Anti-Positivist

The five recommendations [for strengthening Ohio's public schools] include:

1. Creating world-class standards and stronger accountability mechanisms. Successful education systems hold schools, educators, and students accountable for their academic performance. The best systems in the world challenge their children with high standards and rigorous, equitable assessments. Ohio needs to build on its progress by aligning its K-12 standards with the knowledge and skills needed for success in post-secondary education and today's global economy and by benchmarking its standards against high-performing states and nations.
2. Ensuring that funding is fairly allocated among all children and schools. To ensure that monies are allocated fairly, efficiently, and accountably, and are targeted at the differing needs of children, the current system should be replaced by a weighted-funding plan wherein per-pupil amounts "weighted" according to the specific needs of individual youngsters follow them to the public schools they choose to attend.
3. Recruiting the best and brightest to lead schools and empowering them to succeed. Ohio should recruit school leaders from many different professions and backgrounds. School districts should be encouraged to look for proven leadership talent rather than paper credentials. These leaders should be fully empowered to lead their schools to new levels of performance. They should receive substantial bonuses for improving student achievement and their job tenure should be directly linked to school performance.
4. Improving teacher quality. The evidence is overwhelming that quality teachers are the prime drivers of student success. To improve Ohio's teaching force, we need to:
   Open the doors to talented college graduates and mid-careerists.
   Help good teachers become great.
   Create a competitive compensation system and sustainable retirement systems.
   Empower school leaders to engage, deploy, compensate, develop, and retain top instructional talent.
5. Expanding the quality of, and access to, a range of high-performing school options. One-size-fits-all education doesn't work. Students and parents need the ability to choose the best school options based on calendar, academic emphasis, pedagogy, philosophy, and technology. Public-education alternatives also provide needed competition to traditional schools so that all schools can improve. The state also needs to strengthen its capacity to overhaul and close schools that persistently fail to deliver results. Ohio's children will prove the beneficiaries.

# posted by Jim Fedako @ 10:51 PM