1. The elected school board of Reynoldsburg City Schools has come up with a plan to end remote learning (no, not THAT remote learning) and restore busing to its students. It involves non-optional schedule changes to the start and end times every day at seven district school buildings, including PreK services. District teachers have raised objections right out of the gate. (10TV News, Columbus, 11/15/22) Meanwhile, in Columbus City Schools, leaders are opting for a scorched earth money approach to their endless busing problems. Despite spending millions on a new routing software, they are going to pay more to bring back the old one (quality dubious, methinks) and restart the whole process so that both can “work together” on new routes. District transpo officials tell us that every bus route for every student will change; charter, district, private, STEM students alike. Everyone. And as to the bell schedule changes which they say are vital to the plan, those are being requested (oh so politely and optionally, I assume) of charter schools only. Who knows what will happen to the plan if those schools of choice politely decline to change. All of this mishegas is underway right now, to be finalized and communicated to families over the various holidays ahead. It will be rolled out dark and early on the morning of January 3, 2023, the first day back after 10 days of Christmas break. Happy Freakin’ New Year! (Columbus Dispatch, 11/14/22) Somehow, despite the cumulative ridiculousness of all of the above, the elected board members of Columbus City Schools say they are “confident” these fixes will solve the problem, at least in the short term. (I suppose they have to say that when there’s an open mic around, don’t they?) At their meeting last night, our public servants discussed longer-term solutions. It is unsurprising but still sad (and quite ironic, given the meeting location), that their immediate thoughts centered around how to curtail various school choice options which are problematic to the easy and hassle free conduct of their ONE JOB. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/16/22)
   
   

2. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of new ed bills received their first hearings in both branches of the legislature yesterday. Only one resulted in big screamy front page headlines. This one. Quelle surprise. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/15/22)
   
   

3. Back in the real world, the CEO of Battelle published an op-ed in the Dispatch this week, touting the history of the Ohio STEM Learning Network, which grew out of the creation of the state’s first independent STEM school (those guys, again?!), included big boosts to the PAST Foundation and KIPP Columbus, expanded to other states, and has now culminated in the connection of over 1.4 million students with high quality STEM opportunities. Nice. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/15/22)
   
   

4. In the real real world, here’s a nice profile of the life and work of Newark charter school leader Gisele James. (Newark Advocate, 11/14/22)

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In the education world, the last couple months have been awash in news and commentary about sagging student achievement in the wake of the pandemic. The story is no different in Ohio, where students have also lost significant ground compared to pre-pandemic cohorts. Proficiency rates on Ohio’s high school algebra exam, for example, are down from 61 to 49 percent between 2018–19 and 2021–22. For economically disadvantaged students, proficiency rates on this exam decreased from 42 to 30 percent; for Black students, rates slid from 30 to just 19 percent. It’s not just algebra, either. State test results are troubling in other grades and subjects, too, and recently released national assessment data likewise show serious academic decline.

Given these data, it might surprise you to learn that Ohio students crushed the state’s annual achievement goals that are set forth in its federally-required ESSA Plan. The figures below show the performance index scores of the various subgroups whose achievement must be “disaggregated” under federal and state law. The top chart shows that every subgroup topped the state’s achievement goal in English language arts (ELA)—in some cases by fairly wide margins. For example, the ELA performance index score of economically disadvantaged students was 69.2 versus a goal of 64.2. In math, performance against goals was slightly less impressive, but every subgroup, except for students with disabilities, beat its goal. 

Figure 1: ELA (top) and math (bottom) performance index scores—actual versus goal—in 2021–22 by subgroup

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What gives?

The backstory—and it gets into the weeds—is this. Federal law requires states to establish “ambitious” yearly achievement targets, but in reality, states can set their expectations just about wherever they’d like. Earlier this year, the Ohio Department of Education amended the state’s goals. Recognizing pandemic learning losses, the department slashed the subgroup goals by anywhere from 5 to 26 points, depending on subject and student group. For instance, the department’s ELA goal for economically disadvantaged students was initially an index score of 77.3 for 2021–22, but that number was adjusted to 64.2—a 13-point cut.

Some downshift was probably sensible, but the department went too far in dampening expectations. One issue is that department relied on 2020–21 performance index scores to create a baseline—and those scores were depressed not just from learning loss, but also because of higher numbers of untested students.[1] Fewer students took state exams that year, and untested students count as zeros in the performance index calculations. This artificial “deflation” doesn’t seem to have been accounted for. In fact, economically disadvantaged students could have likely met the state’s 2021–22 goal simply by virtue of greater test participation, not any real academic improvement.

The department might be forgiven for setting extremely modest goals for 2021–22. But what is less pardonable are persistently low expectations for achievement that continue well into the future. Table 1 shows that Ohio doesn’t expect economically disadvantaged students to perform on par with their pre-pandemic counterparts until 2027–28. That’s an inadequate expectation, especially in ELA where the losses have been less severe, rebound has been more evident, and some experts are predicting that full recovery could occur within three years (math may take longer). This goal could be seen as another example of the oft-discussed “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Table 1: Ohio’s amended ELA performance index goals for economically disadvantaged students

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Figure 2 shows that such mediocre goals aren’t limited to economically disadvantaged students, but exist for other groups, as well. These charts display the state’s 2024–25 achievement goals versus the pre-pandemic performance index scores of each subgroup. There is no instance in which the state expects a subgroup to meet pre-pandemic achievement levels by this year, and for some subgroups, the goal is quite a bit lower. For example, by 2024–25, Black students are expected to post an ELA index score of only 61.9, even though their pre-pandemic peers scored 67.3.

Figure 2: ELA (top) and math (bottom) performance index scores—actual in 2018–19 versus 2024–25 goal—by subgroup

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Setting low achievement goals has implications for both policy and practice. For one, these goals are used in Ohio’s report card system, as schools’ Gap Closing ratings are based in part on whether subgroups achieve these targets. One consequence of softening targets in 2021–22 was that most schools received rosy Gap Closing ratings—more than 60 percent received four or five stars—even at a time when students were struggling with serious learning loss. Such ratings could be misleading the public into thinking that schools are narrowing gaps when, in fact, they are widening.

Perhaps more important is what these goals communicate to schools. They seem to say “it’s OK for learning losses to persist well into the second half of this decade.” That message is exactly the wrong one for state leaders to send Ohio schools. Instead, the state’s achievement goals should be incentivizing schools to go above and beyond the status quo on behalf of students who, by no fault of their own, lost significant ground during the pandemic.  

In a recent piece, my Fordham colleagues Amber Northern and David Griffith write, “If we’re serious about getting our students back on track, we must be even more serious about getting our expectations for them back on track.” They are right. We do need to get back to having high expectations for all Ohio students.

The department should scrap these “pandemic-adjusted” goals and start fresh, with an eye towards full recovery by 2024–25. Some may think that’s too ambitious. Some might worry about dinging schools’ ratings. Perhaps Ohio’s amended goals are already locked in with the feds (it’s not clear if they’ve been approved). If that’s the case, fine. Let’s create a set of “real” achievement goals that Ohio’s leaders and schools can get behind. But fears and bureaucracy shouldn’t stop us from setting aspirational targets that motivate schools to achieve something big for Ohio students.

In 2010, a group of researchers from the World Bank and the Central Bank of Brazil began to study the efficacy of a financial education program delivered to high schoolers in Brazil that aimed to help young people make good decisions around saving, borrowing, and credit usage. Their first report, in 2016, looked at short-term findings of the randomized control study and found decidedly mixed outcomes. A newly-published follow up looks at the students’ financial situations years later and finds that many of its young subjects have become more money wise in the longer run.

The experiment was conducted in 2010 and 2011 and included 25,000 students in 892 schools across six Brazilian states. Half the schools were randomly selected to receive teacher training and financial education textbooks. The treatment was integrated into the classroom curricula of math, science, history, and Portuguese during students’ last two years of high school. Control group schools did not receive the new training or materials, nor was any other formal financial education provided.

In their earlier analysis, just after high school graduation, researchers found that the program led to increased financial knowledge among treatment group students, as well as positive effects on attitudes toward savings, self-reported saving up for purchases, money management, and budgeting. On the other hand, treatment students reported a significantly greater use of expensive financial products such as credit cards, as well as greater likelihood of being behind on credit repayments than their control group peers. These differences were visible even before they had left high school. The research team speculated at the time that the curricular materials raised the profile of these risky products but may have erred by not actively discouraging their use.

The data in the new report come from administrative records on a subsample of nearly 16,000 individuals from the original experiment, covering nine years after their high school graduation. Long-run financial outcomes were tracked using data on bank account ownership (but not account balances), use of various credit products, as well as information on formal employment status and microenterprise ownership. Data span from students’ high school graduation in 2011 to February 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Brazil. Slightly more than half of the subsample were in the original control group. The subsample contained significantly more females than did the full sample; otherwise the subsample’s treatment and control groups were statistically similar to the originals.

First the analysts looked at the same outcomes as in the previous study. The financial education program had no long-term effect on bank account ownership (although a commendable 85 percent of students in the full sample had bank accounts in 2020). Treatment students, however, used fewer expensive credit products in the long-term. They were 1.4 percentage points less likely to have credit card debt and 0.9 percentage points less likely to use overdrafts, compared to 23 percent of control students with credit card debt and 11 percent of control students with overdrafts at nine years post-graduation. The program also appeared to lead to lower the likelihood of having loans with repayment delays by about 0.9 percentage points, compared to 15 percent of control students with repayment delays.

There is no way to determine the mechanisms behind these long-term improvements using this methodology. But the researchers’ speculations seem reasonable: Maybe students “experimented” with expensive credit when young and then realized that this was not a sound financial decision, or perhaps they realized that expensive credit was untenable when larger, more expensive, “grown up” purchases were contemplated. The phrase “live and learn” comes to mind.

As to additional outcomes, treatment students were 3.69 percentage points more likely to own a formal microenterprise in 2020 than were control students and were 1.2 percentage points less likely to hold a job with a written contract, suggesting that the program encouraged a focus on owning their own business rather than being employees beholden to a boss or company. The researchers speculate that these effects stem from program modules on work and entrepreneurship whose impacts would only be seen later in students’ lives.

It’s certainly possible that the researchers are giving a bit more credit to a high school financial literacy program than they probably should. A lot happened in Brazil—and in the world economy—in those nine years, including a two-year-long recession. There is no way of knowing whether such upheavals impacted individuals differently, especially with so many students from the original study unaccounted for, nor what additional financial education they may have received in the interim, either formally or via the school of hard knocks. But perhaps that is the point here: Arming students with financial knowledge before they head out into the working world may help many of them navigate some of the difficult ups and downs of adulthood, no matter how treacherous those may be.

SOURCE: Miriam Bruhn, Gabriel Garber, Sérgio Mikio Koyama, and Bilal Zia, “The long-term impact of high school financial education,” World Bank Group (October 2022).

NOTE: Today, the state board of education heard public comment on a pending resolution which would call for the elimination of the retention provision of Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee. Below are the written remarks given by Chad L. Aldis, Fordham’s vice president for Ohio policy at that meeting.

Thank you, President Maguire, Vice President Manchester, and State Board members for the opportunity to provide public comment on the resolution calling for the elimination of the retention requirement for third graders who cannot meet the state’s promotion threshold.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the vice president for Ohio policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C.

Reading is absolutely essential for functioning in today’s society. Job applications, financial documents, and instruction manuals all require basic literacy. And all of our lives are greatly enriched when we can effortlessly read novels, magazines, and the daily papers. Unfortunately, even today, roughly 43 million American adults—about one in five—have poor reading skills. Of those, 16 million are functionally illiterate. 

Giving children foundational reading skills, so they can be strong, lifelong readers, is job number one for elementary schools. Understanding this, Ohio passed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee in 2012. The law’s aim is to ensure that all children read fluently by the end of third grade—often considered the point when students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

The Guarantee takes a multi-faceted approach. It calls for annual diagnostic testing in grades K-3 to screen for reading deficiencies and requires reading improvement plans and parental notification for any child struggling to read. Importantly, it also requires schools to hold back third graders who do not meet state reading standards and to provide them with additional time and supports.

I urge the State Board to reconsider its recommendation to eliminate the guarantee’s retention requirement.

Why retention?

The goal of retention is to slow the grade-promotion process and give struggling readers more time and supports. When students are rushed through without the knowledge and skills needed for the next step, they pay the price later in life. As they become older, many of them will decide that school is not worth the frustration and make the decision to drop out.

An influential national study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that third graders who did not read proficiently were four times more likely to drop out of high school. A longitudinal analysis using Ohio data on third graders found strikingly similar results. The consequences of dropping out are well-documented: higher rates of unemployment, lower lifetime wages, and an increased likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system.

Seeing data such as these, almost everyone agrees today that early interventions are critical to getting children on-track before it’s too late.

Some believe that schools will retain children without a state requirement. Anything’s possible, but data prior to the Reading Guarantee makes clear that retention was exceedingly rare in Ohio. From 2000 to 2010, schools retained less than 1.5 percent of third graders. Retention has become more common under the guarantee, as about 5 percent of third graders were held back in 2018-19.

In 2021-22, however, Ohio temporarily waived the promotion requirements and we saw a return to social promotion. Schools promoted virtually every third grader to fourth grade, whether they could read fluently or not; in fact, 100 percent of third graders were promoted in 469 out of 605 districts. At the same time, we also know that 20 percent of Ohio’s third graders have serious reading difficulties, having scored “limited”—the lowest achievement level on state exams. Students at this level earned less than 11 out of 40 possible points on their third grade ELA exam.    

Make no mistake, if the legislature follows your advice and removes the retention requirement, Ohio will in all likelihood revert to “social promotion.” Students will be moved to the next grade even if they cannot read proficiently and are unprepared for the more difficult material that comes next. There’ll be relief in the short-run but the price in the long-term will be significant.

Data and research

Shifting gears, I’d like to briefly address two claims that regularly come up in Ohio when the topic is retention.

First, some have claimed—based on research studies—that holding back students can have adverse impacts. There is some debate in academic circles about how to assess the impacts of retention. Doing a gold-standard “experiment” with a proper control group is not possible in this situation, so scholars rely on statistical methods that help make apples-to-apples comparisons between similar children. But unless researchers use very careful methods, the results don’t give us much insight.

Arguably, the best available evidence on third-grade retention—as opposed to retention generally—comes from Florida, which has a similar policy to Ohio’s reading guarantee. That analysis, which compared extremely similar students on both sides of the state’s retention threshold, found increased achievement for retained third graders on math and reading exams in the years after being held back. It also found that retained third graders were less likely to need remedial high school coursework and posted higher GPAs. The analysis found no effect, either positively or negatively, on graduation.

If you would like to review this research for yourself, an essay on the findings by Harvard University’s Martin West, who led the Florida study, was published by the Brookings Institution in 2012. The longer, academic report was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and in the Journal of Public Economics in 2017.

The second claim, particular to Ohio, is that the reading guarantee isn’t producing the improvements we’d like to see. The basis is a paper from The Ohio State University’s Crane Center that notes flat fourth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2013-17. NAEP does offer a useful high-level overview of achievement, but raw trend data are not causal evidence about the impact of the third grade reading guarantee—or any other particular program or policy. The patterns could be related to any number of factors that affect student performance, whether economic conditions, demographic shifts, school funding levels, and much more. Without any statistical controls, it’s impossible to isolate the effect of the reading guarantee.

Of course, NAEP isn’t the only yardstick. It’s also worth considering what state testing data show. The chart below shows third grade ELA scores in Ohio. We see an uptick in proficiency rates—from 55 percent in 2015-16 to 67 percent in 2018-19. Also noteworthy, given the guarantee’s focus on struggling readers, is the substantial decline in students scoring at the lowest achievement level. Twenty-seven percent of Ohio third graders performed at the limited level in 2015-16, while roughly half that percentage did so in 2018-19.

I’d like to pause and emphasize this point. From 2016 to 2019, the percent of students reading at the lowest level was cut in half. Much of the data in the resolution focuses on proficiency, and I understand the inclination to do that. Ohio’s policy has been focused on getting students from “limited” into the middle of “basic” where the promotion score has been. And that is exactly what Ohio teachers and students appear to have done.

Ohio’s third grade ELA scores, 2015-16 to 2018-19

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Much like NAEP trends, this shouldn’t be construed as causal evidence. But the improvements on third grade state exams should be weighed heavily in any analysis on whether the guarantee is improving literacy across Ohio.

Right now, no rigorous evaluation of Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee and the retention requirement has been conducted; however, the structure of Ohio’s law and the strong data system in place lends itself to a high quality research design. We encourage the State Board to take a step back and request that the department conduct a study on this issue before recommending that the retention requirement be eliminated.

As I noted earlier, NAEP data is useful but not causal. If your inclination is to stick with NAEP though, you should look closely at what’s happened in Florida and Mississippi. Both states rigorously implemented comprehensive early literacy policies, including a third grade retention policy, and have enjoyed tremendous success.

NAEP scores in fourth grade reading, students eligible for free and reduced price lunch

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NAEP scores in fourth grade reading, Black students

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NAEP scores in fourth grade reading, White students

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In 2003, economically disadvantaged and Black students in Florida had lower NAEP fourth grade reading scores than their peers in Ohio. By 2022, both student group performed for than 15 points higher than similar students in Ohio. It’s important to note that 10 points is generally seen as a grade level. Mississippi’s success is even more dramatic. They started reforming policies in 2013—a year after Ohio—and their progress has been nothing short of remarkable. As you can see from the NAEP data above, white, Black, and economically disadvantaged students in the Magnolia State closed a sizable gap and now outperform their peers in Ohio.

Ohio students simply aren’t keeping pace in reading with students from Mississippi and Florida. If this was college football, we’d be firing people. But, it’s not. It’s more important.

Ten years ago, Ohio lawmakers decided it would be better to intervene early than have students suffer the consequences later in life. The logic made sense then, and we believe that it’s still true today. Of course, retention—like any policy—isn’t a silver bullet. It must be paired with effective supports, and students need to continue receiving solid instruction in middle and high school. What the policy does, however, is slow the promotional train and give struggling readers more attention and opportunity to catch up.

As data from Florida and Mississippi suggest, it can be done. Their teachers and students aren’t somehow better than ours. What they have had is unflinching state leadership. Ohio students deserve that same commitment. Now is the time to help all students learn to read—not the time to back down.

Thank you for the opportunity to offer public comment, and I look forward to any questions that you may have.

1. Today’s headline says it all for me, but a) I can’t make this gig all about myself or all 9 of you dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers will no doubt abandon ship, and b) this “other” story is interesting also. It’s a look at the Columbus Promise scholarship program, set up to give a free ride to and through Columbus State Community College for Columbus City Schools graduates. We learn that the first class of enrollees totaled 629 this fall and that that is slightly more than double the number of Columbus City Schools students who directly enrolled at Columbus State the previous fall. We also meet one of those new enrollees, Luka Bastin Howes, whose trajectory seems typical of the type of student the plan is meant to attract: He’s got his eyes set on a four-year degree and the AA he will earn for free is, for him and his family, a necessary first step. Seems like good stuff so far, and we also learn that it is being professionally evaluated as it is implemented. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/13/22)
   
   

2. TMZ, a news outlet better known for leaping out of the bushes or lurking in LAX to ambush celebrities with awkward questions, inexplicably covers MacKenzie Scott’s donation to Metro Early College High School this morning. I am gobsmacked for lots of reasons. And lest you think I am only losing my mind over the existence of this piece because of my personal connection to Metro and thus can tenuously claim celebrity-adjacency myself now, I will note that we do learn something new and important here. To wit: Some of the money will go to provide free transportation for students to go from school to their internships and back, something that school leader Meka Pace tells TMZ (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence!) has been a big obstacle in the past. (TMZ, 11/14/22)

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We mourn the passing of Robert D. Kern at 96, even as we recall some of the great good he did—and our encounters with him.

“Mister Kern,” as everyone but family members always addressed him, could be formidable. He was plain-spoken, tough-minded, and far more interested in facts than theories. His own long career as a highly successful engineer and businessman no doubt inclined him in that direction. So did his solid midwestern roots.

He was the opposite of fancy. Grantees and grant-seekers summoned, as we sometimes were, to present their case (or findings) to him—and, until five years ago, to Pat (Mrs.!) Kern, his charming and exceptionally keen wife of 69 years—were housed overnight on the Foundation’s expansive but unpretentious grounds in comfortable but plain quarters and often then treated to a tasty but no-nonsense lunch in his presence. (We seem to remember spaghetti.)

He was always gentlemanly, if occasionally brusque, but his questions were tough and basic. What were we think-tankers and policy wonks doing, or hoping to do, that would strengthen America—strengthen people’s character, their faith, their patriotism, their infrastructure? What was our evidence? Why should he invest in this? What real good would come of it?

The Kerns were pillars of their community, employers of exceptionally loyal and able staffers—but did they ever have to perform!—and leaders of a classic, nay paradigmatic, “family foundation.” It wasn’t just named for them. It embodied and extended their family values, and we have absolutely no doubt that it will continue to.

As Bob and Pat Kern had built Generac over decades of hard work, their Kern Family Foundation quietly built strong and durable relationships with key institutions, ranging from the Medical College of Wisconsin to the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. The “Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network” operates in many universities. They also made innumerable project-specific grants.

But don’t look to the Kerns for vague “general-support” type grants! Their support was always skillfully targeted and closely monitored. Grantees must advance the Foundation’s mission, which is to “Empower the rising generation of Americans to build flourishing lives anchored in strong character, driven by an entrepreneurial mindset, and guided by the desire to create value for others.”

Talk about traditional midwestern values!

We at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have on several occasions been the grateful recipient of support from the Kern Family Foundation, mostly recently for our review of state academic standards for civics and U.S. history. But they didn’t always say yes when we asked. Our plan had to align with that clearly-stated mission—and almost always we had to convince Bob Kern in person that it was really going to do some good in ways that mattered to him and Pat.  We could also be sure that the Foundation staff would check to see if we really delivered—and if it really did some good.

Yes, we had palpitations in advance of the spaghetti and sometimes afterwards as well. But those polite-but-tough sessions were good for us. And Mister Kern was good for America and for those who come after him. May he rest in peace. We and many others will miss him even as we’re grateful for his life, his work, and his legacy.

Broken record

Kudos to ABC6 News in Columbus for keeping a spotlight on the continuing transportation problems for district and choice students in the city. Their most recent piece leads with a charter school family whose members must get up at 4 am daily to be at the bus stop on time…waiting for a bus that may not even show up.

“Kids can’t wait”

Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb released the results of his recent listening tour related to education in the city. You can read all the details in this Ideastream piece, but Bibb’s urgency to address problems he sees is palpable. He proposes “doubling down” on the Cleveland Plan, especially the need to make more high-quality schools available for families. And this story suggests that might include additional charter school seats.

Fordham lauds the Mountain State

Fordham president Mike Petrilli joined with colleague Nathaniel Grossman to pen an op-ed in the Coal Valley News looking toward a bright future for charter schools in West Virginia and laying out the data to back up that sentiment.

No bargain?

Teacher Joan Walden published an op-ed in the Indy Star last week opposing closure of undersubscribed district buildings in Indianapolis because of the possibility that charter schools may purchase them. And she may have a point (about the possibility, not the opposition, which is flat out wrong) since state law sets the price for such a purchase at $1.

Parental compromise

An interesting research report was recently published attempting to quantify the difference between parents’ ideal school choices and what they opt for in the real world. While the findings from Kansas City, Missouri, indicate that traditionally-underserved families there have to compromise more when they make choices, parents are still opting for non-zoned schools at very high percentages and are likely happier with their choices than they would be with no option other than a district assignment.

The Year of School Choice rolls on

Corey DeAngelis, executive director of the Education Freedom Institute, is one of the loudest school choice cheerleaders in the country. Following this week’s midterm elections, he took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to tout the “school choice wave” that he sees based on the outcomes of a number of important races across the country. “For far too long in K-12 education,” he writes, “the only groups that commanded politicians’ attention were unions representing the employees in the system. Now the kids have a union of their own: their parents.”

*****

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1. Here’s another angle on a story we talked about earlier this week: Changing the way students are taught to read in Dayton-area schools. These changes, as stated again and again, are in response to very low third grade reading proficiency scores in those schools. (And once again, only the lowest-performers are interviewed on how to do the job better.) Unfortunately, I can’t shake the feeling that while those teachers are talking about implementing new and better ways to do their jobs, there is some level of denial that the old way was responsible for the low proficiency scores in the first place. (Dayton Daily News, 11/11/22) And indeed not everyone is sold on the new ways being the best ways anyways. Here is a sour-grapes-level op-ed written by two Kent State profs who try to make the case that their own locally-produced reading curriculum would be a better deal for Akron City Schools than the one the district  is already in the midst of implementing. (Akron Beacon Journal, 11/8/22)
   
   

2. Staying on topic for a moment, here’s a look at an old “new approach” to education which is celebrating 50 years of implementation at a handful of schools in central Ohio. It’s known as a “progressive” or “informal” model—think drums and dancing and multi-age classrooms and teachers staying with students up the grade levels—and has some enthusiastic adherents among its district-run schools of choice. It sounds a little like Montessori-lite, but I once knew a fellow parent who opted into and then opted quickly out of the Upper Arlington flavor of progressive education who called it “the hippie school”. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/8/22)
   
   

3. Back in the real world, the elected board of Reynoldsburg City Schools told cranky parents—who are trying to come to grips with a return to hybrid remote/in-person operation—that the busing woes causing the problem will hopefully be fixed “in the next few weeks”. (10TV News, Columbus, 11/11/22)

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If you’ve been paying attention to education headlines this fall, you’ve likely noticed a spate of think pieces and analyses of NAEP results. NAEP, commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” is a series of math and reading assessments administered biennially to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders from every state. As expected in the wake of school closures and remote learning struggles, Ohio's results revealed significant learning losses. In eighth grade, proficiency rates fell from 38 to 29 percent in math and from 38 to 33 percent in reading. Fourth grade losses were less severe, but proficiency still dropped 1 percentage point in both subjects.

In a previous piece, I discussed how worrisome the eighth grade results are, as these students will soon enter college or the workforce. But teenagers aren’t the only age group we should be concerned about. NAEP declines in fourth grade weren’t as large as those in eighth grade, but fourth graders did lose ground. We don’t yet know what to expect from younger students—including those who started kindergarten in the midst of the pandemic—as neither NAEP nor state tests collect data on students below third grade. And while elementary students may be a long way off from college and career, an uneven start to their academic careers could compound and worsen over time if schools don’t act quickly and efficiently.

Going forward, it will be particularly important to prioritize early literacy. A 2012 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation indicates that third graders who weren’t proficient in reading were four times as likely to drop out of high school. Longitudinal analyses conducted in Ohio and elsewhere have found similar results. The troubles don’t end once struggling readers reach adulthood, either. For the estimated 16 million Americans who are functionally illiterate, everyday activities like getting a driver’s license, reading news stories online, or voting are far more difficult than they should be.

There is some good news. Recent state test results show a rebound in reading achievement among last year’s third graders, which could indicate that schools are already prioritizing early literacy. Indeed, we have proof that some of Ohio’s largest districts are doing so. A recent piece published by the Akron Beacon Journal offers an in-depth look at how Akron Public Schools is boosting knowledge of the science of reading by requiring teachers who work with the district’s youngest students to undergo an intensive, year-long training known as Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS. Columbus City Schools, the state’s largest district, also plans to spend federal Covid relief funding on LETRS training for its teachers. This is great news, as LETRS has been a crucial part of the reading miracle that’s happening in Mississippi.

But good news has limits. In Akron, the early literacy training effort has been met with pushback from some teachers. Dozens of districts—including Akron and Columbus—earned abysmal early literacy scores on recent state report cards, even though they got full credit for the promotional rate dimension of the component thanks to a Covid-related pause on third grade retention. And data show that in most cases, Ohio’s Black and Hispanic students, as well as those from low-income families, fared worse academically than their national peers. Traditionally underserved groups and the tens of thousands of elementary students who attend chronically underperforming districts will face a tough road ahead. And even districts that are on the right track still have a long way to go.

There are policy solutions that could help. Here at Fordham, we recently published a brief that outlines ten ways the state could strengthen its early literacy initiatives. The Ohio Department of Education’s budget priorities aim to boost early literacy in some smart ways, too. But the Akron Beacon Journal’s coverage of literacy training efforts is an important reminder of just how difficult it is to implement big reforms, regardless of how much research exists, how good the changes would be for kids, or how pressing the need currently is. Changing policy is one thing. Changing practice is entirely different.

Ohio has a long history of going all-in on big education policy changes and then backing off when it comes time to implement them. It would be easy, given this history, to throw up our hands and say that early literacy efforts are doomed in the long run. But we can’t afford to do that. Right now, the pandemic defines the educational journey of hundreds of thousands of Ohio youngsters. That’s understandable—of course a once-in-a-generation health crisis and its many impacts are affecting kids—but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

We owe it to Ohio kids and their families to ensure that they can read proficiently. That means when the current early literacy push turns a little less kumbaya, state leaders need to stand strong. Identify evidence-based strategies—especially ones that have worked in other states, like LETRS—and incentivize districts to adopt them. Provide schools with the funds to implement sweeping early literacy interventions and initiatives, and then hold them accountable for the results. Resist political pressure to gut the Third Grade Reading Guarantee’s retention requirement. For the next few years, schools need to do whatever it takes to make sure kids can read. But they can’t—and won’t—unless state lawmakers buck historical trends and stand firm.

Homework is the perennial bogeyman of K–12 education. Any given year, you’ll find people arguing that students, especially those in elementary school, should have far less homework—or none at all. I have the opposite opinion. The longer I run schools—and it has now been more than sixteen years—the more convinced I am that homework is not only necessary, but a linchpin to effective K–12 education.

It is important to remember that kids only spend a fraction of their time in school. The learning that does or does not take place in the many hours outside of school has a monumental effect on children’s academic success and is a root cause of educational inequity.

The pandemic gave us a stark demonstration of this reality. Achievement gaps widened between affluent and low-income children not only because low-income students received less in-person or high-quality online instruction during the years of disrupted school, but also because children of college-educated and affluent parents were already less dependent on schools for learning. Affluent children are far more likely to have the privilege of tutors or other types of supplementary instruction, as well as a family culture of reading, and opportunities to travel, visit museums, and more. Homework is a powerful tool to help narrow these inequities, giving children from all backgrounds the opportunity to keep learning when they are not in school.

At Success Academy, the charter school network I founded and lead, we seek to develop students as lifelong learners who have the confidence and curiosity to pursue and build knowledge in all facets of their lives. Homework cultivates these mindsets and habits. Indeed, when teachers don’t assign homework, it reflects an unconscious conviction that kids can’t learn without adults. Kids internalize this message and come to believe they need their teacher to gain knowledge. In reality, they are more than capable of learning all sorts of things on their own. Discovering this fact can be both incredibly exciting and deeply empowering for them.

We also know that none of these benefits accrue when homework is mere busywork. Low-quality homework is likely what drives the mixed research evidence on the impact of homework on student achievement. It also sends the message to kids that doing it is simply an exercise in compliance and not worth their time. Homework must be challenging and purposeful for kids to recognize its value.

For this reason, at Success, we take great care with the design of our homework assignments, ensuring they are engaging and relevant to what takes place in class the next day. When done well, homework can be a form of the “flipped classroom”—a model developed by ed tech innovators to make large college lecture classes more engaging. In flipped classrooms, students learn everything they can on their own at home (in the original conception, via recorded lectures); class time builds on what they learned to address confusion and elevate their thinking to a more sophisticated level. It’s an approach that both respects kids’ capacity to learn independently, and assumes that out-of-class learning will drive the content and pace of the in-person lesson. 

Students always need a “why” for the things we ask them to do, and designing homework this way is motivating for them because it gives them that clear why. Class is engaging and interesting when they are prepared; when they aren’t, they won’t have the satisfaction of participating.

At this point, some teachers may be saying, “I can’t get my kids to hand in a worksheet, let alone rely on them to learn on their own.” And of course, effective use of homework in class relies on creating a strong system of accountability for getting kids to do it. This can be hard for teachers. It’s uncomfortable to lean into students’ lives outside of school, and many educators feel they don’t have that right. But getting over that discomfort is best for kids.

Educators should embrace setting an exacting norm for completing homework. This should include a schoolwide grading policy—at Success schools, missing and incomplete homework assignments receive a zero; students can get partial credit for work handed in late; and middle and high schoolers can revise their homework for a better grade—as well as consistently and explicitly noticing when kids are or are not prepared and offering praise and consequences. Enlisting parents’ help in this area is also highly effective. I guarantee they will be grateful to be kept informed of how well their children are meeting their responsibilities!

Ultimately, minimizing homework or getting rid of it entirely denies children autonomy and prevents them from discovering what they are capable of. As we work to repair the academic damage from the last two-plus years, I encourage educators to focus not on the quantity of homework, but instead on its quality—and on using it effectively in class. By doing so, they will accelerate kids’ engagement with school, and propel them as assured, autonomous learners and thinkers who can thrive in college and beyond.