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NBC4...
Ohio Education Reform
Leader: Schools Can Cut Costs And Be Successful
Sommers Advocates For Parents, Districts To Have More Control
By Patrick Preston
April 8, 2011
Ohio Governor John Kasich’s point person for reforming Ohio schools
stressed his desire to support innovative and creative teaching
methods, close failing schools, and increase parents’ ability to choose
their child’s school.
In his first televised interview, Robert Sommers, the Director of the
Governor’s Office of 21st Century Education, said he would support a
variety of approaches to educating students, including online learning,
so long as they led to student performance success.
Sommers emphasized his belief in putting superior teachers and
administrators in schools, shifting money away from administrative
duties and toward the classroom, and improving digital technology in
Ohio schools. Sommers also urged local districts not to ask taxpayers
to make up the difference of expected budget cuts.
“We’re real clear, don’t raise taxes at the local level either,”
Sommers said. “It’s time to think about ways to be more efficient in
our production of educational success.”
After NBC4 viewers Gail Spicehandler Burkholder, Kim Doucher and
Heather Clark DuLuard raised concerns about funding for gifted student
programs, Sommers addressed Gov. Kasich’s proposed budget which would
remove the requirement that local schools spend money on gifted student
education.
“We need to make those decisions primarily at the local level, what’s
in the best interest of all students at the local level,” Sommers said.
Asked if he believes school districts should support and fund gifted
education, Sommers responded, “I believe that the locals should believe
in what it takes to have all their students succeed to the best of
their abilities.”
Among Kasich’s education proposals, a plan to give parents at failing
schools the ability to demand significant changes, including converting
the school to a charter school or removing at least 70 percent of staff.
Sommers described the “parent-trigger” proposal as a last resort option
for schools that have been ranked in the bottom five percent based on
student performance testing for three consecutive years.
“We hope that never happens,” Sommers said. “We think that a school
district that knows that their school is in the bottom in the first
year, then in the second year, they’re going to be creative and smart
enough to get that performance up.”
When NBC4 first reported on the “parent-trigger” proposal, one parent
in east Columbus questioned whether teachers and staff deserve the
blame for failing schools, raising the question of how much
responsibility parents share in low performance.
Asked Friday if he would ask anything more of parents in failing
schools, Sommers responded, “We always encourage parental involvement
but in the absence of parental involvement, we still think we need to
serve those kids that might not have that opportunity. We think that
when parents have choices about where they go to school, when parents
have literally the ability to vote to take over their school, they’re
going to be highly involved.”
Sommers added that poverty and parental involvement are not excuses for
failing to adequately educate children, and he noted that he would not
be concerned if the “parent-trigger” proposal upset local
administrators.
“If you’re school is in the bottom five percent, we’re saying, ‘You
lost the opportunity to lead because you haven’t succeeded with your
children’.”
Teachers at failing schools would also be required to pass
recertification tests in the future.
“If they’re in the bottom five percent for three years in a row we
expect all the teachers to go through the Praxis assessments that every
teacher in Ohio has to go through to get their license. They get three
shots at passing it, if they don’t pass it that gives the option to the
local school to non-renew them.”
Sommers did not give a timeframe for how long teachers would have to
pass the test, noting that he wanted to include local districts on the
decision.
On merit pay, Sommers stressed that teachers deserve to be compensated
for performance, rather than longevity or education.
“There’s no research that connects student performance gains with
number of college degrees or tenure,” Sommers said. “We want teachers
that are effective to be well paid. We want teachers that are
ineffective to be removed from the system.”
Drawing from his most recent work experience as the CEO of a Detroit
charter school, Sommers said Ohio schools have room to become more
efficient.
“We know that there are technological advances that make it possible
for high quality teachers to serve more kids more successfully... In an
inner-city urban school, we chose as a charter company to have larger
class sizes and longer school year. In the long run, we had higher
performance.”
Sommers said he would leave it up to local school districts to decide
whether to expand class sizes or maintain smaller teacher-student
ratios, but he urged districts to examine their administrator-pupil
ratios, stating that the school districts in Ohio’s eight largest
cities had done little to change non-faculty staffing despite decreases
in student populations.
Read it with links and video at NBC4
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