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2008 OSU vs. Michigan
2008 Ebony Fashion Show
Alter vs. Genoa Area
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > July
July 2006
Charter school exceptions .. or loopholes?
Reporting today’s story about the charter school cap and charter sponsors in Ohio, I learned a few things I didn’t know about our pioneering, year-old charter school authorizer law. Among them:
• Good charter schools outside Ohio can bring more charter schools to our state. OK, I followed the logic in Ohio’s new law that says a charter school management company that has a good performing school (rated in continuous improvement or better) can win permission to open a new school. So suppose a company has 20 schools in Ohio and two of them are scoring well, they can win permission from the state to open two more schools.
But here’s what I didn’t know. Suppose none of that company’s 20 Ohio schools are scoring high enough to earn it any new schools, but the same company operates two schools with a good state rating in Pennsylvania. Based on the performance of the out-of-state schools, the company could still earn the right to open two new schools in Ohio.
• There is confusion over whether the Ohio Department of Education has the right to monitor and review the performance of most of the state’s charter school sponsors. Language in House Bill 364, which last year created this new sponsoring arrangement, apparently was not clear in defining the education department as the overseer of sponsors who were already operating in the state.
The education department is so unsure, it asked the state board to send lawmakers a resolution urging them to create a legal fix to make this line of accountability clear. But as of right now, there technically is no accountability for most charter sponsors.
• A year into the new sponsor law, performance reviews for sponsors are just getting off the ground. Setting aside the question of the education department’s legal power to oversee sponsors for a moment, officials told me for the story they are just now devising a process to review sponsors.
The new sponsoring law places a great deal of responsibility on those sponsors. They are in charge of the day-to-day monitoring of the schools under their purview and the law makes it the sponsor’s call to decide when a school should be placed on probation, shut down or other action taken.
The education department says it is dead serious about holding sponsors accountable and will expect them to take corrective action with low scoring schools. This issue is absolutely crucial to the future of the charter school movement in Ohio. Bad charters make the case against them easier and dampens the charter school lobby’s clout with lawmakers.
• School districts can create “conversion” charter schools at will. Under conversion, a rarely used option, districts can take an existing school and allow it to operate independently under contract with the local school board. The school is still considered part of the district — for instance its test scores still count in the district’s averages.
The new Dayton Technology Design High School is a conversion school, although it’s an odd case in that there was really no existing school that was converted. It’s a new school completely, but it uses “existing resources” of the school district. Or at least that’s how it was explained to me.
Expect more districts to use the conversion charter option as No Child Left Behind sanctions favor creating more charters as a remedy for poor test performance. The conversion process is fairly painless and still allows the district a measure of control.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite Posts
Fine print in cap allows for more charters
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
An Ohio law passed last year limited the number of charter schools to the 285 that were open as of last summer. Or did it?
This fall, there will be 305 charter schools open in Ohio. One Dayton school is among 28 that will launch this fall.
How is the charter movement continuing to grow? The same law that created a “cap” allows three avenues for new schools, even if the number exceeds that cap.
“I don’t believe the intent was to stop growth,” said Todd Hanes, executive director for community schools at the Ohio Department of Education. “I believe the intent was to slow growth.”
There are three ways charter schools can be added despite the cap:
• Companies operating charter schools can open one school for every school they manage that is performing well by state standards — even if the original school is not in Ohio.
• Schools that applied to open last year but did not receive charters in a lottery are on a waiting list and can earn a charter if any charter school closes. About nine schools opened last year closed and three merged with other schools.
• School districts are always permitted to convert schools into charter schools. The Dayton Technology Design High School, launching this fall, is a conversion school.
Ohio’s charter movement continues to change rapidly, with Dayton leading the way.
Statewide about 15 percent of charter schools changed sponsors after just one year of a new sponsoring law, but in Dayton, nearly a quarter of all charters changed sponsors.
Those shifts have created concern that poor-performing schools could evade accountability by jumping to new sponsors and the state education department is just now putting in rules to try to prevent it.
“We’ve seen a lot of sponsor-hopping,” said Lisa Zellner of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. “Bad schools fear they are going to be shut down, as they should be, leave one sponsor for another hoping their funding won’t be interrupted.”
Todd Hanes, Ohio’s executive director for community schools, said sponsor shopping is not allowed. Sponsors overseeing poor schools have an obligation to address the problems.
“I don’t necessarily see this as a loophole in the law,” he said. “First and foremost, good monitoring is an expectation of good sponsorship. Beyond that, schools do move.”
Charters have newfound mobility after changes to state law last year. The education department now approves sponsors that oversee the schools.
Sponsors can be school districts, universities or nonprofit groups and each can manage up to 50 charter schools.
The state continues to approve new sponsors — nine since last summer — bringing the number to 67 across Ohio.
In Dayton, the biggest change came when four Richard Allen charter schools switched to Kids Count of Dayton, a new sponsor group, from Cincinnati-based St. Aloysius Orphanage.
Krista Allen, superintendent overseeing Kids Count’s nine schools statewide, said it was founded by the board of directors for the West Park Academy, a Dayton private school.
But two other local charters with past academic or management troubles also changed sponsors after one year.
Academy of Dayton’s contract was not renewed by the Toledo-based Ohio Council of Community Schools for poor academic performance but found a new sponsor in the Cleveland-based Ashe Cultural Center.
Rhea Academy, involved in a financial disagreement with the state auditor, also changed to Educational Resource Consultants in Cincinnati from the Columbus-based Buckeye Community Hope Foundation.
Hanes said his office will soon launch an evaluation process for sponsors that would keep a school on probation, suspension or termination from changing sponsors. And evaluators will be looking at how sponsors handle low-rated schools.
“Without question, the expectation would be to place on probation any school failing to meet the expectations of the sponsor,” he said.
Sponsors that fail evaluation could see the schools they operate reduced or other sanctions. But one curve ball is that the education department may not have authority over all the sponsors. The state board of education has asked lawmakers to make it clear that it can evaluate sponsors that were operating before House Bill 364 was passed. Now just 18 sponsors are directly accountable to the department, Hanes said.
Even so, evaluations will start this fall for 20 sponsors.
Zellner said more oversight is needed as the state will spend half a billion dollars for charter schools this school year.
“It’s good to see them moving forward on these things,” she said. “The question is if we are in a situation where it is already too little and too late.”
UPDATE: Click here for more on the new sponsor rules.
Permalink | | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite DDN Stories
The case against school uniforms
I never did get an answer to my question last week asking if anyone knew of a suburban or rural Dayton-area school that required uniforms. I guess I’ll take that as a no.
Meanwhile, there was quite a debate over the value of uniforms in a school in the 11 comments that followed that simple, one-paragraph post.
So let’s talk about uniforms. Do they really make a significant contribution to a school on their own? I’m not buying it.
Here are some of the arguments made last week on behalf of uniforms:
—They’re cheaper and easier for parents. This may be true, but how does this in anyway improve conditions at the SCHOOL? If parents want cheap and easy clothes they could send kids to school in the same white shirt and navy pants everyday whether the school required it or not.
—They instill discipline. I’m sorry but nobody has been able to convince me of this one yet. To me, discipline is an individual personal trait that is learned. Institutions like the military use uniforms as part of an array of strategies to reinforce self-discipline in their charges. But something tells me Marines would stand just as straight and still get up at the crack of dawn if they were wearing Nike track suits.
—It makes family income less obvious and reduces teasing. Believe me, at my Catholic high school, we knew who the wealthy kids were … and weren’t. Wealthy kids had expensive jackets, earrings, shoes, belts, gym bags — anything outside the scope of the uniform rules was a signal of status.
—They reduce dress related misbehavior and the need for discipline. No way. Private school teachers tell me they spend loads of time handing out demerits and other discipline to students who don’t wear the right kinds of socks or let their uniform pants droop or leave shirts untucked.
Which brings me to my solution. While I am not convinced uniforms solve any school-related problems, I do think a consistently enforced dress code is important. A dress code can work whether a school has a uniform or not. Dress codes should enforce neatness and make clear what sorts of attire are appropriate or not.
If you have a uniform, you really also have a dress code too. It’s not good enough just to require the white shirt and navy pants/skirt. You have to tell the kids shirts must be tucked, skirts can’t be too short, etc.
I think an enforced, sensible dress code, without the uniform, works just as well.
OK, let me have it, uniform lovers. Tell me why I’m wrong.
Those wacky teacher sex cases
There’s been a lot of talk this summer about about what seemed like a bit of a run of women teachers having sex with male students. There were several high profile cases toward the end of the last school year, especially Debra Lafave (pictured above).
I can’t remember which education blog pointed me to this last week, but I found this Georgetown U. psychiatrist’s TV comments about why some women teachers become sex offenders with their students interesting.
Among the things Alan Lipman says are that teachers offending with under age students is exceedingly rare, the least common category of female sex offender, despite our media fascination with these cases. Also he emphasizes that these cases are sex offenses and that the young boys are harmed, despite the argument from some quarters that these cases are somehow not abuse.
Happy Ape-aversary!
One of my favorite teacher/bloggers, Mrs. Cornelius at A Shrewdness of Apes, is celebrating her one-year anniversary as a blogger today.
I can’t believe her blog is so young. It seems so polished that I would have guessed it had been around much longer. But the Apes aren’t much older than Get on the Bus. (Hint: Watch for an upcoming anniversary at an edublog near you.)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: The Carnival of Education
What if there was a “Dayton Promise?”
Back in November, I wrote about the Kalamazoo Promise, a program funded by an anonymous donor in Kalamazoo, Mich., through which every student who completes all his or her schooling and graduates from that city’s public school system is guaranteed free tuition at any Michigan public university or college.
Last night, I went to a meeting of an anti-sprawl group that raised the idea of a similar Dayton Promise here as a way to bolster home values in the city and slow outward growth.
Before I go any further I want to clear up some confusion. The headline suggests this is a Dayton schools proposal. It is nothing of the sort. As the story states, this was one of three ideas suggested for discussion by a group called Grassroots Dayton. So nobody actually proposed anything at all. As For Dayton schools, the district sent a representative to the meeting in response to an invitation by Grassroots Dayton who merely spoke about the district’s issues. The headline was off base.
But back to the idea of a “Dayton Promise:”
Could it work here in Dayton? I don’t see why not.
Our fair city certainly has enough financial might to fund it. We’ve got Boonshofts, Schusters, Mathiles and other individuals who are philanthropic, well-heeled and interested in the well-being of the city and its youth. Plus there are foundations, like the Kettering Foundation.
What are the advantages? Bob Steinbach from the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission said he has spoken to the Kalamazoo area Realtor’s group and it reports improved home values and inquiries from every state about moving there.
At the meeting, the anti-sprawl folks talked about the disadvantages of the way the Miami Valley is growing away from the core city. Population is mostly steady but construction continues to push further outward. This spreads out the taxpayers over a wider area. Less density means fewer taxpayers in each school district, which raises each taxpayer’s burden.
There were three ideas proposed at the meeting for combating this problem suggested by Grassroots Dayton. The others were allowing more district-to-district student transfers and creating one large consolidated school district for the entire Miami Valley.
Those two things, frankly, are very unlikely to happen. The districts that need fewer students, like Beavercreek and Springboro, would probably draw more students under the transfer plan, while the districts with capacity, like Dayton and Fairborn, would likely lose more kids. Besides, most school districts right now won’t play the transfer game and have policies against accepting them.
Consolidation of school districts also is wildly unpopular, as voters prefer greater local control, not less.
But the “promise” idea could work. The question is whether the benefit is worth the cost and if significant donors would be willing to step up to the plate and lead such an effort.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Colleges and Universities, Dayton Public Schools, School Construction
Free tuition “promise” discussed as sprawl remedy
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
Suppose every child who completed all their schooling and graduated in Dayton was guaranteed free tuition at any Ohio pubic college.
What effect might that have on housing patterns in Dayton?
In Michigan, where the Kalamazoo Promise makes such a guarantee, realtors report improving home values in that city and inquiries about moving there from every state.
A copycat “Dayton Promise” was just one idea for attacking suburban sprawl and the problems it creates for school districts discussed Thursday at a meeting sponsored by Grassroots Greater Dayton.
About 45 who attended heard John Carr, Dayton school construction chief, describe how falling enrollment in the city schools has caused the district to reduce its construction program by eight schools.
Meanwhile, Beavercreek Superintendent Dennis Morrison said exploding growth there already has the schools over capacity and are creating a desperate need for new buildings.
Dayton’s lack of wealth made it eligible for 61 percent matching funds for its $627 million building program. Beavercreek won’t be eligible until 2112 and then can only receive 9 percent state money for its projects.
The group discussed three ideas for a regional solution — allowing more students to transfer between districts, consolidating area school districts under one umbrella and a Kalamazoo-style promise.
Perhaps the least complicated option is the donor-funded scholarship program, such as that in Kalamazoo.
“It’s not really an education initiative,” said Bob Steinbach, of the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission. “The people who funded it see it as an economic development initiative to stabilize neighborhoods in Kalamazoo and attract middle class families with educational aspirations for their kids.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
What to tell the kids?
During the Iraq War, the news junkie in me just took over. I watched CNN nearly every waking, non-working moment. Inevitably, my then five-year-old daughter would plop down in the chair next to me.
And the question was, what to do? Turn the war off or try to explain what was going on? And if you explain, how honest should you be?
I decided then on a policy of honesty in nearly all circumstances. It was the route that made me feel most comfortable. But I’m not always sure I made the right choice.
She had lots of questions and for the most part, she did not seem especially freaked out. But then Sadaam Hussein disappeared. I kept telling her not to worry, that eventually we’d capture him. But she seemed overly concerned. One day she asked, “if they can’t find him in Iraq, could he be in Ohio?” Absolutely not, I said. “What about California?” she asked.
It was then I realized that in her world, there really were just three places — Her home (Ohio), Her grandparents’ home (California) and the place she watched on TV (Iraq). If Sadaam couldn’t be found in Iraq, to her it seemed perfectly rational that he might be hiding out in Ohio or California.
I thought about this issue today as I read a post by my colleague Margo Rutledge Kissell, who writes about military life both in the paper and her blog On the Homefront.
Margo discusses the struggles of explaining events on the news to her four-year-old son. She also points us to some useful tips for talking to kids about war and terrorism from New York University.
I still like my honest policy, although sometimes explaining events on the news can be tricky. And I do censor the worst stories. On the other hand, I’m a firm believer that talking to kids about the world, current events and history can help them learn.
What’s your strategy in these situations?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Young Children
As test scores rise, the town gets richer
Maybe this is a “duh” study. In districts that score high on standardized tests, homes are worth more. If you want to debate the “chicken or egg” question about wealth and test scores, check out my posts on that topic by going here.
Still I found it interesting that a recent study of Ohio found that big gains in test scores by a school district translated directly to nice jumps in home prices there. From Education Week:
An Ohio study suggests that high scores by public school students on state exams may help boost a community’s home prices. Donald Haurin, an economics professor at Ohio State University in Columbus, examined 77,578 house-buying transactions for the year 2000 in seven urban Ohio communities and compared them to the 4th and 9th grade test scores in those districts. On average, he found that a 20 percent increase in a district’s pass rate on the state tests translated to a 7 percent increase in the home prices in that district. His study was published in the May issue of the Journal of Regional Science.
So the pro- and anti-testing crowds can debate all day about the value and meaning of standardized test results, but one group pretty clearly seems to believe those results are meaningful and useful — home buyers.
In your view, are these folks making rational choices? Does a sudden jump in test scores really mean a school district should command that much more respect?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Testing
An education carnival odyssey
This week’s Carnival of Education is up over at the blog Text Savvy.
You can find my post on median income and standardized test scores included in this weekly roundup of the best posts around the education blogosphere last week.
The post I found most interesting this week is from a blog called Texas ED, who clearly has had a good experience with Odyssey of the Mind.
Odyssey of the Mind is an extracurricular program for kids that promotes creativity. Kids compete in teams against other teams to see who can solve an assigned problem most creatively.
Overall, I like Odyssey of the Mind and similar programs, although I’ve seen teams of widely varying quality — from those who produce very smart and interesting results to other for whom the program is just a step above playtime.
Readers, do you have experience with Odyssey or its imitators? Tell us about your experience. Do you believe, like Texas Ed, that they truly enhance student learning and creativity in kids?
UPDATE: My post about Dixie Allen’s party switch and support of vouchers also made this week’s Carnival of Ohio Politics.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: The Carnival of Education
“Our School” review on deadwood
A few weeks ago, I posted my review of Joanne Jacobs’ book “Our School” here at Get on the Bus. On Sunday, a shorter version of the review appeared in the Life section on page D8.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Journalism
Uniforms in the burbs and small towns
Do any Get on the Bus readers know of a suburban or rural public school in the Dayton area that requires kids to wear uniforms? Just curious because I noticed a strong majority of Dayton Public Schools are requiring uniforms this fall. I know public schools in other big Ohio cities require uniforms, but I’m honestly not aware of a public school outside of a major city that does. I was wondering if this was an urban-only trend.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
The “School of Rock” approach to education
Over the weekend, I saw “School of Rock” for the first time. It’s a funny film in which Jack Black plays a struggling rocker who pretends to be a teacher to put together a new band made up of grade school students. Black’s character tells the kids they are going to be working on a class project called “rock band” and that they will be competing against others from around the state to see who can put together the best band.
In today’s paper, I wrote about the new Dayton Technology Design High School, which borrows the “school of rock” approach by giving 80 kids a common goal they must work on cooperatively. Principal David White is in the Jack Black role, and instead of a rock band the schoolwide project this time is called “virtual game.”
In the movie, Black’s class ended up putting together a rocking show for the battle of the bands. If White is a success, his kids will knock the socks off other schools with an educational video game they’ll actually pay money to use with their own students.
As far as I can tell, this is a unique approach.
School officials say they looked at somewhat similar game-building efforts at a couple of online schools, but frankly they said they were not especially impressed. So they crafted their own concept for the school and curriculum from scratch.
The goal here is to entice kids who might otherwise dropout to stay in school by giving them a “rock band” style project, a team effort in a genre — video games — that hopefully they will find interesting, fun and exciting.
It’s also risky. The whole approach could fail. But this is part of Dayton’s effort to create new options, especially at high school, for kids who in the past have gotten lost in traditional schools.
What do you think of the “virtual game” idea? Is it genius or insanity?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite Posts, Urban School Issues
Reading, writing and video games
(David White, principal of the new Dayton Technology Design High School. DDN photo by Jim Witmer)
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
The Dayton school district’s newest high school wants kids who are willing to spend hours staring at a video screen, working on their skills, until they master the challenges presented to them.
And some of the district’s academic stragglers already have made such a commitment, spending hours seeking electronic Super Bowl titles, imaginary ill-gotten riches or fantastic conquests over video villains.
Capitalizing on youthful passion for video games, school leaders hope to keep more kids in school by offering the chance to conceive, design, build — and sell — their own video game.
“That’s what they love,” said David White, the school’s chief academic officer. “That’s the hook.”
The Dayton Technology Design High School will enroll about 100 students, with about 80 in the “virtual game” track, requiring a three-year commitment and culminating in the completion, marketing and possibly sale of a student-created educational video game.
“When we first started talking about the video game, people laughed at us,” Superintendent Percy Mack said. “But they laughed at the Wright brothers, too.”
White knows a few things about kids who are at risk to drop out. He last worked at the ISUS Trade and Tech Prep High School, a highly regarded charter school that teaches building trades to dropouts, where he was assistant superintendent.
This technology design school, he said, is built around the typical dropout or at risk student.
“We play to their strengths,” he said. “That doesn’t happen in traditional schools.”
Before ISUS, White worked with a group that helped start the three Mound Street Academy dropout-focused charter schools run by the Montgomery County Educational Service Center that teach military, health care and information technology skills. And he also has roots in the school district, where he was an assistant principal at Meadowdale and Patterson high schools.
Troubled students, he said, have a typical personality profile. They score very low on assertiveness, calmness and “conscience restraint,” or the ability to control emotional responses.
But the same kids post among the highest scores for sociability and conformity.
“They like to talk — and especially to text,” White said. “Sociability is what they crave. But they love structure, order, routine and high expectations. You have to provide that for them or they provide their own.”
The technology design school is for 16- to 22-year-olds willing to make a three-year commitment. During 70-minute periods, course work will cover math, science, social studies and English. In virtual game classes, students will work in groups of no more than 12 on a schoolwide project, creating an educational video game.
The goal is to teach the kids work force, academic, life and “new economy” skills. Student work will focus on developing the technical framework of the game, managing the process and marketing the end product.
White said he envisions a game in the mold of a classic called Oregon Trail, a strategy game in which players must answer academic questions to earn supplies and move ahead in virtual quest to make it to the early American West.
The students will need to create an attractive concept, design the game functions and create the content.
In a perfect world, the game would prove marketable to other schools to use as a classroom tool as part of their curriculum, and income from sales could be reinvested in other projects or even used for stipends for students.
White said the model is unique — a hybrid of the purely online curriculum of “cyber” schools combined with the in-the-classroom intensity of schools designed for dropouts.
The technology design school will be housed at Jackson Center, a school remodeled as a teacher training unit, but will technically be a “conversion” charter school sponsored by the district but independently run by a separate governing board headed by former school board member Doniece Gatliff.
The hope is to get kids up to speed on academics while imparting job-ready skills like management and marketing along with technology training that could make them career ready, perhaps even in the booming video game development industry.
“This is not just a game,” Mack said. “It’s about educating students and giving them something they can do after they graduate.”
NOTE: Click here for more on the Dayton Technology Design High School.
Permalink | | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories, Urban School Issues
The hard way to save a school
(New Omega Principal Tracy Ross )
In today’s DDN, I wrote about the Omega School of Excellence and its effort to totally “reconstitute” the troubled school, a radical approach that included letting all the teachers and administrators go and starting over this year with an entirely new staff.
This is one of the very rare examples anywhere in the country of a total reconstitution.
Last year I wrote about Dayton Public Schools’ use of this tactic. Dayton also took reconstitution seriously in the four cases where they’ve employed it, requiring all the school staff to reapply for their jobs and administrators restaffing the school picked only those teachers who were a good fit with the new philosophy of the reborn school and its new principal.
But in all cases Dayton placed at least some of those teachers back at the school, and sometimes close to half the staff returned. Even so, as I wrote last year, Dayton won accolades for going that far. No Child Left Behind encourages the use of reconstitution for schools that are persistently underperforming. But in most places around the country it’s looked more like “reconstitution lite,” sometimes with changes as mild as just a new principal. So Omega’s total overhaul is exceedingly rare, although it was made easier since the school is small and the teaching staff is only six.
Omega also is an interesting example of the challenges of starting a school from scratch, even with well intentioned and capable founders.
The school grew out of concern at Omega Baptist Church about the problems of middle school youth in Dayton. Church Pastor Daryl Ward and his wife Vanessa Oliver Ward, both ministers, were persuaded that they could help children most by creating a strong middle school option in the city with their own high expectations school. Originally, they pair thought to start a Christian school, but they quickly decided they’d be better off financially to go the charter route.
And Vanessa Ward originally sought out the most challenging school model around — the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP. KIPP today is one of the most celebrated new school models. Begun by two young teachers in Houston, KIPP aims to turnaround kids who fall behind with an intensive model. Kids go to school for nine hours a day and on Saturdays for a longer school year than other schools.
Unfortunately, as Ward says, Omega was about a year too soon for KIPP, which in 1999 was really not interested in expanding and had few materials to guide others in replicating the program. (BTW, this is why Dayton, the charter school capital of the country, doesn’t have a KIPP school, a question I’m often asked.) Ward tried anyway and at first with an ambitious KIPP-like program.
But it was hard to maintain. Over time, tight budgets and parent complaints led to cutbacks in Saturday sessions, school hours and other program elements. Then two years ago, as Ward was taken away frequently by family health concerns, the school began to slide into serious academic trouble.
The effort to save the school will be interesting to watch. It’s also the first example I know about of an organization primarily dedicated to reviving schools through reconstitution. That group, KIDS, is an equally ambitious expiriment, and one its founders hope can take its show on the road to other schools soon.
UPDATE: Omega’s revival hits a few bumps.
(Image credit: Jan Underwood, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite Posts, Urban School Issues
Real sex ed makes a difference
Two counties, next to each other, with nearly identical demographics — numbers that would suggest a high teen pregnancy rate.
One county is highest in South Carolina for teen pregnancy. The other is the lowest.
What’s the difference? One county has had a comprehensive sex education program for 24 years.
This fascinating story is on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. I think you may have the be a subscriber to access the story, but here’s a taste:
One explanation for how Bamberg County has performed so well is one of the nation’s most intensive and long-running programs to prevent teen pregnancy. Its director, a 47-year-old former volleyball coach named Michelle Nimmons, leads an eight-person staff at the Denmark-Olar Teen Life Center in Denmark, one of the county’s two central towns.
They bombard boys and girls with hours of sex-education classes, “life skills” sessions to teach self-esteem and saying no to sex, practical guidance on contraception and other outreach programs that take place as often as basketball or track practice.
While many schools offer sex-education classes for just a few hours a year, often after school, scarcely a day goes by here without a class, one-on-one counseling session, or a free dinner for parents and their kids. Classes and individual counseling sessions are integrated into the school curriculum and meet during the school day.
Meanwhile, the federal government today exclusively encourages “abstinence only” sex education, which critics argue are far less effective.
Is this South Carolina example an argument for change?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Sex Education
A sharper No. 2 will solve the world’s problems
So the College Board spent $5 million to have a company evaluate its SAT scoring methods in the wake of thousands of mis-scored tests last school year. What does the company recommend? Some more training, better software, adding some new marks on the score sheets to help line them up better with scanners.
Oh, one big sweeping change was recommended — providing pencils and erasers at test sites!
Critics respond that the recommendations do not address the problems that led to the scoring mistakes. What do you think? Did the College Board get its money’s worth?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Testing
Dixie Allen, vouchers and politics
Over at Eduwonk, Andy has noticed that Dayton Democratic legislator Dixie Allen is switching parties. And he’s wondering why I’m not telling him how much her decision has to do with her support, and Ohio Democrats’ disdain, for vouchers.
Well, Andy, there’s not that much to tell. Dixie Allen has been a Republican for a long time when it comes to voting and her embrace of vouchers is a recent phenomenon. I think it played little, or probably no, part in her decision to switch parties so she could run for Montgomery County Commission.
I have to say, however, that I was really surprised to see Allen seek office again, no matter what flag she is flying. I distinctly remember Allen pledging never to run again for any office, and how that decision played a role in her move to push for vouchers.
Back in February, Allen was the featured guest of a local group called Parents Advancing Choice in Education, which backs vouchers. In a room full of fired up parents, mostly with kids already in private schools, Allen told the story of how she came to be the sponsor of the bill that ultimately led to the expansion of the voucher program statewide.
She said she had been thinking about vouchers for some time and decided they were a good idea. From my notes during that meeting:
“I went to (Ohio House Speaker) Jon Husted and said, ‘I want to sponsor a voucher bill,’” Allen said. “He said, ‘you know that is political suicide for you.’ I said, ‘I ran for office the last time and I am not going for public office ever again, so what can somebody do to me?’”
I suppose we’ll see if her voucher support comes into play.
One other interesting thing about Allen’s switch and her impending resignation from the Ohio House. It appears likely then that the Democrats will get to name a replacement and that it will be Dayton school board member Clayton Luckie, who is seeking the seat. (BTW, Luckie is strongly opposed to vouchers.)
If that comes to pass, Luckie, the longest serving school board member, will resign the Dayton school board in the middle of his third term. This means the board will name another new board member this year. They already added Joe Lacey, who defeated Doniece Gatliff last November, in January and Stacy Thompson, who replaced Tracy Rusch at the beginning of the summer.
When this change occurs, the board suddenly will have a majority of members who have served a year or less — Lacey, Thompson, Lee Massoud (who replaced Tony Hill last summer) and Luckie’s replacement.
The remaining board members include President Gail Littlejohn and one ally from her original reform team — Yvonne Isaacs — plus Mario Gallin, the last holdover from the pre-Littlejohn era.
In effect, big changes are unlikely. Littlejohn did a masterful job of uniting the board under her reform plan after she was elected in 2001 and new board members since then have largely been selected by the board in appointments and shared Littlejohn’s vision. (The notable exception being Lacey, who at times is outspoken and will oppose Littlejohn publicly.)
Still, having one iron-clad ally is much different than having three on a seven-member board. It will be interesting to see if the politics get more complicated when disagreements arise.
This also shows one of the few areas that the board has fallen short on — building a farm team for itself for the future. Littlejohn and company probably should be recruiting good community people for key volunteer posts who could step up to the board when future openings occur. As it has been, Massoud and Thompson were largely unknown to the board before they applied for appointment to open seats and Lacey ran an outsider campaign in last November’s board race.
Still, the quality of candidates interested in serving on the board, even when it comes to open seats for which anyone can apply, has clearly improved during the Littlejohn era, which is a good sign for the board.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools, Schools and Politics
NY Times Tierney picks the wrong study
New York Times columnist John Tierney earlier this week took up the cause of private schools who he says were unfairly spun as the big losers in a recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Tierney’s take wasn’t exceptionally thoughtful. He took the usual anti-public school tack — scapegoating unions, dismissing public school success and making a case for the cost effectiveness of private schools, if nothing else. And mostly he talked off the top of his head, citing only two studies to support his arguments.
It just so happened that both studies involved Paul Peterson, whom Tierney neglected to mention is often funded by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based school choice advocacy group with roots here in Dayton.
Most surprising to me was that Tierney reached way back seven years to cite this 1999 study:
“The most scientific way to compare schools is with the kind of randomized experiment that has been conducted in New York, Dayton and Washington. In these cities, students from low-income families were given a chance to apply for school vouchers. After the vouchers were awarded by lottery, researchers tracked the voucher students in private schools and compared them with a control group: the losers of the lottery who remained in public school.
After three years, the white and Hispanic voucher students were doing as well as their counterparts in public school, and the African-American voucher students were testing a full grade level higher than the blacks in the control group.
Don’t remember this study? Since it included Dayton, I remembered it. Let me help refresh your memory. This is the Paul Peterson led study that saw it’s conclusions renounced by the research group compiled the data. Here’s an excerpt from a story that ran in the Dayton Daily News in 2000:
An educational research company that compiled data for a school voucher study that showed blacks did better at private schools says gains in one city were overstated by the lead researcher.
The study, led by Paul Peterson, a government professor at Harvard and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, examined three privately funded experimental programs in New York, Washington and Dayton.
It showed significant gains, based on scores on standardized math and reading tests, for black students who received vouchers to help pay for private school.
Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, which gathered data in New York, has issued a statement that calls the findings premature and cautions against jumping to any policy conclusions, The New York Times reported in Friday’s editions.
`If you ask the question,When I offered students vouchers, did I make a difference in their test scores,’ right now you come away saying, `No, there’s no impact’ ” said David Myers of Mathematica.
Researchers admit the gains among black students were concentrated heavily in Washington, where the improvement was twice as great as in New York and one-third greater in Dayton.
But Peterson stood by his conclusions, saying, “An average is average.”
The study measured test scores among 1,400 poor students given vouchers worth $1,700 a year to attend private school.
Researchers found that between 1997 and 1999, black children on vouchers raised their percentile rankings on standardized math and reading tests on average by 6.3 points.
Their scores were compared with a control group of students who were not awarded vouchers by lottery and remained in public schools. But the study, released about two weeks ago, found no similar improvements among other ethnic groups.
Advocates of voucher programs used the study to bolster support for their cause. But critics of vouchers criticized the study initially, saying it was tainted because it was done in cooperation with pro-voucher organizations supporting the three programs.
This was the best study Tierney could find to bolster the case for private schools? There hasn’t been a more definitive or independent study in seven years? I’m not sure how much he helped the cause.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite Posts
Finally, new schools
NOTE: Today’s story had an error. Cleveland opens in January and Belle Haven and Wogaman open in October.
Dayton’s school construction program is a big, complex project that has taken a long time to bear fruit, but this month the city will begin to see its 2002 tax levy dollars pay off.
Here’s a photo of what the new Kiser Elementary School looks like on the inside:
(Thanks to DDN photographer David Munch for this photo and to DDN intern Nicole Lark, who taught me how to post photos at GOTB)
I think the very first planning meeting for the Dayton schools construction project that I went to was in 1999. If that seemed like a long seven years of waiting, the new schools will soon seem like they are opening all the time. Here is the schedule for when the 15 schools already in the pipeline will open:
2006
July: Kiser Elementary School
October: Belle Haven Elementary School and Wogaman Elementary School
2007
January: Cleveland Elementary School
July: Fairport Elementary School (interim name that will likely change for a new school at Gettysburg and Kings Highway)
September: Ruskin Elementary School
November: Stivers School for the Arts
December: Kemp Elementary School, Louise Troy Elementary School
2008
January: E.J. Brown Elementary School, McNary Elementary School (at Westwood Park site)
February: Thurgood Marshall High School (replaces Colonel White at the Roth site)
April: Horace Mann Elementary School
September: David Ponitz Career Technical High School (replaces Patterson next to Sinclair Community College), Dunbar High School
Click here for the complete list of which schools will be rebuilt vs. torn down.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, School Construction
Predestined to flunk
Should a teacher try to pre-determine that 25 percent of their students are going to get a D or F on every test? I don’t think so. But one teacher featured in this week’s Carnival of Education, hosted by Mike at his Education in Texas blog thinks this is the way to make a test.
Sounds like he needs to read this story about standardized test creation.
See, I thought tests were supposed to measure how well a group of students learned material. If everyone in the class learned really well, the’d all get A’s and we’d celebrate, right? But this approach to testing presumes there should always be about 10 percent who flunk and 15 percent who get D’s, no matter how well the teacher teaches and the kids study.
Imagine if they used this approach on your state’s driving test, deciding ahead of time that one in 10 people are just simply going to flunk and never get their licenses because the test will be designed to “differentiate” them into the bottom group. Sound fair?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Testing, The Carnival of Education
Top 10 college majors
A nod to the teacher/blogger Chem Jerk who’s quiz pointed me to this list.
Before you click “continue reading” quickly jot down your prediction for the top 10 college majors. Then see how close you are to the real list. I’ll even get you started with big hint — journalism is not in the top 10, but both of my college majors are.* And another major closely associated with this blog is on it TWICE.
Here’s Princeton Review’s list with the most popular major first:
Business Administration/Management
Psychology
Elementary Education
Biology
Nursing
Education
English
Communications
Computer Science
Political Science
Some quick observations:
—For an “undesirable” profession known for a lack of respect and low starting pay, teaching is surprisingly popular.
—There’s a noticeable lack of science and engineering on this list. About 10 years ago, I wrote a story about how biology, a long-dissed “boring” major, was surpassing physics as the most popular science major thanks to the sudden explosion of exciting biology-related research in genetics, forensics and other areas. It appears that trend has held.
—Do we really need that many people with expertise in psych