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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > April
April 2007
Dayton vs. Lakota: What we learned
In today’s paper, our goal was to explore how Dayton schools spend their money. We thought we’d do that by comparing them to another district.
Our first instinct was to choose another large urban district as a model, figuring like districts would share the same challenges. But for a year or so, I’ve had Lakota in the back of my mind, ever since our paper ran a story about how this fast growing suburban district had passed Dayton in enrollment size.
I had a thought — could we learn more by comparing Dayton to a district that is about the same size but otherwise is completely different? Unlike other urban districts, Lakota is growing, it’s an academic high performer and it’s generally regarded as a good steward of its tax money.
So it was fascinating to learn that these two very different districts have fairly similar spending patterns.
Dayton spends a ton more money but it also has unique challenges with poverty and special education issues that are off-the-charts big. This is largely what inflates its per pupil spending figure.
On the other hand, I think it was clear that Dayton, even beyond those programs, has a very large administration. Even Superintendent Percy Mack acknowledged there likely is room to cut. (This isn’t in the story, but he hinted that on Tuesday he will announce deep cuts in administrators as well as teachers if the levy fails.)
And the sensibility of some of the board’s individual spending decisions certainly are open to questions, such as the purchase of the Reynolds headquarters.
What caught your eye in today’s stories? Did anything you read reaffirm or cause you to rethink any of you positions on the district and its upcoming levy?
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
How Dayton spends its money
(Special education student Nisha Carter and teacher Cassandra Hoagland at Gorman Elementary School)
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
Dayton’s school system has falling enrollment, one of the highest poverty rates in Ohio and an enormous number of special-education students.
Lakota, located in Butler County, is the third fastest growing school district in the state, serving suburban residents with few poor or special-needs students.
But financially, the districts are a closer match than they seem on the surface. With a 15.17-mill tax levy looming for Dayton on May 8, a comparison of the two is an instructive journey through Dayton’s spending habits.
Last year, Lakota passed Dayton to become the seventh largest Ohio school district, with just over 17,000 students enrolled to Dayton’s approximately 16,000.
At roughly the same size, their spending patterns speak volumes about the priorities they have — and the challenges they face. Their budgets are, perhaps surprisingly, not that different.
In Lakota, 67 percent of its budget goes directly to the classroom. In Dayton, it’s 64 percent.
In Lakota, administrative costs are 2 percent of the budget. Dayton’s are 3 percent. Even busing costs line up when Dayton’s expense for transporting charter school students is removed.
Dayton does spend much more overall. It has far more administrators.
And special education and poverty programs carve out a separate universe of services unknown in suburb districts such as Lakota.
Even so, sometimes they face the same issues. Three years ago both needed better administrative space. Lakota built a cheap new administration building. Dayton spent big money to buy a former corporate world headquarters.
Dayton officials say they have spent money wisely. In 2000, the district spent just 47 percent of its budget on classroom education. Since that time, $44 million was committed to a huge reform plan that school leaders say has paid off in higher test scores.
“We knew our spending had to be different to focus on our main business of educating children,” Superintendent Percy Mack said. “Today, it is.”
For one private duty nurse at Gorman Elementary School, the school day begins not at the schoolhouse door but at her student’s home, where she dresses and feeds a severely handicapped child. Then she rides the bus with him to school.
The student’s class has a teacher and two teaching aides for six students, in addition to the private nurse and two school nurses on duty. All of this, by law, is paid by Dayton Public Schools. For more several severely handicapped students, Dayton spends more than $50,000 a year.
Half an hour down the Interstate 75 toward Cincinnati, Lakota is a sprawling school district in a fast-growing suburb that last year passed Dayton to become the seventh-largest school district in Ohio. But although Lakota is similar in size to Dayton, its students — and the district’s responsibilities because of them — are completely different.
Where Dayton has 20 percent of kids in special education, Lakota has 9 percent. And by one Ohio Department of Education poverty measure, 65 percent of Dayton’s students qualify as poor, while just 8 percent do in Lakota.
Those two key differences — special education and poverty programs — create a large administrative structure in Dayton that helps drive its spending much higher despite the comparable enrollments.
The Dayton Daily News is comparing the districts’ spending to gauge how much of Dayton’s administrative costs can be attributed to poverty alone. The answer is some, but not all.
Dayton’s core budget of $182 million is a third higher than Lakota, spending an extra $47 million. Special education alone accounts for nearly half of the difference. Dayton outspends Lakota by a staggering $23.5 million on special education.
Poverty programs — federal, state and locally funded — also grow Dayton’s budget. Even so Dayton has far more administrators than its peer to the south.
The special education divide
Handicapped students are just one facet of special education in Dayton, where one in five students receives some services.
“Special education for us is behavioral, emotional, learning disability and health issues,” Superintendent Percy Mack said. “When you’ve got one in five, it plays a major role in everything you do.”
Only 29 of 613 Ohio school districts have a higher percentage of special education students than Dayton. The district has 191 classes dedicated solely to special education. Gorman is a separate school just for 102 severely handicapped kids.
Lea Loree, a physical therapist assistant at Gorman, said the goal is always to get the students to “graduate” to regular education classrooms, but the district has a duty under federal law to provide the students a “free and appropriate education.” “It’s exciting when they graduate our services,” she said. “But it’s expensive. Lots of general education funds get pulled in here.”
With less than half as many special education students, Lakota manages its programs largely at the school level rather than in separate programs. Schools typically have a special education classroom, but even the most medically fragile children are included in regular classrooms where they still are served by specialists.
Dealing with poverty
Poverty accounts for a key difference in the size of Dayton’s administration when compared to Lakota.
“I can see 20 or 25 people here who are strictly devoted to poverty issues,” Lakota Treasurer Alan Hutchinson said as he paged through a list of Dayton administrators. “That’s something we just don’t have here.”
High poverty districts like Dayton — its schools rank 20th poorest in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Education — qualify for special state and federal aid, some of which requires staff to manage those funds. In all, Dayton has 14 administrators who are paid through state and federal grants. Another seven administrators paid by general funds are devoted entirely to addressing poverty-related problems, said Ed Sweetnich, Dayton’s human resources director.
Even more school district staff have at least some poverty-related duties, he said. Some of these extra services bring with them more state and federal money. Those extra dollars help drive Dayton’s per-pupil spending figure so far out of proportion to neighboring districts that school officials argue they are no longer even comparable figures.
Dayton last year spent about $13,767 per pupil while Lakota, for instance, spent $8,049 per pupil.
Lakota’s figure stays lower partly because it has less cash flowing through to address poverty and partly because of an administrative focus on a trim operation.
Poverty is a growing problem for Lakota, as low-income families are moving into the fast-growing district along with those with higher incomes. But the associated costs just don’t compare to Dayton, said Hutchinson, whose district is the 62nd richest among 613 districts in Ohio.
“They have a huge number of programs, nowhere near what we have,” he said.
In fact, Lakota has just one administrator with responsibility for poverty programs, but it’s only part of his job. He has no staff and borrows from the superintendent’s office when he needs secretarial help.
Lakota runs a very lean administrative ship. All told, the district has 72 administrators at a total salary cost of $5.7 million, including 25 working in the central office.
Dayton, on the other hand, has 157 administrators at a total salary cost of $10.9 million with 70 working in the central office.
Dayton has many positions that don’t exist in Lakota. For example, Dayton has eight administrators with the “executive director” title. Lakota has none. Dayton also has almost twice as many directors, associate directors and assistant directors.
Some of those extra administrators are common in urban districts, Mack said. Against those peers, he said, Dayton compares better.
“A lot what we have is just based on what we have to mange in a district like ours,” he said. “If you look at other districts in our situation we might be even less than some of those.”
Dayton has been shrinking its administrative staff, Mack said, and will continue to do so.
“There probably some areas we can’t justify,” he said. “But there are some that we probably can.”
Charters inflate busing costs
One other key budget difference between Dayton and Lakota is busing, but there’s a twist.
On the surface, Dayton appears to spend a staggering 41 percent more than Lakota to bus roughly the same number of students to school. Dayton’s annual busing cost is $18.7 million a year, while Lakota contracts busing to a private company at an annual cost of about $13.3 million.
But the details show the costs are much closer than they appear. About $4.8 million of Dayton’s busing budget is the district’s cost for transporting students to charter schools.
Under Ohio law, school districts are responsible for transporting all kids — whether they attend the school district, private schools or charter schools.
When charter school busing costs are subtracted, Dayton’s transportation cost — including a $2.8 million contract with RTA for high school students — comes to $13.8 million, nearly the same as Lakota.
‘Video gaming’ at school?
Both Dayton and Lakota offer unique extras to their students.
The difference is Dayton’s extras are aimed at the basic task of getting kids excited about school so they won’t skip class, misbehave or lose interest in schoolwork.
In Lakota, the extras go beyond the sort of instruction and activities parents might expect in most districts.
For Dayton, creating unique instructional options causes one obvious disparity among administrators — Dayton has 20 more principals than Lakota for roughly the same enrollment.
Why? Because one focus of Dayton’s academic reform efforts has been to create small learning communities designed to increase individualized attention kids receive. Some examples include two single-gender schools, an early college academy, an alternative school, a school for the severely handicapped, a technology design school, a school for emotionally disturbed kids, and an academic magnet program at Colonel White High School. Lakota has nothing comparable.
On the other hand, kids at Lakota who want to take foreign language have more options that just the traditional French and Spanish. They can take German, Latin and even American Sign Language.
Then there are after school programs. Among the many offerings are intramural sports, ballroom dancing, video gaming and guitar.
How can the district afford all those extracurriculars? Because they don’t pay for them — parents do. Many of the program costs are covered by user fees, a luxury not available to high poverty districts.
“They are self-supporting,” Hutchinson said. “They are not funded out of the general fund.”
(Image and graphics credits: Jan Underwood and Greg DeGroat, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories
Five years filled with change for Dayton
(A kindergarten class at the Charity Adams Early Academy for Girls)
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
Superintendent Percy Mack can rattle off the advice he got from teachers five years ago for how to reform the troubled Dayton school system.
“Here’s what they said was broken,” Mack said. “There was no solid reading program, no consistent focus, teachers needed training and we needed to get media centers open if we are going to be serious about reading.”
Today, Dayton schools have a standard math and reading program across all elementary schools, Mack said. They have more effective teacher training programs, he said. And the media centers, or school libraries, are open full-time in all schools.
As Mack and the school board crafted the reform plan, teachers used to joke about the “flavor of the month” reform, mocking the district’s frequent reinventions of its academic approach.
But the new school board leadership — a coalition called Kids First — vowed to put an end to that. Yvonne Isaacs, a Kids First team member who now is school board president, said everyone pledged to stay the course with the plan.
“It was researched, based on data and we weren’t going to waver from it,” she said.
Over the next four years, Dayton spent $44 million on a reform effort with the main goal of improving literacy and math, teacher training, student behavior and student preparedness for school.
Isaacs said the payoff has been higher test scores that helped the board meet its goal of rising out of the state’s lowest rating category of “cademic emergency.”
“It’s very clear it’s worked,” she said.
Without the 15.17-mill, May 8 levy, the board says, much of the reform program would have to be dismantled.
Among the changes that were made under the plan:
New textbooks: The district’s books were largely out of date and differed from school to school, Mack said. The board chose new curriculum in each subject and bought new books to complement it.
Teacher training: Teachers needed specific training in new math and literacy teaching techniques to go along with the district’s new instructional approach, he said.
Resource centers: The district opened a truancy center to address students with absenteeism problems. It also put a parent resource room and liaison in each elementary school to handle parent concerns.
Alternative schools: Previously, Mack said, students suspended more than 10 days were sent home. Kids sometimes spent as much as 45 days out of school. The district instead beefed up its alternative school programs so those students leave their assigned schools but must continue to attend classes.
Pre-school: The district expanded pre-school programs at elementary schools with the goal of helping more new kindergarteners arrive ready for school. Smaller classes: Dayton hired more teachers to reduce class sizes below grade four to try to increase personal attention for each student.
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories
Lakota built when Dayton bought
Lakota’s new administration building
The former Reynolds & Reynolds world headquarters in Dayton
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
In 2003, two large southwest Ohio school districts had the same problem — inadequate and inefficient central office space.
In Dayton, the city school district’s offices were spread around the city at three sites, and the central office was crowded and worn out.
Things were worse in Lakota schools, where administrators were crammed into a small building and a handful of trailers.
Lakota’s solution was to build a 27,000-square-foot administrative center at a cost of $2.2 million, paid entirely with interest earnings from a school construction bond issue. The building houses 65 people.
Dayton, on the other hand, purchased the former Reynolds & Reynolds World Headquarters, a 220,000-square-foot building, for $15.5 million in general funds and spent another $4 million on moving expenses and renovations. The two-building complex houses 226 Dayton administrators and support staff.
The disparity in cost and space, along with continuing complaints from the public about the perceived opulence of the new administration building, raise questions about the sensibility of the deal.
“You’ve got to think about where we were and what was happening then,” said Dayton Treasurer Stan Lucas, a key player in brokering the deal. “We looked at other sites and considered other options. Of the options we had at the time, this was the best option.”
Lakota Treasurer Alan Hutchinson said building new was the district’s last resort. Their first instinct, like Dayton’s, was to buy a building. The only property the district seriously considered was a former Auto Nation paint and repair center, but the office space proved too small.
Lakota then considered a warehouse “design-build”; approach, but wanted a more user-friendly building. Ultimately, it followed some of the design-build techniques, constructing a cheaper, concrete building that is less sturdy than the typical school but suitable for office space.
“We looked at eight or nine options before we settled on this one,” Hutchinson said. “We wanted to find something cheap we could renovate, but at the size we needed, there wasn’t anything available.”
By building new, the district could tailor the space to its needs. As a result, administrators in Lakota make do with less than half the space — about 415 square feet per worker compared with 976 square feet per worker for Dayton in the Reynolds buildings.
Although Lakota paid more, brick-for-brick, to build new than Dayton did by buying and renovating space — $81.48 per square foot in Lakota compared with $70 per square foot in Dayton — Hutchinson says his district saved money by forgoing a traditional structure. That would have cost around $130 per square foot, he said.
If Dayton could have built new at $130 per square foot, but stuck to Lakota’s smaller space per worker, a hypothetical new building might have cost about $12.2 million to house the same 226 workers in just more than 93,790 square feet — a savings of more than a fifth of the cost the district paid for the Reynolds buildings.
But the reality Dayton faced in 2003 was complicated, Lucas said.
“We wanted a building that was very centrally located and could house all of our people in one location to better serve the schools and parents,” he said.
The district considered other downtown properties and its own buildings, including the former Roosevelt High School. The Reynolds property was the best option then and has saved the district money, Lucas said. Having all administrators downtown allowed Dayton to cut about 50 positions.
“Consolidation worked for us,” he said. “We saved nearly $6 million after we paid the debt service on the building.”
Lucas also argued having the district’s offices downtown was good for the city.
“It was good for downtown,” he said. “We brought a lot of people downtown. And it’s great for our parents, who now have one-stop shopping.”
(Image credits: Ron Alvey and Jan Underwood, DDN)
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories
Husted: This doesn’t help DPS with charters
Dayton Superintendent Percy Mack
Jon Husted called me Thursday, angry about Percy Mack being quoted in this Cleveland Plain Dealer story about the big urban school districts and their lobbying effort on behalf of Gov. Ted Strickland’s education budget proposals.
Among those proposals — shutting down vouchers, limiting charters and kicking for-profit charter management companies out of Ohio.
This, he said, is what he was talking about when he said Dayton should be cooperative with charters rather than obstructive.
But was what Mack said all that bad?
(Quick aside: a DPS employee called me Friday and sarcastically asked if I knew when the press conference was scheduled for Husted to announce his levy endorsement, now that the district claims it met his demands for offering old buildings to charters.)
Here’s the offending part of the Plain Dealer story:
The school leaders want legislators to know they are weary of watching students, as well as tens of millions of tax dollars, fly out of their coffers and into the hands of charter schools - independent public schools that are privately run but publicly funded.
“It really leaves a school district without stability,” said Dayton Superintendent Percy Mack. “You don’t know from year-to-year how many students you’re going to have.”
Why do you think? Should Mack be part of a lobbying effort that could harm charter schools? Or are the urban superintendents simply doing what they must to protect their financial backsides in the state budget process?
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools
Why endorsements (and money) matter
Thursday was the first deadline for election campaigns to file reports on their fundraising and spending. (There’s a second deadline after the election.) Dayton’s levy campaign report was interesting in terms of how much was raised, who was contributing and how much they gave.
The question was raised here on the blog recently about whether endorsements matter. I think they do for this reason — it’s a way to stare up the flag pole and get a sense for how the wind is blowing. On April 1, the Dayton levy flag seemed to me to be pretty limp. Today, I think it’s caught a reasonably strong breeze.
To pass a levy in Dayton, there are certain groups that must be on board. The Chamber of Commerece is a big one. So are the Urban League and the NAACP. So is the mayor, city commission and county commission. All those now are in the tent.
Also important are banks, big employers and big money individual donors. Do they believe in the cause? When you see them giving big money like $10,000 and $15,000 like they’re doing now, you’d have to say yes.
Dayton is still pretty far short of its ambitious $400,000 goal. But there may be other givers who didn’t make it onto this report. Still, a wide cross section of teachers, administrators and school staff gave, which is a good sign for the campaign committee.
There were even a few suprise donors. If you would have told me at any time in the first five years I covered this school district that the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation would ever give a dime to a Dayton school levy, I’d have thought you were insane. Fordham, one off the nation’s most powerful promoters of charter schools and its leader, Checker Finn, has been one of the most pointed critics of Dayton Public Schools through the years. But now Fordham’s Terry Ryan has endorsed the levy and Fordham is backing it with cash. Wow.
Overall, I think what we’ve seen in terms of endorsements tells us this — the levy has a fighting chance. Even with all this — endorsements, money and energy — a levy can fail. But if we were at this point in the campaign and there were big red flags in those areas — key endorsements or big donors missing — you could make an argument by now that the levy is certainly doomed. I don’t think you can make that case today.
Put your personal view aside for a moment. What’s your objective feel right now? Is this thing going to fail or pass?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Cuts could be 400 teachers
Dayton Superintendent Percy Mack told a crowd of people at a town hall meeting sponsored by the Greater Dayton African American Chamber of Commerce Tuesday that a levy defeat could bring 200 to 300 teacher cuts
He called me Wednesday to clarify. It’s looking like it will be more like 400 teacher jobs cut if the levy goes down.
Mack said, based on the average salary in the school district, it will take about 20 job cuts for every $1 million that needs to be cut. With $30 million in cuts looming, that comes to approximately 600 total jobs.
Of that, he estimates about 400 would be teachers. The district has roughly 1,500 teachers. That’s more than a quarter of the teaching staff that could go.
The district plans a complete detailing of the proposed cuts at its board meeting on Tuesday.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
DPS: Where are charter bids for schools?
I have a story coming Thursday in which Dayton school board president Yvonne Isaacs responds to Jon Husted’s call last week for the district to be more agreeable about selling old schools. (The story was followed Sunday by an op-ed backing Husted’s take.)
The funny thing is, she says the district already is doing what Husted wants.
Here’s what Isaacs cited:
—East End Community School. The district is negotiating to bring this charter school under its umbrella and into one of its school buildings.
—Fairview Elementary and Fairview Middle schools. A district lawyer says he sent letters to every charter school inviting bids on these buildings, as required by state law, but got no response from any of them.
—Roosevelt High School. Isaacs noted this large, much admired building was for sale for two years before the district decided to demolish it without any charter inquiries.
In response, I called Terry Ryan of the pro-charter Fordham Foundation for his take. He largely backed Isaacs, calling DPS the state’s most charter friendly district.
When Husted and I talked Wednesday night, he backed off some and said he is prepared to praise the district if this all proves to be true. He argued his central point was that this sort of cooperation is good for everyone. But he said he wanted to touch base with his Dayton charter sources, whom he said had grumbled about the district’s posture on buildings.
I asked him and Ryan if this whole thing could be about the former Julienne High School/Dayton Christian building that the district bought a couple years ago. Right now Stivers School for the Arts is temporarily housed there until its new building opens in a few months.
In some quarters of the Dayton charter movement, there has been a long running desire for a comprehensive charter high school. Currently there are charter high schools, but only “specialty” schools that serve small slices of high school populations, such as drop outs.
Some charter folks think the Julienne building — a nice school that’s in good shape, would be a great place for a charter high school. The problem is the district likes the building, too. It plans to reuse the school as part of its master plan, possible for special programs or for an elementary school.
The other problem is that high schools are costly, which is the reason there isn’t a comprehensive high school in town right now. Nobody has figured out how to make it work.
Husted acknowleged that his contacts are interested in a charter high school, although he didn’t know if Julienne was their specific concern. Ryan agreed that the charter high school idea is a a long-running discussion in the charter community.
Charter supporters, tell us your take on this topic. Is the district playing straight on old schools?
UPDATE: Here’s a link to today’s story about this.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools
Scenes from an American childhood: Fear factor
Freddy Krueger
Remember when kids went to the movies for scary stories that would keep us up at night?
My eight-year-old daughter, Claire, was shaken by something she heard from her friends the other day. It made her afraid to go to be or even play outside.
It was an awful, terrifying story of violence against a child. But you know what I found almost as scary? That it didn’t even occur to me for several days that the story might not be true. And, in fact, as far as I can tell the story is not true.
In today’s America, scary stories are routine. Parents and kids are accustomed to being terrified.
Claire’s been dabbling, with my supervision, in Club Penguin, a social networking site aimed at pre-teens which I wrote about previously.
The story she heard after school, from a friend who also uses the site, was that a Club Penguin member had broken one of the cardinal rules by giving out her home address and a man had come there and killed her three-year-old sister.
It’s a horrible, shocking story that prompted a long discussion with Claire about safety and lots of reassurance that something like this was not likely to happen to her.
It was only days later when I had a thought. If something like this actually had occurred, why hadn’t I heard about it? After all, I work at a newspaper, I write about children’s issues and the news media tends to go wild these days with scary stories about adult social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
So I went to the Net and began searching for the source of the story. I got nada, nothing. Not a single news story, blog post or Web reference anywhere to so much as a Club Penguin-related bullying case.
You know, I tend to be something of a party-pooper when it comes to tall tales. I’m always the one to debunk a friend’s forwarded e-mail advice about the dangers of static while filling your gas tank or drinking cold water after a fatty meal. If it smells fishy, I go to the urban legends home page, look it up and report to everyone who got the email that the danger is bogus.
So it is a little scary to me that a alleged horrible murder of a three-year-old didn’t even register to me as unusual enough to check out at first.
Still, days later I sat down with Claire and told her I was pretty sure the story was not true. She seemed relieved. She told me she had been afraid to go outside to play since she heard the story and she even had asked her younger sisters not to leave the house for fear they would be kidnapped right out of our driveway.
I’ve written before that the chances are very small that our kids will be victims of the worst kinds of violence. But that doesn’t keep us from imagining they might be.
I’m surprised the horror movie business hasn’t folded. Today you can stay home and be terrified.
(Image credit: www.youthink.com)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Young Children
How voters actually decide
(Retiree Barlyn Kerr in front of her historic Grafton Hill home.)
In today’s package of stories about the Dayton school levy (the first installment in a series examining the levy), we get a glimpse into what factors voters consider when they make up their mind about voting for or against new taxes.
And what we learned about the four families profiled is perhaps not what we expected.
How could a senior citizen on a fixed income with an expensive home vote yes for this levy? How could families with children attending the district consider voting no? They tell you in their own words.
The school board has framed this levy in the biggest of big picture terms. They have said the levy is a watershed moment, a chance to “break the cycle of poverty” in Dayton and produce a generation of the best educated Daytonians the city has seen in years by keeping the school board’s four-year-old reform plan going for another five years.
But interestingly, the average voter is not hearing that message, or at least not considering it as part of the decision about how to vote. Those decisions are far more personal, based on questions like “can I afford it?” and “does the district deserve it?” and “how will this affect my child?”
What did you find most interesting in today’s stories about the levy? Did reading the views of other voters change or reaffirm your view of the levy?
Here are all of today’s stories:
—The Dayton school levy: Will it be worth the cost?
—District’s effective millage lowest in the county
Voter profiles:
—Residents: Improvement claims dubious
—Family: We’re swtiching to private school
—Retiree: Levy costly, but crucial
Permalink | Comments (42) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Dayton School levy 2007
Scenes from an American childhood: Fun free zones
(A kindergarten class in Waynesville in 2004)
It’s finally begun to feel like spring here in the Midwest. Earlier this week the kids and I left our jackets on the hooks as we packed into the car for the ride to school. The temperature was expected to approach 70 that sunny afternoon earlier this week, a welcome change from several days of unseasonable cold and rain.
As the kids piled out onto the curb near the schoolhouse door, I said to them, “Hey, maybe you’ll get to play outside today.”
Kate, in kindergarten, looked at me curiously. “But Dad, I don’t ever get to play at school,” she said, with deep disappointment.
And she is 100 percent right.
Kate’s school does not offer full-day kindergarten. Why? That’s a good question.
Ohio doesn’t expect more — that’s the first part of the answer. For every kindergarten student, the state sends school districts half the per pupil funding that it sends for kids in grades 1 to 12.
And even though our suburban school district is generally considered one of the best around, it is not one of the few that has made full-day kindergarten a priority by funding it through local tax dollars.
All this despite a strong consensus among educators that full-day kindergarten has a positive impact on kids.
But even in half-day kindergarten, kids used to have more fun. A kindergarten teacher with nearly 30 years experience lamented to me recently that there’s no time in the school day anymore just for play.
Kindergarten used to primarily be about getting kids ready for school — teaching them about the rules and regiments of the school day, helping them learn to get along with each other and imparting to them pre-reading and pre-math skills to prepare them for the serious work of learning to read, add and subtract in first grade.
Not any longer. Now in many school districts the goal is to have kindergarteners reading by the end of the school year. To accomplish that goal, recess and most other downtime has been reduced or eliminated.
And the kids notice. Kate, who is six, is well aware that her grade is the only one that never gets recess. She has never once set foot on the school’s playground during the eight months of school so far. If not for weekly visits to gym and music she’d never leave her kindergarten classroom at all. That’s three hours a day of hard work every day mostly spent learning to read. Then they line up to go home or to after care.
Now, Kate is doing quite well in reading. Remarkably well, really. About mid-year this eager learner would sit next to me on the couch and try to sound out words in the headlines of the newspaper I was reading. Today she can handle a simple children’s book without any help.
But I wonder if the trade off is worth it. Most of us adults probably didn’t begin to learn to read until first grade and generally we seem to be getting by just fine in the world. When I recall kindergarten, I think almost exclusively of the friends I had and the great variety of educational toys and games we could choose from at playtime. (But then again, I went to full-day kindergarten nearly 35 years ago in a New Jersey school district that made it a priority.)
The 30-year teacher said that’s the way she prefers it. But the pressure today to get the kids reading is great. By third grade, kids, teachers, schools and school districts are judged on their reading scores in Ohio. Those judgments are made partly in response to No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law the requires schools to show ever-increasing progress on state exams.
So that’s what this change in kindergarten is all about — getting 100 percent of Kate’s class to pass that test so the school district can brag about the reading prowess of its nine-year-olds and keep the state and the feds off its back. It’s not because any research necessarily suggest a no-play kindergarten program is more educationally sound.
It would work as well, perhaps better, to extend the kindergarten school day — a method that much research supports as a way to improve the educational success of young children. But our school leaders have ruled that option out as too expensive and our state implicitly discourages a longer kindergarten day by declining to fully fund kindergarten.
So Kate is left with a high intensity, heavy workload kindergarten experience. And I worry a bit if she’ll view school as a grind instead of an exciting and fun place to learn.
(Image credit: Cox News Service)
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, School Funding, Testing, Young Children
Husted: I’ll support Dayton’s levy IF …
Jon Husted and Yvonne Isaacs
After Tuesday’s Dayton school board meeting, I was speaking to school board President Yvonne Isaacs. I wanted to know if she knew why the Dayton City Commission hadn’t yet endorsed the 15.17-mill school levy.
I had a theory. Could it be, perhaps, that the city was withholding its support unless the school district agreed to give up the Patterson Career Center property that the city badly needs to clear the way for an investor’s plan for a “ballpark village” around Fifth Third Field.
Isaacs shook her head.
“No, that hasn’t come up and its not something we would ever entertain anyway,” she said of the idea of a “trade” to earn the city’s endorsement.
On Wednesday night, two interesting things happened. First, the board got the commission’s endorsement. Second, the board got a different “trade” offer, this time from House Speaker Jon Husted.
Husted, a Republican from Kettering, was critical of Dayton schools the last time I asked him about the school levy but said he had no position on it back then in February.
On Wednesday, he was in town at Dayton View Academy for a rally to support charter schools. It was a huge event with more than 600 in attendance, some coming from as far away as Cincinnati and Columbus, protesting Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland’s budget plan, which would place limits on charter schools and dismantle the statewide voucher program.
Afterward, I asked him if he was going to take a position on the levy now. Husted said he thought there was a way he could endorse the levy. But what it would take, he said, is for the district to demonstrate a willingness to work together with school choice folks.
Dayton, he noted, has some empty buildings and will have even more as its construction program continues. It plans to raze nearly all of the old schools. Instead, Husted said, Dayton should sell those empty buildings to charters, some of which are in need of building space.
If the school board committed to doing that, Husted said, he could see himself backing the levy.
Late tonight I reached Yvonne Isaacs after a long evening. She had been to the city commission meeting followed by a talk with a neighborhood group in Dayton View, the same neighborhood where the charter rally was held.
When I told her about Husted’s offer, she reminded me of our conversation from Tuesday. Her position, she said, is the same, whether we are talking about the city commission or the speaker of the house. The board would not work any swaps to earn endorsements.
“I don’t think thats the right thing to do,” she said. “I think the progress that has been made in Dayton Public Schools — greater than and at a faster pace than anyone anticipated — really deserves to stand on its own merits.”
Husted should make his decision based on whether the district had earned his support, not if they were willing to trade to help his charter school agenda, Isaacs said.
What do you think about Husted’s offer and Isaacs response?
Permalink | Comments (38) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools
Is there any way to stop a school shooting?
(Virginia Tech student Jill Weikert at Tuesday’s memorial service.)
Unspeakably tragic. Heartbreaking. Just watching people who are part of the Virginia Tech family mourn today is soul shaking.
Naturally, we think of ourselves and our own children, friends and family. We think of our own schools. And we ask the question editors across the country asked their education reporters Monday — could it happen here?
The short answer is yes, but the chances are slim.
Is there anything we can do to make our schools less likely to be targeted? Yes. But if a warped, sinister individual is bent on creating havoc in your school, can they be stopped?
The disheartening answer is maybe not.
Let’s take these big, troubling questions one at a time.
Of course, this and nearly every other school shooting has demonstrated that this can happen anywhere. You know what’s odd about these killings? They rarely happen at the “dangerous” schools in what are perceived as “bad” neighborhoods (usually translated to mean inner cities).
Rather, they are almost always in places deemed “safe” — rural towns and suburbs.
Now, let me bring an important fact to your mind. The first is that, despite the terrible shock we feel when these incidents occur and the intensity of the media coverage (my own media company included), deadly school violence is very rare. It’s helpful to remember, and to remind your children, that these incidents are very, very unlikely to happen in your neighborhood.
So, yes, it can happen here. But it probably won’t.
Still, if there even is the slightest chance of an incident, it’s only natural to ponder what could be done to prevent it or minimize the danger.
Metal detectors? Random searches? Gun-sniffing dogs? Pat-downs at the door? A thicker wall?
Those approaches are not very effective, says Kenneth Trump, a thoughtful and often-quoted school security expert from Cleveland. But there are other less sexy but more effective methods that do make a difference.
Speaking at the University of Dayton last fall, Trump said the best defense is a a culture of communication in which everyone — kids, teachers, staff, parents, neighbors, etc. — are taught to be careful observers and to talk openly about issues of concern.
Too many schools want to shield kids from stories like what happened Monday in Virginia. I watch the news with my kids most nights when I am home, but last night I have to admit I couldn’t bring myself to switch it on and have to explain to them what happened in Blacksburg.
But we must resist the impulse to shelter. Kids need to know that they are safe at school, but they must tell people when they see or hear something out of the ordinary.
The thwarted plots to do harm get less press attention. The heroes in those cases are often regular folks — kids who heard something in the hallway, parents who noticed someone who looked out of place or staff who listened, watched and asked questions.
Those people, the observes and the communicators, are the ones who will keep your school safe. Be one of them.
(Image credit: AP)
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: School Violence
Breaking News: Another shocking school shooting
(Police evacuate students at Virginia Tech)
The New York Times is reporting 20 dead at Virginia Tech after a gunman opened fire on campus. Details are still coming out. This news is just a couple minutes old.
UPDATE: Folks, this one is going to be horrible. A national school safety group is already calling this by far the worst school or campus shooting ever, far worse than Columbine High School. With 22 dead and at least another 20 wounded, Virginia Tech’s tragedy already has nearly doubled the 12 dead at Columbine in 1999.
(Image credit: AP)
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Colleges and Universities, School Violence
The pitfalls of school construction
How outraged would Daytonians be right now if the city school board were asking for a 15.17-mill tax levy while one of its high schools under construction was a year and a half behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget?
As I listened to an education reporting colleague here in Michigan tell his story of covering a troubled, big money school building program, it made me wonder if Dayton doesn’t deserve more credit than it has gotten for running a scandal-free $600 million, 28-site construction program for five years?
I’ve been in Michigan the past couple of days to attend the Society of Professional Journalists region 4 conference for Midwestern states. Many of those in attendance were young journalists and college journalism students and on Saturday I was a presenter on a panel about education reporting.
The other panelists were David Jesse, who covers schools for the Ann Arbor News, and Judy Putnam, a statehouse bureau reporter who writes about education for the Booth Newspapers chain in Michigan. Our main message to these young and aspiring journalists was that education was a great beat to cover and one where you can do serious reporting and investigative projects. Education does not have to be the soft “featrey” beat that some young journalists believe it is.
In the course of the discussion, Jesse described some of his reporting on Ann Arbor Public Schools and its $93 million project to build a new high school as part of a $240 million construction program that will make improvements at several schools. Jesse has written about how the high school project is now $8 million over budget and 18 months behind schedule.
The high school project has been plagued by repeated problems. Most of the budget over runs were fueled, school officials say, by a spike in concrete and steel prices. There was a lawsuit filed (and later dropped) to stop the project to protect a salamander habitat. There was a raging debate over the name of the school after the school board picked Skyline High School over a chorus of pleas to name the school for recently deceased Michigan football coaching legend Bo Schembechler. Even the school’s sports nickname, Eagles, prompted some complaints that it was too boring.
(Somebody joked that the school should have been the Schembechler High School Fighting Salamanders.)
As Jesse told these stories, I thought about Dayton. The local tax share for Dayton’s project is $245 million, almost the same as Ann Arbor’s all locally-funded project. Ann Arbor’s school district is roughly the same size at 17,000 students (Dayton is closer to 16,000).
So far, Dayton’s project has not suffered these sorts of troubles. It has had help. Steel and concrete prices also hurt Dayton, but the district counteracted those higher costs, partly with investment strategies and partly due to a twisted sort of “luck.” When the state forced Dayton to build fewer schools because of an enrollment decline, it meant more money for the smaller number of remaining schools, which helped cover higher materials costs.
The biggest Dayton controversy has been the continuing inability of the district to deliver on its promise to spend most of its construction dollars with local companies and to include minority companies at a high percentage. Navigating the competitive bidding process while still hitting those goals has proven more elusive than promised.
But even though, as Jesse said Saturday, construction projects inevitably have change orders and other unexpected obstacles, Dayton’s program has had stumbles but largely has stayed on track and on budget.
What do you think? Should Dayton get more credit for managing school construction well? Could the district’s leaders fairly argue that through the project they’ve demonstrated a trustworthiness managing money that it can extend as a promise to do the same with the levy money?
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite Posts, School Construction
Chamber endorses levy
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
When the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce backed a tax levy for school construction in Dayton in 2002, it demanded something in return — better schools.
“We are damn tired of being last,” chamber Chief Executive Phil Parker recalled telling the school board, referring to the city schools’ state report card ranking which that year fell below 606 Ohio districts. “We’re not going to be last any more.”
On Thursday, Parker announced the chamber’s endorsement for Dayton schools’ 15.17-mill operating levy, issue 4 on the May 8 ballot, saying the board had done what what was asked.
“We started to see some improvement and the challenge was met,” he said. “They surpassed the goals we asked them to set.”
After nearly a month and a half of discussions with school leaders, the chamber gave the levy its blessing, joined by Willie Walker, President of the Dayton Urban League and Buddy LaChance, neighborhood development director for CityWide Development Corporation, pledging support from their organizations.
School officials said they were slow to approach the chamber for its endorsement because they waited to see if a lawsuit by Cincinnati’s public school against the state over charter school payments would result in a cash settlement for Dayton.
School board President Yvonne Isaacs said when Cincinnati prevailed in a Hamilton County Court, Dayton hoped a settlement could bring enough money to shrink or even delay the levy. But in January the state appealed the ruling.
Steve Reeves, the chamber’s board chairman and a downtown business owner, said the chamber also wanted a detailed explanation for the size of the levy.
When he saw how much the district was asking for, “I was shocked,” Reeves said.
Even so, he came around when “the school board did such a good job in presenting what they accomplished,” he said.
Superintendent Percy Mack said some of what the presented to the board was a 20-point gain in graduation rate, a shift from 47 percent to 64 percent of the district’s budget spent on instruction and a two-rung move up the state’s five-stage rating system from the lowest category of “academic emergency” to “continuous improvement.”
Mack said a levy failure could threaten those gains.
“This is a crossroads time for our school district,” he said. “We have shown growth over the last few years. Taking $30 million out of our budget could wipe that away.”
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
How the chamber came around
In a press conference Thursday, Dayton Area of Chamber of Commerce officials were pretty direct in saying they were skeptical about the 15.17-mill size of Dayton’s May 8 school levy and that they wanted a lot of information before agreeing to sign on as supporters.
But in the end, they chose to back the levy and were joined at the press conference by the Dayton Urban League and CityWide Development Corporation, which also endorsed Issue 4.
Here are some comments from the press conference:
Phil Parker, CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce
(Note: Parker did most of the talking at the press conference)
On what he said to the board in 2002 when the chamber agreed to back the school construction bond issue (referring to the city schools’ state report card ranking which that year fell below 606 Ohio districts):
“We are damn tired of being last. We’re not going to be last any more.”
On the fate of the levy:
“However it goes, in my personal opinion, so goes city of Dayton. That’s how important Dayton Public Schools is to our future.”
On the business community’s view of the levy:
“This is about investing in human capital. This is about investing in our young people’s future. This is about the Dayton business community’s invest in its future workforce and the future leaders of our community.”
On the size of the 15.17-mill levy:
“It seemed like a pretty big heavy axe. I can understand why people say how can you support something this high in millage?”
On the 15 years between the district’s last levy in 1992 and the May 8 levy:
“It was a double edged sword. It was good that we were good stewards of the public’s money. But we also perhaps might have been better off asking along the way for some help and some support.”
On why it was easier to sell the school construction bond issue in 2002:
Back then, he said, it was easier to tell people the district needed to replace schools that were “out of date, inefficient and, in some cases, an embarrassment.”
On the district’s important for workforce development:
“We’re not the sun belt. We’re not growing by leaps and bounds in population. We as a community probably have to learn to do more and better with the people we have in this community because they are our future.”
Steve Reeves, chairman of the chamber’s board
On what he thought when he learned of the size of the levy:
“I was shocked.”
On why the chamber endorsed it:
“Everything they promised to do then they either did or exceeded. That helped a lot to convince our board to give us the latitude to come out and support this levy.”
On the school district’s leadership:
“In business community we all look for return on our investment. I think this board and this administration are giving us that.”
Willie Walker, President of the Dayton Urban League:
On the cost of the levy:
“I’m a taxpayer in Dayton and I will pay this higher tax as a result of this levy. And I will pay it with a a smile. This investment will not pay off tomorrow. It will pay off today.”
On the needs of the community:
“I see and serve a number of people who come into our office on a daily basis in need of a strong system. If we fail to pass this levy we will weaken this system.”
Buddy LaChance, neighborhood development director for CityWide:
On the levy’s economic development value:
“Daytons economic growth is directly related to our ability to retain and grow small business. Growing those businesses is directly realted to having a well educated workforce.”
On the connection between schools and neighborhoods:
“We need to have neighborhoods that recognized the value of education. Schools cannot succeed without support of communities and communities cannot succeed without good schools.”
School board President Yvonne Isaacs
On the levy’s importance to the Dayton area:
“The economy and success of our city, indeed of our region, depends on ensuring we have an educated workforce.”
On the district’s recent track record:
“We have delivered at a rate that is faster than we promised. We must continue this progress.”
Superintendent Percy Mack
On the importance of the school system:
“I want all of our community to understand we stand as high as our school system stands. Our school system, any school system, is one you have to depend on to deliver young people who can move out and be successful.”
On the danger if the levy fails:
“This is a crossroads time for our school district. We have shown growth over the last few years. Taking $30 million out of our budget could wipe that away.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Levy endorsements coming today
Willie Walker and Buddy LaChance
An announcement for today’s Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce press conference to endorse the 15.17-mill school levy says chamber CEO Phil Parker will be joined by Willie Walker from the Dayton Urban League and Buddy LaChance from CityWide Development Corporation.
This seems to suggest those groups will also endorse. But noticeably absent are the mayor, the city commission, the Downtown Dayton Partnership, the Dayton Development Coalition, the NAACP, the SCLC, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, all of whom endorsed the 2002 bond issue.
I was told by representatives of the Downtown Dayton Partnership and Dayton Development Coalition that they are still considering their positions.
More later after the press conference.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
LEAD: First official levy endorsers
Leaders for Equality and Action in Dayton, a coalition of Dayton churches and religious groups, sent me this announcement today:
At a clergy breakfast, April 8, the LEAD Clergy Caucus unanimously endorsed the Dayton Public Schools Tax Levy.
Dr. Rod Kennedy, co-president of LEAD, says, “There is not a greater issue of justice and equality in our city than the full and total support of Dayton Public Schools. Dr. Percy Mack and his staff have made such important gains at Dayton Public Schools and we need to do everything possible to help consolidate those gains.”
LEAD (Leaders for Equality and Action in Dayton) is a fifteen-year old justice ministry organization. Representing 20 area churches and mosques, the interreligious group focuses on improving education as one of its primary goals.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Breaking News: Chamber to endorse Dayton levy
Phil Parker
Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Phil Parker told me today that the chamber will endorse Dayton Public Schools’ 15.17-mill levy in a press conference on Thursday. Parker said talks are underway with other key groups and the event may include other endorsement announcements. Perhaps this is the first of several dominos to fall when it comes to levy endorsements?
We’ll have more in Wednesday’s paper.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
City Day on “probation”
In today’s paper I wrote about City Day Community School, which was placed on probation by its sponsor after an investigation into its handling of state tests last year.
(Here’s my original story on this case. Look here to judge the practice test vs the real test for yourself. A prior blog post on this case can be found here.)
I spoke with Phyllis Brown, legal counsel for the school’s sponsor — Cincinnati-based Education Resource Consultants of Ohio. Brown conducted the internal investigation of City Day.
Essentially, Brown argued there is no way to determine what happened at City Day last year. The issue boils down to a “he said, she said” debate and Brown was unable to even find one of the key parties — consultant Rachel Armour, who worked at the school last year and told the DDN she created the practice tests.
I asked Brown if she had tried calling Armour’s lawyer, David Williams of Huber Heights who was quoted in our first story in February. Brown said she was unaware Armour had a lawyer. (In fairness, I called Williams who said he is no longer in touch with Armour.)
A state investigation is still underway, but I wonder if the state is going to push harder than ERCO in its investigation. Will the education department, for instance, ask Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann to assist in the case? Dann could, conceivably, interview Armour, City Day superintendent Roseda Goff and others under oath about how the state tests were handled last year. (Dann’s spokeswoman expressed interest in helping with this case when I spoke to her in February.)
The case, potentially, could be about cheating on the state exam on a wide scale at one school. Does that possibility merit a more aggressive investigation? Or will the state also stop and say, “well, it’s one person’s word against another so I suppose we’ll never know what really happened?”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, City Day Investigation, Testing
City Day gets probation on test concerns
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
DAYTON — City Day Community School has been placed “on probation” by its sponsor, which will administer and proctor the school’s state achievement tests this year.
Meanwhile, an Ohio Department of Education investigation into the charter school’s past handling of the tests is ongoing, state officials said.
The Ohio Achievement Tests will be delivered directly to the sponsor, Cincinnati-based Education Resource Consultants of Ohio. ERCO will administer the tests, collect the exams and deliver them to the state, according to the sponsor’s attorney.
The move is part of ERCO’s action plan in response to concerns raised by the Dayton Daily News in February. The newspaper found 44 questions on practice tests taken by City Day students that were identical or substantially the same as questions that appeared on the actual state exam they took just days later.
When state report cards came out last year, huge gains in the percentage of students who passed helped the school jump two steps up the state’s rating scale from the lowest category of “academic emergency” to “continuous improvement.”
Phyllis Brown, legal counsel to ERCO, said she investigated City Day’s test procedures but could not determine if any wrongdoing occurred. She said her investigation was hampered because she could not reach Rachel Armour, a consultant who told the Daily News she created City Day’s practice tests but was unaware the questions she retyped were from the state exam.
ERCO sponsors 24 charter schools in Ohio.
Even though the sponsor couldn’t determine wrongdoing, Brown said ERCO placed City Day on probation and created a three-step corrective action plan for the school. The sponsor will administer this year’s exam, students will receive special tutoring to prepare them for the state test and the school’s governing board will develop new test handling protocols to ensure secure storage and traceable chain of custody for future state tests that are delivered to the school.
Permalink | | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, City Day Investigation, My Favorite DDN Stories, Testing
Ten thousand parents not registered to vote!
There’s good news and bad news for Dayton schools in today’s paper.
The bad news: The Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce has yet to endorse the 15.17 mill levy. Chamber leaders meet with school officials again today.
The good news: Thousands of parents of DPS kids have registered to vote. Get this statistic — 10,000 DPS parents were not registered voters. Even if you assume that all of the district’s 16,400 kids have two parents living with them, that means almost a third of those parents were not registered to vote! The actual percentage could be closer to half!
How I know that statistic, and how these parents have come to register lately, may raise eyebrows with some of the district’s critics. But school officials insist they have followed the law to the letter.
DPS says it has undertaken a big voter registration effort, which it also is quick to point is a perfectly legal thing for a school district to do. What the district can’t do is use its resources to advocate for its levy. And it says it hasn’t.
For the voter drive, the district’s list of parents was compared with the county’s list of registered voters. Then, school officials say, volunteers at the schools contacted unregistered parents and gave them materials so they could sign up and vote by absentee ballot. One story I heard was that those who turned their forms back in could win a prizes, like a DVD player.
Again, the district says this is all kosher as long as schools are not using their resources to urge people to vote for the levy. Urging people register is just fine. Some schools have even discussed the voter drive in civics class as an example of democracy in action, officials said.
If you’re in the schools, tell us how the registration drive has worked where you are.
(Image credit: NYTimes.com)
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
What kids can learn from, um, sport?
I know there are a lot of critics out there who feel college sports are out of control, an industry in itself that bleeds money from academics and a distraction for kids who should spend their time studying.
OK. I can’t argue with any of that. But I can still argue that there is some good that can come from kids watching college sports. There are lessons about teamwork, effort and competition. I even think kids can learn from watching college sports about creativity, innovation, problem solving and strategic thinking.
But this post isn’t about what we saw Monday when Florida defeated Ohio State in the NCAA championship game. This post is about something else that drew 80,000 fans this week and the attention of millions of kids.
They call it Wrestlemania.
The annual spectacle, put on by World Wrestling Entertainment, was so hugely popular it drew the attention of the New York Times, which wrote a “how can this be” front page story about Wrestlemania today.
The NCAA championship game may be a spectacle, but the game is real. The competition is legitimate. The players win through hard work, skill and teamwork. There is no script.
I personally would rather have my kids watching college sports than Wrestlemania, but I don’t pretend to understand the attraction of professional wrestling. If you think there are real lessons there for kids and that pro wrestling is worth watching for them, by all means make the case to me here.
Because, as the Times writes, Wrestlemania is bigger worldwide and bigger with kids than the NCAA Final Four or Major League Baseball’s opening day.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Sports and Athletics
Seeking a liberal arts education … in China?
Snapshot USA: Our kids are too leisurely. Their instruction is too unfocused. They lack basic skills. They come out of school without the ability to perform basic functions and disappoint employers who have to send them for retraining in order to compete on the world economic stage. To rectify this problem, we create standards and connect them to tests kids are required to pass and judge schools on the results the way effective national education systems do in places like China. Critics say this crowds out important creative thinking instruction that has been a hallmark of our education system.
Snapshot China: Chinese kids are too rigidly focused on monotonous drilling of basic skills. They aren’t trained to consider the application of the skills. Everything is about passing the next test. They come out of school without the ability to think creatively and disappoint employers seeking an innovative edge in the world economy. To rectify this problem they create new schools which give kids more choices and freedoms they way effective national education systems do in places like the United States. Critics fear their children will lose the basic skill proficiency that has been a hallmark of the Chinese education system.
Here in the U.S., critics of our education system often speak admiringly of our international competitors and how they teach their kids. In Sunday’s New York Times, some Chinese reformers talk of the need to emulate the U.S. system.
This was one of three big education-related stories in the Times recently.
The No. 1 most read story today at NYTimes.com is the latest in a series of stories about the pressure on girls be perfect in school. And the Times also took an interesting look Sunday at parenting gay children today.
(I guess the DDN isn’t the only paper that’s a little education happy lately.)
The story on education in China I found interesting. The star of the piece is a Chinese girl now attending Harvard who is urging families back home to break with their tradition of relentlessly drilling for tests by instead including American-style extracurriculars into their studies in an effort to become more well-rounded.
Critics of the American system must have choked on their Corn Flakes at the thought of China emulating the U.S. education system rather than the other way around. But this story seems to point to the desperate need to find a middle ground. Can we somehow discover a way to produce well-rounded graduates with curiosity, outside interests and creative thinking skills who also, on a wide scale, possess top-flight basic skill proficiency?
What do you think? Do both nations need to seek a middle ground?
(Image credit: www.theodora.com)
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Testing
The Education Edition of the DDN
(Pam Stenzel speaks at Springboro High School)
Was it just me or was there a ton of educaiton-related stories in the Sunday Dayton Daily News? The front page alone had sex education, pension double-dipping and the tragic death of Sarah Merritt.
in case you missed them, check out these stories:
—Following up on the story recently about Gov. Ted Strickland’s opposition to abstinence-only education my colleague Laura Bischoff attended an abstinence-only sex education program at Springboro High School and found some of speaker Pam Stenzel’s statstics didn’t add up.
—Columnist Mary McCarty, I thought, did a nice job writing about Sarah Merritt the Tipp City teen who died tragically on Spring Break. Merritt, her fiancee said, was sober when she tried to climb from one balcony to another. She sounds like a great kid. What a sad story.
—Reporter Lynn Hulsey take an in depth look at public employees who retire and are rehired. Her story is primary about county and municipal employees, but this is a common, and controversial, practice in school districts, too, where top administrators frequently double-dip under state rules that allow them to collect pension and keep working.
—Finally, the Associated Press reports that a new law taking affect Friday will forbids those under 17 from having passengers who are not family unless they have a parent with them. The rationale is that a study showed the risk of a fatal crash at this age triples with another teen passenger and doubles again with a third passenger.
Wow. It was practically the Education Daily News Sunday! I’d love to hear your thoughts on these issues.
(Image credit: Ron Alvey, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Schools and Politics, Sex Education, Student Health and Safety
