• Undergraduate college enrollment has dropped 8 percent from 2019, a decline quickened by a growing number of young people entering the workforce. —AP News
• “Academic pressure cannot explain the mental illness epidemic.” —Jean M. Twenge
• The study of English “has lost its allure,” even among students who enjoy reading. —New York Times

In a series of articles, I’ve been looking at various issues in school funding as Ohio lawmakers discuss the state budget. This piece looks at a special component of the funding formula, known as Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA), which current provides districts and charters with $542 million in extra funding based on economically disadvantaged student enrollments.

One of the basic principles of equitable school finance is to fund low-income pupils at higher levels. This type of weighted student funding ensures that more dollars are available to help children who typically need more supports, whether that’s tutoring, summer school, or non-academic services. The extra dollars also support schools that may need to offer higher salaries to attract and retain talented educators who are willing to work in tougher environments. For many years, Ohio has followed this concept and funded economically disadvantaged students (as well as special education and English learners) at higher amounts via the formula.

The rationale for DPIA is sound, but the implementation needs improvement. In a problem that predates Ohio’s new funding model, the state significantly over-identifies economically disadvantaged students, which undermines the intent of the funding stream and soaks up dollars that could otherwise be used to better support students who are actually in need.

Like many other states, Ohio relies on free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) eligibility to identify economically disadvantaged students. Historically, this has served as a decent proxy for income, as students need to come from households at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level to receive subsidized meals. But a 2010 change in federal policy has weakened the connection. Known as the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), certain higher-poverty districts and schools are now allowed to offer subsidized meals to all students, regardless of their household income. This makes sense as a way to address nutritional needs and is a paperwork saver for schools and families. But it has also led schools to report—inaccurately—that all their students are economically disadvantaged.

This wouldn’t be a big issue if CEP applied to a handful of schools here and there. But this year, seventy-two Ohio districts—more than one in ten—reported that 95–100 percent of students were economically disadvantaged (and almost 1,000 individual public schools did so). Figure 1 shows the marked increase in CEP eligible districts over the past decade. Prior to the meals initiative, just one district (Cleveland) reported universal economic disadvantage. But that number has grown significantly since 2012–13.

Figure 1: Number of Ohio districts reporting blanket economically disadvantaged rates

Figure 2 offers a closer look at how CEP inflates the data of three mid-poverty districts. Historically, Logan-Hocking, Hamilton, and Massillon school districts reported between 50 and 70 percent economically disadvantaged rates. But with CEP, those rates spiked to 100 percent in all three districts. Assuming that the 2010 data more accurately reflect the number of disadvantaged students in Ohio’s seventy-two CEP districts, the state over-identifies roughly 60,000 students as “economically disadvantaged.” This is a conservative estimate of the overcount, as individual schools also participate in CEP, even if their overall district does not participate.

Figure 2: Spike in economically disadvantaged rates in three Ohio districts after CEP

Inflated headcounts lead to an inefficient allocation of DPIA funding. To illustrate, let’s return to Hamilton City Schools, a district outside of Cincinnati. Table 1 shows its DPIA funding calculations (under a fully phased-in formula) using its currently inflated economically disadvantaged rate. It also shows a “simulated” DPIA calculation using its pre-CEP rate of 70 percent—almost surely a more accurate number. Note three things: (1) Hamilton’s “economically disadvantaged index”—a key multiplier that drives DPIA funding—doubles when it is allowed to report blanket rates. This, in turn, more than doubles its per-pupil DPIA amount, from $869 to $1,768; (2) Hamilton’s number of economically disadvantaged students swells by more than 2,500 students under CEP; and (3) its total DPIA funding almost triples when it’s allowed to report blanket rates. The district thus enjoys a nearly $10 million windfall because of CEP—an increase that pulls dollars away from districts that need them more.

Table 1: Illustration of inflated DPIA funding for a CEP district

Ohio legislators need to tackle these problems. Two steps would help.

1. Move to direct certification to identify economically disadvantaged students. To address the data quality challenges presented by CEP, states including Massachusetts and Tennessee have transitioned to “direct certification” for identifying economically disadvantaged pupils. This method relies on an administrative process that links students to their families’ participation in means-tested benefits programs. In fact, Ohio already uses this method to identify students (sans income forms) who are eligible for free meals based on participation in SNAP or TANF, as well as a few other identifiers, such as homeless or migrant status. Just last month, Ohio received approval from the feds to also direct certify students based on Medicaid participation, which should further improve the accuracy of the data. Under current law, the Ohio Department of Education has discretion to determine an identification method, but it has yet to make the shift to direct certification. State lawmakers should move the process along by enacting language that requires the department to do so.
   

2. Use the more accurate direct certification numbers as the basis for DPIA funding. Once a move to direct certification has been made, state legislators should use those data to steer DPIA funds to Ohio districts and charter schools. This would more effectively target state funds to the highest-poverty schools, and it would also give legislators the confidence to increase DPIA funding in the long-term knowing that the funds are going to the right places. The transition would also provide the state with an opportunity to overhaul the DPIA formula itself—and it may need to do so anyway to account for the “deflated” (albeit more accurate) headcounts.[1] One possibility is to align DPIA with the weighted student funding model used in the other categorical funding streams. Under this approach, the state would create a weight that yields an incremental amount above the base by which economically disadvantaged students are funded. (For instance, the formula could be: 0.3 x $7,000 = $2,100 per disadvantaged pupil.) As with the other categoricals, the state share could also be applied to account for districts’ local capacity to support low-income students. This structural change would make DPIA more consistent with the rest of the formula, create a more transparent DPIA per-pupil base,[2] and would allow the DPIA funding to automatically rise when legislators increase the formula’s general base per-student amount.

Properly funding low-income pupils’ educations should be a priority for state lawmakers. Such students rely on effective schools and supplemental supports to reach their full potential. But without a reliable methodology for identifying them, Ohio is failing to target DPIA funds to students who need them most. The data quality problem is known. And with widening achievement gaps, the need to effectively target DPIA funds is great. It’s time for Ohio to transition to a more accurate count of low-income students, along with a better method for allocating resources for their education.

1. Let’s revisit a few previous stories to start the day. What was in the new contract agreement that ended the bus driver strike in Morgan Local Schools? Money, and lots of it. A 6 percent raise in year one and 4 percent each in years two and three of the new contract. In addition to yearly step wage increases. I guess everything really is back to normal down there. (Marietta Times, 3/13/23)
   
   

2. Here’s another piece from the embedded reporters at one elementary building in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Just like the piece we looked at Monday, this is focused purely on academics. And it isn’t pretty. It may be OK for kids to struggle at math in fifth grade, as the teacher asserts, but it’s not OK that any of them are still struggling on second grade concepts while in fifth grade. Especially when, as Mr. Whelan tells us, a precipitous drop in math scores from fourth to fifth grade “has happened for years and is not new”. Pandemic disruption is trotted out as a somewhat incongruous explanation, although it would hit a little differently if there was at least admission of the fact that it was CMSD’s decision to stay closed longer than any other district and to limit remote education to ungraded paper packets for most of that time. As to the phenomenon’s incarnation prior to the advent of SARS-CoV-2? That appears to be the tests’ fault. (Cleveland.com, 3/15/23) Of course, not being on grade level in reading is probably also affecting math learning for many of those putative fifth graders, as we noted on Monday’s visit to Cleveland. Mercifully, the retention provision of Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee looks to be returning from its pandemic-era hiatus, the “I guess there’s no way to stop this” nature of this piece notwithstanding. (Spectrum News, 3/13/23)
   
   

3. There was a press conference at the Statehouse yesterday in support of the so-called backpack funding bill. The bill’s sponsors gave their thoughts on how much they think it will cost (considerably less than opponents were predicting in Monday’s clips, especially in year one as you might imagine). Ohio’s own rising star Walter Blanks, Jr., was among the voucher recipients sharing school choice success stories. As a side note: congrats to journalist Megan Henry on her move from the Dispatch and kudos on an excellent first piece for the OCJ. (Ohio Capital Journal, 3/15/23) On a related note, education officials in the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland are focusing on SB 11, a more-traditional effort to boost eligibility for EdChoice Scholarships in the state. They are, as you also might imagine, fully in support of it. (Diocese of Cleveland, 3/13/23) Here’s something new to talk about regarding vouchers in Ohio: An anti-voucher group released a research report that, unsurprisingly, makes private school choice sound really bad. I look forward to some in-depth analysis of the work, but what does it mean when an anti-voucher group finds that Ohio’s programs actually come off looking better than every other state? To wit: As voucher spending increased by a crap ton between 2008 and 2019 (you know what they mean), public school funding also increased during that time. Not by as much, obvs, but more than three percent higher than the mean of 49 other states. Feels important, eh? (K-12 Dive, 3/14/23)
   
   

4. Speaking of new stuff, here’s what’s up in two of Ohio’s largest school districts. Dayton City Schools will be closing its sole girls-only magnet school at the end of this school year and making it a traditional, co-ed, neighborhood-assignment school. Supposedly due to low enrollment. Current students are allowed to reapply to the new school if they want, whether they live in the area or not, but why would they do that when a) it’s going to be exactly the same as the school near their house, and b) transportation will likely be an even worse issue for them than it is now. In fact, I’ll just go out on a limb and suggest that transportation is at least part of the reason for this change and predict that we’ll see other magnet schools in the district making such transitions next year for #reasons. Stay tuned! (Dayton Daily News, 3/14/23) Meanwhile, the interim superintendent of Columbus City Schools addressed a gathering of the local NAACP this week. There’s way too much talk about air conditioning in both the speech and this coverage of it, if I do say so myself. But I would draw your attention to Her Honor’s discussion of the status science of reading in district classrooms. It’s waaaaay down at the bottom of the piece, naturally, and seems to be equated with other “tools” still available to teachers to use as they see fit. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/13/23)
   
   

5. Meanwhile, over in Nero’s palace (a.k.a. the sad subterranean basement meeting room at ODE), our state board of education got a report earlier this week from interim state supe Stephanie Siddens and several of her erudite colleagues on the data they have around the status of the teacher corps in the state. It’s an important issue which deserves serious attention. I’m sure that’s why two of our elected board members pressed the data folks on why there are no boxes for departing teachers to check to indicate “bills coming out of the General Assembly” and “lack of joy” as the reasons they are leaving. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/13/23)
   
   

6. And finally today: Despite copious evidence that the practice is a wash in terms of cost and an across-the-board disaster for academic achievement, the elected school board of North College Hill City Schools voted this week to approve the adoption of a four-day school week districtwide starting next fall. Superintendent Eugene Blalock told the Enquirer that the move wasn’t about saving money (because he knows it won’t) but about “saving teachers”. “We know our teachers are underpaid and undervalued,” he explained. “We’ve assumed for the past 200 or 300 years [!] that this is how education is. The pandemic showed us we can do things differently.” Which is great news for these lucky kiddos, because there will be a regular element of online school in the plan as well. Since the pandemic showed us just how effective remote teaching can be in the hands of those who disdain it. Go Trojans, indeed. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/14/23)

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NOTE: Today, the Ohio House's Finance Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education Committee heard testimony on House Bill 33, legislation establishing the state’s budget for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. What follows is the written proponent testimony submitted by Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy.

Right now is a pivotal time for K–12 education in Ohio. The pandemic has knocked students off-track and widened longstanding achievement gaps across the state. The most recent data indicates that one in every four students scored at “limited”—the state’s lowest achievement level—on their state exams in spring 2022. The numbers rise to 37 percent for economically disadvantaged students and 56 percent for students with disabilities. While graduation rates remain high, too many students exit high school without the real preparation they need for college and career. Less than 10 percent of students earn meaningful industry credentials before graduation, and only one in five meet college-ready benchmarks on their ACT exams.

With these challenges in mind, we are excited about Governor DeWine’s strong focus on K–12 education in his budget. As the governor noted in his state of the state, there is a moral imperative to ensure that every Ohio student receives an education that unlocks their full potential. We are equally pleased by the specific policies he put forward that would move Ohio towards achieving this goal. In my comments, I’ll highlight several of the governor’s proposals that Fordham strongly supports, as well as offer some ideas that would further strengthen this legislation.

• Early literacy: We strongly commend the governor’s efforts to improve literacy through an emphasis on effective instructional practices and curricula. The research is clear: Instruction that is anchored in phonics, background knowledge, and vocabulary is absolutely critical for fluent reading.[1] We support requirements that schools adopt high-quality curricula and instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, as well as budget allocations that would ensure schools have the resources needed to rigorously implement effective practices.

• Career-and-technical education: We applaud the governor for his strong investments in high-quality career-technical education (CTE), a pathway that can open doors to rewarding careers for many Ohio students. We’re especially pleased to see continuing support for an incentive program that provides schools with an extra $1,250 when students earn an in-demand industry credential, as well as an extra $1,000 per pupil when students complete 250 hours in a work-based learning program.

• High quality community school funding: Turning to matters of school choice, we strongly support the increase in the high-quality community school funding proposed by the governor. For far too long, community schools (a.k.a. charter schools) have been asked to serve students with less overall funding than local districts. The high-quality fund helps bridge that gap for about a third of Ohio’s community schools. The governor’s proposal would increase the amounts qualifying schools receive from $1,750 per economically disadvantaged pupil to $3,000 (and from $1,000 to $2,250 per non-disadvantaged student). This would boost the funding received by high-quality community schools to 85 percent of their local district funding—up from 73 percent currently. The extra aid will help quality schools retain great teachers, provide more supports and enrichment for their students, and allow schools to reach a larger number of students.

• Community school facilities. Ohio’s community schools receive little support for facilities. They are not eligible for the state’s main school construction grant program and cannot access local tax sources to pay for facilities. To help cover these costs, Ohio currently provides community schools with a facility allowance of $500 per pupil. The governor proposes a much-needed increase to $1,000 per pupil, an amount that would track closer to districts’ spending on capital outlay.

• EdChoice scholarships. We applaud the governor’s proposal to empower more Ohio families with private school choice through expanded eligibility for income-based scholarships. Even with the recent expansions to EdChoice, many middle-income families still remain ineligible for the financial assistance. A family where mom works as a police officer and dad as a teacher is likely over the current income threshold of $75,000 for a family of four. Raising the income threshold to 400 percent of federal poverty would ensure that working class families are not squeezed out and have access to the program. Of note, we also support ongoing efforts to go further and make scholarship eligibility universal and open to all Ohio families.

Going beyond the governor’s proposals, we wish to offer two additional ideas that would also strengthen choice in Ohio.

• Make the high-quality community school fund part of the funding formula. As in prior years, the budget bill funds this program via line-item appropriation with temporary language. We encourage the legislature to move this program into the community school funding formula in Revised Code. This would put these funds on an equal footing with other formula components and would help avoid reductions to the per-pupil funding amounts that have occurred in recent years due to the fixed appropriation.

• Create a community and STEM school equity supplement. As noted above, Ohio has long shortchanged public community schools, historically funding them at about 70 cents on the dollar compared to local districts. But other states, such as Massachusetts and Texas, fund charters more equitably at roughly 85-95 percent of district funding.[2] While the high-quality supplement helps bridge the gap, it still leaves sizable differences in funding for community school students—most of whom are low-income or students of color. To fund their education fairly, we recommend the creation of an equity supplement that would provide all brick-and-mortar community schools and the state’s seven independent STEM schools with an extra $1,000 to $1,500 per pupil. At the higher amount, this would bring the average charters’ funding—when combined the quality funding initiative—to 92 percent of districts. The figure below shows how an equity supplement, paired with the high-quality dollars, would help to bring community school funding to near parity with districts.

Figure 1: Impact of a community school equity supplement[3]

School funding formula

Turning last to the school funding formula. As we all know, the formula is an incredibly complex mechanism. That was true with the formulas used by Ohio in the past, and it’s still the case with the new model implemented by the last General Assembly.

We strongly believe that Ohio needs a well-designed and properly functioning formula, one that drives dollars to the neediest schools—those with the least capacity to raise funds locally—including via the state-required 2 percent, or 20 mill, property tax—along with schools that serve more students who have special-needs or are economically-disadvantaged. The dollars provided by the state are critical to ensuring that all students have the resources needed to achieve at high levels.

It’s no secret that Ohio has struggled to create a workable, sustainable formula. While the new formula was supposed to address the problems that plagued prior iterations, we believe the new system, which Governor DeWine has proposed to continue phasing-in, also has challenges of its own. There isn’t time to cover all the issues, but we wish to point out just a few areas of concern.

Base cost model: One of the new formula’s most distinctive elements—and the source of its well-known expense—is a base-cost model that helps to determine the core state funding of each district. The model relies on various inputs—employee salaries, staffing ratios, and other data points—in an effort to calculate the cost it takes to educate a typical student. This model, which is more art than science, yields a somewhat different base amount for each district.

One challenge with the model is that it currently uses FY 2018 salary data. Even with those old numbers, the formula still cost enough that the legislature opted to phase-in additional state dollars, which is effectively a statewide cap on funding. What happens if the salary data are updated to more current numbers? How much will that add to the formula’s price tag? What impact have the federal Covid-relief dollars had on salaries? If they increased as a result, will the state be responsible for increased outlays because of inflationary federal spending?

Another issue is the base cost model’s staffing minimums that “guarantee” low-enrollment districts—though not charter schools—funding for a certain number of staffing positions. These minimums deviate from the formula calculations, in effect providing about one-sixth of Ohio districts with a hidden special subsidy. In a few cases, these minimums cause their base amounts to soar over $10,000 per pupil (versus a statewide average of about $7,300). This guarantee also discourages efficiencies, such as shared services between smaller districts or using educational service centers for extra support.

We suggest shifting to a flat base amount for all districts and charters that is simpler, more predictable, and doesn’t build-in guarantees or inflationary adjustments that are not driven by the state legislature. This would acknowledge the work of the prior General Assembly and many workgroups involved in the Cupp-Patterson effort to figure out a base cost. It would also open the door for full funding of the model right now. Importantly, future lawmakers could easily adjust the base for inflation, rather than face the uncertainty about the fiscal impact of fully updating all the many “inputs” inside the base-cost model.

Disadvantaged pupil impact aid (DPIA): Ohio has long included a funding component that directs additional dollars to districts and charter schools that serve more economically disadvantaged students. The rationale is sound—low-income students typically require more supports—but the current implementation is faulty due to Ohio’s longstanding method for identifying such students, which is through free and reduced priced lunch eligibility (FRPL). Starting in 2010, certain districts and schools are now allowed under federal law to offer subsidized meals to all students, regardless of their family incomes. For the purpose of providing lunches, that’s just fine. But, as a result, a sizeable number of districts now overstate the number of economically disadvantaged students. Last year, 72 districts reported that 95 to 100 percent of their students were economically disadvantaged. Ten years ago, just one district reported rates that high. This overidentification causes an inefficient allocation of DPIA funding and reduces the dollars available for schools that actually serve more low-income students.

To address this issue, Ohio should replace FRPL eligibility as the marker for low-income status with “direct certification” counts. Under this method, low-income students are identified through their families’ participation in means-tested programs, such as SNAP, TANF, or Medicaid. Using these counts would yield more accurate data on the number of low-income students; in turn, the state would better target DPIA to the schools that need the extra dollars most. This could also free up dollars to allow an increase in DPIA’s base per-pupil amount, which would further enhance the funding directed to the highest-poverty schools in Ohio.

***

In conclusion, Ohio has a lot of work ahead to ensure that all students thrive academically and reach their full potential. The need for quality educational opportunities is even more urgent in the wake of the pandemic. We thank Governor DeWine for his focus on education and an excellent budget proposal that puts Ohio parents and students first. As the bill moves forward, we ask lawmakers to embrace his proposals and consider ideas that would further strengthen education for Ohio’s 1.8 million students.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

As new kids on the school choice block, education savings accounts and pod schooling are grabbing the headlines these days. But an old stalwart—interdistrict open enrollment—is also worthy of attention. These policies have been around for decades in many states, generally yield the largest choice programs wherever they are established, and typically draw less opposition than their charter and private school choice peers. A new report from Reason Foundation examined Wisconsin’s program as an exemplar and deems it a model that other states should consider emulating.

At its most basic, interdistrict open enrollment allows families living within the boundaries of one public school district to send their children to schools located in another district. Rules regarding district participation, transportation, and funding vary from state to state.

In Wisconsin, open enrollment began as a bipartisan effort in 1998. Each school year, districts are required to identify the number of seats they will make available for open-enrollment students based on data such as student-teacher ratios and building capacities. The number of openings by school building and grade level must be publicized so that families have a list of what is available and where. Students may apply for a seat in up to three different districts. Districts can evaluate applicants based on their discipline history and truancy, as well as whether they believe they can meet the needs of the students. Random lotteries result if demand exceeds capacity. The primary application window runs from February to April of the previous school year. There is also an alternative application window in late summer specifically for students who have been the victims of violent crime, have experienced bullying, or moved to Wisconsin from another state after the primary deadline.

On the funding side, money is transferred from the district of residence to the receiving district. The dollar amount, which is state funding only, has increased every year but has always been less than the average per pupil funding amount (state and local funding combined) in the state. Receiving districts must accept this amount—$8,125 per pupil in 2020–21—as full funding, and no additional tuition can be charged to parents. Home districts keep an average of $5,624 in funding per departed student (again, state and local combined), and even the lowest-funded (a.k.a. wealthiest) districts retain more than $1,800 per student with no further requirement to provide services for them. In 2016, far larger amounts were approved for students with individualized educational program (IEPs), amounting to several thousand dollars per student above the normal transfer amount, reflecting the additional services needed. Receiving districts can also apply to the state for further reimbursement after an IEP student’s first school year if the actual cost of serving them exceeds the regular amount—up to $30,000 per student. Finally, low-income families are eligible for transportation reimbursement from the state based on a per-mile amount between home and school. However, all families opting for open enrollment must provide the transportation themselves, and needy families must accrue a year’s worth of costs up front before they can even request reimbursement. The reimbursement fund is limited and thus generally does not fully pay for eligible miles.

In analyzing participation data, the report provides four key findings. First, increasing the window for program entry increases participation. Open enrollment jumped nearly 20 percent in the first year that Wisconsin opened the second window, despite limitations on who could apply at that time. Second, families are motivated by academic performance. Districts with better outcomes on state tests tend to gain more students via open enrollment, while districts that perform poorly tend to lose more students. Third, districts that lose more students than they gain through open enrollment in a given year initially improve their performance on state tests, although these effects dissipate after three years. Fourth, increases in the transfer funding amount are correlated with greater district participation. As the amount of funding transferred to the receiving district has increased over time, districts have taken in more students through the program.

These findings are correlational, not causal, but that doesn’t stop the authors from being very jazzed about them. Their recommendations: more money and more transparency to boost all the benefits observed, and other states should follow Wisconsin’s model.

Certainly there are some positives in Wisconsin that are worth emulating elsewhere. Requiring districts to quantify and advertise openings and centralizing parental applications are huge improvements on other states’ optional participation and district-by-district, family-by-family processes. Making sure that home districts keep some funds does work to stifle predictable dissent from net losing systems, but obviously there is a limit to this as the amount following students grows. There is also some evidence that non-academic factors such as racial composition of schools and size of the student body play a factor in incentivizing moves. And finally: However much a program like this brings more resources into districts having more open seats, a skeptic might suggest that student-teacher ratios and building capacities don’t magically change as a result. Surely there is a simpler way for the state to buy (or create) more open seats in more good schools.

Nevertheless, we return where we began, noting the durability and popularity of interdistrict open enrollment. Nearly twenty-five years ago, Wisconsin’s program began with a mere 2,500 participants. Despite limitations, it continues to grow. In the 2020–21 school year, Reason reports that nearly 8.5 percent of all public school students in the state—more than 70,000 kids—opted for a district school other than the one in which they resided. That is really the key takeaway.

SOURCE: Will Flanders, “K–12 Open Enrollment in Wisconsin: Key Lessons for Other States,” Reason Foundation (February 2023).

In 2010, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce published a report warning that a majority of the nation’s jobs would soon require at least some post-secondary education. In Ohio, the prediction was 57 percent. Six years later, a Lumina Foundation study found that only 43 percent of working-age Ohioans had a post-secondary degree or certificate. Together, these reports pointed to a looming crisis: Unless Ohio ramped up its efforts to offer high-quality training and improve career pathways, businesses would struggle to fill job openings and the state would face cascading economic effects.

To their credit, state policymakers have implemented a plethora of policies aimed at improving the state’s career pathways. But despite these efforts, Ohio’s talent pipeline has only marginally improved. Employers struggle to find employees with the right skills, workers lack access to the training they need to fill open positions, and although high schoolers are eager to explore in-demand job pathways, they largely lack the opportunities to do so. The pandemic exacerbated these issues, but even before Covid, Ohio’s rate of educational attainment was too low to meet employer needs.

What to do? ExcelinEd and Ohio Excels have some ideas, and they offered them in a recently published brief that outlines four recommendations aimed at improving learner outcomes, addressing workforce needs, and increasing economic mobility. The recommendations build on each other, so let’s examine them as steps Ohio should take to build on its previous efforts.

Step one: Evaluate the return on investment of career pathway programs

Ohio has improved its overall data transparency in the last few years. But in education—especially in the education-to-workforce realm—there’s still a ton of inaccessible information. For example, Ohio doesn’t currently link K–12, post-secondary, and workforce outcomes. Without these data, it’s impossible for state and local leaders to determine whether career pathways successfully put learners on track to well-paying jobs in in-demand industries.

To fix this, the brief recommends that Ohio conduct a biennial return on investment (ROI) analysis that would assess both the quality and equity of career pathways. This analysis would allow the state to determine whether pathways are aligned with employer demand; evaluate student participation and outcomes for each program; and determine whether current offerings deliver on federal, state, and local investment. In short, the ROI analysis would become the “north star” by which programs and pathways are evaluated.

Step two: Identify, increase access to, and promote high-quality career and technical education pathways

Right now, Ohio doesn’t have an effective system for identifying which career pathway programs are high quality and offer the most value to students. The state’s quality program review does include a post-program placement indicator and requires the collection and analysis of labor market data, but overall reviews largely focus on outputs—like credential attainment—rather than outcomes, like wages and whether learners are working part or full time.

Once Ohio starts conducting an ROI analysis, though, that will change. The outcomes data provided by the analyses will equip state leaders to identify which programs and pathways are effective and most closely aligned to current workforce needs. From there, leaders can make data-driven decisions about how to boost program quality, where to invest more (or less) funding, and which pathways should be expanded or scaled back. It also opens the door for the state—or an outside entity hired by the state—to closely examine the most effective programs and identify best practices that can be implemented elsewhere.

Step three: Revise career pathway funding to focus on high-value programs and reward student success

If Ohio sets the policy stage by establishing biennial ROI analyses and using the results to identify high-quality pathways, the next step is to strategically dedicate funding to the programs and pathways that offer students (and by extension, the state) the most value. One way to do so is to modify the funding formula to include a student outcomes incentive that rewards high-quality programs and the attainment of valuable credentials.

Another way is to differentiate funding based on programs that are linked to higher-skill, in-demand, and middle- or high-wage occupations. State law tiers career and technical education funding according to specific industries, with priority industries that have the most pressing workforce needs receiving more funding. Although that’s a step in the right direction, the brief argues that it’s better to fund programs based on their links to occupations rather than general industries.

An example offered earlier in the brief illustrates why. According to Ohio’s Top Jobs List, the state has a significant need for home health aides, licensed practical nurses, and registered nurses. All three occupations are part of the health industry, which is considered a priority under the funding rules. But home health aides earn a median salary of only $23,000—the equivalent of approximately $11 per hour—compared to the $46,000 earned by practical nurses and the $68,000 by registered nurses. Thus, although these occupations might be in the same industry, they don’t offer the same value to learners.

Step 4: Strengthen industry credential lists to prioritize high-value credentials

Industry-recognized credentials have the potential to be mutually beneficial to both learners and employers. But a recent study found significant misalignment between the credentials employers demand and those that are promoted by the state. To ensure that credentials live up to their potential—and to build on the improvements that the previous three steps will generate—the brief recommends that state leaders strengthen Ohio’s credential landscape by ensuring that promoted credentials are valuable to employers and students. It also recommends linking promoted credentials to “intentional” pathways into college and career and focusing on outcomes via post-secondary, wage, and employment data.

***

Ohio has improved its career pathways by leaps and bounds over the last decade. But there’s still plenty of work to be done and no time to waste. The four steps outlined above could have an immediate impact, especially if the first is incorporated into state law via the current budget cycle. Here’s hoping state lawmakers feel the same.

1. Last week it was Chad on the spot, but the torch is being passed, so it’s today it’s Aaron’s turn to discuss the putative cost of a universal backpack funding bill in this DDN piece. As you might expect of a data guy, he’s pragmatic on the details despite the rather amped up rhetoric from the other contributors around him. (Dayton Daily News, 3/13/23)
   
   

2. It feels like the only reason that this piece—which is another assembly of the evidence in favor of the science of reading (woot woot—say it loud!)—is listed as an opinion piece is because the author is a member of the Editorial Board of the Rep. There doesn’t seem to be anything opinion-y about it to me. Just the facts, ma’am. Although, given the wishy-washy PD editorial board piece on the topic from last weekend, perhaps there may be another reason this ended up on the opinion page. (Canton Repository, 3/12/23) Relatedly, here’s an inside look at the struggles of fifth grade students in reading and math at one Cleveland Metropolitan School District building. While I assume the teachers here are discussing their most-challenged students, a) those challenges seem pretty overwhelming at this point, b) there are likely other students with similar severe-but-not-the-very-severest challenges who were not part of the story, c) it feels like some evidence of improvement should have registered by now, even for the most-behind kids, despite the very important point that CMSD students “spent more time learning remotely than in most Ohio school districts”, and d) the teachers quoted here don’t seem all that confident in their abilities to effect any further boost for anyone. Although they at least sound like they’re going to try. (Cleveland.com, 3/13/23)
   
   

3. Catholic education in Ohio has traditionally been divided into K-8 and 9-12 buildings with little to no variation. (And when those guys say “tradition”, they usually mean 150 years of it). St. Peter’s in Mansfield is, amazingly, changing things up to create a true middle school consisting of grades 6, 7, and 8. Students will move to their own floor of the high school building and will follow a restructured curriculum including early prep for high school honors courses as well as a full suite of “life skills” courses to help focus on “whole child development”. Sounds great to me. There’s no discussion, though, of how school families are receiving news of the change. Sure hope no one decides to sic the health department on ‘em in a fit of...whatever. (Mansfield News-Journal, 3/10/23)
   
   

4. There are no details here as to what was in the agreement—and indeed the piece was posted before the deal was even ratified—but it seems that a contract agreement was reached in the Morgan Local Schools bus driver strike late on Friday. If everything went OK over the weekend, transportation should have resumed as normal this morning. (10TV News, Columbus, 3/10/23)

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In case you missed it, Charter News co-author Chad Aldis is leaving Ohio and returning to his native Iowa for a big important job. This is his last edition of the news, but our weekly roundups will continue with Jeff Murray as solo author. Thanks, as always, for reading and subscribing

Tug-of-War

There was a serious escalation of rhetoric around student transportation this week in Dayton. School district leaders held a press conference to denounce the Regional Transit Authority’s plan to stop allowing students on their buses next school year. RTA officials responded by reminding them that student transportation is the district’s responsibility and that they should look to fully embrace it. There’s no sign of a solution in the works, but it will likely be students utilizing charter, private, and STEM school options who will continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing dysfunction.

A glimmer of hope in Nevada?

In response to similar transportation struggles in the past, a number of charter schools in Nevada long-ago opted to take the plunge and provide their own busing services to students. Nevada Prep, in the Las Vegas area, is the largest such school in the state. More are joining them every year, supported by a small amount of state funding per pupil served. Now, Nevada’s Commission on School Funding is recommending boosting that amount—to the same level as districts receive—in order to help more charters take on student transportation themselves. Nice!

Closure announced

Citizens of the World Charter School in Cincinnati announced this week that it would close permanently at the end of the school year. There is a lot of relevant discussion in this piece about the challenges of starting up a school in the midst of a global pandemic and at the same time as a number of other schools were coming online. A sad end for a promising school model.

Wellness matters

Governor Mike DeWine has repeatedly cited Ohio’s moral imperative to support children and youth in both district and charter schools. His latest efforts to direct state funds toward students’ mental and physical health—and to make sure that schools and providers are spending that money appropriately—are proof of his ongoing response to that imperative. Fordham’s Jessica Poiner digs in to the new proposals in this recent analysis.

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1. In case you missed it, Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy (a.k.a, my boss) is leaving the organization and heading back to his home state to lead the Iowa Department of Education as Director. Gongwer’s brief note on the departure calls Chad Aldis a “Statehouse fixture”. Personally, I will always remember him as… Wait. He’s still reviewing these clips, isn’t he? Hey, y’all. Check back with me on Monday and I’ll finish that thought. Cool? (Gongwer Ohio, 3/9/23)
   
   

2. The joke around the office is that, once Chad’s watchful editorial eye is gone, your humble clips compiler will only cover stories involving school transportation, “Weed Guy” in Toledo, and Ohio’s independent STEM schools. Seems far-fetched to me. Moving on: Here’s a great story about Black mathematicians from Ohio State University working with high school students to show the younger generation how to follow in their footsteps, and indeed the footsteps of those who came before our current generation as well. It’s awesome. I don’t know about Berwick Alternative K-8 School, but at Metro Early College High School (the independent STEM school here in Columbus which you all know I love beyond measure and whose students are among those featured here), math is everywhere, a majority of students are Black, and true subject mastery is the name of the game. Awesome! Go Metrobots!! (Columbus Dispatch, 3/10/23)
   
   

3. Turning to Toledo for a moment, former home of Snoop-Pete Kadens (what?), we talked on Wednesday about Toledo City Schools’ very nebulous-sounding plans to develop and launch some alternative programs after, it seems, a very uncertain—but certain to be pretty long—timeline. “The timeline is what it is supposed to be,” said one elected school board member, either philosophically or poetically (who can tell), “based on whatever due diligence is required to make sure we get it right.” Here’s a follow up story wherein the superintendent explains that negotiations for the district to give millions of dollars to the University of Toledo for some underused buildings and land are taking up part of that uncertain timeline. And despite his protestation that “it could be a week, it could be a day, and it could be a month” before things are finalized, I reckon they’ll get there in the end. If there’s one thing Ohio’s school districts know how to “get right”, it’s spending lots and lots of money on stuff. Even if it takes forever. (Toledo Blade, 3/8/23)
   
   

4. As you all have heard me say millions of times, Metro Early College High School and the other independent STEM schools modeled from it (ohhh… now maybe I’m starting to hear it) utilize real and proper mastery grading. That is: 90 percent or better on every assignment, every test, every class, or you redo it. It’s the right thing: Codified and unwavering high expectations for every kid with needed supports (and acceleration) built in for what’s next. And because this is so simple and perfect and right on the money (if I do say so myself), it burns me up every time I read about the so-called “mastery transcript” scam being perpetuated among pseudo-scientific do-gooders in education across the country. Thus, I was initially cranky when this new update on that patently dumbed down bait-and-switch popped up in my Inbox. But wait! Even though I may be reading more into it than is there, I see quite a bit of evidence that a number of district officials who signed on to the false promise of this sham bill of goods are now balking at it since it’s execution time. That is, allowing their seniors to apply to colleges with only this flimsy piece of paper to show what they know and can do as a result of their 12 years of formal education. “(They’re) saying, ‘I don’t know that we’re ready for that kind of change. I don’t know if it’s worth it,” the piece documents. “‘Why don’t we just sort of play by the rules, because that’s what we need to do to get kids into Stanford?’.” Or, you know, how about you actually teach them what they need to know to be competitive at Stanford and elsewhere? Good riddance to bad rubbish. (The 74, 3/9/23)
   
   

5. I’m torn on my reaction to this story. At base, it seems that the parents whose students attend St. Mary Catholic School in Delaware are unhappy about some educational changes underway there. And as uncomfortable as the interactions sound, this is indeed how school choice is supposed to work—up to and including the administration putting its foot down and the parents withdrawing their kids in protest and sending their tuition (and voucher?) money elsewhere. Of course, the admins could also change their plans—that also is a possible outcome resulting from parental feedback. However, parents here are calling in the county health department because, they say, they are “concerned” over some cases of pink eye in their school. Which, to me, feels like a step beyond expressing disagreement on curriculum. If you ask me (though seriously, why would you at this point?), participants on the parent side would do well to remember that there’s another possible outcome here that they might not have considered and may not prefer to have happen. But it, also, is part of how school choice works. (WSYX-TV, Columbus, 3/8/23)
   
   

6. How was the first week without cellphones in class at Ellet High School in Akron? Depends who you ask, but the lengthy discussion of 21st Century kids being taught by their teachers how to play paper football like it’s 1954 probably tells you a lot. Oh, and we learn for the first time that iPads aren’t banned. If I had to guess, that’s probably because no one realized that they wouldn’t fit in the pricey little electronic envelopes the district rented to stash phones for the day, but still. Kinda silly, right? If this piece is any indication, the kids with money will all have iPads in class by Monday and the kids without, well, they’ll always have 20-cent fidget poppers and toys made of ABJ scraps and masking tape. (Akron Beacon Journal, 3/10/23)

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This essay is adapted from a collection titled Unlocking the Future: Next Steps for K–12 Education, that was published by Opportunity America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was visiting U.S. troops headed to Iraq in 2004, a soldier asked why his unit had to scrounge scrap metal in trash heaps to weld onto old Humvees to strengthen them against attacks. Rumsfeld memorably responded, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Many thought he was being dismissive, to which he later responded in his memoir, “My response told a simple truth about warfare: As a conflict evolves, both sides adapt to the reality of the battlefield.”

Teaching isn’t combat, though education is often discussed using martial metaphors. Teachers are often said to be on the front lines or in the trenches. But there’s a lesson in Rumsfeld’s “simple truth” that can and should be applied to education: You go to school with the teachers you have, not the teachers you might wish you had. Education policymakers and administrators, however, have long been stubbornly reluctant to adapt their battle plans to the simple truths of classroom life, student readiness, and the changing labor market.

Decades of education policy have evinced unshakable faith that the way to raise student outcomes is to improve teacher quality, whether through training and certification, unlocking excellence through incentives, or by luring away the cognitive elite from more remunerative careers through some combination of higher pay or enhanced prestige. None of these strategies has been fruitful at scale, nor are they likely to be effective in the future. The inconvenient fact is that the nation needs nearly 4 million people to teach its children. Any number that large means the men and women who staff our schools and teach our children will be, by definition, ordinary people. There will never be a sufficient number of classroom saints and superstars to go around, nor enough hours in the day to meet the ever-spiraling demands we place on teachers to fulfill multiple roles, from instructional designer and deliverer to unlicensed therapist attempting to reach and teach the “whole child.”

In sum, there is a conceptual problem at the heart of our decades-long effort to improve teacher performance. We are seeking to raise and enhance the capacities of millions of teachers while, at the same time, placing ever greater burdens on them. We have known for several decades that some teachers are more effective than others. But identifying what makes them so has proven elusive. No consistent or clear relationship has been found, for example, between teacher credentialing or certification exams and classroom effectiveness. If achievable, sustainable progress is our aim, we should endeavor instead to make the job one that can be done with a reasonable degree of fidelity and success by the teachers we have, not the teachers we wish we had.

One concrete improvement to teacher effectiveness would be to reduce the burden placed on them by lesson planning, which tends to be incoherent, below standards, and incredibly time consuming, taking time away from potentially higher-yielding uses of their time and energy. Time spent creating lessons from scratch or culling them from disparate websites is time not spent analyzing student work, offering feedback, building subject matter expertise, cultivating strong relationships with parents, and other higher yield activities. While many educators argue, often strenuously, that their autonomy is sacrosanct, and for allowing teachers to build a curriculum around their students’ interests or customize their lessons to maximize their engagement, an even stronger argument can be made that the mere existence of an established curriculum allows the teacher to build expertise herself, leading to richer conversation and thoughtful questions, with deeper student thinking as a direct result.

In his 2016 book Leadership for Teacher Learning, Dylan Wiliam observes that when teachers are asked to identify something that they will stop doing or do less of to create time and space for them to explore improvements to their teaching, they fail miserably. “They go through the list of their current tasks and duties and conclude that there is nothing they can stop doing or do less of because everything that they are doing contributes to student learning,” he writes. “In my experience, it is hardly ever the case that teachers are doing things that are unproductive. This is why leadership in education is so challenging. The essence of effective leadership is stopping people from doing good things to give them time to do even better things.”

Wiliam’s insight deserves careful reflection among education leaders and policymakers alike. It is beyond the scope of this brief article to describe all the ways in which we have made teachers’ jobs unmanageable for “the army we have.” What is needed is a new approach to a persistent problem: Let’s not ask what more teachers can do. Ask instead what are the things that only a teacher can do. Everything else should be a job for someone else.