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Editorial
Ohio needs a reading guarantee
By Emmy L.
Partin
Ohio needs an elementary school “reading guarantee.” This
was one of several recommendations for improving student achievement in Ohio
that were pitched
last week by School Choice Ohio at its event highlighting the research of Matt
Ladner (senior advisor of policy and research to the Foundation for Excellence
in Education). Ladner noted that Florida has embraced a reading guarantee as a
key to helping improve student achievement (see Jamie’s blog
for more about his research and SCO’s policy recommendations).
Ladner
attributed Florida’s success to a set of reforms, one of which was the reading
guarantee. In other words, Florida third-grade students cannot advance to
fourth grade if they do not pass the state’s third-grade reading assessment.
The logic behind this policy is that if students aren’t competent readers by
fourth grade, they will struggle to comprehend tougher subject matter in late
elementary and middle school and beyond, and will fall further behind
academically. A report
out last year from the Annie E. Casey Foundation supports this argument. It
stated that while the failure to read is consistently linked to higher rates of
dropping out of school, “of the
fourth graders who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
reading test in 2009, 83 percent of children from low-income families—and 85
percent of low-income students who attend high-poverty schools—failed to reach
the ‘proficient’ level in reading.”
Ohio should embrace Ladner’s recommendation, and in fact we
already have. We just haven’t earnestly implemented it yet.
The Buckeye State has a history with a “reading guarantee”
that goes back to 1997 and the Voinovich administration. Fourteen years ago
lawmakers in Ohio acknowledged the fact that all fourth graders should be able
to read and as such they enacted a reading guarantee. The legislature passed Senate Bill 55,
which laid the groundwork for much of the state education accountability system
we have in place today. Among its many provisions was a "fourth-grade
reading guarantee." Set to take effect for the 2001-02
school year, it was a fairly stringent measure that stated if a child didn't
score "proficient" or better on the state reading test, s/he couldn't
progress to fifth grade..
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Ohio should embrace Lader's recommendation, and in fact we already have. We just haven't earnestly implemented it yet. |
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Everyone
from parents’ groups to teacher unions was outraged by the requirement. And
given the strong local control and heavy local funding base of Ohio’s schools
(especially at that time), districts didn’t take kindly to the state
encroachment on their local grade-level promotion policies either. Before the
measure could take effect, it was ruled an unfunded mandate in 2001 by the Ohio
Supreme Court in one of the DeRolph (school-funding lawsuit) rulings.
Subsequently, the guarantee was amended by the legislature and watered-down to
appease opponents and let fourth graders who can’t read move onto fifth grade,
and beyond.
Fast forward a decade and additional legislative changes to Ohio’s law. We
still have a reading guarantee on
the books (at the third-grade level now), but in practice nothing has
changed. School Choice Ohio reports that “although 20 percent of Ohio third graders were not proficient in
reading as judged by the state assessment, just 0.6 percent of them were
retained in the 2010-11 school year.” Those students who do fail the
third-grade reading test and still advance to fourth grade are supposed to
receive reading intervention services, though there is little evidence such
intervention is having much of an impact. Last year, 16.2 percent of Ohio
fourth graders were below proficient on the state reading test and our NAEP
reading scores have barely budged.
A real reading guarantee won’t be a silver
bullet for Ohio’s academic woes, but it surely has enough merit to inspire
renewed debate among lawmakers and state education leaders. And that debate can
be informed by recent efforts in Florida and Indiana. The Hoosier State, for example, enacted a comprehensive third-grade reading
guarantee as part of its sweeping education reforms in recent years and added
additional reading support and K-2 diagnostic testing to help prepare students,
teachers, and families for the requirement. If Ohio’s lawmakers are willing to
debate (and in some cases legislate) school funding changes, expansion of school choice, reporting on students’ Body Mass Index, and religion in schools (and more), surely a frank conversation about how well our
students can read and should be able to read, and what the state ought to do
about it, is warranted. Ohio’s students – and this state’s future – deserve at
least that much.
Opinion
Why I support the education provisions in the hotly debated SB5
By Terry Ryan
Earlier this year I testified in both the Ohio Senate and
the House in support of the education provisions embedded in the highly
contentious Senate Bill 5. SB5, now known as Issue 2, is up for referendum next
Tuesday and current polls show the bill will very likely be overturned. If that
happens, it would be a shame because there are reforms in SB5 that education in
Ohio needs to not only become more efficient and sustainable, but to become
better for children.
As I shared in my legislative testimony, “Nothing matters
more to student learning than teacher quality. The fact is that highly
effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced
levels in a single year. The significant of this finding can’t be understated.”
I went on to argue, “Ohioans, for the most part, understand that strong
teachers and good schools are a critical investment in our children’s and our
state’s future. Consider that in 2010, the state invested more than $18.3
billion in K-12 public education – roughly $2,078 for every adult living in the
Buckeye State. In fact, school funding in Ohio has steadily increased over the
past three decades. Just since 1991, when the first DeRolph lawsuit was filed,
per-pupil revenue for Ohio’s public schools has risen 60 percent (even
accounting for inflation.)”
This growth in spending saw the number of K-12 public
employees statewide grow 35 percent (from about 181,000 to 245,250), while K-12
enrollment in the state actually declined about 1.5 percent. The math didn’t add
up when I testified and it still doesn’t. In fact, it is not a stretch to say
that education spending in Ohio, and indeed across the country, has peaked and
we need to figure out how to educate children to a higher standard with less
money.
To do this, school districts need more flexibility over
personnel and especially personnel costs as they make-up about roughly 85
percent of school spending. Senate Bill 5 would provide districts with needed
flexibility that includes:
- Creating a salary structure free of automatic
step increases;
- Requiring performance-based pay for teachers and
nonteaching school employees;
- Limiting public employer contributions toward
health care benefit costs to 85 percent.
- Banning seniority as the sole or primary
determinant of who gets laid off when lay-offs are unavoidable;
- Requiring annual evaluation of teachers to
include student performance date; and
- Requiring that any lay-offs be based in part on
these evaluations.
The bottom line, as the editorial pages of the Cincinnati
Enquirer, the Columbus
Dispatch, Cleveland
Plain Dealer and the Canton
Repository have noted, Ohio can’t continue doing
business as usual. Does SB5 need some improvements and fixes? Absolutely, and
this is what the legislative process is for, but throwing it out completely and
returning to the status quo will mean tougher times for school districts, more
teacher cuts, and a diminishment of quality in a time when we need to do more
with less.
Now is not the time to backtrack on reform. Hopefully Ohio’s
voters will see it the same way, but if they don’t lawmakers should seek to
move forward anyway. The state’s future is at stake here and doing more of the
same is not an option.
News & Analysis
Putting Ohio's teacher evaluation reforms in a national context
By Jamie
Davies O’Leary
The State Board of Education has just eight weeks left to
develop a model framework for teacher evaluations that will be used or adapted
by over 1000 local education agencies (LEA) by July of 2013. (Ohio’s biennial
budget – HB 153 – stipulated that the Board come up with a model by December 31
of this year.) Skeletal requirements are
spelled out in state law. Evaluations must: include measures of student growth
(50 percent); be based on multiple measures; rate teachers according to four
tiers of effectiveness (accomplished, proficiency, developing, and
ineffective); and inform other personnel decisions, particularly layoffs
(strict seniority-based layoffs were struck from state law).
But what else will the model framework include, especially
for that remaining - and some would argue more important - 50 percent of a
teacher’s rating? To what degree will districts and charter schools need to
enact a replica of the state’s forthcoming model, or something closely
resembling it, instead of merely repackaging their current systems? And how
will teacher evaluations impact other key personnel decisions, if at all?
Despite the fact that legislation clearly spells out a handful of requirements
surrounding Ohio’s new teacher evaluations, the answers to these questions
aren’t as straightforward as one might think.
In Fordham’s analysis
of Ohio’s education legislation from the first half of 2011 (primarily the
biennial budget, HB 153), we observed that when it comes to teacher
evaluations, “the budget leaves many decisions to local districts.” Depending
on whom you ask – this can be a recipe for watering down evaluations or it
could be a fact worth celebrating, in that it allows districts themselves to
take ownership and drive meaningful reforms to teacher effectiveness.
Recent analyses from two well-respected national organizations
put statewide teacher evaluations in national context. In State of the States: Trends and Early
Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies, the National Council on Teacher
Quality summarized the state of teacher effectiveness policies nationwide,
zooming in on 17 states and the District of Columbia (including Ohio) that
require student growth to be a predominant factor for teacher ratings. (Note,
NCTQ publishes a comprehensive annual yearbook
on state teacher policies broadly that is also worth checking out.)
In State of the States,
Ohio was among just a handful wherein teacher evaluation ratings aren’t
directly tied to dismissal, certification, or tenure. That is, among the dozen
and a half states under study, the vast majority have prescribed not only what
shall comprise a rigorous teacher evaluation but also how it will factor into
high-stakes decisions – whether rewards or sanctions.
Democrats for Education Reform’s Built to Succeed? Ranking New Statewide
Teacher Evaluation Practices took it a step further and ranked states,
attempting to measure “which of those [19 states plus DC] states’ laws are
tough enough to withstand the challenges ahead and are most likely to succeed
in increasing teacher quality.” DFER depicted Ohio as one of just a few states
with “clear potential for weakening the evaluation process at the ground
level,” ranking Ohio among the bottom third of states overall and bottom-most
among states in the Midwest. When it comes to having real implications for poor
ratings (dismissal, layoffs, placement, tenure, and compensation) Ohio earned
only three points out of a possible 21. (In each strand, a state can earn zero
to three points; there are a total of 20 strands in areas such as “strength of
evaluation plan,” “employment implications,” etc.)
Fordham unapologetically supports accountability for
educators, an end to LIFO (last in, first out) layoffs, and more
performance-based decision making in schools generally. But it’s hard to escape
the truth that no state – not even those heralded by DFER and NCTQ – has had teacher
evaluations for long enough to be able to discern what impact it’s had on
student achievement, and how or if it’s changed teachers’ behavior or ensured
better teachers for the kids who need them the most. Lest this sound like
backtracking on our beliefs around teacher effectiveness, let’s reiterate: Ohio must craft and implement more
meaningful evaluations for teachers that differentiate for quality.
But perhaps designing that system and collecting data on
teacher effectiveness (and sharing that data in a transparent, but low-stakes
way) should be priority number one. Once the state has several years of data, a
list of robust and meaningful assessments from which to draw that data (which
the State Board of Education has been tasked with devising, but which doesn’t
exist yet), and enough time so that educators can observe for themselves that
the data make intuitive sense (namely that it accurately gauges their own
abilities and those of their colleagues) – then
the state can worry about tying meaningful rewards and sanctions to those
evaluation ratings. Or possibly by that point, districts themselves will be
motivated to do so on their own.
It’s understandable to want to improve teacher quality by
pulling all levers at once. DC Public Schools and Harrison School District 2
have done phenomenal work in developing rigorous teacher evaluations that,
while not perfect, are worlds better than previous systems and that educators
on the whole seem to buy into. But we should keep in mind that these reforms
happened on a local level; DCPS has 44,900 students and HSD 2 has just over
10,000 students, a splash in the bucket compared to Ohio’s 1.8 million
students. Creating such a system for an entire state, let alone a state as
large and diverse as Ohio, requires a lot more work (and a lot more cooperation
and buy-in from schools and the people working in them).
The danger in launching fully ahead and tying all personnel
decisions – layoffs, transfers, pay, certification, tenure, etc. – to
evaluation systems before we’ve seen the accuracy of those evaluations systems
is obvious: it threatens credibility and could foster hostility from districts
and schools. Worse, by tying high-stakes rewards and consequences to an
evaluation system that doesn’t exist yet, we risk creating dozens of incentives
for principals to inflate scores instead of honestly
evaluating teachers and providing them with meaningful feedback to improve.
This isn’t to say that high-stakes decisions shouldn’t
eventually be directly connected to teachers’ ratings. But while Ohio ranks low
according to DFER’s likelihood-of-watering-down scale, it also ranks low in
terms of absolutely screwing up, unfairly dismissing teachers, or creating
hostility. That may sound unnecessarily risk-averse, but caution in this realm
may end up producing a better – and more importantly, more sustainable –
outcome for Ohio’s teachers, schools, and students.
Ohio's NAEP results no surprise
By Bianca
Speranza
The 2011 NAEP results for reading and mathematics were
released yesterday - see here
for our DC colleague Mike Petrilli’s take on it. Nationally, fourth-grade
reading scores remained the same from 2009, while eighth graders achieved a
small increase in reading performance. Students from around the country
continued the upward trend in math, with increases in both the fourth and
eighth grade. Ohio’s state-specific results were more of the same, mostly stagnant
performance compared to past years.
Chart 1 below shows that reading results for fourth and
eighth graders in the Buckeye State haven’t budget for the last decade or so. In 2011, 27 percent of fourth-grade students
scored at the proficient level or higher, unchanged from 2009. Only 7 percent
of fourth graders scored at advanced proficiency, down from the 9 percent that
did so in 2009. Breaking down the data by racial subgroups, only 13 percent of
Black students were proficient on the fourth-grade assessment, and 1 percent
scored at an advanced level.
CHART 1
The results from the eighth-grade reading assessment paint a
very similar story. The percent of students proficient in eighth-grade reading
has remained virtually unchanged since 2002, with only 33 percent of students
scoring at or above the proficient level in 2011. The achievement gap between
Black and White students, as well as White and Hispanic students has not narrowed
since 2009.
It is disappointing to see a continuing weakness in reading,
but Ohio’s math results are slightly more encouraging. Chart 2 below shows Ohio’s
fourth- and eighth-grade math scores over time. While the percent of fourth-grade
students proficient in math didn’t change from 2009 (38 percent), eighth graders
eked out a small gain. In 2009, 28 percent of eighth graders scored at the
proficient level, and in 2011 Ohio saw an increase of 3 percentage points, with
31 percent proficient of students now proficient in eighth-grade math. Ohio was
one of only a handful of states to see an increase in eighth-grade math
results.
CHART 2
Voucher student performance promising, better data needed
By Bianca
Speranza
Ohio currently has a basket full of
publicly funded, private-school voucher programs, making it unique in America’s
school choice landscape. Ohio has three separate programs for students in failing
districts, students with autism, and students living in Cleveland. A voucher
program for students with disabilities launches next year. Further, the
EdChoice Scholarship program (which provides private school scholarships for
students in failing public schools) was recently expanded to 30,000
scholarships statewide this school year and 60,000 next year.
A new choice bill is now being
debated in the House that would vastly expand the number of students eligible
to receive a voucher. HB 136
would create the Parental Choice and Taxpayer Scholarship (PACT) Program and
give children who come from families with annual incomes of up to $62,000 a
year a voucher worth up to $4,563. Furthermore, 25 percent of families in the
state could be eligible for smaller vouchers awarded on a sliding scale for
families with incomes up to $95,000. This expansive
growth in school choice options via vouchers is contentious to say the least.
A myriad of opinions offering both
support and opposition to the expansion of vouchers have been voiced over the
past several months (see Terry’s
recent op-ed here); however, one criticism in particular warrants a
response. An October 12 Columbus Dispatch
editorial,
“Many Questions,” stated that “advocates should be able to show that students
who go to private schools using vouchers do better than their peers who remain
at the public schools they left. So far no one has collected such data.” While
better data are certainly needed, what we have now is telling.
With the limited data available
from the Ohio Department of Education (we can’t get at value-added growth or
growth over time) we are able to
compare the academic performance of students using an EdChoice voucher to those
students who remain in voucher-eligible public school buildings, on a
single-year, snap-shot basis.
The results for Ohio’s “Big 8” districts (from which
the majority of voucher students hail) are encouraging for school-choice
supporters. The chart below provides a one-year snapshot for the performance of
EdChoice students in Columbus versus students in voucher-eligible district
schools. Voucher students outperform their peers in every subject and grade
except one, and in some cases do so by a significant margin. Particularly,
voucher students’ performance in the eighth grade is strong. Eighth-grade
voucher students outperform their district peers by 31.9 percentage points in
reading and 18.3 percentage points in math. These results are an improvement to
a similar analysis we performed last
year in which voucher students in Columbus out-performed their district peers
in eight tested grades and subjects.
Chart 1: Columbus EdChoice Students vs. Voucher
Eligible Students
Source: The Ohio Department of Education
The results are also positive in Fordham’s hometown of
Dayton.
Chart 1: Dayton EdChoice Students vs. Voucher Eligible
Students
Source: The Ohio Department of Education
Last year, voucher students outperformed their
district peers in seven of fourteen academic tests in Dayton. Perhaps most
encouraging is the fact that they are outperforming their district peers in
third grade reading by 22.4 percentage points (see Emmy’s piece above on the
importance of early reading proficiency).
While voucher performance in Columbus and Dayton, is
positive the same cannot be said for Canton. District students outperform
voucher students in Canton in every subject and grade, and in the case of
fourth-grade math they do so by 37 percentage points. These results are
somewhat of an anomaly (voucher students in the remaining Big 8 districts
perform fairly well comparatively), but it is still worth noting that while
voucher students’ performance is strong in some urban cities, it is not necessarily
the case for all.
The results are mixed, but overall a majority of
students using vouchers are outperforming their peers who remain in traditional
district schools. Reading proves to be an area of strength for students using
vouchers in the Big 8 – in Cincinnati, for example, students using vouchers
outperformed their district peers in reading in every grade. The Dispatch argued that if advocates of
vouchers could show that voucher students are performing at higher levels than
their district peers, such programs should continue.
While the data available for an analysis of this type are
limited to one year snapshots, the data we do have has shown that in fact
voucher students are performing well, and that in cities like Dayton and
Youngstown, where traditional public school performance has languished years,
vouchers appear to be a good option for the children using them. The lack of
data available, however, is a yet another clear call for why Ohio needs a
system of accountability for all publicly funded students that will not just
show us raw achievement data for one year, but rather how schools, and
students, are performing over time. Until such a system is created and put in
place it is difficult to really tell what impact vouchers are having on student
learning in the long run but what we can see now is that children using
vouchers outperform those who stay in their district schools.
Capital Matters
Local school and government leaders gather to discuss sharing services to improve performance
By Bianca
Speranza
Can we work smarter together? That was the question on people’s
minds at a forum last week sponsored by Fordham, the Nord Family Foundation,
Ohio Grantmakers Forum, ESC of Central Ohio, Ohio Education Matters, and Public
Performance Partners. The
event, Working Smarter Together:
Enhancing savings and performance for local schools and governments,
featured several keynote speakers (including Auditor of State Dave Yost), and a
panel discussion about real-world examples of efficiency and cooperation in
local government.
C.
Jack Grayson, founder and chairman of the American
Productivity and Quality Center, kicked off the event with a discussion
about the need to increase efficiency and productivity in the public sector,
and especially in education. Grayson stressed that local governments and school
systems must think differently when it comes to operating more efficiently. Grayson
argued that the commonly used across the-board cuts hurt both efficiency and
effectiveness, and more times than not lacks a thoughtful process as to who to
cut and why, resulting in a loss of talented people and critical organizational
knowledge. Instead, Grayson advocated for the need to focus more on process and
performance management (PPM). "You cannot improve results by
looking at results. You have to look at processes," Grayson
said. "Whether you are the CEO or the custodian
who cleans the toilet, you have a process, and you can improve it."
Grayson said that everything involves a process and in order to
improve outcomes we must evaluate the entire organizational process from the
beginning to the end. He also discussed the need to reduce functional
silos and the tremendous amount of waste associated with compartmentalization. He
noted that most educational organizations are organized functionally with
different silos focusing solely on individual task such as HR, instruction, and
IT. Downsides of functional silos include redundancy, focusing more on
improving the function rather than meeting the needs of the customer, which in
turn produce large amounts of waste.
Grayson’s presentation was followed by a panel on increasing
efficiency and cooperation across local government that included Bart Anderson
(ESC of Central Ohio), Barbara Gellman-Danley (University of Rio Grande &
Rio Grande Community College), and John Weithofer (Miami Valley Communications
Council). These panelists, moderated by Public Performance Partners founder
Hugh Quill, discussed the need to share services more now than ever before, and
the challenges that sometimes lie in the way of doing so- such as political
tension and legal barriers. Each panelist brought a unique and different
perspective to the table.
To find out more about this important and timely issue and view
footage from the event click here.
Short Reviews
Strong Support, Low Awareness: Public Perception of the Common Core State Standards
By Daniela Fairchild
While adoption and
implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have spurred a
hailstorm of activity across educator and policy circles alike, the general
public remains clueless even as to what the standards are—never mind how they
are being implemented or what the long-term implications of their adoption might
be. Through this national poll (given to 800 registered voters), the folks at
Achieve find that a whopping 60 percent of Americans have never heard of the
Common Core standards—and another 21 percent have heard “not much.” Further,
among voters who have heard peep about the Common Core, impressions are
mixed: Thirty-seven percent view them favorably while 34 percent hold an
unfavorable opinion (the rest are undecided). Despite this mixed reaction to
the CCSS specifically, Americans overwhelmingly approve of the idea of common
academic standards for all states: sixty-six percent support vs. 31 percent
opposed. (Even a majority of Republicans like the notion of common standards.)
But with so few people in the know, it’s clear that Common Core remains fragile
politically. The good news, however, is that public-school teachers (most of
whom have heard “a lot” about the Common Core) like the idea of common
standards: Sixty-five percent of them are in support. That’s a promising
indication that these standards might actually have some staying power in the
classroom—if the public doesn’t come to dislike them first.
Developing Education Talent Pipelines for Charter Schools
By Bianca Speranza
Strong teachers and leaders are undoubtedly critical to the
success of any school system; research has repeatedly suggested that school
leadership is second only behind classroom instruction in its impact on student
learning. The autonomous nature of charter schools makes the need for strong
school leadership even more crucial. Charter school advocates who are trying to
increase the number of quality charter schools and replicate high-performing
schools must consider not only how they are going to retain talented
individuals, but also how to support a talent pipeline.
A recent report
by Public Impact, with the help of Foundation Strategy Group (a social impact
consulting firm), identifies six indicators that have the biggest impact on
recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers and leaders. The report
draws from two cities, New Orleans and Indianapolis, to demonstrate how these
indicators are being used successfully in practice:
- A facilitator that focuses specifically on
the talent pipeline: A strong facilitator that is a locally-based entity
can help to identify gaps in the talent supply for charters and determine ways
to fill those gaps. Examples of facilitators include New Schools for New
Orleans and the Mind Trust in Indianapolis.
- Local and national talent providers: Organizations
such as Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, and New Leaders for New
Schools provide help in recruiting highly effective teachers and leaders, and
also provide them with ongoing development and support.
- Political support: Having political
supporters who will advocate on behalf of human resource policies and equal
funding for charter schools is a crucial piece in order to create a sustainable
pipeline of talent.
Both New Orleans and Indianapolis are utilizing a
combination of the indicators mentioned above and have seen tremendous results.
In 2011 Indianapolis charter school students were outperforming their peers in
traditional schools. New Orleans charter schools continually outperform
district-run schools, and over a dozen of their charter schools have
demonstrated exemplary growth, the state’s highest rating.
Creating a teacher and leader pipeline is a difficult task
and one that Ohio must think more seriously about developing. Ohio also faces
challenges such as gaining political support, recruiting national talent
providers to the state, and raising philanthropic support.
Editor's Extras
Teacher accountability making strides
By Matthew C. Kyle
- Over the last decade poverty levels in American
suburbs have increased by more than 50 percent.
As two-thirds of this dramatic increase came recently during 2007-2010,
suburban communities have had to re-evaluate their community identities
including how they fund local schools particularly in areas surrounding Cleveland.
- Recent data on 8th grade achievement
in math and reading compares the United States and the states individually to
other countries around the world who also participate in the Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA).
Results
show that the United States as a whole lags behind in reading achievement (17th)
but much more so in math achievement (32nd). Meanwhile, Ohio is doing better compared to
other states, ranking above the U.S. average for both reading and math.
However, 25 other nations and 16 states are ranked ahead of Ohio in math while
10 countries and 10 states rank ahead of Ohio in reading.
- While challenging traditional models and
expanding student options, public charter schools are changing the national
landscape of education. However, charter schools are constantly facing funding
and political challenges. In this report,
the Center for American Progress identifies methods and solutions as to how the
federal government can best support public charter schools.
- In Washington D.C. the new IMPACT program
for measuring teacher effectiveness is making great strides in properly
rewarding effective teachers while also working to improve struggling teachers. In the last year, 58 percent of teachers that
were considered “minimally effective” improved displaying the program’s ability
to provide valuable feedback to motivate teacher improvement. IMPACT uses multiple measures to evaluate
teacher effectiveness including: student achievement, three administrator
observations, two third-party observations, collaboration with other teachers,
and community involvement. For more on
the success of IMPACT, watch teacher interviews here!
- Teachers and school officials in Cleveland City
Schools are beginning to discuss the transition to teacher
merit pay in order to help combat budget restraints that have forced over
$13 million in cuts this year.
Announcements
Charter incubators: the future of high-quality charter schooling
Going to be in the nation’s capital on December 7? Join us in
our DC office for an interactive conversation on a new model for charter school
growth that has taken root in several cities. Charter incubators are
accelerating the launch and development of top-flight charter schools in
communities that need them most. Co-sponsored by the Cities for Education
Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), this discussion will analyze the key
findings from a new policy brief by Public Impact, and provide lessons on how
federal, state, and local policymakers can help create an ecosystem that
accelerates the smart-growth of quality charter schools. Click here to
register. If you can’t make it out to DC that day simply visit our website, www.edexcellence.net, at 3:30 p.m. EST on December 7, and
watch the proceedings live.
Innovative pathways to teaching fair at OSU
Are you interested in becoming a teacher, especially in a
high-need or shortage area? Students for Education Reform–OSU and StudentsFirst
are hosting an “Innovative Pathways to Teaching Fair” on November 16 at OSU.
The fair is open to the general public as well as to students. See the flyer below for more
information or email Justin at justinschulze@gmail.com.
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