The Cincinnati Enquirer

10/16/2007

BY BEN FISCHER

While campaigning for a 9.95-mill tax levy this fall, Cincinnati Public Schools officials and supporters tell the story of a high-achieving district.

“We outperform our peers,” Treasurer Jonathan Boyd said at an Oct. 1 speech in Bond Hill.

In a recent online commercial, teachers union chief Tim Kraus said the city’s teachers are “unparalleled” and the district “performs very, very well.”

But at the same time, some of the district’s own board members and parents call the system’s academic gains woefully inadequate. Meanwhile, state Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr., a frequent critic of public education, has said supporting the levy would amount to supporting incompetence.

Incompetence or national model? Which is closer to the truth?

It depends heavily on what’s used as a baseline for comparison: Ohio’s other big cities, nearby suburban districts or independent federal standards.

“It is impressive that we are beating Cleveland and Columbus, and people should be proud of that,” said school board candidate Eve Bolton, who teaches in Wyoming City Schools, the highest-scoring district in the state and a neighbor to CPS.

“But being better than Cleveland and Columbus is not good enough if you are trying to attract families back into the city of Cincinnati to attend our schools.”

When compared to similar districts - seven other large, urban systems that educate a high percentage of poor children in Ohio - Cincinnati Public Schools shine.

Consider:

- Along with Akron, CPS is one of just two big-city systems in Ohio to maintain its C grade, a “continuous improvement” rating, on state report cards three years in a row.

- The performance index for CPS, an aggregate measure of overall student achievement, ranks third out of eight, behind much-smaller Akron and Canton. CPS has shown the biggest increase among urban schools in performance index since the regulators created the measure in 2001.

- CPS has the most nationally certified teachers in the state, and is one of four urban districts to take baby steps, helped out by federal funds, toward merit-based pay for teachers.

“In terms of how far they have come, (Cincinnati) has outperformed anyone else,” said Akron Superintendent Sylvester Small. “That is a true statement.”

But the statistics reflect much less favorably on CPS if a voter simply considers the 33,900-student district as one of many educational options in Greater Cincinnati, or against goals set by the federal government.

Out of 48 other public school districts in Butler, Clermont, Warren and Hamilton counties, 38 are rated higher than CPS. Ten others are also in continuous improvement. None rates lower.

However, one popular alternative to CPS - public charter schools - rank slightly lower as a group. Out of Hamilton County’s 23 charter schools, 12 are either in academic watch or emergency, roughly the same percentage of CPS schools. But just two scored in the top two categories, compared to 13 out of 67 in the city schools.

Also, all nine of the school buildings in Greater Cincinnati being forced by the federal government to restructure after failing to meet national improvement goals are CPS schools.

Despite pockets of excellence, particularly among high schools, broad swaths of CPS remain in the lowest two ratings. The district as a whole, and more than two-thirds of the individual schools, failed to meet federal improvement goals in the 2006-07 school year.

Being a leader among urban schools should give parents and taxpayers scant comfort, said T.J. Wallace, interim director of School Choice Ohio, a charter-school advocate.

“If a parent’s kid is in a classroom where just 40 percent are passing a proficiency test, to know that some kid in Canton’s class does it at 38 percent, that doesn’t give them much hope,” Wallace said.

Even the most ardent pro-levy campaigners acknowledge CPS’ shortcomings.

But they turn to urban-to-urban comparisons, as well as year-to-year trends, to make their underlying case: Current CPS scores are far better than they were just a few years ago, and those gains come in a challenging urban environment.

“You can’t really compare apples and oranges,” said Mark Turner, president of the pro-levy group Cincinnatians Active to Support Education. “But I would also argue that anyone who does look at the numbers, our progress, should be fairly impressed by what we’ve done.”

At a summit of urban educators in Columbus last week, Cincinnati Superintendent Rosa Blackwell said overall scores in suburbs tend to be higher, but schools struggle just as much as urban districts to educate challenging subgroups of students, such as those coming from poverty.

If approved by voters, CPS’ levy would raises taxes by about $294 annually on a $100,000 home. In the process, it would generate $65.3 million annually in revenue for CPS over the next five years.

Cincinnati City Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz, who opposes the levy, said the tax increase would further increase CPS’ share of the city homeowner’s overall property tax burden, pushing it above 70 percent if approved.

Meanwhile, she continues to hear from residents who have moved out of the city in search of better schools.

“If I’m paying 71 percent of my property taxes to the public school system, you should be able to send your kid to any public school and get academic results,” Ghiz said.

CPS levy supporters say the district’s improvement over time is what should matter to voters weighing whether to increase their own taxes.

“Trends are far more important in whether you want to continue investments rather than a snapshot,” Turner said.