PIE: Partnership For Innovation in Education

Building the “Habitual” Entrepreneur

Posted by P.I.E. | February 28, 2011

Superintendent Todd Yohey, Oak Hills High School

“Entrepreneur” is a hot career title for just about any high school student.  And with the popularity of youthful CEO’s leading Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Linkedin, popular media makes it look easy to create, nurture and fund a business.  They forget to report the hard work, passion, discipline, and business skills required to transform a dream into a profitable reality.

And that’s where schools step in.  Entrepreneurs aren’t typically born — they are nurtured.   And studies indicate that new, project-based curriculums build skills necessary to thrive in global economies that demand leadership, great communication skills, and a quick grasp of both the big picture and the small details.   But where do you find these skill-building schools that imbue an entrepreneurial, collegial attitude?

Come visit Oak Hills High School where innovation and project-based learning are hot disciplines.  In fact, several schools in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois highlight the newest implementation of 21^st century skill and portfolio school curriculums.  For instance, the Oak Hills Local School District creates new opportunities for their students on a daily basis — which is no small feat.  With nine schools, and one of the largest high schools in Ohio (2738 students), Oak Hills Administrators have created a new curriculum that rivals many freshman college programs.

Led by Superintendent Todd Yohey, the Oak Hills Local School District exemplifies how innovation changes lives.  Located in southwestern Ohio, the suburban school district has created a K-12 twenty-first century, project-based learning program called “Habits of Mind.”    Begun at the elementary school level, the Habits of Mind program infuses the State-mandated Core Curriculum Standards with career-ready skills that hinge upon effective teaching of the 4 C’s:  critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.

And the Oak Hills Local School District has the technological infrastructure to support such an innovation-based, project-centric curriculum.  Enlisting the help of parents and community sponsors, Oak Hills is one of the first public school districts in Ohio to welcome the use of outside, student-owned technology in the school. With rising technology costs and decreasing budgets, the school district enjoins parents and students to use their technology within the public school.

Understanding that the strongest education program fully prepares its students beyond high school, the Oak Hills School District has implemented a portfolio program targeting eleventh and twelfth graders called “Programs of Study.”  The Program allows students to “major” in one of four areas and take classroom, virtual or one-on-one classes that satisfy the plan requirements.   Highlighting portfolio subject specialties such as business, international studies, creative and performing arts and STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine), students can delve deep into career, college preparedness, and job opportunities before graduation.

By embedding real-time skills into content-based academic requirements, students obtain the best of both worlds:  project-based learning infused within a core academic curriculum.   And the required Capstone Project mimics the typical masters project, minus the dissertation and defense!

And yes, the voluntary Programs of Study requires extra time, commitment, and dedication among all staff members and students.  The Oak Hills Local School District believes at least 35 percent of the entire eleventh and twelfth grade students will participate in the new, college/career-prep curriculum.

Moreover, the curriculum is one that appeals to more entrepreneurial, less-linear student learning types.  The Oak Hills School District wants to encourage all types of thinking – especially in today’s new innovation, results-driven, economy.  As Yohey noted “more non-traditional students will realize success.”   Typically, the “top 15 percent students know how to ‘play school’ very well, but we also want to capture the learners with entrepreneurial tendencies, who aren’t comfortable in the typical school setting.”

Oak Hills may serve as the bellwether for how to best implement new, content and career-driven curriculums among public schools.   However, its success may hinge upon how the entire community, including a strong parochial school student base, gauges the value.

With a school district small enough to make meaningful 1:1 changes, but large enough to monitor scalable progress, the Oak Hills Local School District has a great chance for success. Clearly, teaching a curriculum based on business principles and self-reliance can only help encourage the “entrepreneurial” habit of mind.   When will we see any measurable results?  Only time will tell.

About the Author

Todd Yohey is the Superintendent of Oak Hills Local School District located just west of Cincinnati OH. Prior to his career as school superintendent, he served as a high school chemistry teacher and currently serves as an adjunct faculty at Wright State University.

To learn more about the initiatives in the Oak Hills Local School District please feel free to contact Todd Yohey at Yohey_t@oakhills.hccanet.org.

Education Demands Innovation

Posted by P.I.E. | February 16, 2011

Mary Welsh Schlueter, PIE Founder and Chief Executive

It seems fitting on the morning of former Cincinnati Vice Mayor David Crowley’s funeral, a group of elected officials and education advocates met at City Hall to discuss education funding in southwestern Ohio.   As a passionate education advocate, Crowley would have been pleased at the lack of partisan politics during a working session convened by City Councilmember Laure Quinlivan.

Education reform has become the new “It “ word among cash-strapped states like Ohio.  Impending budget shortfalls have created a new reality as staffing levels decrease, technology needs increase, and 21^st century “4 C” core curriculums (creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication) are mandated. For most districts, superintendents must create more opportunities with fewer resources.  But how much fewer?  The answer depends on a calculus of demographics, income levels and school population.

With an $8B budget deficit to plug, Ohio Governor Kasich will demand everyone tighten his or her belt.   And it’s not like Ohio has been shortchanging its youngest citizens over the past 20 years.  Since 1991, Ohio has fully supported its public school communities.  For instance, public school employee levels have increased by 35%, while public school enrollment has remained stagnant (-0.6%).  And since 1997, per pupil spending has increased by an inflation-adjusted 60%.

Yet schools have changed too. Serving as community centers and neighborhood hubs, schools represent increasingly diversified student populations, requiring more individualized attention.  As community partners call for more workforce readiness measures, schools are forced to offer varying curriculums addressing changing needs.  Such measures cost money.  But as any business can attest, tailoring services to each consumer yields better results and higher satisfaction.  And isn’t academic achievement, college/career readiness, and healthy economic development the goal for any community determined to thrive?

By March 15^th, Ohio citizens will get their first glimpse of how the Governor may deliver education cuts.  The Ohio Assembly has already determined some of the strategic cuts by introducing legislation that would eliminate professional “step” raises and collective bargaining for unions.  Let’s hope further changes won’t compromise the ultimate goal: Delivering high quality education allowing our youngest citizens to realize productive and rewarding lives.

About the Author:

Mary Welsh Schlueter serves as Chief Executive of the Partnership for Innovation in Education.  PIE is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to facilitating educational innovation that accelerates academic achievement, offers critical thinking and career-readiness skills and promotes economic development.

‘Coasting 2 Success

Posted by P.I.E. | February 15, 2011

Alexandra Ball, Math Department Head Oakhurst Academy & Teach For America Alumna

Roller coasters are exhilarating examples of algebra.  Yes, it’s true.  As a teacher of math, I wanted to engage my middle school students in a discussion of slope, utilizing the best, real-world teaching tool to enhance their learning experience.   Roller coasters, comprised of multi-slope turns, altitude shifts, perceived force, and gravity changes are universal.  The breathtaking, thrill-inducing, depth defying amusement park ride easily doubles as, a creative way to teach the algebraic concept of multi-directional graph lines, slope, and rate of change.

I needed to develop a solid method that was aligned to the objective but was totally hands-on.  I have learned that when students are afforded the opportunity to experiment with concepts they gain a deeper understanding of why processes are mathematically possible.  They remember and thus excel when assessed, not because they memorized a procedure, but because they were a part of it themselves.  I decided the best way to teach slope was using something that all my students love: roller coasters.

The first day we worked with terminology and basics of slope: appearance, direction, naming etc.  The second day is when the fun came for my students.  They were strategically grouped by performance level and were given guidelines on how to build roller coasters using a tape measure as the track and a marble as the coaster car.  Equipped with their materials and questions to answer along the way, my students were ready to embark on a real life Algebra adventure.  As I watched them build various types of tracks I was amazed at how insightful the responses were.  Even the lower performing  students were able draw conclusions such as, the marble rolled faster because the steeper a negative slope the more gravity is acting on the marble or that roller coasters can’t be made with undefined slopes, vertical lines, because the car will fall off the track every time.  It was amazing to see students so excited about Math and truly understanding why these concepts are important and how they make sense.  They were thinking critically about the process.  At the end of the experiment students were able to build their own designs and experiment with different slopes and levels of force to make their idea roller coaster a reality, if only on a small scale.

The next day was the second test of my method.  Could my students apply what they learned from the experiment the previous day to other real-life examples such as walking up and down hills or across a straight road?  It was profound to see how they were able to transfer and apply knowledge to make conclusions about other scenarios and explain the reasoning behind why the solutions they came to were mathematically logical.  As with all teaching the final and true test of mastery comes from the student’s assessment on the material.  My students had done so well in class that the exam scores were returned with no surprises.  Overall mastery was 88%, which exceeds our class goal of 80% mastery on our Unit Assessments.

My teaching method for this particular topic was successful for two reasons:  it aligned to the learning objectives, and it offered a real-life example that engaged students, using critical thinking skills.   As a teacher, I can engage my students using various methods – but the most impactful are those that revolve around an experience relative to the world.  It takes more time and creativity to engage these new learning opportunities.   However, my credo:  “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it” heightens retention of key math concepts for a lifetime and significantly impacts academic achievement.  Try it sometime.  Remember, even Newton used an apple to teach gravity….

About the Author:

Cincinnati, Ohio native, Alexandra Ball and 2005 graduate of Eastern Michigan University, holds a Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies with a minor in Spanish.  She is a 2007 Teach For America Alumna and continues to work with the organization on a regular basis. Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors and career interests who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.  Ball, Math Department Head at Oakhurst Academy, was awarded Teacher of the Year in May 2010 and was voted by the student body as Favorite Teacher of the Year for the last three years.

Educational “Rhee-form”: A Discussion with Michelle Rhee

Posted by P.I.E. | February 2, 2011

Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools

Michelle Rhee – former District of Columbia Education Chancellor – offered advice as she kicked off her SmartTalk presentation about ways to improve the American education system.  From suggesting invested parents serve in executive positions (“Moms serve as superintendents”) to offering Warren Buffet’s advice (“Make private schools illegal.”), Rhee presented her experience to an audience of government officials, parents, teachers, administrators, business executives and education advocates.

Rhee noted how “impatience” and “parental urgency” guided her actions to provide “great education now” for her poverty-ridden school district.  Taking on the “most dysfunctional” district with a 70% achievement gap, Rhee battled with parents, teachers unions, and politicians as she closed 23 schools, re-negotiated a teachers contract rewarding teaching excellence, and instituted economic efficiencies and business partnerships that saved her district millions of dollars.

With a goal of “insuring that every DC child receive a great education,” Rhee supported voucher programs, emulated selective Charter school “best practice” systems, and “offered teachers opportunities to double their salaries using transparent performance measures.”  Citing Gates Foundation research, Rhee indicated that teacher excellence dictates student success, directly affecting high school graduation rates and college enrollment.  And graduation rates foreshadow global competitiveness and future economic development.   Using international statistics, Rhee stated “153M new high skill/high pay jobs will be created:  American kids are only prepared to fill 1/3 of those skilled jobs,” opening the door for significant career advancement by “technology-driven countries such as India and China.”

With global business surging, Rhee noted American students rank 23^rd , 27^th , and 29^th in Reading, Math and Science in international standings.   And private schools don’t do much better:  5% of all top high school seniors rank 23^rd in overall subject areas.  She noted that America has “lost its competitive standing” and suffers from “complacency” where students – and teachers – are not asked to stretch their capabilities.  Rhee noted she wanted her team to actually “be good – not just feel good.”

Finally, Rhee noted the American education system lacks fiscal accountability where elected and appointed education leaders rarely “follow the money” and “politics” guide most education decisions.

Rhee closed her session by offering some solutions.  Most notably billionaire Warren Buffet  advised that education inequities among socioeconomic classes would be solved by  “Making all private schools illegal.”  Although the suggestion is impossible to enforce, she noted public schools, “are considered historically the ‘great equalizer’ in American society.”  She added,“randomly assigning all kids to attend public schools throughout a district from President Obama’s children to foreign ambassador’s kids, to kids living in homeless shelters would  create a dynamic that would change the education system and allow public schools to offer children an equal shot at life.”  She noted that it was the “biggest social injustice that skin color and zip code determined a child’s education and future opportunity.”

P.I.E. looks forward to Rhee’s continued impact on education reform and future plans for the nonprofit organization, StudentsFirst, a lobbying organization — founded by Rhee — representing student interests.