The Observation Deck

Hi all,

After spending a great day with talented Lakewood students, today's morning paper made me sit up and put my coffee cup down.

The front page PD story is about the state of Ohio raising the bar on its state tests for students in 3rd through 8th grade. I have been hearing about this--- the first time was from my daughter's second grade teacher who said said that everybody's gearing up for the new reading tests next year.

According to the Plain Dealer, Ohio students' passage rates are expected to drop 30 to 40 percent, "based on what's already happening in other states, such as Kentucky."

I would put a link to the story but even though it is the PD's front page story it is not online. Here's another story by the same author on the same subject for more details, "Ohio state tests slated to get much harder in two years."
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ss ... to_ge.html

I have to say that I would be surprised to see our passage rate drop that much but I know that refugee students, and students speaking English as a second language, and students moving here from school districts who haven't had good teachers might not be able to pass those tests easily as early as third grade, if they just arrived in Lakewood in second grade.

As for my daughter's second grade class, the reading and writing standards are so rigorous already I can't imagine what her teacher could do to improve.

I'm just passing this along so everybody knows what our District is facing.

Betsy Voinovich

Thanks for posting this, Betsy. The good news is, our district has been preparing for the new, more rigorous standards that are part of the Common Core for the past couple of years and teachers are already teaching the new standards in our primary grade levels. Scores are likely to drop across the board in all Ohio districts, but hopefully with the preparation our district is doing and the ongoing professional training that is happening with our early release days, Lakewood will weather these changes better than most.

Christine Gordillo
Communications & PR Specialist
Lakewood City Schools

The Common Core Standards are:

“(1) research and evidence based, (2) aligned with college and work expectations, (3) rigorous, and (4) internationally benchmarked. A particular standard was included in the document only when the best available evidence indicated that its mastery was essential for college and career readiness in a twenty-first-century, globally competitive society. The Standards are intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards will be revised accordingly”

The Common Core Standards are a desperate effort to improve the educational performance of American students. Even though we spend much more than other countries overall our educational achievement is lower than many countries around the world.

The Whole Language fiasco should serve as a warning to what can happen when the educational “experts” try to force new and improved education methods on school systems. It seems odd that as education methods have become more complex and less comprehensible students have become less educated. What was once learned in high school is now learned in college.

As actual achievement has declined students think they are the best students ever:

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2008/11 ... hemselves/

A good overview:

http://www.corestandards.org/
Some have expressed concerns about the imposition of the standards:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/com ... f-reading/


Why do home schooled students outperform students taught in public schools?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162- ... n-college/

Bill Call wrote:Why do home schooled students outperform students taught in public schools?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162- ... n-college/

Hi Bill,

Have you read the actual study this "writeup" was based on?

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/homeschool.pdf

This was done at ONE college in ONE location of the country based on ONE denomination. I know you care deeply about education so I would hope that one study would not sway either side one way or another.

The study makes for great headlines, though. I see this study cited time and time again as "proof" that homeschooling is better. In fact, I see it as "proof" that people from all sides like to take one small sample size and extrapolate it to something that isn't there.

I in no way oppose homeschool, private school or public school. But I do oppose using statistics that are proof of nothing to prove a point that isn't there.

I don't keep score, but over recent years it seems that home-schooled students do very well in certain tests, such as the national spelling bee.

I think it demonstrates that very committed and involved parents are an important component of educational achievement, and that students whose parents rely solely on the public teaching institution to provide their child's education will often be disappointed with the results. I looked into home schooling for one of our kids, largely because the public schools could not handle this child. The home schoolers have lesson plans all drawn up, to the point where you do not really have to know chemistry to teach your child chemistry. The public schools say that their students benefit from socialization, but socialization can cut both ways; if your child socializes with the right group, there may be some benefit; but if they socialize with the wrong group, it is an impediment. And kids can get socialization outside of schools. We didn't opt for home schooling, mostly because my wife was adamantly unconfident of her ability to handle it, and I was working overtime constantly.

I think international comparisons of public education costs is often misleading. The cost of living in different countries, and the methods of education vary widely, and it is very possible that a Laotian teacher being paid three or four thousand dollars a year, if that, would be producing better results than a teacher here who is paid fifty or seventy thousand dollars a year.

I'm rather curious as to why this thread was posted here, rather than in the schools and education forum.

There was no mention of the high school tests. Are OGT changing as well? I had thought they were but am unsure.

Toni