1. It is a rarity for school districts to run afoul of city zoning issues, especially in Toledo where we all remember how a zoning committee was weaponized to destroy a charter school in that town. But that’s exactly what has happened here. City concerns over the creation of a propane storage and distribution site has served to scuttle plans for a new CDL driver training center for Toledo high schoolers. It is interesting to note that rejection of the plan came back in April but district officials are only now announcing that the center is dead for this school year. Wonder what’s been going on for the last five months? (Toledo Blade, 9/5/22) Meanwhile, Toledo School for the Arts’ glow up is still underway, but the beloved Glass City charter school reopened for the new school year yesterday in an incomplete form. Even without AC, the expanded school was still full of excited and impressed students. Awesome! Officials noted there is still a waitlist for this year. Here’s hoping everyone who wants in can get in. (Toledo Blade, 9/7/22)
   
   

2. We noted last week that Columbus City Schools still seemed to be missing many thousands of students even after the teacher strike ended and in-person classes finally began. This piece suggests that busing issues—for district students—could be part of the problem. Additionally, the extremely long wait times for parents to get information from the transportation department are not helping the situation. (ABC6 News, Columbus, 9/6/22) Private school students residing in Columbus and depending upon the district for transportation are faring no better, it appears. Among the causes, say district officials, inclusion of high school students in yellow bus routes and a troublesome new routing software, not to mention the fact that the first weeks of school are always logistically difficult. Parents don’t seem to care for the response. (10TV News, Columbus, 9/6/22)
   
   

3. It’s more than a month into the school year in Dayton, and busing problems continue for charter school students there. The principal of Horizon Science Academy North elementary is so fed up with the constant problems for families that that she joined a group of 10 other charter leaders to file a complaint with the Ohio Department of Education and asking for help. (WHIO-TV, Dayton, 9/6/22)
   
   

4. Meanwhile, not only does Columbus charter network Zenith Academy handle its own student transportation, it does so using one of the first electric school buses on the road in all of Ohio. Kudos! (Spectrum News 1, 9/6/22)
   
   

5. Test score data and school report cards are coming soon across Ohio. Officials at Akron City Schools are out in front, offering us their take on the preliminary data they have seen. They say that they have made up something like 70 percent of the achievement lost during pandemic-era school disruptions. Not having seen the data, I can’t comment on whether they are accurate or not. But I will say that the pre-pandemic numbers in the district were pretty awful so any fraction below them is even worse. But that’s just how I look at things. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/7/22)
   
   

6. Meanwhile, here’s a great story about Harry and Linda Fath, a Cincinnati area couple who recently pledged an astonishing $3 million to support the Springer School and Center, a private school which specializes in teaching students ages 6 to 14 with learning disabilities. Amazing! (Cincinnati Enquirer, 9/2/22)
   

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For all the welcome attention being paid to the Science of Reading, and literacy in general, there has been little focus in public policy on how to address the learning needs of secondary students who, for whatever combination of reasons, have failed to learn to read in elementary school.

Earlier this year, the “What Works Clearinghouse,” an arm of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES), made steps to elevate the narrative about secondary literacy when it issued a practice guide entitled, “Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9.”

Few people know much about the IES Practice Guides, which is a real shame, for they codify much of the science about what works in K–12 education. The recently issued guide is the twenty-ninth in a series that was launched in September 2007 and includes such topics as “Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Learning or Teaching Math to Young Children.” Together the IES Practice Guides constitute the closest thing the education sector has to the medical field’s clinical practice guides.

Authored by panels of academic researchers preeminent in their field, the strategies these practice guides identify are those that are distinguished by their effects in all types of educational settings.

And what does this new practice guide say about secondary literacy? The panelists identified four findings that are supported by moderate or strong evidence:

1. Build students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multisyllabic words.

2. Provide purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly.

3. Routinely use a set of comprehension-building practices to helps students make sense of text.

a. Build students’ world and word knowledge so they can make sense of the text.

b. Consistently provide students with opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read.

c. Teach students a routine for determining the gist of a short section of text.

d. Teach students to monitor their comprehension as they read.

4. Provide students with opportunities to practice making sense of stretch text (i.e., challenging text) that will expose them to complex ideas and information.

I was struck, as I read these recommendations, by the intersection of these findings with the content of a training program I recently had the good fortune to witness in Tennessee.

In a move that is unique in the country, this summer Tennessee’s Department of Education (TN DoE) provided training to thousands of secondary school teachers in the Science of Reading. Part of its Reading 360 Initiative, which has trained more than 20,000 elementary school teachers in “sounds first” instruction over the past two years (to rave reviews, I might add!), the current focus on secondary literacy supports Commissioner of Schools Penny Schwinn’s belief that “All teachers are reading teachers.”

The state put its money behind Commissioner Schwinn’s vision and commissioned TNTP, a nonprofit technical assistance organization, to develop a two-week course specifically geared for secondary literacy. “We absolutely knew about the studies and the research that supported the recommendations in the IES Practice Guide,” said Francisco Martinez Oronoz, a partner at TNTP who led the training project. “This course not only focuses on decoding but also on how to build reading fluency, the role of background knowledge, the importance of all students working with grade level text, and other findings highlighted by the IES panelists.”

The course is divided into two parts: thirty hours of asynchronous instruction on the foundational skills of reading and five full days of in-person, interactive instruction on research about such things as how to make complex text the center of every lesson, the vital role of domain knowledge in gaining meaning from text, how discussion and writing can impact reading acquisition, how essential writing is to mental processing and accessing knowledge, etc.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to detail the syllabus for this outstanding course, a couple of examples might be illustrative.

Day one of the training introduces teachers to text complexity and asks them to read and discuss the article, “Struggle is Not a Bad Word,” which identifies a number of misconceptions about adolescent reading (e.g., struggling students need easier texts) and provides alternative approaches. “Educators should adopt the mindset that when it comes to reading, struggle is not necessarily a bad thing. As we prepare students for college and careers, we ought to engage them in texts and tasks with which they will struggle but will learn to be successful with support,” write authors Sarah Lupo and John Strong. This theme of struggle is one that is returned to throughout the week.

The role that vocabulary plays in reading comprehension, and how a student’s command of high frequency “Tier 2” words can be developed, understandably receives a good deal of attention in the module that focuses on the need to build background knowledge. The training includes extensive discussion of ways in which past adolescent reading “interventions” have failed and offers strategies, rooted in science, about more effective literacy practices.

A few weeks ago, I visited Washington County in East Tennessee, where one of the state’s 113 Secondary Literacy Trainings was taking place. I talked with some of the teachers about why (in addition to the $1,000 stipend they received) they were willing to give up a precious week-plus of their summer to take part. For most, it was their interest in the research. “I like staying ahead of the curve,” said sixth grade teacher Cassie Kirk. “The training is giving us a refresher, making us go back and really think about what we’re doing,” high school teacher Sheila Clark shared.

While I was only with the folks in Washington County for two days, I asked the panel I met with if they were having any epiphanies. “Yes. It’s not about the quantity,” one of them said. “It’s about the quality.” “Sometimes you can get kind of panicky about not getting through everything—but [I now understand] it’s better to go deep,” another offered.

“Going deep” took on practical meaning in a conversation a few weeks later with social studies teachers in Kingsport City, where school had already started back. Training participant Joshua French described a lesson he’d just taught on the Gilded Age where he and the class took time—time that before the training he wouldn’t have taken—discussing words like “monopoly” (it’s more than a board game) and “trust.” “I think it was eye opening for a lot of us,” he said. “When you talk about literacy, you think it’s very simple, but when you get into the research, you realize how complicated it is.”

In conversations I had with leaders of other districts across the state that had hosted the Secondary Literacy Training, the most compelling message they shared was how eager their teachers were to take part. It seems better understanding the research was a near universal draw. “We didn’t have to push at all,” said Rhonda Stringham, Assistant Superintendent in Kingsport City Schools. “We just offered it, and they chose to attend.”

“I think it’s an old mindset that says reading doesn’t cross genres,” reflected Bo Griffin, Director of Schools in Millington Municipal School District. “When I was teaching history, I had a kid ask me if they had to spell the word right. When I said yes, the kid pushed back saying, ‘But this is history.’”

“We’re all about getting our kids college and career ready,” Director Griffin offered. “We understand that the manual they need to operate a forklift is at the same readability level as another kid’s college textbook. The buzz [I saw at this training] was so exciting. Everyone’s pulling the wagon in the same direction and sharing their ideas together.”

Tennessee Chief Academic Officer Lisa Coons, whose office oversees all of the state’s literacy initiatives, echoed this sentiment. “The secondary literacy courses within our Reading 360 Initiative have really helped to pull our secondary teachers together around how literacy can and should be integrated into their instruction,” she said. “Because districts hosted their in-person sessions and invited all secondary teachers to attend, teachers across all content areas and grade levels now have a shared understanding—and vision—for the integral role literacy plays in improving student outcomes. I am incredibly proud of Tennessee educators across our state and their ongoing commitment to improving their instructional practice. They have clearly shown that literacy is an integral component of their work regardless of what subject they teach.”

Editor’s note: This was first published by the Albert Shanker Institute on its Shanker Blog.

Editor’s note: On June 29, 2022, members of the National Working Group on Advanced Education met for its second meeting, this time virtually. (The first was on March 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C.) The following is a summary of the discussion, with particular focus on social and emotional support for high-achieving students, especially those from underserved backgrounds; support for educators of advanced students; the importance of high-quality instructional materials; and how best to use ability (or “achievement”) grouping. We also note broader themes that came out of the conversation, areas where further discussion would be helpful, and additional topics to tackle at future meetings.

General themes:

• Every student, including those from underrepresented racial groups and low-income backgrounds, deserves educational experiences that help them reach their full potential. Some children, due to high achievement, ability, or potential, require more than can be provided in the typical classroom geared toward the typical student. Schools should therefore offer distinctive and high-quality advanced programs, options, and services for all those who would benefit from them.
• The field of “gifted education,” originally designed to identify and serve the highly gifted, considered “giftedness” to be an inherent, dichotomous trait that a student either had or didn’t. Schools labeled students as either “gifted” in all subjects or none. By adopting a narrow definition of giftedness that ignored each child’s unique strengths, weaknesses, or interests, the field wrongly excluded many students capable of advanced work in one or more subjects, especially those who are low-income or from underrepresented racial groups.
• Districts should move toward a “continuum of services” that replaces binary “gifted or not” thinking. This strives to give individual students from culturally different backgrounds or at different ability levels what they need in each academic subject. Some students will realize their potential by skipping entire grades, for example, while others will benefit from certain advanced classes, while still others will get enough from within-class enrichment. And some students will need interventions that jump start their motivation and achievement and bring out their talents.
• It’s helpful for districts to distinguish between two groups of students when developing services: those already identified as high-achievers who need support to stay on that track, and those with the potential for high achievement, who need to be identified, encouraged, and assisted so that they come to participate in advanced programs.
• Almost everywhere, students who are low-income or from underrepresented racial groups have not received adequate access to advanced education opportunities. Many children from these populations who should enjoy the benefits of these programs have therefore been excluded—or at least never been sought out and included. The field must rectify this problem, including with a restorative approach for those who have been excluded.
• Going forward, schools should adopt a bias toward inclusion, especially in younger grades. Too often, advanced programs are driven by scarcity, such as serving only a tiny percentage of all students. We should open the gates wider.
• Districts can and should approach everything about the development, design, and implementation of these programs and services in culturally responsive ways—which means working to better recognize and allow for the upholding of students’ cultural identities and offering culturally relevant content.
• Identification and services need to be proactive and universal, not solely based on parent or teacher nominations or opt-in assessments that favor behaviors in students that are pleasing to teachers, and they should be appropriate for the population and local context. Districts should also ensure that their teachers do not develop “referral fatigue,” where they tire of recommending students who are not accepted into advanced learning opportunities.
• Nor should we focus exclusively on the technical aspects of building effective programs for advanced learners—we also have to pay attention to school culture writ large. We need leaders with high expectations for all students, programs that cultivate self-belief in students, and schools that foster a growth mindset in their educators and students.

Social and emotional support for high-achieving students, especially those from underserved backgrounds:

• All students need social and emotional support. That includes high achievers, who may be prone to certain emotional conditions, such as perfectionism.
• High-achieving students from underserved groups may have distinctive social and emotional and mental health needs that should also be addressed by schools. Examples include:
  • Stereotype threat.
  • Feelings of isolation.
  • Feelings of not belonging.
  • Lack of support from peers and cultural group. Recognition of academic giftedness is not always appreciated by some cultural groups but can be seen as a betrayal of the group.
  • Microaggressions.
  • The effects of poverty and racial prejudice.
• To help students overcome these difficulties, districts should make programs more culturally relevant, train staff to counter personal and systemic biases, work to better retain students from underserved backgrounds, increase inclusivity, and help foster the development of students’ agency and self-efficacy.
• Students are more likely to persist and succeed in programs when they’re with peers who share key characteristics. This fosters a sense of belonging, which is especially important for students from groups that have been historically left out of these programs.
• It’s best for districts, when thinking about this support, to distinguish between two groups of students, including those from underrepresented racial groups and low-income backgrounds: those already identified as high achievers who need support to stay on that track (retention), and those with the potential for high achievement, who need to be identified, encouraged, and assisted so that they come to participate in advanced programs (recruitment).
• These best culturally relevant recruitment and retention practices will ultimately require a positive school culture with leaders who understand the importance of advanced education and are ready to grow and adapt their programs.

Support for educators of advanced students:

• We should move teachers away from the idea that if students are at grade-level proficiency, they’re successful. Educators should look at each student’s achievement and work to maximize student growth throughout the year.
• District and building leaders need to inform preparation programs about the skills and experiences that need to be provided to aspiring teachers and administrators to promote advanced learning.
• The group is somewhat divided over training specific teachers in best practices for high achieving students versus including these practices in professional development for all teachers. There was a consensus, however, to use data-driven approaches when creating these new approaches and also a need to use emerging practitioner-supported successful approaches.
• School administrators must understand that being an effective teacher of high achievers calls for a different skillset than being an effective teacher in general. Even the most qualified teachers may not arrive with an understanding of how best to teach high-achieving students, much less those from underrepresented racial groups and low-income backgrounds, so school systems should offer professional learning opportunities for them in this area with high-quality professional development.
• Especially at the secondary-school level, teachers’ content knowledge is an important factor in determining whether they will be successful with high achievers.
• We should seek to hire teachers who are highly qualified, but also do so in a culturally responsive manner to help support students from marginalized backgrounds and narrow excellence gaps.
• Our goals should include working towards eliminating racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic bias from classrooms. This is difficult, but not impossible, as biases that are deeply rooted and often unconscious can change with effective and ongoing professional learning and support. School systems should seek out administrators who are deeply committed to achieving equity-focused and excellence-oriented goals.
• Ultimately, students will benefit when teachers:
  • Identify those with the potential for high achievement in one or more subjects.
  • Can see when a student is or is not being challenged.
  • Use data to help further the aforementioned ends.
  • Use culturally responsive curricula, materials, experience, and instructional practices.
  • Come from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds.

High-quality instructional materials:

• We have far too little information about which curricula, when properly implemented, work well for smart kids.
• The “regular” curriculum might work fine for advanced learners so long as schools embrace acceleration. For example, allowing advanced third-graders to cover third and fourth grade math in a single year.
• A pre-differentiated, prescriptive (though not scripted) curriculum may work well for advanced learners, though there may be some benefit to pursuing specialized curriculum created specifically for the advanced learners at hand (such as the William & Mary program).
• Popular materials developed to align to the Common Core standards, such as Eureka Math and EL Education, likely have some benefits. But there is a lack of research or evidence that they truly make a difference—especially for advanced students, much less those from underrepresented racial groups or low-income backgrounds—and a lack of evidence that they are differentiated appropriately for students who need greater challenge.
• Teachers are unlikely to adapt, create, or use materials specific to their advanced learners without motivation, resources, and accountability, so there must be a specific focus on teacher support and implementation, as well.
• Districts should pay special attention to their elementary school teachers’ math instruction. Most of them are less comfortable with math than with English language arts, and there is some evidence that the math curricula in some widely-used materials aren’t rigorous or challenging enough to suit advanced math students.
• The benefits of acceleration policies have a deep research base, but their effectiveness can be hampered in places with low teacher quality and limited capacity to teach math sufficiently at advanced levels. This makes district leaders less likely to use these programs widely, so special effort should be made to explain to these leaders the benefits of these policies and broaden their use, particularly in schools with large populations of students from underrepresented racial groups or low-income backgrounds.

How best to use ability (or “achievement”) grouping:

• When done well, and equitably, grouping students by ability in separate classrooms can be an effective way to challenge talented children. When done poorly, however, it can be a new source of segregation.
• Ability grouping is only appropriate when the curricula or programmatic experiences are differentiated. When kids are re-grouped in classes where the curricula or experiences are the same as in “general education” classrooms, it will not show learning benefits and is indefensible.
• Districts should use universal screening, objective identification tactics, and frequent onramps, with frequent evaluations for students to move into appropriate-level class placements.
• There should be advanced content or honors classes (or the equivalent) in middle and high school in as many subjects as possible.
• These efforts should not come at the expense of quality in other classrooms. Districts should be able to benefit advanced learners without being detrimental to other students. Taking advanced learners out of heterogenous classrooms need not reduce classrooms’ quality or effectiveness.
• Parents should be included in the ability-grouping conversation. Any type of grouping that excludes children from an advanced group will trouble the parents of the students who aren’t selected. Districts should be prepared for this and explain that it is not beneficial to force acceleration on students who are unprepared for it.
• Districts should always be strongly focused on considerations of inclusion, so that as many students can benefit as possible. The question should be whether a student has a need or would benefit from a particular service. Demonstrated ability or achievement through standardized tests should not always be the determining factor.
• Districts should also be prepared to handle the political challenges of ability grouping. Policies should intentionally address and include efforts to improve equity, possibly acknowledging the difficult history of ability grouping and tracking and making clear how these programs are different and designed to recruit and retain students from underrepresented racial groups and low-income backgrounds, and to affirm excellence with all groups.
• “Ability grouping” can be a problematic term; the field might consider shifting to “achievement grouping,” “performance grouping,” or “advanced potential grouping” instead.

Areas ripe for further discussion:

• How important is it for districts to use measures beyond achievement tests when identifying students for advanced services, particularly in schools with high populations of low-income students and those from underrepresented racial groups? Will nonverbal tests turn up additional students, especially English learners or students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds?
• What are specific examples of effective training programs for teachers of advanced students?
• What content should be covered in training programs for teachers of advanced students?
• To what extent should districts seek knowledgeable and experienced professionals from other fields, such as mathematics or science, to teach advanced courses in their areas of expertise?
• How should we rate instructional materials on their suitability for advanced learners?
• How can districts make sure advanced learning services are well aligned across elementary, middle, and high school?
• Which state policies foster and advance this agenda, and which serve as barriers? Regarding accountability and incentives, for example, if a superintendent or principal knows they will be penalized for mediocre achievement in general and receive no credit for increasing advanced achievement, it’s rational for them to eschew advanced education.
• What is the best way to conceptualize programs for advanced learners that signals more equity and inclusivity and that is more politically palatable? And what is the best language to use?
• To what degree can and should districts link programming to higher education? And what role should institutions of higher education play in this agenda? Do the answers to these questions change for low-income students and those from racially underrepresented groups?
• With the increased conversation around equity for all students, how do we integrate concepts of equity with excellence, so that the narrative also encompasses the notion of a quality education for all?
• What role should selective and specialized schools, especially high schools, play or create in districts’ playbook of programs, as well as their recruitment and retention of low-income students and those from racially underrepresented groups?

Areas for additional research:

• Much of the research on social-emotional programming and services for advanced students is contained within smaller, qualitative studies. It would be useful to have a meta-review of what we currently know about these offerings, what programs are currently in use, and what programs are working best for students of various backgrounds.
• How students from different subgroups develop (or struggle to develop) positive identities when categorized as advanced or gifted, and what effects that identity has on future academic and professional outcomes.
• The peer effects of being in separate classrooms designed specifically for high achievers versus being in more heterogenous groupings.
• How exactly the social-emotional needs and issues of advanced learners differ from their less-advanced peers, the effect on these differences of being from an underserved background, and what that ought to mean for programs and services.
• Whether teachers who themselves were high achieving academically are better prepared to effectively teach high-performing students.
• Whether high-quality instructional materials (such as those with all greens from EdReports), when properly implemented, are effective for high-achieving students.
• Which curricula are districts using to educate high achievers? How effective are they?
• What, if anything, is being taught about advanced education and advanced learners in preparation programs for both teachers and administrators?

Editor’s Note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

In Columbus, Ohio’s largest school district, the academic year began in late August with more online learning and the first teacher strike in nearly five decades. While the strike itself lasted just three days, the terms of the final settlement promise to impact Columbus students and taxpayers for years to come.

Despite the considerable local and national media coverage the labor dispute attracted, much of the community appears to still be confused about the key points of contention and how they were ultimately resolved. My goal is to summarize some of these issues and help readers understand the promising governance and staffing reforms included in the new contract, the important provisions that were ultimately left on the cutting room floor, and the worrying longer-run financial implications of the various concessions made by the district.

Tackling teacher inequities and attendance

Columbus has struggled for years with two key challenges—dramatic inequities in teacher experience levels and turnover rates in some of its most disadvantaged schools and disturbing levels of teacher absenteeism. The new contract makes important progress on both fronts.

It expands an existing but largely dormant section of the prior contract—appropriately named “Article 911”—that provided for $4,000 stipends for teachers that volunteered for assignments in hard-to-staff schools. New provisions expand the use of such incentives to cover high-needs positions—such as in special education—district-wide. They offer district-funded opportunities for teachers to obtain licensure and certification in these areas and a one-time 20 percent pay boost, paid over three years, for accepting such teaching assignments. Given teachers unions’ historical opposition to any sort of differentiated pay, this is a major win for the district and disadvantaged students.

To address absenteeism, the new contract gives the superintendent modestly greater flexibility to police the abuse of sick leave. More importantly, it creates an innovative “buyback” program that financially incentivize teachers not to use all of their accrued sick leave days. In addition, the contract sets up a formalized teacher disciplinary process for addressing unprofessional behavior and requires teachers to allow principals to review lesson plans upon request.

Although these provisions may not seem groundbreaking, they could—if used correctly—lead to important improvements in student learning in the district. Unfortunately, the Columbus Education Association (CEA), the district’s teachers union, was successful in watering down other proposed reforms. The final contract gives the superintendent “sole discretion” to call calamity days and decide when the district moves to remote learning, to avoid the dragged-out negotiations that resulted in Columbus being among the last districts in the state to reopen during the 2020–21 academic year. However, it strips out district-proposed language that would have required teachers to provide real-time, synchronous instruction if remote learning is used. Also missing is a proposed “memorandum of understanding” that would have committed both sides to developing a “new resourcing model” addressing huge variation in enrollment and class sizes in schools across the district.

What CEA ultimately won

In the weeks of fractious off-and-on-again negotiations leading up to the strike, CEA remained disciplined and on message: The strike is about air conditioning, decrepit school building conditions, and class sizes, its leaders claimed. With the exception of class sizes, discussed in more detail below, the final contract includes largely symbolic language on these issues, perhaps to allow union chiefs to save face.

Making air conditioning one of the hills to die on for the 2022 contract negotiations was an odd choice, given the recent developments in the district. Although many Columbus school buildings have lacked air conditioning for decades, the district addressed this issue last year, thanks to an influx of federal Covid aid. In total, the district allocated nearly $40 million in federal dollars to install air conditioning in all but one school building that lacked one. (That last building is scheduled for demolition and replacement in the near future.) By the end of this month, 97 percent of Columbus school buildings were already on course to have air conditioning in every classroom. According to district data, that will rise to 99 percent by next fall.

The final contract includes language guaranteeing that learning spaces will be climate controlled. However, this provision will not take effect until the 2025–26 school year, after the three-year contract ends, and the district is clearly on pace to meeting this obligation.

Perhaps most disappointingly for teachers are the provisions related to salaries. According to an unfair labor practices complaint filed by the district, which provides a rare behind-the-scenes look into otherwise confidential negotiations, the teachers union originally asked for an 8 percent raise in each of the next three years, on top of the 4 percent annual “step” increase most (but not all) Columbus teachers were already scheduled to receive. The district countered with several alternatives, ultimately offering a 3 percent annual increase in its “last, best, and final” offer. The final agreement increased that to 4 percent per year (in addition to the “steps”), apparently prompting audible “boos” when the details were first shared by union leaders with their members.

How will Columbus pay for everything?

The union’s biggest wins—and the most serious long-term financial risk for the district—came in the form of class sizes. The district’s final offer prior to the strike included a phased expansion of an existing class-size reduction effort, eventually capping all elementary grades at 27 students per class. It also reduced by one the number of class periods taught by middle and high school teachers. Building on these reductions, the final contract further reduces the enrollment caps in middle and high school classes by two, to 33 and 34 students, respectively.

As school board members warned before the strike, paying for all of these concessions will ultimately require taxpayers to approve an operating levy in 2024. One risk for the district is that the heated rhetoric surrounding the strike—including CEA allegations that the district was “top heavy” with administrator bloat and sitting on hundreds of millions of unspent federal Covid dollars—could undermine the levy effort. More importantly, the various class-size reductions in the new contract will exacerbate a growing disconnect between district enrollment and staffing levels.

Historical data presented in the district’s latest financial report show that the total number of teachers employed in the district has grown by nearly 20 percent over the past decade, even as student enrollment has shrunk by 5 percent over the same time period. As a result, the district student-teacher ratio has declined by nearly 20 percent since 2012 and per-pupil expenditures increased by nearly 30 percent, much faster than the rate of inflation. Columbus experienced a significant outflow of students during the pandemic and some media reports suggest that charter schools saw additional enrollment growth due to the strike itself. It is difficult to imagine how the district will continue to secure voter approval for higher taxes and continue balancing its books as enrollment and teacher staffing levels move in opposite directions.

Here, the new resourcing model to address the big enrollment imbalances would have helped, by allowing the district to allocate its teaching staff more efficiently and reduce class sizes without necessarily growing the teacher headcount. As I note above, however, that proposal did not make it into the final contract.

In addition, the district’s investments in Chromebooks and air conditioners in recent years, while initially paid for with federal dollars, will require significant upkeep, maintenance, and ultimately replacement. Finding the money could be a challenge. The school board had placed a permanent improvement levy on the ballot this November to raise $40 million per year earmarked specifically for these kinds of expenses, but ultimately voted to withdraw it last month, in part out of concern that the teacher strike would make the measure difficult to pass. (The levy was paired with a $680 million bond measure to construct new school buildings, which was also removed from the ballot.)

A preview of 2023 elections?

The Columbus labor dispute occurred despite the fact that every member of the school board had been elected to office with a CEA endorsement. Indeed, the current school board president is the daughter of a Columbus teacher and another board member is a former district teacher and CEA member herself. So why did the union and its own hand-picked board fail to avoid the strike?

Two developments may have been critical. First, an outside audit released in 2020 painted a scathing picture of many aspects of district operations and the quality of its instruction. The audit specifically called out a “strong union contractual Agreement with the Columbus Education Association,” with auditors expressing “concern over CEA’s control of district governance and management functions.”

Second, around the same time, the board began working with an outside governance coach affiliated with the Council of Great City Schools. The coach, AJ Crabill, led the board through painfully awkward struggle sessions—including board members confessing about the times they had put their own political agendas ahead of kids’ interests—and almost always ending with some version of Crabill’s signature tagline: “Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”

The coaching seems to be working. The current board majority, first elected in 2019, has fundamentally reorganized school board meetings, ditching long ceremonial proclamations and celebratory pictures, adopting clear numerical targets for student achievement, and holding quarterly analyses of student achievement data, with pointed questions asked of top district administrators when the data showed students falling short of board goals. Many of the new provisions in the contract directly build off of these efforts.

This year’s short strike may offer a preview of things to come, with the majority of the school board up for reelection in 2023. Three years ago, the last time the district and the union renegotiated the contract, board members faced considerable CEA opprobrium after approving a contract with an outside crisis staffing firm in case of a strike. Both sides ultimately agreed to a new contract, avoiding a strike, and the teachers union subsequently endorsed the incumbents it had criticized just months earlier in the 2019 election.

Whether the union again forgives and forgets next year could have big implications for the future trajectory of the district, its ability to implement and fund the provisions of the new contract, and the learning opportunities available to Columbus students.

Vladimir Kogan is Associate Professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of Political Science and (by courtesy) the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. The opinions and recommendations presented in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily represent policy positions or views of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science, or The Ohio State University.

Thanks to inflation and supply chain issues, back-to-school shopping was an especially tight squeeze for many families this year. But parents aren’t the only ones shouldering the financial burden. Teachers are, too.

Most people know that teachers often spend their own money on items like student supplies, instructional materials, and classroom decorations. But many don’t realize just how steep the costs can be. A teacher questionnaire administered as part of the federal 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey found an average spending total of $478 among teachers who used their own money to purchase classroom supplies. On average, elementary teachers spent more than secondary teachers, and the spending amount was higher for teachers at city schools (compared to suburban, town, or rural schools), as well as for teachers in schools where 75 percent or more of students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. Unsurprisingly, reported costs seem to have increased with time. A teacher spending survey conducted in 2020 by Adopt A Classroom found that teachers spent an average of $745 on school supplies during the 2019–20 school year. With recent inflation hikes, the totals for this year are likely even higher.

Asking employees in any profession to spend their own money so they can do their job is troubling. But it’s particularly egregious that we ask teachers to do it. In Ohio, public school teachers earn an average of about $65,000 per year. And while that salary places them in the middle class (depending on their household size and additional income), it overlooks plenty of nuances. For example, teachers who choose to work in rural and urban high-poverty districts often make less per year than their counterparts in more affluent suburban schools. Many don’t have spare cash to devote to their classrooms or to students who struggle to afford their own supplies, but they scrape together the funds anyway. Those who teach in traditionally hard-to-staff subject areas like math and science make considerably less money working in schools than they would in the private sector, and early career teachers make far less than their veteran peers. But they, too, choose to funnel a portion of their hard-earned salaries back into their classrooms. Resources like Adopt A Classroom, DonorsChoose, and classroom wish lists on Amazon can help, but relying on the generosity of strangers isn’t always enough.

It’s also not good policy. Ohio policymakers are already gearing up for budget season next year, and they’re considering a wide range of initiatives designed to support teachers and tackle possible shortages. Addressing out-of-pocket expenses should be on the list. Federal policymakers have tried to ease the financial strain via the teacher expense deduction, which allows eligible educators to deduct up to $300 from their income for classroom materials they haven’t been reimbursed for, but this amount is well below what most teachers report spending each year.

Ohio should consider supplementing the federal provision with state-level support. Obviously, lawmakers can’t just write a blank check to every teacher in the Buckeye State. And we need to start asking some tough questions about why teachers have to resort to spending their own money. The answers are likely complicated. But to address the immediate problem, state leaders could create a program styled after education savings accounts that distributes a set dollar amount to each teacher at the start of each new school year. These funds could be spent in certain stores via a debit card, and could be used to cover the cost of supplies and materials that teachers would normally have to pay for on their own.

Such a program would need strong guardrails to prevent fraud and waste. For example, all purchases would be subject to audit, and unused funds that remain in accounts as of July 1 would revert back to the state. But Ohio has created and managed similar programs before, so this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. And even if lawmakers decide that an ESA-style program isn’t the best method, there are other options—state tax credits, a state-run reimbursement program, or dedicated funding streams for schools to direct to teachers are all possibilities. What matters is that state leaders address the problem. And here’s hoping that during this upcoming budget season, they do.

Though many of America’s single parents do a great job raising their kids and getting them off to an excellent start in school and in life, research has long demonstrated that, in general, children tend to do better in two-parent, married families. A new research brief from the Institute for Family Studies offers yet more evidence of this basic fact.

Analysts Nicholas Zill and W. Bradford Wilcox are aggressively binary in their work: Traditional families consisting of two married parents and their biological children are compared against all other family structures, including single-parent, stepparent, and families built by adoption. They used data from two federal National Household Education Surveys nearly twenty-five years apart: the first dates from 1996, and surveyed the parents of more than 17,500 elementary and secondary students; the second was in 2019 and interviewed the parents of just under 16,000 students. The authors focused on four negative academic outcomes of interest: if a child repeated one or more grades, if a child had been suspended or expelled, if parents were contacted about their child’s schoolwork, and if parents were contacted about their child’s behavior in school. They then examined the frequency of occurrences over time and in each family type, and compared the numbers based on factors such as parent education level, race and ethnicity, and the ages and genders of students in both family structures.

Overall, the incidence of all four outcomes was lower in 2019 compared to 1996. Reports of suspensions and grade repetition were down by half or more, likely reflecting systemic efforts by schools to move away from such practices. The incidence of schools reaching out to parents about student behavior and schoolwork was also modestly lower. In both surveys, however, students from non-traditional families were still more likely to experience these outcomes than their peers from traditional ones.

Zill and Wilcox note that the proportion of U.S. students living in single-parent, step-parent, and other non-traditional families increased a bit between the 1996 and 2019 surveys—from 41 percent to 43.5 of the total. This jibes with other data showing that the previous explosive growth of family units such as those headed by single parents has slowed in recent years and may even be leveling off. The proportion of students from non-traditional families who were suspended or expelled from school fell by 39 percent, the proportion who repeated a grade declined by 47 percent, and the proportion whose parents were contacted due to their child’s difficulties with schoolwork and classroom behavior both went down by 16 percent. Despite all this, their relative risk for these negative outcomes (compared to two-parent family peers) increased or remained the same. In fact, the data indicate that family structure is at least as strong a predictor of school suspensions, grade repetition, and student misbehavior as race.

The data do not allow for examination of the mechanisms responsible for the stark division in outcomes nor for possible differentiation among two-parent versus single-parent non-traditional families. The analysts thus conclude that no matter how or how much the American school climate has changed over the years, the educational advantages of being raised “by one’s own married parents” have stayed steady.

SOURCE: Nicholas Zill and W. Bradford Wilcox, “Strong Families, Better Student Performance: The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same,” Institute for Family Studies (August 2022).

A new Fordham Institute publication by Dr. Matt Giani, entitled “How Attaining Industry-Recognized Credentials in High School Shapes Education and Employment Outcomes,” provides a timely and much-needed overview as to the how industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) may benefit individuals once they leave high school. The popularity of IRCs across the country is continuing to grow as high schools look for ways to better prepare students for both college and career. However, prior to this report, little was known about how these credentials related to college and career outcomes.

While Giani covers an extremely wide range of outcomes—including college enrollment and persistence, early career earnings, and descriptions of IRC earners—there are two specific findings that warrant greater discussion.

First, there is a huge difference in outcome, whether related to college or career, depending on the field in which the IRC was earned. In general, as the author states, “IRCs are weakly related to increases in short-term employment, while a few specific IRCs are positively related to increases in short-term earnings.” However, these benefits tend to be concentrated among high school graduates who go straight into the labor market. In other words, IRCs are more beneficial for students who don’t attend college immediately after high school.

Specifically, IRCs in cosmetology, transportation, and health science provide the largest and most reliable earnings boost. Interestingly, both cosmetology and transportation are the IRCs most strongly related to decreased chances in attending any college, though health science is most strongly related to higher chances of attending college. While these findings in themselves provide valuable information, one of the broader takeaways should be that this work highlights the importance of analyzing the unique fields of IRCs, and other career-related education opportunities, as opposed to viewing them as a single entity.

A second major finding that is worth discussing in more detail relates to the idea of alignment between an earned IRC and later field of study or employment. Essentially, do students go on to study or work in a field that is directly related to the IRC they earned in high school? Giani largely finds the answer to be no. With respect to alignment between college major and IRC, public safety is the only IRC for which more than one-third of students are in an aligned field of study. Meanwhile, for IRCs in fields such as architecture and construction or cosmetology, fewer than 5 percent of students choose to study in an aligned field in college. There is similar misalignment related to career outcomes. For half of the identified IRC fields, fewer than 5 percent of students are employed in a related career field. Cosmetology is the only IRC field that boasts career alignment for more than one-quarter of students.

Each of the two above findings align with prior work I’ve done related to participation in career and technical education (CTE) coursework in high school. Specifically, I have found that there is a great deal of variation in early career earnings based on the field in which they concentrate (earn three or more credits). Similar to the findings related to IRCs, health science and trades (e.g., transportation, manufacturing, architecture and construction) were related to higher earnings.

With respect to alignment, I have found that there is some alignment between CTE course-taking and later participation in aligned fields in postsecondary education by field of study. Specifically, there is evidence that students who take courses in a given CTE field in high school are more likely to both take courses and later earn a credential in that same CTE field in college. Again, there are very clear differences based on field of study, with health science, info tech, business, and public service having the strongest connections—fairly similar to IRCs.

These findings bring up a handful of important considerations. Chief among them—what is the purpose of IRCs? Giani provides interesting context in conversations with students regarding their decisions to pursue a given IRC, and many students talk about reasons that have nothing to do with college or career. There is certainly an argument for allowing students to pursue knowledge for their own personal knowledge and benefit. There is also something to be said for helping students to choose a path by allowing them to identify fields they don’t want to pursue. There is also the possibility that students learn skills by completing these IRCs that are generalizable beyond the specific field.

But again, this brings us back to the original question—what is the purpose of IRCs? If we identify the purpose as a way to encourage career exploration and allow students to engage in interesting course material, then perhaps IRCs are doing exactly what they should. If we want IRCs to serve as a direct pathway from high school into college and career, then perhaps we need to reconsider how to make this a reality.

20 years of serving Dayton students

Here is a profile of Dayton Early College Academy (DECA) as it celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. What started as a college prep program in Dayton City Schools has become one of the best charter schools in the state, serving students K-12. Huge congratulations to staff, students, and families for two decades of outstanding effort with many more to come.

Data on academic success

New data from San Antonio, Texas, indicates strong academic performance by charter school students in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years, especially as compared to their traditional district peers. A spokesman for the Texas Charter Schools Association said, “Charter schools [are getting] increasingly good at zeroing in on what different kinds of students need, and refining their curriculum, refining their instructional methods” to provide the services needed.

Conversion with a twist

Two new charter schools opened this year in Montgomery, Alabama, joining a third opened in 2021 as conversions of traditional district schools into charters. The model is an interesting one, combining some continued oversight and control of funds by the district with the choice-friendly aspects of charters. Student assignment zones are still in effect—sort-of—along with the option of other families outside of those zones to attend as well. It is a work in progress, likely worth watching for its impact on student achievement going forward.

Georgia’s next state superintendent?

Alisha Thomas Searcy is running for state school superintendent in Georgia. She is a former state representative and also the former head of Ivy Preparatory Academies, a chain of all-girl charter schools in the Peach State. As you might imagine, she is outspoken in her support for charters and choice as she crisscrosses the state ahead of the November election.

Webinar series for serving children experiencing homelessness

An upcoming webinar series from SchoolHouse Connection will cover the basics of the McKinney-Vento Act’s rights and protections for children experiencing homelessness and will highlight best practices for schools serving them. Participants will also receive materials to use in their schools. Webinars will be held throughout the school year, but two upcoming sessions are McKinney-Vento 101 on Thursday, September 15, at 2 p.m. ET,  and Identification Best Practices for School Staff on Thursday, September 22, at 2 p.m. ET.

Work for the Fordham Foundation

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation’s Sponsorship Team has two part-time openings to help with oversight of its charter school portfolio. You can check out the details for School Data Analyst and School Quality Analyst, both based in the Cincinnati/Dayton area.

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1. You gotta love it. Another day, another lovely piece touting Ohio’s Afterschool Child Enrichment ESA program. Go get yours, folks! (Fox 19 News, Cincy, 8/30/22)
   
   

2. I’m sure you heard the news about the alarmingly bad NAEP test results released yesterday. While the Dayton Daily News says that the downward trajectory in achievement “mirror[s] Ohio trends”… (Dayton Daily News, 9/1/22) …if you live in the suburbs or the exurbs, you might be forgiven for thinking that things are better than all that. The Cincinnati suburb of Oak Hills is very fortunate to have “a world-class university less than a mile away,” says an elementary school principal there who gets 17 students in that university’s education program to come in and help his teachers with math instruction twice a week. (Local 12 News, Cincinnati, 9/1/22) The superintendents of Grand Valley Local Schools and Geneva Area City Schools say that all they’ve been doing the last two years is “catching kids up with their learning and educational skills” using afterschool and summer camps, among other strategies. Their data say it’s working; nearby Ashtabula City Schools? Not so much. (Star Beacon, 9/1/22) In bougie Westerville (a.k.a. a 2019 Global Top 7 Intelligent Communities awardee), it feels like no pandemic disruption ever occurred in education. The district supe instead touts all of the many ways his students can stay in reach the middle class besides earning a four-year college degree. (But also including a four-year college degree earned multiple different ways.) (Columbus Dispatch, 9/1/22) And in Stepford Worthington, upgrading the district’s various school mascots appears to have been the chief priority of the last several months. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/1/22) Even teacher contract troubles are resolved easier in the ‘burbs. (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 9/1/22)
    
3. Speaking of contract troubles, let’s return to the big city for a minute to contemplate student attendance numbers during and after the Columbus City Schools teacher strike. (We will accept for the sake of argument that the district’s reported enrollment number of approximately 47,000 kids is accurate, but I have questions there too.) Just under half of students logged in for virtual learning on Day One of the school year, despite the picket lines. The picket lines disappeared the next day as a “conceptual agreement” was reached between the parties, and virtual attendance jumped up by 2,000 more kids. The third day, when teachers were chillin’ at home and waiting for the weekend to get together and approve the agreement, an additional 1,200 students logged in. I ask you: What would those numbers have been if a) so many of my fellow Clintonville neighbors hadn’t refused to “cross the virtual picket line”, as the Dispatch told us, and b) literally anyone on the district payroll had any actual interest in getting kids online and teaching them properly those days or any other days? Additionally, there appears to be about 6,500 kids “missing” from school on each of the first two in-person days. Wonder where they are? (Columbus Dispatch, 9/1/22)
    
4. Finally today—lest you all think I am arguing that everyone should move to the ‘burbs, which I most assuredly am not—we get a message from Sylvania that not every leafy enclave is a haven of uncomplicated bliss. The legal wrangling there over busing for private school students not only continues, but sounds like it’s settling in for a protracted fight. Charming. (Toledo Blade, 8/31/22)

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In the realm of elementary and secondary education, we so often focus on one or two trees instead of the forest. We go off and argue about the best way to teach reading, about which books belong in the school library, about whether everyone should take “college prep” courses, about how to teach race or evolution or climate change or even algebra. We fret about gifted kids and kids with disabilities, about teachers unions and school bus routes, about cafeteria food and parent engagement, about test scores and discipline codes.

Yes, there are lots of trees. But why is there a forest to begin with? It’s to develop tomorrow’s American citizens and prepare our young people for citizenship. Yet that profound and fundamental mission is so easy to forget, both because it’s so basic and because most of the time it’s not newsworthy like those hot-button issues mentioned above. Except, of course, when it gets tangled up in them.

We also sometimes err by thinking that the way schools prepare students for citizenship is simply by teaching them “civics.”

How and what to teach in civics (and history and—more broadly—social studies) is its own issue and one worth taking seriously and doing well. A handful of states—both red and blue—are doing so today, at least setting exemplary expectations for what their students should learn during the K–12 years. But getting this part of the curriculum right is just part of what goes into preparing citizens.

The rest of the curriculum matters, too. Although every American has a right and responsibility to participate in our democracy even if illiterate and innumerate, people will have more power and agency if they can read newspaper articles, possess the background to understand what they’re seeing on television and their screens, make sense of data graphs, have some grounding in science, and more.

Yet the formal curriculum itself—the whole curriculum—is just part of what schools need to get right if they’re to do as much as they can to form citizens. At least as important are the values, habits, principles, convictions, and patterns of behavior that kids acquire in school. Those don’t just come from classroom instruction. They also come from extracurricular activities, from playground time and basketball games, from how the principal handles misbehavior (and rewards good behavior), from the examples that teachers set through their own personal conduct, from whether the school climate is one of integrity and mutual respect or corner-cutting and suspicion. Are students’ rights and responsibilities taken seriously? Are parents taken seriously? I don’t go quite as far as the late Theodore Sizer—the Harvard education dean who decades ago handed me two graduate degrees—whose “Coalition of Essential Schools” wanted every participating school to “model democratic practices that involve all who are directly affected by the school.” But it’s clear to me that how schools function as organizations and the lessons in citizenship that they convey by example and precept are at least as consequential as what happens in civics class.

This is also what distinguishes great education from skills training and what differentiates the schools of a democracy from those of totalitarian regimes. We’re not just making kids learn things and obey orders. We’re turning them into tomorrow’s voters, neighbors, public servants, and community leaders.

If our schools do this well, they’ll have fulfilled their most vital responsibility. We know, of course, that even at their best they can’t do it all, that the citizens kids grow up to be are also shaped by family, community, media, and myriad institutions of civil society. But the schools’ part is indispensable, both in the formal curricular sense and in the types of communities that they model.

That’s all getting harder, to be sure, as today’s political divisions, racial tensions, and “culture wars” enter more forcefully into school governance, curricula, and operations. Autonomous schools of choice, including private and (most) charter schools, find it somewhat easier to navigate these turbulent waters because they’re not pummeled quite so hard by external pressures and politics (Sizer and his colleagues understood this). Yet district-operated schools, whether on purpose or incidentally, also convey values, habits, and precepts to their pupils. Those kids are far likelier to acquire key elements of good citizenship when their schools are intentional and consistent about what they’re conveying.

This naturally varies by community—and if it varies too much, it can widen rather than narrow the country’s divisions. I view the usual version of “local control of the schools” as a mixed blessing, but on the positive side, this form of governance adds flexibility and a degree of diversity to the enterprise such that the precepts and practices embodied in schools—including the district-operated kind—can to some extent reflect the values and priorities of the communities they serve.

Yes, it’s a balancing act. We recognize that some of the values and priorities conveyed by the schools of Portland, Oregon, say, or Brookline, Massachusetts, won’t be the same as what kids see and learn in Amarillo, Texas, or Knoxville, Tennessee. But all four communities are building Americans in their schools, and it’s important all four—and all the others—convey what it means to be an American and what it means to be an honest, truthful, tolerant, and engaged citizen.

At the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, we’ve delved into this in several ways. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and subsequently, we asked thinkers and leaders across the political spectrum to write about America and citizenship in ways that would help educators address these core topics. Over the years, we have evaluated states’ academic standards for teaching U.S. history and, more recently, civics, thereby conveying our judgment as to how well individual states are (or aren’t) setting their K–12 expectations, as well as our criteria for what those expectations should contain.

We’ve also addressed social and emotional learning and school discipline, two realms that intersect big time with the signals schools send and the examples they set for up-and-coming citizens.

It would be a fine thing if the information available to students and parents (and taxpayers and policymakers) about schools included their effectiveness on the citizen-prep front. It would also be great if states’ school-accountability systems incorporated this along with academics. Elements can be gleaned from civics tests, school-climate surveys, and the incidence (and handling) of discipline challenges. Bits may also be gathered from the media and certainly from the parent grapevine. Longitudinal studies—such as the propensity of their graduates to vote—can supply further clues. Yet much that we would like to know about schools’ impacts in this realm would require multi-year information about the life trajectories of those who once attended them. Even if we had such information, we’d need to remember that what young people take from school is only part of what molds the adults they become.

Yet to end where I began, the preparation of those young people for citizenship is the ultimate reason we send them to school in the first place. It’s not just to teach them the Three R’s, important as that is, or to expose them to chemistry or poetry or computer programming. We educate kids in many ways and for many reasons. But none matters more in the long run that their readiness to participate in sustaining the vitality and integrity of our democratic republic.