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Cleveland challenging Indy to become the Midwest’s ed-reform capital
A version of the following post appeared in today's Indianapolis Star.
Last month I led a delegation of education-reform advocates from the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton to spend a day with leaders of The Mind Trust, an education reform nonprofit that is paving the way for transformative change in K-12 education in Indianapolis. For several years, Indianapolis has been leading the Midwest in education reform. It started when former Mayor Bart Peterson launched the city’s award-winning charter schools initiative. It accelerated with the launch of The Mind Trust that brought a concentration of the nation’s best education entrepreneurs to the city and made Indianapolis the envy of the region.
Most recently, Indianapolis is inspiring other Midwestern cities to propose big ideas for driving systemic change in K-12 education. The Mind Trust issued a report in December proposing bold reforms to the Indianapolis Public Schools district. That plan, “Creating Opportunity Schools: A Bold Plan to Transform Indianapolis Public Schools,” influenced a report Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson issued earlier this month offering prescriptions for how the city can improve its K-12 system. Jackson’s plan, “Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools,” cites and draws from The Mind Trust’s report. Both plans seek to:
- Give high-performing schools far more control over staffing, budgets, culture, curriculum, and services, in return for increased accountability for student performance;
- Drive central-office spending down so more can be invested at the school level;
- Force schools that don’t deliver results to close;
- Push new investments, such as early-childhood education, to help expand enrollment in excellent schools and improve student performance;
- Strategically recruit and place
Category: Ohio Policy
Cleveland challenging Indy to become the Midwest’s ed-reform capital
Responding to Diane Ravitch's drive-by shooting of Cleveland’s school-reform plan
Diane Ravitch's blog earlier this week on "Desperate Times in Cleveland and Ohio" was troubling in how much it got wrong. Specifically, she totally misconstrues what Mayor Frank Jackson's bold school reform plan is trying to do and who it is trying to help. According to Diane's post, Jackson’s plan is nothing more than an attack on hardworking teachers and an effort to enrich for-profit charter school operators (namely the Akron-based, for-profit White Hat). This assertion is simply wrong.
I live near Dayton - another struggling former industrial power that is a shadow of its former self - and spend a lot of time in Cleveland meeting and working with some of that community's fantastic civic leaders, philanthropists, educators, and business people who are trying desperately to save their city. There is no doubt that Cleveland is hurting and it is bleeding families and children. The city has 30,000 fewer children today than it did just a decade ago, and many of the children left behind are struggling academically. In 2010-11, 56 percent of students in Cleveland attended a school rated D or F by the state. This is despite the fact the district spends a little more than $14,000 a pupil.
Because Cleveland is shrinking, its schools are facing a serious fiscal crisis. The district faces at least a $64.9 million budget deficit in 2012-13, and without additional cuts and or revenues the district's five year budget forecast shows a shortfall of close to $300 million by 2016. Despite the fiscal challenges, Cleveland has seen
Responding to Diane Ravitch's drive-by shooting of Cleveland’s school-reform plan
Embracing the Common Core in the Buckeye State
Yesterday the Fordham Institute, Ohio Grantmakers Forum, and Achieve hosted “Embracing the Common Core: Helping Students Thrive” in Columbus. It was the first event of its kind in Ohio to address head-on the implementation plans and challenges that accompany the state’s transition to the Common Core academic standards and aligned assessments.
Nearly 400 people gathered to discuss why the Common Core standards are necessary to improve educational outcomes in Ohio, as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with the new standards. The opening keynote speaker was State Superintendent Stan Heffner, who stressed that Ohio’s current K-12 system isn’t working and is letting kids down and not preparing them for the future. He went on to emphasize that the Common Core gives us the opportunity to do better and we must capitalize on that. Cleveland Metropolitan Schools CEO Eric Gordon and Reynoldsburg City Schools Superintendent Steve Dackin shared how they have already begun to implement the Common Core standards in their districts. Mike Cohen, president of Achieve, spoke to the specifics of PARCC (the assessment consortia Ohio joined last fall) and warned that the implementation of the new standards in ELA and math will not be easy and that districts should start the implementation process now. State Board of Education President Debe Terhar; Deb Tully of the Ohio Federation of Teachers; Melissa Cardenas from the Ohio Board of Regents; the new director of the Governor’s Office of 21st Century Education Dick Ross also participated.
The event was chock full of great discussion and interaction not only among those in
Embracing the Common Core in the Buckeye State
Five key factors to the success of Cleveland’s school transformation plan
Cleveland has taken a significant step toward becoming one of the nation's school-reform leaders with the introduction this week of Mayor Frank Jackson’s "Plan for Transforming Schools." The plan builds on the experience of cities like New Orleans, Indianapolis, and New York City and seeks a portfolio approach to school management that includes:
1) Significantly increase the number of high-performing schools, both district and charter, while closing failing schools;
2) Maximizing enrollment in Cleveland’s existing high-performing district and public charter schools;
3) Investing in promising schools by giving their leaders additional resources, the freedom to build high-performing teams, and the ability to make financial and instructional decisions based on their students’ needs;
4) Seeking flexibility in the hiring, retention, and remuneration of teachers (this change will require a change of state law); and
5) Sustaining both district and public charter transformation schools through a set of innovative legislative reforms and a levy request that would provide new dollars for both district and effective charter schools.
In recent years Cleveland has embraced a series of reforms - including a highly touted transformation plan in early 2010 put forth by then superintendent Eugene Sanders, and largely crafted by current district head Eric Gordon - while the city has seen a steady growth in both the number of charter schools and children receiving public vouchers to attend private schools. Despite these efforts student achievement in Cleveland is still atrociously low (only 30 percent of fifth graders are proficient in math), and 55 percent of the city's schools (charter and district) were rated D or F by the state in 2011. Telling, more than 30,000 children have abandoned the
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