Think performance statistics and longitudinal databases are just pillow talk for policy wonks? Don't tell the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), a national educational collaborative promoting better data collection and data-driven practices.
Think performance statistics and longitudinal databases are just pillow talk for policy wonks? Don't tell the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), a national educational collaborative promoting better data collection and data-driven practices. DQC recently held its quarterly issue meeting in Washington DC, and the topic was the use of data from the central office to the classroom level, and how it can improve the quality of student learning.
Ohio's new longitudinal data system was one of the meeting's featured attractions. Amy Andres, chief information officer for the Ohio Department of Education demonstrated Data Driven Decisions for Academic Achievement, or D3A2 as the system is called. As a clearinghouse for smaller databases, D3A2 offers Ohio's educators one-stop shopping for student test scores, model lesson plans, and host of other educational resources. A later version of the system will incorporate the state's "value-added" assessment model, which will track individual student performance over time (beginning in 2007-08).
The benefits of such databases were illustrated by two veteran users of high-powered systems.
Edwin S. Hedgepeth of the Knox County School System in Tennessee discussed how transparent data reporting has created healthy competition among the district's schools. Tennessee has been using a value-added assessment model for several years to track individual student performance over time. Knox County's system can even illustrate the effects of particular teachers on student learning.
Holly Fisackerly, principal of Hambrick Middle School in Houston, stressed the importance of creating ownership of school data systems. Her teachers were reluctant, at first, to learn what appeared to be a complex new technology, but when they saw the capabilities and ease-of-use of the new system, they quickly changed their minds. School administrators and staff point to narrowing achievement gaps as proof of the system's worth.
DQC's meeting was an encouraging reminder that more and more states (Ohio among them) are seeking to improve classroom instruction with valuable student data and user-friendly interfaces that even the most recalcitrant technophobes could love.
To learn more about the Data Quality Campaign, click here.
Check out D3A2 for yourself here.
Recent campaign rhetoric and debate exchanges about education funding between gubernatorial candidates Ken Blackwell and Ted Strickland have been disingenuous at best. Neither candidate has raised the most critical issue affecting school funding for whoever next sits in the governor's chair: the growing fiscal crisis facing Ohio's education system caused by rapidly rising healthcare and pension costs.
No one knows for certain how much has been promised to Ohio's educators and other active school employees in the form of pensions and retiree health care benefits. (This will change in coming years as Ohio, like all states, will have to comply with new Government Accounting Standards Board rules requiring public agencies to disclose future retirement burdens.) But promises made through the State Teachers Retirement System and the School Employees Retirement System provide a glimpse of what's to come. According to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) report for fiscal year 2005 (see here), Ohio faces over $20 billion in unfunded liabilities for state teacher pension plans alone. That's about $62,500 in promised pension benefits per active participant in the state's teacher and non-teaching staff retirement systems. Only the states of California (at $24 billion) and Illinois (at $23 billion) face a more significant unfunded liability burden.
This will come as little surprise to companies in the private sector, which have been coping with rising pension and healthcare costs for the better part of a decade. In Ohio, we've seen the repercussions for big employers such as General Motors and Delphi, whose strong unions and generous benefits packages have forced drastic cuts and shuttered several manufacturing sites. Dayton-based NCR (see here) just announced it will no longer contribute to employee pension plans, in an effort to reduce its annual retirement expenses by $40 million. And the rising costs of employer-sponsored healthcare premiums are taking an enormous toll on Ohio's small businesses.
These same health care and pension costs are putting a squeeze on Ohio's school districts. According to Standard & Poor's (see here), between 1998 and 2002, benefit costs for Ohio's school districts rose 42.8 percent on average over the four year period. In 2003, almost $1,700 of average per student spending, which comes to about $8,500 with both state and district contributions, went to subsidizing employee benefits. Such numbers, coupled with steep drops in enrollment over the past several years, are quickly emptying district coffers--particularly in urban areas. Even as it lost teachers and students, Columbus Public Schools' "instructional" expenditures, which include teacher salaries and benefits, ballooned by 52.6 percent per teacher over four years from 2001 to 2005 (see here). Cleveland Public Schools' instructional spending grew by 44.1 percent, and Dayton Public's increased by 35.4 percent, again despite dwindling enrollment and fewer teachers.
At the same time, many teacher unions have been loath to concede any portion of their generous benefit packages. A recently settled teacher strike in southwestern Ohio's Huber Heights was instigated, in part, by the district's request that teachers pay a greater portion of their health insurance costs--though only in the form of marginally higher co-pays (see here). Come October 9, Barberton City School District teachers in northeastern Ohio will take to the picket lines to protest, among other things, the district's recent announcement that it can no longer pay 100 percent of teachers' family healthcare premiums--about $10,000 per employee (see here). Instead, the district is now asking that teachers pay $45 a month next year, with monthly payments eventually reaching $85 after two years. (Most Ohioans can only dream of such healthcare premiums.) And teachers in Dayton Public Schools aren't ruling out the option of a strike (see here) if their contract concerns--healthcare premiums chief among them--aren't met.
To be sure, the massive unfunded liabilities associated with teacher pensions and healthcare benefits will eventually impact the state's general operating budget (and taxpayers' wallets). Ohio is constitutionally obliged to meet all public employee retirement costs, including those for teachers and other school employees.
There are measures that states can take to deal with these unfunded liability costs. For instance, studies by Deloitte Research and the Reason Foundation (found here and here), among others, offer guidance on transitioning to more modern and flexible pension plans. (A few charter schools already contribute to "defined-contribution" plans, which allow employees to invest money as they choose and, more importantly, take their investments with them from job to job.) Any reform will still require substantial growth in state and local revenues. And Ohio's cities are hemorrhaging residents, many of them young professionals, by the thousand, leaving fewer and fewer taxpayers to shoulder the mounting costs of education.
One thing is certain. If these issues continue to go unaddressed, policymakers will be faced with a formidable dilemma: reduce benefits to public employees or slash key services in programs such as education and healthcare.
Messieurs Blackwell and Strickland will face the polls in just under six weeks; it remains to be seen if they will face the realities of education funding in Ohio.
In 2005-06, 8,446 schools and 1,624 districts nationwide failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as required under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Many states are scrambling to improve student achievement before districts and schools face state and federal sanctions (Columbus Public Schools alone has 45 schools in this predicament). As this report shows, reform initiatives run the gamut--from creating "how-to" manuals for school improvement to hiring for-profit school reform specialists.
Two of Ohio's neighbors, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, have dispatched teams of consultants to provide district leaders the skills they need to turn around failing schools. The teams, typically comprised of former school leaders and educators with experience raising student achievement, evaluate district weaknesses and then teach district leaders how to implement necessary reforms. Pennsylvania's "distinguished educators" may stay in a district for up to two years. "It's like having four or five consiglieres," said Thomas Chapman, superintendent of Pennsylvania's troubled Reading district. The district has used the team to help institute data-informed instruction and an ambitious restructuring plan. And Superintendent B. Michael Caudill in Madison County, Kentucky insists his "voluntary assistance team" has helped him gain a "laser-like" focus on academics.
Yet the jury is still out on the efficacy of these costly programs. The only verifiable success among the report's case studies was found in New Mexico, which is using the Baldrige model to improve some its most troubled schools. Named after former secretary of commerce Malcolm Baldrige, the program employs rigorous data analysis to help administrators, teachers and students set and attain concrete goals. (The Ohio Department of Education also promotes aspects of the Baldrige model--see here). Nine of the 13 schools purged from New Mexico's list of most distressed schools in 2005 were Baldrige schools.
Leading for Learning does a fine job of showcasing state efforts to create innovative school leadership (sadly, few states are looking to thriving "leader-centric" charter models like KIPP). But with spotty track records of success and a limited pool of talented reformers, they may just be another case of the blind leading the blind.
Download a copy of the report here.
