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The Ohio State Fire Marshal Larry Flowers announced Monday that the state’s fire fatalities hit a 25-year low in 2011.

According to Flowers, the number of fire-related fatalities dropped nearly 18% from 2010 to 2011.

During the 2011 calendar year, 126 fire-related fatalities were recorded compared to the 153 fire-related fatalities reported in 2010.

The previous low of 130 fire-related fatalities occurred in 2007.

“Smoke alarms are proven to save lives,” State Fire Marshal Larry Flowers said.

“I’m pleased by the efforts of Ohio’s first responders, educators, journalists and citizens in raising awareness of the need for working smoke alarms which undoubtedly played a role in the reduction of fire deaths” Flowers added.

According to a press release from the Fire Marshal’s office, more than 90% of Ohio’s fire-related fatalities occurred in homes with no confirmed working smoke alarms.

Flowers attributes the reduction to a number of efforts, including fire safety education programs, increased media attention to the need for working smoke alarms in homes, and innovative training for Ohio’s firefighters.

Potentially drastic changes to teacher personnel policy in Ohio have been at the heart of heated debates for the last five or six months, precipitated by provisions in controversial SB 5, Ohio’s collective bargaining law, as well as about-to-be-passed state biennial budget HB 153. Either set of provisions would change the way teachers are evaluated, rewarded, retained, dismissed, developed, and placed (though Fordham strongly prefers the language in HB 153). 

Among the myriad ways these policies would change the face of teaching and learning, however, “merit pay” seems to be the maelstrom toward which the majority of coverage and attention has been pulled. (For a quick experiment, google “merit pay and Ohio” and “teacher evaluations and Ohio” and see how many more recent hits the former returns.)

The House’s teacher provisions (fingers crossed that that it will get re-inserted during conference committee) would get rid of seniority-based layoffs, develop a rigorous and sophisticated rating system for teachers, undo forced placement of ineffective teachers, use student test scores in evaluations, and effectively get rid of tenure (among other things). And yet the media seems to have a fixation on “merit pay,” dwindling the entire teacher policy debate down to this one issue, or conflating “merit pay” with other – arguably more critical – teacher policy reforms.

Even worse is that those who oppose merit pay can drum up legitimate points against it – the research showing that merit pay improves student achievement is weak; Ohio doesn’t have a rigorous enough system by which to evaluate and reward teachers (yet) – and in doing so effectively convince Ohioans that the teacher provisions on the table are worth tossing out altogether.

Such is the conversation in Ohio. Regardless of what happens with SB 5 (which is up for referendum in November) or the budget, or how comfortable (or not) lawmakers, teachers, and the public are with “merit pay,” this doesn’t diminish in the least Ohio’s need to overhaul teacher evaluations and policies associated with them. First and foremost, we need to rate teachers in a meaningful way (and frequently). Once that data begins to pile up, and teachers know and trust the system by which they’re evaluated (see our videos of DC teachers describing that), and can see how it legitimately assesses the qualities of effective teachers – only then should Ohio introduce the “m” word.

We’ve done it all backwards – beginning with Kasich’s somewhat random performance pay plan that would have given teachers $50 per student who made more than a year’s worth of learning (this, happening in a vacuum of data about teacher effectiveness or a thorough evaluation system that would help build that data), being fueled by misunderstandings about what’s actually in each bill per teacher evaluations (the majority of Ohioans still don’t know the different between what’s in SB 5 and HB 153), and then culminating by calls to toss it all by the wayside.

Instead, Ohio needs to consider teacher evaluations as the fundamental foundation to any other teacher policy change, and the media needs to focus on this ingredient far more (forcing people to really understand what’s at stake instead of identifying as pro- or anti-merit pay and then calling it a day). If lawmakers accomplish nothing else to improve teacher quality in this legislative session, they must set in motion the creation of more meaningful rating systems (and statewide; among RttT participants is not good enough). Merit pay, tenure reform, etc – those can all come later; they’re like toppings on the pizza. But first we need the crust. – Jamie Davies OLeary

This week, I made my first trip to visit our Ohio team since joining Fordham last year. I found a lot to make me very hopeful about the Buckeye State, as well as seeing things that made clear to me just how difficult the challenges are there.

On Tuesday, Drs. David Driscoll (former Commissioner of Education in MA and a Fordham Board member) and Tony Bennett (State Superintendent of Instruction in IN) testified before the Ohio State Senate finance committee. Both men articulated the challenges facing state departments of education and the smart solutions proposed by the education reform movement. Many of us were impressed by the respectful back-and-forth between the two of them and senators from both sides of the aisle. Given the riotous protests over SB5 just a few short weeks ago, it was heartening to see lawmakers remaining open-minded in their search for solutions to improve public education in Ohio.

I spent the afternoon visiting KIPP Journey and Columbus Collegiate Academy. The students at KIPP, when asked to describe what the school meant to them, deftly turned arguments about poor home life limiting education on their heads. They all said KIPP was a place where they felt safe, cared for, and challenged — because some of them lacked these things at home, it was all the more important that they find them at school from dedicated teachers. At least three of the kids I talked to (all young men) used the word family to describe the community at their school.

The next day, I was in Dayton. When I was leaving for my trip, a friend from Ohio told me (a bit harshly), Dont judge Ohio based on Dayton. But what I saw going around to schools there made me hope that others in the state share Daytonians spirit. The city clearly faces very real challenges; that much is obvious from the shuttered factories, boarded-up homes, and high joblessness figures. Yet the community has also stepped up with support for some great schools like the Stivers School for the Arts, a magnet inside Dayton Public Schools, the Dayton Early College Academy, and others. Everyone I talked to believes strongly that Daytons troubles neednt be permanent and see education as the best lever they have to reverse its trajectory.

The key constraint in Dayton (as in many other places) is human capital. There are plenty of charter schools in and around the city, but few have the kinds of transformational leaders and high-quality boards needed to move Daytons kids to the next level. I suspect the other, greener kind of capital would follow if there were a way to entice more sharp, entrepreneurial educators to start schools there. Bringing TFA to Ohio is a great first step, but theres still a heavy lift ahead to create a sustainable pipeline of top-notch human capital into Daytons schools.

On a more personal note, the highlight of the trip for me was getting connected to Fordhams roots in Dayton. I saw the Finn family plot, where Checkers ancestors dating back to the late 19th century are buried. Terry also took me to see ghosts of schools past, places where Fordham poured a lot of sweat and dollars into charters and after-school programs that werent long term successes, learning hard lessons along the way.

It all drove home the lesson that education is at heart a local endeavor. National and state policy are critically important, but at the end of the day, their purpose is to clear the ground so that teachers and school leaders can prepare kids for a brighter future. I have a lot of hope that that future can become a reality because of the great things I saw going on in Ohio.