Division I regional track finals
Fenwick graduation 2012
Ponitz graduation 2012
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > November
November 2006
Bill Gates: Small isn’t so big anymore
(Bill Gates, education philanthropist)
There was a little rumble in the education world earlier this month that I’ve been meaning to write about because even a little tremor at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation can have aftershocks throughout the education landscape.
Tom Vander Ark, who built the foundation’s education program into the influential powerhouse it is today, is departing the organization. (A big nod here to my pal Alexander Russo at This Week in Education who’s been tracking the change in outlook at Gates for much of the year and predicted the Vander Ark departure.)
It was Vander Ark who really pushed the Gates emphasis on small schools as an antidote to failure. And, perhaps not coincidentally, just a few months ago the foundation backed away some from the idea that small schools by themselves can make significant change.
Recently, the Seattle Times recapped the Gates experience with small schools and their now realization that perhaps school structure matters less than curriculum and instruction.
As the story states, the original small school idea was born of studies that showed high performing high schools were often small. Gates himself sometimes cited high powered New England prep schools as examples.
The foundation began throwing tons of money as schools that would agree to be redesigned either into separate, small schools or as smaller “schools within schools.” Its even had an impact in Dayton, where new high schools are being designed with self-contained wings for up to 400 students with the idea each wing could virtually operate as an independent school, sharing common building space like the gym, cafeteria and media center but combining only for activities like sports teams and band.
But the bottom line is that so far these schools within schools have had trouble operating efficiently and the overall performance of Gates-influenced small schools has been disappointing. So now Gates is focusing on improving curriculum and Vander Ark is looking for work.
Teachers, what experience have you had with the small school idea?
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Sports math: From radical to mainstream?
(Shaun Alexander, fantasy football star and teaching tool?)
A few months ago, I highlighted a college education course that was written up in the journal “Radical Pedagogy” for its use of an NBA “fantasy team” of sorts to teach aspiring educators about the need for multiple measures of student performance.
Today, the all-sports cable network ESPN is touting the story of an eighth-grade teacher who lets kids pick fantasy football teams to help them learn math.
Can fantasy sports as a lesson plan go that quickly from “radical” to a potentially emerging mainstream trend? Perhaps.
Not familiar with fantasy sports? Here’s how it works. A group of people get together and draft “teams” of pro athletes in a given sport. Let’s use football as an example. My fantasy football team has 14 players and each week I have to choose seven to “play” — a quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end and one kicker. I get points every time my players score a touchdown or kick a field goal or extra point, plus bonus points for gaining lots of yards. My team’s total points are compared against my opponent for the week. The team with the most points wins.
Fantasy sports are a new phenomenon. Sports journalist Dan Orkent (more recently the first ombudsman of the New York Times) is credited with starting perhaps the first such league with friends who followed baseball in the 1980s. The idea is to allow the sports fan to feel what it might be like to own or run their own professional team — they pick the players through a draft, make trades, choose who starts, etc. And it’s fun. I’ve been playing fantasy football since 1991, and I’ve dabbled in fantasy baseball here and there.
Back when I first began playing, fantasy sports were math intensive. All those yards and points had to be tallied, added and compared to see which teams won each week. Now the Internet has made fantasy games incredibly automated. I followed every yard Shaun Alexander gained for Seattle Seahawks on Monday as my team’s scoring was instantly updated online before Alexander had even gotten up off the turf and returned to the huddle on every play.
There was a recent news story I read that profiled Sports Illustrated magazine’s new head of fantasy sports coverage. Much of the story was about how the magazine realized how mainstream fantasy sports had become in recent years, especially among younger fans, and what a big untapped market it was for them. Now the magazine includes a fantasy sports supplement for readers who are under 35 (notice that at 38, I am too old to be considered a serious fantasy sports player).
So are fantasy sports a smart avenue to use for teaching math to kids? I think it’s not a half bad idea.
There are now fantasy sports leagues for an incredible array of endeavors — fantasy golf, fantasy NASCAR, even fantasy bass fishing. Seriously. So it would be easy to let the kids’ own interests guide the process.
What you really get once you start playing is a huge data set of player outcomes — in football it would be yards gained, points scored, etc. If all students in a class were managing their own teams, there would be endless mathematical exercises they could undertake that might be interesting:
—What players in the league have scored the highest percentage of their teams points?
—How much would the worst player on each team need to increase weekly scoring output to equal the production of the best available free agent?
—What players were most over-valued and most under-valued in the draft?
—What is the probability a quarterback will equal his weekly scoring average based on his past performance against this week’s opponent?
I’ll be honest, I’ve done the math on some of those very questions in my league just for fun. When was the last time any eighth-grader you knew did math just for fun? For kids who are interested in sports, or even those who just like solving practical, real-life problems, it would seem fantasy sports could be a way to get them to see that math can be fun, interesting and useful.
But I know my bias here. I already enjoy fantasy sports. What’s your take on this math-teaching strategy?
(Image credit: Club card house)
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
Mayor candidate vies for school board
David Bohardt
It was pretty interesting to learn Monday that former mayoral candidate David Bohardt wants to join the school board. Bohardt was one of seven applicants for Clayton Luckie’s open board seat and part of an applicant pool that was pretty strong — certainly much stronger than the sorts of applicants the board was getting seven years ago when I first began covering the district.
Bohardt is easily the highest profile person to seek a school board post in at least a decade. The increasing quality of folks who are interested in the board is a good sign by itself that more thoughtful people are paying attention to the city schools and have more faith that the district can do better.
The candidate list brought a few questions to mind:
1. Will Bohardt get the job?
He’s certainly a strong candidate who is well connected, knows the city and has an appreciation for the important role the district plays in the success of the city and the region, even if he does not have an education background. Still, this decision is not cut and dried. There are at least a couple other strong candidates also with interesting experience and perspective that could be useful to the board.
Another question is whether Gail Littlejohn will view Bohardt as a potential ally or as a potential rival. Bohardt would be another strong-minded personality who already tangled with the board on the issue of historic preservation of old schools in the past.
2. How will the board dynamic change?
In 2001, Littlejohn and three allies took over total control of this board and began running the show their way. Fortunately for them, the rest of the board was open to their ideas and all seven members were generally in step through 2005, a remarkably harmonious period for what had frequently been a divided school board prior to 2001.
But since last year, four board members have left, including two of Littlejohn’s 2001 Kids First team. Doniece Gatliff lost to Joe Lacey in last fall’s election, robbing Littlejohn of her best friend on the board and adding to the board a member who has occasionally challenged Littlejohn on the issues.
Then Tony Hill and Tracy Rusch moved out of state. Hill was replaced by Lee Massoud, an experienced financial manager who now heads the board’s finance committee. Stacy Thompson took Rusch’s place. The two have generally been in step with Littlejohn’s approaches to the issues.
Luckie was independent-minded but worked fairly well with Littlejohn. His departure means a majority of the board will soon be newcomers who have served less than two years — Massoud, Lacey, Thompson and the new board member.
Littlejohn clearly still leads the board. Yvonne Isaacs is a close ally and Mario Gallin also is generally supportive. Even with the changes, finding four votes won’t be too difficult too often. But her hold over the board also is clearly diminished. Depending on who fills Luckie’s spot, there’s at least the potential for less harmony when the issues get hot.
3. Should a teacher be on the board?
When I started covering the district in 1999, the board had three ex-teachers. Now it has none. Not that there’s anything magical about having a teacher on the board. In fact, many critics felt the teachers on the 1999 board added little value. Still, an informed ex-teacher recently removed from the classroom certainly ought to bring some valuable perspective that could be useful for the board.
There are two ex-teachers among the six applicants this time. There’s also a lawyer who just graduated the district as a top student 1999. It will be interesting to see who the board chooses. Stay tuned.
(Image credit: DDN file photo)
UPDATE: There is a seventh applicant for Dayton school board that I inadverdantly left out of Tuesday’s story — John Wardell is self employed in public relations and has applied for open school board positions in the past. He ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign for school board last year. I’ve updated this post to include him in the numbers.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Education’s future: Will we do what works?
(Students at the Dayton Early College Academy, an experimental school that borrowed some of its core concepts from the KIPP model)
Poverty is a powerful roadblock to student success, but it can be overcome. To breach the achievement gap, schools need more than typical resources so they can provided extended programs with more hours of instruction.
But it can be done, as demonstrated most notably by the KIPP charter schools around the country. The question is how effectively a KIPP-style model can be replicated on a wide scale in America’s urban areas, and if as a nation we have the will and the willingness to pony up the extra cash it would likely take.
That’s the message of a lengthy but very useful primer on the state of education in America written by Paul Tough in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine called “What it takes to make a student.” (Since the magazine was in print by Saturday, I’ll forgive the Times for ripping off my blog headline from that day: “How to make a teacher.”)
The story already has been dinged by some critics for covering old ground on some of the hot education issues. That may be true for the real policy wonks, but my hunch is the step-by-step explanation of some of the research that Tough highlights on the effects of poverty and parenting styles is news to more general followers of education issues.
And these are important trends. Fairly recent discoveries such as the “word gap” are driving lots of changes in education policy, especially the push for more and better early childhood education. Plus, there’s lots of good practical information for parents, such as how to talk to your kids in a way that makes them smarter.
Tough also makes the argument that charter schools have served their purpose by providing a “laboratory” of sorts through which KIPP and other innovators honed more effective programs. As he states in the story, critics rightfully point to poor academic performance of charters compared to traditional public schools. And I’d add that most charter schools are not especially innovative, using off-the-shelf curriculum and school designs rather than experimenting. But if the KIPP-type models work, perhaps that alone will prove the charter movement was worth the effort?
Perhaps. That may depend on whether those programs are practical for use on a wide scale in public schools. The best charter school I know is the SEED school in Washington, D.C., which removes kids from their troubled neighborhoods and boards them at the school while they learn. It works great — so far every graduate, no matter how low income, has gone on to college — but it’s three times as expensive as a typical public middle/high school education costs. Just because it works doesn’t mean we should pluck all our urban kids out of their homes and place them in public boarding schools.
Or look locally at Dayton’s ISUS Trade and Tech Prep high school, which teachers practical workforce skills to dropouts while helping them reclaim some level of academic success. They also get kids who might otherwise be lost to graduate, but at a cost that requires vigilant private fund-raising. ISUS could never do what it does on the state subsidy alone.
On the other hand, KIPP and like models use some strategies that we’ve already seen copied in other public schools — an emphasis on character, rewards and consequences for good and bad behavior, a heavy focus on math and reading, frequent testing, 24-hour access to teachers by phone.
Still, probably the biggest advantage of KIPP is the longer school day, longer school week and longer school year many of the schools employ. Tough says they provide up to 60 percent more instruction hours than typical schools. KIPP may be right when it argues that much extra time is needed to catch up kids who have fallen behind. On the other hand, many charter schools that employ their model rely on very young, idealistic teachers and the schools have high teacher burnout rate.
Sustainability is a big concern with the KIPP-style approach. Keeping it going on a broader scale is almost certainly going to depend on spending more in high poverty areas, as Tough argues. That’s where the future of this reform gets tough. If we know what it takes to erase the achievement gap but we find it will be very costly, with Americans have the will to go forward with it?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning, Young Children
How to make a teacher
At first glance, it would seem a new Hoover Institution study contradicts research I’ve written about in the past that showed new teachers need more than just content knowledge to be effective in the classroom.
But when you look at the recommendations from Hoover, I think the researchers from prior studies might agree with their conclusions.
Hoover looked at reading and math scores in New York over five years for elementary grades and found teachers who followed “alternative” certification routes (usually shorter and less instructive than what traditional certification requires) did as well as their traditional teacher peers after two years when it came to raising student test scores. The report argues there should be minimal standards for getting into the classroom but careful selection after two years of just the high performers to continue as teachers.
A couple of things jumped out at me here. The first is that the teachers in the study had at least some sort of “alternative” training, which is different than the no training some opponents of certification argue for. Second, the report notes that teachers with alternative training perform less well than their traditional peers at first but that the differences disappear in two years.
That actually jives with the Michigan study I cited in the past, which shows new teachers who knew their subject matter well (usually a good predictor of teaching success) but were untrained struggled at first to help kids learn. That study suggested there are some core teaching skills new teachers must learn to be effective.
Both the Michigan and the Hoover studies seem to suggest that new teachers with good content knowledge may be able to learn those teaching skills pretty quickly. In the Hoover study, it looks like ones who made it through two years had probably begun to discover effective teaching strategies on their own.
And both studies seem to at least hint that it’s a good idea to identify those alternative route teachers who are succeeding and support them, while counseling those who don’t measure up to find a different line of work.
(Image credit: www.gamedip.com)
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Happy (?) Thanksgiving
This is a tough one for me. I believe in honesty. I believe in history. I believe in telling kids the truth. But if I were a teacher on Thanksgiving, would I do this:
“Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he “discovered” them.”
Is it wrong for kids to dress up and celebrate Thanksgiving in school programs across the country?
I don’t know. According to the historian in the CNN story, at the first Thanksgiving actually was a polite cross-cultural event in which native Americans and Pilgrims basically got along and shared a meal. The peace didn’t last long and the arrival of the Europeans ultimately was the harbinger of many bad things to come for the native peoples of this continent.
But at least for that brief moment in time, everyone was cordial.
Is that enough? Is it dishonest to promote Thanksgiving to kids as a great lesson in the fellowship of man? Put yourself in Bill Morgan’s shoes. What would you teach your kids about today?
(Image credit: www.timesnews.net)
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
The politics of homework
In his online Class Struggle column this week, Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews takes on two recent books that bemoan what they describe as the escalating homework load piled onto American kids in recent years.
But Mathews counters with a strong opposing view, using the same statistics cited by the authors to show that while homework is up, to demonstrate time kids spend on it is still small compared to the time they spend on other activities, most notably playing video games or watching T.V.
I’m inclined to side with Mathews on this issue.
I think the homework crush possibly is a problem in some high end school districts, but for many schools, expectations for class preparedness (which can only be achieved through at least some review and independent work at home) are perhaps not high enough.
But I’ll make two points that lean toward the anti-homework side:
—Good homework is never bad, but bad homework is a waste of time. I like homework that truly adds to learning — extra reading on the subject, hands on challenges to put concepts learned into action, etc. But sometimes teachers assign wasteful busy work. I’m thinking in particular of photocopied worksheets from dubious lessons in subpar textbooks or other low quality sources. I see these sometimes covering schools and kids usually hate them. But good homework? I’m all for it.
—Kids should be taught effective study skills. In fairness, many kids do know what they need to do to be successful and just choose not to do it. That is an infuriating problem for teachers and I don’t have a solution. But sometimes kids who are decent students really don’t know the sorts of work they should be doing on their own that could make them into excellent students. But rarely are students actually taught study skills. And it’s often the self-guided exploration of a subject that can turn a kid on to a topic.
—At times, some coordination among teachers could be helpful I’m thinking of high schoolers now, who sometimes report that their English teacher took an extra two weeks talking about Hemmingway and now is rushing to cover Fitzgerald, leaving just two weeks for them to turn in a long paper on Fitzgerald instead of the planned three weeks. Meanwhile, math and science teachers have the big semester exams planned for the same week the paper is due. Sometimes teachers forget that there is a world out there the kids live in besides their class. Inevitably, homework can really pile up for kids at certain times of the year. If teachers communicated better with each other, perhaps they could coordinate in a way that could avoid such a crush.
What’s your take on homework? Is there too much or too little of it?
(Image credit: Salon.com)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Cuts plan delayed again
Dayton school Superintendent Percy Mack said today that the district will not announce this week the revised plan for $9.4 million in cuts — including teacher layoffs — that is scheduled to go into effect in January.
The news that cuts were being considered was first made public on Oct. 21. The board then voted on Oct. 25 to approve a five-year financial forecast that included the proposed cuts. At that meeting, Mack said there was a chance some cuts in academic programs could be removed from the plan and replaced with cuts from outside the classroom. He said a revised plan would be ready in “a couple weeks.”
Two weeks later, on Nov. 7, Mack and board President Gail Littlejohn said the revised plan would come soon, certainly before Thanksgiving. Today, Mack would not state a new deadline for the revised plan.
But other factors should still force final decisions within three weeks.
The teachers’ contract says anyone being laid off must have 30 days notice. The original proposal said most cuts would go into effect on Jan. 7, which means the board would have to notify those folks no later than Dec. 8.
Coincidentally, the union and the board just set a new date for talks on a new contract — Dec. 8. In theory, those who worried the board could use the threat of deeper cuts to force union concessions should be able to rest easy. Unless things change, the cuts will have to be decided before the two sides next sit down to meet.
Meanwhile, students from Stivers School for the Arts picketed the board offices this afternoon. The group had planned to address the board tonight, but the meeting was canceled when board member Clayton Luckie resigned. State law requires a full compliment of board members before a meeting can be held. Luckie, who was elected state representative on Nov. 7, was appointed last week to fill the last month of Dixie Allen’s term.
The Stivers students are upset about proposed cuts in adjunct faculty, who provide the art and music instruction that the students say make Stivers a high performing school.
Mack said today that he is “optimistic, but not overly optimistic” that some academic cuts can be restored. What cuts stay and what comes out of the plan remains to be seen.
He said the holdup in announcing the revised plan centers around two problems. The first is the need to carefully check to be sure all changes adhere to union contracts. A worst case scenario is to discover after the fact that someone who was told their job is safe must later be cut because of mistakes in following procedures.
The other problem is high school scheduling. Electives will be cut and administrators must be sure those cuts don’t end up preventing students who are following individualized plans toward graduation from getting a course they need to graduate.
I’ll have more in tomorrow’s Dayton Daily News.
UPDATE: Here’s today’s Ddn story about the delayed plan.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Why do teachers really leave the profession?
Last week, a debate erupted in the comments under this post about teaching — Is it an easy job or hard job? Are teachers well paid or under paid? Do people flock to the profession to avoid real work or do they flee teaching jobs because the work is so hard the jobs are not worth the money?
Those are hot debates. But some of the answers, perhaps, aren’t that tough. And a recent Wall Street Journal story may provide an answer to the question of how big a factor money can be.
Let’s start with the relative ease or difficulty of teaching. I was asking a teacher I know about this question. Many smart people in tough professions look at teaching, with a work day that ends by 3 p.m. and the summer off, and think that sounds like a pretty cushy job.
The teacher’s reply? It might be easy in some districts to be a BAD teacher, but good teaching is challenging and consuming work. This teacher said it may take a lot of brain power to be an engineer or long hours to be a lawyer but there a unique challenges in the classroom that would stump a lot of hardworking people. It’s not easy to do a good job helping 25 kids each overcome their individual learning obstacles, the teacher said. It requires a lot of strategic trial and error. Plus there are situations teachers deal with that other professionals would find intolerable, like taming unfair and combative parents or enduring unhealthy work environments.
And, the teacher added, good teachers put in the hours — coaching, moderating, leading committees, meeting kids before and after school for extra help, grading with extended comments late into the night.
This put me in mind of a post I wrote a few months back about a study that looked at smart, knowledgeable people who became second career teachers and the skills they lacked on their first tries in a classroom.
Then there’s the question of pay. Are teachers really underpaid?
Last week in the Wall Street Journal a story addressed the question of what motivated high performers to leave a job. Better opportunities for advancement? Bad bosses? Bad work environments? That’s why most companies believe people leave.
What do the high performers say motivates them to leave? Most of the time it simply came down to money (I think a subscription may be needed to follow the link):
“In a survey of about 1,100 U.S. employees, 71% of top performers listed pay among the top three reasons they would consider leaving their employer. Yet in a sister survey of 262 large employers, 45% of employers cited pay as a top-three reason workers leave. Instead, employers thought promotion and career-development opportunities were more important. Another oft-blamed culprit, relationship with a supervisor, was cited by 31% of employers but 8% of top performers.
The results suggest employers don’t fully understand the needs of their top employees, frustrating companies’ efforts to battle turnover as the labor market improves. “Employers have probably gotten caught up in this myth that employees leave their manager or they leave for better opportunities,” says Laura Sejen, director of strategic rewards at Watson Wyatt. “Perhaps we’re being a little unrealistic about the fundamental element of rewards, which is pay.”
Which brings me back to the question of why people leave the teaching profession. Teachers say many get out because it’s a hard job and they can’t hack it. But those who leave frequently report that it was the low pay that drove them out.
So perhaps the Journal story lends credence to the argument that teachers are underpaid? If many people leave the profession (one study by a national teachers’ union said 50 percent of new teachers bail within five years) and this study shows good people most frequently leave jobs because of dissatisfaction with pay, perhaps many of these people bail because they feel underpaid?
I’ll end with a story. The last time I considered buying a new home the realtor driving me around neighborhood after neighborhood asked me what I did. When I told her I wrote about education for a newspaper, she got very excited.
“I used to teach kindergarten in a Montessori school,” she said, as we turned a corner in her sparkling and pricey luxury sedan. “I really loved teaching.”
Of course I had to ask. Montessori trained teachers are in demand thanks to a strong movement of expensive Montessori private schools, so in theory could command a higher salary than the average elementary school teacher. So why did she leave teaching?
Well, she told me, her husband was a broker for housing loans — a one-man operation. He was doing well but working his brains out. Many of his friends were husband-and-wife operations — one partner sold homes while the other arranged the loans. The friends kept telling them how much more money they could be making if she became a realtor.
So finally, she took the plunge. She quit teaching to start selling homes. Business was good, she said. They were making much more money this way. But she really missed the kids, she said. Someday she hoped she might figure out a way to go back to teaching. But not while there was so much money to be made in real estate.
Permalink | Comments (25) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
The fate of Patterson(s)
(Patterson Career Center)
Hmm. School officials seemed a little perturbed that they were out of the loop on the city’s plans for a development project near Fifth Third Field that, oh by the way, depends on the school district selling the Patterson Career Center so it can be torn down.
The city-school district relationship could be headed down another bumpy road, much like when the district bought the Reynolds & Reynolds buildings for a new headquarters four years ago over the vehement objections of the city.
The city has long been interested in the Patterson property, a riverfront site close to the ball park. But the district has not been interested in selling or swapping it. Built in 1981, the school is the newest building the school district owns (outside of just-constructed schools) and is in better shape than any of its other buildings. The working plan right now is to develop Patterson into a Montessori school in hopes of attracting parents who work downtown after a new techinical high school opens in 2008 next to Sinclair Community College.
John Carr, the distirct’s construction chief, said if the district were to give up the Patterson site, it would want another good downtown site for its Montessori school.
Which got me thinking about the “other” Patterson.
Let’s step back in time about five years ago. Back then, most of the city’s career tech programs were located at the old Patterson High School on First Street, with a handful of program a short distance away at the career center on River Corridor Drive — the site now in question.
The district was in financial crisis and then-Mayor Mike Turner offered a cash-generating idea — close the First Street building and sell it to the city. At the time Turner said the city considered the First Street site prime downtown real estate that had high potential for redevelopment. (At the same time, downtown businesses supported the deal because of their perception that Patterson kids contributed to unruliness on the city streets, a suggestion school officials hotly disagreed with.)
In the end, a deal was struck — the city would pay $5 million for the building over five years. The district closed the school and moved the kids out.
There was just one small problem — the city reneged on the deal.
About two years later, city officials said they didn’t have the money and backed out, leaving the district holding the bag. The school has since sat empty.
And that’s why it comes to mind now. The First Street building is not conducive for use as an elementary school. But it is a pretty large site. Perhaps the school could finally be torn down and the site, which both sides once agreed was prime downtown space, redeveloped as a showcase Montessori elementary school?
Such a school would be just blocks from Riverscape, Fifth Third Field, the downtown library, Victoria Theatre, the Schuster Center, Memorial Hall and the art museum. Plus, it would be closer to downtown office buildings than the River Corridor site.
What would it take to pull that off?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
The father of vouchers, charters
(Milton Friedman)
Internationally, Milton Friedman was best known as a groundbreaking thinker on economics. But his ideas also have had a profound impact on education in the U.S. and indirectly helped change the face of public education right here in Dayton.
Milton, who died Thursday, was memorialized in a long front page obituary in the New York Times.
Milton, put simply, was the uber libertarian. He believed democracies should have the smallest possible governments and that markets should shape nearly all facets of life. In a simple essay in 1955 entitled “the Role of Government in Education” he argued the U.S. should abandon government-funded schools and instead give “vouchers” that parents could take to any private school and use to purchase education for their kids.
It was Friedman’s ideas that were picked up by Ronald Reagan, who began pushing for experiments with school vouchers in the 1980s. Dayton native Checker Finn, who worked in the U.S. Department of Education under Reagan, later pushed for expansion of an in-the-system, voucher-like program that became known as “charter” schools.
In both cases, many proponents hoped to bring market forces to the table in education to try to force bureaucratic public systems to innovate and improve performance.
Nowhere in the U.S. have market forces had a greater impact on an urban education system than here in Dayton, where we’ve been a leader in the percentage of kids going to charter schools. This is partly thanks to Finn and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which was founded here and continues to influence education locally.
And Ohio, of course, became the test case through which the U.S. Supreme Court decided vouchers were permissible under the constitution.
Nobody can argue Friedman’s remarkable influence on the world. Education was just something of a hobby for him, and look at the impact his ideas have had there. Whether his was a good or bad influence on education is still open to debate.
(Image credit: www.ideachannel.com)
Permalink | Comments (23) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
I’ll wager this trend takes off
In Houston, a couple of schools recently joined about 40 nationwide who have created websites for students to make anonymous tips.
They can use the system to alert school officials to rule breaking, suspicious behavior or to raise a red flag if they think a friend needs help (even if the “friend” is them).
Proponents say this approach is the natural next step in a digital world toward ensuring student safety. Critics argue such a system can invade students’ privacy and subject innocent kids to suspicion.
Interestingly, the most common use of the system so far is to alert school officials about students who are self-mutilating, or cutting on themselves. This is an increasingly common depression symptom, one that guidance counselors and schools are reporting seeing an alarming spike.
Personally, I like the idea of a Net-based anonymous tip line. It’s a sensible, student-friendly approach that can help school officials track what’s common knowledge among students — a pretty powerful information source. And on an individual basis, a red flag here and there could help prevent bad things from happening.
Some common sense is called for. Administrators will have to remember the students are innocent until proven guilty. But if they use the info for leads to follow up on and signals for where to dig deeper, they should be able to navigate the privacy concerns.
(Image credit: bakersfieldgraffiti.us)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Student Health and Safety
Talking in “txt msg speak” on tests
This week’s carnival of education (a weekly compilation of the best education blog posts from last week) hosted at What it’s like on the inside highlights this post from Ms. Cornelius about a decision in New Zealand to allow students to write in “text speak,” an abbreviated language for communicating on cell phones and in computer chats, on national exams.
What are the chances states in the U.S. would ever allow that on state tests? (I think the chances in Ohio are roughly zero percent).
Permalink | | Categories: The Carnival of Education
Mack and Lucas answer your questions
After tonight’s school board finance committee meeting I cornered Dayton school Superintendent Percy Mack and Treasurer Stan Lucas and did your bidding — I asked them some of the questions that Get on the Bus readers have been asking here in the comments.
Here’s what they had to say:
—Administrative cuts. The teachers’ union has argued administrative cuts in the proposals were less severe than the classroom-based cuts and told its members that there is one administrator for every 16 teachers.
Lucas said roughly 15 percent of the district’s administrators are paid for by state and federal programs and do not affect the general fund budget, which is where the crisis lies. Administration, overall, makes up about 5 percent of the district’s budget, he said. This is a contentious issue. School leaders argue that many administrative jobs are required by the state and federal programs, or needed to support those programs, but shouldn’t count against the district since no local money is going toward them.
But union leaders and other critics say the district is top heavy, that it could cut from the central office to save money that could be used to restore academic cuts.
Mack said top school leaders have pared administrative jobs consistently since he took over in 2002 and that he made a conscious effort to move administrators to state and federal funding. More administrative cuts are still to come, he said.
“The administration is far smaller than it was in 2002,” he said.”When I came here, state and federal programs bought things, not people. Now they pay for people.”
Lucas said he would try to get me breakdown of administrators — how many are at the schools, how many are funded by state and federal programs and how many work at the Ludlow buildings. I’ll let you know what those numbers look like when I get them.
—Athletics. Some teachers have complained that the district is cutting back on high school courses and adjunct faculty but planning to maintain expensive sports like football even into next year. They argued that the district’s rationale that sports like football, basketball and volleyball generate revenue or are high interest is not enough to choose them over academic programs.
Dayton does not make huge revenue off its sports programs. In fact, a portion of Tuesday’s meeting was spent on the continuing concern of Welcome Stadium. By year’s end, the district plans to make Welcome an “enterprise fund,” one that is supposed to be a business enterprise and expected to pay for itself.
The district has had a hard time figuring out exactly what Welcome costs because its operations are so intermingled with the athletic department funds. This move is designed to separate it out, in part to make it easier to judge the success of the district’s new partnership with the University of Dayton to jointly manage the stadium.
Mack said basketball is probably the one sport that pays for itself through ticket sales, but that the other choices for what sports to save were driven by a desire to offer some athletic programs in the areas kids had the most interest.
“You have a lot of participation in those sports. They fill those teams completely,” he said.
—Adjunct arts faculty. Mack said observers should view the cuts globally, rather than pit one program vs. another and argue for taking one cut out to keep another program in. The cuts, he said, were designed to be spread across all areas of the operation.
In addition to cuts in adjunct faculty for arts, he said, there are also cutbacks in course offerings and larger class sizes at other top academic programs like the Dayton Early College Academy and Colonel White’s academic magnet program.
Mack said the initial discussions about adjuncts might have resulted in even deeper cuts sooner but that administrators backed off some of the early cuts.
“It’s hard to have any area that’s untouched,” he said. “We want to keep the staff in place everywhere as much as possible. We really pushed those cuts back as far as we could.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
The Stivers dilemma
(Stivers freshman Danielle Snyder pickets Wednesday’s board meeting)
At Wednesday’s school board meeting, a group of Stivers School for the Arts students came out to protest the board’s proposal to cut hours for adjunct faculty who teach private music lessons at the school.
This proposed cut is a good example of the difficult choices faced by the board, and Mary McCarty’s Sunday column did a nice job of capturing the view of students and their concerns about how such a cut would affect their learning.
Stivers is one of Dayton’s highest performing schools, with test scores that rival well-regarded suburban high schools. Under the dual leadership of Liz Whipps, who runs the arts programs, and Principal Erin Dooley, Stivers marries academic and arts instruction together.
Arts students there can take private one-on-one lessons from their instrument teachers, who usually are professionals who teach as adjunct faculty. In the proposed cuts for January, the board tentatively plans to eliminate those lessons.
Cutting adjuncts is a tough call, but they ended up on the list of reductions in part because those one-on-one lessons are viewed as essentially “extras.” In looking for places to cut, administrators sought to avoid reductions that would affect the academic classroom. Music lessons traditionally are arranged/paid for by families outside of school. The same rationale was behind the elimination of sports like soccer and swimming — activities that kids can still get elsewhere on their own dime.
Those ultimately were viewed as extras when compared with, say, assistant principals and reading and math coaches, both of which administrators fought hard to save. The priority was on the general classroom. Next year’s proposed reduction for Stivers —- another 25 percent of adjuncts — is a much deeper cut that I’m told the board has more qualms about. But that decision can be avoided if the levy passes.
The counter argument on the private lessons is that they are part of what makes Stivers great and unique and that messing with the district’s most successful academic program could be a very bad idea. Plus, the estimated $100,000 cost savings is pretty small (Cutting 10 elementary school assistant principals, by comparison, would save nine times as much). And, whether its music lessons or soccer or swimming, the simple reality is many Dayton kids can’t afford to do it own their own.
In Mary’s column, Superintendent Percy Mack said everything possible has been done to avoid cutting the classroom. What’s your view? Do private music lessons qualify as “classroom” cuts or are they, in fact, “extras?”
(Image credit: Ron Alvey, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (58) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite Posts
I am not a nerd
If I have proof that I am not a nerd, does that mean I must be cool?
Well, according to this test I am less nerdy than 65 percent of those who have taken the test. I’m sure the self-selecting nature of a nerd test has nothing to do with my relative “coolness” on this measure.
I found the test thanks to my pal Eric Berger at the SciGuy blog at the Houston Chronicle’s website. (Eric reports he is 37 points more nerdy than me.)
Go on. Give it a try. See if you can out nerd me.
(Image credit: http://hal.tipos.com.br/)
A return of the school funding wars?
(Governor-elect Ted Strickland)
For a guy who didn’t talk much about education during the campaign, governor-elect Ted Strickland sure is talking a lot about education now.
Immediately after his victory, Strickland called for renewed efforts to make education effective and affordable from pre-school through college.
By the end of the week he was even more ambitious, calling for a new system of school funding for Ohio and invoking the four Ohio Supreme Court decisions in making his case for a fundamentally different system that the legislature largely ignored in the 1990s.
One way to look at this is that there is little Ted Strickland alone can do to change school funding. The legislature still remains solidly Republican, and legislative leaders have exhibited no urgency for a dramatic funding overhaul.
On the other hand, the governorship is a powerful platform from which Strickland can bring pressure on lawmakers if he can make a convincing case for change to regular Ohioans. There has been no strong voice for funding changes in any of the state’s major elected offices during the era of court decisions. Of course, what’s lacking so far is a proposal of any substance. Only when we see the details of how Strickland might like to fund schools can Ohioans really begin to weigh the merits of radical change.
Interestingly, Strickland lobbies for school funding change by citing the Supreme Court’s orders for change. But would today’s court make the same decisions? After last week’s election it’s now seven Republicans on the court, so probably not.
(Image credit: AP)
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Fairborn teachers approve contract
Teachers in Fairborn just announced they ratified a 1-year deal with a 3 percent raise by a 197-11 vote. Union spokeswoman Marilyn Kaple said the big issue was health care and the new deal includes “logical, acceptable and appropriate” increases in premiums and co-pays. She said the school board’s prior offers included new health care costs that would have eaten up the raise they were offering.
Kepple said teachers will support a levy expected in May in hopes of providing steadier funding for the district going forward.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Littlejohn and Lynch talk money
Here’s what Pat Lynch, president of the Dayton teachers union, said Wednesday when I asked her for her view on the state of the school district’s finances:
“I disagree with a lot of the ways the board has spent money the last few years, but I know and believe the bulk of the problem is state funding,” she said.
In reply to a similar question Wednesday, Gail Littlejohn, president of the Dayton school board, noted the district has gone nearly 15 years without an operating levy:
“I think we waited too long. We probably should have had a levy in 1997 or 1998,” she said. “State funding is an issue for everyone and its the real source of the frustration.”
There’s more.
Given the disrict’s money woes, I asked Lynch what steps the board should be taking to find money for a raise for teachers and to avoid cuts and layoffs come January:
“We need to see (cuts) in the administration instead. I think there are a lot of folks we could lose there and not feel it,” she said. “The only administrative cuts proposed for this year were people who will retire in June anyway,”
I told Lynch’s view to Littlejohn. Here’s her reply:
“Those are valid arguments,” she said. “We have to have discussions where we say there are no sacred cows. And there are none. Our eyes are on every position in the district.”
In other comments of interest from these two key players in Dayton’s labor dispute, Lynch addressed the anger many of her members feel and Littlejohn explained the reason for the way the rejected contract proposal was crafted.
Lynch said teachers have been through crises like this before and many feel they’ve been burned before.
“The big issue with members is there is a lot of mistrust,” she said. “There are people here with a lot of history and memory.”
Littlejohn said the reason the board proposed a one-time payout rather than a traditional 1 percent raise is concern about next year’s budget.
“We can’t ratify any contract unless we know we have the money to pay for it,” she said. “We have to know we have the money to operate next year. That’s why we have the provision there to reopen discussion next year on wages and benefits.”
Even so, Littlejohn said there may be a way to create wiggle room that would allow for a traditional raise.
“There may be some flexibility there,” she said.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Cuts, layoff details by Thanksgiving
There was a ton of education news yesterday and limited space in the jam-packed post-election Dayton Daily News. So I’ll try to post some of of the news that didn’t make it into this morning’s paper here today.
The most important news that was in my story for today but later cut out for space was a promise from both Percy Mack and Gail Littlejohn that whatever cuts are coming in January would be detailed no later than the week that schools break for Thanksgiving.
“I don’t want people going into the holidays not knowing if they have a job or not,” Littlejohn said.
This pushes back the timeline that Superintendent Percy Mack established on Oct. 25 when I quoted him saying administrators would have a revised cost-cutting plan in about two weeks, which would be right about now. The new deadline essentially gives administrators another two weeks.
Board President Gail Littlejohn reiterated to me that the board had something of a “eureka” moment during its Oct. 21 meeting when the plan for cuts was first detailed. That plan was crafted by administrators who were told to start with the assumption that all areas of district operations needed to find about 11 percent in cost reductions that could be implemented in January and then deeper cuts for the next school year.
Because academic programs are by far the largest portion of the budget, the cuts there were pretty painful, including eliminating teacher jobs, high school electives and sports teams. Toward the end of that first meeting, board members began asking about deep non-academic cuts that were in the plan for next year, such as job reductions in grounds, maintenance, food service and transportation. Some of these cuts would really affect service, like delaying maintenance response time for repairs and reducing mowing significantly.
Still, the board asked, could some of those cuts be moved forward to January to reduce some of the academic cuts?
Littlejohn said Wednesday that administrators are working to answer that question, trying to bring non-academic cuts forward to January wherever possible and practical and then trying to decide what academic cuts are highest priority to restore.
So that’s the latest from the board’s side on the January budget cuts. I’m certain teachers will be quick to point out that Mack’s first deadline for revising the cuts coincided with Wednesday’s contract vote by the teachers and now the new deadline pushes a decision back for two more weeks just as contract talks are about to resume.
I’ll have more on the labor talks and the district’s budget later today.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Dayton teachers vote down contract offer
Busy night tonight. Teachers meeting just broke up and the school board meets in 15 minutes. Quickly, Dayton teachers voted down a tentative contract offer from the board tonight. I spoke to about a half dozen teachers afterward and none said they voted for it. There was no vote total released, but the teachers I spoke with said there was very little support for the deal that would have given a 1 percent one-time payment in place of a raise.
I’ll have more later. I spoke with union President Pat Lynch in probably our longest conversation during these negotiations. In short, she said the members want the raise to be permanent, not a one-time payout, and that they believe the board has the money for a better offer and that it should focus more cuts on administration rather than teachers.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
An omen of sorts?
In noticed in today’s Dayton Daily News that Fairborn schools settled their labor dispute yesterday.
Interesting timing, since Dayton teachers meet at 4 p.m. today at Dunbar High School to vote on the proposed contract offered by the school board. The sentiment of the teachers in comments here are pretty pointed. It will be interesting to see how the vote plays out.
If you’re a Dayton teacher, please come up and introduce yourself if you see me there. I’ll be the guy hanging around outside the meeting with a notebook in hand. I’d love to get your comments on the deal and today’s vote when the meeting is done.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Election 2006: What’s it mean for education?
(Governor-elect Ted Strickland)
From this morning’s media reports, it seems the Democrats have taken the U.S. House and appear likely to also take control of the U.S. Senate. In Ohio, we will have a Democratic governor for the first time since 1991 and the D’s picked up several seats in the statehouse (although they are still well short of a majority).
That’s some serious change. And it has implications for education.
Let’s start on the national level.
No Child Left Behind
Democrats will now be in control when it comes time to reauthorized the controversial No Child Left Behind Law, which many of them have derided in political campaigns despite its bi-partisan birth in 2002. I see edublogger Alexander Russo doesn’t think they’ll be eager for big changes, but you can bet there will be changes that come with reauthorization and even small changes can have a wide ranging impact. There’s sure to be different priorities with Democrats leading the process rather than Republicans.
Ohio’s education priorities
For at least a decade, Ohio has been focused around standards and choice on the education front. The state has created one of the nation’s model testing programs, however it is controversial.
Ted Strickland mentioned education in his victory speech Tuesday, saying he wanted to do more to make early childhood education and college affordable. He is on record calling charter schools in Ohio a “rip off.”
So it would seem here that priorities will be different. As on the federal level, a big question in general is how the two parties work together. The need to do so is a big change, especially in Ohio where Republicans have pushed an education agenda all but independent of input from the other side. Strickland promised Tuesday to work cooperatively and House Speaker Jon Husted echoed that sentiment. That will be an interesting relationship to watch.
The state board of education
The state board in some ways is a smaller player than you’d expect when it comes to setting Ohio’s education priorities. But the board has tremendous impact on the details.
Susan Haverkos’ surprise win in the Dayton area’s third district replaces a politically-connected Bob Taft appointee —Tom Gunlock — with someone from outside politics. In an interview late Tuesday Haverkos described her goal of promoting more parent involvement and expressed some concern about the state’s approach to standards and testing.
Haverkos, who described herself as a conservative who is open-minded about teaching intelligent design, could also be pulled into that hot debate. On the same day she was elected, the chief intelligent design proponent on the board, Deborah Owens Fink, was soundly defeated after a nasty campaign.
Dayton will get a new school board member
Clayton Luckie was elected to the Ohio House in Dixie Allen’s old seat as expected. Look for him to resign quickly from the Dayton school board. The board, then, will be looking to replace the three-term board member in the next 30 days.
And you won’t see Luckie chumming around with Husted as Allen did. While Allen, who has now switched parties and was easily beaten by Judy Dodge for county commission, was a supporter of charter schools and one of the major proponents of vouchers, Luckie is stridently opposed to those initiatives. Instead, he’ll bring a new, informed voice in support of the issues of urban school districts.
While Allen and Husted shared similar views on many issues, Luckie and Husted are polar opposites on most of those issues.
(Image credit: AP)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Schools and Politics
State board of ed shocker — Haverkos wins
(Susan Haverkos)
The big education news story in the Miami Valley on election night is the upset victory of a little known ex-PTA president, Susan Haverkos, over two considerably more well known and better funded opponents — incumbent Tom Gunlock and Oakwood school board member (and radio commentator) Jim Uphoff.
Haverkos said she spent about $3,500 on her campaign, about a third of what Gunlock and Uphoff each spent. Her numbers were really remarkable. She won her home county, Butler, by a 2-to-1 margin and also was the top vote getter in Miami and Darke counties — both pretty far from her stomping grounds. She even gave Gunlock a run for his money in Montgomery County, where the Cenerville resident should have made big gains.
Haverkos is an accountant in a home business. She and her husband have been in business for themselves since 1986 and mostly oversaw heating and air conditioning work for hotels — until Sept. 11, 2001. Anticipating the travel industry’s decline, they branched out into buying telecommunications equipment from failed dot.coms and reselling it, which is what they do now.
They have one child, a daughter, who attends private school. Haverkos said she got involved in her daughter’s public school partly to learn more about gifted programs, even leading the PTA, before pulling out in frustration as the curriculum narrowed to make time for more proficiency testing prep.
Haverkos’ only endorsements came from two conservative groups emphasizing family values — Family First and Citizens USA. She describes herself this way: “I’m very conservative and family values. But I also very much respect all parents, conservative, liberal or in between. They should have more input in public schools.”
She offered that she believes there is a sensible middle ground on the question of teaching intelligent design in schools, a highly controversial issue in Ohio which has divided the state board of education.
“We need to be able to question science always,” she said. “Just look, we don’t have Pluto anymore.”
Haverkos said the debate over intelligent design is too polarized.
“The people who fight so hard to keep Darwinism in the science curriculum, most of that is the very extreme people trying to keep everyone from questioning anything about the theory,” she said. “When you stop questioning science it becomes an ideology.”
The real question, she said, is what to tell kids about the origins of life.
“Did we come out of bubbling ooze or did we come out of something else? That question, to say its been solved, is a stretch,” she said. “For my daughter, I want her to learn there are all these views out there. I don’t want her to learn only my view. Preparing her to be an adult you have to prepare her to come up with her own conclusions based on hearing all those sources.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Take your child to vote day
There’s two things I hope you’ll do today. The first thing is I hope you vote. The second is I hope you’ll take your children with you to the polls, let them watch while you vote and talk to them about who you’re voting for and why.
That’s my plan this morning. Think of it as a one-on-one civics lesson. It’s really our best hope for intelligent, engaged citizens in the future, that they learn from adults around them that political participation is an important duty, a thoughtful exercise and that it actually can be exciting and fun.
The first election I really remember getting fired up about was 1980. I really liked John Anderson, the Republican who ran for president as an independent against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. I was just hitting my teens then. Once I decided he was my favorite, I actually rode my bike downtown to his local headquarters and volunteered, passing out bumper stickers and literature in town.
I think I liked Anderson because he wasn’t Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan. He was sensibly middle of the road and, perhaps because he was an independent with virtually no chance of winning, he spoke his mind while the two party candidates stuck to a careful script.
My parents tried to explain that while they liked Anderson’s ideas but were afraid to waste their votes on a candidate with no chance in a close election. My dad showed me a political cartoon of a guy flipping a coin. The caption said, “Heads I vote for Reagan. Tails I vote for Carter. If the coin lands on its side, I’ll vote Anderson.” I didn’t think it was funny.
I was so naive that I was really disappointed as I watched the returns come in on T.V. that night and Anderson was getting trounced. I began rooting for him to at least get one electoral vote. He didn’t.
Still, I learned a lot from that experience and most of all, it sparked my interest in politics, news and world events. Perhaps it was even a first step toward a career in journalism. But it all started with parents who engaged me in their political discussions and encouraged me to think for myself about the issues.
(Image credit: University of Tennessee libraries)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Teachers sound angry
(School board President Gail Littlejohn)
Based on the reaction of teachers who have posted here since Thursday, I’d say the tentative agreement between Dayton schools and its teachers’ union may have a bumpy ride. Teachers meet Wednesday afternoon to vote on the deal, with the board meeting that night.
I’m a little surprised by the amount of Gail Littlejohn bashing going on in the comments here. Littlejohn can be a polarizing figure. She has a very direct style that can rub people the wrong way, plus some feel she exhibits something of a “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” vibe at times.
On the other hand, community leaders across a diverse spectrum widely credit Littlejohn’s leadership for straightening out many of Dayton Public Schools’ worst problems.
Littlejohn’s critics usually cite these failings — her lack of an education background and what they see as a corresponding lack of appreciation for classroom challenges and needs; their belief that she micromanages the school district; and their sense that her primary goal is self glorification.
Her defenders say Littlejohn has very little to gain personally from her work with the school board. She has pledged not to run for any other office and said she decided to make turning around the schools her retirement job out of a sense of duty to her community and her own disillusionment with the state of the schools, her friends argue. And they say the chaos the schools were in upon her arrival has been greatly reduced even if there is still a ways to go.
It seems most of the commenters here are in the critic camp.
Here’s a few other things from the comments that surprised me:
—Calls for a strike. It’s not hard to see why many teachers are unhappy with the proposed contract. Some have expressed to me a desire to send their negotiating team back to at least make the 1 percent permanent rather than a one-time payout. But really, a strike helps nobody here.
There are radical elements on both sides of the fence that wouldn’t mind seeing the other side’s resolve tested. Some teachers think the board would cave quickly and pay out more if there was a strike. Some on the administration side believe enough young teachers wouldn cross the picket lines to force the union to back down.
But so far, good sense has prevailed. A strike would seriously jeopardize the chances of passing a levy in May and beyond. Levy failures would mean more pain for everyone. I think the key players on both sides know this.
—Leaks. Let me just say this about Thursday’s DDN story on the contract details. We wrote the story because there was high interest in the details of the deal and we had reliable information from very good sources. The lead negotiators on both the union and administration sides were equally unhappy that the information came out ahead of their planned release.
—Misconceptions. No, Gail Littlejohn’s car is not paid for by the district. She drives her own car. Baldridge training has strong school board support but is less controversial than some here have portrayed it. I’ve spoken to some teachers and administrators who think it’s really helped them manage schools. About an equal number have told me they think it was a big waste of time and money. Retrofitting the Ludlow buildings cost more than expected, but there was no “marble floor” installed.
(Image credit: DDN)
Permalink | Comments (73) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
No raise (sort of) for Dayton teachers
Sources tell me the deal struck Wednesday between Dayton teachers and the school board includes no raise for the current school year. Instead, teachers will get a one-time payment equivalent to 1 percent of their annual pay. The advantage to the district is that base pay is unchanged from last year, which makes future raises slightly smaller going forward. For the teachers, they get something rather than nothing — the “no raise” that the board originally proposed.
The deal also keeps health care premiums steady. This was a major issue for the teachers, who last year had to pay extra when the district’s health care costs exceeded a pre-set cap.
I also hear this may be a two-year deal, with the second year including a clause that allows negotiations to be re-opened if “economic conditions change,” such as, I assume, a levy failure in May. Teachers will get packets detailing the contract on Friday and vote on it Wednesday at 4 p.m. at Dunbar High School.
What other details have you heard about the deal? Please post them in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (66) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Fordham cracks down
The once highly regarded W.E.B. DuBois charter school in Cincinnati is in danger of being closed again.
You may recall that the school’s founder was criminally charged for alleged financial misdeeds and that the school’s sponsor is a nationally-known charter school champion, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Well Fordham has stepped up its scrutiny of its affiliated schools, according to a story by Jen Mrozowski in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer.
In an evaluation, Fordham said DuBois and its sister schools need to get their acts together or face closure.
This is more in line with the “tough love” approach to sponsoring that Fordham promised to provide when it began overseeing schools in Ohio. But it remains a stunner that DuBois could go so quickly from what some thought was the best charter school in the state to one which Fordham describes in a report as having “scant evidence of a coherent education program.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Teachers, Dayton schools reach accord
Pat Lynch, president of Dayton’s teachers’ union, tells me her group reached a tentative contract agreement with the school board this afternoon. She said no details will be released until after the union informs its members about the details on Friday. A ratification vote is set for next Wednesday. If the members approve the deal, any possibility of a strike would be averted.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Close a brand new school?
(Springfield’s new Schaeffer Middle School)
It’s a real nightmare scenario. A school district builds all new schools in partnership with the state’s building program, carefully tailored to the enrollment of that district at the end of the construction.
But in just a couple years, enrollment drops anew to unprecedented lows. The district enters a financial danger zone is is taken over by the state. An oversight commission, with veto power over the school board, is looking for cost savings and begins to actually say out loud that one of the brand new schools may have to close.
This is the situation in Springfield where my colleague Gail Cetnar reported last week for the News-Sun a state oversight committee wants the district to study the idea of closing a new school.
Dayton, facing its own enrollment and fiscal trouble, may want to keep an eye on what happens.
With regard to Dayton, I’ll caution you right off the bat by noting that enrollment has been fairly steady the past two years and some observers believe the district’s charter school capacity may be close to its limit with 34 charters operating here.
And Dayton already has reduced the size of its construction program because the state’s enrollment projections forsee a smaller school district down the line. The past two years, Dayton has done a far better job of estimating its enrollment than in the past and school officials are confident that the new schools will draw students into the district, stemming any possibility of further decline.
Before coming to the Dayton Daily News, I covered Springfield schools at the News-Sun, and I have to admit I was shocked to see the district’s enrollment is now down to 8,400. It was about 13,500 when I covered schools there just nine years ago. The state drove Dayton crazy with what school officials thought were overly conservative enrollment projections, but its goal is to avoid just what it could be soon facing in Springfield — closing a school it spent millions to build.
Springfield and Dayton are alike in some ways — both are challenged by competition from charters, private schools and have families that frequently relocate to suburban districts as children grow older. And Springfield, like Dayton, depends economically on the shrinking manufacturing sector. As those jobs dry up, some are moving out of both cities.
Springfield’s experience shows that even a construction program that is co-planned with the state can over-estimate enrollment. Like Springfield, Dayton is building a network of neighborhood elementary schools that don’t lend themselves well to redeployment of kids if one school must close.
Dayton still has a long road ahead for its building program, and ample opportunity to make sure the district is “right sized,” to borrow a term often used by Superintendent Percy Mack and school board President Gail Littlejohn.
(Image credit: Bill Lackey, Springfield News-Sun)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: School Construction
