North College Hill schools Superintendent Stanley Wernz doesn't mind that the state wants to make it tougher to earn a high school diploma. But he gets angry about new state rules he says could usurp local control and cost his district money.
"I applaud the concept, but I believe the process needs to be done differently," he said. "They're talking about requiring us to do a lot of things that don't really make a lot of sense."
On Monday, the State Board of Education will meet in Columbus and likely approve in principle sweeping changes for what is required of the state's public and nonpublic schools. With new rules, Ohio will join the growing list of states that have made standards the nucleus of school improvement efforts.
The new rules would be among the most sweeping school reforms the state ever has adopted, with new performance levels for students and new rules for district superintendents to follow.
Ultimately, if student performance doesn't improve, the penalty would be among the most severe the state can impose: wresting control of the district from the local school board.
Nationally, Ohio is among the last states to embrace standards as the basis for school improvement. More than 40 states and much of the world already have developed standards, said Christopher Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education. Based in Washington, D.C., the council is a non-profit organization that advocates education reform through standards.
"The U.S. is probably unique in having so diffuse a system," he said. "Almost all U.S. states are doing standards, but they're not all doing them well."
If the current proposal is accepted by the state board and the General Assembly, work will begin on determining the specific content students must know in different subject areas to demonstrate competency.
The standards would replace rules adopted in 1983 that specified the minimum number of minutes in instruction for each subject students took. Instead, students would be required to demonstrate competency in 10 areas, including foreign language and the arts.
New rules on schools
Schools would also have new responsibilities. Among them: ensuring the person supervising special education is licensed in that area - a requirement many districts currently don't meet. School boards also would have to provide at least a dozen vocational education classes, eight of them with in-school laboratories. Those kinds of mandates worry school officials, who don't expect more state money will be available to cover the cost of additional responsibilities.
"I'm disappointed they are so prescriptive in some areas," said Kathleen Ware, Cincinnati Public Schools director of quality improvement. "I'd hoped they would be more results oriented, instead of proscribing the process by which we're supposed to achieve some results."
Mrs. Ware oversaw the development of CPS's strategic plan. Released last year, that report detailed current levels of student performance and the district's five-year goals. While she expressed concern about increased mandates for services in areas like vocational education, the state's efforts to increase general student performance with standards is overdue, she said.
"What a student needs to know in math, from the smallest hamlet to the largest city in Ohio is really the same," she said. "Actually, I think it's the same all over the country."
A fiscal report done for the State Board of Education projects the new standards will initially cost $13 million statewide, with most of the increase coming in special education services.
Hidden costs
But some superintendents find that estimate laughable. It doesn't account for the districts that will have to hire special education specialists to supervise those programs, or meet other requirements such as adding vocational programs or hiring a librarian who can be available throughout the day.
Schools will have to develop ways of assessing whether students are meeting new standards in art, business, family and consumer sciences, foreign language, health and physical education and technology. And they will have to find ways to increase planning time for all teachers, which may require hiring additional staff.
That will be a challenge, given that the dropout rate statewide is now 5.4 percent and that just 54 percent of ninth-graders pass all sections of the proficiency exam. It will be even tougher in places like Cincinnati, where the annual dropout rate is 11 percent and only 29 percent of freshmen pass all sections of their proficiency exams.
"There are a lot of new things this requires us to do," said John Varis, superintendent of Reading Community Schools. "It's pretty scary that no one had costed out what it would take to do all this."
Mr. Varis teamed with North College Hill's Wernz and the superintendents from Lockland and Madeira to take their concerns to the state. Emphasizing they support standards, accountability and testing, the school leaders told state officials they were worried about hidden costs in the special, vocational and gifted-and-talented education sections.
"We can talk about what is mandatory for a district to do, but let's also talk about what it's going to cost and who's going to pay for it," said Roy Hill, superintendent of the Lockland City Schools.
Uncertainty over the price tag is one of the reasons state board member Diana Fessler gives when explaining why she won't support the standards proposal. Even if funding were clear, she is opposed to adopting a system that is based on performance requirements set at the state level.
Loss of control feared
"What are we saying about local control?" said Mrs. Fessler, who has been the revised standards' most vocal critic. "We're telling you what to do, and if you don't do it, come up with a corrective action plan. And if you don't do that right, the state is going to come in and do it for you."
A member of the board for the past three years, she represents a district that includes Butler and Montgomery counties. The state allowed its standards efforts to lie dormant for several years, but the expanded board approved by the governor last year moved the effort to a fast track, she said. Now she worries the effort will usurp the authority of community school boards to meet the needs of their students.
"We're going to require everyone to be competent in foreign language in high school," Mrs. Fessler said, noting the difficulty many students have on the English and writing portions of the state proficiency exams. "Foreign language is a stretch, particularly in some of our urban areas."
A national movement
Clearer, tougher state standards is one of the reforms a coalition of eductors and business, labor and community leaders wants state lawmakers to consider.
BEST - Building Excellent Schools for Today & the 21st Century - recently unveiled its plan, presented as a response to the recent Ohio Supreme Court decision that declared the present school-funding system unconstitutional.
"We've got to say to the people of Ohio, 'Stop doing what doesn't work,' " said Robert Wehling, senior vice president for Procter & Gamble Co. and a BEST co-chair. "We need high standards, good assessment strategies and a minimum level of funding for all students."
Other states have made standards an integral piece of their education reform efforts, including Kentucky, Virginia and Delaware.
In many Ohio schools, the requirements of the state's proficiency tests - given at 4th, 6th, 9th and 12th grades - have essentially become a substitute for standards.
For example, since fourth-graders need to know how to add and subtract decimals to pass the test, schools have made sure that task is covered prior to when the test is given.
Standards set a tone
Development of standards is a chance for a community to ask itself what it values about education, said Patte Barth, senior associate at the Education Trust in Washington, D.C., a group that has worked to promote adoption of standards in the nation's schools.
"Decide what the standards mean," she said. "What standards will students be required to meet to graduate from an Ohio school and be admitted to an Ohio university? Because they should be the same."
Involve a range of educators, parents, community leaders and others in discussion of how the standards are eventually written, she suggested. "This really gets to the heart about what a community values about itself," Ms. Barth said. "What do you want your children to know when they go out into the world?"
While the standards proposal is very specific in some areas, such as special and vocational education, it intentionally avoids detailing exactly what some areas will require, said Gene Harris, the state assistant superintendent of public instruction who has overseen development of the new standards.
If the general framework is approved by the state board and lawmakers, work will begin detailing exactly what, for example, competency in foreign language or art entails, she said. Then, in most cases, the assessment of whether children are meeting that standard will be something each district develops on its own, she said.
"The focus now will be on what's learned, not the amount of time in a math class," she said. "We want to provide a system that will allow schools and school districts the opportunity to improve student performance."
Approval seen likely
The state board is likely to approve the new standards because members believe schools need to be producing higher-caliber students, said Dwight Hibbard, an at-large board member from Cincinnati and retired chairman of Cincinnati Bell Inc.
He dismissed the complaints by some superintendents that the new standards are essentially new, unfunded mandates. "The real issue is how do you manage the money you have," Mr. Hibbard said. He called the latest effort a natural follow to last year's decision not to grant teachers permanent certification. Now, teachers must renew their license every five years.
"We've increased our standards for teachers, now we've got to put higher challenges on students," Mr. Hibbard said. "We can't excuse inability. If you go to school, you're expected to learn. And if you can't do fourth-grade work, you don't get passed on to the fifth grade."
MONDAY: Early childhood education is key to raising student performance.
TUESDAY: Teacher quality has become a priority for many districts.
