Mayor Jackson unveils his plan for education reform in Cleveland

CLEVELAND - Ohio Gov. John Kasich appears to be throwing his support behind the new education reform plan for Cleveland schools.

The comprehensive plan, unveiled Tuesday by Mayor Frank Jackson, would increase the number of high-performing schools and eliminate low-performing schools, create partnerships with high-performing charter schools, extend the school year, and implement universal pre-school. It would also eliminate seniority from teacher layoff decisions and base teacher pay on performance.

"If the Cleveland business community and the mayor is really committed to very comprehensive and unbelievable reform, and we can involve Republicans and Democrats in this endeavor, we can change urban education in Ohio and change urban education in America," Kasich said, during his State of the State address on Tuesday.

Jackson said the plan is a way to create educational excellence in the shortest period of time possible.

"We do not have the time to wait around and to have another set of kids in another school year not to do well because we're engaged in an ongoing dialog of what we should do," he said. "This is about action. This is about doing something and doing it now."    

Cleveland schools are in the second year of another reform plan, called Academic Transformation.

"This is really  about how do we take what was the vision of the Academic Transformation Plan and get to levels of implementation," schools CEO Eric Gordon said.

Gordon said Cleveland voters will be asked to approve a tax levy in November.  It would be the first new levy money for Cleveland schools since 1996.