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Home > Blogs > Lakota Schools News and Issues > Archives > 2009 > January > 22 > Entry
Would this reform education?
Here is a press release I got about reforming education in Ohio. Do you like any of these ideas? Do you think Gov. Ted Strickland will adopt any?
Governor, State Legislators Urged to Pursue Bold Education Reforms Ohio coalition says tinkering with the systems we have will not serve children’s learning needs
COLUMBUS, Thursday, January 22, 2009 - Acknowledging that Ohio’s schoolchildren have benefited from a decade of important education reform, Ohio Grantmakers Forum (OGF) and its education partners today called upon Ohio’s leaders to act boldly to restructure the traditional model of teaching and learning, refine the state’s academic standards, create an assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in different ways, and ensure that we have the very best teachers and principals working in all of our classrooms and schools. The broad coalition of education partners; 11 recommendations were contained in a report, Beyond Tinkering: Creating Real Opportunities for Today’s Learners and for Generations of Ohioans to Come, which was presented to Governor Strickland, state legislative leaders and members of the State Board of Education.
“The title of our report - Beyond Tinkering - is not meant to diminish the significance of what Ohio has accomplished during the past decade” said David T. Abbott, executive director of The George Gund Foundation and OGF chair when the statewide organization’s Board of Trustees approved the report in November 2008.
“Expectations for all students have been raised and assessment programs aligned with academic standards have been implemented to hold schools, teachers and learners accountable. Conventional approaches to teacher recruitment, preparation and development have been approved, and there have been changes in the way instruction is delivered and schools are designed.”
Abbott acknowledged that Ohio ranks sixth out of the 50 states on a comprehensive set of measures, as reported in Education Week’s 2009 Quality Counts report. Yet, “Incremental changes are not getting the job done. Bolder action is required and the pace of improvement must be accelerated. We must find ways to scale up our successes. We can no longer defend or tolerate an industrial-age school model that is out of step with the demands of the 21st century in which jobs, careers and workplaces are learning-intensive and where people often have many jobs over the course of their lifetimes.”
Beyond Tinkering and its 11 action recommendations are the product of two workgroups convened by OGF in May 2008, and chaired by Ronn Richard, president and CEO of The Cleveland Foundation. Composed of representatives of 33 stakeholder organizations, the workgroups were asked to explore ways to prepare Ohio students for success in the global economy and to guarantee quality teaching and effective school leadership in the state’s classrooms and schools.
Among the groups that have formally endorsed the final report are: Business Alliance for Higher Education and the Economy; EDvention (Dayton); KidsOhio.org; Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools; Ohio College Access Network; Ohio Education Association; Ohio Federation of Teachers; Ohio Grantmakers Forum; Ohio School Boards Association; and Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“Despite significant progress in recent years, Ohio still has one of the lowest education achievement rates in the country, which itself suffers when compared with that of other industrialized nations,” said Ronn Richard. “We must reinvent education or Ohio’s children will not be able to compete in the new global economy, and we will doom yet another generation to poverty. It is nothing less than a moral imperative that we take bold and urgent action.”
OGF and its partners’ action recommendations are focused on three priorities: 1. Accelerate the pace of innovation by restructuring the traditional, industrial model of teaching and learning and improve the performance of Ohio’s lowest-performing schools.
From Beyond Tinkering: Real innovation is needed in the way schools operate - how they deliver instruction and use their assets, how they use time and talent, and how they allocate and spend resources. Maintaining our traditional definition of “schooling” and preserving boundaries between schools and communities will undermine efforts to find real solutions and to get better results.
- Refine Ohio’s academic standards and restructure the state&’s assessment system.
From Beyond Tinkering: The state standards need to be revised to articulate what we expect all students to know and be able to do so they are ready to compete in the increasingly global labor market, can live and thrive in a diverse society and can participate as informed members of our democracy. And we need to move to a more balanced assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and abilities in different ways; informs teaching strategies and improves learning; and provides a complete picture of how schools are doing against a consistent set of expectations.
- Ensure that we have the very best teachers and principals working in all of our classrooms and schools for the benefit of all of our students, especially minority and low-income students who traditionally have been underserved.
From Beyond Tinkering: For any school - and for any state -high-quality instruction is a strategic investment. Teacher quality is the school-based factor that makes the most impact on student achievement. And high-quality principal leadership is second only to classroom instruction among the school-related factors that influence student achievement.
According to Heidi B. Jark, vice president and manager, The Foundation Office, Fifth Third Bank, and OGF’s current Board chair, “Education is the key to Ohioans” success in a global community that prizes and rewards knowledge and innovation. Competition for business investment, jobs and consumer dollars is intense, and the rote learners of past generations are being replaced by creative, critical and analytical problem solvers. That is why all of our young people must be ready for postsecondary education without remediation, and why they must enter the workforce ready to learn in the workplace where job-specific education and training is available. George E. Espy, president of Ohio Grantmakers Forum, acknowledged that the release of these recommendations coincides with the ongoing work by Governor Strickland to develop a comprehensive education reform plan for Ohio. He said the extreme fiscal challenges facing the state today provide an extraordinary opportunity to look at how Ohio invests it current education resources. “Many of our recommendations do not touch funding at all but focus on different approaches to educating our students,” Espy said. “In other cases there may be a need for a re-allocation of existing resources, and for new dollars. The state’s current fiscal condition and the rapidly changing world in which all of us live make it imperative that we commit ourselves to using scarce resources wisely and that we take the actions recommended in this report now.” Ohio Grantmakers Forum is an association of foundations, corporate contributions programs and other grantmaking organizations.
A Summary of the Recommendations Presented in Beyond Tinkering: Creating Real Opportunities for Today’s Learners and for Generations of Ohioans to Come
To accelerate the pace of innovation Recommendation #1: Create Ohio Innovation Zones and an Incentive Fund. Seed transformative educational innovation by attracting and building on promising school and instructional models; introduce district-wide innovations that personalize and deepen teaching and learning; and eliminate operational and regulatory barriers. Recommendation #2: Focus on transforming low-performing schools. Develop a statewide plan targeting the 10 percent of lowest performing schools; focus on research based best practices; create a coordinating body to lead the work; and reassess and reallocate school improvement dollars. Recommendation #3: Develop a statewide education technology plan. Develop a plan that addresses: technology as a diagnostic tool and an approach to instruction and data management; teacher capacity in using technology; ways to close the equity gap and be agile, nimble and flexible. To refine Ohio’s academic standards and restructure the state’s assessment system. Recommendation #4: Develop a graduate profile. This profile, which will be used to establish the next generation of academic standards, should identify the foundational content and skills (i.e., work-related skills, international workplace expectations, technology skills, learning and thinking skills, citizenship skills and other competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills) that all graduates should master. Recommendation #5: Re-evaluate and revise Ohio’s academic standards. Ensure that standards are aligned to college and career expectations, benchmarked internationally, streamlined to focus on depth vs. breadth and include 21st century skills. Recommendation #6: Revise the state’s assessment and accountability framework. Develop a new system that informs and improves the quality and consistency of instruction and learning; has multiple measures; ascertain whether students are meeting important mileposts during their school careers; and holds schools accountable. Expand K-8 assessments so there is a greater focus on performance assessments and significantly re-vamp the current high 9-12 exams. Recommendation #7: Provide instructional supports to promote high-quality teaching and learning. Facilitate the development of performance assessments and corresponding rubrics; act as a clearinghouse for curriculum frameworks, lesson plans and instructional methods; and provide high quality professional development
To ensure that we have the very best teachers and principals Recommendation #8: Strengthen standards and evaluation for teachers and principals. Amend the teacher and principal standards in key areas; develop a deployment strategy for the standards; and create model hiring and evaluation protocols based on the standards; and provide teacher level value-added reports with the appropriate privacy precautions. Recommendation #9: Improve Ohio’s teaching and learning conditions. Provide financial incentives to encourage schools and districts to implement changes to improve teaching and learning environments; strengthen the awarding of tenure; ensure high quality professional development; and reconcile the language of teacher dismissal to that of other public employees. Recommendation #10: Develop a new educator compensation system. Create a taskforce to develop new educator compensation system models that broaden and strengthen the pool of individuals who are attracted to and retained in teaching and school leadership, and improve the connections among compensation, teaching excellence and higher levels of student learning. Recommendation #11: Ensure an equitable distribution of high-quality teachers and principals across all schools. Develop and implement strategies that ensure effective educators teach and lead in all Ohio schools; provide innovation and incentive grants to develop graduate-level teacher residency programs and principal leadership programs; and design programs that provide time for teacher collaboration and planning, team teaching, reorganization of the school day/year and other innovative practices.
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