Begging your leave, this week I shall acquaint you with a new report from the wing of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation that's chiefly concerned with education reform in Dayton, Ohio, where Mr. Fordham lived, where I grew up, and where we focus our on-the-ground efforts (as opposed to the national policy research issues that you usually read about in this space).
Dayton Education in 2001: The Views of Citizens and Parents (available in full - in a PDF version - on our website at http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/dayton_2001.pdf) reports the findings of an August survey of 1455 residents of that Midwestern city, including approximately equal numbers of public-school parents, charter-school parents, private-school parents, and adults with no children in school. Statistically significant data are available from each group - and for comparisons among them. To our knowledge, this is the first time any survey has made possible a three-way comparison of public, private and charter school parents in any community. (The survey was scientifically constructed and professionally administered by Paragon Opinion Research.)
Dayton isn't a big place, but it warrants the attention of people interested in education reform. It's home to a sizable privately funded voucher program, one with promising evidence of academic gains for black youngsters. It's also home to one of America's liveliest charter-school programs, with upwards of fifteen percent of the city's children attending some 13 charter schools today - and several more in the pipeline for 2002. Though it also bears most of the marks of a troubled urban community - white flight, low test scores, high dropout rates, a dysfunctional school board, an obdurate teacher union - there's a lot of worthwhile reform occurring there.
The nearly 50 questions in the Dayton public opinion survey divided into three broad categories.
One set asked parents how satisfied they are with various dimensions of their children's current schools. The response pattern is fascinating, if perhaps predictable. On a host of criteria (teachers, discipline, safety, curriculum, parent involvement, etc.), private-school parents are the most satisfied, public-school parents are least satisfied, and charter parents turn up in the middle - though generally closer to private than public.
A second clutch of questions asked Dayton parents and non-parents about issues facing the local public school system and its leadership - the latter being especially timely since a key school board election will be held on November 6, an election with livelier competition among abler and more thoughtful candidates than has been seen in ages. These responses show Daytonians deeply troubled by many aspects of their school system. Most say that it's gotten worse in recent years, that its current leadership is not doing an adequate job, and that "bold reformers" should be elected to the open school-board seats.
The third cluster of questions probed Dayton residents' receptivity to a bundle of education reform ideas, including many deemed "controversial" within the profession and in national policy circles. Insofar as one can tell from comments on a telephone survey, Daytonians look like radical education reformers. For example, 83% favor requiring children to meet higher academic standards in order to be promoted or to graduate; 70% would give public-school principals greater control of their budgets and personnel; 67% favor "making it easier for professionals from other fields to become teachers"; a similar proportion would pay teachers more if their students make strong academic progress; three-quarters would pay more to teachers in shortage fields such as math and science; and nearly everyone in town would test (all) teachers to ensure that they know their subjects. Three out of four Dayton adults would require suburban schools to admit city youngsters if they have room (that's now up to individual districts under Ohio law); just 15% would scrap the city's lively charter-school program (the rest split between keeping it at its present size and expanding it); and a whopping 73% (including 77% of public-school parents) favor school vouchers (here phrased as "the use of government funds to send children to any school, including private and church-related schools.")
Dayton residents, in other words, sound like serious reformers, ready for sweeping changes in a public-school system that few think is doing a good job today. Will they vote that way two weeks hence? And will the would-be reformers among the candidates stick to their guns if elected? We shall see. Meanwhile, what about a similar survey in your favorite city?
PS: After five years of experience in education-reform philanthropy, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation have distilled some lessons about the kinds of activities that we believe have greatest potential to effect serious change in education. Our advice (plus profiles of a dozen other philanthropists and some further musings on what we've tried and learned in Dayton) can be found in another new Fordham report, Making It Count: A Guide to High-Impact Education Philanthropy, also available on our website at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=39.
