Beyond Tinkering
A coalition of education partners working through the Ohio Grantmakers Forum (OGF) has called on Ohio’s leaders to act boldly to restructure the traditional model of teaching and learning, refine the state’s academic standards, create an assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in different ways, and ensure that Ohio has the very best teachers and principals working in all classrooms and schools.
The report, Beyond Tinkering: Creating Real Opportunities for Today’s Learners and for Generations of Ohioans to Come, contains 11 recommendations that were presented to Gov. Ted Strickland, state legislative leaders and members of the State Board of Education early in 2009. KnowledgeWorks Foundation was one of 33 stakeholder organizations that helped shape the report.
The recommendations aim to identify ways to prepare Ohio students for success in the global economy and to guarantee quality teaching and effective school leadership in the state’s classrooms and schools.
Priorities for reforming Ohio schools
The action recommendations are focused on three compelling priorities:
1. Accelerate the pace of innovation by restructuring the traditional, industrial model of teaching and learning and improve the performance of Ohio’s lowest-performing schools.
“Real innovation is needed in the way schools operate – how they deliver instruction and use their assets, how they use time and talent, and how they allocate and spend resources. Maintaining our traditional definition of “schooling” and preserving boundaries between schools and communities will undermine efforts to find real solutions and to get better results.”
2. Refine Ohio’s academic standards and restructure the state’s assessment system.
“The state standards need to be revised to articulate what we expect all students to know and be able to do so they are ready to compete in the increasingly global labor market, can live and thrive in a diverse society and can participate as informed members of our democracy. And we need to move to a more balanced assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and abilities in different ways; informs teaching strategies and improves learning; and provides a complete picture of how schools are doing against a consistent set of expectations.”
3. Ensure that we have the very best teachers and principals working in all of our classrooms and schools for the benefit of all of our students, especially minority and low-income students who traditionally have been underserved.
“For any school – and for any state – high-quality instruction is a strategic investment. Teacher quality is the school-based factor that makes the most impact on student achievement. And high-quality principal leadership is second only to classroom instruction among the school-related factors that influence student achievement.”
Recommendations for action
To accelerate the pace of innovation …
1: Create Ohio Innovation Zones and an Incentive Fund.
Seed transformative educational innovation by attracting and building on promising school and instructional models; introduce district-wide innovations that personalize and deepen teaching and learning; and eliminate operational and regulatory barriers.
2: Focus on transforming low-performing schools.
Develop a statewide plan targeting the 10 percent of lowest performing schools; focus on research based best practices; create a coordinating body to lead the work; and reassess and reallocate school improvement dollars.
3: Develop a statewide education technology plan.
Develop a plan that addresses: technology as a diagnostic tool and an approach to instruction and data management; teacher capacity in using technology; ways to close the “equity gap”; and be agile, nimble and flexible.
To refine Ohio’s academic standards and restructure the state’s assessment system …
4: Develop a “graduate profile.”
This profile, which will be used to establish the next generation of academic standards, should identify the foundational content and skills (i.e., work-related skills, international workplace expectations, technology skills, learning and thinking skills, citizenship skills and other competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills) that all graduates should master.
5: Re-evaluate and revise Ohio’s academic standards.
Ensure that standards are aligned to college and career expectations, benchmarked internationally, streamlined to focus on depth vs. breadth and include 21st century skills.
6: Revise the state’s assessment and accountability framework.
Develop a new system that informs and improves the quality and consistency of instruction and learning; has multiple measures; ascertain whether students are meeting important mileposts during their school careers; and holds schools accountable. Expand K-8 assessments so there is a greater focus on performance assessments and significantly re-vamp the current high 9-12 exams.
7: Provide instructional supports to promote high-quality teaching and learning.
Facilitate the development of performance assessments and corresponding rubrics; act as a clearinghouse for curriculum frameworks, lesson plans and instructional methods; and provide high quality professional development.
To ensure that we have the very best teachers and principals …
8: Strengthen standards and evaluation for teachers and principals.
Amend the teacher and principal standards in key areas; develop a deployment strategy for the standards; and create model hiring and evaluation protocols based on the standards; and provide teacher level value-added reports with the appropriate privacy precautions.
9: Improve Ohio’s teaching and learning conditions.
Provide financial incentives to encourage schools and districts to implement changes to improve teaching and learning environments; strengthen the awarding of tenure; ensure high quality professional development; and reconcile the language of teacher dismissal to that of other public employees.
10: Develop a new educator compensation system.
Create a taskforce to develop new educator compensation system models that broaden and strengthen the pool of individuals who are attracted to and retained in teaching and school leadership, and improve the connections among compensation, teaching excellence and higher levels of student learning.
11: Ensure an equitable distribution of high-quality teachers and principals across all schools.
Develop and implement strategies that ensure effective educators teach and lead in all Ohio schools; provide innovation and incentive grants to develop graduate-level teacher residency programs and principal leadership programs; and design programs that provide time for teacher collaboration and planning, team teaching, reorganization of the school day/year and other innovative practices.