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On March 27, 2015, The Columbus Dispatch published The Ohio 8 Coalition’s Letter to the Editor in response to the paper’s editorial “A big step forward” that called on members of the Ohio House to further support efforts to ensure financial transparency for public charter schools. That editorial noted the national ridicule the Ohio’s charter-school system has been attracting because of its accountability loopholes and steps that Ohio House Bill 2 should include to address charter school accountability and transparency. As also mentioned in the editorial, The Ohio 8 believes that the legislation is a good start but should go a few steps further by requiring chapter school operators to disclose how they spend millions of tax dollars to run their schools (as is also required of traditional public schools).

As House Bill 2 moves on to deliberation in the Ohio Senate without inclusion of components that The Ohio 8 Coalition recommended, ACS will continue to push this critical legislative reform and engage local media to keep such reform at the forefront.

On March 23, 2015 ACS Policy Associate Cassie Gaffney prepared approximately 75 members of the Junior League of Cleveland to engage with elected officials. The two-hour training covered the basics of Ohio’s legislative process, what is and is not lobbying, and how to effectively engage policymakers.

The Junior League of Cleveland, Inc. is a group of women volunteers dedicated to community change. The group is composed of diverse, creative, compassionate, and action oriented women who are committed to promoting the League’s mission of promoting volunteerism, developing the potential of women, and improving the community through the effective action of trained volunteers.

The Junior League of Cleveland is supporting the passage of HB 50, which is currently in the Ohio House Community and Family Advancement Committee. The bill would expand foster care and adoption assistance to persons up to age 21 who meet a number of qualify criteria.

This training served to prepare members who are interested in engaging advocacy efforts with the tools they need to connect with policymakers related to HB 50.

Two hundred NAEYC members from 39 states gathered in Washington, DC for the annual Public Policy Forum on March 8-10, 2015 to prepare to meet with elected officials about the importance of early childhood. On March 8, 2015 ACS president Lori McClung and policy associate Cassie Gaffney, along with Amy O’Leary, director of the Early Education for All Campaign, presented a four-hour interactive pre-conference session. More than 100 early childhood stakeholders from across the country, most without previous advocacy experience, came to the session to learn about the federal legislative and budget process, rules for nonprofit lobbying, and strategies and tactics for effectively engaging policymakers. The pre-conference day concluded with a policymaker-meeting workshop where participants had the opportunity to practice and hone their new skills alongside their colleagues. Participants reported that information at the pre-conference was new and helpful, encouraged their colleagues back home to participate next year, and invited ACS to do similar trainings in their states. All resources from the pre-conference can be found here: http://www.naeyc.org/policy/advocacy.

This week’s Columbus Dispatch editorial highlights The Ohio 8 Coalition’s testimony on Ohio House Bill 2 that calls for greater transparency and accountability for public charter schools. The Ohio 8 Coalition’s common sense reform provisions reflect a national trend with Ohio at its center to help ensure that all schools meet the same expectations on behalf of kids. The Ohio 8 Coalition will continue this dialogue and ACS will be there to ensure media outlets continue coverage on this critical issue.

New America Foundation’s Ed Central blog recently shone a spotlight on communities that are working to reduce pre-K suspension rates. As in K-12, pre-K suspension affects young children of color at a much higher rate than their white counterparts. This is most unfortunate, as it puts suspended children further behind their peers and helps them form early negative opinions of school overall. Fortunately, some cities are taking steps to address the issue. For example, the District of Columbia has introduced legislation to prohibit pre-K suspension within public and charter schools in almost all cases. Minneapolis and Chicago have banned pre-suspensions, and in Baltimore, principals must first gain approval from central office before suspending a pre-K or kindergarten student.

“These are good steps, but they are not widespread enough,” the blog author Shayna Cook writes. “It is promising that some cities and districts are making strides in this area and creating policies to eliminate the use of suspension in pre-K and the early grades. More should follow their lead, and then take the next step of investing in greater access to early childhood mental health professionals.”

PRE4CLE is highlighted among these recent Cleveland Plain Dealer articles that help parents understand what to look for in quality child care settings

State ratings point to preschools that are really schools, not just child care

What makes a good preschool? State inspectors and other experts tell parents what to look for

Metro Finding a preschool: A guide for parents on how to start (slideshow)

You can find our more about PRE4CLE here: http://www.clevelandmetroschools.org/pre4cle.

 

 

As a co-author of Show Me The Evidence and key driver of 1996 welfare reform policy, Ron Haskins knows a thing or two about finding programs that work. Now, as co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families and Budgeting for National Priorities Project, Haskins’ recent blog post, “Social Programs that Work,” highlights five evidence-based programs that “have produced big and lasting impacts on social problems.” These programs are:

• Career Academies – small learning communities of 150-200 students that result in an 11% increase in average annual earnings for graduates and significant increases in family stability.
• Nurse-Family Partnership – a home visitation program for at-risk new parents that shows impressive reductions in child abuse and neglect, reductions in subsequent births, less time spent on welfare, and better cognitive, academic and social outcomes for children.
• Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program – a youth development program for economically disadvantaged teens that not only reduces pregnancy rates by 40%, but shows participants are 30% more likely to complete high school (or GED) and 37% more likely to enroll in college.
• Success for All ­­– a comprehensive reform program for high-poverty elementary schools that shows significant improvements in grade-level reading outcomes for second graders.
• Small Schools of Choice ­– A model that replaced 31 large, failing NYC high schools with more than 100 smaller schools with specialized curricula and philosophies. Students in SSCs were more likely to graduate and more likely to enroll in college.

One more fact worth mentioning: the cost of all of these programs is far less than that of the government programs successful participants would likely require later in life.

Recently the Ohio Department of Education released this link* to promote the initial results of the state’s 3rd grade reading policy. Several school districts from ACS client The Ohio 8 coalition are featured as examples of success! Ohio’s new Third Grade Reading Guarantee ensures that every struggling reader gets the support he or she needs to be able to learn and achieve. This year, 95.8% of eligible 3^rd graders met Third Grade Reading Guarantee promotion minimum.

*http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Early-Learning/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee/TGRG-Infographic.pdf.aspx

Are you facing community leaders or legislators who say there’s still not enough research to prove that high quality pre-K is effective — even imperative? A new article from The Washington Post provides new firepower to help you push back. In fact, this article debunks a poorly contrived “October surprise” policy brief from the Cato Institute, authored by David J. Armor. The Cato piece proposes that the success of some key programs can’t be generalized to pre-K overall, findings from other pre-K research projects are flawed, and the effects of pre-K fade out over time.  In the Washington Post article, author W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, takes on – and knocks down – each of Armor’s claims. “If all the evidence is taken into account, I believe that policy makers from across the political spectrum will come to the conclusion that high-quality pre-K is indeed a sound public investment,” Barnett asserts.