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Education center to address chronic absenteeism, college readiness in rural schools

KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News

Published: February 15, 2019

Thirty Ohio rural school districts are expected to benefit from the Ohio Department of Education's partnership with Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research to develop networks that would address some of rural schools' greatest challenges.

The state education department announced last week award of a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences for the purpose of devising and testing solutions to chronic absenteeism, college readiness and college enrollment in rural education.

Nearly half of the full grant amount, about $5 million, will be spent on the 30 Ohio school network, the announcement stipulated. The remainder will fund the same project in New York.

Similar to the Harvard center's Proving Ground initiative, which has focused on continuous improvement approach to the challenges dealt some urban school districts in the Buckeye State, the endeavor is aimed at assisting school districts identify and test evidence-based solutions to district challenges.

The approach allows school districts to pool data across the network to uncover potential solutions and evaluate their success, a press release detailed.

"We are excited that rural schools in Ohio will have this fantastic opportunity to help build their capacity to use data analysis to drive continuous improvement," State Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria said in a prepared statement. "Our experience with the Proving Ground program has shown that student outcomes can be positively impacted when this model is applied. We are honored to have the opportunity to expand this work."

Proving Ground's current work with urban districts in Ohio led to reduced absenteeism in the Canton City and Maple Heights City schools.

The initiative has supported partner districts by providing data analysis, strategic advice, hands-on assistance and peer networking opportunities since 2015.

"Our work with Proving Ground has helped us completely rethink how we look deeply at our data and make meaningful and targeted decisions to improve our work," Maple Heights City School District Superintendent Charlie Keenan said. "The Proving Ground continuous improvement model has provided us with a clear framework to persist with and improve upon effective strategies, eliminate efforts that don't lead to success and identify new ways to maximize our efforts."

The networks are to engage in three mutually-supportive activities to apply the comprehensive continuous improvement approach: Data analysis, strategic advice and hands-on assistance and peer networking.

Ohio was selected to participate in the five-year grant opportunity, in part, because rural districts in Ohio serve a large percent of the state's school-age children compared to the national average, officials said.

The application for district participation will open in March. All rural districts, as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics, in Ohio and New York are invited to apply to join initiative.

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