By Jennifer Mrozowski
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio plans to put its high schools under the microscope over the next year to determine why so many students drop out and why so few graduates are prepared to enter college or the workforce.

During a State Board of Education meeting at Walnut Hills High School in Evanston on Tuesday, the board announced the creation of a new statewide high school redesign task force.

"Too many Ohio students are not meeting the state's academic standards," said Jennifer Sheets, state board president.

About 20 percent of Ohio's ninth-graders never graduate, said Susan Tave Zelman, Ohio's superintendent of public instruction. In some Ohio districts, fewer than half of ninth-graders graduate.

Part of the problem is that many high schools have not changed the way they educate students in the past 100 years, even though businesses have been revolutionized by technology and other industry innovations, said Melissa Ingwersen, co-chairwoman of the new task force and president of Bank One in Ohio.

That's not the case in Cincinnati and West Clermont school districts, which have been overhauling their high schools for the past two years.

The task force will look into those two districts' efforts to turn their schools into smaller high schools with focused programs, Zelman said.

Members also plan to examine how Robert A. Taft Information Technology High School and Cincinnati Bell have partnered to redesign the West End school.

Some of the mandates for the task force are to:

• Recommend changes on how schools are organized and staffed so all students meet state standards.

• Consider how to better blend career and technical training into high school education.

• Examine how to help students make a better transition from middle to high school.

The task force, made up of about 30 teachers, principals, other administrators, school board members, business leaders and community members, is to present recommendations to the state board in June 2004.

Two philanthropic organizations, the Cincinnati-based KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, contributed a total of $500,000 to support the group's work.

E-mail jmrozowski@enquirer.com