The following is a guest post from Peggy Lehner, Ohio State Senator for the 6th District, on why Ohio should be considered the reformiest state at our Ed Reform Idol event next week. The contestant from Wisconsin will explain why the Badger State should be named the 2011 Ed Reform Idol winner tomorrow; Florida's, Illinois's, and Indiana's contestants have already weighed in.
Don't forget to join us for Ed Reform Idol on August 11 at 8:30AM or watch the webcast live to see which state wins!
Ohio deserves recognition not only for the K-12 education-policy reforms it accomplished during this legislative season, but for the collaborative (and therefore more sustainable) nature of many of them. What's even more remarkable is this occurred in the last six months as Governor Kasich and the new legislature were confronted by an $8 billion structural imbalance to address as we began constructing the state's budget plan for the next two years. Considering where the Buckeye State's policies stood on teacher effectiveness, accountability and school improvement, charter schools and choice, and other policies affecting K-12 education prior to 2011, we've achieved extraordinary progress, arguably more so than any other state in the U.S.
Teacher Effectiveness. Ohio has given authority to local districts to come up with their own teacher evaluations and policies tied to them, while requiring them to follow basic principles that will improve the quality of the state's teaching force. Policy changes that will promote teacher effectiveness include:
- Requiring that districts adopt rigorous new teacher evaluations that are based at least 50 percent on student growth, and that differentiate levels of effectiveness;
- Eliminating an Ohio law that required that schools use the ?last hired, first fired? approach to reduce staff based on seniority (our new law now bans this practice and requires that these decisions are based on performance);
- Opening up alternative licensure to K-12, which paves the way for Teach For America and other high-quality teacher programs;
- Requiring schools performing in the bottom 10 percent of all public schools to test core teachers in their subject areas to ensure they have the content knowledge to teach in their subject areas; and
- Collecting data from teacher preparation programs to track their effectiveness.
Charter Schools and Choice. Ohio was one of the early states to enact a charter-school law and we have learned from experience over time. Suffice it to say, hindsight is 20/20. With close to 340 charter schools serving almost 100,000 students, we have both ends of the spectrum?excellent charters as well as many that are performing poorly. Merely lifting caps on charter growth doesn't translate into ?reform.? Rather, lawmakers, the governor, educators, and reform-minded interests have worked to improve our laws to put a greater emphasis on quality over quantity. Examples of what Ohio accomplished include:
- Strengthening the automatic closure (?death penalty?) provision for poorly performing charter schools, already the toughest closure law in the nation;
- Lifting arbitrary, low numerical caps on the number of schools authorizers can sponsor (pushing it up to 100) while also installing a smart cap preventing authorizers rated in the bottom 20 percent according to their schools' academic performance from opening new schools;
- Granting charter schools more access to unused district facilities; and
- Expanding the state's voucher program for students and eligibility for it, making it one of the largest program's in the country, and creating a new special-needs scholarship program.
Accountability and School Improvement. Over the past six months, we are:
- Moving from having virtually no teeth to consequences for poorly performing district schools, to installing tough interventions for schools persistently rated in the bottom 5 percent of all buildings statewide;
- Creating a pilot program for ?parent triggered? school turnarounds;
- Increasing transparency (through data collection, reporting, and statewide rankings of all buildings) not just for academic performance but fiscal performance and return on investment; and
- Encouraging the creation of innovation schools and zones, to be held accountable for student performance but granted the autonomy necessary to innovate and achieve dramatic achievement gains.
Considering the monumental fiscal challenges facing Ohio (including a historic budget deficit) and the fact that these changes occurred with such expediency over the last year or less, the Buckeye State is a strong contender for the title.
? Peggy Lehner