« Back to Commentary
Fordham working to improve our schools
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has a long history in Dayton – our roots in the city date back to the founding of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in 1959. Today’s Dayton Daily News includes an interview with our Ohio Vice President Terry Ryan about Fordham’s work in the Gem City and the pressing education issues facing Dayton and the state. We are pleased to share this interview below with our Gadfly audience.
Q: Describe the Fordham Institute and your mission.
A: Thomas B. Fordham was a Dayton industrialist who died in 1944. His widow, Thelma Fordham Pruett, established the Ford-ham Foundation in his memory in 1959, and after she died in 1995, the modern foundation was launched by renowned educator Chester E. (“Checker”) Finn Jr. in 1997. Fordham’s mission is to improve primary and secondary education in Ohio and nationally. The institute is the sister organization of the foundation, and today we regard Ford-ham as a statewide education reform and advocacy group with one foot firmly planted in Dayton, which is also a key part of our “grounding in reality” that is crucial to our work statewide and nationally.
Q: What are some of the problems and challenges in education that the Institute is trying to address?
A: We work on a whole range of issues in public education. Just in the last few weeks, we’ve shared reports and organized public forums on issues ranging from the challenges of implementing new academic standards in
Fordham working to improve our schools
Attempting to solve financial disaster by outsourcing schools – is Ohio next?
America’s states, cities and schools are hurting big time financially. This is not news but the fact that the bad news keeps coming especially hurts. For example, just released unemployment numbers show an increase to 8.3 percent as American households lost 195,000 jobs. The underemployment rate – which includes those who are underemployed or who are working part time rose to 15 percent. This economic pain has struck education hard, leaving public school budgets strapped for cash and making business-as-usual more and more difficult. Districts around the country are now starting to take some drastic, and sometimes controversial, actions.
Highland Parks Public Schools, a small district in Michigan that is one the state’s lowest-performers, is on the verge of financial collapse. It made news last week when officials there announced plans to outsource its schools to a private for-profit charter school operator. The district handed over operations to The Leona Group which runs 54 schools in five states; 22 of its schools are in Michigan. The Leona Group will now oversee decisions around the hiring of staff, school curriculum and instruction, as well as school facility and maintenance issues.
What led up to such drastic action and are more districts right behind Highland Parks Public Schools? A perfect storm of low enrollment, poor fiscal management, and some of the worst academic results in the state prompted Highland Parks Public Schools to take bold action. Since 2006 district enrollment has
Attempting to solve financial disaster by outsourcing schools – is Ohio next?
Current testing scandal is an opportunity to improve Ohio’s education accountability system
Rigorous academic standards and high-stakes accountability for schools and educators alike are important for school improvement efforts. The states where students have made the most significant academic gains over the last decade (for example, Massachusetts and Florida) have had high academic standards, assessments aligned to those standards – complete with high cut scores, and transparent systems for sharing school and student results through district and school “report cards.” The fact is standardized testing has proven to be the best, most objective tool for measuring both student and teacher success.
This is important to remember as Ohio deals with a widening scandal around allegations of “data fudging” and “manipulation of attendance records” to improve test scores and school report cards. Some Buckeye State educators and lawmakers have suggested that the underlying problem here is accountability, or that the state’s report card has taken on “way too much importance.” Accountability, however, is not the problem. The Columbus Dispatch editorial board got it exactly right when writing:
It’s true that the report card is short of perfect; it is an attempt to tell an extremely complex story – how effective a school district is, allowing for all of its advantages and disadvantages – in a few numbers and phrases. But even so, it is a valuable tool to ensure that educators strive for improvement. To back off now would be harmful.
In the short term, the state must investigate these allegations; and if
Current testing scandal is an opportunity to improve Ohio’s education accountability system
Business leaders rally around Common Core
Earlier this week I attended the GE Foundation's Summer Business and Education Summit in Orlando. Most of the two-day conversation among the 150 or so participants revolved around the Common Core and the implementation challenges this effort to reboot public education across 46 states is sure to face in the coming years. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush captured the scale of the challenge when he told the gathering on the first morning that states are heading for a “train wreck.” He noted that when the new standards and assessments come fully online in 2014-15 that many communities, schools and families are in for a rude awakening.
Governor Bush said that the more rigorous Common Core standards, if backed up by equally rigorous assessments, will show that only one in three children in America would qualify as college or career ready. Bush warned that such bluntness about the poor health of American education and student achievement will trigger serious political backtracking. He said, “My guess is there’s going to be a lot of people running for cover and they’re going to be running fast.”
But, as Governor Bush and other speakers during the two day conversation argued, running away from the Common Core would be a huge mistake and a serious step back for the country, its children, and its future. This, in fact, was the overwhelming feeling of the group of business leaders gathered in Orlando. A recurring message throughout the event
Subscribe to the Ohio Gadfly Daily