Brain Drain in Ohio - What the Local Data Shows

As a follow-up to the recent post on the Fordham Foundation's report on Brain Drain in Ohio, I tracked down the latest data I could find on local colleges from the Ohio Board of Regents.

The graphs below show the percent of college graduates staying in Ohio as measured by graduates working or going to school in Ohio six months after graduation. Data is presented separately for Associates and Bachelors Degrees.













More can be found at the Ohio Board of Regents.

Strive Education Forum

The Strive Education Forum takes place tomorrow - Friday, June 26 from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM.

UPDATE! The Strive Community Forum on Education will be streamed live on Friday, June 26 from 8:30-9AM & 12-3PM. Click here on Friday to access the video.

The Strive Community Forum on Education will be an opportunity to discuss the importance of education in initiatives that seek to improve the quality of life in our area. Instead of hearing from people about what is happening, most of the time will be spent offering you the chance to provide your thoughts on what we need to do to address the three critical themes drawn from the Striving Together report card:

• Increase the Pace of Change? There is a great deal of success for us to build on: 35 of 53 student outcomes from birth through college are on the rise. Now we need to find ways to build on these successes to help more student succeed faster.

• Increase Rigor in the Classroom? Students scores are improving to meet state standards. We can be one of the first communities to aim even higher by ensuring students are not only meeting these benchmarks, but are fully prepared for college or career training.

• Increase Enrollment, Retention, & Graduation from College and Career Training? In these tough economic times, we need to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow. This will require education beyond high school. Increasing the number of graduates is a key indicator of our ability to compete in the 21st Century.

Cost: FREE to register, contact Nancy Hackett at 513-745-3264 or hackettn@xavier.edu

Brain Drain in Ohio

Fordham Foundation recently released a report on brain drain in Ohio called "Losing Ohio's Future: Why college graduates flee the Buckeye State and what can be done about it."

Here is a quick overview:

· Fordham hired a research firm to survey sophomores, juniors and seniors at seven Ohio schools: Case Western, Kent State, Miami, Oberlin, Ohio State, Ohio U., and University of Dayton on their plans after college.
· 51% of Ohioans who attend college in Ohio said they are “leaning toward or definitely leaving Ohio” following graduation; 79% of out-of-state students who attend college in Ohio said they are “leaning toward or definitely leaving Ohio.”
· Students’ perceptions of Ohio as being a fun and exciting place to live, as having good jobs, etc. were also not high.
· Analysis of this survey data led to the conclusion that the Brain Drain is a real problem in Ohio and that colleges need to do more to connect students to their communities, market the positives of Ohio, and help them find better job opportunities.

The full report can be found at:
http://www.edexcellence.net/index.cfm/news_losing-ohios-future

Progress vs. Performance

Another nice report by KidsOhio.org is now available on their Web site titled "Analysis Shows Ohio's 8 Large Urban Districts and Charter Schools Rank Higher on Educational Progress Than on Absolute Test Scores."

KidsOhio.org ranked Ohio’s public schools - both traditional district schools and charter schools - according to their Performance Index scores (measuring student achievement on state tests in a given year) and their Value-Added Gain scores (the state’s measure of students’ academic progress from year to year). The analysis covered the 2,688 Ohio schools that received scores for both measures in 2008, and the data revealed that:

• Ohio 8 district schools ranked, on average, 2,199 out of 2,688 schools on test scores, but jumped 663 places to an average ranking of 1,536 on student progress.
  
• Charter schools taken as a group had an average ranking of 2,288 on test scores, but an average ranking of 1,362 on student progress, an increase of 926 places.

The following chart shows the data for the 8 urban school districts. Cincinnati Public Schools comes out particularly well with the highest value-added gain rank of all at 332.

The entire report, tables, and charts are available at KidsOhio.org.

Source: KidsOhio.org

Strive: A Community Forum on Education

Save The Date!

Strive: A Community Forum on Education
Friday June 26, 2009
Cintas Center, Xavier University
8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

We want to hear from you! Strive: A Community Forum on Education is a unique symposium focused on supporting and preparing youth for academic excellence from early childhood through college. Most of the time will be spent offering you the chance to provide your thoughts on what we need to do to address the three themes drawn from the recently released 2009 Striving Together Report Card.

How would you propose that we:
• Increase the pace of change in education?
• Increase rigor in the classroom?
• Increase enrollment, retention, and graduation from college and career training?

View the full agenda.

Join us and let us know what the keys to success are as we strive for excellence in education!

Cost: FREE
To register, contact Nancy Hackett at 513-745-3264, or hackettn@xavier.edu

Sponsored by Strive with the Community Building Institute

New Schott Report: Comprehensive Look at the Opportunities to Learn in the U.S.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education has released a new 50-state report on the opportunity to learn in America. "Lost Opportunity" is a state-by-state analysis of student performance data reported by state departments of education that determines the opportunity to learn in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The Schott Foundation used resource models to identify the four core minimum resources that are necessary if a child -- regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status -- is to have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn: (1) high-quality early childhood education; (2) highly qualified teachers and instructors in grades K-12; (3) college preparatory curricula that will prepare all youth for college, work, and community; and (4) equitable instructional resources.

The study shows that minority and low-income students have half the opportunity to learn in public schools that their white, non-Latino peers do. It gives a state-by-state comparison of academic proficiency (percentage of students scoring at or above proficient on eighth grade NAEP reading measures) and equity (as measured by a tool created by the Schott Foundation, called the Opportunity to Learn Index). See the full report.

Local Charter Schools

As a follow-up to last week's post on charter schools in Ohio, this one looks at local charter schools serving Cincinnati. You may have read last week about the most recent local charter school that closed with little notice (Silverton charter school shut down - 5/7/09).

So, how are charter schools doing locally? Overall, the picture looks bleak, although there are four schools who do rank "effective" and four who rank in "continuous improvement" according to the Ohio Department of Education. Below is a spreadsheet that contains a list of the 25 local charter schools along with basic information such as street address, enrollment, designation, graduation rate (if available) and performance index.

There are five designations that the State uses for student performance in schools. If we picked a letter grade for each designation, it would go like this:
A-Excellent
B-Effective
C-Continuous Improvement
D-Academic Watch
F-Academic Emergency

Of the local charter schools, none are excellent, four are effective, four are continuous improvement, five are academic watch, and eleven are academic emergency. Use the scroll bars to view all of the data.


Data Source: Ohio Department of Education

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