In an effort to expand educational opportunity, several large urban school districts—including Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.—have increased school choice within traditional public school systems through intradistrict open enrollment. But do such programs, which allow students to choose schools throughout the district, actually improve outcomes? In a recent working paper, researchers from MIT and the University of Chicago investigate the consequences of transporting students to non-neighborhood district schools.

The causal study, one of only a handful to consider the relationship between school commute time and academic performance, analyzes both the integration effects and the academic effects of transporting Black and Hispanic students to district schools throughout Boston and New York City. In addition to offering school choice within traditional public school systems, these two urban districts share key features. First, both foot the bill for transportation costs for students attending non-neighborhood schools: Boston choice middle schoolers ride yellow buses, and choice high schoolers in both cities receive monthly public transit passes. In addition, both districts have historically been sites of conflict over school integration. Although integration is not an explicit aim of their choice programs, the researchers still sought to determine whether they mitigated the enduring influence of residential segregation on school segregation.

The study uses Boston data for all applicants for sixth and ninth grade district schools from 2002 to 2013, and New York City data for all applicants for ninth grade district schools from 2012 to 2016. It tests the effects of two factors: first, whether the student attended a non-neighborhood school (a yes/no variable), and second, the student’s commute length in minutes. To measure integration, the researchers use same-race peer enrollment and minority isolation (that is, attendance at a school with at least 90 percent Black or Hispanic students). A combination of statewide end-of-year math and English language arts test results, SAT scores, and college enrollment data serve as measures for academic outcomes. Since students who were already more academically motivated could have been more likely to seek out a non-neighborhood school, the researchers designed their methodology to account for the possibility of such selection bias.

In both Boston and New York, traveling to a non-neighborhood school clearly boosted integration. The largest statistically significant effect was on Black students in Boston, where non-neighborhood enrollment led to Black students experiencing a nearly 17 percent drop in minority isolation. In New York, the effect was largest for Hispanic students, for whom minority isolation decreased by almost 8 percent. On the other busing measure, traveling to school for an additional twenty minutes also led to greater integration, particularly for Black students, whose same-race peer exposure decreased by approximately 6 percent in Boston and 7 percent in New York.

The effects of commuting on test scores and college attendance, however, were minimal. Perhaps-surprising exceptions were for Black students in Boston and Hispanic students in New York, for whom twenty additional minutes of travel time decreased college attendance by 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively. (The troubling finding that Black students in Boston simultaneously experienced the greatest gains in integration and the largest drop in college attendance merits further investigation.) In the study’s final step, the researchers use what they call a value-added model to ascertain that the small effects on education outcomes are due to negligible differences in the quality of the students’ neighborhood and choice non-neighborhood schools—rather than a result of factors like fatigue from long commutes.

At least for Boston and New York, these findings complicate the argument for intradistrict school choice. On the one hand, allowing students to travel throughout the district advances progress toward the inherently worthy goal of increased school integration. Choice also comes with its own value; students in both districts can, for instance, select themed schools, which could affect student engagement in ways not necessarily captured in the study. On the other hand, considering the slightly negative academic impact of these commutes, along with annual transportation costs of $1,020 per Boston student and $1,300 per New York student, the authors urge us to ask whether these funds could be more productively spent on improving neighborhood school quality. Given these tradeoffs, district leaders must decide how best to allocate inevitably finite resources to serve their students’ needs.

SOURCE: Joshua Angrist, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Clemence M. Idoux, and Parag A. Pathak, “Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series (July 2022).

Recent national test data paint an alarming picture of middle school math achievement post-Covid, with eighth grade math scores on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) having the largest decrease of any other subject or grade.

As a former math interventionist for fifth through eighth graders, I am well aware of the challenges that accompany the more rigorous middle school math material. Curriculum for these grades is geared toward developing more sophisticated reasoning skills, and many students struggle to adjust to this new level of difficulty—alongside the many other challenges that a typical junior highschooler faces.

Districts have been pouring time and resources into various middle school math interventions for decades, but we haven’t seen big gains in this subject in these grades. Is there a cost-efficient way to actually improve these students’ math outcomes?

A recent study analyzes a four-year math intervention program called Changing the Odds (CTO) designed by local policymakers, math specialists in the San Diego Unified School District, and a team at the University of California San Diego. It was implemented in four low-performing schools in San Diego, and emphasizes continuous improvement, data-driven decision making, and professional learning communities (PLCs)—collaborative groups of teachers who share best practices across schools.

One of CTO’s primary tenets is the use of diagnostic testing and formative assessments to track student progress. All district teachers received assessments from the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project, but those participating in the program received additional training on how to best use the data. They were also encouraged to provide multiple formative tests and daily learning checks throughout the year to gauge comprehension.

Then in same-grade PLCs across the four schools—a second tenet of the program—teachers used student data to identify gaps in learning and adjust their upcoming lessons. PLCs occasionally met for day-long planning sessions where they analyzed student data and collaborated on upcoming lessons, while a substitute teacher covered the classes of attending math teachers.

The last major component of the CTO program was a grant-funded resource teacher who worked with the math teachers in all four schools on curriculum and pedagogy. In the first year, the resource teacher worked out of the district headquarters and would visit the schools individually. But in years two, three, and four, the resource teacher rotated among the four schools full-time, designing lessons with teachers and co-teaching classes.

Researchers at UCSD used a difference-in-difference analysis to compare the change in math achievement in the four CTO schools to the change in four academically and demographically similar schools from the same district. On average, they found that there was a statistically significant increase (0.11 standard deviations) in math achievement for CTO students, compared to the control students—which translated to an increase of over 4 percentile points per year on the math standardized test.

Even more interesting is the program’s affordability. The total yearly cost of the program was estimated to be just over $200,000, including various labor expenses, supplies, and the resource teacher’s salary. Divided amongst the four schools, the additional cost of $50,000 for each was about half of the average full-time teacher’s salary, or less than 1 percent of the school’s total personnel salaries.

Many district leaders might roll their eyes when they hear that they should be implementing the latest new middle school math intervention program, and understandably so—they’re a dime a dozen. But this program is not reinventing the wheel. Prior research tells us that data-informed teaching, collaborating with peers, and having an additional resource teacher will lead to increased achievement. But this study shows skeptics that all of these things can be done in a cost-efficient way.

We must also recognize, however, that not every district has a local university willing to throw its time and resources at the local public schools. Additionally, the sample size in this study was small, so results cannot be generalized. For districts that do have the opportunity to partner with outside organizations, though—such as testing companies and universities—and for middle schools whose teams want to find a way to improve their math achievement without breaking the bank, a program similar to Changing the Odds could be a sustainable option.

SOURCE: Betts, Julian R., Andrew C. Zau, Karen Volz Bachofer, and Dina Polichar, Changing the Odds: Student Achievement After Introduction of a Middle School Math Intervention, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper (January 2023).

Cheers

• “What we’re seeing here is a complete absence of leadership—even in the midst of a crisis that will literally bend the arc of American history.” —David Brooks
• “Apprenticeship programs are becoming more popular as an alternative to college.” —CNBC

Jeers

• A suburban Maryland high school is responding to a spate of antisemitic acts with restorative circles, but little else. —Matt Bai
• The New York State Catholic Conference says that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to expand charter school access in the state will hurt Catholic schools. —Catholic Currier
• “The Chicago Teachers Union pursues radical politics even as public school enrollment declines and student learning suffers.” —City Journal

• “In fast-growing Jersey City, charter schools seen as more friend than foe to traditional school district.” —NJ.com
• One writer says that education savings accounts should be a means to create new and unique learning environments for students, not to raise student achievement. —Adam Peshek
• In Ukraine, a middle school teacher traded books for a rifle in order to defend her city from a Russian invasion. —New York Times
• A student enrollment decline in Denver was “years in the making.” It’s part of a national trend described by Tim Daly. —Denver Post
• The curriculum of the AP African American Studies course rejected by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis relied too heavily on “protest and professional pessimism” and did not accurately represent Black history. —John McWhorter
• In the K–12 culture wars, progressive activists “are far less invested in history that is true than that which they think feels true.” —Frederick Hess
• An old ice factory in the Bronx has been transformed into a new charter school. —New York Times
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes to directly fund his state’s poorest schools in order to target persistent racial disparities in student achievement. —EdSource
• “The mask mandates did nothing. Will any lessons be learned?” —Bret Stephens

1. Nice coverage of Governor DeWine’s all-in push to make the science of reading the law of the land here in Ohio. It not only includes $129 million dollars to retrain teachers and replace textbooks in schools across the state, it also includes an outright ban on the other janky curricula that are still pretty prevalent here and elsewhere. (The 74, 2/21/23)
   
   

2. Related, I reckon, is this story from Alliance City Schools. Officials there updated the elected school board on the concrete progress being made by hundreds of second and third grade students who were two or more grade levels behind in reading and/or math. Since just the start of the school year, nearly ten percent of the students have caught up and rejoined their on-grade-level peers. Others are moving ahead steadily. What efforts wrought this miracle? A Response to Intervention model that provides 200 minutes a week of tutoring in math and reading, in addition to their regular classes. Progress is monitored weekly and students are tested every six weeks. Future lessons are then adjusted based on whatever improvement is shown by those test results. Principal Cory Muller summed it up thusly: “We took them where they were and gave them what they needed.” Miraculous. Yea, verily. (Canton Repository, 2/22/23)
   
   

3. I always love an opinion piece with a super elaborate metaphor or throughline. I imagine the author gleefully banging out reference after reference thinking with each additional commitment to the bit: “THAT’LL show ‘em!” What’s this small town principal complaining about via his quaint comic strip riff in our big city newspaper? How Governor DeWine somehow ruined the promise of the new school funding plan by proposing an expansion of EdChoice eligibility. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/22/23)
   
   

4. Speaking of small towns, the elected school board of tiny Crestview Local Schools got an earful this week because they dared to consider a calendar for next school year that did not, in many many folks’ opinions, give students enough time off for the Van Wert County Fair. I graduated from a district that gave kids excused absences during the first week of deer hunting season every year, so what do I know? But I will suggest that the parent who said, “I learned more during Fair Week when I was a kid than what I learned in school or doing homework” is not making the case that he thinks he is. Accordingly, the elected board members are going to go back home and think about what they did before making a final decision at their next meeting. I am sure they’ll end up doing the right thing. Aren’t you? (Times Bulletin, Van Wert, 2/22/23)
   
   

5. Meanwhile, in the somewhat larger city(ish) of Newark, here’s a great piece on Par Excellence Academy, a charter school primarily focused on students with developmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder. They are considering adding a robot or two to their curriculum and had a visit from the manufacturers this week demonstrating their wares. The idea is that not only will the programming of these little guys deepen the STEM offerings for students but also provide them with some experience in reading and responding to facial cues and body language (these things are very human-like IMO) from a non-judgmental partner. Fascinating. (Newark Advocate, 2/21/23)
   
   

6. And speaking of state-of-the-art, the Dayton Daily News finally (finally!!!), has some update on the Greater Dayton School. That’s the private school for low-income students funded by space-y billionaire Larry Connor. While we don’t get any inkling of how the first year of the school in its rented digs is going—about which I would love to know—we do get a nice hard hat tour of the huge and beautiful new building being constructed to house Greater Dayton come the fall. Looks and sounds awesome! (Dayton Daily News, 2/21/23)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.

Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more. You can subscribe on the Fordham Institute website and the newsletter’s Substack.

One of the most enduring and important challenges in advanced education (a.k.a. “gifted” education) is how to balance excellence and equity—how, in other words, to have quality programs that maximize the educational outcomes of high achievers, but also better identify and serve low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native American children.

Accomplishing this is now a major focus of the advanced learning field, and from these efforts have emerged two common strategies. One, wherein leaders work to enroll more marginalized children in available offerings while also improving program quality and breadth, shows real promise. The other, in which school systems eliminate advanced learning opportunities, doesn’t. The latter, in fact, is an imposter—a masking of the problem masquerading as a solution—that rejects excellence and increases inequity by harming many of the underserved children it purports to help.

Aptly illustrating this dichotomy are two recent news stories about public school districts struggling with insufficient diversity in their advanced education programs. The good example, profiled in Education Week, hails from Manassas, Virginia, a city of about 40,000 that’s part of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The bad example, reported on by the Wall Street Journal, comes from Culver City, California, in Los Angeles County, which also has a population around 40,000.

In recent years, both districts faced significant racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in their advanced-learner offerings. In Manassas, for instance, Hispanic students and students from low-income families comprised just 22 percent and 26 percent, respectively, of those in the gifted program, despite making up 67 and 65 percent of overall enrollments. In Culver City, Hispanic and Black students made up 13 and 14 percent, respectively, of high schoolers enrolled in twelfth-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37 and 15 percent of the total student body.

Because of statistics like these, district leaders “replaced the [freshman and sophomore] honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses that officials say will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The seeds of change were planted at a board meeting last year where teachers presented enrollment data and members saw “anonymous quotes from students not enrolled in honors classes saying they felt less motivated or successful. One described students feeling ‘unable to break out of the molds that they established when they were eleven.’” Culver City leaders say “the goal is to teach everyone with an equal level of rigor, one that encourages them to enroll in advanced classes in their final years of high school.”

It’s easy to empathize with the district. Racial and ethnic gaps in these academic programs is a big problem, but narrowing them is difficult if the goal is for more marginalized children to enroll and succeed in them. The gaps start at an early age, and many of their causes, such as the deleterious effects of poverty and racism, are outside schools’ control. As Culver City Schools Superintendent Quoc Tran told the Journal, “it was very jarring when teachers looked at their AP enrollment and realized Black and Brown kids were not there. They felt obligated to do something.” The easiest response was to eliminate the ninth and tenth grade honors classes altogether, and that’s what they did. The effects were immediate and seemed to directly combat some of the dynamics that lead to misbalance.

But it was the wrong response. “I just don’t see how removing something from some kids all of a sudden helps other kids learn faster,” says Scott Peters, a senior research scientist at NWEA. The Journal adds:

Critics say attempting to teach everyone at an elevated level isn’t realistic and that teachers, even with the best intentions, may end up simplifying instruction. Instead, some educators and parents argue schools should find more ways to diversify honors courses and encourage students to enroll who aren’t self-selecting, including proactively reaching out to students, using an opt-out system, or looking to teacher recommendations.

Quite right. And that’s exactly what’s happened in Manassas, Virginia, thanks to efforts led by Anthony Vargas, the district’s supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs since 2019. When Vargas stepped into the role, he was struck by the glaring racial and ethnic gaps in in the programs, much like the leaders in Culver City. But instead of dismantling the offerings, he “embarked on a massive and multistage undertaking to diversify the program, involving extensive research on equitable practices on how to select students, the kinds of enrichment to provide, implementing evidence-based practices districtwide, and gaining the trust and cooperation of the school community, including the school board,” reports Education Week.

Among many changes were eliminating the reliance on test scores alone to select students, showing teachers how to better identify potential, adding more educators to the program and training them, expanding offerings beyond a single elementary school, strengthening instructional programming, creating a continuum of services wherein students can receive enrichment in a single or multiple subjects, and casting a wider and more flexible net. “Most of the work revolved around identifying barriers to [gifted and talented] access and breaking them down,” Vargas told Education Week. “There must be some flexibility to ensure we are making appropriate decisions, especially considering that historically excluded students have testing biases stacked against them.”

Today, advanced education in Manassas is thriving and representation gaps have narrowed. In 2019, 240 children were enrolled in the programs and, as noted above, Hispanic and low-income students comprised just 22 percent and 26 percent of them, respectively, despite making up 67 and 65 percent of the district population. This year, enrollment has grown to 334 students, of which 41 percent are Hispanic and a similar percentage come from low-income families.

This transformation represents lives changed. The Education Week profile offers the case of a sixth grader named Grayson. Before Manassas did the hard work to improve advanced education, he was denied admission to the program because his test scores fell slightly below the strict cut-off. But after the changes were implemented, teachers took a closer look at his abilities and realized he would benefit. “My son has blossomed since then,” said his mother Keisa Reid. “He’s turned out to be a rockstar in the program,” added Vargas.

Racial and ethnic gaps in advanced education exist in school districts across the country, and leaders must decide how to address them. It’s tempting to take the quick and dirty route like Culver City and eliminate the programs that lack representation. The results are immediate and features like “equal instruction for all” can sound noble. But it’s a mirage. Too many students, including those from marginalized backgrounds, won’t be challenged and won’t reach their full potential. Children like Grayson are more likely to wilt than blossom. Widespread blossoming only happens when leaders like those in Manassas, Virginia, do the hard work and devote ample resources to transforming advanced education. More leaders should follow its example.

—

QUOTE OF NOTE

“Before I could effectively communicate with the stakeholders the new GT plan I had in mind, I had to dive deep into our district’s current programming, share the disparities in our demographics [between GT students and the district’s overall student population], show what the research is saying, and seek out other school districts with similar demographics to see how they are tackling the many challenges of creating a more equitable GT program.”

—Anthony Vargas, the supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs in Virginia’s Manassas City public schools, quoted in “A formula for creating more equitable gifted and talented programs,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023

—

THREE STUDIES TO STUDY

“Individual, collective, and contextual aspects in the identification of giftedness,” by Robert J Sternberg, Gifted Education International, OnlineFirst, February 11, 2023

“Giftedness is typically thought of as an individual characteristic. But the development and labeling of an individual as ‘gifted’ is always a collective process and takes place embedded within local, sociocultural, and temporal contexts. The view of giftedness as individual is deceptive and results in faulty practice, such as the bestowal of huge advantages in development and labeling upon children whose parents have more substantial financial and other resources. This article applies a pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness to the analysis of individual, collective, and contextual factors in development and labeling and concludes that giftedness should never be viewed merely as an individual characteristic. Doing so not only distorts reality but creates procedures that tend to pass identification and development of ‘giftedness’ inequitably through successive generations of families by virtue of the families’ resources.”

“Developing scientific, transformational, eloquent, artistic, mathematical, mechanical, emotional, relational, and social talents through problem solving: A conceptual, practical, evidence-based analysis,” by C June Maker, Randy Pease, and Robert H Zimmerman, Gifted Education International, OnlineFirst, February 6, 2023

“Building on the definition of steamers (a tasty hot milk-infused drink), we defined STEAMMERS as ‘a blend of diverse talents, going beyond domain-specific to domain-integrated abilities. Like steamers, they have a rich and colorful “flavor”!’ They are passionate about solving problems they and others face by honoring and blending diverse perspectives and disciplines. Gifted children and young people have the potential to become STEAMMERS, making outstanding contributions to themselves, their communities, and their world. The underlying principle is to design learning experiences beyond traditional conceptions of STEM, STEAM, and other similar combinations of disciplines in ways that uncover, ignite, cultivate, and extend these potentials. Using Real Engagement in Active Problem Solving (REAPS), an evidence-based teaching model, enables educators to recognize, cultivate, and extend the talents of the STEAMMERS we need for our future. Here, we present our new concept, describe practices, and give evidence showing how it accomplishes these purposes.”

“Educator Perceptions Following Changes in Gifted Education Policy: Implications for Serving Gifted Students,” by Jaret Hodges, Rachel U. Mun, Javetta Jones Roberson, and Charles “Tedd” Flemister, Gifted Child Quarterly, Volume 65, Issue 4, October 2021

“Policy changes are an ever-present part of education. In 2019, legislators upended over two decades of gifted education policy in Texas with the removal of direct funding for gifted education. In its wake, the removal of funding shook educator morale and created uncertainty as to the future of gifted education in the state. In this article, we report on a survey administered to gifted education educators in Texas. A descriptive framework in conjunction with Bayesian analysis and multiple imputations is used to analyze the survey results. Our findings provide evidence that though educator sentiment is largely negative toward the changes to gifted education in Texas, educator outlooks on the future of gifted education in the state are relatively high.”

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WRITING WORTH READING

“Virginia reviewing AP African American studies class rejected by Florida,” WRIC, Dean Mirshahi, February 21, 2023

“The war on merit turns into systemic injustice,” National Review, Asra Q. Nomani, February 21, 2023

“U.S. probe into racial bias in Henrico Schools [in Virginia] prompts overhaul of gifted program,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Anna Bryson and Sean McGoey, February 20, 2023

“4 states to review AP African American studies class amid Florida’s ban,” Axios, Sareen Habeshian, February 18, 2023

“To increase equity, school districts eliminate honors classes,” Wall Street Journal, By Sara Randazzo, February 17, 2023

“Proposal would expand Running Start to sophomores,” Washington State Journal, Alexandria Osborne, February 13, 2023

“DeSantis says maybe Florida can do without College Board, AP classes and SAT test,” Miami Herald, Jeffrey S. Solochek and Ana Ceballos, February 13, 2023

“He completed high school at age 9. Next up? Maybe rocket science.” Washington Post, Praveena Somasundaram, February 8, 2023

“The report of gifted education’s death is greatly exaggerated,” Education Week, James R. Delisle, February 8, 2023

“Success! Cobb teacher named Georgia’s Gifted Program Teacher of the Year,” Cobb County School District, February 8, 2023

“A leader who’s busting down barriers to gifted education,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023

“A formula for creating more equitable gifted and talented programs,” Education Week, Elizabeth Heubeck, February 6, 2023

This being a budget year, state lawmakers will soon be delving into the minutia of school funding. To help inform these discussions, we’ve begun a series looking at Ohio’s funding system, including a deep-dive into the new formula that lawmakers enacted in 2021 and which Governor DeWine has proposed to maintain. The first essay provided a basic orientation to the state’s funding system and the new formula, known as the Cupp-Patterson or Fair School Funding Plan. The second essay examined the “base cost” model, a set of calculations that yield districts’ base amounts. When used in tandem with the state share mechanism, the base amount drives core state funding allocations for districts, as the figure below indicates.[1]

But what is the state share? Basically, it’s an “equalizing” mechanism that ensures state dollars “level-up” poorer districts. The state picks up—as it should—a larger portion of base funding for poorer districts, while it covers less in wealthier districts that can raise more dollars locally (including a minimum 2 percent, or 20 mill, state-required property tax). While the concept of the state share is straightforward, implementing it remains a complicated task. In this piece, we’ll unpack this element, as well as look at some technical challenges that deserve attention.

Measuring district “capacity” and calculating the state share

The new formula (and its predecessor) relies on property values and resident income to measure districts’ wealth. Property values makes obvious sense, as they directly impact how much districts can generate locally through property taxes. Income is somewhat less intuitive, but the idea is that higher-income districts are more likely to gain voter approval for higher property tax rates, further enhancing their capacity to raise local dollars.

The trickier part is how to use these data in a formula. The pre-2021 version inconsistently used income in the state share calculations, as it only played a role in certain districts whose incomes were low relative to their property values. The new formula is more consistent, applying both factors in all districts’ calculations. Using data for Columbus City Schools, table 1 illustrates how the data are combined to create a composite wealth measure for the district. Two slightly different measures of income are used: 1) the total federal adjusted gross income of a district’s residents, and 2) a district’s median income multiplied by the number of state tax returns filed by its residents. 

Table 1: Calculating a composite per-pupil wealth for Columbus City Schools, FY 2023

Things get more complicated after this. Step two of the new methodology calculates a district’s median income relative to the state median. Columbus, a district with below average income, has a “median income index” of 0.85, while a high-income district like Bexley has an index of 2.05. This index is then multiplied by specific numbers[2] to yield a “local capacity percentage.” This appears to be the local tax rate the state assumes districts have the capacity to levy. That said, it’s odd to see assumed tax rates under 2 percent, such as Columbus’s, since Ohio law requires all districts to assess a minimum property tax of that rate. Nonetheless, as table 2 shows, this generates a per-pupil local capacity amount—the portion of the base that the state presumes a district can cover. Note that this amount doesn’t determine districts’ actual local funding; it’s used only for formulaic purposes.  

Table 2: Calculating local capacity amounts for three Franklin County districts, FY 2023

In step three, the local capacity per pupil is then subtracted from the base to produce the base state funding allocation. From that, the state share percentage is derived.[3] As Table 3 indicates, the wealthy district of Bexley has a lower state share (and thus receives just $361 per pupil in state aid), while its poorer neighbors receive more state funding.

Table 3: Calculating the state share percentage for three Franklin County districts, FY 2023[4]

How will the state share function over time?

Though obviously complex, the state share does work to identify the state’s neediest districts and steers more aid their way. But how might this mechanism function over time? Here, there seems to be less clarity.

To begin, table 4 reveals a striking pattern in districts’ state share percentages between 2022 and 2023—the first two years for the new model. We notice that nine in ten districts experienced declines in their state shares (meaning they were deemed wealthier under the formula in 2023 than in 2022), while only eighteen of roughly 600 districts registered an increase in state share (meaning they got poorer). Interestingly, nothing like this occurred under the old, pre-2021 formula. There was a greater balance of gains and losses from 2016 to 2019, the last year it was used.

Table 4: Changes in districts’ state share percentages under the new and old formulas
 

Two factors seem to explain the systemic declines in the state share from 2022 to 2023.[5]

One is inflation, along with the new formula’s stronger emphasis on “absolute” wealth. Nearly all districts registered higher property values and incomes in FY 2023—partly due to inflation—and thus districts systemically looked wealthier. While inflation was tamer then, how did the old system avoid a system-wide decline in state shares due to inflation? One likely explanation is that it took a more “relative” approach to measuring wealth, whereby a district’s income and property values were compared to the state average. Thus, districts that gained wealth—but at a slower clip than the statewide trend—were actually deemed poorer and in need of more aid. Piqua school district, for example, had a 1.3 percent increase in property values from 2016–19, a rate below the statewide median of 8.3 percent. Thus, its state share rose.

One complaint about the relative concept was that trends in other parts of the state could impact a district’s measure of wealth. That was felt to be unfair. Thus, the new system takes a more “absolute” approach, where each district’s wealth is measured on its own terms (see table 1). That, however, creates an issue in which inflation will steadily make every district look wealthier over time, as they all begin to look “rich” by today’s standards.

The plot thickens with a second factor—a virtually fixed base amount—also playing a role in the declining state shares. With the exception of enrollment data, the state did not update the “inputs” of the base cost model (e.g., applying more recent teacher salaries). This resulted in very little change in districts’ base amounts from 2022 to 2023. Combined with the increasing local wealth, that led to declines in the state share percentages. The top rows of the table below illustrate how this occurs with hypothetical data. If the base amount remains constant over time, state shares slide as local wealth increases. In such a scenario, the state’s funding obligations under the formula would become less and less, presumably leading to funding reductions or perhaps increased use of “guarantees” to fund districts. However, when the base increases over time, inflationary gains in local capacity put less downward pressure on the state share percentages. The bottom rows of the table illustrate this scenario.

Table 5: Illustrating the interaction between the base amount and state share percentage

Raising the base seems to be critical for long-term functioning of the formula. But here’s the twist. Ohio isn’t actually funding schools at the full base amount of roughly $7,300 per pupil. Instead, it’s currently somewhere around $6,500 per student, reflecting the phase-in of the large, $2 billion-per-year increase in state spending called for under the new formula—additional outlays that the last General Assembly determined there weren’t enough resources to fully fund. Even with a partial phase-in of the spending increase during 2022 and 2023, lawmakers are still going to struggle to get the base to $7,300 per pupil in the forthcoming budget. Going above that amount is even more unlikely. What this means is that state shares could slide yet again in FY 2024 and 2025, leading to questions about how this whole thing will work over the long haul.

* * *

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably concluded that this is all very complicated. You’d be right. The system is intricately designed, with a huge number of variables serving as “inputs.” Will it function and serve Ohio well over the long term? Or will it break down under the weight of its expense and complexity? No one knows the answer for sure, but it’s always possible that Ohio will end up with yet another “patchwork” formula—the very thing the proponents of this iteration desperately sought to fix.

Much of the conventional wisdom in education policy is sacrosanct, circulated so long that it is no longer up for debate. From firm beliefs about school funding to assumptions about what drives unequal educational outcomes, our field is rife with outdated ideas long overdue for updates.

In an effort to equip open-minded education policymakers and practitioners with the latest know-how, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute introduces Think Again, a series of policy briefs that presents the most rigorous research and up-to-date knowledge about critical, and often controversial, topics in education. Our Think Again series (hat tip to Foreign Policy magazine for the name) will re-visit multiple presumably “settled” debates, such as the idea that gifted programs are bad for equity, that charter schools drain funding from district schools, and that elementary schools should prioritize reading comprehension “skills.” We plan to release individual installments periodically over the course of this year and the next.

In the inaugural policy brief in the series, “College Admissions Exams Drive Higher Education Inequities,” Fordham’s national research director Adam Tyner tackles the notion that college admissions exams drive racial and socioeconomic inequities in higher education. This claim is at the heart of successful court cases and has helped to feed the movement against standardized testing. Yet Tyner argues that use of the SAT and ACT for college admissions has minimal implications for equity. That’s because they undergo extensive vetting to remove bias; most colleges do not require high scores for entry in the first place; and the other components of the college application packet exhibit similar racial and socioeconomic gaps, on average, as do the tests.

Update

Think Again: Do charter schools drain resources from traditional public schools?

Opponents of public charter schools frequently contend that they drain resources from traditional public schools—a potentially serious charge. But of course, it makes sense that traditional school districts get less money when they enroll fewer students. So from a policymaking perspective, the real question is whether districts’ financial capacity to meet students’ needs is compromised by charters’ presence. This brief addresses that question and several key subquestions by synthesizing the latest and most rigorous research on charters’ fiscal and academic impacts on district schools.

Think Again: Is education funding in America still unequal?

Historically, many American students from poor families have been trapped in sorely underfunded public schools. The conventional wisdom suggests that school funding remains unequal across low- and high-income schools and that equal funding equates to equitable resources for students. This brief challenges the notion that economically disadvantaged students receive less funding than other students, with implications for equalizing classroom resources and optimizing other social policies.

Think Again: Is grade retention bad for kids?

For many years, the conventional wisdom in the field was that grade retention was a bad idea. A 1997 opinion piece in Education Week titled “Grade retention doesn’t work” reflected the prevailing sentiment in the education community and the available research evidence at that time: retained students performed worse than their promoted peers in the years that followed. This brief challenges that notion, based on more recent studies that do a better job of isolating the causal effect of retention.