Mark North, Superintendent of Lebanon City Schools

Mike Lafferty / December 2, 2009

The Ohio Education Gadfly recently caught up with the Lebanon City Schools Superintendent Mark North about House Bill 1, the state's rating system for school districts, and how his district is achieving success while spending far less money per-pupil than comparable districts.

Q: What’s your opinion of House Bill 1?

In theory, there are some good things that can be supported with research. My biggest concern – unless you tie in how it’s going to be funded – I don’t know how practical these theories will be in practice. Everything costs something. It’s great to mandate things that will help but if you  cannot tie in how it’s going to be funded it’s more difficult to take those practices, or in this case the legislation, and realistically implement them.… for example, all-day kindergarten. 

In our district, just the additional staffing for all-day kindergarten will take almost $1 million. In addition to that you have to have twice as many [kindergarten] classrooms. We’re growing at 75-125 students per year. We’ve added modular classrooms almost every year. They cost a lot of money to purchase and install and this is money that has to come from somewhere else. It could cost us $8 million-$10 million to build and supply the facilities for all-day kindergarten.

It’s the same with the student-teacher ratio. We have 26-28 students per teacher in kindergarten through third grade…..To lower that (to the mandated 1-15) someone suggested we just add another teacher to

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Mark North, Superintendent of Lebanon City Schools

Ohio charters told to improve performance while also doing a better job of sharing their successes

Mike Lafferty / December 2, 2009

Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn, Jr. believes Ohio charter schools need to further boost academic performance and then do a much better job of telling the public about it.

The two items were on a “to-do” list that Finn ticked off in a speech Nov. 17 at the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools annual meeting in Columbus (read Finn’s prepared remarks here).

“Ohio has way too many mediocre or worse charter schools to good ones,” he said. Of the 244 charter schools rated by the state last year, 42 were judged “B” or better while 123 were rated “D” or “F.”

“Having that many low performers wouldn’t be such a problem if there were an equal number of truly strong schools,” Finn said. “It’s really difficult to say the state has a robust charter program, that it’s doing a good job of serving needy kids. Yes, it’s got some terrific schools, yet it’s really easy for critics to declare the program a failure.”

The poor-performers, Finn said, need to be closed or fixed. “Aggressively solving this problem is vital for the future of Ohio’s charter movement,” he said. Part of the fix may include finding new operators for struggling schools. Charter advocates should encourage the best operators and sponsors to take on more schools. Strong boards are also vital. “We need to recruit talented people to serve on boards and we should be developing a pipeline to recruit and

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Ohio charters told to improve performance while also doing a better job of sharing their successes

Race to the Top recap

December 2, 2009

The U.S. Department of Education’s announcement of final priorities for the competitive $4.3 billion Race to the Top (RttT) program has unleashed speculation about Ohio’s position in the pack (see here and here). Weighing in on the application details, a spokesperson for Gov. Strickland told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Ohio is “one of the strongest-positioned states” and that Ohio would score well in “effective teaching and leadership” (the criterion garnering the most points). Fordham’s Andy Smarick has noticed that such high expectations have become the trend when various states size up their odds in RttT (see here) even though there is credible evidence to suggest otherwise (see here and here). 

As the application deadline draws near, several Ohio lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at bolstering the state’s competitiveness for these funds. If awarded RttT dollars, the Buckeye State stands poised to collect between $200 million and $400 million to be used toward K-12 education. Currently there are two sets of competing bills in the legislature.

The first set of companion bills, Senate Bill 180 and House Bill 312, have been introduced by Sen. Jon Husted (R-Kettering) and Rep. Seth Morgan (R-Huber Heights). These bills would allow alumni of the Teach For America program to receive an initial professional educator license, require the use of student performance data in teacher evaluation and licensure, and lift the current moratorium on e-charter schools (see our

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Race to the Top recap

All-day kindergarten mandate and rating system up for changes

Emmy L. Partin , Jamie Davies O'Leary / December 2, 2009

Senate Bill 173, sponsored by Senator Gary Cates (R-West Chester), would delay for one year a major tenet of Governor Strickland’s education reform plan and marks the legislature’s first attempt to address problems with implementing the mandates in the evidence-based school funding model.

The mandate that districts provide all-day kindergarten – along with other requirements in House Bill 1 – would be postponed until the 2011-12 school year under the bill, which was introduced amid concerns that compulsory all-day kindergarten without an adequate infusion of state funding creates an unfunded mandate that would exacerbate financial strains on school districts (see interview above).

SB 173 would require districts that choose not to offer all-day kindergarten in 2010-11 to submit a plan explaining how they’ll meet the requirement in 2011-12. Without this legislation, districts rated Excellent or Effective by the state can apply to the Ohio Department of Education for waivers to delay the start of all-day kindergarten, though the details of the waiver process have not been finalized and there is no guarantee the education department would approve such requests.

SB 173, which was passed by the Senate education committee, has the support of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA) and the State Board of Education. At its November meeting the board voted 15-1 to pass a resolution expressing support of the bill.

However, soon after meeting with staffers from the governor’s office (see here) board president Deborah Cain released a

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All-day kindergarten mandate and rating system up for changes

New report from The New Teacher Project hopes to inform upcoming teacher contract negotiations in Cincinnati

Jamie Davies O'Leary / December 2, 2009

Yesterday representatives from The New Teacher Project (TNTP), alongside Cincinnati superintendent Mary Ronan and president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT), Julie Sellers, gathered for the release of TNTP’s Cincinnati-focused teacher effectiveness report. TNTP researchers presented recommendations from their 87-page study of the district’s human capital approach, including controversial suggestions to sack the current teacher evaluation system, base teacher evaluations largely on student academic performance, install a differentiated compensation system, and empower principals with more authority over teacher hiring and evaluations.

The report’s laser focus on defining “teacher effectiveness” by linking it to student achievement data mirrors comments from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and embodies the federal Race to the Top priorities (in fact, the TNTP report couldn’t be more timely – “effective teaching and leadership” is the single most important category in the RttT application).

Unfortunately, many of TNTP’s recommendations with the most promise to ameliorate Cincinnati’s perennially low academic performance will not be well-received by the CFT. Despite the collaborative nature of the report (which relied heavily on teacher and principal surveys for the findings) and the message delivered by Dan Weisberg, TNTP’s vice president of policy, that “teachers are not the problem; teachers are the solution,” the teachers union appears to be taking a defensive stance. 

The Enquirer reports this morning that the CFT is reticent to scrap the current teacher evaluation system, is concerned with the fairness of individual performance bonuses, and is

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New report from The New Teacher Project hopes to inform upcoming teacher contract negotiations in Cincinnati

Ohio School Funding Advisory Council under critique

December 2, 2009

Today the Dayton Daily News ran an editorial criticizing the makeup off Gov. Strickland’s Ohio School Funding Advisory Council. The Council’s purpose is to develop recommendations for improving the state’s school funding model. The article laments that key players from Dayton are not represented on the panel, and names Fordham’s vice president of programs and policy Terry Ryan among those whose voices are sorely missed.

In a previous Ohio Education Gadfly post, Emmy pointed out the strange timing of the Funding Council, as its recommendations are due December 1, 2010, four weeks after the gubernatorial election. “If Kasich prevails, it seems unlikely that he’ll heed the advice of a panel convened by the previous administration to improve its flagship policy initiative…There is reason to believe that Governor Strickland won’t embrace the panel’s recommendations either, especially if they call for more resources to be poured into the system.” The Council looks to be more about politics than policy and this is unfortunate as Ohio is facing some serious fiscal challenges that need less politics and more problem-solving to have any chance at being dealt with successfully.

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Ohio School Funding Advisory Council under critique

The Secret of TSL: The Revolutionary Discovery that Raises School Performance

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 2, 2009

William G. Ouchi
Simon & Schuster
2009

U.C.L.A. business professor Bill Ouchi has authored another valuable contribution to the education-reform literature. (We reviewed his last big book, here.) “TSL” stands for “total student load” and refers to the number of students that a teacher is responsible for and also to the number of students in a school. He contends, plausibly enough, that small schools are easier to lead and manage than big ones and that they’re more likely to be managed successfully by principals who are competent but not necessarily superstar executives.

He also contends, again plausibly, that a teacher responsible over the course of a day or week for 80 or so students is far more effective with them than one who must contend with twice that number. But this useful book isn’t ultimately about class or school size. Befitting a scholar of management, it’s really about effective school and district organization. He sets out five “pillars of school empowerment” and “four freedoms” that actually give principals the capacity to lead their schools. Along the way, he does an admirable job of explaining how districts should be decentralized and why they work better when they are.

Taken seriously, Ouchi’s analysis would do important good for American K-12 education, particularly in big cities and large districts. It’s not the whole story, however. Important as it is, for example, for schools to control their curriculum, that doesn’t get us very far if it’s a loopy,

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The Secret of TSL: The Revolutionary Discovery that Raises School Performance

How Bold is Bold? Responding to Race to the Top with a Bold, Actionable Plan on Teacher Effectiveness

Jamie Davies O'Leary / December 2, 2009

The New Teacher Project
November 2009

Anyone curious whether Ohio will win a $200-400 million share should read The New Teacher Project’s recently released national report, purportedly a “blueprint” for states hoping to win a piece of the federal grant money: How Bold is Bold? Responding to Race to the Top with a Bold, Actionable Plan on Teacher Effectiveness. The report outlines components of a “bold” application, suggests appropriate roles for states and LEAs, and lists five goals a state should pursue to have a coherent plan for improving teacher quality (rather than a “series of disjointed initiatives”):

1) optimize new teacher supply,
2) boost effectiveness of all teachers,
3) retain and leverage most effective teachers,
4) prioritize effective teachers for high-need students, and
5) improve or exit persistently less effective teachers.

While Ohio aligns with a few of TNTP’s recommended components, such as modifying “tenure policies to provide grounds for termination” (House Bill l lowered Ohio’s teacher dismissal standards), the report makes several recommendations that conflict with current Ohio law and contradict the viewpoints of current state leadership: requiring that student achievement growth be predominant in teacher evaluations; basing compensation models on teacher performance; and holding teacher preparation programs accountable by linking student achievement data to the teachers they graduate.

Unsurprisingly, the goals derived from TNTP’s analysis of the Race to the Top application emulate those found in the new Cincinnati report (see above article). TNTP delivers the same

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How Bold is Bold? Responding to Race to the Top with a Bold, Actionable Plan on Teacher Effectiveness

Racing to the Top in a time of fiscal peril

Terry Ryan / December 2, 2009

I’ve just finished reading the Race to the Top program executive summary released by the U.S. Department of Education last week and while there is much in it to excite reformers there seems to be a serious disconnect between its ambition and states’ capability to actually deliver on reforms, given the grim fiscal realities they are facing (see Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril). Using Ohio as an example is illuminating....Read it here.

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Racing to the Top in a time of fiscal peril

Camping out for school choice

Jamie Davies O'Leary / December 2, 2009

…Shoppers across the nation will prepare for the madness known as Black Friday. This week the Cincinnati Enquirer highlighted another unique American phenomenon involving long lines and midnight campers - parents lining up as far as two and a half days in advance in order to win their child a spot in one of the city’s elite public magnet schools. Read the full post here.

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Camping out for school choice

Errata: Mislabeled chart

December 2, 2009

The first chart in the email version of our November 30 Special Ohio Education Gadfly had one mislabeled data point. The correct chart is available online here. 

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Errata: Mislabeled chart