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 > 2007 > December
December 2007
Obama: Save arts, music, language, literature
The presidential primary process may get a little tiring after a while, but one thing I like about it is it gives a lot of regular folks the chance to talk to the candidates and ask them real questions about things that concern them in their personal experience.
Already in this presidential race, we’ve seen that you can walk up to them and ask a question in New Hampshire and that a five-year-old can get an interview with a presidential contender in North Carolina.
Now in Iowa, a high school student gets to ask her question to Barack Obama. And it’s a good one.
Amelia Schoeneman joined the editorial board of the Quad City Times of Davenport, Iowa, in a session with Barack Obama, where she told him her high schools is constantly fighting for funding to keep its arts program going. She wanted to know how Obama could help.
If you follow the link you can hear his reply yourself. Basically, he said we need to change No Child Left Behind so all the focus is not on reading, math and science. Specifically, he wants to make sure arts, music, foreign language, social studies and literature are covered.
To do this, Obama said we need to change the way kids are tested. And, he argued, if we do it will reduce dropouts by making school more engaging.
What do you think of Obama’s take on NCLB, arts education and their affect on drop outs?
This post also appears on the Education Writers Association’s Education Election blog.
(Image credit: Quad City Times)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Tracking Barack Obama
Maize helps break education malaise
I’m back from a week off from blogging for the holidays to find education issues near the top among those being debated in Iowa (the land of corn), where the 2008 presidential race will finally actually begin in just a few days.
Earlier this week, Sam Dillon wrote in the New York Times that No Child Left Behind has become a major political football with little likely to be accomplished this year to refine and renew the law while the candidates beat each other over the head with it.
That’s bad for progress in federal education legislation, but good for making the candidates really talk about education issues. For much of the pre-campaign, education has not gotten much play, despite the efforts of groups like Eli Broad’s Ed in 08 and the Education Writers Association.
Dillon’s piece sugggests education is about to get a lot more notice on the campaign trail.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Spears prompts national sex talk
Jamie Lynn Spears
I have three daughters (the oldest is 9). They love Nickelodeon’s family-friendly, teen hearthrob heavy lineup of kids shows.
I know the questions are coming, thanks to Jamie Lynn Spears.
Get ready America, because if you have young children and cable T.V. in your home, the questions will be coming about sex and pregnancy.
Perhaps it’s not a bad conversation to have. But it certainly will be awkward for some of us adults.
I know it’s coming from my oldest daughter — How did she get pregnant? Isn’t she too young to have a baby? Will she still be on Nickelodeon?
I guess this is what you call a “teachable moment.” It does tickle me a bit that this conversation will be happening in living rooms across America at the same time.
Maybe we need a national script. Can we hire a P.R. firm? I can hear myself now:
“Well, girls, mistakes were made. It was never intentional. I’m sure Jamie Lynn is sorry to anyone she has offended.”
They should start learning about political non-answers anyway, with the presidential race starting in just a couple weeks.
(Image credit: AP)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Sex Education
Income, school readiness, test scores strongly linked
In today’s paper, I looked at statewide data for a new kindergarten readiness test. Based on Ohio’s guidelines, it looks like lots of kids are starting school unprepared.
Big urban districts like Dayton get a lot of blame for their low test scores. But our study of the data calls into question how much blame they deserve. Consider, the state test says 40 percent of new kindergarteners in Dayton will need intervention to succeed in school because they already are far behind where they need to be.
Think about that — 40 percent. That is a staggering figure. And hardly any of those kids had yet set foot in a Dayton city school before they took the test.
This may be best addressed through early childhood education. Luckily, Montgomery County has a promising plan to start doing just that. It is a unique partnership that will seek to raise the quality of pre-school instruction locally and, in turn, eventually raise those kindergarten readiness scores.
And that is where possibilities lie. Our study of the data actually shows the statistical correlation between kindergarten readiness and school district test performance was even higher than the connection between family income and and district performance. (All the correlations — among income, kindergarten readiness and district test performances — were very high).
So if the effort to improve pre-school is successful, it would seem promising that test scores in Montgomery County schools could rise, even if income levels don’t go up. The key, experts say is high quality pre-school.
Unfortunately, right now Ohio makes one of the weakest investments in early childhood education among the 50 states.
What do you think? Do the numbers justify a bigger investment in early childhood learning?
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Testing, Urban School Issues, Young Children
New kindergarten test shows readiness concerns
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
A new statewide test designed to check if kids are ready to start school shows many in the greater Miami Valley will need help to succeed in kindergarten.
For nearly all area school districts at least one in 10 incoming kindergarteners this year scored low enough on the readiness test that the state deems them in need of intervention. Only a small sliver of the 82 districts in the 10 counties surrounding Dayton had fewer low scoring kids.
A Dayton Daily News study of the data shows a strong link between kindergarten readiness and overall district test performance — the better prepared a community’s incoming kindergarteners are the more likely that district will rate high on its state report card.
Consider Oakwood, consistently among the highest rated area districts. Just 2.7 percent of 147 Oakwood’s 2006 incoming kindergarteners scored low enough to require intervention.
Meanwhile in Dayton, one of the state’s worst-rated districts, 40 percent need immediate intervention, the test showed. That’s among the highest percentages in Ohio. And none of those children had set foot in a district school when they were assessed.
Oakwood is one of Ohio’s wealthiest districts while Dayton is among the poorest. The Daily News study of Ohio corroborated other research showing strong links among income, kindergarten readiness and test performance.
“We have some challenges that make it more difficult for us,” said Dayton school board President Yvonne Isaacs.
Many studies have shown that kids from wealthier families come to kindergarten more ready to learn.
But to W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, that is part of the proof that communities can have a big impact by investing in pre-schools.
“You have to make them intentionally educational programs rather than thinking of them as primarily a service so parents can work,” he said.
Even in a high poverty area, kids can be ready to start school.
“You have to have a quality, intensive pre-school program to do that,” Barnett said.
In Montgomery County, where a state readiness exam found at least one in five incoming kindergarteners need immediate intervention to succeed in school, an effort is under way to raise the quality of early childhood care.
The effort seeks, first of all, to create a structure for drawing grants to help the county receive more federal aid.
Secondly, that money will be spent to provide technical support to early childhood programs, to rate child care centers and to help them make good pre-school choices.
“There is an incredible opportunity in Montgomery County to provide enriching experiences during a time when children are developing 90 percent of their brains,” said Jenni Roer, executive director of the Tait Foundation, a local organization funding youth development initiatives.
To that end, a unique partnership was formed — the Montgomery County Early Care and Education Initiative. Karen Lampe, a pre-school operator and the former president of the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers, has been hired as a consultant to lead the initiatives efforts.
That includes hiring two technical assistant to work with 250 local day care centers and pre-schools to help them earn new state quality ratings.
The initiative will work in tandem with Edvention, a partnership announced earlier this year to bolster student skills in science, technology, engineering and math.
Lampe said there is between $2 million and $4 million state and federal dollars available that Montgomery County has not accessed because there were not effective structures and processes to connect those in need with the money.
“What we found here was providers were really struggling to connect with those resources,” she said. “They did not have enough support locally to get to the higher quality level and to connect the dots.”
The initiative’s goals include offering training for early childhood workers, creating a standard documents that pre-school teachers can fill out to share information with kindergarten teachers and a pilot program to help centers earn state quality ratings.
Ohio is moving toward a three-star quality rating system for pre-schools and day care centers. The initiative’s technical assistants will advise centers as they seek to qualify for those star ratings and may provide mini-grants or services to help them overcome barriers to earning the stars.
“These are specialists who will meet with them and help them with whatever their needs are,” Lampe said. “We really can help them where they are.”
The county’s Families and Children First Council and the Tait Foundation contributed nearly $500,000 to fund Lampe’s position, the technical assistants, mini grants and collaboration with Edvention over the next 16 months. By comparison, the 10-county region that includes the Dayton area has just two state-assigned technical assistants to work with child care providers.
“By having higher quality experience from birth through age five, that will enable them to be more kindergarten ready,” she said.
Permalink | | Categories: Young Children
Data shows many kindergarteners start school behind
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
A new statewide test designed to check if kids are ready to start school shows many in the greater Miami Valley will need help to succeed in kindergarten.
For nearly all area school districts at least one in 10 incoming kindergarteners this year scored low enough on the readiness test that the state deems them in need of intervention. Only a small sliver of the 82 districts in the 10 counties surrounding Dayton had fewer low scoring kids.
A Dayton Daily News study of the data shows a strong link between kindergarten readiness and overall district test performance — the better prepared a community’s incoming kindergarteners are the more likely that district will rate high on its state report card.
Consider Oakwood, consistently among the highest rated area districts. Just 2.7 percent of 147 Oakwood’s 2006 incoming kindergarteners scored low enough to require intervention.
Meanwhile in Dayton, one of the state’s worst-rated districts, 40 percent need immediate intervention, the test showed. That’s among the highest percentages in Ohio. And none of those children had set foot in a district school when they were assessed.
Oakwood is one of Ohio’s wealthiest districts while Dayton is among the poorest. The Daily News study of Ohio corroborated other research showing strong links among income, kindergarten readiness and test performance.
“We have some challenges that make it more difficult for us,” said Dayton school board President Yvonne Isaacs.
Many studies have shown that kids from wealthier families come to kindergarten more ready to learn.
But to W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, that is part of the proof that communities can have a big impact by investing in pre-schools.
“You have to make them intentionally educational programs rather than thinking of them as primarily a service so parents can work,” he said.
Even in a high poverty area, kids can be ready to start school.
“You have to have a quality, intensive pre-school program to do that,” Barnett said.
In Montgomery County, where a state readiness exam found at least one in five incoming kindergarteners need immediate intervention to succeed in school, an effort is under way to raise the quality of early childhood care.
The effort seeks, first of all, to create a structure for drawing grants to help the county receive more federal aid.
Secondly, that money will be spent to provide technical support to early childhood programs, to rate child care centers and to help them make good pre-school choices.
“There is an incredible opportunity in Montgomery County to provide enriching experiences during a time when children are developing 90 percent of their brains,” said Jenni Roer, executive director of the Tait Foundation, a local organization funding youth development initiatives.
To that end, a unique partnership was formed — the Montgomery County Early Care and Education Initiative. Karen Lampe, a pre-school operator and the former president of the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers, has been hired as a consultant to lead the initiatives efforts.
That includes hiring two technical assistant to work with 250 local day care centers and pre-schools to help them earn new state quality ratings.
The initiative will work in tandem with Edvention, a partnership announced earlier this year to bolster student skills in science, technology, engineering and math.
Lampe said there is between $2 million and $4 million state and federal dollars available that Montgomery County has not accessed because there were not effective structures and processes to connect those in need with the money.
“What we found here was providers were really struggling to connect with those resources,” she said. “They did not have enough support locally to get to the higher quality level and to connect the dots.”
The initiative’s goals include offering training for early childhood workers, creating a standard documents that pre-school teachers can fill out to share information with kindergarten teachers and a pilot program to help centers earn state quality ratings.
Ohio is moving toward a three-star quality rating system for pre-schools and day care centers. The initiative’s technical assistants will advise centers as they seek to qualify for those star ratings and may provide mini-grants or services to help them overcome barriers to earning the stars.
“These are specialists who will meet with them and help them with whatever their needs are,” Lampe said. “We really can help them where they are.”
The county’s Families and Children First Council and the Tait Foundation contributed nearly $500,000 to fund Lampe’s position, the technical assistants, mini grants and collaboration with Edvention over the next 16 months.
“By having higher quality experience from birth through age five, that will enable them to be more kindergarten ready,” she said.
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Testing, Urban School Issues, Young Children
Sparring over Obama’s education advice
(Barack Obama at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.)
Barack Obama has named Standford education research heavyweight Linda Darling-Hammond as his education adviser. And not everybody is happy about it.
Blogger Alexander Russo over at This Week in Education points to some cranky comments by an Obama fan who thinks Darling-Hammond is a step backward for Obama’s chances of proposing serious reform.
The good news for Alexander is that Darling-Hammond apparently checks in at This Week. She sends him a rebuttal of the criticism.
This post also appears at the Education Writers Association’s Education Election blog.
(Image credit: Iowa Politics Blog)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Tracking Barack Obama
The Readers’ Digest version of the City Day story
Apparently a columnist at Readers Digest magazine this month is using the story of City Day Community School’s cheating scandal as the lead example in a piece on teacher-led cheating.
There’s just one problem. In the case of City Day, the major players around whom questions were raised were Superintendent Roseda Goff and an outside consultant — not the teachers. The City Day teachers I’ve talked to there say they did not know the practice exams they were giving their kids contained questions lifted from the actual exam.
Most of the rest of the column is built around the reporting of the Dallas Morning News on cheating in Texas. In many cases there, teachers and administrators were responsible for the cheating.
I think it would have been a bit more prescise for the columnist to call it “educator-led” cheating.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: City Day Investigation
The $41,000 school board defeat
Lee Massoud
Dayton school board member Lee Massoud spent a stunning $41,000 in her failed election campaign this fall, according to campaign finance reports that were released today.
That is a remarkable number. I believe it is likely the most ever spent by one candidate in a Dayton school board race. (Kids First, an alliance of four candidates, topped $200,000 in their 2001 run with a joint campaign committee.) She raised $10,000 the last month of the campaign and loaned her campaign $13,500 from her personal funds.
None of the other six candidates who ran for school board spent even half as much as Massoud.
I was tied up in some training all day today, so look for my colleague Lynn Hulsey’s story in Saturday’s DDN.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Roseda Goff found guilty
Roseda Goff
Roseda Goff, the former superintendent at the center of controversy at City Day Community School, was found guilty Wednesday of attempted obstructing of official business for allegedly interfering when school staff felt cases of child abuse and neglect needed to be reported to law officers.
Montgomery County Juvenile Court Judge Tony Capizzi said in his decision that Goff attempted to dissuade a teacher, Nate Moore, from reporting suspicions of physical abuse to the county’s childrens’ services investigators.
Capizzi set sentencing for Jan. 9 at 2 p.m. The charge is a third degree misdemeanor that carries with it a maximum sentence of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Goff was fired as superintendent in July. The charter school’s sponsor had dismissed its governing board in June after board members refused to fire Goff. The new board’s first order of business was her dismissal.
Goff was one of four founders of City Day, Dayton’s first charter school and one of the first 15 in the state when it opened in 1998. All four were former Jefferson Twp. teachers but the others all dropped out of involvement with the school. Two left after disputes with Goff.
In February, a Dayton Daily News examination found City Day students practiced on 44 questions were identical or nearly the same as questions that later appeared on the actual state exam in the days leading up to the March 2006 administration of the Ohio Achievement Tests. That prompted a state investigation that still is underway.
Then in early May a City Day employee was caught taking notes while reviewing an Ohio Achievement Test that students were to take later in the week by proctors sent by the school’s sponsor to monitor the exam administration.
In testimony at Goff’s trial last month, four former City Day teachers said she ruled the school like a “dictator” and that teachers, who did not had employment contracts, lived in fear of being fired if they crossed her.
One of Goff’s rules, they said, was that incidents of abuse or neglect were to be reported to her before calling law enforcement so she could decided the best course of action. Other employees of the school, testifying for Goff, said she merely wanted to be informed of child abuse reports and did not discourage reporting. Teachers are mandated by law to report to law enforcement if they suspect abuse or neglect.
Moore, a physical education teacher at the school last year, said Goff tried to discourage him from reporting to law enforcement that a 13-year-old girl at the school told him she had been beaten by her mother, calling the girl a liar who couldn’t be trusted.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: City Day Investigation
The tricky game of getting kids to walk
(Students at Kiser Elementary School on International Walk to School Day.)
City planners in Dayton have a dream that might have sounded pretty odd as recently as the 1960s — they’d like most kids to walk or bike to school.
Back then it was commonplace. Today it is rare. And achieving that goal is more complicated than it sounds.
John Gower and Kate Ervin from the city’s planning department told a joint meeting of the Dayton City Commission and the city school board Tuesday they think a new initiative could earn up to $1.5 million in grants from the Ohio Department of Transportation to make five school sites more walkable.
The city will apply in January for the money for a Safe Routes to School program here.
“We think we have a good chance of being competitive for this,” Gower said.
About a year ago, I wrote here at Get on the Bus about Safe Routes to School, a program that began in California’s Merin County that now is spreading nationwide. The program encourages walking to school as a way to cut down on pollution, traffic congestion and auto accidents while at the same time promoting good health for children and their parents.
Walking to school is something I do whenever possible with my own kids in my suburban community, although the good readers here at GOTB told me last year that they are too young to walk alone.
Dayton has a challenge because 25 years of cross-town busing for integration and open enrollment magnet schools conditioned residents to expect kids will attend school outside of their neighborhoods. In fact, since the integration order was dropped in 2002, encouraging families to attend schools closer to home has had mixed success.
The city hopes easier biking and walking will help. The five schools in the pilot program would be Edison, Fairview, Ruskin, Kiser and Cleveland elementary schools.
The grants could bring $250,000 for engineering improvements near each school along with $50,000 to educate families about the benefits of walking and for law enforcement efforts.
Ervin gave the example of Broadway near Edison Elementary School. She suggested the four-lane, low traffic road could be reduced to two lanes with a center turn lane to slow speeders and make room for biking and walking areas.
Or, for $30,000 annually, a school could pay police overtime for three hours of extra traffic enforcement around the schools at peak times.
Planners hope to use data on traffic accidents, crime and population to craft safe walking and biking routes and make street improvements to make those routes work better.
Gower and Ervin also talked up walkability as a potential selling point for the city as the country becomes more energy and environmentally conscious. Unlike sprawling suburbs, the city does not have to be auto-based, if it can make its walking and biking routes attractive and safe. The first step, they said, is to get kids walking to school and building communities around the new schools Dayton is building.
What do you think of this idea of making schools more “walkable?”
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Student Health and Safety
A good (and overdue) idea
I’m at the joint meeting of the Dayton City Commission and school board tonight. More on that later but school board member Stacy Thompson just announced that in 2008 some school board meetings will rotate among the new school buildings.
Thompson said the plan is for six meetings at school sites — or one meeting every other month.
This is a good idea that is overdue. Since the district moved from its First Street administration offices over to the Ludlow buildings it moved its meetings to Jackson Center. Jackson, while a nice facility, is somewhat remote. It’s next to an old auto plant on Abbey Avenue near U.S. 35 west.
More importantly, few people outside of the district know where it is. Thompson said she hopes meetings at the school sites will encourage more parents and community people to attend.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Education issues abound
Sorry for the sparse posting over the last week. I’ve been distracted by a few things. Meanwhile, there were some stories in the paper lately I took note of:
—There was this very disturbing story out of Cincinnati, with a local ties. A principal of a well-regarded performing arts school, who lives in Springboro and previously worked at Dayton’s Colonel White High School, is accused of raping one of his ex-students. I don’t recall meeting John Carlisle when he worked for Dayton. Did any of you have any interaction with him?
—Over the weekend, the DDN editorial board talked about the task force that will start its work this week reviewing the spending in Dayton schools and recommended changes. It will employ a consultant to review the district’s operations. The editorial board thinks, to make a real difference, the consultant will have to recommend serious changes such as privatization of services. I wonder what the DPS employees who read GOTB think of that idea. Privatization was a pretty big disaster when the district emplyed Service Master for custodial services.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Are snow days really necessary?
(The Lackey kids of Springfield celebrate as school closings are announed this morning.)
So loads of Miami Valley schools are closed today because of four inches of snow.
This put me in mind of a conversation I recently had with a local high school teacher and principal. The question they asked was this — with today’s technology, why is there ever a reason for a snow day?
This is what they mean.
Why not, when it is too snowy for students to actually go to school, just hold classes electronically? The teacher told me she already routinely communicates with her students via email. On a day when the class cannot meet, there is no reason why she can’t email assignments to her students and have them email her back. Or she could post assignments on the Web.
Already college classes are held online, over the Web, via e-mail or using chat rooms for class discussion. Nearly every high school kids today also has their own cell phone, which could be useful for connecting with teachers and fellow students at home. Why can’t this sort of work qualify as a day of class for high school students stuck at home?
The principal told me he envisions a day when the crawl on television won’t just say “School X is closed.” Instead it might say something like “School X closed; students should check their email.” Then classes could return the following day without missing a beat.
The only reason this wouldn’t work right now is that the state would not count a snow day toward a school’s required class days if the students do not actually come to the physical school building. If they would let them count the day, I bet some schools would try holding virtual class on snowy days.
Is it time to change that rule? Could we allow these sorts of innovations on snow days?
I know some students have been posting here lately. I’d love to hear their thoughts. I suppose a day of snowball fights and sledding is probably preferable to them.
What about teachers? How does this idea sound to you?
(Image credit: Bill Lackey, Cox News Service)
Permalink | Comments (56) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Dayton schools: No levy until next November
School board President Yvonne Isaacs told me tonight that Dayton schools will not seek a new levy in March, aiming instead for a likely levy try next November.
She said the district instead will spend most of next year studying its spending and management structure, making changes and preparing for the campaign.
This is a big deal because if they really wait until November the district will get one shot — and only one shot — at raising new revenue for 2009. This plan increases the danger that the deep cuts the district is living with right now could last until 2010.
Next week, a committee of about 20 people will begin discussing a plan to hire a consultant to perform a diagnostic review the district’s operations to recommend cost savings. The study mostly will be paid by the business community with some contribution from the district, Isaacs said.
Next, the district will consider an economic study of the community. That will be followed by significant fund-raising for the levy campaign.
“We need a better understanding of what kind of school district this community can afford,” Isaacs said.
Levies work like this. You can’t collect any money after you pass one until Jan. 1 of the next year. So if Dayton passes a levy in November of 2008, the money won’t flow until January of 2009. But if that levy fails, then Dayton cannot try again until 2009. And even if a new levy passed early in 2009, no money would be collected until 2010.
As we stand right now, Dayton will start the 2008-09 school year with the same limited budget it has today. If the district actually waits until November and that levy fails, it would mean a third year of drastically reduced offerings in Dayton schools in the 2009-10 school year.
What some hoped would be one tough school year with deep spending cuts could quickly become three tough years.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Education: The wind in Obama’s sails?
Have you noticed that ever since Barack Obama announced his education platform he’s suddenly leading in Iowa and getting more press attention?
Note to the other candidates: Voters are interested in education.
OK, so maybe Obama’s new momentum can’t ALL be attributed to the education proposals he’s making. I suppose having the world’s most popular talk show host campaigning for him in Iowa might be a factor.
And there was that intriguing breakfast meet up with Michael Bloomberg, the popular Democratic mayor of New York. (That was such a circus the waitress who earned a $10 tip on a $17 bill from Obama was the subject of a whole separate story in the next day’s Daily News.)
Even so, the Obama education plan has people talking in South Carolina, another important primary state. On a conference call with Palmetto State reporters, Obama explained further his views on testing and teacher incentives.
Meanwhile, Obama dipped his toe in the debate over bilingual vs. English-only programs for English language learners, coming down strongly in the bilingual camp in a Scripps News Service story about where the candidates stand on the issue.
Despite the surge of interest in his campaign, not all the Obama press has been good when it comes to education. He drew a quick rebuke from Mitt Romney recently when he admitted to students in New Hampshire that he was a goof off in high school who tried drugs and drank before getting his act together. Romney said he wasn’t sure that was a message students needed to hear from a potential role model.
This post also appears on the Educaiton Writers Association’s Education Election blog.
(Image credit: Wall Street Journal)
Permalink | | Categories: Tracking Barack Obama
Ohio’s best high school gets … a silver medal?
(Oakwood High School’s pep band.)
Today’s paper had a story about the U.S. News and World Report’s high school rankings that included six Dayton-area high schools that won silver and bronze medals.
Any school ranking will always invite second guessing and any list of the “nation’s best” will have to rely on basic rules that may work well in general but often are prone to inconsistencies when you look at individual schools.
When I looked at the list two schools jumped out at me — one that was there and one that was not.
First lets talk about Oakwood High School, the area’s consistent top scorer on nearly every measure of school quality. In August, it ranked as Ohio’s best high school for test scores.
I guess I’m a bit surprised that Ohio’s best high school could rate only a silver medal from U.S. News and World Report. Ohio’s got some pretty good high schools. It just seems like our best school ought to be gold medal material.
The report says it takes a number of factors into consideration — the study, it says, is “based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes that show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.”
If that’s so, then another local school, it seems to me, should be on that list somewhere — Stivers School for the Arts. Stivers serves a variety of kids from a range of backgrounds. It sends many of them to college but sends others to speciality schools and other post-high school programs that serve them best. Again, Stivers isn’t even worth a bronze medal?
What was your reaction to the list?
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Schools and Politics
