In an effort to give you just a taste of the education budget’s legislative hearings, here is a copy of Dr. Robert Sommers’ testimony.
Bob is the Director of Governor Kasich’s Office of 21st Century Education and appeared before the House Finance Committee on March 23, 2011.
Also offering testimony last week was Ohio Department of Education Budget Director Kelly Weir. Her testimony is available here.
It’s bad enough that Ohio’s definition of excellent is 75% of students meet the minimum standards, but just how low a standard is proficient?
Actually, it’s pretty darn low.
First of all, the proficient bar starts with the assumption that it represents the level at which a student who is “just barely proficient” would be able to answer the question correctly. Next, just to make it more interesting, a test’s difficulty varies widely by grade and subject. And if that’s not enough, the proficiency bar does not represent readiness for the next grade level.
The Columbus Dispatch takes a closer look at this issue.
Several examples show how to see beyond a school’s passing rate on the state tests given in grades three through eight and 10.
About 65 percent of the third-graders passed the state reading test last year at both Maybury Elementary and Ecole Kenwood Alternative, two Columbus schools.
Our friends at Fordham Institute have a new publication that details their findings of just what Ohio superintendents would say if they could speak anonymously. Conducted by The FDR Group, the results of the survey are summarized in Fordham’s new report Yearning to Break Free: Ohio Superintendents Speak Out.
Before I get to the results of the survey, I just have to take a moment and offer a comment on the title. Yearning to Break Free? Seriously? Aren’t we being just a tad dramatic? Read the full post…
There is a very interesting post on the Future of Education Blog regarding linear thinking and innovation.
I printed out the list of the seven deadly sins of innovation and plan to pin them on the wall in my office.
Are there more?
Our friends at the Fordham Institute issued a new report this week that is critical of Ohio’s United States’ History content standards. Lacking in both clarity and rigor, Ohio scored a 3 of a possible 10, earning a less than acceptable grade of D.
Ohio’s standards claim to outline the “essential knowledge” that students should acquire through the social studies curriculum. Unfortunately, the state does not seem to consider substantive historical content to be “essential,” since very little is included.
In the elementary grades, Ohio’s standards place little emphasis on U.S. history. Early grades’ guiding themes include such general concepts—typical of the “expanding environments” approach to social studies—as “The Classroom Community” (preKindergarten), “A Child’s Place in Time and Space” (Kindergarten), “Families Now and Long Ago, Near and Far” (first grade), “People Working Together” (second grade), and “Communities: Past and Present, Near and Far” (third grade). The history strand in these grades is divid Read the full post…