1. We start our state government tour with the Controlling Board, the members of which voted earlier this week to approve an additional $1.2 million to [checks notes] help schools across the state battle chronic absenteeism. Specifically, the move would use some of the federal Covid-relief funding still sloshing around state coffers to expand an existing contract with a for-profit company called Graduation Alliance. GA has been working with Ohio school districts since the start of pandemic-related school disruptions, focusing a lot on credit recovery as well as the absenteeism stuff. If you’d like to see their rah-rah case study of work in Dayton City Schools in 2020, you can check it out here. Color me underwhelmed. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/27/23)
   
   

2. This is more like it: “I am the person who sat there at first with her arms crossed and went, ‘you're crazy’. I believed in the three-cueing system.” This quote comes from an elementary reading teacher here in Ohio who is giddy that this failed system will be hitting the scrap heap in Ohio soon. Well, it will be if Governor DeWine’s plan to ban it and other curricula not aligned to the science of reading goes through. Our teacher tells the Dispatch that once she saw the light, she began thinking about former students that she could never reach because of the flawed curriculum she had been so passionate about. “I share that story with teachers,” she concludes. “I say, ‘I did what I thought was best at the time, but now I know better’.” Amen. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/28/23)
   
   

3. In the state Senate yesterday, the Education Committee voted to send SB 1 to the Senate floor. That’s the bill which would, among other things, make significant changes in K-12 governance in Ohio. A few straggling grouchers got to put in their tuppence as well, although it sounded a lot like everyone else’s previous beefs. Meanwhile, the lower chamber’s companion bill, HB 12, saw a few amendments in committee yesterday. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/28/23)
   
   

4. Also on the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee docket yesterday: HB 11. That’s the bill which would, among other things, provide state education funding directly to families in the form of an Education Savings Account. It was a first hearing, so only testimony from the bill’s sponsor. The fireworks, if there are any (!), will commence later. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/28/23)

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California is among a handful of states that require the least amount of high school math to earn a diploma—just two courses. That means most students can complete their full complement of high school math education, even the “enhanced” requirements for admission to California State University and University of California campuses, well before their senior year. But is there a benefit to continued coursework beyond a state’s or an individual school’s minimum prescribed course load? A new study digs into the data to investigate the impacts of taking an additional year of math in high school on college enrollment and persistence.

A research team led by Leonard Wainstein of Reed College used longitudinal administrative and survey data from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Their analysis focused on two cohorts of students who were first-time eleventh graders in either 2015–16 or 2016–17 and who remained in the district through the following year. It included over 45,300 students in district high schools and district-affiliated charter schools.

The comparison looked at a group of seniors who took no math at all and three groups who took another a full year of math. While all the senior math non-takers had already completed their high school requirements in that subject, as well as any college preparatory requirements relevant to them, the math-takers fell into six initial groups. They included two groups that needed to take math in twelfth grade to graduate, one group that needed to boost their math grade to meet college admissions requirements, and three groups who opted for additional math courses beyond the requirements. For ease of comparison, Wainstein and his team excluded the two groups finishing high school requirements and the highest-flying optional group—those who took two additional courses above requirements during senior year.

Wainstein found that senior math-takers, overall, enrolled in college at higher rates than otherwise-similar peers who did not take any math in twelfth grade. The effect ranged from a 3.2 percent to a 6.4 percent boost. These positive effects occurred even though math-takers experienced a slight “hit” to their overall GPA—from 3 to 6 hundredths of a point—which their peers did not. Additionally, enrollment in four-year colleges was as much as 5.8 percent higher for math-takers than math non-takers. The strongest effects were seen among those students taking additional math courses above the California college admissions requirements. The researchers also found a 4.5 to 5.8 percent increase in college persistence—returning for a second year of four-year college—for students who took math in their senior year, compared with those who skipped it. Wainstein’s team found similar positive impacts from traditional courses taken in senior year—such as precalculus and algebra 2—and from so-called “alternative” offerings such as Transition to College Mathematics and Statistics or Introduction to Data Science. It seems that the mechanism at work is, especially for college-bound seniors, “keeping one’s hand in” the math game.

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho recently announced that he plans to act on the findings in this report, to “explode the information” and make sure principals, teachers, guidance counselors, and parents know of the benefits of taking math in senior year, even for those who have already met state and university requirements. Diversifying the courses offered and increasing access to those options district-wide are also on his to do list. All of this will hopefully combine to help incent more students who will benefit from keeping their skills sharp to take more math in the future even while the state’s requirements remain at rock bottom.

SOURCE: Leonard Wainstein et. al., “Twelfth Grade Math and College Access,” UCLA Los Angeles Education Research Institute (January 2023).

1. This national story is about how ability grouping in classrooms works, including findings from a number of studies into its effectiveness. However, the real-world context in which the clinical discussion is framed is one fifth-grade classroom in Trotwood-Madison City Schools outside Dayton. What sounds like a recipe for disaster when you discuss it up in the researchosphere simply is a disaster when it plays out on the ground, with exactly the winners and losers you would expect. (Real Clear Investigations, 2/23/23)
   
   

2. Meanwhile, officials and elected board members of Toledo City Schools continue to waffle about implementing block scheduling in the district. Here are three things we know from this piece: It’s supposed to be GREAT for students, it failed previously because it cost something like $100 million a year, and it ain’t happening next year for sure. (Toledo Blade, 2/27/23)

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Mississippi’s model for improving early literacy has been a standout since 2019, based on its nation-leading achievement growth on the fourth grade NAEP reading test. But its use of grade retention—holding students back in third grade and, if districts choose, earlier—as both a student intervention and an accountability tool, has drawn criticism, especially from educators, many of whom feel that retention amounts to “educational malpractice.”

According to Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond, now President of the California State Board of Education, “The findings are about as consistent as any findings are in education research: the use of [retention based on] testing is counterproductive, it does not improve achievement over the long run, but it does dramatically increase dropout rates.”

But that picture seems to be changing, with studies of literacy-focused retention policies, both in Florida and now in Mississippi. A new analysis recently released by Kirsten Slungaard Mumma and Marcus Winters of Boston University provides the first data on the impact of Mississippi’s retention model on the students actually retained.

The results are stunning: In sixth grade, three years after the intervention, retained students outperform similar students by 1.2 standard deviations (a 0.8 effect size is generally considered “large”), with no measurable impact on student absenteeism or special education classification, negative indicators sometimes associated with retention.

In short, it shows a very strong positive impact of retention, at least through sixth grade, with no associated negative effects. The impact was particularly pronounced with Black and Hispanic students.

Mississippi’s retention policy is not a “gate” to hold students back. What some are now calling “purposeful retention” differs from simply “repeating the grade” in two ways. First, by law, retained students must receive a minimum of ninety minutes in reading instruction based on the science of reading and intensive interventions with progress monitoring, among other supports. The retention treatment is designed to specifically address their needs.

Second, retention plays a key role in aligning the system’s adults—teachers, parents, administrators—around meeting the needs of the students. If we want the students to do better, we need to improve the performance of the adults. As Kymyona Burk, the former Mississippi State Literacy Director, has described, Mississippi’s comprehensive literacy policy includes training all primary grade teachers and their administrators; state-provided literacy coaches, deployed directly to high-need schools; changes in teacher preparation programs; and adoption of new instructional materials—all centered around the science of reading, including the building of foundational skills.

In Mississippi, this “purposeful retention” acts as both an intervention for struggling students and as an accountability tool for the system’s adults, designed to support them in changing their practice to align with the state’s science of reading approach. The combination is clearly working.

The magnitude of Mississippi’s accomplishments with early reading is truly impressive and rightly deserves attention and replication by other states. For low-income, Black, and Hispanic students, by 2019, Mississippi had risen to the top five of all the states on the fourth grade NAEP, with each group showing more than a year’s additional progress since 2013. On the Urban Institute’s demographically adjusted NAEP ranking, Mississippi comes in number two among all states in fourth grade reading (just behind Florida).

While there is clearly room for further progress—there are still large gaps between Black and White students, as well as low- and high-income—simply replicating Mississippi’s model would be a huge step forward for almost all states.

Grade retention has played a key role as an accountability measure and an educational intervention in both Mississippi and Florida, the two biggest NAEP improvement stories of the last twenty years. Many educators and policymakers continue to reject it as a tool. Even states that include retention in literacy legislation struggle to put or keep it in effect (such as Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee). But Mississippi and Florida continue to bring in evidence that, done correctly, “purposeful retention” can be a powerful tool for change without the downsides experienced in earlier models.

Governor DeWine’s budget recommendations are out, and they tackle a host of education issues. Thus far, his proposals for expanding school choice, improving early literacy, and investing in career and technical education have grabbed most of the headlines. But buried amidst all those provisions is an interesting idea that could help address some of Ohio’s teacher shortage issues.

The governor has charged the state board of education with establishing standards and requirements for a new pre-service teacher permit. Teacher candidates enrolled in Ohio’s educator preparation programs would be required to obtain this permit before they could participate in student teaching or other training experiences that involve students in any grade level at any public or chartered nonpublic school. As part of the permit application process, pre-service teachers would be subject to a criminal records check, which the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) would then use to enroll the applicant into the fingerprint database (just like they do with licensed teachers). Permits are valid for three years, but ODE can extend that duration on a case-by-case basis.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Districts and schools would be allowed to employ anyone who holds one of these permits as a substitute teacher. Permit-holders could teach for up to the equivalent of one full semester, but district superintendents and school administrators could request that their board approve “one or more additional subsequent semester-long periods of teaching.” Teachers who substitute using a pre-service permit can also be paid. In short, this permit would allow candidates in educator preparation programs to serve as substitutes, something that is not permissible under current state law, which requires substitute teachers to have a postsecondary degree (pandemic-driven flexibilities that serve as workarounds to this requirement will expire in 2024). This would, in turn, increase not just the number of substitute teachers that schools can hire, but also the quality.

To understand why this could be a gamechanger, some context is needed. Over the last few years, many Ohio districts and schools have been grappling with a teacher shortage. But despite all the headlines, it’s hard to get a pulse on the full scope of the problem. Teacher staffing concerns are highly localized, and the state doesn’t collect and maintain statewide data on teacher vacancies in a single, easily accessible place. Without this information, it’s hard to understand the breadth and depth of the issue. It’s also difficult to determine the kind of teacher shortage schools are facing. In some places, “teacher shortage” is a term that includes substitutes, who are a crucial part of day-to-day operations even if they aren’t an official part of staff. Teachers might do heroic work, but they aren’t superheroes. They get sick, they have family emergencies, and they burn out. To serve kids well, schools need an effective substitute system with a decent supply of teachers.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case in many schools. In fact, headlines from the last few years indicate that Ohio’s most significant teacher shortage might actually be with substitutes, not full-time staff. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as it’s long been hard to find good substitute teachers. It’s a difficult job that doesn’t pay well, and it’s temporary by nature. The pandemic and the ever-shifting job market have only exacerbated existing problems. Disadvantaged schools have systematically lower substitute coverage rates, which means they’re being hit hardest. And Ohio isn’t a unique case. Last year, a piece in The Atlantic argued that America is desperate for substitute teachers. A few months later, NPR covered a story about schools in Illinois that were holding one-day trainings just to get short-term subs into classrooms.

National coverage like this can be disheartening, but it also means that more people are focused on solving the problem. Last spring, Dan Goldhaber and Sydney Payne published a piece in Education Week that proposed an innovative solution to the substitute teacher crisis that might sound familiar: allowing student teachers to serve as substitutes. They argued that doing so would be a win for everyone involved. Obviously, it would help districts staff classrooms who had absent teachers. But these substitutes wouldn’t just be warm bodies charged with pressing play on movies, assigning busy work, or monitoring students during an impromptu study hall. They would be prospective teachers with some of the knowledge, skills, and training needed to run a classroom. As substitutes, student teachers could “turn idle time into learning time,” which would be beneficial not just for the school, but for students, as well.

The challenge with such an idea, Goldhaber and Payne write, is that state and local bureaucracies get in the way. Well-intentioned rules about who can substitute teach and whether they need to be licensed can keep student teachers out of the classroom. But if Governor DeWine’s version of a pre-service teacher permit becomes law, bureaucratic regulations won’t get in the way. Schools across the state, many of which already have relationships with teacher preparation programs thanks to student teaching requirements, could simply offer teacher candidates the opportunity to get paid and obtain additional classroom experience by substitute teaching.

Obviously, this won’t solve all of Ohio’s substitute teacher staffing woes. But it would help. Schools could immediately bolster their substitute teacher pipelines. In doing so, they could avoid asking teachers to use their planning or lunch periods to cover absent colleagues’ classrooms—a common practice that can contribute to teacher burnout. Student teachers would benefit from the additional experience and income. Students could benefit from a substitute teacher who is familiar with state standards, curricula, and up-to-date instructional strategies. Districts could even collaborate with teacher preparation programs to use pre-service permits as a jumping off point for creating teacher apprenticeship programs, like those in Tennessee. All things considered, there’s a lot to like about this proposal. Here’s hoping that legislators approve it. 

Happening now in Ohio charter schools

Par Excellence Academy in Newark serves primarily students with developmental issues, including those on the autism spectrum. Officials believe that the human-looking robots like Milo, featured in this interesting profile, would benefit their students in multiple ways. Not only in learning coding and programming, but also in decoding human facial and body cues in a non-judgmental space. Awesome! And at Shepard School in Columbus, officials invited students and their families to a children’s firearms safety class presented by the Onyx Gun Club, a chapter of the National African American Gun Association which stresses that guns are tools and can be safely stored and handled with proper training.

Meanwhile, in Dayton

There is a lot to unpack in the latest public dust up between Dayton City Schools and the Regional Transit Authority over transporting high school students, including discussion of bus safety, old contract problems, and whose responsibility it is to get kids to school. But the bottom line is that both entities are saying that they cannot possibly transport all the students who need it, specifically pointing out the “difficulty” of those families choosing charter and private schools. No matter, it seems, how much money is available to do the job.

Speaking of charter funding in Ohio

Fordham’s Aaron Churchill, one of the foremost experts on school funding in the Buckeye State, published a new analysis this week looking at the funding gap between charters and traditional district schools. Despite some recent efforts to narrow the gap, Churchill notes the work still to be done and proposes a new “charter equity supplement.”

The national view

A new report from the Government Accountability Office extends a previous analysis of federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) grants, reiterating that schools which received grants stayed open longer than those that didn’t, and adding the new observation that CSP-receiving schools also had higher enrollment than non-CSP peer schools. You can check out the new report here.

Oklahoma update

Two weeks ago, we discussed the possibility that an online charter school, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, might be approved to operate in the Sooner State. We also noted that there were a lot of potential issues that might intercede between now and its projected fall 2024 opening. The first—and probably—biggest of those possible roadblocks materialized this week in the form of an opinion issued by new state Attorney General Gentner Drummond which argued, among other points, that his predecessor erred in his assessment that such an arrangement would meet Constitutional muster and that approving a Catholic-sponsored charter would open the door to charters sponsored by any and all other religions. No word yet on next steps proposed by school or diocesan officials.

*****

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1. We start today with student transportation problems both old… (10TV News, Columbus, 2/23/23) …and new. Well, I say “new”, but really the current disagreement between Dayton City Schools and the Regional Transit Authority about the issues around transporting high school students using RTA bus passes appears to be a culmination/continuation/public airing of some longstanding beefs between these two august public entities. With students caught in the middle. I don’t know who’s going to win here, but I know who will end up on the losing side no matter what. (Dayton Daily News, 2/24/23)
   
   

2. Speaking of august public entities (were we?), how exactly does an elected school board get approval for a $74 million school building project, let alone vote to add $6 million more in bells and whistles, without needing to tell the public where it will be built? I thought only evil empire builders like Amazon and Intel could get away with stuff like that. (Toledo Blade, 2/26/23)
   
   

3. We continue today with eyebrow-raising opinion pieces both old (so old that it barely even references Ohio in its voucher grouching)… (Columbus Dispatch, 2/23/23) …and new. This latter one, written by a first year substitute teacher in Columbus City Schools, contains information and opinion so new that I haven’t even figured out what it means yet. But I will. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/22/23)
   
   

4. Two interesting views on legislative testimony this week (both from the same source—go figure) to end our Bites: Three elected state board of education members testified in opposition to a bill which would curtail their power revamp education governance in Ohio. I guess it is nice to know that our state board can come together these days and laser focus on something. (Ohio Capital Journal, 2/22/23) Representatives of multiple religious entities then testified in favor of a bill which would create backpack education funding for Ohio families. Like that old Benetton ad, right? (Ohio Capital Journal, 2/23/23)

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Ohio has long underfunded charter schools. Back in 2004, we at Fordham published a Dayton-specific study finding that the city’s charters received just two-thirds of the revenue as the local district. Ten years later, a report from the University of Arkansas discovered that the situation hadn’t much changed, as charters statewide received on average about 70 percent of district funding. Looking at data through 2017, my analysis published four years ago found similar disparities. In contrast, several other states have done a far better job of ensuring equitable funding: Massachusetts and Texas charters, for example, receive about 85 to 95 percent of their local districts’ funding.

Ohio’s charter funding gap has real-world consequences. Without equitable resources, charter schools often struggle to provide the extra supports—both academic and non-academic—and the enrichment opportunities that help unlock students’ full potential. They have less capacity to work to continually improve their educational programs and expand their reach. They also face challenges in attracting and retaining talented teachers, as their lower funding levels leave them stuck offering lower salaries.

Just as important is the matter of fairness and equity. Children attending charter schools ought to receive the same taxpayer support for their education as their peers attending district schools just down the street. Failing to do so is a violation of basic principles of funding equity—especially given that charter school students are disproportionately low-income and students of color.

To its credit, Ohio took a big step toward narrowing the gap by launching the high-quality charter funding program in 2020. The initiative currently provides up to an extra $1,750 per economically disadvantaged pupil for qualifying schools and $1,000 per non-disadvantaged student. This year, 117 schools—about a third of charters statewide—are receiving the supplemental aid.[1] In his latest budget proposal, Governor DeWine calls for a commendable boost to the program. Under his plan, qualifying schools would receive $3,000 per economically disadvantaged student and $2,250 per non-disadvantaged student.

With this background in mind, it’s worth revisiting Ohio’s charter funding disparity. What does the gap look like today, and how would the governor’s latest proposals help bridge it? How much further does the state need to go to achieve equity for all charter students?

Before turning to the results, it’s important to know how exactly the gaps are calculated. We start with the state’s FY 2022 expenditure per equivalent pupil data which relies on an adjusted, or “weighted,” enrollment of districts and charter schools. (Only brick-and-mortar charters are included in this analysis.) This measure attempts to account for the extra dollars received when they enroll special education students, English learners, and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Hence, the measure creates a more apples-to-apples comparison of spending figures than using the “raw” per-pupil spending data.[2] Charters’ expenditure per equivalent pupil are then compared to the district in which they’re located; from that, average gaps are calculated. To show that state policy is driving the gap, federal dollars are excluded from both charter and district spending; transportation expenditures are also subtracted because districts must transport charter students. The analysis includes all “operational expenditures”—spending on, e.g., instruction and student supports—but excludes capital outlay. If those dollars were included, the gap would actually widen, since districts receive more funds for facilities.

Using this methodology, Figure 1 displays the charter funding gap as of FY 2022. To get a baseline picture, we first display the disparity in charter-district funding without the high-quality supplement. Here we see—as in earlier analyses—that the typical Ohio charter receives about 70 cents on the dollar compared to their local district.[3] This indicates that, apart from the supplement, Ohio has done very little to improve charter funding. When the high-quality supplement is included, the gap narrows slightly, lifting high-quality charter funding to 73 percent of their local district and the statewide average to 74 percent.

Figure 1: Ohio’s current charter funding gaps

As noted earlier, Governor DeWine has proposed a significant increase to the supplemental aid that high-quality charters would receive. Figure 2 shows the impact of his proposal on the charter funding gap, should it be passed by the legislature. Funding for high-quality charters would be at 85 percent of their local districts; other charter schools would remain at 76 percent. Of note, this doesn’t include the proposed increase in charters’ facility allowance. For the purposes of this analysis, those dollars are excluded because this analysis focuses on operational expenditures (not capital outlay).

Figure 2: Impact of Governor DeWine’s latest budget proposal

As figure 1 and 2 indicate, the high-quality supplement narrows funding gaps for about a third of Ohio charters. But it doesn’t lend any extra support for schools that do not qualify for the performance-based funding. Yet students attending these schools still deserve fair funding. Given that most of them are economically disadvantaged (82 percent) or Black or Hispanic (59 percent), failing to provide sufficient resources raises significant equity concerns.

To move Ohio closer to funding parity for all students attending brick-and-mortar charters, legislators should create an “equity supplement” that would complement the high-quality program. There are various ways to design such a program, but the most straightforward approach is to provide a per-pupil supplement for all brick-and-mortar charters (both schools that qualify for the high-quality funds and those that don’t). Figure 3 shows the impact. If Ohio funded the equity supplement at $1,000 per pupil, the charter funding gap statewide narrows to 88 percent of district funding. At $1,500 per pupil, it closes to 92 percent. Under the latter scenario, the average high-quality charter would be funded at near parity with their local district, while other charters would be at 88 percent.

Figure 3: Impact of a charter equity supplement

* * *

For a quarter-century, public charter schools have served hundreds of thousands of Ohio students. Despite their schools’ shoestring budgets, many of them have received an education that opened opportunities in higher education and the workforce. But it’s time for the state to stop shortchanging charter students—most of whom are disadvantaged—just because they attend non-district schools. As they are in other states, Ohio charter students deserve to be treated on equal terms as their counterparts. Governor DeWine and state lawmakers have already made inroads in fighting this inequity through the high-quality fund. To complete the work, the legislature should take the additional steps needed to ensure that all charter students have the resources needed to reach their full potential.

In a landmark 2021 settlement by the University of California (UC), the nation’s most prestigious state university system, officials agreed to eliminate the requirement that students submit college entrance exam scores to gain admission. When then-UC president Janet Napolitano initially proposed suspending the testing requirement in 2020, her statement claimed that eliminating testing requirements would “enhance equity.” Critics of college admissions exams have increasingly argued that testing requirements are bad for equity in higher education, and have often gone even further, painting the SAT and ACT as simply racist. For example, the left-leaning groups that brought the UC lawsuit called the tests “discriminatory,” and their lawsuit cited then-UC regent Cecilia Estolano, who said of the SAT, “We all know it’s a racist test.”

In this inaugural policy brief in the Fordham Institute’s Think Again series (see more about the series here), I tackle the pervasive notion that college admissions exams are responsible for racial and socioeconomic inequities in higher education.

The claim that that the SAT and ACT discriminate relies on statistical analysis of the average performance of students of different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Gaps in average exam scores are, of course, no myth. The average ACT composite score is about 20, but the highest-scoring racial/ethnic group, Asian students, scores 24.9 on average, while Black students, the lowest-scoring group, have an average score of 16.3. For some, the existence of such a gap is alone sufficient to prove the tests are racist. Yet students of different groups do not all have the same family and school experiences. Black children, for example, are three times as likely as their Asian and White classmates to grow up in poverty. Childhood disparities in access to everything from health care to good schools and teachers mean that—whatever those disparities say about the roots and consequences of American inequality—it would be surprising if all groups of seventeen-year-olds exhibited equivalent levels of college readiness. But as the brief explains, all measures of academic achievement exhibit such gaps.

Far from being instruments of systemic racism, the SAT and ACT are put through extensive measures to ensure that the exams do not discriminate against students because of their racial or ethnic background (or class or gender). The organizations that administer the exams vet them intensely, not just by diverse review panels that alert the test makers to any potential cultural biases, but also through statistical techniques that flag test questions answered differently by students from different backgrounds. This latter process alerts test makers to any questions that, after controlling for students’ overall scores, two groups of students (e.g., students from high-income and low-income families) answer correctly at different rates. Officials at both testing companies implement multiple, overlapping systems designed to ensure that the exams are free of such biased questions before they could affect any student’s score.

The claim that the SAT and ACT drive inequities in higher education feeds the movement against standardized testing and has been at the heart of successful court cases. But in this new brief, I argue that, whether colleges decide to go “test optional” or not, the implications for equity are actually quite minimal.

Editor’s note: This is a modified excerpt of the inaugural policy brief in the Fordham Institute’s new Think Again series of policy briefs, “Think Again: College Admissions Exams Drive Higher Education Inequities,” written by Fordham National Research Director Adam Tyner. Read the brief in full here.

Dear Checker,

Greetings from Arizona! I read your piece last week about your wariness toward universal ESAs like the ones adopted here and in a handful of other states. I share many of your concerns about the potential for misuse and fraud, and the dubious choices parents might make when given control of public education funds. I worry, too, that advocates are being a bit too cocky about the growth of ESAs and a little blithe about accountability. All that said, I’m more sanguine than you. ESAs represent an intriguing development, and their sudden popularity (at least among red-state legislators) is one of the most surprising developments I’ve seen in more than two decades in this work.

Interestingly, the parent advocates, policymakers, and school leaders I’ve met with this week in Arizona sound modest about their expectations for universal ESAs, and quite level-headed. Perhaps that’s because Arizona has been an open-enrollment state for nearly three decades, and half of the state’s students already attend a school other than their designated one. It’s hard not to be struck by how different Arizona educators sound than elsewhere: They’ve spent their entire careers working in a system in which choice, flexibility, and competing for students is unremarkable.

Like you, Checker, I regard the Supreme Court decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters as a touchstone and can recite parts of it from memory. “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” and parents “who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” The rationale for ESAs has so far heavily leaned on parents’ right to direct their child’s education. But it’s the “duty” that deserves some of our attention.

A common talking point among proponents is that ESAs give parents control of their money to customize their child’s education, spending it on private school tuition, tutoring, and other educational products and services. But it’s not “their” money. It’s our money that’s being put under parental control. This is not mere pedantry or a difference of semantics. The cost of education is socialized; we have a shared stake in the education given every child in America and pay school taxes whether or not we have kids in our local school or have kids at all.

This distinction—“their” money versus “our” money—holds the key to thinking about ESAs that may assuage your misgivings, Checker. To my way of thinking, an ESA is not a new form of education funding, it’s a different form of education accountability. States like Arizona, Iowa, West Virginia, and Utah that have enacted universal ESAs aren’t giving parents money heedlessly. They’re making a public policy wager to put accountability into the hands of those who “nurture and direct” the child. They’re betting that parents will discharge their “high duty” with more attentiveness, care, and diligence than the state can possibly provide through its districts and schools.

It’s a reasonable wager. A recent report found fifty-three schools in Illinois where not a single student is on grade level in math; thirty where none read on grade level. Ditto two dozen schools in Baltimore. It’s not “whataboutism” to point to such schools as poor stewards of public funds and wonder if parents could possibly make worse decisions. Nor are such educational catastrophes limited to high-poverty urban schools and districts. Emily Hanford’s recent “Sold a Story” podcast detailed how popular approaches to reading instruction in countless schools failed millions of children, enriching the gurus who peddled them. Time and again in Hanford’s telling, it’s parents, not professional educators, who are alarmed to learn that their children can’t read and refuse to be mollified by bland reassurances to not worry, that they’ll read when they’re ready. Make no mistake, there will be examples—lots of them—of parents spending ESA dollars unwisely. But when ESA dollars are mismanaged, the damage is limited to a single household. When a school spends public dollars unwisely, hundreds of children suffer lasting harm.

I’m in strongest agreement with your concern, Checker, that enthusiasm will diminish with reports that ESA parents are spending public funds on extravagances with a “hazy relationship to K–12 education.” Nothing will derail enthusiasm for ESAs more quickly than a steady drumbeat of stories like the one in The 74 describing public dollars going to kayaks, chicken coops, and trips to SeaWorld. Never mind that, when I was a South Bronx public school teacher, we took kids ziplining, to theme parks, paid for ballroom dancing lessons, and more, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Chicken coops? I visited a school near Tucson this week with a barn, livestock, and students on their way to careers in large-animal veterinary science. It was fantastic.

The simple fact is that motivated opponents, from teachers unions to the media, will be looking for questionable spending of ESA funds, and such examples will not be hard to find. I noted with no small amount of consternation the response when Mike Petrilli posted your piece on Twitter (which you wisely avoid). One ESA advocate responded mockingly with a GIF of Frank Sinatra and sniffed, “Consider me pro-free-swinging, almost-anything-goes universal ESAs, babe.”

Giddiness and arrogance are the kind of thing that will derail ESAs. Choice proponents working to make ESAs a growing and politically sustainable fixture in K–12 education have to give accountability more than a smirk and a shrug. A good friend, Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation, points out that, once enacted, no state has ever repealed an ESA or voucher plan. To which it’s important to add: “yet.” The sudden rise of universal ESAs makes it inconceivable that there will not be an equal and opposite reaction: a concerted effort to paint them as a reckless cash grab. At some point, ESA proponents will need to transition from popping champagne corks and recast themselves as sober and judicious stewards of public funds.

Sincerely,

Robert