Bryan C. Hassel and Daniela DoylePublic Impact In The Tab, ConnCAN (a well-connected Connecticut education advocacy group) and Public Impact (a crackerjack education research organization) make the case for Connecticut’s move to a school funding system that:
Bryan C. Hassel and Daniela Doyle
Public Impact
In The Tab, ConnCAN (a well-connected Connecticut education advocacy group) and Public Impact (a crackerjack education research organization) make the case for Connecticut’s move to a school funding system that:
The Tab builds on the school finance work of organizations like the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and the Fordham Foundation. It actually applies concepts like weighted student funding, empowered school leadership, and performance-based results into a working school reform model for Connecticut. The report goes deep – getting into the thorny issues of setting weights (for things like poverty, limited English proficiency, district size, etc.) and modeling out the costs of the new system over time.
The authors readily admit that their model would create winners and losers. They write, “the reforms have costs: financial, but more significantly political, since some districts and schools will lose money to make real change possible.” With these costs in mind, why do it? Because Connecticut simply can’t continue to afford the social costs of staggering achievement gaps that plague the state despite spending $13,000 per student (fifth highest in America).
Reformers and policy makers in Connecticut are coming to the realization that their state has to get beyond issues of equity and adequacy (which still embroil Ohio) and focus on creating a model of school funding that will “connect money with achievement and inputs with outputs.” This is a very different approach to Ohio’s evidence-based model of school funding and one worth checking out. See here.
Craig D. Jerald
The Center for Public Education
July 2009
Hoping to calmly and critically evaluate the grandiose promises of the 21st century skills movement, this paper systematically looks at three things: how changing world conditions have impacted skills requirements; which kinds of skills, based on this new world order, will be most important going forward; and what districts and schools should do about it. The world has become more automated and globalized, meaning jobs formerly done by humans in a specific location can now be admirably completed by computers half-way around the world. Further, argues Jerald, workplace success in the 21st Century relies on the layered interdependency of “foundational knowledge” (core academic content), “literacies” (ability to apply content), and “competencies” (ability to call on literacies), not on a simplistic skill set learned in the abstract.
Finally, what are the implications of these findings for school districts and schools? Though he spends a mere two pages on this important question, Jerald does hit some key points. There can be no "either or" thinking about the relationship between skills and content knowledge; 21st century skills (or applied literacies and broad competencies, as Jerald calls them) are best taught within traditional disciplines and there is good reason to be skeptical of stand-alone lessons related to these skills; America's expansive curriculum needs to be focused on fewer, deeper concepts; and athletics and extracurricular activities play an important role in developing many of these skills, thus classroom teachers shouldn't be expected to bear responsibility for imparting these all on their own. Longtime skeptics will be heartened and fueled by this refreshing and thoughtful analysis. Read it here.
By J.B. Schramm & E. Kinney Zalesne
December 2009
The Promise of Proficiency, a joint production by the Center for American Progress and College Summit, argues that we need to equip high schools with data regarding their graduates’ college enrollment and proficiency rates. To fill the “P-20” informational gap, and backmap students’ collegiate performance in a way that would improve America’s high schools, the report insists that the federal government should:
Promise’s case for building P-20 longitudinal systems is compelling, as is the call for installing a college-prep culture in America’s neediest high schools. However, it places the onus of responsibility on the shoulders of the federal government without adequately exploring whether states are suited to oversee data-building efforts. Certainly the federal government plays an important funding role (with 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act money, the U.S. Department of Education earmarked $250 million for this very purpose), but individual states are ultimately responsible for laws/regulations governing the use of data, and creating (or preventing) an environment conducive for collecting and applying data meaningfully.
Ohio already has incorporated nine of the 10 elements of the Data Quality Campaign (see Ohio’s DQC profile here), a national group that supports state policymakers in improving the use of high-quality education data. And the Ohio Board of Regents collects a wealth of data on district and school-level outcomes (average ACT scores, graduation rates, percent of students requiring remedial coursework) as well as performance indicators from Buckeye State colleges and universities. To learn why this kind of postsecondary data collection is so essential, read the report here.
Like other states, half of Ohio’s $200 to $400 million in potential Race to the Top (RttT) winnings will be distributed to participating LEAs via the Title I formula. That $100 to $200 million pot may seem like a lot of money at first blush, but in reality it represents no more than about one percent of what the state will spend on education this biennium and roughly $55 to $110 per public school student. If not targeted toward spurring real reform, the risk is great that the money will do little more than provide a small, temporary boost to district bank accounts. Unfortunately, that may be exactly what will happen.
Ohio LEAs have until January 8 to sign on to the state’s RttT application. At this point (and it must be noted that nothing is final and that the state still has a full month to work on its application), because of the political capital spent on his school reform plan in the last state budget, Ohio’s RttT approach revolves around Governor Strickland’s education vision and the changes he signed into law in July. While that bill did contain reform-minded provisions in areas like teacher tenure and preparation, its hallmark was mandating a statewide, prescriptive, one-size-fits-all, inputs-based method for funding education – one that is far removed from student or school-based performance. This is far from the type of reforms we hear Secretary Duncan pushing.
If Ohio’s final plan is built largely on already-mandated reforms and doesn’t require heavy lifting or difficult decisions at the local level, we are likely to see hundreds of districts sign on. Consider that Ohio has more than 1,000 LEAs (ranging from school districts and charter schools to county educational service centers and joint vocational schools). What happens if, say, one-quarter of those entities sign up for Race to the Top? What if half get on board? What if nearly all of them jump at the opportunity? The money will be spread pretty thin and what little opportunity exists for spurring bold reform with the dollars will be greatly diminished.
State education officials are surely feeling pressure from lawmakers who all want to see their constituents win a piece of this pie, no matter how small. And with a cavernous hole in the state’s education budget, spreading the wealth far and wide might seem like a good idea. But spreading the wealth isn’t the purpose of Race to the Top. It is unclear how Ohio can hope to spur districts, especially those with the most troubled schools, to embark on real reform and increase student achievement without a significant incentive, or what impact this peanut-butter approach to disseminating the dollars will have on the state’s odds of winning the award in the first place.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) –also known as the “nation’s report card”—released district-level results last week for 18 urban districts including Cleveland. Districts participating in the voluntary Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) can compare their scores to their home state, the national average, and other urban districts.
Cleveland is among the ten established participants in TUDA (which started in 2003). Unfortunately, 2009 math results reveal that Cleveland, the district with the highest percentage of low-income families (almost 100 percent), is also the only one whose math scores in fourth and eighth grade have not budged, statistically speaking, since 2003 (see charts below). While students in cities like Boston, Atlanta, and Houston have made gains over the last six years, Cleveland’s scores remained stagnant.
Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress
In 2009, only eight percent of fourth graders and eight percent of eighth graders in Cleveland scored proficient or higher in math. This places Cleveland second to last in fourth grade (topping only Detroit) and fourth to last in eighth grade (ahead of Detroit, DC, and Milwaukee). (See a graph comparing the five lowest scoring cities here.)
What does this mean in terms of real-life math skills? When asked to subtract a two-digit number from a three-digit number, less than half of Cleveland fourth graders could do so. When asked to interpret a basic algebraic expression (like 2w-3) just 29 percent of eighth graders were able to.
That Cleveland students are in serious trouble is no surprise. Fordham’s most recent annual achievement analysis found that 71 percent of students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District are enrolled in a school rated “D” or “F” by the state. According to math scores on the Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) in 2009, Cleveland scores across all grades were among the lowest in the “Big 8.” However, our analysis also revealed that according to Ohio’s value-added growth measure, Cleveland students are making more progress than students in several other cities (e.g., Youngstown, Columbus, and Cincinnati). Admittedly, OAT and NAEP scores don’t always align, but if Cleveland makes more gains than other Ohio cities and still lags behind the majority of peer TUDA cities, that doesn’t bode well for how districts like Youngstown or Dayton might perform on the TUDA.
These findings should embolden district CEO Eugene Sanders, who will release his district “transformation plan” next month, to embrace bold school reforms like closing the city’s most broken schools; partnering with the city’s top charter schools and recruiting others (like KIPP) to work with the district; opening up the teacher recruitment pipeline to encourage Teach For America and The New Teacher Project to the city; and reforming the district’s personnel policies to reward performance rather than seniority.
The holiday season is a great time to catch up on these 2009 Fordham-Ohio publications you might have missed during the year:
The first major component of Governor Strickland’s education reform plan, an all-day kindergarten mandate facing Ohio school districts in the 2010-11 school year, is making apparent why the “evidence-based” funding model cannot live up to the lofty expectations the governor and others have set for it.
Putting aside questions about the benefits of across-the-board all-day kindergarten, consider the fiscal realities. Implementing all-day, every day kindergarten is estimated to cost $205 million statewide. (For a breakdown of what it would cost Columbus and Dayton area districts, see here and here.)
Colleen Grady at State of Ohio Education blog parses out the $205 million cost estimate to see if that, as Sen. Gary Cates (R-West Chester) argues, is “probably a conservative figure.” Grady shows how the price for all-day kindergarten actually will end up being much higher due to egregious problems with how the education department calculated the figure (e.g., using a student-teacher ratio much higher than what is now mandated by law, failing to include the price of textbooks and other instructional supplies, and not including the cost of additional non-teaching staff needed to serve the additional students). As if an extra $205 million would not be burdensome enough on taxpayers, it comes at a time when the state is already scrambling to plug an $851 million hole in the budget before December 31 to prevent catastrophic cuts to education that could run as high as 15 percent of total funding.
Lawmakers have proposed that the state delay the all-day kindergarten mandate, giving districts one more year to plan for accommodating additional students and giving the state’s economic situation time to improve. Gov. Strickland opposes the across-the-board delay, suggesting instead that ODE determine on a “district-by-district basis” whether to grant waivers to districts unable to implement all-day kindergarten.
Catherine Candisky at the Columbus Dispatch points out the sheer number of districts that would be affected:
Thus, only 11 percent of districts not already offering all-day kindergarten plan to go forward with the mandate, while 27 percent of surveyed districts – who in turn educate 30 percent of Ohio’s public school students – indicated the need for a waiver. This surely contradicts the governor’s assertion that “a relatively small number of districts are seeking waivers.”
That so few districts are able to comply with the first component of Ohio’s new funding model should raise serious doubt as to whether the governor’s full slate of education reforms is feasible. We’ve been skeptical of the “evidence-based” model since the beginning. Especially in a deep national recession, funding educational inputs with that are not proven to increase student achievement, and doing so with no consideration for district/school performance, is irresponsible to the state’s long term fiscal health (to say nothing of its detrimental impact on students).
But we’re no longer the most outspoken opponents to the new funding system. District and school leaders are coming out en masse against the all-day kindergarten stipulation, not necessarily because they don’t support all-day kindergarten in theory, but because the mandate threatens to tank them financially. Even the State Board of Education and the Buckeye Association of School Administrators have voiced support for delaying the kindergarten mandate.
With even the most ardent supporters of the evidence-based funding model advocating for work-around solutions to stall its implementation, it’s time for Ohio to take a step backward and reconsider the incredible costs it imposes, and whether it’s truly the best funding system for the Buckeye State’s schools and students.
By J.B. Schramm & E. Kinney Zalesne
December 2009
The Promise of Proficiency, a joint production by the Center for American Progress and College Summit, argues that we need to equip high schools with data regarding their graduates’ college enrollment and proficiency rates. To fill the “P-20” informational gap, and backmap students’ collegiate performance in a way that would improve America’s high schools, the report insists that the federal government should:
Promise’s case for building P-20 longitudinal systems is compelling, as is the call for installing a college-prep culture in America’s neediest high schools. However, it places the onus of responsibility on the shoulders of the federal government without adequately exploring whether states are suited to oversee data-building efforts. Certainly the federal government plays an important funding role (with 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act money, the U.S. Department of Education earmarked $250 million for this very purpose), but individual states are ultimately responsible for laws/regulations governing the use of data, and creating (or preventing) an environment conducive for collecting and applying data meaningfully.
Ohio already has incorporated nine of the 10 elements of the Data Quality Campaign (see Ohio’s DQC profile here), a national group that supports state policymakers in improving the use of high-quality education data. And the Ohio Board of Regents collects a wealth of data on district and school-level outcomes (average ACT scores, graduation rates, percent of students requiring remedial coursework) as well as performance indicators from Buckeye State colleges and universities. To learn why this kind of postsecondary data collection is so essential, read the report here.
Craig D. Jerald
The Center for Public Education
July 2009
Hoping to calmly and critically evaluate the grandiose promises of the 21st century skills movement, this paper systematically looks at three things: how changing world conditions have impacted skills requirements; which kinds of skills, based on this new world order, will be most important going forward; and what districts and schools should do about it. The world has become more automated and globalized, meaning jobs formerly done by humans in a specific location can now be admirably completed by computers half-way around the world. Further, argues Jerald, workplace success in the 21st Century relies on the layered interdependency of “foundational knowledge” (core academic content), “literacies” (ability to apply content), and “competencies” (ability to call on literacies), not on a simplistic skill set learned in the abstract.
Finally, what are the implications of these findings for school districts and schools? Though he spends a mere two pages on this important question, Jerald does hit some key points. There can be no "either or" thinking about the relationship between skills and content knowledge; 21st century skills (or applied literacies and broad competencies, as Jerald calls them) are best taught within traditional disciplines and there is good reason to be skeptical of stand-alone lessons related to these skills; America's expansive curriculum needs to be focused on fewer, deeper concepts; and athletics and extracurricular activities play an important role in developing many of these skills, thus classroom teachers shouldn't be expected to bear responsibility for imparting these all on their own. Longtime skeptics will be heartened and fueled by this refreshing and thoughtful analysis. Read it here.
Bryan C. Hassel and Daniela Doyle
Public Impact
In The Tab, ConnCAN (a well-connected Connecticut education advocacy group) and Public Impact (a crackerjack education research organization) make the case for Connecticut’s move to a school funding system that:
The Tab builds on the school finance work of organizations like the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and the Fordham Foundation. It actually applies concepts like weighted student funding, empowered school leadership, and performance-based results into a working school reform model for Connecticut. The report goes deep – getting into the thorny issues of setting weights (for things like poverty, limited English proficiency, district size, etc.) and modeling out the costs of the new system over time.
The authors readily admit that their model would create winners and losers. They write, “the reforms have costs: financial, but more significantly political, since some districts and schools will lose money to make real change possible.” With these costs in mind, why do it? Because Connecticut simply can’t continue to afford the social costs of staggering achievement gaps that plague the state despite spending $13,000 per student (fifth highest in America).
Reformers and policy makers in Connecticut are coming to the realization that their state has to get beyond issues of equity and adequacy (which still embroil Ohio) and focus on creating a model of school funding that will “connect money with achievement and inputs with outputs.” This is a very different approach to Ohio’s evidence-based model of school funding and one worth checking out. See here.
