The Education Gadfly Weekly

When Deborah Delisle takes the reins at the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) she will face a long list of challenges, not the least of which is getting to know a very large set of new bosses.

Delisle, the superintendent of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools, was the unanimous pick of the State Board of Education to become the next state superintendent of public instruction (see here). She will start her new job no later than Dec. 1 and replace Susan Tave Zelman, who is leaving her post at the end of the month to become a senior vice president at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Delisle, however, may not get to know many of the current board members before a large number of them leave. The panel that hired her will not be the one she works for three months from now as more than half of the 19 state board seats could change hands by January (see here).

There's also the governor. Though Gov. Ted Strickland's chief of staff was a member of the search committee and Strickland had glowing things to say about Delisle after her appointment, the governor has not officially given up his intent to effectively takeover ODE by appointing a cabinet-level director of education. Although the superintendent doesn't work for the governor, he's a definite factor. Strickland forced Zelman to leave her post after nearly 10 years in the job and Ohioans will be wondering how Delisle gets along with him. Even if Strickland does abandon his proposal to put in place an education czar, he is still moving forward with a comprehensive overhaul of the state's public-education and school-finance system. Until it is unveiled, that much-anticipated plan will be the elephant in every room Delisle enters.

Internally at ODE, an early order of business for the new superintendent will be replacing recently departed ODE leadership, including accountability czar Mitch Chester-now the Massachusetts' commissioner of education-and school-finance guru Paolo DeMaria-who left for the Board of Regents in August. She'll also have to convince key staffers to stay on as well as manage a large agency with 600-plus employees during tough economic times. There is likely to be little new spending, so introducing a new program will mean eliminating or scaling back an existing one, and further staffing cuts are possible.

All of this isn't to say that Delisle is sure to fail. Far from it. She has a record of success as a district superintendent. She has seen the good, bad, and ugly that result from changes to state education policy and programs. She's been around the Buckeye State long enough to understand the politics and know the key players, so she ought to be able to hit the ground running. We at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute wish the new state superintendent the best of luck. And if she is looking for ideas about where to take education in Ohio, we have some suggestions (see here).

Two very important questions face educators in determining when an Ohio high-school senior should become an Ohio high-school graduate. First, how much does that student know? And, second, exactly how should that question be answered?

With educators in many states, including Ohio, looking at using the ACT and SAT as high-school graduation tests, a new report says they should proceed with caution.

The Report of the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission, issued in September, says it would be wrong to stretch these tests, twisting them to measure knowledge or ability for which they are not designed. The report comes as Ohio educators are increasingly chit-chatting about using the ACT to replace the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). Certainly, something new is needed, if for no other reason than the OGT measures only what a high-school student may know up to the 10^th grade. Gov. Strickland is interested. In his series of meetings with education stakeholders, the governor has hinted at using the ACT-in combination with other measures-to replace the OGT (see here).

In 2004, the Stark Education Partnership conducted a study (see here) that recommended that the state should grant waivers to districts to use the ACT and/or ACT WorkKeys in place of the Ohio Graduation Test in conjunction with end-of-course tests or in conjunction with the social studies component of the OGT. In 2007, Kentucky began using the ACT and its related exams to help inform decisions students make about high- school coursework. High-school juniors are required to take the ACT. Eighth graders take Explore, a curriculum-based assessment designed to help students make the most of high-school opportunities. Tenth-grade students take PLAN, an assessment which, in part, explores career/training options (see here).

Any discussion on how the ACT is used in Ohio, however, needs to account for the new report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (see here). Chaired by the dean of admission and financial aid at Harvard University and joined by colleagues from places such as Georgetown, Columbia, and Achieve Inc., this report examines how college readiness tests such as the SAT and ACT should be used. Several of the recommendations explicitly address state issues. Particularly pertinent recommendations are to:

• Refrain from using admission tests as measures of achievement for accountability purposes. Don't stretch the tests for uses other than which they were designed. They are designed to measure students' abilities to complete college work, and nothing more (or less for that matter), unless big technical changes are made to the test.
• Ease the K-16 transition. Make the transition between primary and secondary school and college easier by having a college-readiness assessment that is aligned to high-school coursework.
• Help verify the research on the value of test preparation. It's not clear how useful test-preparation programs are in helping students. We need to know more.

Of course, the report is not the end-all, be-all for how standardized admission tests should be used for accountability purposes by states. But it should give advocates of using the ACT or the SAT as a high school graduation test pause. It would be peculiar not to notice what is written in this national report, especially if choices are made to use these tests for multiple purposes. Regardless, what it simply goes back to is what constructs do we want to measure at the end of high school, what rigorous tests do we want to select (or develop), and what can we buy for these constructs and tests. The ACT may or may not rigorously measure what we want. That's to be determined. But it shouldn't be selected just because it's there and we want to keep up with the Joneses in Kentucky.

Charter-school supporters are calling a Toledo effort to require every new school to have a cafeteria, gym, and other facilities the latest skirmish in an on-going guerrilla war against charters.

Faced with strong opposition to the measure, the city plan commission tabled the proposal until Dec. 4 (see here). It would not only require a cafeteria and gym but also a media lab, library, and outdoor play area in every new school or any school that is expanded by 10 percent.

Unlike public district schools, charters don't receive any state building money from the Ohio School Facilities Commission (which has provided over $5 billion to local districts for new school construction since 2002), said Jennifer Dillion, who is the sponsor representative for the Madison Avenue School of Arts in Toledo. She called the proposal unfair.

A finance officer for another charter school said adding a cafeteria could easily cost $130,000 using an estimated construction cost of $100 per square foot. A 50-foot-by-50-foot gym could run $250,000.

"Toledo has been very resistant every time a charter school comes in and (they) keep finding more and more reasons to prevent us coming in," said Ron Adler, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, a Dayton-based pro-charter group. He said the proposal, if adopted, would amount to a de facto moratorium on new charters in Toledo.

Adler said the proposal doesn't take into account that some charter-schools, such as drop-out recovery schools, aren't required to provide lunch or physical education. The idea as originally proposed to the city was to also require field and track facilities and well as appropriate parking. Academics are the reason charter schools exist. "A lot of our schools don't offer sports," he said.

The facilities requirement would severely hurt plans to expand the rapidly growing Autism Model School in Toledo, said school director Mary Walters. A cafeteria or gymnasium also would be inappropriate for children with autism.

"They have a lot of sensory issues. The noise of a lunch room can over-sensitize them and can cause a lot of severe behaviors among students," said Walters, who testified before the Toledo Plan Commission.

Members of the plan commission and Toledo City Council concerned about charter schools operating in former commercial buildings have pushed the proposal, commission Chairman Rey Boezi told the Toledo Blade (see here). The idea may be the brainchild of State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, a former teacher who enjoys strong support from the Toledo teachers union. The Gadfly was unable to reach Fedor, who spoke in favor of the proposal before the plan commission. A spokesperson for Fedor confirmed that Fedor broached the issue with the city and said she likely would introduce the idea in the Ohio General Assembly. Prospects for a bill would seem dim since Republicans are likely to retain a Senate majority, even if Democrats take control of the House.

Still Adler is afraid the idea will spread. "I can see this popping up in every city-Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Cincinnati. It's a moratorium, city by city."

Adler said the Toledo fight is part of a larger battle. In Ohio, charter opponents have been unable to close charter schools by having them declared unconstitutional so they have set upon a campaign of harassment. The lawsuits filed by the state attorney general against several charter schools in Dayton and Cincinnati are examples (see editorial above), he said. Gov. Ted Strickland also has been a constant critic, most recently this week in Toledo where he, again, threatened part of the program (see here).

Other sniping efforts attempt to keep charters from buying empty school buildings by setting ridiculously high prices on the real estate. Akron voters will decide Nov. 4 on an initiative to lease its sewer system to a private contractor and use the proceeds to fund college and technical-school scholarships-but only for the city's district and parochial-school students (see here). Graduates of the district-sponsored charter high school would be eligible but not graduates of the drop-out recovery high school charter program (see here).

The idea, dubbed by wits as "stools for schools," is to arrest the brain drain in which the city's educated young people are fleeing the city for better opportunities. Mayor Don Plusquellic has estimated Akron, eventually, could realize $200 million from the lease (see here).The scholarships would be for students attending the University of Akron or an Akron trade or technical school, with the requirement that they would remain in town to work (see here).

Charters are Ohio public schools, however, and excluding non-school-district-sponsored charters from publicly funded scholarships may be illegal, said the executive director of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS). "This somewhat mystifies me. There really is no such thing as a private charter school," Bill Sims told The Gadfly in September after the Akron idea was revealed. "There are district-run charter schools and there are charter schools that are run by non-profit boards. To discriminate among public schools, I would suggest, is unconstitutional."

Maybe, although the state has been able to get away with allowing local tax dollars and state building money to be withheld from charters. But at the very least, what's happening in Ohio is out of step with the current swing in Democratic politics. Joe Williams, who heads up Democrats for Educational Reform, told attendees at the OAPCS annual meeting in Columbus last week that the union lock on the Democratic Party is weakening. The party has a strong pro-charter plank and presidential nominee Barack Obama is for charters. Teachers unions are increasingly out of touch with younger members, he said. Finally, the unions that represent low-wage workers support charters, Williams said, because their members know that poor public district schools are not helping their children.

When Deborah Delisle takes the reins at the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) she will face a long list of challenges, not the least of which is getting to know a very large set of new bosses.

Delisle, the superintendent of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools, was the unanimous pick of the State Board of Education to become the next state superintendent of public instruction (see here). She will start her new job no later than Dec. 1 and replace Susan Tave Zelman, who is leaving her post at the end of the month to become a senior vice president at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Delisle, however, may not get to know many of the current board members before a large number of them leave. The panel that hired her will not be the one she works for three months from now as more than half of the 19 state board seats could change hands by January (see here).

There's also the governor. Though Gov. Ted Strickland's chief of staff was a member of the search committee and Strickland had glowing things to say about Delisle after her appointment, the governor has not officially given up his intent to effectively takeover ODE by appointing a cabinet-level director of education. Although the superintendent doesn't work for the governor, he's a definite factor. Strickland forced Zelman to leave her post after nearly 10 years in the job and Ohioans will be wondering how Delisle gets along with him. Even if Strickland does abandon his proposal to put in place an education czar, he is still moving forward with a comprehensive overhaul of the state's public-education and school-finance system. Until it is unveiled, that much-anticipated plan will be the elephant in every room Delisle enters.

Internally at ODE, an early order of business for the new superintendent will be replacing recently departed ODE leadership, including accountability czar Mitch Chester-now the Massachusetts' commissioner of education-and school-finance guru Paolo DeMaria-who left for the Board of Regents in August. She'll also have to convince key staffers to stay on as well as manage a large agency with 600-plus employees during tough economic times. There is likely to be little new spending, so introducing a new program will mean eliminating or scaling back an existing one, and further staffing cuts are possible.

All of this isn't to say that Delisle is sure to fail. Far from it. She has a record of success as a district superintendent. She has seen the good, bad, and ugly that result from changes to state education policy and programs. She's been around the Buckeye State long enough to understand the politics and know the key players, so she ought to be able to hit the ground running. We at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute wish the new state superintendent the best of luck. And if she is looking for ideas about where to take education in Ohio, we have some suggestions (see here).