In our August 6 issue we misstated some requirements of the Ohio Core curriculum. Ohio high school students entering ninth grade after July 2010 will be required, among other things, to take four years of math, including Algebra II, and three years of lab-based science, including an upper-level course like chemistry or physics.
In our August 6 issue we misstated some requirements of the Ohio Core curriculum. Ohio high school students entering ninth grade after July 2010 will be required, among other things, to take four years of math, including Algebra II, and three years of lab-based science, including an upper-level course like chemistry or physics. See the full Ohio Core requirements here.
AKRON, Ohio - Voters will decide Nov. 4 if leasing the city sewage system to a private contractor and using the money to finance college and technical-school scholarships for Akron public high-school grads is a good idea (see here).
Wits have dubbed the idea "stools for schools," according to the Associated Press's Thomas J. Sheeran. But Mayor Don Plusquellic said he's giving the city the straight poop when he estimates Akron, eventually, could realize $200 million from the idea (see here). The mayor believes the money could help arrest a "brain drain" of educated Akron residents from the city, which has suffered from the decline of the rubber industry and other manufacturing sectors.
The plan is a spinoff from programs such as one in Kalamazoo, Mich. (see here). The idea is to provide scholarships to students in the city to attend the University of Akron or an Akron trade or technical school with the idea they would remain in the community to work.
Participating schools would have to be in Akron and be approved by the city, Akron Service Director Rick Merolla told The Gadfly. Akron's city website indicates that district-school and parochial-school graduates would be eligible to participate (see here). Graduates of Akron school-district-sponsored charter high schools would be eligible. The city has one of those. He also said charters sponsored by non-profit groups might be eligible but graduates of so-called "for-profit" charters would not. So students at schools like Life Skills Center apparently wouldn't be covered. It's also unclear how students attending e-schools would be treated.
Excluding some charters is unfair and may be illegal, said the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "This somewhat mystifies me. There really is no such thing as a private charter school. There are district-run charter schools and there are charter schools that are run by non-profit boards," said William Sims, executive director for the group. "To discriminate among public schools, I would suggest, is unconstitutional. They are sometimes managed by for-profit or non-profit management companies but they are ultimately accountable to a non-profit board."
Graduates would have until they're 25 to take advantage of the program. Members of the military would have even longer, according to the Akron Beacon Journal (see here).
The most exciting innovation in education policy in the last decade is the emergence of highly effective schools in our nation's inner cities, schools where disadvantaged teens make enormous gains in academic achievement. In his new book, Sweating the Small Stuff (published by Fordham), freelance journalist David Whitman, a former senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, takes readers inside six of these secondary schools and reveals the secret to their success: they are "paternalistic."
The schools teach youngsters how to act according to traditional, middle-class values, set and enforce exacting academic standards, and closely supervise student behavior. But, according to Whitman, unlike paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are warm, caring places, where teachers and principals form paternal-like bonds with students. Though little explored to date, the new paternalistic schools are the most promising means yet for closing the nation's costly and shameful achievement gap.
You may purchase Sweating the Small Stuff here. (For review copies, please contact Christina Hentges.)
For a national Education Gadfly piece by Checker Finn and Marci Kanstoroom, see here.
For an EdNews interview with Whitman, see here.
For George F. Will's review, see here.
For Cory Bunje Bower's review, see here.
For David Whitman's response to Cory Bower, see here.
In our August 6 issue we misstated some requirements of the Ohio Core curriculum. Ohio high school students entering ninth grade after July 2010 will be required, among other things, to take four years of math, including Algebra II, and three years of lab-based science, including an upper-level course like chemistry or physics. See the full Ohio Core requirements here.
