1)  128th General Assembly:  The Ohio House and Senate will hold committee hearings and sessions this week.

*Governor Strickland will deliver the State of the State Address on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at noon to a joint session of the Ohio House and Senate.

*Representative Tyrone Yates (33rd House District) has been appointed by Governor Strickland to the Hamilton County Municipal Court, and will resign from his House seat. With the resignation of Representative Yates and Representative Dolan last week, there will be temporarily two vacant seats in the Ohio House.

*The Ohio Statehouse has planned a number of events to celebrate Black History Month throughout February 2010.  Events include free concerts, displays, an exhibit of children's artwork in honor of Rosa Parks, and tours of the George Washington Williams Room at the Statehouse.  George Washington Williams was Ohio's first African-American elected to office.  He was elected in 1879.

In addition to these events, a painting by Columbus artist P. Tepper, entitled General Davis and His Redtails, will be rededicated and reinstalled in a public ceremony honoring the Tuskegee Airmen and their contributions during World War II on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM in the Statehouse Rotunda. For more information please visit http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_state/ohio_statehouse/index.cfm

2)  This week at the Statehouse

*The Senate Education Committee, chaired by Senator Cates, will meet on January 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM in the South Hearing Room.  The Committee will hear testimony on SB102 (Turner) School Dropout Programs, which requires the State Board of Education to recommend performance standards for dropout programs operated by school districts; and SB192 (Cates) School Transportation, which permits non-Civil Service school district boards to terminate positions of district transportation employees for reasons of economy and efficiency, and contract with independent agents to provide transportation services.

3)  School Funding Advisory Council:  The second meeting of the School Funding Advisory Council (OSFAC) was held on January 19, 2010.

Superintendent of Public Instruction, Deborah Delisle chaired the meeting, which addressed how the council would operate and make decisions, including how four subcommittees would be structured. The Council accepted the following subcommittee structure to address specific topics outlined in law:

*Special Needs: This subcommittee will make recommendations due December 1, 2010 regarding the evidence-based model and its provisions for special education, gifted education, and limited-English proficiency,

Members:  Dayvenia Chesney, Robyn Essman, David Huelsman, Jan Kennedy, James McClure, and Representative Randy Gardner.

*Education Linkages: This subcommittee will make recommendations due December 1, 2010 regarding the evidence-based model provisions for career-technical education and early college high schools, and also review funding for joint vocational school districts and compact and comprehensive career-technical schools.

Members:  Lynn Elfner, William Hiller, Kathryn Lorenz, Adrienne O'Neill, and Jack Pierson

*Regional Variation: This subcommittee will make recommendations regarding open enrollment, Educational Service Centers, and regional service delivery systems.

Members:  Alan Hutchinson, JoAnn Johntony, Richard Murray, Senator Tom Sawyer, John Stanford, and George Wood.

*Learning Environments: This subcommittee will make recommendations regarding the evidence-based model's provision for arts education and the compensation and retirement benefits for teachers, and ways to improve the connections between teacher compensation, teaching excellence, and higher levels of student learning.

Members:  Michael Dawson, Representative Stephen Dyer, Neil Gupta, William Leibensperger, Richard Petrick, and Sue Taylor.

The Council also agreed to form another subcommittee to coordinate the work of the statutory subcommittees and help focus on the broader goals of the new state school funding system. All Council members are eligible to join.

The Council then received a presentation on Ohio's new system of funding schools included in Am. Sub. HB1.  The presentation included information about the state, federal, and local roles in funding Ohio's schools, and information about the components of the evidence-based model.  The presentation will continue at the next meeting of the Council on February 4, 2010.

4)  Race to the Top:  The Ohio Department of Education submitted Ohio's Race to the Top application to the U.S. Department of Education on January 19, 2010 requesting over $409 million. Race to the Top (RttT) is a $4,35 billion federal competitive grant program to improve student achievement in states.  According to the U.S.

DOE's web site 40 states and the District of Columbia submitted applications for Phase 1 of the grant program.  State awards will be based on student population, and so Ohio is eligible for between $200 million to $400 million. The awards will be announced in April 2010.

States that do not qualify for the awards in Phase 1 can re-submit in Phase 11.

A total of 479 school districts and schools submitted memorandums of understanding to participate in Ohio's RttT application.

Participating schools and districts include  five of Ohio's six largest districts, encompass 53 percent of Ohio's public schools, and serve nearly half of Ohio's 1.9 million K-12 students.

According to a summary of Ohio's RttT application, the theme of Ohio's proposal is "From Fifth to First", which represents Ohio's plan to move in four years to first place in Education Weeks'

"Quality Counts" annual rating system. This effort is referred to in the application as the "5-1-4" strategy, and will be used in future ODE communications and presentations.

Ohio's RttT application responds to the following four "assurance areas" and also includes a focus on teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM):

Assurance 1: Standards and Assessments: Ohio plans to adopt the Common Core curriculum by June 8, 2010. The Common Core includes a set of academic content standards in English language arts and mathematics developed by a consortium of states with the support of the National Governor's Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, ACT, and the College Board.

To create a seamless P-20 system, Ohio will expand its Kindergarten Readiness Assessment literacy to include other measures of school readiness, and the ODE's RttT implementation team and the Ohio Board of Regents (OBR), will "mobilize" the University System of Ohio, and private academic officers to "...ensure that all higher education institutions in Ohio are thoroughly aligning their entry level curricula and training their entry level faculty to the new standards so that Ohioans truly move seamlessly from high school to college."

Assurance 2: Statewide Longitudinal Data System: "Ohio's Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) currently meets nine of the America COMPETES Act elements. The state has a plan in place, with funding proposals pending and all legislative preconditions satisfied, to meet the remaining three elements by 2012."

Assurance 3: Great Teachers and Leaders: "Ohio's plan for improving teacher and principal effectiveness will ensure rigorous, fair, and transparent evaluation systems that incorporate measures of student growth. As a collective bargaining state, these evaluation systems will be memorialized in negotiated agreements between the participating LEA and the teachers' union. These comprehensive evaluation systems will provide constructive and timely feedback to teachers and principals and will serve as a guide to professional development and advanced opportunities for educators. Decisions regarding advanced licensure and removal of ineffective teachers and principals will also be based on the evaluation system."

"For teachers in non-tested grades and subject areas, other measures of student achievement gains will be used to determine levels of teacher effectiveness, such as gains on literacy levels, supplemental tests, and performance-based assessments. ODE will work with LEAs, teachers unions, and other stakeholders to develop these measures with the guidance of national experts. In addition, formative assessments and performance-based assessments developed in Ohio's other RttT-funded projects will be utilized as part of a series of measures to document student growth."

Assurance 4: Turning Around Lowest Achieving Schools:  "In partnership with LEAs, ODE promises the citizens of Ohio that school transformation will be an absolute imperative and together we will dramatically increase the quality of education for the 37,051 students in the State's 69 persistently lowest-achieving schools.

Building this capacity is central to Ohio's reform agenda and especially to the attainment of our aggressive achievement gap targets."

For more information about Ohio's RttT application please visit the ODE webpage at http://www.education.ohio.gov/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.
aspx?page=560.

5)  State of Poverty in Ohio: The Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies released on January 22, 2010 its annual report entitled "The State of Poverty in Ohio, Building a Foundation for Prosperity" prepared by Community Research Partners.

The report notes that poverty continued to rise in 2008 to a rate of

13.7 percent of all Ohioans. These rates do not reflect the deterioration of the economy in late 2008 or in 2009.  In June 2009, for example, the percent of the population receiving food stamps reached 12.5 percent.

According to the report's summary, "Poverty was rising before the economic downturn, but now higher unemployment appears to be accelerating the number of Ohioans moving into poverty."

The report includes information about the effects of the recession and recovery efforts in Ohio.  It provides information on the number of working poor who are now unemployed; the demographics of poverty in Ohio; and the geography of poverty.  It also includes information about specific communities in Ohio and how they are addressing the impact of the recession through innovative programs sponsored by Community Action Agencies and other stakeholders.

The report is organized around the following five themes, four of which were outlined by the Ohio Anti-Poverty Task Force in a report issued in June 2009:

-The need for jobs that pay well and provide benefits -The need for lifelong learning opportunities -The need for affordable housing -The need for reliable transportation options -The need for stable social and household safety nets.

For each theme the report provides Ohio Facts and Figures; observations from regional conversations; and examples of efforts in Ohio to address the issues of poverty in Ohio communities.

According to the report, "Together, these five themes represent a foundation for all Ohioans to move out of poverty and toward self-sufficiency and prosperity."

The authors recommend that Ohio General Assembly construct a statewide response to eliminate poverty based on the themes.

The report is available at http://www.oacaa.org/

6) Ed Trust Releases Gaps Analysis:  The Education Trust, Kati Haycock president, released on January 7, 2010 a report entitled "Gauging the Gaps, A Deeper Look at Student Achievement" by Anna Habash Rowan, Daria Hall, and Kati Haycock.

The report provides a more comprehensive way to assess state progress in narrowing the achievement gaps among groups of students (African American, White, Native American, Latino, Low Income, High Income) by analyzing student achievement data on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and reading at grades 4 and 8 using the following multiple perspectives:

-Simple Gap Narrowing:  Have absolute gaps in mean performance between groups decreased over time?

-Progress for All:  Have all groups of students gained over time?

-Gap Size:  What is the current size of the gap between groups?

-Group Comparisons Across Districts:  How does each group of students currently perform compared with their counterparts in other jurisdictions?

The report includes a review of state NAEP data across all groups, subjects, and grades since 2003 based on the four perspectives with the following results:

SIMPLE GAP NARROWING: More achievement gaps were narrowed in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, and West Virginia.

Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, and Washington experienced more gap widening compared to other states.

PROGRESS FOR ALL: Student groups in Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, and the District of Columbia were more likely to have improved than their peers in other states. Student groups in Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and West Virginia were more likely to have declined.

GAP SIZE: Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming have smaller-than-average gaps, while California, Connecticut, Illinois, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia have much wider gaps between student groups than the national average.

GROUP COMPARISON ACROSS JURISDICTIONS: Low-income and minority students in Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas, and Vermont perform higher than their peers in other states. Low-income students and students of color in Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Nevada typically perform below their peers.

According to an Ed Trust analysis of the four perspectives combined, the states of Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, and Texas are making the most progress in closing achievement gaps.

The analysis for Ohio showed "no change/at national average" for most of the elements compared, and statistically significant increases in 4th grade reading for White and Latino students; in 4th grade math for African American, White, Latino, and high income students; and in 8th grade math for White, Latino, and high income students.

The report is available at

http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/
NAEP%20Gap_0.pdf

7) Head Start Report:  The U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services, Kathleen Sibelius Secretary, submitted to Congress on

January 13, 2010 a Congressionally mandated report on the impact of

the 2002-2003 Head Start program entitled "Head Start Research: Head

Start Impact Study Final Report January 2010."

Head Start was established by Congress in 1965 as a component of

President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.  Head Start promotes

school readiness for children in low income families by enhancing

their social and cognitive development through educational,

nutritional, health, social and other services. Head Start and Early

Head Start have provided services to 25 million children, and

currently serve nearly a million children each year.

In 1998 Congress reauthorized Head Start and mandated that the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services determine the impact of Head

Start on the children it serves. The impact study that resulted

measured the "...cognitive and social/emotional development, health

status, and behavior of approximately five thousand 3 and 4 year olds

who were randomly assigned to either a control group or a group that

had access to a Head Start program."

The results of the study showed that providing access to Head Start

has a positive impact on children's preschool experiences, and has

positive impacts on several aspects of children's school readiness

during their time in the program.

The report also notes, "However, the advantages children gained

during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few

statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st

grade for the sample as a whole."

As a result of the study, the U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services (HHS) announced plans to strengthen and improve the quality

and effectiveness of the Head Start and Early Head Start programs in

order to close achievement gaps, promote early learning through the

first eight years of life, and help families and communities break

the cycles of poverty.

In order to strengthen the impact of Head Start, the Department of

Health and Human Services will do the following:

-raise program performance standards

-increase program accountability by only renewing grants for

high-quality, constantly improving programs

-improve classroom practices by providing higher quality training for

classroom teachers, staff, and program directors, and improving

technical assistance

-convene a research advisory committee to gather insights from the

Head Start Impact Study and other relevant research

-partner with the Department of Education to collaborate with early

childhood education and ensuring continuity of quality programs

One of the strategies that the Obama Administration will consider to

improve the quality and effectiveness of Head Start involves the

Early Learning Challenge Grant program now under consideration in

Congress. The program would require states to develop innovative

models that promote high standards of quality in all early childhood

settings including Head Start, child care centers, and public and

private preschools. Funds would be granted to states already making

progress, allowing them to bring their models to scale.  Grants would

also be made to other states that show promise, but need additional

assistance to create a standards-based, outcomes-driven system.

To read more about the Head Start impact study please visit

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/news/press/2010/head_start_roadmap.html

8)  Bills Introduced

HB407 (Zehringer) School Calamity Days:  Allows school districts and

STEM schools to make up excess calamity days by requiring students to

complete lessons posted online.

SB224 (Coughlin) Lottery and Turnpike Agreements:  Establishes the

Ohio Promise Scholarship Program; authorizes the Department of

Administrative Services to negotiate the sale or lease of the right

to manage and operate the State Lottery; authorizes the Department to

negotiate a public-private lease agreement for the operation of the

Ohio Turnpike; requires the proceeds from the Lottery and Turnpike

agreements to be paid into the Ohio Promise Scholarship Program Fund;

abolishes the Ohio Turnpike Commission upon the transfer of control

of the Ohio Turnpike to a private entity.

SJR9 (Coughlin) State Lottery:  Authorizes the state lottery to be

operated by a private entity and authorizes the net profit of the

state lottery to be used for scholarships for Ohio residents who are

students at institutions of higher education located in Ohio in

addition to the current use of the net profit for the support of

elementary, secondary, vocational, and special education programs.

9)  NEA Grant Opportunity:  The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)

Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth program funds projects

that help children and youth acquire appreciation, knowledge, and

understanding of and skills in the arts. Projects must provide

participatory learning and engagement of students with skilled

artists and teachers, and ensure that the program will apply

national, state, or local arts education standards. The maximum award

is $150,000, and the application deadline is June 10, 2010. For more

information please visit http://www.nea.gov/grants/apply/artsed.html.