Ohio's Biennial Budget Sets the Conditions for Education Success

Emmy L. Partin , Terry Ryan , Jamie Davies O'Leary / June 30, 2011

Gov. John Kasich is slated to sign Ohio’s biennial budget today (it’s a 5,000 page document), legislation that not only appropriates funding for the Buckeye State until 2013 but that also includes hundreds of pages of education-policy changes—most of which will move Ohio forward in significant ways.

The ultimate success of the budget’s education reforms will depend greatly on the quality of implementation by the State Board of Education, the new state superintendent, and his team at the Ohio Department of Education. This may sound obvious, but it’s worth hammering home: The budget puts an enormous amount of responsibility and faith into the Department of Education (to sponsor new charter schools, a move we opposed during the debate), the State Board (to approve model frameworks for teacher evaluation), and already thinly-stretched staffers who are still deciphering what the budget provisions actually mean.

Now that the legislative debate has ended, where does Ohio stand on the big education-policy issues of charter schools, teacher policy, and school accountability and improvement? And why will implementation be so crucial? Let’s dig in.

The budget puts an enormous amount of responsibility and faith into the Department of Education...the State Board...and already thinly-stretched staffers who are still deciphering what the budget provisions actually mean.

“The Case for Common

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Common Core: Not a communist plot, after all

Jersey Shore-s up its budget

June 30, 2011

Kudos to Chris Christie and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in New Jersey for passing comprehensive reform of public sector workers' benefits this week. The plan is expected to save the Garden State a whopping $120 billion over the next thirty years by bringing the benefits offered to teachers and other government workers closer in line with the private sector. The reforms call for higher employee contributions for pension and health care benefits for most workers, suspend collective bargaining over health care, and raise the retirement age. Still, Jersey has some heavy lifting ahead in addressing its unfunded obligations, as retirees and long-tenured employees will continue to receive health care free of charge—unlike nearly every other worker in the country. Lawmakers in nearby states—we’re looking at you, Connecticut—could well take a lesson from Trenton's brave crew, in particular from the Democrats who joined Christie in standing up to excessive union demands.

“N.J. Dems Approve Sharp Rise in Teacher Pension, Health Care Costs,” The Associated Press, June 29, 2011.

“What are states doing on retirement benefits?,” by Chris Tessone, Flypaper, June 29, 2011.

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Jersey Shore-s up its budget

Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 30, 2011

This slender book is an elegant and heartfelt plea for educators (and other adults) to pay far more attention to the moral and civic formation of young Americans in school and beyond. Author Bill Damon (professor of education at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution) is probably the country’s wisest, most learned, and most thoughtful observer/critic/analyst of civic and character education, its absence, and the consequences of that absence for our kids and nation. You won’t find tons of new data in these pages (for numbers, look here) but you will find an astute and deeply alarming discussion of why we’re doing such a crummy job of preparing our daughters and sons for “citizenship in a free society” and of how and why we could do a whole lot better. In Damon’s words, “What the American Dream means to young people today is more than a matter of passing cultural trivia. If the Dream means little, or if it is confined to its most base connotations of quick materialistic gain, we cannot deny that our society’s prospects have grown dimmer within our lifetimes. If, on the other hand, young Americans come to appreciate some of the deeper meanings that the American Dream has held for hopeful citizens over the centuries; if they come to understand the role of liberty in fostering this hope; if they

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Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society

Achievement Gaps: How Hispanic Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress

Daniela Fairchild / June 30, 2011

This federal analysis finds that Hispanic students have made considerable leaps in fourth- and eighth-grade math and have also progressed in reading: Since 1990, their fourth-grade math scores have shot up twenty-eight points. (To put this in context, a ten-point jump on the 500-point scale is equivalent to about one grade level of increased learning.) Eighth-grade scores in math jumped twenty-one points. In reading, scores for both fourth and eighth graders bumped up ten points since 1992. Still, these gains didn’t narrow the achievement gap because white students progressed even faster in math and at about the same rate in reading. The media reported this analysis as a glass-half-empty story, focusing on the lack of progress in closing the gap. We tend to favor the half-full view: Both Hispanic and white youngsters have made big gains over the past two decades. That’s worth celebrating.

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Achievement Gaps: How Hispanic Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress