1. Last week, it was the new school funding system delayed due to the…intricacies...of operationalizing new legislation. This week, it’s Education Savings Accounts for tutoring, summer camps, and the like which are struggling to get off the ground due to the same sorts of…intricacies. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/10/22)
    
2. Speaking of the bureaucratic “abyss”, a newly-elected board member in Cincinnati City Schools recently discovered some…intricacies…all along the process were snagging substitute teacher applicants,  stopping their efforts to get approved and hired at a time when the district really really needs them. Sounds like some remedies are being implemented. (Local 12 News, Cincinnati, 1/10/21)
   
   

3. Remember last year when headlines were made when the legislature passed new and more stringent rules regarding transportation of charter, private, and STEM school students? And also when the outgoing state supe wrote a pretty stern memo to districts about properly prioritizing same? Turns out that, not making headlines at the same time, were five school districts across the state being fined for failing to properly transport those resident non-district students. The full list is: Columbus City Schools, Cincinnati Public Schools, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Elyria City Schools, and Groveport Madison City Schools. In GM’s case, the fine was $53,000 per day multiplied by 13 days, for a total of nearly $700K. Yowza! The district is now suing the state (no doubt “watched” very closely by the others), alleging that aspects of the noncompliance definition are arbitrary and unconstitutional. Expect some amount of movement fairly quickly because that big old dollar amount is scheduled to be deducted from Groveport Madison’s February payment from the state. And Ohio’s school districts don’t waste time when it comes to their money. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/10/22)
    
4. Speaking of that very topic, Lt. Governor Jon Husted went on the record earlier this week defending Ohio’s voucher programs in light of the lawsuit recently filed against them. “When we focus on the kids, usually education conversations are easy,” he said. “When we focus on the adults, that’s when they get complicated. And this is about adults fighting over control and resources, not about what children and families want.” Yep. What he said. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 1/11/22)
   
   

5. Meanwhile, back in the real world of schools doing the right thing for their kids, Utica Shale Academy recently created an outdoor welding lab because the contracted work to build the indoor one was taking too long. Not only will the charter school’s students immediately begin gaining experience with the shiny new welding machines (donated by a local employer), they will also get to work in situations more resembling the real world environments of the oil and gas industry. Nice! (The Daily Review, 1/11/12)

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1. OSU professor and Columbus City Schools dad Vladimir Kogan hit the pages of the Dispatch today with a cold dose of reality. Teacher absenteeism and a lack of substitutes was a huge problem in the district long before anyone ever heard of SARS-CoV-2, as was the less-than-productive “dividing” of students from unstaffed classrooms on a daily basis. As usual, the professor provides receipts data in his op-ed. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/10/21)
    
2. Meanwhile, the Dayton Daily News has its own take on the state of play with regard to the EdChoice Scholarship program. that take is: Voucher usage has “skyrocketed” in Montgomery County and across the state in recent years, thus it makes sense that voucher opponents are choosing to file a lawsuit to kill the program at this moment. I wonder if they see the double meaning in that argument? I’ll be they don’t. (Dayton Daily News, 1/10/21)

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A decade ago, most charter school authorizers agreed it was not their job to help struggling charter schools. But times have changed, and best practices in charter school authorizing are evolving. Authorizers are exploring ways to support and encourage improvement in the charter schools they oversee, and some charter schools appreciate the change.

In a podcast for the National Network for District Authorizing (NN4DA), I sat down with leading authorizers from Colorado and California to discuss their initiatives. Authorizers interested in partnering with charter schools should consider these lessons and explore adapting them to their context.

District 49 near Colorado Springs (D49) created a leadership institute for all their charter schools. These multi-day professional development activities address reoccurring challenges in their portfolio, including frequent turnover among school leaders and a preponderance of leaders coming from non-traditional pathways. These dynamics left gaps in leaders’ knowledge and skillsets, which kept their schools from being as good as possible.

The D49 leadership institute focuses on common challenges, like relations between boards and leaders, and critical district priorities, like services for special populations. It also promotes distributive leadership and systems thinking. A broad pool of charter educators is encouraged to participate in the training to support new and aspiring leaders and future transitions. The participants give solid reviews and encourage more of their colleagues to participate.

D49 believes that charter students are still the district’s students. Franko explains, “As an authorizer, we feel it is really our duty to support our charters to be as successful as possible. In a district with just over 23,000 students, inclusive of our portfolio of 11,000 students in charters, as it goes with our charter schools, it goes with our district.”

Corey Loomis leads charter school initiatives for the Riverside County Office of Education (Riverside), which reoriented its work to partner with charter schools. Riverside is a direct charter authorizer and a support structure to local districts. By reorienting services directly to charter schools, Loomis believes Riverside’s charters are much more likely to have the support they need.

The traditional argument against authorizers trying to improve charter schools is two-fold. First, authorizers working with charter schools undermine the autonomy. Second, if the school still struggled, authorizers undercut their ability to close the school. Presumably, closing the school would be more challenging if a charter school could argue, “We wanted to fix things, but the strategies you made us implement failed. So, you can’t hold us accountable for struggling.”

Loomis disagrees and explains his transition in personal terms: “I never signed up to be a compliance officer; I’m an educator first. So, if we are student-focused, what does that mean? We are going to lean into the work, and we are going to support charters the best that we can, still managing that autonomy and that arms-length reach... What we are calling our new approach is beyond compliance.”

Initiatives to improve charters need not undermine accountability or autonomy. Improvements in policy and practice have made it realistic to expect authorizers to close the worst-performing schools. That still leaves many schools that won’t close but need to improve. We now have a lot of experience with charter closure, enough to know that it cannot be the only way to address problems in the sector.

Authorizing best practices have always been evolving. Many authorizers now use probationary renewals predicated on a school addressing noted deficiencies during a shorter charter term. A decade ago, policy wonks—myself included—were concerned about short probationary charter terms with prescriptive lists of required improvements. I was concerned shorter renewals would undermine eventual closures because there would still not be enough data, and authorizers would micromanage in the interim. But now this approach is working well and is widely accepted. Sometimes it leads to improvement. Other times, we see orderly closures that are less disruptive to students. Like probationary charter terms a decade ago, authorizer improvement initiatives probably won’t undermine closure when it is needed, and they need not erode autonomy. 

Colorado identified about seventy-five of the state’s 260 charter schools as failing to meet state standards. Given historical closure rates, it is reasonable to expect that ten to fifteen of these will close voluntarily or not be renewed. The other sixty to sixty-five technically “sub-standard” charter schools will probably stay open indefinitely. Other schools have acceptable academic performance but severe problems with specific functions, like serving students with disabilities.

Authorizers in these cases are right to ask, “What do we do now?” And “If not us, then who is going to help?” Charter support organizations are increasingly focused on policy advocacy and generally responsive to their biggest operators and best performers in our hyper-politicized world. Unfortunately, struggling charter schools are more a political liability than a call to action in this environment.

Many districts have sincerely committed to the notion that students in charter schools are “their” students while respecting charter autonomy. Their commitment to excellence and equity includes an imperative to do what they can to help all their schools succeed. While some charters will refuse help, authorizers like District 49 and Riverside find willing partners. Wonks may still bemoan slippery slopes leading toward district tyranny, but charter school leaders decide whether to accept help.

The Covid-19 pandemic makes these developments timely. With the pause in testing and state accountability systems, authorizers may renew struggling schools they would have closed before the pandemic and Covid-related challenges complicate work in all schools.

Whether addressing new challenges created by the pandemic, facilitating continuous improvement, or remedying common challenges in an authorizer’s charter portfolio, attitudes toward charter-authorizer partnerships are changing. Though respecting autonomy and maintaining accountability remain central to authorizing, the authorizer’s role in supporting charter improvement is likely to expand.

Exporting opposition

Ohio-based charter school opponent Dennis Smith published an editorial in the West Virginia Gazette-Mail recently, lauding the current court injunction against the first charter schools in the state and repeating the tired and debunked canards against them in his support for a more permanent halt.

More choice in Youngstown

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, the Academy for Urban Scholars has opened a new charter high school in Youngstown, providing a pathway for young people to earn their diplomas along with certifications in health care, advanced manufacturing, and IT, among others. They are also working with local employers, eager for new workers, to place student trainees. Nice!

The view from Idaho

In its end-of-year report, charter support organization Bluum reports nearly 2,000 new charter school seats were created in Idaho in 2021. The opening of four new startup schools and the expansion of three other existing schools are responsible for the majority of the expansion. Kudos to all!

The view from Florida

Pasco County, Florida, is booming with new homes. And that means lots of incoming families with children looking for schools. A report from the Tampa Bay Times says that home builders initially pointed new residents to local charter schools as an alternative to crowded district buildings but now district officials are jumping on the bandwagon as well. It is amazing how far into the mainstream choosing schools has become. Let’s hope that even more such family-focused efforts will follow.

Speaker series to aid teacher effectiveness and wellbeing

The EdWisely Speaker Series 2021-2022 continues with three upcoming virtual events focused on educator efficacy and wellbeing. Sessions titled “Self-Care in Practice”, “Teach Better, Work Less: EduProtocols”, and “Better Meetings” are all coming up. More information on these free events and links to register for all three can be found here.

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1. I’m sure my long-suffering tenured subscribers have noted that I am not clipping stories about which schools are closed/open/remote/in-person/hybrid/winging it due to SARS-CoV-2-related issues these days, despite the fact that education reporters (and government reporters and crime reporters and sports/weather/cute pet reporters) are writing almost exclusively about that topic. It feels like too serious and personal an issue at the moment, ill-fit for my usual snark. But who knows? It may speak to me before long. In the meantime, I will say that the ingenious technology integral to the continued learning of a Springfield girl as described in this piece seems like it might prove useful beyond a special needs situation. Who’s with me? (Springfield News-Sun, 1/5/22)
    
2. Speaking of awesome technology, here’s an update on all the cool stuff going into Ohio’s newest STEM school. This includes drone and robotics labs, a rock climbing gym, a makerspace, and an Esports arena. Ready or not, Xenia-ites, here comes the future! (Dayton Daily News, 1/5/22) Too Buck Rogers for you? How about this, then? A STEM-focused school in CMSD had a parking problem and it turned to teams of students to research, test, and design possible solutions to this real world difficulty. A decidedly practical use of STEM education’s ubiquitous “design challenge” model. Unfortunately, the difference between a standalone school like Xenia’s and a district school like CMSD’s seems to have resulted in a whole different kind of “challenge”. While students got to pitch their ideas to the district facilities team, it is those bureaucrats who will—eventually—implement whatever their preferred solution turns out to be. I am very sure that no student has ever won a “red tape challenge” before. (Cleveland.com, 1/2/22)
   
   

3. Speaking of bureaucracy, community recreation facilities and programming in the city of Lakewood are actually under the control of Lakewood City Schools. That weird arrangement has, it seems, been in place for decades. Who knew? However, beef seems to have arisen around baseball fields and while this piece initially indicates some détente on the matter (I don’t really know because the novelty of the situation wore off real quick), the small-town gov-speak quoted throughout points to a whole lot of hot air and not much action so far. (Additionally, I assume that it wouldn’t be in the paper if everything was hunky-dory.) Wonder what would happen if the city wanted to take matters into its own hands? (Cleveland.com, 1/5/22)
    
4. Awww… God bless Youngstown CEO-for-the-moment Justin Jennings. Seriously. But, also seriously: why man? (Mahoning Matters, 1/5/22)

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Welcome back to our first edition of 2022, covering news from 12/17 – 12/31/21. We will return to regular weekly publication on Fridays starting tomorrow.

Life advice and career advice

Canton native Armani Sharpe has been making a name for herself as a celebrity hair braider in Las Vegas for the last few years. Just before the holiday break, she returned to her hometown and provided makeovers—and some helpful life and career advice—for Beacon Academy students at a pop up salon inside the charter school. Awesome stuff.

Injunction

Just before the end of the year, a judge in Kanawha County, West Virginia, issued a preliminary injunction preventing the opening of the first five charter schools in the state. At issue is the constitutionality of the appointed Professional Charter School Board to “create schools”. More on this in 2022.

High achiever

Newly-minted Rhodes Scholar Samantha O’Sullivan credited BASIS Public Charter School and a magnet school in the DC Public School District for helping foster her love for math and science at a young age. “BASIS DC Public Charter School is very rigorous in math and science education,” she told the Washington Informer in late December, “that school built my confidence in those skills and made me feel like I could achieve anything.” O’Sullivan is currently majoring in physics and African-American studies at Harvard University with an eye toward becoming a research physicist. Fantastic!

To the next level

Charles Alexander, former director of college counseling at the University of Chicago Charter School’s Woodlawn High School, penned an important piece for Chalkbeat which posted just before Christmas. He details the creation and operation of Men with Purpose, a cohort of 14 high school juniors whom he guided along a college preparation track intended to help them boost their GPA and put college matriculation squarely in their sights. The ups and downs the young men experienced are as vital to understand as their ultimate success.

The view from Nevada

Coral Academy charter schools in southern Nevada are in the same boat as many charters across the country: they have more applicants than available seats and thus must hold a lottery to fill open slots. In order to increase enrollment of under-resourced students in their popular schools, Coral Academy is implementing a weighted lottery for the 2022-2023 school year. Students whose families qualify for Free or Reduced Price lunch will have, in essence, four entries in the next lottery by comparison to students whose family income is above that threshold. The 74 discussed the plan in late December, including analysis of similar efforts by other Nevada charters.

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Recent months have brought much hand-wringing and ink spilling over the possibility that hordes of Republicans are gearing up to plunge into local school board elections, this as part of their discovery that public education is rich with political opportunity (cue incoming Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, his campaign advisors, and observant GOP strategists).

Good thing or bad? Likely to succeed or not? Of course, it’s early days and way too soon to tell. All that’s really clear, besides the Virginia gubernatorial contest, is that school boards have become exceptionally contentious and that a nontrivial number of long-serving members are heading for the exits. The Atlantic reported seventy resignations in Minnesota alone between summer 2020 and autumn 2021 compared with fewer than twenty in a typical pre-Covid year. Recall campaigns against sitting board members are more frequent. And board meetings themselves have had enough angry protests that the head of the National School Boards Association famously sought federal help, leading Attorney General Merrick Garland to alert the Justice Department—or, in the words of critics, to “deploy the FBI.” This then led to an infamous memo from Montana’s acting U.S. attorney detailing the many ways that federal laws can be invoked to suppress such protests and punish the perpetrators.

Why all the agitation and seeming political potential? The big reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is millions of parents angry over school shutdowns, learning interruptions, and other education malfunctions associated with Covid, inflamed in some places by the ruckus over schools’ handling of race in general and “critical race theory” in particular. As The Atlantic’s Adam Harris sees it, “Although that [CRT] fight has garnered a lot of attention, the current animus toward school boards, and the members who sit on them, goes back to the start of the pandemic, when many schools shut down, prompting intense anger from some parents.”

In normal times, we tend to think of school boards as quiet backwaters, produced by thinly attended off-cycle elections and without much to do beyond hiring (and occasionally micromanaging) the superintendent and producing an annual budget. But that’s not quite right, as University of Chicago political scientist William Howell explained to Harris: “They’ve been places where issues involving race, involving our obligations to the less advantaged, involving citizenship and immigration status” have been sorted out, “and they invite all kinds of attention: threats, lobbying, and, of course, some positive engagement from people who want to be helpful. But boy, that temperature will often go up.”

Today it’s up for sure—which doesn’t necessarily mean that a lot of different people, notably people in Republican clothes, will soon be elected to serve on America’s thousands of local school boards. Though moves are underway in several states to turn school board elections into partisan affairs, around most of the country they remain nonpartisan, a legacy of the original expectation that this form of governance would not only preserve local control of the schools but it would also insulate public education from the messy dealmaking and logrolling and corruption of conventional politics while inducing each community’s leading citizens—the best and the brightest, the great and the good, call them what you like—to engage selflessly in the vital civic work of educating the next generation as well as possible.

I’ve long lamented how far school boards in many places have slipped from that pedestal, how their ranks have filled instead with aspiring politicians, fellow travelers of the teacher union, and revenge-minded former employees of the school system itself; how their off-cycle elections have yielded thin turnouts that could easily be manipulated by adult interests (often the union) with selfish agendas; and how the occasional slate of earnest reformers gets ousted at the next election by reactionary forces of the status quo. I’ve also lauded alternative arrangements such as mayoral control (though I’m more mindful than I once was that their achievements, too, can be undone by the next election).

Because I don’t think they work as intended, and because so often they’re barriers to needed reforms, I’m not nearly as troubled as some, including my friend, Harvard’s astute Martin West, by the prospect that GOP strategists are eying local school boards as an opportunity to make a difference. If enough get elected, they may at least shake up a complacent status quo and stodgy bureaucracy and offer a substantial counterweight to the unions and others that—visibly and vividly during the Covid plague—have pressed for decisions that served the interests of the school system’s adult employees far more than the interests of children and families.

Yes, they’ll doubtless cause missteps and excesses of their own, especially if the newcomers intrude farther than board members should into curricular matters. It’s great to mandate that primary teachers follow reading science, phonics and all, when introducing Kindergartners and first graders to the first and most fundamental of the three R’s. It’s great to insist that history and civics give patriotism its due. But history and civics also bring the risk of further polarization, particularly if board members go beyond asking for “the whole story” and insist on just the good parts. Pushing back against CRT and 1619 in the K–12 curriculum is one thing, but neglecting inclusion and tolerance is quite another.

We might reasonably hope, however, that Republican board members (along with right-thinking Democrats and independents) will also push their school systems to stick with high academic standards, clear metrics of achievement, and results-driven school accountability. And we should be able to count on them to support school choice, whether within the district, between districts, or by welcoming (and authorizing) the independent public schools we know as charters. That would be a seismic change in a great many places—and one that is apt to do poor and minority youngsters more good in the long run than a steady infusion of CRT, 1619, and other dubious curricular changes made in the name of equity.

All of which is to say that a purposeful GOP quest to infiltrate local school boards could turn out to be a good thing but only so long as it goes beyond political opportunism, manages to keep schools open, and incorporates the thoroughgoing overhaul that so many of them and their school systems sorely need.

To start the year off on an upbeat note, Colorado’s muscular effort to improve K–3 reading curriculum finally appears to be paying off. One of twenty states that passed or recently considered measures related to the science of reading, the Centennial State began cracking down on how its teacher preparation programs cover early literacy. It is now in the process of requiring teachers to demonstrate more in-depth knowledge about reading pedagogy as well as tightening the reins on which reading programs may be used by districts. Last year, barely two in five of the state’s many local districts used reading curricula from the state’s list of approved programs. That has already risen to 63 percent. 

The encouraging news can be traced back to Colorado’s READ Act, a major law enacted ten years ago requiring districts to help struggling readers in the early grades. But laws are blunt instruments, particularly when it comes to improving classroom practice, and the READ Act was no exception. Frustrated by the slow rate of progress, lawmakers passed an update to the statute in 2019, which spurred the state to take a more assertive role in compelling districts to pick from the list of state-approved curricula. Notably, Colorado’s four largest districts—Denver, Jefferson County, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek—have all recently publicized plans to adopt new elementary reading programs that adhere to reading science.

The state’s department of education sent out dozens of letters last fall notifying districts that plans for complying with the curriculum requirement must be submitted later this month. Those that don’t risk having their accreditation rating lowered—a toothless consequence by itself but one that could lead to greater sanctions down the road. Colorado districts have long enjoyed wide latitude on their curriculum choices—it’s a “local control” state, after all—so it’s not surprising that some districts have pushed back by playing games or disregarding the state’s directives. But in a foreshadowing of what may be to come, the state’s fifth largest district, Aurora Public Schools, made an abrupt about-face in December after arguing for months that the state’s rules didn’t apply to it. What’s important to understand here is how and why Colorado’s policy is getting results. Other states may have similar laws on the books, but they haven’t yet seen this kind of response. So what’s the secret? Four things come to mind.

The first was an unusual level of legislative involvement in the details of classroom teaching, emanating from both sides of the aisle. Consider just this one passage from the final law:

Each [district] that enrolls students in kindergarten or first, second, or third grade shall provide to the students the instructional programming and services necessary to…develop the reading skills to enable them to master academic standards and expectations....The instructional programming and services for teaching students to read must be evidence based and scientifically based and must focus on reading competency in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency including oral skills, and reading comprehension.

I have mixed feelings about how heavy a hand state legislatures should take when it comes to the nuts and bolts of curriculum and instruction. Those of us who have had a hand on the switch when it comes to influencing state policy often have strong feelings about what is and isn’t within the state’s bailiwick. But if there’s an exception, it might be in Colorado’s unapologetic attention to reading in the early grades, where the battle to ensure the success of our students is largely won or lost.

Second, Colorado’s elected state board of education—which is directly accountable to voters for shaping policy—has been animated by an urgency to raise reading proficiency scores. For example, a report commissioned last year to review the state’s landmark reading law recommended giving districts more time to replace state-rejected reading materials because curriculum adoption is “expensive and time consuming.” Several state board members balked at the suggestion, with one saying, “Reading should be the highest priority that any school district has so they need to be allocating the resources to make the adjustment as soon as possible.” Another added, “Some of the [reading] programs that are in use are actually detrimental to the science of reading. I don’t think we need any more time. I don’t think we have any more time.”

Third, ongoing pressure applied by parents focused attention on the abysmal number of students reading at grade level as well as the barriers—including financial ones—that several districts had erected to obfuscate how literacy is taught. Indeed, officials in Jefferson County, the state’s second largest district, initially reported that it didn’t know what reading programs its schools used! Thanks to the efforts of COKID, a group of parents of children with dyslexia, among others, the legislature enacted a transparency bill requiring districts to submit information about their core and supplemental reading programs for posting on the state department’s website.

Lastly, the news coverage about flawed instructional approaches galvanized by Emily Hanford’s indispensable work sounded the clarion call. Curriculum reform advocates flogged her stuff to state lawmakers, district leaders, and other key stakeholders. Without Hanford’s oeuvre, it’s hard to imagine Colorado making progress at its recent pace. By shining a spotlight on the deficiencies in how elementary schools approach teaching reading, she helped equip policymakers and parents alike with the tools to become knowledgeable and persuasive advocates for high-quality instructional materials.

The open question is how far can literacy laws move the needle on student learning. But good policy is always preferable to crappy policy, and adopting a high-quality curriculum should be low-hanging fruit for school districts, more so after receiving Uncle Sam’s ESSER largesse. Although it remains to be seen how vigorously Colorado will continue to exercise its oversight over curriculum in the face of countervailing pressures to ease up, it’s nonetheless heartening to see state leaders leaning in to ensure that schools employ sound methods for teaching children how to read. If they haven’t already, more states should keep an eye on Colorado’s curriculum reform efforts.

Improving reading results, especially for Black and Hispanic students, is one of our top educational priorities. The numbers are dire, as we see almost half of these youngsters performing “Below Basic” on the fourth grade NAEP—a truly alarming level of performance.

Yet there are a few bright spots. As we look at those NAEP results, only two states rank in the top five for both Black and Hispanic students: Florida and Mississippi. They also place first and second overall on the demographically adjusted NAEP rankings published by the Urban Institute. Even more impressive, both have risen from near the bottom of the rankings twenty years ago.

They are doing something right.

Much has been written about Mississippi’s successful reading program (a good review of its multifaceted approach is here). Similar reading initiatives, based on a common playbook, have been rolled out in several states over the last decade.

Yet many states with similar reforms have not had the same success. Consider Arizona and Nevada: both have improved, they still significantly lag Mississippi and other top states for Black and Hispanic students.

That could be because they lack a key feature of Mississippi and Florida’s approach: a vigorously applied, test-based student retention policy—the so-called “third-grade reading gate.” As others have written, this is “the elephant in the room.”

Most states retain few students. Data from 2017 show a national retention rate of 1.7 percent for grades K–3 (versus 7 percent for Mississippi and 4 percent for Florida, among the nation’s highest). National grade retention levels have been falling for decades.

That’s because most educators believe that retaining students is ineffective and even harmful; some have called it “educational malpractice.” According to Linda Darling-Hammond, an emeritus Stanford education professor who now serves as President of the California State Board of Education,

“The findings are about as consistent as any findings are in education research: the use of [retention based on] testing is counterproductive: it does not improve achievement over the long run, but it does dramatically increase dropout rates.”

That presents us with a puzzle: how could something that many educators call "educational malpractice" be one of the core components of the nation's most effective reading programs?

First, retention in these states isn’t just “repeating the grade.” In Mississippi, retained students are given, at minimum, an individualized reading plan, assigned to a highly qualified teacher, and receive at least ninety minutes of daily reading instruction with targeted interventions. Florida’s approach is similar. More effective retention is likely to lead to a better result.

Second, the research that led to the conventional wisdom—based primarily on twentieth-century studies—has been superseded by newer studies, generally larger and more statistically sophisticated, which tell a somewhat different story. While retention per se does not seem to be a highly effective student intervention—it’s mixed—it also does not have the negative consequences, like higher dropout rates, found in earlier studies.

This raises the question: If retention is a mixed intervention for students, why would it have a big impact on the result?

A likely reason is that a fixed, public promotion standard is one of the most effective tools we've found to change the actions of adults. Retention policy may or may not be effective for the kids who repeat a grade, but it is very effective in getting adults—teachers, administrators, even parents—to focus their attention and change their behavior.

The prospect of student retention forces all these adults to come to grips with the fact that a child they care deeply about is significantly behind in one of the most crucial areas of their education. This often comes as a surprise to parents and sometimes also to the teacher. Yet that arresting realization, made vivid by the risk that a wonderful child might be retained, helps them focus on the problem and change their own behaviors.

It takes a lot to change settled adult behavior. We are trained to do things a certain way, and our routines are comfortable. Change is hard and, despite the best intentions, usually we just can’t sustain it. Anyone who’s ever made a New Year’s resolution knows this firsthand. System-wide change in how reading is taught—across multiple districts, schools, and classrooms—calls for very powerful and effective tools to make sure that the changes will stick. Student retention has proven to be a very effective tool.

Retention by itself is likely of little value; it needs to work in support of an effective reading improvement program. Oklahoma and Louisiana have K–3 retention levels comparable to Florida and Mississippi, but without their robust reading programs, these states do not have similar results. The point is to support a system-wide improvement program, not punish teachers or students for disappointing results.

Yes, it feels unfair to retain a child who, through no fault of their own, has been failed by adults. But it’s also unfair to fail millions of children, year after year, by not doing what’s needed to change how the system works.

Todd Collins is one of the organizers of the California Reading Coalition and a school board member in Palo Alto, California.

Much attention has recently focused on early childhood education (ECE), thanks in part to its inclusion in President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. A new study by Robert C. Carr and colleagues investigated how the longitudinal effects of ECE are mediated by the quality of the K–12 schooling that follows.

The researchers used data on eighteen cohorts of North Carolina (NC) students enrolled in public schools, grades three through eight, between 1996 and 2019. They measured school district achievement and achievement growth from end-of-year assessments administered in all NC public schools during the years of this study. To identify the effect of ECE programs, they used a regression analysis for each of the pupil cohorts. Included in this analysis were variables for school district quality, which the researchers measured by average school district achievement growth.

Carr and colleagues found that investments in Smart Start, a NC ECE program focused on developing holistic skills, increase student achievement but only for students who went on to receive a high-quality education in school.

Meanwhile, NC Pre-K, an ECE program that focuses on literacy, also had positive effects but only for students in average or lower-quality school districts.

Carr and colleagues speculated that because Smart Start is more holistic, it enhances performance for students who then move on to high quality K–12. Meanwhile, because NC Pre-K is more focused on literacy, it may equip students in lower-quality districts with elevated literacy skills; however, this may be redundant for students who would learn these skills anyway in higher quality districts.

These findings make the challenge for policymakers and practitioners clear: It’s not enough to offer early childhood education programs. They need to be high quality to make a difference—and so does the public education that follows.

SOURCE: Robert C. Carr et. al., “Do the long-term impacts of North Carolina's early childhood programs depend on the quality of educational opportunity during school?” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (December 2021).