Carroll Commencement
Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
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 > November > 20
Friday, November 20, 2009
Guest column: Overhaul colleges that flunk teacher prep
This commentary is written by Gregory Bernhardt and Thomas J. Lasley II. Bernhardt is dean of the College of Education and Human Service at Wright State University. Lasley is dean of the School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton.
It’s time for Ohio to get tough with colleges that aren’t making the grade when it comes to preparing future teachers and turning out graduates who know what works in the classroom.
Getting good new teachers in Ohio classrooms is an essential goal. Underperforming institutions, whose graduates show a pattern of failing to get their students to make at least one year of academic growth, should be closed or reconstituted with new leaders, new curriculum and better instruction.
That’s a severe punishment, but a necessary one if Ohio wants its kids to compete against the rest of the world, which is where today’s bar is now set. To make this work, the state will need a system that tracks and compares new teachers and their impact on student test gains over time in such a way that allows the colleges they came from to be fairly compared.
Other states are now beginning to recognize this need. Wisconsin and Texas recently joined Louisiana as the only states with a mechanism for tracking the effectiveness of their teacher-preparation programs.
Ohio, which has moved toward such a system, must join that group.
Problems of funding, individual privacy and a viable testing and data-collection system have slowed progress. The state is still not close to implementing what is needed to assess the impact the state’s teacher-preparation programs have on student learning. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for reform of teacher preparation. Critical to his approach is to ensure effective teachers for all classrooms. He wants to measure that, in part, by studying the connection between student achievement and teacher performance.
Duncan says the nation must ensure it has effective teachers — those who know their subject matter, can create a classroom where learning can occur and are committed to a career of professional growth.
At Wright State University and the University of Dayton, we have taken steps to ensure graduates know their disciplinary content well and have the clinical experiences necessary to manage the classrooms they will encounter when they leave school. Both Wright State and UD require their students to begin classroom clinic and field experiences early. They both have a long history of creating critical partnerships with schools that ensure student teachers will have academically rigorous experiences. These experiences are not simple exposure; rather, they focus on learning how to teach content in ways that foster student academic growth.
Both UD and WSU place a premium on recruiting and graduating quality students. The average ACT score for teachers in Ohio is about 21, while at UD, the average is 25. At WSU, students preparing to teach grades 4 through 12 must earn a bachelor’s degree, then spend a year working in a school while earning a master’s degree.
Both institutions also are involved in the Teacher Quality Partnership, an initiative to identify teacher education practices that most effectively promote student academic growth. Both also are part of a national research effort through Stanford University that seeks to create a performance-assessment system for new teachers.
UD and WSU are deeply committed to being part of Ohio’s effort to turn out new teachers who can help kids grow academically.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Guest Columns, Higher Ed
Editorial: UD’s winning plan is working
For University of Dayton sports fans, last weekend had the feel of a dream being fulfilled.
Since the early 1990s, Dayton has aimed for a day when it would field intercollegiate teams that earned respect for the way they competed, succeeded and represented the university. That time seems to have arrived, considering the accomplishments in 2009 in men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, football, volleyball and baseball.
The blossoming of UD athletics has resulted from a purposeful effort to improve management, facilities and coaching.
The men’s basketball program, the flagship sport for UD, is getting lots of attention, and justifiably so. After former Coach Oliver Purnell returned the team to respectability from the lost years of defeat in the early 1990s, Brian Gregory was hired with the expectation that he’d take the program to the next level.
The school and its fans wanted a team that competed for its league title regularly, played in NCAA tournaments and earned a top 25 national ranking.
Under that criteria, men’s basketball — ranked No. 18, the preseason favorite to win the Atlantic 10 and coming off an NCAA tournament second- round appearance — certainly seems to be living up to these high hopes.
But basketball success isn’t confined to the men. The Flyers’ opening game win over Creighton Saturday came the same weekend that the UD women’s team defeated 10th-ranked Michigan State and lost a two-point squeaker to 19th-ranked Louisville. It was an especially nice start to the new season coming off consecutive 20-win seasons.
It was also a big weekend for UD soccer, which saw the women finish the season among the nation’s 32 best teams in the NCAA tournament’s second round, while the men finished the regular season as league champs and hopeful for their own tournament bid.
At the same time, UD volleyball won its 11th straight game Saturday, Nov. 14, to claim at least a share of the Atlantic 10 title, while a big win at Drake put UD football back into a tie for first place in its league.
In case anyone forgot about the success of UD baseball last spring — when it won the A-10 title and had one of its best seasons ever — the team was honored at halftime of the men’s basketball game Saturday.
All this success celebrated since Friday follows a report last month that ranked UD’s 96 percent graduation rate for athletes in the top 10 nationally.
Ted Kissell, who retired in July after 16 years as athletic director, deserves a lot of credit. UD was a low performer in most sports in a bad-fit league when he arrived; he launched a rebuilding effort.
This year’s success and the seamless transition to the new athletic director, Tim Wabler, during the summer are a testament to his leadership.
At the start of Mr. Kissell’s tenure, the university chose carefully those sports it wanted to commit to and then added resources and support for them. This included some painful early decisions to drop some minor sports.
The turnaround took time as UD rehabbed sports venues like UD Arena for basketball, Baujan Field for soccer and the Frericks Center for volleyball and built new baseball and softball stadiums.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kissell demonstrated a good eye for coaching talent, and those coaches have taken the right approach of steady, consistent improvement.
UD’s athletic program, as a rule, now attracts quality student-athletes. That’s worth cheering for.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Scott Elliott, Sports and Recreation
Editorial: Clearcreek Twp. firms should foot water tower bill
Warren County has a serious public safety concern when it comes to a fuel terminal in Clearcreek Twp. — one that the 10 companies doing business there have a responsibility to address.
Everyone would benefit if a water tower big enough to douse a major fire at the terminal is constructed. Negotiating a deal about who pays would prevent a legal fight, which would be costly. In any agreement, though, the companies must pay the most for a project that primarily protects their interests.
The water tower idea grew out of a concern raised three years ago by now-retired Clearcreek Fire Chief Bernie Becker. He felt his crews did not have the resources to contain a serious fire at the terminal.
Underground tanks and pipelines contain up to 85 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, ethanol, propane and natural gas at any given time there.
The new chief, Tom Morrison, also believes the current water system could not provide enough water to the site, should something catastrophic happen.
Since Mr. Becker started this discussion, the companies and Warren County and township officials have proposed four options to increase water supply — a water tower, a ground-level water tank, a reservoir or a water line extension. The easy favorite was a water tower, with an eventual price tag of $4.8 million.
The tower is not needed either for the county water system or for general fire protection, only if a serious fire occurs at the terminal. It would be financed by bonds and the cost assessed to the 10 companies based on several factors. Their costs would range from $95,000 up to $1.9 million each. The companies all had an opportunity to review the assessment method.
But now a majority of the businesses — seven of the 10 — are balking at the cost and want to scuttle the plan. On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the Warren County Commission decided to hold off on a decision, ordering more public meetings.
The companies cannot be allowed to shift the burden for protecting their interests to taxpayers. Their arguments against building and paying for the water tower are not persuasive.
Their attorneys have said each company has the capacity on its own site to contain any fire. Hogwash. The combined disaster plans of each business do not add up to a coherent plan to protect the public if more than one becomes involved in a serious fire. Plus, each of those plans depends to some extent on the fire department.
The companies also argue that the wider community will benefit from the water tower and, therefore, should help pay for it. This is, to put it mildly, a stretch. Everyone could get by just fine without the tower but for the danger of the terminal going up in flames.
County Commissioner Michael Kilburn said he found the argument compelling that water would not even be the best option to douse flames at some facilities, especially the gas companies. He shouldn’t be swayed by that view.
Even if a particular fire shouldn’t be extinguished by water, there is still a need to wet down roads, buildings and other structures nearby to keep the disaster from spreading. And the foam used to douse some fuel fires must be mixed with lots of water.
A water tower is needed to protect the companies themselves. An inferno would threaten everything around it. The companies should foot the bill.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
Kevin Riley: Street-smart officers have bright ideas for downtown
Do you feel safe when you’re walking alone on a dark, unlit and abandoned street that lacks signs?
Of course not. We go out of our way to avoid those situations.
Therein lies one of the challenges for people trying to revitalize downtown Dayton.
Even though downtown is safe — and statistics prove it — many people have the perception that it isn’t. In other ways, it can be intimidating if you don’t go there often.
Michael Ervin, a retired physician and health insurance executive who is behind an initiative called the Greater Downtown Plan, believes his group has to address safety. And Ervin says it will.
Two Dayton police officers who work downtown have become key contributors, and they have innovative ideas worth supporting.
Officers Bill Parsons and Shawn Huey, with the backing of their Central Business District boss, Lt. Larry Faulkner, advocate coupling tried-and-true safety and crime-prevention practices with efforts to create a vibrant downtown.
Here’s what they suggest:
— Use inventive lighting of buildings, parks and other key downtown areas to create a sense of excitement and safety.
— Install lighting, trim trees and fix sidewalks in areas that look unsafe to people. The officers’ ideas, which are cheap and easy to do, fit into what the Greater Downtown Plan is trying to do.
“With relatively little money, their ideas could literally be transformational for the city,” said Ervin. “People tend to focus on the big-dollar projects. Sometimes the really big changes are right in front of us and don’t cost a lot of money.”
Parsons and Huey are advocating for these ideas because they believe in Dayton and want people to feel safe there. They have led citizens and business owners on a late-night downtown tour, pointing out problem areas and opportunities to make them more inviting.
Ervin recalls them simply placing a flashlight at the base of statue to show how even a little light can make a big difference.
Last month, they organized a special presentation that drew ooohs and ahhhs from an audience at Sinclair Community College. The officers showed their concepts for lighting up buildings and areas of downtown. They took real buildings and created pictures of how they could look.
(Click here to see some before and after photos.)
They also convinced companies that sell lights and signs to assist in the presentation.
How did they come up with these ideas?
Parsons and Huey can give you an explanation based on theory and law enforcement studies, while Faulkner has a master’s degree in the subject. But their recommendations also reflect the pragmatism of experienced street cops.
They routinely work with bar owners to improve safety and behavior around their establishments. One of the first things they do? Check the bathroom at the bar. A messy, unkept bathroom with graffiti sends a signal, they say.
“They are going to tolerate the wrong behavior,” Parsons said. A clean, neat bathroom tells people they need to behave.
They also advise bar owners on lighting and music as a way of making sure things don’t get rowdy — and dangerous — at the wrong times. So they are applying the same principles of environmental psychology to making downtown streets safer. Make it look safe and that will help assure it is, they say.
Parsons and Huey specifically point to efforts at Cooper Park near the Montgomery County Public Library as a place where their concepts have worked.
Of course, these ideas all by themselves won’t completely turn around downtown Dayton. But they can help.
And their approach also fits in with getting grass-roots involvement for improving downtown.
Ervin has engaged an army of citizens, and these officers show that the approach is working.
“These guys are the perfect example of talented citizens listening and then getting excited about what they could do to revitalize the city,” Ervin said. “As a community, we are smarter when we all put our collective heads together in trying to figure out how to make a great future.”
Permalink | Comments (23) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Columns, Kevin Riley, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Local Business
