Last month, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released the value-added achievement test data for the state's public schools. This data, from the 2006-07 school year, shows student academic growth (in math and reading, grades four through eight) over time.
Ohio's State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) has serious problems that won't go away without fundamental changes to the system.
Advocates for Children and YouthDecember 2007
Center for Collaborative EducationNovember 2007Ohio is a hotbed of high-school reform initiatives, including:the KnowledgeWorks- and Gates-funded Early College High Schools like DECA in Dayton (see here);
For information on Fordham's unique role as a charter school sponsor in Ohio, there's no better source than The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Sponsorship Accountability Report 2006-07. The report offers a comprehensive account of Fordham's sponsorship policies and practices-as well as individual profiles of all Fordham-sponsored schools. Included in the profiles are descriptions of each school's educational program, school philosophy, and overall academic performance.
As lawmakers in Washington hash out the details of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), both accountability and standardized testing are facing mounting criticism and skepticism. This backlash is felt in the Buckeye State, where some would like to move our academic accountability system away from the state's current achievement tests.
Anti-charter-school wolves are circling in Ohio, howling about low test scores but ignoring the fact that the same low scores are shared by many district schools (see here).
Today's New York Times published an article headlined "Ohio Goes After Charter Schools That Are Failing," noting that more than half of the state's 328 charter schools received either a D or F on the state's report card issued in August (see here).
Ohioans continue to vote for charter schools with their feet.
LBJ high school in Austin, Texas, is no longer one school. This year, it was separated into two: the Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA), a former magnet program that enrolls higher-achieving students, is upstairs, and the traditional LBJ is downstairs.
When it comes to student success, Ohio is kidding itself. Our state's precipitously low academic expectations leave students ill-prepared to compete in the global economy. This is the disturbing conclusion of several major, in-depth assessments of our students' academic performance.
The deadline to submit feedback on Congressmen George Miller's and Buck McKeon's draft NCLB proposal has come and gone. Still, it's never too late to have an impact on the reauthorization debate--if you're Al Shanker, that is.
The political strategy of George Miller and Buck McKeon, respectively the chairman and top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, has now come into focus: to get an NCLB reauthorization bill through Congress, appease the suburbs and those who represent them. This approach is smart and savvy and sometimes leads to good policies--but may also leave lots of kids behind.
Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment to mandate increased state public-education funding failed to get the 402,000 signatures needed to get their proposal on the November ballot. Yet, the debate about adequacy in educational funding is sure to go on and the group pushing the effort, Campaign for Ohio's Future, may very well try again in 2008.
Despite a decade of significant school reform efforts in Ohio, students in the state's largest cities still struggle mightily to meet basic academic standards and are nowhere close to achieving the goals set by the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to an analysis of the latest Ohio school report-card data.
Despite a decade of school reform efforts in Ohio, students in the state's largest cities still struggle to meet basic academic standards and are nowhere close to achieving the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to an analysis of the latest Ohio school report-card data.
As a fairly regular Gadfly reader, I often find myself nodding in agreement at the wisdom and insight that it delivers.
Districts have long resisted plans to pay teachers based on their performance. So it's little surprise that Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer encountered flak when he proposed to pay students based on theirs.
Despite its long history and prodigious size, all is not well with Ohio's teacher pension system. In this Fordham Institute report, nationally renowned economists Robert Costrell and Mike Podgursky illuminate some of the serious challenges facing STRS.
Last week, Fordham and the FDR Group, a respected national survey research organization, released "Ohioans' Views on Education 2007"--a revealing look into the attitudes of Buckeye residents on a host of pressing education issues at the state and federal level.
This survey covers such topics as school quality and funding, academic standards, school reforms, proposals to improve how the public schools are run, teacher quality, charter schools and school vouchers. It follows up a survey conducted in 2005 and many of the questions are repeated, allowing us to gauge whether attitudes have shifted over time.
Elizabeth Logan is 41 years old, makes $69,000 annually, and has been teaching elementary school for 20 of those years. But none of those facts was enough to stop her from (allegedly) stealing a third-grader's winter coat and attempting to sell it on eBay.
Ohio’s children need more high quality educational options. We at Building Excellent Schools (BES) want the opportunity to work in Ohio, training leaders to found strong charter schools. This would seem a match made in heaven, right?
Ask folks interested in the business of education to name the top reform efforts across the country, and it’s a sure bet Teach For America (TFA) will rank among them.
The advent of spring means a lot of things, not least of which is the release of Sports Illustrated's eagerly awaited and top-selling yearly swimsuit issue.
Charter schools are no longer in their infancy. They're gangly, pimply, headstrong, unpredictable teen-agers. It's been 15 years since the first school in Minnesota opened its doors. Back then, say veterans of the early charter wars, the struggle was simply to keep the spark glowing, to make sure that lawmakers gave charters a chance to open and prove their worth.
On February 13, 2007, Achieve, Inc., presented to the Ohio State Board of Education a study of education policy, entitled Creating a World-Class Education System in Ohio.
