Senate Bill (SB) 180 (see here) that would strengthen Ohio’s position in the federal Race to the Top sweepstakes through:
A central Ohio church has appealed the Ohio Department of Education's denial of its application to become a charter school authorizer (more on the story here, subscription required):
Core Knowledge and Joanne Jacobs both picked up on a blog this week by Linda Perlstein, who says that Obama is "wrong" to suggest that teachers are the single most imp
Fordham, along with Catalyst Ohio and the FDR Group, conducted a survey this past spring that measured Ohioans' attitudes on a variety of education issues (note: the sample was 1,002 randomly selected Ohio residents and was the third of its kind -??following 2005 and 2007 surveys).
Here's an interesting article about Harlem Success Academy, a??New York City charter school whose kindergarten field trip to a farm is more than a cute story about pumpkins and cows.
I'm usually not the first person to throw my hands up in response to extracurricular programming being cut from schools.
While we at Fordham view the results of the much talked about Hoxby charter study as encouraging and a good rebuttal to charter critics, here's a reminder of the antagonism towa
Ohio's school district rating system has been getting criticism lately, and for good reason: the category of Continuous Improvement (a "C" rating) is so broad that it is nearly meaningless.
