Friday, September 08, 2000
Goals outlined in 'state of schools' address
By Andrea Tortora
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The state of Cincinnati Public Schools is hopeful, fragile and characterized by many accomplishments, Superintendent Steven Adamowski said Thursday in his “state of the schools” address.
“Our sun is rising,” Mr. Adamowski said. “We will achieve our goals.”
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HIGHLIGHTS
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• Best among Ohio's eight large-city districts on the 12th-grade Ohio Proficiency Test and the Ohio school district report card.
• Continued five-year trend of steadily climbing passing rates on the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Test.
• Nation's first performance-based teacher evaluation and compensation system, developed by the school district and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers.
• Fifty-two teachers have earned certification from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. This is highest number in any Ohio school district and among the top 10 highest in the nation.
• Fifty-five percent of 2,466 third-graders who had not yet passed the reading proficiency test passed it after summer school and will be promoted to fourth grade.
Disappointments
• Failure of two school levies, one in March and one in November.
• Past adversarial relationship between the superintendent and former leadership of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers.
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Speaking to school staff, parents, politicians and community members at the Mayerson Academy in Corryville, the superintendent outlined his goals for the coming year while pointing out highlights and disappointments from last year.
The city's schools are undergoing fundamental change to make the district more competitive, as well as fundamental redesign to help students reach high standards.
In the coming year, Mr. Adamowski hopes to:
• Develop standards for administrators.
• Create a guideline for creating quality schools.
• Implement a high school restructuring plan that will create smaller learning environments within existing large school buildings. More than $1.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will aid this effort.
• Continue to hold schools accountable. Redesign those schools that have consistent low performance.
• Create a model for year-around schooling.
• Provide more funding to neighborhood schools.
• Implement a new teacher evaluation and compensation system and work to recruit and retain quality teachers and principals.
• Continue to focus on early literacy, with a summer-school reading program and more professional development for teachers.
• Improve and renovate school facilities.
The district's early literacy efforts are key to students' successes, and Mr. Adamowski said the district needs to do a better job at teaching students to read.
“Early literacy is a point of greatest leverage in our school system to bring about greater achievement,” he said.
The district's mandatory summer school saw 55 percent of the 2,466 students who attended pass the Ohio Proficiency Test at the end of the five-week program.
State Rep. Catherine Barrett said she is encouraged by the good work happening in Cincinnati schools.
And Chad Wick, president of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, a Cincinnati-based philanthropic agency dedicated to increasing access to education, pointed out that the district's efforts are getting national notice.
“The donation from the Gates Foundation means that there is a clear feeling of what will work,” Mr. Wick said. “Gates found that leadership in place here in Cincinnati.”
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