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9486 in the collection
Ohio's Education Woes
Cleveland and Hudson are nearly equal in school spending. Academically, they're worlds apart
Cleveland's students are failing. Hudson's aren't.
Yet the level of spending per pupil in each district is not that different.
Therein lies one of the most complex and gut-wrenching debates in Ohio's failed effort to fund public schools adequately.
• What does Ohio need to do to adequately educate its 1.8 million schoolchildren -- whether they are from wealthy Hudson or poverty-stricken Cleveland?
• Can it realistically be done?
• If so, what is the cost?
The answers have ramifications not only for every child in the state, but also for Ohio's economy and everyone's wallet.
Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court for the fourth time since 1997 told the governor and legislature that they have not properly devised an adequate education system -- coupled with adequate funding -- that promises each child can succeed.
The court has listened to the plaintiffs in the suit -- a coalition of more than 500 school districts -- repeatedly charge that state leaders have never asked those three key questions.
In some states, leaders have concluded children in urban settings cannot be expected to succeed in a traditional K-12 system of schools. Radical changes are required.
That kind of discussion has not been held in Ohio.
Wide disparities
Visits to classrooms show teachers use standard approaches -- lectures, small-group sessions, one-on-one tutoring -- yet the academic outcomes continue to be dramatically varied.
One need not go outside Northeast Ohio to see the wide disparities.
Hudson and Cleveland schools have for the last three decades been among the top 20 percent in the state for spending per pupil -- with Cleveland slightly ahead of Hudson.
The results: More than 90 percent of Hudson children will go to college; nearly one in five Cleveland ninth-graders will drop out before his or her class graduates.
Hudson is home to some of Ohio's wealthiest families. Students do well on state proficiency and college admissions tests.
State leaders have bashed Cleveland as a failing system in which test scores are among the state's lowest. What they have not acknowledged is that Cleveland pupils are not only among the poorest in Ohio, they also might be the poorest among the 100 largest urban districts in America, according to national data.
Cleveland's dropout rate is worst -- No. 1 -- among the nation's largest districts that reported statistics. Columbus was second and Cincinnati was eighth.
With 190,000 children in those three districts -- 75,000 in Cleveland alone -- their numbers are hard to dismiss as an anomaly. They represent 10 percent of all Ohio schoolchildren.
However, Ohio's definition of adequate funding is based on the amount spent in about 120 school districts, mostly rural and suburban, and almost exclusively white and devoid of poverty.
All of Ohio's districts receive the same basic aid. State officials have never asked whether additional money provided for disadvantaged children in urban districts begins to address the needs of those children. Nor did they compare Ohio'smajor cities with other U.S. metropolitan school districts to see whether their expectations are realistic.
While Cleveland was No. 1 for poverty and dropouts in 1999, it ranked ninth for spending per pupil, according to the national Center for Education Statistics.
In 1997, prominent business, education and community leaders spelled out changes needed to help disadvantaged children succeed. Their study, which had taken more than three years, said as much as $3.5 billion in new money would be required to offer all Ohio children an adequate chance for an education.
Gov. George Voinovich and legislators dismissed the report.
Benefits of music
Delquinn Johnson, an eighth-grader at Cleveland's Forest Hill Parkway Elementary, picked up a trumpet for the first time a little more than a year ago.
On a recent snowy morning that nearly shut down the city, Johnson was happily in school jamming with his director, Roger Wingate, and other eighth-graders on a jazz version of a Christmas song.
Johnson clearly delights in playing. After eight years of schooling, he has discovered he has a gift.
State officials have never asked whether music is important, how much it costs or which districts have programs and why.
Cleveland Public Schools have no money to equip instrumental music -- a program researchers say has positive effects on math skills. When Cleveland children take the state proficiency tests, their lowest scores often are in math.
Cleveland eliminated instrumental music in almost all of its buildings decades ago when court-ordered busing and poor management pushed the district into financial collapse. High school bands are mostly nonexistent, one spokeswoman said.
The new superintendent,Barbara Byrd-Bennett, decreed after she arrived in Cleveland five years ago that there would be music. Cable channel VH1 and Cleveland city government provided grants to buy instruments.
Even that isn't enough.
Wingate at Forest Hill is loaning the students his own trumpets. Delquinn Johnson's middle school experience might have been very different without Wingate's largesse.
The impact of band was immediately evident to Roselyn Brudy, a fifth-grade teacher at Longfellow Elementary. She said one of her students was not doing well in class. When she threatened to pull him from his newly found love -- band -- so he could spend more time on his assignments, he was transformed. His grades came up and he was happier, she said.
Not that far away in Hudson, music is a high priority.
Nearly one-third of fifth- through 12-grade students is in the band program, one of the largest in the Akron-Canton area.
With few exceptions, students own their instruments, according to middle school team leader Ed Kline. New instruments can easily cost in excess of $1,000.
He estimates 1 in 10 takes private lessons and many also play the piano.
As he spoke, 140 members of the seventh- and eighth-grade band practiced a classical piece called Sabre Dance.
Different environments
The homes in Cleveland and Hudson are vastly different, as are the children.
The view from Roselyn Brudy's second-story window at Longfellow Elementary reveals boxy homes on postage-stamp lots. Some are neatly kept, but the one directly across the street has plywood over the windows. At the corner is a store with a sign that reads: ``Checks cashed.''
Brudy says that after summer break, she hears students talk about trips to the South to visit relatives and one-day excursions to Six Flags, Cedar Point and Kings Island.
Outside Jennifer Litzel's window at Hudson Middle School is a sea of snow covering rugby and soccer fields. At the far side are some of Hudson's neatly kept historical homes.
After summer vacation, Litzel hears about trips overseas, including one student whose family lived the entire break in Switzerland.
On the day of a recent visit, Litzel's class discussed a book they had read and how it related to their lives.
One student shared about going home, going to the barn and riding the horses.
Brudy has 24 in her class. Litzel has 24 and an aide for those with learning disabilities.
Nearly one in five Cleveland children has what is called an ``individualized education program,'' or IEP, which means the teachers, parents, administrators and children have jointly developed a plan to address the child's weaknesses.
Among the nation's largest districts, Cleveland has twice the average for children on IEPs.
Alan Golden, head of the Hudson High School science department, knows how good it is in Hudson. He taught in a poor district in Oregon.
``My job and my situation couldn't be better. I wish every teacher in America had my situation,'' Golden said. ``We have a motivated population here. The children are supported at home.''
In Oregon, there were no consequences he could inflict that would make children care about their grades. They wanted to be suspended.
``The fact that children care about their grades is what makes this work,'' he said. ``I have almost no issues with discipline.''
His students' parents often are engineers, chemists and university professors.
Golden remembers discussing Millikan's oil drop experiment in class as they discussed electrons.
One of the students said she was related to Robert Millikan -- the scientist who originated the test. She brought in Millikan's papers for the students to see. Millikan won the Nobel Prize for his work.
In the Hudson parking lot, the snow was cleared. Half of the students drive.
At Cleveland East High School a day earlier, the parking lot was coated with ice.
Students rode the regional transit buses or walked the snow-covered sidewalks. Some walked in the streets.
Security guards worked at the doors and in the hallways.
Plaintiffs in the long-standing lawsuit against the state complain that Ohio leaders hold both school districts to the same academic standards -- yet never asked what is required to help children achieve those standards.
Justices agreed last week in ordering a complete overhaul of public education.
In his court order, Justice Paul Pfeifer quoted a delegate to the Ohio Constitutional Convention who helped write the current language requiring a ``thorough and efficient'' system of public schools.
The delegate said in 1851: ``I think it must be clear to every reflecting mind that the true policy of the statesman is to provide the means of education, and consequent moral improvement, to every child in the state, the offspring of the black man equally with that of the white man, the children of the poor equally with the rich.''
— Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard
State's woes in education beyond cash; ABCs not as easy as $1, $2, $3
Akron Beacon Journal
Dec. 15, 2002
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/4743996.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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