Education News for 05-14-2013

State Education News

• Schools, city look for millions in BWC rebates (Columbus Dispatch)

The city of Columbus could get at least $5.4 million and Columbus City Schools about $1.9 million under Gov. John Kasich’s proposal…Read more...

• Plan would return $113M to Ohio schools, cities (Marion Star)

Ohio communities and schools would share almost $113 million in rebates from the state’s workers’ compensation fund should a proposal from Gov. John Kasich be approved…Read more...

• Schools fared "better than normal" in special election, even though many had losses (Ohio Public Radio)

Voters across the state headed to the polls yesterday to make decisions about all kinds of levies – including almost 140 school issues…Read more...

Local Education News



• No interim chief on the horizon for Columbus schools (Columbus Dispatch)

The Columbus Board of Education has no idea who will take over the $1.3 billion-a-year…Read more...

• Fifth-graders have a blast while learning (Mansfield News Journal)

Fifth-graders at Hannah Crawford Elementary are learning math, language arts, science and social studies skills in a unique way…Read more...

Editorial

• Yet another tale of a looted charter school shows that better fiscal safeguards (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

The Cuyahoga County prosecutor has it right, for the last six years, an in-house den of thieves has stolen nearly $2 million from a Cleveland charter school for teen dropouts…Read more...

Ohio Third Graders Face Retention Ultimatum

PBS recently ran a report on the new 3rd grade reading gaurantee.

Watch Ohio Third Graders Must Learn to Read or Repeat the Year on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

This exchange with the Senate Education Committee chair was interesting

PEGGY LEHNER: I'm hoping that we can put some additional money in.

JOHN TULENKO: How much is it going to take?

PEGGY LEHNER: I think, frankly, we might be looking at $50 million, 60 million.

JOHN TULENKO: Lehner also acknowledges educators' other concerns about the reading guarantee: lack of preschool and parents who don't do their part.

There are so many questions around this.

PEGGY LEHNER: Sure.

JOHN TULENKO: Do you ever feel like you are stepping out on a limb on this one?

PEGGY LEHNER: It is a risk. And I think we have to take a risk. We have to change what we are doing, because what we have been doing is not working.

JOHN TULENKO: Can you give us a guarantee that this will work?

PEGGY LEHNER: Of course not. Of course not.

The budget will be a good opportunitiy to right some of these problems.

Education News for 04-16-2012

Statewide Education News

• State to target achievement gaps among students (Dispatch)

If nothing changes, black fifth-graders won’t be reading on par with white fifth-graders in Ohio for another 303 years, the state estimates. For third-graders, it would be 90 years before black and white students pass reading exams at the same rate. State officials say those alarming estimates show that schools need to act quickly to make sure groups of students who are behind are catching up with their peers. Read More…

• Project learning 101 at Winton Woods (Enquirer)

In classrooms across the country, a pendulum is swinging. On one side is the predominant belief that students learn best through direct instruction – teachers lecturing and students listening, taking notes and proving on tests what they’ve learned. On the other side is what some say is a more progressive form of education, in which students collaborate on projects and problems and learn from each other by asking, doing and exploring. The teacher is merely a facilitator. This “project-based” or “problem-based” learning is where many schools should be heading, Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Stan Heffner told The Enquirer last week. Read More…

Local Issues

• Special ed spending soars in some districts (Hamilton Journal News)

In the past decade, the cost of educating special needs children has skyrocketed while the numbers of children with disabilities have shown only modest increases. An analysis of data from the Ohio auditor and the Ohio Department of Education shows that Butler County public school districts spent 158 percent more on special education between 2001 and 2010 while the number of special needs children has risen by 14 percent. Read More…

• Cleveland mayor takes on teacher union over reform (Associated Press)

CLEVELAND - The mayor wants to give his hand-picked superintendent the power to reassign bad teachers, reshape failing schools and stagger class times without union contract barriers. Mayor Frank Jackson, the only Ohio mayor who controls schools through an appointed board, angered fellow Democrats and the party's labor allies by challenging timeworn teacher union contracts. "What we will not accept is incremental change or the belief that everything is OK and we should continue down the same path," he said in a city hall interview. "That is not acceptable to us." Read More…

• Future cloudy for alternative school existence (Chillicothe Gazette)

CHILLICOTHE -- The Ross-Pike Educational Service District might shutter its alternative school after Ross County's school superintendents said they're unlikely to send students there in the future. "It's a possibility," Ross-Pike ESD Superintendent Steve Martin said of the rumored closure. "It's a possibility every year." Martin confirmed, at a recent meeting, the superintendents indicated they probably would stop using the alternative school as a disciplinary tool for disruptive students beginning with the 2012-13 school year. Read More…

• Westfall discipline case raises questions about public files (Chilicothe Gazette)

WILLIAMSPORT -- A principal is without a job and a teacher is on thin ice after a recent personnel investigation at Westfall High School that was conducted mostly behind closed doors. Tom Lehman, the school's principal since August 2008, agreed to resign April 5, ending an investigation that began in February with questions about his professional conduct. Superintendent Cara Riddel said she often had clashed with Lehman since joining the district in summer 2011, but it was his violation of part of the Licensure Code of Professional Conduct for Ohio Educators that led to his suspension Feb. 21 and ultimately his resignation. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Hold charter schools to task (Warren Chronicle Tribune)

Charter schools - private institutions operating with subsidies from the government - can provide invaluable alternatives to public education in some areas. But they have to play by the rules, too. That has not been the case in Ohio for many years, to judge by revelations about financial mismanagement at some charter schools. Read More…

Science Fact

Corporate education reform science fiction, is having an unintended(?) science fact effect.

First the science

If VAM scores are at all accurate, there ought to be a significant correlation between a teacher's score one year compared to the next. In other words, good teachers should have somewhat consistently higher scores, and poor teachers ought to remain poor. He created a scatter plot that put the ratings from 2009 on one axis, and the ratings from 2010 on the other axis. What should we expect here? If there is a correlation, we should see some sort of upward sloping line.

There is one huge takeway from all this. VAM ratings are not an accurate reflection of a teacher's performance, even on the narrow indicators on which they focus. If an indicator is unreliable, it is a farce to call it "objective."

This travesty has the effect of discrediting the whole idea of using test score data to drive reform. What does it say about "reformers" when they are willing to base a large part of teacher and principal evaluations on such an indicator?

That travesty is now manifesting itself in real personal terms.

In 2009, 96 percent of their fifth graders were proficient in English, 89 percent in math. When the New York City Education Department released its numerical ratings recently, it seemed a sure bet that the P.S. 146 teachers would be at the very top.

Actually, they were near the very bottom.
[...]
Though 89 percent of P.S. 146 fifth graders were rated proficient in math in 2009, the year before, as fourth graders, 97 percent were rated as proficient. This resulted in the worst thing that can happen to a teacher in America today: negative value was added.

The difference between 89 percent and 97 percent proficiency at P.S. 146 is the result of three children scoring a 2 out of 4 instead of a 3 out of 4.

While Ms. Allanbrook does not believe in lots of test prep, her fourth-grade teachers do more of it than the rest of the school.

In New York City, fourth-grade test results can determine where a child will go to middle school. Fifth-grade scores have never mattered much, so teachers have been free to focus on project-based learning. While that may be good for a child’s intellectual development, it is hard on a teacher’s value-added score.

These teachers are not the only ones.

Bill Turque tells the story of teacher Sarah Wysocki, who was let go by D.C. public schools because her students got low standardized test scores, even though she received stellar personal evaluations as a teacher.

She was evaluated under the the D.C. teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT, a so-called “value-added” method of assessing teachers that uses complicated mathematical formulas that purport to tell how much “value” a teacher adds to how much a student learns.

As more data is demanded, more analysis can be done to demonstrate how unreliable it is for these purposes, and consequently we are guaranteed to read more stories of good teachers becoming victims of bad measurements. It's unfortunate we're going to have to go through all this to arrive at this understanding.