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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > August > 23
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Editorial: STEM school spreads choice beyond Dayton
Ten years ago, before the start of Ohio’s charter school movement, Dayton high school students didn’t have great options.
There was the acclaimed Stivers School for the Arts, but it requires a successful audition to get in. And there were the two well-regarded, but tuition-based, Catholic high schools — Chaminade-Julienne and Carroll — in the city limits. The rest of Dayton’s high schools were among Ohio’s lowest scorers on state proficiency exams.
Things have changed remarkably and for the better, thanks to innovative new public high school choices that were incubated both by Dayton’s school district and by charter school supporters.
Consider a few:
• Dayton Early College Academy. An experimental school begun by the district and the University of Dayton, it pushes high-schoolers to college-level work quickly and now rivals Stivers for top scores in the city.
• David Ponitz Career Technology Center. The district’s just-opened tech high school boasts state of the art equipment and a promising partnership with Sinclair Community College.
• ISUS. This charter school offers dropouts a second chance to learn job skills in construction and health care while finishing high school.
• Dayton Technology Design High School. A district-sponsored charter school for dropouts, it teaches entrepreneurial skills and has an impressive track record of getting kids to college.
The new options have been good for Dayton, offering students who were dissatisfied with, or failing in, low-performing traditional city high schools.
The latest new high school option in the region debuted this week with a twist: it’s open to any student in a three-county area. Bringing new and more good high school options to suburban and rural districts is an idea whose time has come.
The Dayton Regional STEM School launched in Beavercreek with 93 ninth-graders from 20 districts in Montgomery, Clark and Greene counties. The plan is to expand to 600 kids in grades 6 to 12 during the next few years.
The school, which couldn’t have happened without Wright State University’s support, resembles the early college model, but with a heavy science and math focus, including classes in conceptual physics and engineering design. It boasts an intimate, collaborative climate and a first-class list of education, business, industrial, community and government partners.
It looks more than promising.
Ohio made a good bet when it invested in STEM schools — public schools with charter-like funding redirected from the students’ home school districts, in addition to additional direct money from the state.
In many rural high schools, there is only one high-school option. There may not be nearby private or other public schools, and sometimes rural districts cannot afford to offer a wide variety of course work. A few of the STEM school kids are making long drives from New Carlisle, Cedarville, Brookville and Germantown, likely in search of more advanced instruction.
Some suburban districts do offer lots of course options, but, for some kids, their large high schools are overwhelming or they just don’t fit in. For them, changing schools generally requires shelling out money for private school tuition. Even in a top performing rural or suburban school district, some kids can’t find a niche that allows them to thrive. The STEM school now offers them another quality option.
Creating more places where educators can push the envelope by trying out new school models, and where students can seek out programs that are the right fit for them, is good for Ohio. It’s a trend that should be nurtured.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Rural Communities, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
Ellen Belcher: UD has good company on the river
Grant Neeley, a former Texan and an associate professor at the University of Dayton, spent two days kayaking on the Great Miami River this week. Afterward, he had lots of ideas about how Dayton should sell its rivers and almost limitless clean water supply.
He likes “Keep Dayton Wet,” but admits it’s too much of a rip-off of “Keep Austin Weird,” a slogan that has helped cement that city’s reputation for embracing eclecticism. A sometimes commuter cyclist, Neeley also likes “Off the road — on the river.”
Neeley, 42, is one of 10 adults and 45 UD students who, after their paddling trip from Taylorsville Dam to SunWatch, have a new picture of the Great Miami River — and Dayton. That was the goal: Experience the river and see where it takes you and your head.
This is the sixth year UD’s Rivers Institute has taken students on a field trip that’s designed to go beyond the teaching and learning that would naturally occur in the outdoors.
Sure, there’s the lecture about the glaciers creating the buried valley aquifer with their deposits and, the ice, which at its peak, was 10 times the height of Dayton’s iconic carillon.
There is an experiment immobilizing fish with electrical shocks. That allows researchers to collect fish without harming them, which reveals what aquatic life is thriving. The diversity or lack thereof represents a measurement of water quality.
And as good luck would have it, this year the groups spotted two bald eagles a stone’s throw from downtown.
But the trip is also designed to open the students’ eyes to what’s special about Dayton and how they might contribute while they’re here or after graduation, should they decide to stay.
None of the good times or teachable moments went to waste. A videographer was along for the ride. Now the post-trip assignment in marketing — though it’s not really presented that way — is to take the reams of footage and create videos for YouTube that speak about Dayton.
(Watch for a notice here when they’re posted.)
UD’s program is important not as an isolated event, even though its ongoing nature is cumulatively creating a passionate band of young people who, whether they stay or leave, are big on Dayton and its assets.
The larger significance is that the program is a piece of a picture that shows a growing appreciation for Dayton’s special natural resource — its liquid gold, above and below ground.
Besides this initiative, which leverages the river as a teaching tool while also marketing its recreational opportunities, the Dayton Development Coalition has its H2O Open for Business campaign. That effort, incidentally, is occurring at a time when 20 states are experiencing drought.
The coalition is targeting not just big water users, but also companies that want to go green. The region’s groundwater has a constant temperature of 56 degrees, making it a powerful source for geothermal heating and cooling.
There also have been two River Summits to spotlight riverfront development and, in a sense, to loosely coordinate riverfront projects. That coordination is not nothing in a fractious region that often sees development opportunities as a zero-sum game.
In this instance, the more there is happening and being built on the river, the better off everybody is. Development begets development.
Meanwhile, there’s also an effort — struggling though it is — underway to create a three-day progressive festival next summer for cities along the Great Miami. That event is designed to encourage people to paddle or bike from town to town.
Over and above the great work that continues at RiverScape, Miamisburg is energetically trying to develop its riverbanks, and Troy is going to town with programming and amenities on the river.
Finally, Five Rivers MetroParks is promoting the region’s expansive bike paths on the rivers and arranging programming that is bringing out people and actually getting them in the water.
As for the students, they’re waiting for the day UD is going to have a boathouse. In a place that for so long has stayed away from the water’s edge, this adds up to broad recognition of what’s in our back yards and that other communities can’t manufacture.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Ellen Belcher, Higher Ed, Sports and Recreation
