The Columbus Dispatch writes that "the truth about Columbus middle schools is brutal." More than 70 percent of the district’s middle schools are rated "D" or "F" by the state and none of them met federal Adequate Yearly Progress targets.
The Columbus Dispatch writes that "the truth about Columbus middle schools is brutal." More than 70 percent of the district’s middle schools are rated "D" or "F" by the state and none of them met federal Adequate Yearly Progress targets. Through perseverance and collaboration two Columbus charter schools are working to change this urban education narrative. Read the full post here.
Standards-based reform in education is imperfect. The ways that states and districts assess kids, design tests, and attempt to hold teachers and schools accountable are bound to be flawed, lead to unintended consequences, and create many enemies along the way. But I wish the opponents of standards-based reform in Ohio would at least get a little more creative. Read the full post here.
On October 29, the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Frank M. Tait Foundation, and the Fred and Alice Wallace Memorial Charitable Foundation hosted an education forum in Dayton to talk about the state of education in that city as well as Ohio and the nation. Fordham’s Terry Ryan was a participant in the panel discussion “Making a Difference: What’s Been Accomplished and What Needs to be Done,” along with Tom Lasley, University of Dayton; Kurt Stanic, Dayton Public Schools; Margy Stevens, Montgomery County Educational Service Center; and moderator Scott Elliott of the Dayton Daily News. Check out selected segments of that panel on our website here.
Teacher quality is arguably the most important variable impacting student achievement. Americans have generally accepted this truism, either through common sense or nostalgia, and policy wonks and politicians (armed with substantive evidence that good teaching matters) are elevating teacher quality as a primary focus of reform and pursuing relevant policy changes.
Ohio House Bill 1 moved teacher tenure decisions back from the third to the seventh year of a teacher’s career, a move with potential to help weed out ineffective teachers. The legislation also lowered the legal bar for terminating teachers and laid out requirements for a four-year teacher residency program. Both are attempts to improve the quality or quantity (through retention or recruitment) of teachers.
On a national level, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has begun visiting America’s teacher colleges, calling for them to reform the way they train teachers and put an end to “mediocrity” (see his remarks here and here). Duncan references the teacher shortage: more than half of the 3.2 million teachers working in America’s schools are Baby Boomers nearing retirement, and the U.S. Department of Education projects one million new teaching slots by 2014. The message seems straightforward -- we need better prepared teachers, and we need more of them.
Two recent reports view the teacher quality issue through a slightly different lens. Education Sector’s Teachers At Work: Improving Teacher Quality Through School Design (see here) and Public Impact’s 3x for All: Extending the Reach of Education’s Best (see here) are premised on the idea that recruiting more (and even better) teachers is not sufficient unless, as Teachers at Work notes, “we fundamentally overhaul the way the work of teachers is organized in schools.”
Teachers At Work showcases the Generation Schools model and offers a glimpse into its Brooklyn-based pilot high school, where teachers are organized into grade- and subject-based teams, teach 90-minute core classes as well as shorter elective classes, and have two hours of daily planning time. Twice a year, grade-based teaching teams go on a four-week break – three weeks for rest, and one week for planning and collaboration. Breaks are staggered among teacher teams so that students won’t miss learning time; students take intensive month-long literacy courses during teacher breaks. The school year stretches for 200 days for students without adding any extra work time or pay for teachers.
3X for All, which gets its name from research showing that students taught by top-quintile teachers make three times the progress of those taught by the bottom fifth of teachers. Even if we entice more great teachers to join the profession, “our nation still will not have an excellent teacher in every classroom… [because] the magnitude of the gap is too enormous.” Our current attempts to address education’s human capital challenges simply are not enough.
The report’s authors argue that schools should use the good teachers they already have so that more children can benefit from “3X” (the best) teachers. 3X teachers should devote nearly all their time to student interaction (and no time to rote and non-instruction duties). Schools can maximize 3X teachers in three ways: 1) “in person reach extension,” which changes how schools are organized so that the best teachers only focus on instruction (and can opt to teach larger classes for extra pay); 2) “remote reach extension,” which leverages technology so that 3X teachers can interact with students through videos, e-chats, etc.; and 3) “boundless reach extension,” which uses technology not based on direct teacher-student interaction but is boundless in the number of students who can be reached.
3X for All contends that while the number of top-flight teachers is limited, the number of students they could reach is not. The report is reminiscent of many ideas underlying NYC’s School of One pilot (see here), whose founder, Joel Rose, argued that “superhero” teachers are hard to come by and that technology and better use of data can change the effectiveness of the inputs we already have. While 3X for All offers some good and feasible ideas to expand great teachers’ digital reach, the argument to reorganize the profession so that the best teachers lead “pods” of classrooms and manage other teachers (and that average or below average teachers shouldn’t be allowed to “own” their classroom) would require significant cultural shifts and changes to collective bargaining agreements.
The thrust of both reports is spot-on: recruiting and retaining more good teachers is only part of the strategy to ensure that all students receive excellent instruction. Policy makers and educators should think creatively about reorganizing teachers’ workload, planning time, and school calendars, and should consider the power of technology to expand excellent teachers’ reach.
Perhaps the most important conclusion to draw from both reports is that if we wish to organize teachers’ time and talent strategically, many other policy changes must happen in tandem (Ohio, pay attention). Traditional budget allocation makes such experimentation difficult; therefore states should consider funding that follows students. Charter schools are a likely vehicle for experimenting with school calendars, and start-up models like Generation Schools must be encouraged. Though class size mandates are well-intentioned, they impose restraints on maximizing teachers’ interactions with students. And teacher licensure barriers, mandates on minimum hours of instruction, and rigidity in school calendars all hinder the innovative ideas described in these reports.
If Ohio is serious about improving its teaching force, leaders must ease regulatory burdens on schools and think outside of the teacher quality/quantity box. Quality and quantity do matter, but current reforms won’t go far enough unless we rethink policies that constrain how well teachers’ time and talent are used to impact students.
Alongside putting in place Governor Strickland’s “evidence-based” model of school funding, House Bill 1 – the state’s biennial budget – called for an advisory panel to issue “recommendations for revisions to the educational adequacy components of the school funding model,” among a slew of other charges.
Appointments have been made to the panel, and the group’s work will get underway soon. There has been much chatter around Capitol Square about who is on the council (a who’s who of players from the state’s political and education establishment) and what they’ll ultimately recommend (odds are they’ll call for directing more money to schools, see here). But such chatter, and the council itself, may be moot because of political timing.
The Ohio School Funding Advisory Council’s recommendations are due December 1, 2010, four weeks after the gubernatorial election. If Kasich prevails, it seems unlikely that he’ll heed the advice of a panel convened by the previous administration to improve its flagship policy initiative (in similar fashion, Strickland largely ignored the Taft-era Achieve/McKinsey report on Ohio’s education system, here, when he assumed office).
There is reason to believe that Governor Strickland won’t embrace the panel’s recommendations either, especially if they call for more resources to be poured into the system. Whoever takes the oath of office in January 2011 will assume a multi-billion dollar budget deficit (though the exact amount of that deficit is up for debate). A second-term Governor Strickland could have his hands full trying to plug the budget hole and keep the state afloat; he may not be keen on revisiting his school funding model.
And unlike 2009, he won’t be in the position of needing to keep teacher unions and other campaign-contributing education special interests happy. State law would prohibit him from seeking a third-term as governor; and Strickland, who would be 73-years old at the end of his second term and who has already served a long and distinguished career in Congress, isn’t likely to seek another elected office.
The Ohio School Funding Advisory Council’s report will find its place on the bookshelves of politicos and policy makers but in the end may not impact much in the way of Ohio school funding policy.
Ohio has made official its plan to adopt common national academic standards for mathematics and English language arts in an effort to take advantage of opportunities to partner with other states and also better-position Ohio to tap a few hundred million dollars in federal Race to the Top education grants.
The Obama Administration has made it clear that common standards make more sense than 50 individual state standards, and that adopting common standards is a prerequisite for winning a piece of the more than $4 billion in discretionary federal Race to the Top funding. Ohio has been a participant in a 48-state effort to create common standards for mathematics and English language arts. However, Ohio’s intentions for the common standards effort had been unclear (see here and here).
Ohio Department of Education (ODE) officials advised the State Board of Education Monday that Ohio will adopt the Common Core standards in math and English language arts. State law requires the board to adopt new standards for math, English language arts, science, and social studies by June 30, and board member Michael L. Collins, from Westerville, said there should be plenty of time to get the work done.
The Common Core standards in math and English language arts will be released for review in December and should be completed by the end of January. ODE will then take the Common Core standards language in whole and add, as permitted by the Common Core project, additional language to fit Ohio’s unique situations. The proposed Ohio standards will be available for public review before finally going to the board in May for action at its June meeting.
Stan Heffner, ODE associate superintendent for curriculum and assessment, said the math and English language arts standards the department has been developing are closely aligned with the Common Core standards. However, those draft standards will not be released as planned to avoid confusion. There are no Common Core science and social studies standards, so Ohio’s drafts in those subjects will be released this week for public review and will be adopted along with the Common Core standards in June. Since Ohio’s science standards will be finalized by early next year, they could be influential in the preparation of any national science standards.
Heffner said the Common Core math and ELA standards will be bench-marked so the achievement of Ohio students can be compared with those of other states as well as to students internationally. “We can look at the lessons learned and benefit from the collective experience of other states,” he said.
On October 29, the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Frank M. Tait Foundation, and the Fred and Alice Wallace Memorial Charitable Foundation hosted an education forum in Dayton to talk about the state of education in that city as well as Ohio and the nation. Fordham’s Terry Ryan was a participant in the panel discussion “Making a Difference: What’s Been Accomplished and What Needs to be Done,” along with Tom Lasley, University of Dayton; Kurt Stanic, Dayton Public Schools; Margy Stevens, Montgomery County Educational Service Center; and moderator Scott Elliott of the Dayton Daily News. Check out selected segments of that panel on our website here.
Standards-based reform in education is imperfect. The ways that states and districts assess kids, design tests, and attempt to hold teachers and schools accountable are bound to be flawed, lead to unintended consequences, and create many enemies along the way. But I wish the opponents of standards-based reform in Ohio would at least get a little more creative. Read the full post here.
The Columbus Dispatch writes that "the truth about Columbus middle schools is brutal." More than 70 percent of the district’s middle schools are rated "D" or "F" by the state and none of them met federal Adequate Yearly Progress targets. Through perseverance and collaboration two Columbus charter schools are working to change this urban education narrative. Read the full post here.
