Among charter school networks having a profound impact on low-income student achievement, one stands out. The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP.
Want proof? Eighty percent of its graduates go on to college--the national average for low-income students being just 20 percent. And on average, fifth graders who spend just one year at a KIPP school improve from the 38th to 68th percentile in math, and 27th to the 42nd percentile in reading on the Stanford Achievement Tests.
Ohioans have the opportunity to bring this high-powered school to the Buckeye State--but not unless current laws are changed.
With 52 schools nationwide, KIPP is looking to expand, seeking proposals from communities across the nation to open more. Our state’s charter cap, however, only allows charter school operators with proven track record of success that manage the “daily operations of a community school” to open here. KIPP doesn’t handle day-to-day operations. Instead, it pours its resources into training independent, highly qualified leaders and support staff who take on the task themselves.
And the school has the financial backing to do this. New KIPP schools come with hefty grants for start-up and professional development from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($300,000 for high schools) and Walton Family Foundation ($400,000 for all new schools).
Ohio shouldn’t let this opportunity pass it by.
State policymakers should do what’s necessary to welcome KIPP to Ohio’s charter school community. If we are serious about closing achievement gaps in this state, we must embrace school models that yield results--even if it means tweaking our own laws so they can come in.
Learn more about KIPP here.
"KIPP Schools Shift Strategy for Scaling Up," by Eric Robelen, Education Week, April 12, 2006.
The Omega School of Excellence, one of Dayton's first charter schools, is breaking new ground once again. From its inception in 2000, the school's goal was to teach predominantly African-American students in grades five through eight the academic skills and attitudes they needed to gain entrance to, and successfully compete at, some of the best high schools in Dayton and beyond. The school has realized some successes: dozens of their students have won scholarships to top local private schools, and some have moved on to the country's top prep schools.
Omega was founded by Daryl and Vanessa Ward--leaders of the Omega Baptist Church in west Dayton--and modeled on the hugely successful Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Early on, the school ran an intensive, 57-hour week program that emphasized academic achievement, leadership and self-discipline. All of its students wore uniforms.
Recently, though, the school has struggled. Daryl's serious health problems forced Vanessa to shoulder most of the church's work as a whole, at the expense of the school. Absent her critical leadership, teachers and parents alike turned against the extended school days and Saturday classes, central to Omega's early successes.
Declining enrollment brought financial difficulties. And less instructional time led to a poor academic showing in 2004 and 2005. That year, it was rated among Dayton's lowest performing schools, a fact not acceptable either to the school's board, or to the Wards. Omega's board decided in the spring of 2006 to take drastic action and make a "fresh start" for the school.
This fall, the Omega School of Excellence will be "reconstituted." This means Omega will start the year with a new school leader, all new teachers, a new curriculum, new school hours, a new grade structure, and a new approach to leadership and instruction. About the only carry-over are some of the students, the building, the school's name, and most importantly, Omega's commitment to preparing urban children for academic success and future leadership positions.
It is the first charter school in Ohio to undergo radical restructuring. The school will partner with an outside charter school management organization, Dayton-based Keys to Improving Dayton Schools (k.i.d.s.), that will run Omega's day-to-day activities on a contractual arrangement. The board is still responsible for the school.
The mission of k.i.d.s. is to ensure that students attending partner schools demonstrate academic prowess that meets or exceeds state standards. Dr. Robert Pohl, the executive director of k.i.d.s., has a long history in education reform, beginning his career as an inner-city Catholic school principal in San Francisco. He spent many years working in California to turn around underperforming urban schools and he helped launch several schools of choice. He recently served as Santa Barbara's school board president.
Omega and k.i.d.s. share the same goals, and both receive philanthropic support to help pay the costs of this fresh start. K.i.d.s. is working with Omega's board to define clear expectations for teacher and student performance, to create a school culture focused on academic achievement, and to empower teachers and the school leadership to act at all times in the best interest of the children and their education. The school will evolve over the next couple of years from a middle school to one serving K-8 students. If all goes well, the school may add high school grades.
Vanessa Ward, who continues as chairman of the Omega board, has embraced the changes, and Omega church is providing the school with a building at a greatly reduced cost.
"Excuses are not acceptable here," Ward said. "There are no shortcuts to learning, and we will do whatever it takes to be successful."
A common phrase, uncommonly applied.
A similar version of this editorial appeared in the July 24 edition of The Dayton Daily News.
"Omega School of Excellence Tries New Approach," by Scott Elliot, The Dayton Daily News, July 23, 2006.
"The Hard Way to Save a School," by Scott Elliot, Get on the Bus web log, The Dayton Daily News, July 23, 2006.
Note: In addition to being vice president for Ohio programs and policy for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Terry Ryan also sits on the board of k.i.d.s.
Critics of voucher programs are positively swooning over a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which finds that public school students in 4th and 8th grades score as well or better than their private-school peers.
Based on results from the 2005 NAEP, the findings surprised many because average scores have historically shown private-school students performing far better. But adjust for student characteristics such as gender, race/ethnicity, and English language proficiency, and the gap between public and private almost disappears.
Fourth graders in both systems scored roughly the same in reading. In math, fourth graders in private schools actually did worse than public school students--by 4.5 points. Eighth graders in private schools still performed better in reading by 7.3 points, but ran neck-and-neck with public school students in math.
Teacher unions wasted no time embracing the study. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) web log cited the data as proof that vouchers programs, which give parents public dollars to send their kids to private schools, are a waste of taxpayer money. Ohio Federation of Teachers president Tom Mooney likewise stated, "The point is not to transfer a handful of students from public to private schools…This is further proof that that’s a dead end."
Hyperbole aside, the NCES’s report never addresses the effectiveness of voucher programs. As a broad comparison of public and private schools, it does not examine how voucher recipients perform academically after transferring to a private school. Studies that have (including those recently discussed in John Tierney’s New York Times column) actually reveal improved test scores for voucher recipients.
Yet the report does raise important issues for voucher programs like Ohio’s EdChoice initiative.
The most critical is that all schools that receive taxpayer funding--public or private--should be held accountable for their performance. Private schools in Ohio must administer the Ohio Achievement Tests to voucher recipients, but there is no penalty for schools if students perform poorly--or any formal evaluation of the overall program.
For the parents of the nearly 2,300 students receiving vouchers under Ohio’s EdChoice program, the report underscores the importance of making good choices. In Dayton, parents have My School Chooser, a user-friendly guide created by GreatSchools.net, which lists performance data and information for the city’s many traditional public, charter, and private schools. It also provides a checklist of key criteria for selecting the right school.
In the coming weeks NCES will release its comparison of charter and traditional public school performance. Should the results be mixed, critics will surely decry charter schools as miserable failures, too.
Don’t believe it. If schools cannot provide students an adequate education, parents deserve the option to look elsewhere. With the EdChoice program and a host of charter schools, Ohio’s parents can choose among viable options--not just hope and a prayer.
To read the NCES report, click here.
Check out the GreatSchools.net web site here .
"Republicans Propose National School Voucher Program," by Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, July 19, 2006.
"Spinning a Bad Report Card," by John Tierney, The New York Times, July 18, 2006. (subscription required)
"Private Schools Not Inherently Better, National Study Suggests," by Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch, July 18, 2006.
"Public Schools on Par With, Outperform Private Schools in Some Areas, Study Says," by Mary Ann Zehr, Education Week, July 18, 2006.
"Public vs. Private " NCLBlog, American Federation of Teachers, July 15, 2006.
While the philanthropy world was still reeling from Investor Warren Buffett's announcement to give the bulk of his fortune-$37 billion-to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the foundation's staff and a group of education leaders met in Seattle on July 17 and 18 for the foundation's EDU Summer Conference. On the agenda was the future of the Gates' Foundation's education program.
Should Ohioans be interested?
You bet. The Gates Foundation has already invested millions in Ohio to improve high school graduation rates and school quality by promoting the "three R's"--rigor, relevance, and relationships. Some of the foundation's work in Ohio include:
- Partnering with The KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Cincinnati to open three early college academies (with five more in the works), including the Dayton Early College Academy;
- Sponsoring the Charter School Conference on Quality in November 2005, hosted by Governor Bob Taft, Ohio Speaker of the House John Husted, Ohio Senate President Bill Harris, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan T. Zelman;
- Supporting the efforts of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation to expand its charter school sponsorship activities throughout the state;
- Underwriting the creation of Keys to Improving Dayton Schools (k.i.d.s), a new charter management organization;
- Financing the start-up of the Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools;
- And supporting numerous district reform efforts in Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Dayton.
The foundation is also committed to preparing students for the demands of college and the workplace. Thus, it has become major backers of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Governor Taft's Ohio's Core Curriculum proposal.
So where does the foundation go from here?
After reflecting on some decidedly mixed results and a litany of studies evaluating its efforts (both detailed in a recent Business Week cover story), the foundation has emerged with a sharper focus. While it will continue to provide significant support to school reform initiatives, the foundation will center its efforts on what works--or at least what has a shot at working--before committing millions of dollars in support.
Ohioans should be encouraged. After all, we're already on the map.
"Bill Gates Gets Schooled," Business Week, June 26, 2006.
As Dick Cheney and John Edwards squared off in their pre-election debate at Case Western in 2004, three billboards in Cleveland dared the moderator to ask the candidates why taxpayers "pay $1.5 billion to label our top schools failures." The billboards, a reference to grievances against No Child Left Behind (NCLB), were paid for by Communities for Quality Education--a group financed by the National Education Association (NEA).
This is just one example that Joe Williams details in his report of how the NEA subsidizes a host of organizations that "echo" the teacher union's criticisms of NCLB. From bankrolling advocacy groups and political organizations to funding union-friendly research, the NEA's efforts to sway public opinion of the law crisscross the country, Ohio included. For example, the nonprofit Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (which keeps tabs on Ohio) has commissioned numerous studies outlining "doomsday scenarios" for schools under NCLB, studies funded by the NEA and its affiliates.
The NEA rarely publicizes these relationships, nor does the press. The result is the appearance of many "impartial" voices united against NCLB--when, in fact, they are just echoes of the NEA's.
Is it working? Polls show opposition to the law has increased from 8 to 28 percent in just two years, while percentages favoring it have fallen from 40 to 36.
At least with this report, readers can "connect the dots" for themselves, provided they keep their pencils sharpened.
To read the report, click here.
Gadfly still favors radically deregulating entry into teaching, but if states are determined to stick with teacher "credentialing" there is every reason to hope that the new American College of Education is getting it right. This for-profit and partially on-line venture of Texas entrepreneur Randy Best--who lined up a blue-ribbon team that included Rod Paige, Reid Lyon, and Mike Moses--enrolled 25 Chicago teachers in master's degree programs during 2005-2006, its first year. The school hopes for 225 students or so in the coming year, and then, the team says, the sky is the limit, as more urban school systems arrange for their teachers to pursue degrees and coursework--advanced training seems to be the main offering today--from this interesting venture. Whether the college survives as a business proposition will eventually depend upon how many customers it can land, both districts and students (i.e., teachers). One supposes that its mid-year tuition slash was meant to attract more of them. Whether it prospers as an education reform will hinge upon ACE-trained teachers producing the requisite classroom results with their own pupils. On that crucial metric, nothing is yet known.
"The Big Asset in This Deal Was a College's Accreditation," by Elyse Ashburn, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2006 (subscription required)
Predictably, Diana Jean Schemo and the New York Times found front-page, above-the-fold space to cover a new National Center for Education Statistics report, drawn from 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress data, that finds private schools only slightly more effective than public when analysts control for income, race, parent education, and such. (The exception is eighth-grade reading where the private-school advantage is marked.)
You can be sure that if the government study had found a wide margin favoring private schools, it would have been covered alongside the shipping news, if at all. But that says more about Schemo and her editors (see here) than about American education.
I've long gotten into trouble with private-school audiences by noting that much of their test-score edge is caused by their choice of students, and students' choice of schools, rather than by their superior educational effectiveness. Private schools, in my experience, are prey to the same daffy constructivist ideas, the same curricular correctness, many of the same mediocre textbooks and much of the same educationist zeitgeist as their public-school counterparts. They are free to be different but in reality they aren't so very different-except that they're all schools of choice and they nearly all charge tuitions, which means their students tend to be relatively more prosperous and from homes where parents care enough both to make a purposeful choice and to shell out money for it. Erase the "selection effect" and private schools may not be academic high flyers. That's more or less what the NCES study shows. (Note, though, that it also has some methodological problems, as Harvard's Paul Peterson explained in the Wall Street Journal on the same day.)
Yet social science is not the real world and the real world never erases the selection effect. Private schools do have higher test scores and that is one reason picky parents who can swing it choose them for their kids-and zillions more tell survey researchers they would do likewise if they could afford it. (It's those zillions more who would take advantage of vouchers if available.)
But test scores and other signs of academic prowess are just part of why parents favor private schools. Indeed, they may be the lesser reason. Private schools have multiple pluses. They are generally smaller, more intimate-and nearly always safe and well disciplined. Many of them attend to character development, values and moral formation as well as cognitive skills and knowledge. Many add religious instruction and prayer to the mix. What's more, private schools are typically welcoming and responsive places from the parent's standpoint, keenly aware that they must please as well as educate their clients. Some of them confer social status and a readymade peer group that suits the parents' sense of who their children are (or wish they were). In part because they're free to hire the best teachers available, certified or not, their instructional staff is often knowledgeable as well as caring. They offer more counseling and individualized attention in areas like college admissions.
All these and more factors go into the durable appeal of private schools. An appeal that will continue to trump any number of government studies.
To repeat, that doesn't mean they're more effective than public schools in a "value added" sense when measured on external tests of academic achievement. Alas, we actually know little about this. Few private schools administer state tests or release their results on the normed tests that many use; and private-school participation in NAEP is spotty. For this they should be ashamed-as they should of their lack of interest in growing, adding more campuses, serving more kids, and pressing for the public dollars that would make that more possible. Thirty years ago, private schools in general and Catholic schools in particular were in the forefront of the quest for federal tuition tax credits and other aid schemes. Today they're far more reticent, sometimes even declining to participate in a voucher program after others enact it. (Some of that is occurring in Ohio today, for example.)
In sum, I have lots of beefs with private schools, their organizations, and their leaders. But they're going to remain popular among those who are able to attend them and the basis of that popularity is legitimate, even if not always visible in NAEP results. That more Americans don't have this option is a national disgrace. The heck with the New York Times.
"Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study," by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, July 15, 2006
"Long-Delayed Education Study Casts Doubt on the value of Vouchers," by Zachary M. Seward, Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2006 (subscription required)
The substance of this commentary appeared in the July 17 National Review Online.
On Tuesday, four GOP lawmakers--two from the Senate (Lamar Alexander and John Ensign) and two from the House (Howard McKeon and Sam Johnson)--proposed legislation to spend $100 million on vouchers for low-income students in chronically failing schools across the nation. The idea, called America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids, is modeled on the Washington, D.C. voucher pilot program. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings offered support for the proposal and pointedly defended it against critics who cited a recent DOE report showing student achievement in public and private schools to be similar (see here). NCLB promised "choice" to students in failing schools, but because big urban districts often have little space in their high-performing public schools, that promise has gone unmet. National vouchers that include private school choice are a fine idea. This proposal is severely limited, though--states and districts must apply for dollars, so parental choice remains at the mercy of state/distict. Nonetheless, it's a good start. We'll be watching what happens.
"Back to School," New York Sun, July 20, 2006
"GOP Unveils School Voucher Plan," by Lois Romano, Washington Post, July 19, 2006
Superman has flown into Pittsburgh's public schools--and this time his name isn't Ben Roethlisberger. It's Kaplan, Inc, the $1.4 billion (with a "b") education company hired to produce curriculum for the Steel City's middle- and high-school students. Frustrated by the city's persistently pitiful performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), the superintendent is paying Kaplan $8.4 million (with an "m") to create a curriculum keyed to the Commonwealth's English, math, science, and social studies standards. Once in place, every student will cover the same material at the same time, and every six weeks take a PSSA-style test on it. Fine, but the state's standards are no models of excellence (see here, here, here, and here). We wish Pittsburgh and Kaplan the best, but we wonder how sturdy can be a curriculum constructed upon such shoddy foundations.
"Attempting a Turnaround: All-new $8.4 million city school curriculum," by Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 16, 2006
To compete with more lucrative private sector job options and address critical shortages, the Los Angeles Unified School District dangled a new (smallish) carrot in hopes of attracting and retaining math and science teachers. The City of Angels will bestow one-time $5,000 "incentives" on certified math and science teachers who opt for classroom over corporate positions. The city will also reimburse its current math and science teachers up to $5,000 for any future subject-matter courses they take. LAUSD's Dan Isaacs said, "We're doing our best to get the very best and brightest in these fields to consider education as a career." It's no small feat to push teacher unions to agree to any form of incentive-based pay, and the city deserves congratulations for making progress on that front. Five thousand dollars, though, is hardly enough to entice America's best young scientists and mathematicians to reject the private sector in favor of urban public schools, and we assume someone within LAUSD knows that. But convincing the unions that physics teachers deserve much higher base salaries than phys-ed teachers will take a lot more work.
"A Costly Lesson in Supply and Demand," by Michelle Keller, Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2006