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E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > March > 27
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Strickland education list could spark controversy
Gov. Ted Strickland
Gov. Ted Strickland has assembled a list of potentially controversial ideas for overhauling primary and secondary education and distributed it to hundreds of stakeholders for their consideration.
The ideas include Democrat Strickland’s own proposal to create a director of education under his control as well as proposals from educators, business leaders and others who have been involved in meetings sponsored by the governor’s office.
“Summary of Education Reform Process” sketches out four phases designed to result in a plan to be implemented in March 2009 although it appears many of the ideas would require approval from the Republican-controlled legislature.
Strickland’s spokesman, Keith Dailey, cautioned that the document did not constitute a plan or proposal.
“The collection of ideas merged over the past year,” he said. “This isn’t the governor’s plan. This is a process that is geared toward ongoing discussion and through the conversation the governor believes consensus for reform will emerge.”
Among the ideas on the discussion list are:
—Junking the Ohio Graduation Test in favor of “portfolio” approach that would require students to complete a senior project, a community service project and both the ACT college entrance exam and end-of-course exams when the complete core high school subjects.
—Requiring the state’s education budget to be adopted before the rest of the state operating budget.
—Funding schools using an “evidence-based” model accounting for school size and demographics. A new state commission would review and update the model and a three-fourths vote of the General Assembly would be needed to overturn it.
—Require a 22-mill base property tax across all school districts, replacing uneven property tax burdens of different districts, and taking median income of the districts into account when determining the level of state aid for each.
—Establishing a statewide teacher career ladder with different pay for at five levels — emerging teacher, associate teacher, teacher, lead teacher and master teacher. A statewide teacher peer evaluation and training program also is an option.
—Making each school more independent with more control given to the principal and creating an administrative manager position for all elementary schools.
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