THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY:
Special Edition
A Special Edition of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 2, Number 23. October 29, 2008
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Strickland Roadmap for Academic Reforms--Translated by the Gadfly
Governor Strickland's office recently shared his "Roadmap for Academic Reforms," which appears to be the forerunner or prelude to the governor's long-awaited plan for renewing and strengthening K-12 education in Ohio. The present document, regrettably, is not only devoid of specifics but also brimming with catchy buzz phrases and trendy eduspeak nostrums. As a public service to readers, Gadfly has provided the following translation:
Exciting 21st Century Learning Environments:
Governor's proposal:
Our schools must become collaborative continuous learning organizations
that build a culture of strong relationships, professionalism, collaboration,
and common purpose for all students.
Gadfly translates: Our schools will be leaderless, directionless
centers of feel-goodism.
Governor's proposal:
Our schools must become a place where everyone feels safe, not just through
metal detectors, but through high expectations, strong discipline, positive
behavior interventions, a nurturing attention to the needs of each person, and
a collective sense of responsibility by parents, educators, and community for
our students to be competitive in the 21st century.
Gadfly translates: Our schools will not have the intestinal
fortitude to rid themselves of misbehaving students or ineffectual teachers.
Governor's proposal:
Strategies to enhance creativity and innovation in the classroom must
be encouraged and developed as an integral part of Ohio's educational system
to prepare our students for the 21st century.
Gadfly translates: Students may not learn proper grammar, spelling,
or arithmetic but they'll be rewarded for doing things their own way.
Governor's proposal:
Schools must become a place that acknowledges and recognizes the importance
of global awareness and cultural competence. Our diversity in Ohio is an important
asset in a global and interdependent world.
Gadfly translates: Let's focus on the pluribus and forget the
unum, along with history, civics, and patriotism.
Governor's proposal:
Schools must create a stronger connection to our families and the larger community
to provide the necessary supports and additional opportunities to ensure academic
success for our students.
Gadfly translates: If the teachers fail to teach students in
school, parents (and "society") are to blame.
Governor's proposal:
Standards and curriculum must continue to focus rigor and core knowledge but
also establish expectations for our students to learn the 21st century skills
that will empower them to be successful in an ever changing global marketplace.
Gadfly translates: When their jobs are outsourced to China
because they lack sufficient knowledge of science and math themselves, Ohio's
graduates will feel really good about communicating thoughtfully in Mandarin.
Governor's proposal:
Academic performance measures must continue to support accountability but must
also utilize multiple measures to provide educators with diagnostic information
about the day to day learning of our students and to demonstrate a wide range
of competencies and skills.
Gadfly translates: Instead of those nasty standardized tests
on which the performance of students and schools can actually be tracked and
compared in ways that parents, policymakers, and educators can understand, we'll
use individualized portfolios, performances, and demonstrations which cannot
be reliably scored or compared by anybody..
Governor's proposal:
Additional time during the learning day is needed for educators to collaborate
and share best practices.
Gadfly translates: The less time teachers spend in actual classrooms
with actual pupils, the better. We'll make sure that gets into the next contract.
Governor's proposal:
Increasing the number of learning days during the year is essential and will
provide opportunities for all students to achieve higher levels of success.
Gadfly translates: So long as the grownups' pay rises commensurately--or
maybe more than that.
Governor's proposal:
How teachers teach is critical to the learning process. Students should
be able to answer: Why an issue matters? What are the facts of a particular
issue? How does the knowledge apply to real life? And, how academic content
can be understood, enriched, and applied using creative thinking?
Gadfly translates: We don't much care if they end up knowing
when or why the Civil War was fought, where Singapore is in relation to Tokyo,
or how to factor equations with two unknowns.
Governor's proposal:
Effective support strategies must be in place to provide all students with an
opportunity for academic success, regardless of their personal situation, and
to once and for all eliminate the achievement gap.
Gadfly translates: Schools need more social workers, counselors,
and other paid adults.
Governor's proposal:
Educating the whole child, which includes wellness, physical education, emotional
development, behavioral development, academic development, arts, music, will
enhance the opportunities for student success.
Gadfly translates: We can ease off that annoying focus on reading
and math and those nasty tests by which achievement is measured.
Excellent Educators:
Governor's proposal:
There must be seamless alignment between our institutions of higher
education and our K-12 classrooms to provide educators with the training and
professional development to ensure the success for our students.
Gadfly translates: Teachers need more ed school courses--and
let's crack down on anything that resembles expedited "alternative paths" into
the classroom or principal's office.
Governor's proposal:
The preparation for becoming a teacher must involve a residency experience
in which an aspiring educator receives an opportunity to obtain technical knowledge
and real world experience in our classrooms.
Gadfly translates: The longer and more complex a teacher's
pre-service preparation, the better for ed schools--and the harder it gets for
anyone unconventional to try teaching. Let's make sure Teach for America and
such never want to come to Ohio.
Governor's proposal:
There must be opportunities for our best teachers to remain in the
classroom to serve as mentors and coaches for each other by providing opportunities
for professional growth and advancement in the profession.
Gadfly translates: But no performance-based pay under any circumstances,
the heck with Obama.
Governor's proposal:
Through tracking the annual achievement of students we can improve the whole
system by acknowledging successful teachers while encouraging ineffective teachers
to leave the profession.
Gadfly translates: We'll "acknowledge" successful teachers
rather than reward them--but even identifying them will be impossible once we
get rid of those irksome standardized tests.
Governor's proposal:
We must create a pipeline for talented individuals to enter the profession.
Gadfly translates: And we'll make sure that pipeline runs through
ed schools, "independent" professional standards boards dominated by union members
and ed-school faculty, and complex certification procedures managed by state
bureaucrats.
Efficient Accountability and Resource Management Systems:
Governor's proposal:
There must be performance benchmarks and high quality operational standards
in place to create an equal environment for all K-12 educational institutions
that receive public dollars for the state.
Gadfly translates: We'll regulate the charter schools (and
why not private schools and home schoolers, while we're at it) till they can't
breathe.
Governor's proposal:
Improving the operational and fiscal accountability of all schools
throughout Ohio's educational system is critically important, and must become
a hallmark of our approach to organizing and funding the services and programs
that meet the needs of our students.
Gadfly translates: We'll make sure that all non-traditional
Ohio schools--charter schools, private schools, STEM schools, home schoolers--toil
under the same regulatory constraints and costs that burden conventional district-run
schools.
Governor's proposal:
Leveraging the resources and services of our ESCs will improve the day to day
operations of local school districts.
Gadfly translates: An expansion of middle management in the
public-education system will create yet more jobs for adults and additional
intrusions into the operation of schools--while relaxing the pressure on the
Ohio Department of Education to do much at all.
Governor's proposal:
Incentivising our schools in need of improvement to pursue aggressive strategies
to improve teaching and learning for our students that require the most attention.
Gadfly translates: Devising new means of persuading bad schools
to do what they should have been doing all along--but not making any grownups
uncomfortable, jeopardizing anybody's job, or giving the kids any opportunity
to flee to greener education pastures.
Governor's proposal:
Create effective communication tools to inform the public about the fiscal and
operational condition of the schools that receive public dollars from the state.
Gadfly translates: Like Joel Klein in New York City, we'll
hire lots more public relations flacks to tout the "successes" of our schools
and school systems.
Governor's proposal:
Improving our technology system to meet the needs of our students in the 21st
Century.
Gadfly translates: We still don't know how to use the computers
that we have but we'll get some more.
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The Ohio Education Gadfly is published bi-weekly (ordinarily on Wednesdays, with occasional breaks, and in special editions) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Have something to say? Email the editor at [email protected]. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email [email protected] with "unsubscribe gadfly" in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward the Gadfly to others, and from our website you can even email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may email [email protected] with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message. To read archived issues, go to our website and click on the Ohio Education Gadfly link. Aching for still more education news and analysis? Check out the original Education Gadfly.
Nationally and in Ohio, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, along with its sister organization the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, strives to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding high-quality education options for parents and families. As a charter-school sponsor in Ohio, the Foundation joins with schools to affirm a relentless commitment to high expectations for all children, accountability for academic results, and transparency and organizational integrity, while freeing the schools to operate with minimal red tape. The Foundation and Institute are neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.