When Mayor Nan Whaley came into office in 2014, she showed great political courage in making education a top priority, something no Dayton mayor in memory had done. To galvanize public support for change, she formed a broadly-representative City of Learners Committee, held “listening sessions” throughout the city, and published two reports updating citizens on the committee’s progress. The committee—and Mayor Whaley—have rightly identified preschool, afterschool and summer learning, business partnerships, mentoring, and (as discussed below) high-quality schools as urgent needs that, if successfully tackled, would definitely improve education in Dayton. That’s something just about everyone living in or near the Gem City recognizes as a grave shortcoming in our community.
For this to happen, more high-quality schools are absolutely essential; but this is where the City of Learners Committee hasn’t gotten it quite right. Its newest report, published earlier this month, uses 2013-14 state data to rank Dayton’s district and charter schools in three categories: high, intermediate, and struggling. Unfortunately, it paints a rosier-than-reality picture of actual school performance, thus giving a misleading impression of the depth of today’s school-quality problem.
Last year (2014-15), the Dayton Public Schools were the lowest performing of 610 Ohio school districts on the Ohio Department of Education’s performance index, a measure of student proficiency. Indeed, the district’s report card (as conferred by ODE) shows that in grades 3-8, not even 35 percent of students were proficient in mathematics.
Given the high level of poverty in the district, it’s not surprising that DPS schools struggle with the performance index, a measure of achievement that is considerably affected by students’ socioeconomic circumstances. That is one reason why Ohio also calculates schools’ value added, i.e., the extent to which students’ performance at year’s end surpasses their performance at the end of the previous year. That’s a reasonable way to compensate for background factors in kids’ lives. Yet DPS’s value added isn’t any better than its performance index. In no primary or secondary grade did the district make even a year of growth, and in some grades, the lack of student learning was staggering. In total, more than 9,500 students attended a district school last year that was rated D or F on both the state’s performance index and its value added measures. Put another way, 88 percent of district students were enrolled in a poorly performing school. And lest anyone think that 2014-15 was an aberration due to the use of new tests, consider this: For the last three years in a row, two DPS schools – Wogaman and Westwood – have been rated F for both performance index and value added.
Deepening the challenge, Dayton’s weak academic performance isn’t limited to district schools. Though our analysis shows that charter schools fared slightly better than DPS schools in 2014-15, the sector has far too many low-performers of its own. Last year, more than 3,500 Dayton charter pupils—almost three-quarters of the total—were enrolled in poorly rated schools. While no charter school received all Fs the past three years straight, two of them (Imagine Woodbury Academy and Klepinger) did so on the newest report card.
Not all is bleak, of course. The city is rightfully proud of a handful of outstanding public schools, including Dayton Early College Academy (DECA), Stivers School for the Arts, and the David H. Ponitz Career Technology Center. In addition, three charter schools—Dayton Leadership Academies – Dayton View Campus and two of the Richard Allen Academies—deserve commendations for their A rating on value added in 2014-15. Sadly, however, schools such as these educate only around one in ten of Dayton’s public-school students.
The remedies devised by the City of Learners Committee and Dayton’s civic leadership are well intended but insufficient, and they are unlikely to have any substantial impact on the quality of schools in Dayton. The committee identified boosting teacher talent as the primary strategy to address the issue of school quality, and three area universities – the University of Dayton, Wright State, and Miami University – will commit to expanding or creating urban teacher academies. This is a fine idea, but it will have scant near-term impact by itself: There are, after all, fifty-three district and charter buildings in the city, and the need is urgent. Getting all children kindergarten-ready via good preschool programs is also an excellent idea, but it amounts to little if children are well prepared for kindergarten only to be routed into dire district and charter schools.
Such grim facts call for a bold strategy of transformation: The community needs to expand or replicate high-quality schools in both sectors and also to demand more aggressive intervention in the worst schools.
Dayton’s outstanding schools need to be provided the support, buildings, training, and development to grow and educate more kids. (DECA will have elementary, middle and high school campuses this fall.) These schools are unmatched community assets and must be challenged—and assisted—to do even more for more children. They should serve more children across more grade levels at more locations throughout the city.
Just as important as expansion of the strong is closure of the weak. And we mean closure, not tepid intervention; research is clear that school turnarounds almost never succeed. We need to shut down the city’s worst performers – district and charter alike – while making room for their students in strong schools. As a charter authorizer, we at Fordham have closed schools; we know firsthand how painful that is. Yet dooming generations of children to classrooms that we all know will not put them on a solid track for either college or career—and will likely land them squarely back in the cycle of poverty, if not worse—is simply unacceptable. In School Closures and Student Achievement: An Analysis of Ohio’s Urban District and Charter Schools, we directly examined the question of what happens to children in failing schools when those buildings close. The researchers found that displaced students make significant gains in math and reading after enrolling in different and superior schools.
Dayton today seems to lack the fortitude to deal forcefully with the wretched achievement of far too many of its young people—and to take the drastic actions needed to overhaul both DPS and the city’s charter sector. Yet our inaction relegates further generations of promising young minds to failure and poverty. In the end, that’s our fault, not theirs. Without significant and far-reaching change, it is unrealistic for us to expect that anything other than the status quo will continue. Mayor Whaley’s educational priorities and those of her committee are fine as far as they go, but they don’t go nearly far enough. A stronger education vision and policy is needed. We must grow what’s working and close what’s not—and do so quickly. The children of Dayton do not have time to wait.
