1. Color me delighted to read this detailed and interesting coverage of Fordham’s recent EdChoice report. It includes in depth analysis of the methodology and findings, an interview with the lead author, national perspective on vouchers and this particular data, and discussion of the ongoing lawsuit here in Ohio looking to kill EdChoice. Awesome! (The 74, 1/24/23)
   
   

2. A big old expansion of EdChoice voucher eligibility—to every student in the state—is among the education agenda items on the minds of some legislators according to Gongwer. More money for charter schools and supports for homeschool families are also on the very long list as budget season gets ready to start. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/23/23)
   
   

3. Also likely to be hotly debated in the General Assembly: An overhaul of K-12 education governance in Ohio, as per Senate Bill 1. That debate—on the merits of moving responsibility for K-12 education oversight from the state board to the executive branch—is already happening in the editorial office of Vindy.com. In fact, the editors seem to be arguing against themselves—in their typical fashion—in this opinion piece. Their conclusion? Who can tell? (Vindy.com, 1/24/23)
   
   

4. One of the bigger difficulties in finding school bus drivers, as I understand it, is that it is a morning and evening job only. School districts don’t give you other work to do in between so the gig appeals to only a small fraction of possible applicants. (Not to mention the clean driving record and CDL certification requirements.) Here is the quick and joyous story of a teacher and coach in Springfield Local Schools in northwest Ohio who got the required licensure and puts on his third hat to fire up a yellow bus whenever he is available and needed to fill in. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 1/23/23)
   
   

5. Here’s a great story about a number of Cincinnati area seniors who were accepted to the University of Cincinnati via a new program aimed to boost the number of Black and Hispanic students, as well as first-generation college-goers, matriculating at UC. Ten of the students also received full ride scholarships along with their acceptances. And while I appreciate the private school student who said she has wanted to be a Bearcat since seventh grade, I also appreciate the Cincinnati City Schools student who noted that this acceptance and scholarship was just one of several she had received with more likely on the way. Keep your options open, kiddo. Find the best fit. (Local 12 News, Cincinnati, 1/23/23) What else is goin’ on at UC these days? CI 3010, a.k.a. Save our Schools: Education Controversy and Reform. Here’s a look at the class as offered every fall semester by the University Honors Program and housed within the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services. Sadly, we do not get to hear what students’ final proposals were this time around nor how they were argued. Shame. (University of Cincinnati blog, 1/23/23)

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In December, state lawmakers rocked the boat during an otherwise sleepy lame duck session by moving forward with a proposal to significantly overhaul Ohio’s education governance structure. Although the measure ultimately stalled, proponents vowed to try again, and in the early weeks of January, they kept their word.

Senate Bill 1 makes two significant changes to current law. First, it replaces the current Ohio Department of Education (ODE) with a new agency, the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW). The new DEW would be run by a director appointed by the governor, and would consist of two divisions—one focused on primary and secondary education and the other on career-technical education—each headed by deputy directors who are appointed by the director. All three positions would be selected with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Second, the bill transfers the vast majority of Ohio’s day-to-day education decision-making power to the DEW. Right now, ODE is overseen by a state superintendent who answers to the state board, a nineteen-member body comprised of both elected and appointed members. However, under SB 1, the overwhelming majority of powers and duties related to primary, secondary, special, and career-technical education would be transferred to the DEW, which would also become Ohio’s “state education agency” under federal law. The state board and the state superintendent would still be responsible for executing some administrative functions, like the adoption of requirements for educator licensure, disciplinary actions, and school district territory transfer determinations.

If this bill passes, education governance in Ohio will be vastly different than it has been in years past—and that’s likely a good thing. Here are three reasons why.

1. The state board doesn’t focus on the right things.

Under current law, the state board has a host of responsibilities. One of the most important is its obligation to “exercise leadership in the improvement of public education in the state.” This has become especially crucial in the wake of the pandemic, during which hundreds of thousands of Ohio students fell behind academically. Black and Hispanic students, those with special needs, and children from low-income backgrounds have been hit the hardest.

Given its mandate to lead the way on education improvements, one might assume that the state board has been using its platform and powers to spotlight learning loss, highlight the pandemic’s outsized impacts on underserved communities, and strategize about how best to address the crisis. But a look at materials from board meetings held in 2022 reveals very few planned discussions about Covid learning loss or state efforts to address it. That doesn’t mean these things didn’t come up during meetings, of course. But they weren’t the headlining discussion topic they deserved to be, particularly in light of state and national testing results that indicate some pretty serious academic wreckage.  

The same is true for the billions of Covid relief funding that Ohio and its schools have received from the federal government. According to state law, the board is responsible for supervising the “allocation and distribution of all state and federal funds for public school education.” That includes developing “a standard of financial reporting” for districts and schools so that their financial information and budgets are “available to the public in a format understandable by the average citizen.” Although recent state board meetings have included discussions about state and district spending of Covid relief funds, the board has never called on ODE or district boards to transparently track and report how they’re spending hundreds of millions of federal dollars. That’s a problem.

To be fair to the board, some of their work has focused on the right things. Last spring, they did a solid job of ironing out the details of a state report card overhaul. And in recent meetings, they’ve tried to focus on workforce readiness and the rising importance of career-technical education. But for the most part, the board is so busy miring itself in controversy and engaging in “psychological games” and public backbiting that it isn’t doing the work it should be. Laura Hancock, writing for Cleveland.com, said it best: “The board spends significant portions of time in confusion and arguing over parliamentary process. The board is ideologically divided and spends hours arguing over resolutions that don’t directly affect student achievement, even though Ohio kids are behind because of the pandemic.”

2. The state board has a history of lowering expectations.

Research indicates that teacher expectations—like whether a teacher thinks a student is capable of earning a college degree—can influence student performance. College completion rates are “systematically higher” for students who have teachers with higher expectations, and a Fordham-commissioned study published last year indicates that teacher expectations have a positive effect on long-term outcomes regardless of if students attend a traditional district, charter, or private school.

Whether teachers have high expectations of their students depends on a variety of factors. Education policy might not immediately come to mind as one of those factors, but it plays an important role. When high expectations are enshrined in law, teachers and schools that may have otherwise given in to the soft bigotry of low expectations are instead required to strive toward a higher standard. It’s not a perfect system, obviously, but it can positively impact students. That’s why it’s so worrisome that the state board has a history of lowering expectations.

Consider the graduation requirements debacle that plagued Ohio for years. In the fall of 2016, some district leaders warned of a coming “graduation apocalypse” thanks to a new set of requirements that thoughtfully and purposely raised the bar for students. By the spring of 2017, the state board was advocating for a set of alternative requirements that would allow students to earn a diploma based on things like attendance, capstone projects, and volunteer hours—measures that have little to do with the knowledge and skills that most colleges and employers are looking for, and that would likely result in students earning meaningless diplomas. Despite a lack of data on how many students needed an alternative pathway, and the fact that such low expectations created serious equity issues, the state board asked the legislature in 2018 to extend the softened graduation requirements to the classes of 2019 and 2020. Fortunately, the legislature didn’t follow through with the board’s recommendations. But the episode is an important illustration of how the board has openly sought to water down academic standards.

Ohio’s younger students haven’t been spared the board’s low expectations, either. At its most recent November meeting, the board voted to recommend that the General Assembly repeal the retention provision of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. In its resolution, the board claimed that “mandating third grade retention had not achieved the desired result” in Ohio. But that’s highly questionable. In fact, pre-pandemic trends in third grade English language arts state test scores show an uptick in proficiency rates and a substantial decline in the number of students who score at the lowest achievement level—an important data point to consider, as the policy was intended to focus on struggling readers. Rather than seeking to maintain a high standard for early literacy, the board has planted a flag for low expectations.

3. The state board doesn’t act with urgency.

One of the most persistent criticisms of the board is that it takes far too long to do pretty much everything. Take the aforementioned graduation requirements issue, for example. Throughout 2018, state board members complained about “inaction” from state lawmakers in identifying a permanent solution to the supposed problem that students were struggling to earn the number of end-of-course exam points required by law for a diploma. And yet in an ironic—and supremely hypocritical—twist, it was the state board that was legally responsible for setting the number of end-of-course points. If board members thought the required number was too high, they had the power to change it. But they didn’t. Instead, they abdicated their responsibility for nearly a year and then accused the legislature of being slow to act. 

The most obvious example is the seemingly interminable search for a permanent state superintendent, which has dragged on for over a year and a half now. It’s important to acknowledge that the extended search isn’t entirely the fault of the board. But the board isn’t free of blame, either. Discord and political infighting among members have certainly slowed the process. (“You’ve got a bunch of factions,” Senator Andy Brenner told the Columbus Dispatch in October. “That’s really what led to the delay in the superintendent search.”) In mid-December, rather than vote to hire a search firm to find a state superintendent, board members decided to postpone the decision “amid legislative uncertainty” about their future. Ironically, one of the chief reasons such legislative uncertainty exists is because they have a longstanding habit of postponing decisions.

***

If SB 1 makes it through both chambers and is signed into law, it will change Ohio education governance as we know it. But change isn’t always a bad thing. For years, the state board of education has failed to focus on academic growth and achievement, refused to uphold high expectations for students, and neglected to act with urgency. Instead, it’s become consumed with political infighting and controversy. Ohio schools and students deserve educational leadership that acts quickly and efficiently in their best interest. Right now, they don’t have it. SB 1 could change that.

1. Despite the somewhat-traditional National School Choice Week snowfall, nearly 1,000 people attended the Northwest Ohio School Choice Fair at Lourdes University yesterday. Representatives from many K-8 schools were present to make their case to families, as well as folks providing information on homeschooling and Ohio’s five voucher programs. While some of the kiddos quoted here were perhaps less than thrilled by the day’s activities, the parents were all in the right frame of mind and, even if they do not choose to change schools or school types, likely got a lot of valuable information no matter what. This is the way, folks. (Toledo Blade, 1/22/23)
   
   

2. The principal of Horizon Science Academy seems skeptical of Dayton City Schools’ new plans to improve student transportation. And who can blame her? She’s got her own stories, which are compelling and are recounted in this piece. But I think this quote from the district supe (which was not part of the coverage we looked at on Friday, I note), says even more: “In previous years, an attendance bonus was used as an effort to improve driver attendance. Although it was stopped because the results were not significantly different, the district is hopeful a new bonus will help improve driver attendance.” The clear lesson here is that hope does indeed spring eternal…for some folks. (WHIO-TV, Dayton, 1/20/23)
   
   

3. Another lesson to learn from the elected members of Dayton City Schools’ board: You gotta spend money to make money. The budget to renovate the district’s Welcome Stadium nearly doubled last week as the elected board approved adding another $9.25 million in spending to the project. They note in their justification comments that it’s federal Covid-relief funds they are tossing into that particular money pit and that somehow they’re predicting to make $150 to $300K in profits every year by renting it out to other groups for events…as soon as it’s done. (Dayton Daily News, 1/20/23)
   
   

4. Finally today, here’s some evidence that one of Akron City Schools’ career academies is working somewhat like it’s supposed to. That is, the “applied engineering” pathway has actually worked to get at least one student to pursue welding. Mind you, that’s not how the academy system is designed/promised by the district to work. But sometimes, miracles happen despite the foibles of mere mortals. (Akron Beacon Journal, 1/20/23)

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“Stocktaking” of issues facing all public schools

Bellwether this week released a new report—first of a semi-annual series—that aims to find common ground among all public schools. Analysts look at six issues—including enrollment, achievement, and discipline—that both district and charter schools across the nation are dealing with in the wake of pandemic disruptions. Their hope is to help educators and school leaders “establish a common fact base” around the issues as a basic step toward navigating through them.

Busing improvements happening in Columbus?

Elected school board members overseeing Columbus City Schools were told by transportation officials this week that changes to bus routing and assignments implemented at the start of January were working to improve coverage of routes and to help students get to and from school daily. This positive assessment comes despite the fact that the transportation help line continues to receive over 1,000 calls a day from parents with questions and concerns.

Busing improvements on the way in Dayton?

Meanwhile, elected school board members overseeing Dayton City Schools voted this week to approve three new proposals aimed at improving long-troubled busing service provided by the district. They are: Hiring a transportation director (filling a post vacant since August), bonus incentives for drivers based on attendance, and green-lighting a new transportation hub (to be operational near the end of 2023).

Synergy between schools and sponsors

A new report from the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice at Tulane University indicates that prospective charter school operators look for authorizers that share their values and goals. Using best practices in equity policies as an indicator, analysts found that authorizers with clear commitments to equity were more likely to receive applications from schools with similar aspirations than were authorizers more focused on other goals. The full report is here. Interesting stuff.

National School Choice Week in Ohio

National School Choice Week 2023 begins Sunday! Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Lt. Governor Jon Husted issued a formal recognition of the celebration earlier this week. Among many events going on in Ohio and across the country next week is the fifth annual Northwest Ohio School Fair, happening in Sylvania on Sunday afternoon.

*****

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Editor’s note: This essay was part of an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that is 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.

The idea for Harlem Academy was borne from an educational needs assessment I worked on as a graduate student in 2001. Parents and community leaders were frustrated by the lack of educational opportunities for promising, low-income children in Harlem and its surrounding communities. So in 2004, we opened an independent school to fill that gap.

Unfortunately, in the decades since that initial research project, the need has not dimmed, and Black and Latino students remain severely underrepresented within the city’s coveted Gifted and Talented (G&T)program.

Meanwhile, at Harlem Academy, we’ve seen first-hand the impact of a rigorous academic program on a child’s trajectory. Our students enter with median baseline scores in the 74th percentile, a level that would generally miss the mark for gifted admissions. By eighth grade, their median scores reach the 90th percentile, achievement that opens a door to top secondary schools and ultimately to college. Among the students in our four most recent classes, 98 percent went on to four-year colleges, including Carnegie Mellon, Howard, NYU, Princeton, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Yale.

Knowing the life-changing impact of these opportunities, I was enthusiastic when Mayor Adams announced the expansion of the G&T program in New York City. This was a direct reversal of his predecessor’s flawed plan to end the program because of its persistent inequities. Adams recognized that eliminating the program would not solve the problem of segregation in New York City; higher-income families would simply find other options, while yet another door would close for everyone else.

The mayor’s big-picture goal of expanded access to G&T and his specific strategies for achieving it are a step in the right direction: more seats in kindergarten, a new third grade entry point in every district, and a shift away from sole reliance on an IQ test for admission. Now, kindergartners are nominated by their preschool teachers or interviewed by the city’s Department of Education staff, and the top 10 percent of second graders based on their performance in core subjects from each school is invited to apply to the third-grade G&T program.

As the administration continues to develop its policy, here are a few points I hope the mayor considers:

• Use a variety of tools for identifying students who could benefit from G&T programs. The city has effectively traded one skewed tool (an IQ test) for another (teacher recommendations or grades). Knowing that any given measure is somewhat flawed, the city should strive to mitigate bias through some combination that goes beyond a singular teacher’s assessment of performance and potential. At Harlem Academy, we hold playgroups, collect recommendations, meet with families, and administer a standardized assessment to get a sense of the whole child. It may be too expensive for the city to do everything we can as a small independent school, but the mayor would better meet his goal of equity if he found a way to incorporate multiple measures of potential, and to apply them universally to all students in the system.

• Keep standardized tests in the mix. Standardized tests often favor higher-income students who are more likely to be prepared for them—both formally and informally. At the same time, standardized tests can identify potential a teacher might miss. By comparing students relative to socioeconomic peers, we mitigate income-driven biases while benefiting from the insight gained from using a consistent measure. The city could implement a similar strategy as it hones its admissions protocol.

• Add more opportunities in the city’s lowest-income districts. Even after the mayor added 100 new kindergarten seats, New York City’s highest-income districts still have twice as many gifted programs per kindergartener as the lowest-income districts. (See the New York City Department of Education demographic snapshot for the economic need index and number of kindergartners in each district, and MySchools to filter for the list of kindergarten G&T programs in each district.) For Harlem Academy’s prospective families, our location in Central Harlem and proximity to Washington Heights and the Bronx is a significant draw. Low-income neighborhoods should have at least as many seats as their wealthier counterparts, particularly since the burdens of the additional commute are likely to weigh more heavily on families with fewer resources.

• Don’t ignore middle school. Mayor Adams left the decision as to whether to incorporate selective admissions in middle school to local superintendents, rather than guarantee those spots. Ultimately, this decision will greatly reduce the number of selective middle school programs. As reported in Politico, “Only fifty-nine out of those 478 schools will use grades and test scores to decide who to let in, a 70 percent decrease compared to before the pandemic. Of those, twenty-four will screen all students, while thirty-five will use competitive admissions only for certain programs.” We need to ensure a continuum in services from kindergarten through high school, rather than forcing promising middle schoolers to navigate a gap in programming.

Mayor Adams knows that the need for more opportunities for promising, low-income children in NYC is as urgent as ever, and he’s made some important changes. I hope he continues his efforts to ensure that every child has access to an education that challenges and supports them to realize their fullest potential.

1. The elected leaders of Dayton City Schools finally got some proposals before them this week, intended to address longstanding school transportation issues. Most of them seem pretty far removed from kids/parents/schools/routes, but that didn’t stop the money spigot from being opened to full blast for them all. One of the proposals, a new transportation hub whose putative location was deemed unimportant to include in the coverage, will not be a reality for at least a year and is not, as you might suppose, geared toward getting buses closer to kids. It is, instead, intended to serve a…more basic function, we are told. (Dayton Daily News, 1/19/23)
   
   

2. Personally, I believe that very little good will come of this move—school-based Esports going under the thumb of the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA)—but that’s only because I’ve seen every sequel, prequel, reboot, reimagining, and spinoff of this franchise already. Especially not for the actual participating kids. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/18/23)
   
   

3. I have not talked about the recent goings-on at Akron City Schools (except for the blessed lack of a strike earlier this month) for a number of reasons. Mainly because some of it likely borders on the criminal, and that’s not what Bites are about. But this is: The extreme nitty gritty of life and learning (such as it is) inside Akron City Schools. I won’t comment on the six proposals put forth here as potential ways to lower violence in district schools, which is the point of the piece. But the ways in which both routine (IEP designation of students) and new (Akron’s 100 percent focus on career academy pathways) policies and operations contribute to the ongoing problems are eye- opening. Huge kudos to reporter Doug Livingston for his dogged, detailed digging on the topic. (Akron Beacon Journal, 1/20/23)

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Last fall, Stephen Sawchuk published an Education Week article exploring why “educational equity” had become a “trigger word”—even though the notion has been baked into federal policy for decades. “Equity may be the law,” he wrote, “but we don’t agree on what it means.”

I can understand Sawchuk’s confusion because, properly construed, the call for greater equity can and should command widespread support from Americans across the ideological spectrum. A potentially unifying argument might go something like this:

In a great country like ours, we should aspire for every child to grow up to achieve his or her full potential. Anything less is a waste of talent and a blemish on human dignity and flourishing.

Schools have a particular role to play in helping children achieve their full academic potential, and supporting roles in helping children develop socially, emotionally, artistically, and athletically, as well.

Yet we know that our country is failing to live up to this aspiration because millions of boys and girls are failing to live up to their full potential. And we know that most of the reasons have to do with what happens between conception and kindergarten—that the strains of poverty, family instability, parental substance abuse, and other social ills mean that many children enter schools far behind what their cognitive trajectory otherwise could have been.

We know this in part because of the evidence of achievement gaps that can be measured at school entry, if not before. If we reject the notion that genetic differences drive racial achievement gaps as morally and empirically dubious—which we absolutely should—then the explanation for their existence as early as age five must be differing life circumstances, including the gaping chasms in socioeconomic status and its associated opportunities.

A major focus of “equity work,” then, is to close these gaps in the zero-to-five years—both because it’s the right thing to do, and so that all children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential—cognitively, academically, and otherwise.

This project has tended to be the domain of the political left, with its calls for better pre- and post-natal healthcare; the eradication of environmental pollutants like lead paint; direct financial supports for families with young children, like 2021’s expanded and fully refundable child tax credits; and expanded public support for high quality childcare. Yet the political right has contributions to make, as well, with its calls for greater personal responsibility; greater family stability, especially via married, two-parent families; and for welfare programs that encourage—rather than discourage—marriage and work, which have been shown to lead to better outcomes for kids.

Schools also have a critical role to play, especially at the elementary level, where students are still young enough for a great education to make a significant difference in their academic trajectories. Schools may not be able to overcome all of the damage of poverty, family instability, and their associated ills, but they can do a lot, as we know from the markedly different achievement trajectories of children in the highest-performing high-poverty schools—many of them public charter schools—compared to kids in more typical school settings.

Educational equity, then, means providing children, and especially poor children, with excellence—excellent instruction, excellent curricula, excellent teachers, excellent tutoring, excellent enrichment. Some of that costs more money in high-poverty settings, so yes, educational equity demands that we spend more public dollars on the students who need it most.

The greatest enemy of equity, then, is mediocrity. It’s the everyday bureaucratic dysfunction that remains all too common in American education. It’s the decisions that public officials take that block excellent schools, including excellent public charter schools, from growing or replicating. It’s the inertia that keeps traditional public schools from retaining many of their best young teachers. It’s the refusal to intervene when a principal is not up to the task of creating a culture of excellence.

Note what is not an enemy of equity: excellence. Indeed, far from it—excellence is the antidote to inequity.

—

And yet—back to the puzzle that Sawchuk presented in his article—some “equity advocates” have turned the notion into a “trigger word” by arguing that excellence is indeed the enemy. By their line of thinking, anything that helps a subgroup of children achieve at high levels, or even just celebrates that achievement—such as gifted-and-talented programs, exam schools, or National Merit Scholarships—is at war with equity. These advocates see equity as a zero-sum game. Rather than focus on helping every child achieve his or her potential, potential that inevitably varies from individual to individual, they seek a world in which the outcomes children achieve are closer to equal—even if that equality comes by leveling-down the high achievers.

Needless to say, this conception of equity is highly unpopular, and not just on the political right. As well it should be because it’s also morally bankrupt. It is simply wrong to embrace policies and practices and seek to put a ceiling on any child’s achievement—just as it is wrong to block efforts to get all students to a floor of basic literacy and numeracy.

John Gardner once asked if we can “be equal and excellent too.” The answer is an unequivocal “yes!” And in the domain of racial equity, the way to do that is to ensure that all children, from every racial and ethnic group, get what they need to live up to their full potential. And for high-potential children from underrepresented groups in particular, it means identifying their talent early, cultivating it through gifted-and-talented programs and the like, and keeping them on a trajectory of high achievement all the way through high school and beyond.

It bears repeating: Excellence is not the enemy of equity, it is the antidote to inequity. Equity advocates would do well to keep that in mind.

House Republicans this week introduced a curriculum transparency bill aimed at ensuring parents know what their kids are learning in school, particularly when that includes “divisive concepts” like critical race theory, which has been banned from classrooms or restricted in at least eighteen US states. But even if enacted, the measure won’t have its intended effect. It could even make the problem worse.

The puckishly titled Curriculum Review of Teachings Transparency Act or “CRT Transparency Act” (get it?) would require that schools receiving federal funding post the curriculum in use in elementary and secondary schools on a publicly accessible school or district website. This is an unremarkable demand. As a rule, taxpayers deserve to know how their dollars are being spent, and schools are no exception.

“Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in the classroom,” insists Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) who introduced the bill. “It’s clear bureaucrats and teachers’ unions have no reservations about putting divisive material such as critical race theory in front of our children that seeks to put people in groups based on skin color or gender. The CRT Transparency Act will solve this problem by helping parents get a straight answer about what their children are hearing in school.”

It probably won’t. As a rule, you can learn more about a restaurant you’ve never patronized by reading its menu online than about what’s happening in your child’s classroom through the lens of her school’s “adopted” curriculum. The simple fact is most teachers don’t consistently use their district or school’s officially adopted curriculum when one even exists. Less than 30 percent of the teachers surveyed by the RAND Corporation’s American Educator Panel report using a single published curriculum as written. “The other 70 percent either mostly relied on instructional materials they created themselves, modified more than half of the curriculum materials they used, or cobbled together multiple curricula,” notes RAND’s Julia Kaufman.

Previous studies have shown that nearly every U.S. teacher draws upon “materials I developed and/or selected myself” in teaching English language arts. Only one in four secondary-school social-studies teachers cited resources “provided by my school or district” as comprising the majority of what they use in class on a given day. In one Connecticut school district, a recent external audit discovered that only 20 percent of high schools have a written curriculum at all. The figure for middle schools was even lower.

Moreover, all this curriculum creation and cobbling is not regarded as a flaw, but a feature of classroom practice. Teachers are trained to “differentiate instruction,” adapting or supplementing the textbooks and other materials to make lessons more engaging, accessible, or challenging based on the needs of individual students.

Teachers turning their classrooms into havens for social justice activism and using their professional discretion to indulge their political priors in front of captive audiences of children is not even the worst problem of public education’s impressionistic relationship with curriculum and classroom materials. Multiple studies have shown that when they deviate from adopted curriculum, the materials produced or chosen by teachers are consistently of low quality and rigor. David Steiner, who heads the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, states the matter succinctly: “We have built a system that not only fails to support the sustained use of demanding curriculum—but actively produces powerful disincentives to its use.”

Outsiders assume far more top-down control over classroom content than actually exists. If conservative lawmakers’ primary concern is classroom social justice activism and teachers promoting their politics, the “CRT Transparency Act” might even make worse the problem it seeks to fix, lulling watchdogs into a false sense of security, assuming that knowing the “curriculum” is a sufficient safeguard against controversial content in schools. It’s simply not so.

Editor’s note: This was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Two years ago, students at a charter school in East Los Angeles were learning at 1.5 to two times the pace of their grade level peers around the state, based on three years of standardized test scores. But the California Department of Education labeled the school a “low performer,” which put it at risk of closure. Why? Because California’s method of measuring academic growth was deeply flawed.

I have written before in these pages about the importance of accurate and balanced methods of measuring school quality. In the same spirit, I recommend a new book by Steve Rees and Jill Wynns, Mismeasuring Schools’ Vital Signs: How to Avoid Misunderstanding, Misinterpreting, and Distorting Data.

Wynns spent twenty-four years on the San Francisco school board, while Rees spent just as long running a company that helped school districts measure and report on the quality of their schools. Both have seen their share of mistakes, many of which lead to real pain: teachers reassigned and principals removed based on faulty data; English learners held back from entering the mainstream academic program even after they have become fluent; charter schools closed due to inadequate measurement of growth; even students denied graduation based on flawed interpretation of test results.

Rees and Wynns have now authored a highly readable guide that superintendents, principals, school board members, education reporters, teachers, and advocates can use to avoid these kinds of errors. They underline four flaws that are most common:

Growth versus proficiency

The first is using children’s current test scores—rather than a measure of their academic growth—to judge the quality of schools and teachers. In high poverty schools, students often arrive several years behind grade level. Few of them are “proficient” in math or reading. But too often states and districts give greatest weight to students’ current test scores, not their rate of improvement.

Consider a middle school whose sixth grade students arrived three years behind grade level. If they are only one year behind grade level at the end of sixth grade, that would be spectacular progress. But in California, to use but one example, the school’s academic score would be in one of the two lowest categories.

Apples versus oranges

The second major flaw Rees and Wynns point out is related: When trying to measure academic growth, some states and districts fail to measure the same students over time. Instead, they measure a school or grade level’s average over time. But in a middle school, a third of the students each year are new arrivals, and another third from last year have departed. In four-year high schools, a quarter leave each year, another quarter arrive. So annual school or grade level averages are measuring different kids.

The solution is obvious: Measure the same cohort of students over time, following them from one grade level to the next. Even better, remove from your measure students who have departed or recently arrived at the school.

Ignoring the imprecision of test results

The third common flaw is failure to acknowledge the imprecision of test scores. “When we test kids, we’re trying to gather evidence of something that exists out of sight, somewhere between their ears,” Rees and Wynns write. “Whatever their test scores reveal, it can only be an estimate of what they know.”

Standardized tests are often used to rate children—typically into four categories, which might be summarized as advanced, proficient, needing improvement, and far behind grade level. But imprecision means some of these classifications are dubious. “The major test publishers include what they call classification error rates in their technical manuals,” the authors explain. “It is common to find a 25–30 percent classification error rate in the middle bands of a range of test scores—and that’s for a standardized assessment with forty-five to sixty-five questions.”

“In Texas, Illinois, Maryland, California, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and many other states,” they add, “the parent reports make no mention of imprecision.” Yet these reports tell parents whether a child is on grade level. Some states use a standardized test called the Smarter Balance Assessment. Its “technical manual reveals that the classification accuracy rate in these middle two bands (Levels 2 and 3) is about 70 percent. In other words, just seven out of every ten kids whose scores land in the middle two bands will be classified correctly as having either met the standard or scored below the standard.” 

Lack of context

The fourth major flaw Rees and Wynns discuss is “’disregarding context when analyzing gaps in achievement.” Often, a school is compared to the statewide average, when its students are anything but average. They might be affluent, or poor, or recent immigrants. If so, do we learn anything about the quality of their school by comparing them to a state average?

Rees and Wynns urge school and district leaders to compare their students to schools or districts with demographically similar children. “If you can identify other schools with kids very much like your own who are enjoying success where your students are lagging, you can call the site or district leaders and see how their approach to teaching reading differs from your own,” they suggest. “That last step, compare-and-contrast with colleagues who are teaching students very similar to your own, is where your analytic investment will pay off.”

The authors point a finger of blame at schools of education, which rarely teach future teachers or administrators about data, assessment, or statistics. “Schools of education simply must stop sending data- and assessment-illiterate educators into the field,” they declare.

They also urge state departments of education to disclose the imprecision of test scores whenever they report results, to do more to communicate the meaning of those results, and to create help desks that district and school leaders can turn to with data and assessment questions.

Perhaps their most novel recommendation is that we begin measuring “opportunities to learn,” to draw attention to yawning gaps. Some districts assign students to the school closest to their home, for instance, while others offer significant choices—hence greater opportunity. Most districts give teachers with seniority more ability to choose their schools, leaving the schools in low-income neighborhoods to settle for rookie teachers or those no one else wants—creating a huge opportunity gap for low-income students. Some schools offer the opportunity to take more advanced courses or more career-oriented courses.

A few districts work hard to match their supply of courses and schools to what students and their families want, but most don’t. The result: yet another opportunity gap. “If 90 percent of your sections are dedicated to college-level course work, and 50 percent of your graduating seniors have chosen a path to the workforce or the military, then your master schedule constrains the opportunities to learn that your students care most about,” the book explains. “Work force prep courses and multiple pathways toward work-related professions would be a needed addition for that school. The question for those leading or governing districts is how actively you listen to students when they tell you what future they’re aiming for, and the extent to which you direct your budget and staff to meet their desires.”

A brief article cannot begin to suggest the depth and detail the authors plumb in this volume. In addition, every chapter of Mismeasuring Schools’ Vital Signs includes questions people can ask to uncover data and measurement problems—and methods to solve them—in their own districts and schools. There is even a website that extends the book, which includes interactive data visualizations and resources, such as a glossary of statistical terms and a “visual glossary” showing the types of charts and graphs you can use to communicate meaningful data. There’s an old saying in the management world: What gets measured gets done. As Rees and Wynns demonstrate, in public education we too often measure the wrong things in the wrong ways. If we’re going to improve the lives of children, we have to learn how to measure what matters, accurately, and then understand what it means. Mismeasuring Schools’ Vital Signs is a good place to start.

Editor’s note: This was first published in The 74.

Editor’s note: On November 17, 2022, seventeen members of the National Working Group on Advanced Education met for its third meeting in Indianapolis. (The first was on March 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C., and the second was on June 29, 2022, and held virtually.) The following is a summary of the discussion, with particular focus on integrating and reconciling excellence and equity, aligning advanced programs from kindergarten through twelfth grade, removing problematic state policy barriers, improving teacher training and selection, and the proper roles of high schools and higher education.

Integrating equity and excellence:

How do we integrate concepts of equity with excellence so that the narrative also encompasses the principle of quality education for all? What is the best way, for example, to conceptualize programs for advanced learners that signals more equity and inclusivity and is more politically palatable? What is the best language to use? In particular, what are alternatives to the terms “gifted education,” “ability grouping,” and “tracking”?

• We should not set up excellence and equity as a dichotomy. Great practice has to be and can be both.
• What equity and excellence in gifted education is and what it is not1 :
  • It is not about “status” or sacrificing the needs of one group of students for another or providing the same services to all. It is meeting the needs of all students.
  • It is not seeing students as at-risk. It is seeing students as at-potential.
  • It is not having multiple hoops to show a student’s perfection at everything. It is about multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their potential.
  • It is not based on a national comparison for local programs. It is based on local context and data.
  • It is not only recognizing students who come with easily recognizable gifted and talents. It is about being a talent scout and intentionally creating environments to recognize and develop talents not yet tapped.
• Be proactive to promote culturally responsive attitudes, access, assessments, and accommodations that create the environment for excellence, regardless of background.
• As much as possible, we should provide a “continuum of services,” individualized to each student, rather than thinking of children as either gifted or not.
• Change the terminology around “gifted education” to something like “advanced education,” “education for high achievers,” or “advanced learning opportunities.”
• “Grouping” or “equitable grouping” is a more accurate term than “tracking,” since the former imply flexibility, which is key to ensuring that these programs do not reinforce social inequities as tracking once did.
• Ideally, we’ll get to a point where we can individualize and personalize instruction, and in doing so, challenge all kids. But this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and until then, we need to acknowledge that advanced learning opportunities are the best way to meet the needs of advanced students. Grouping is also of minimal effectiveness without altering the complexity and pace of the curriculum, as well as methods of teaching. We must minimize making incorrect selections for these groupings, and make them flexible with on-ramps and, where appropriate, off-ramps.
• Building- and district-level leadership is very significant. If principals and district leaders believe that it’s possible to achieve both excellence and equity, then it’s possible.

Aligning advanced education from K through 12:

How can districts make sure advanced education services are well aligned across K–12 (or even pre-K–12), to ensure a robust, diverse pipeline into advanced courses in high school? What should on-ramps and off-ramps look like? As children progress through the grade levels, how do issues around identification and gatekeeping change? How important is it, for example, at different grade levels for districts to use measures beyond achievement tests when identifying students for these services or advanced courses, particularly in schools with high populations of low-income students and those from underrepresented racial groups? How can systems make sure students don’t encounter duplicative content or, conversely, significant gaps?

• There is a disconnect between the advanced learning services offered in elementary school, middle school, and high school. For better or worse, elementary gifted programs focus more on “critical thinking” and enrichment, while middle and high school advanced courses are usually subject-specific. The result is the lack of a continuous pipeline of learning for advanced students, and a lot of confusion for parents.
• To fix this, we need clear goals that reach and coordinate services across the levels. Among those should be expanding the pipeline of kids prepared for advanced courses in middle school and high school. That’s going to mean different programming in elementary school especially—gifted programs to boost critical thinking related to major subject areas and equitable opportunities for academic, subject-specific acceleration. A good solution is for school districts to hire K–12 coordinators of advanced learning opportunities to manage articulation between the levels.
• The “rules for getting in” are also inconsistent, so children may “qualify” for advanced programming at one level but not at the next, or qualify at a level for which they are not well prepared because they didn’t qualify for (or it didn’t exist or have room for them) at the previous level.
• High schools especially tend to put up barriers, such as not allowing middle school students to take high school level classes early or receive credit for such courses, during the transition from middle to high school, stemming in part from them having no control over the content and instruction at the middle schools that feed them. This can lead to both blocking kids from services and opportunities for which their qualified. On the other hand, the trend toward open enrollment for AP classes can result in encouraging kids to take AP and other advanced classes who are ill prepared to succeed in them.
• Some high schools may need to rely on outside resources for advanced classes, such as arrangements with local community colleges and/or online courses, but these can present logistical and other challenges for an individual high school to manage in the absence of state dual enrollment policies. But it can and does work in places, and can be a good option for some districts. It would also help many administrators if they had models of schools that have successfully integrated outside resources.
• Districts should automatically enroll gifted kids from elementary school into advanced courses in middle school and high school, as long as the courses represent their strengths and interests, and if students are demonstrating sufficient levels of performance. One caveat is the transition from enrichment classes to accelerative options, which might require some kind of re-evaluation of student preparedness.
• If a student is already identified for gifted or advanced education services, then the hoops to be accelerated should not be many. And for those not officially identified, schools should embrace a philosophy of rigor and challenge and allow promising motivated students to be accelerated. Once students, particularly under-represented groups, are accelerated and experience success, the bar is raised and they realize they are more capable than they realized.
• Schools need to do a better job of showcasing their successes of students in advanced courses, particularly under-represented groups and in Title I schools. School leaders should institute a student ambassador program as part of the advanced education services pipeline, where high school students are sharing about their experiences and pathways with middle schoolers, and middle schoolers with elementary school students. Many kids from under-represented groups and their parents do not know about the diverse options available, and educators have not effectively invited them into the spaces and conversations where they can learn or be influenced and supported to stretch. This is where peer-to-peer ambassador efforts can help. Youth listen to youth.

State policy barriers:

Which state policies impede this agenda? Regarding accountability and incentives, for example, if a superintendent or principal knows they will receive no “credit” for increasing advanced achievement, it may be rational for them to eschew advanced education. What else might be getting in the way?

Barriers that need to be removed:

• State policies are often used as an excuse to limit options for gifted students. People hide behind state policies as a reason to not accept certain proposals. One example is not giving “graduation credit” for high school level courses taken before entering high school. The kid may get “placement credit” but not “Carnegie unit” credit nor count coursework towards satisfying the state requirement for “four years of high school math.”
• Age-based placement is a problem. Districts and states shouldn’t impede early entrance to schooling, nor early entrance to middle schools or high schools. If a student is ready for instruction at a higher grade level—in all subjects or individual subjects—that student should not be prohibited from receiving it because of age.

Proactive steps states should take:

• State accountability policies must balance academic growth and moving students beyond proficiency. This advances both equity and excellence, as it ensures schools “credit” is given when low achievers make good progress, as well as when schools enable students who are already “proficient” to forge ahead further.
• States should create systems to support partnerships between advanced education programs and the entire school community to provide services and interventions for students who need advanced learning beyond the regular curriculum.
• States should mandate:
  • Local, school-based norms for identifying students for advanced programs, as opposed to district-based norms that can under-identify students from marginalized backgrounds.
  • Access to acceleration—both grade acceleration and subject-specific acceleration—where appropriate.
  • The articulation or procedures of acceleration—including how students are identified, how they’re enrolled, how the programs work, and the alignment between elementary, middle, and high school (including credits, school report cards, and funding).
  • Data collection, reporting, and accountability (number of identified kids, by demographic subgroup).
• States should enable schools to take advantage of online options for offering AP and other advanced coursework.
• We don’t know a lot about “effective” funding systems for gifted education; they vary dramatically. Competitive grants probably don’t do much good if they are the sole source, but are OK when used as a supplement to set the base funding amount. This should be monitored, though, to make sure the money is spent on advanced learning opportunities.

Teacher training and selection:

What content should be covered in training programs for teachers of advanced students? How does that vary by elementary/middle/high school? What are specific examples of effective training programs and/or textbooks for teachers of advanced students? Should schools/districts select teachers who themselves were advanced learners to teach advanced students?

• Providing in-service professional learning opportunities is incredibly important. High-quality versions, that teach educators how to make their instruction culturally responsive, should be required for teachers working with gifted kids, but everyone should be invited.
• There is a difference between the training needs and knowledge and skill requirements of teachers within advanced education programs and that of coordinators of advanced education programs, and their training should reflect their different needs. Teachers who are going to specialize in advanced opportunities, and especially in administrating such services, should also have coursework or a certificate.
• Many gifted-education coordinators who take on the role of gifted education in their school have never been exposed to gifted education courses or training. That’s a problem.
• Most states offer licensure or certificates in gifted education, but they usually aren’t required. And very few states have pre-service requirements for general education teachers.
• We can learn a lot about professional learning and support from the AP and IB programs.
• There is a federal requirement in ESSA that states provide gifted training to teachers and other school leaders. This ought to be enforced, but it isn’t.
• Funding for better training seems to work, as states with more and better funding are more likely to have licensure programs.
• Schools of education must stop promoting the ideas that ability grouping doesn’t work, acceleration doesn’t work, and meeting the needs of advanced learners is racist. None of this is true. Instead, the focus should be on providing equitable access to acceleration and other advanced learning opportunities.
• Teacher preparation programs should promote clear learning experiences for pre-service teachers focused on gifted education, as well as the importance of evidence-based concepts versus myths.

The roles of high schools and higher education:

What role should selective and specialized high schools play in districts’ playbook of programs, as well as their recruitment and retention of low-income students and those from racially underrepresented groups? To what degree can and should districts link their high school programming to higher education goals and outcomes? What role should institutions of higher education play in this agenda? Should they partner with districts in ways that provide dual enrollment or credentialing opportunities? And do the answers to these questions change for low-income students and those from racially underrepresented groups?

• Call high schools designed for advanced students “selective enrollment” or “specialized” high schools,” not “exam schools.”
• Specialized or selective enrollment high schools can act as one arrow among many in the quiver of programming and services for advanced students.
• To be justified, these schools should offer more than just a chance to join a select group of peers—they must offer programming that is not available at students’ base high schools.
• Admission should be based on more than an exam.
• These schools should be conceptualized as capstones of a continuum of services in K–12.
• Existing problems with selective high schools include a lack of transparency in admissions procedures, as well as rationing, with there not being enough spots. Too many kids who are eligible or could benefit don’t get into them. So districts should work to build a large, diverse pipeline into these schools. Districts that don’t have any should create them, and those that have had to resort to rationing should create additional schools, as well as “schools within schools” and honors-track alternatives.
• Selective high schools should marry the way the instruction is structured with the background and prior preparation of students who are admitted. In other words, they should be ready to scaffold supports for kids who might be underprepared and embed culturally-responsive policies and practices.
• Dual enrollment is often a good thing, but there must be much greater collaboration between the state and individual districts. And the state ought to lead to ensure that program benefits are being equitably distributed and that offerings in each district are high quality. For example, the credits awarded by a community college via dual credit or early college need to be transferrable to four-year colleges.
• Right now, lots of high school kids are ready for higher education, but there are still too many barriers. Access to dual-enrollment courses is sometimes restricted to eleventh and twelfth graders‚ for example. Scrap senseless polices such as these and broaden access in ways that maintain program quality.
• There is a quality control concern with dual enrollment, but one way to mitigate this is to select classes for which colleges grant credit. Steer kids toward classes that will transfer to four-year colleges. That’s built-in quality control. It’s also best if students can take classes directly from college professors and—if possible—in person on the college campus itself. Advising and counseling are also important.

Areas ripe for additional research:

• Out of school activities, parent-pay tutoring, and their impacts on achievement.
• Why are so many more kids above grade level in English language arts versus math? And what intentional efforts are being made to recruit and retain underrepresented groups to enroll in advanced English language arts and math?
• Do the attributes of effective teachers for advanced students from underrepresented groups differ from those for effective teachers of advanced students writ-large? For example, are teachers who themselves were academically high achieving in high school or college more effective with advanced students?

• 1Sourcing primarily from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s “Critical actions to realize equity and excellence in gifted education: Changing mindsets, policies, and practices.”