a conversation with…
Ohio State University/Urban Schools Initiative
printer friendly >
Conversation Archives >
This page includes occasional conversations with colleagues about pertinent issues, exemplary programs, or relevant research.
Over the past 8 months, Principal’s Office has visited with teachers, principals, and district administrators in Columbus, Mansfield, Springfield, and South-Western City Schools.
Our purpose was to highlight student learning initiatives made possible through the districts’ partnership with the Ohio State University/Urban Schools Initiative (read more>).
This month, Principal’s Office comes home to headquarters, based in Ramseyer Hall on The Ohio State University campus.
Here we learned in depth about a project that intends to make high-quality teaching and learning the order of business for every urban child. It also intends to change the way schools and universities interact to improve professional practice.
Principal’s Office sat down three OSU/USI project team members, who personify vision, leadership, and commitment to urban education:
Michael Casto, Co-Director of Urban Schools Initiative; Associate Professor,
Interprofessional Studies, College of Education
Steven Harsh, Director of Interprofessional Commission
Oliver Jones, Co-Director of Urban Schools Initiative
Principal’s Office: The Urban Schools Initiative reaches well beyond the four central Ohio districts. Can you describe the project’s scope and history?
OSU/USI: A good place to begin is 1997, with the Ohio Department of Education’s convening discussions on two tiers. The first was a superintendents’ congress to discuss the whole issue of urban school districts. Twenty-one districts were identified at the time as having similar demographics.
The second tier convened a series of urban team meetings to examine issues of student achievement, Proficiency tests, curriculum alignment, teacher turnover and training, and the role of families and mentors in student learning.
Thanks to financial support from the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, these discussions led to the publication of Through the Eyes of Children: A New Vision for Ohio’s Urban School Communities. Read more>
PO: And support from the Jennings Foundation continued after publication of the report. Would you elaborate on the Foundation’s involvement?
OSU/USI: We’ve now gone to autumn of 1998, when Jennings decided to realize some of the goals envisioned in Through the Eyes of Children. They made the bold step of awarding major grants to five Ohio universities to partner with clusters of urban school districts in their area.
PO: Why urban districts?
OSU/USI: With larger populations, higher concentrations of minority and special needs students, and a history of past economic and social barriers to overcome, urban school districts face enormous challenges in the next decade to improve student learning.
That’s why the statewide Urban Schools Initiative focused on the report’s recommendations for systematic, long-term change in Ohio’s urban schools. Our stated mission in central Ohio follows that of the statewide USI—
- Create a new vision for Ohio’s urban school communities
- Form strong partnerships with urban school districts in central Ohio
- Promote research and programs to improve K-12 education
- Involve families and communities in making public schools better places to learn
PO: How did the project unfold at OSU?
OSU/USI: Jim Bishop, director of research and grant development, and Daryl Siedentop, interim dean of the College of Education, joined with Mike Casto, director of the Interprofessional Commission. Through the Commission, they began to shape the partnership.
Mike and Jim made visits to the four urban districts identified by Jennings, where they conducted surveys to identify common areas of interest and need. These became the priority areas around which OSU/USI would build its initiatives.
The project began under the leadership of Daryl Siedentop and continues with Dean Donna Evans. She has a strong interest in urban education, including membership on the Council of Great Cities Colleges of Education.
PO: You mentioned developing priority areas for the OSU/USI initiatives. What were—and are—the top priorities?
OSU/USI: Jennings expected that each of the universities would work with their urban school partners to decide which programs were most important. The survey of our four districts revealed that literacy education was a top priority.
In March 1999, therefore, we hosted a series of meetings where we talked about literacy education and began to shape professional development programs to focus on short and long-term needs.
This was our first decision. Our second was to operate as a Steering Committee, with members representing the university and each urban district. We all recognized that as recipients of programs, the districts should to be making decisions about which would best serve their teachers.
PO: How has the Steering Committee worked out as the project’s decision-making structure?
OSU/USI: We really appreciate the relationship between Jennings project leadership and our Steering Committee. The norm with committees in general is to have a lot of turnover and sporadic attendance. It has been the opposite with our Steering Committee.
In fact, it’s our hope that the four districts can continue to collaborate even after the project is completed. Collaborating between districts on initiatives, in addition to empowering the districts, builds an effective mechanism for shaping programs.
Planning teams are directly involved to develop, monitor, and evaluate programs, which in turn provide a good feedback loop to the university from the districts.
PO: Your leadership team receives excellent support from Carolyn Simpson, a doctoral student in the College of Education. Can you tell us about her work for the project?
OSU/USI: As Program Associate, Carolyn Simpson helps promote and coordinate many of our activities, including the highly successful Literacy Collaborative workshops.
She also collects evaluation data on the programs to identify key indicators of success and continued needs for improvement. This work includes a database to gather information on outcomes of the programs.
The database will allow us to cross-reference participation levels among the workshops. We also plan to include data from a teacher survey of each program’s impact a year after workshop training. We want to see the level of application in classrooms and of how teachers’ own professional development has progressed as a result of the initiatives.
Carolyn Simpson’s work, therefore, will help us develop a clear picture of which programs make a lasting improvement in teaching and learning.
PO: What type of feedback do you get from the districts?
OSU/USI: Through the Steering Committee, we hear districts saying what they need most from the university is help on research-based best practices. They also wish universities would get out into the districts and find out what actual needs are.
This is another place where Steering Committee members not only represent their district in a broad range of discussion about teacher needs and impact on students, but they take on a role as member of a larger team that thinks collectively about improving urban education.
PO: Would you outline the major initiatives requested by your Steering Committee?
OSU/USI: Now in our fourth year, we’ve launched the Literacy Collaborative training, and it continues to move forward.
Mathematics training is completing its second year. Steve Pape, Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning, developed a proposal approved by the Steering Committee.
It focuses on professional development of middle school math teachers, offering them the opportunity to take a sequence of Master’s level courses over a 2-year period.
We’re happy that both programs—literacy and math—were singled out as exemplary programs in an independent evaluation by the Education Commission of the States.
PO: Do you have plans for other initiatives?
OSU/USI: In 2002-2003, we plan to offer a professional development course called “Strategies for Teaching Standards-Based Science in Ohio in Grades 5-10.” We will make the course available to teachers and administrators in all four urban districts.
We also plan to deliver parts of the course through video-conferencing and online resources to overcome traditional obstacles like time, travel, and substitute teacher shortages.
The first and last sessions will be face-to-face, but most information will be accessible through distance learning activities, immediately applicable to the participants’ schools and classrooms.
PO: The ECS evaluation also makes note of the critical role of building leaders. How are administrators involved in the initiatives?
OSU/USI: The Steering Committee understood from the start that the success of our major initiatives hinged on leadership within the building and district from school principals. Obviously, this involved participation in the staff development programs, but principals also needed information specific to their roles.
Early into the project, we discussed the need for more use of information technology to assist school administrators. Our Leadership and Learning web page grew out of the recognition that we needed to share the results of professional development and research projects with a larger community of administrators.
The website was developed in summer of 1999 to share, disseminate, and sustain the outcomes of our work.
PO: With the future in mind, what programs do you see creating measurable gains in student achievement?
OSU/USI: Now in our fourth year of the project, we’re at a critical juncture. The Ohio Department of Education plans to publish a new edition of Through the Eyes of Children, and that will help sharpen the focus on where to go from here.
We foresee a continued, even increased, emphasis on programs with the most potential—literacy, math, science, and technology.
PO: You’ve reached hundreds of teachers and administrators with these programs to improve student learning. In what ways would you like to see the OSU/USI project make a continuing impact?
OSU/USI: We see an important part of our role as encouraging the development of urban teacher/administrator preparation initiatives across the College of Education and the university.
Another place to connect is to nonteaching school professions like the Counselor Education program. In general, there needs to be more collaboration among all school professionals and preparation of those professionals to work in an urban setting.
Our extended goals, then, are to continue initiatives that demonstrate a measurable impact on student learning, build capacity for urban educators in urban settings, and make interprofessional collaboration the standard of practice.
