Introduction

The Ohio School Climate Guidelines

A school can create a "coherent environment so potent that for at least six hours a day it can override almost everything else in the lives of children." -Ron Edmonds, 1986 -"The Granddaddy of School Effectiveness Research

In October, 2004, the Ohio School Board adopted a set of nine guidelines to assist schools in developing optimal learning conditions for Ohio schools.  These guidelines underwent significant scrutiny and review by professionals, parents, school staff, and legislators.  As a result, the nine guidelines, their benchmarks and strategies, can be viewed as "best practices" for removing the non-academic barriers to learning.  Ohio is one of a handful of states with guidelines on school climate.

Why State Guidelines?

Every time a student crosses over the threshold of your school, teachers and other school staff have another opportunity to shape knowledge, attitudes, and behavior—to shape the lives of those that will one day shape your community.  Research supports the notion that teachers and school staff better achieve their academic mission if they also:

• provide caring support for their students and families to ensure that the students’ basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, and safety are met
• increase each students social and emotional skills
• provide developmentally and culturally appropriate health and drug information to enable students to make informed decisions about healthy living
• provide appropriate structures that set positive social norms and emphasize limit setting and consistent expectations
• offer disruptive and unruly students an alternative academic environment where they can receive intensive interventions
• provide nutritional meals and snacks
• welcome parents as part of the learning community, and
• provide all students the opportunity to meaningfully participate in decisions that impact their learning environment

Within the school community, learning is the common purpose shared by students, parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, and the community-at-large. Everything done in the school community must focus on helping all students achieve learning to their highest potential. Thus, the academic curriculum is designed to provide a vast array of learning opportunities for diverse students and skilled teachers are employed to practice effective methods for teaching students, each with varied learning styles. 

While schools must rightly focus their attention on standards for high academic achievement, they will not be able to meet that goal without providing a safe, supportive climate in which their students can learn” (Learning First Alliance, 2001).   For enrichment of the community’s future, community stakeholders must work diligently in the present to establish safe and orderly school settings where high expectations for academic achievement is the norm and sufficient home-school-community support is provided.  In this kind of climate, their community’s children and youth develop the knowledge, social and emotional skills,  character, and civic responsibility to assume present and future leadership roles.

Implementation of the Guidelines

Planning Guide

This toolbox contains a planning guide  to facilitate planning, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based strategies that promote student success. By clicking on the guiding principles below, you can access the benchmarks, action steps, and related resources for each of the climate guidelines.

Operationalizing guide recommendations must involve building administrators. Likewise, action based on these guidelines, as with any effective long-term reform, should be based on community collaboration, as addressed in Guideline No. 1 and on local needs and circumstances, as addressed in Guideline 2.  District leaders must recognize that systemic change can only occur with district-level and community support.

The Ohio Department of Education is committed to removing the non-academic barriers to learning and in concert with the Ohio State School Board will regularly review and revise the guidelines to ensure that they are dynamic and responsive to future demographic trends and research.  Future versions will be shaped through collaboration with other groups working on standards for teacher preparation, core academic content, and other relevant school reform initiatives.
 Toolbox   [click on the highlighted "guiding principle" to access resources]