1. Here is a story about the status of the three Ohio school districts currently operating under the (nominal) aegis of an Academic Distress Commission. Having followed this story in detail for the last six years, I didn’t need to read any further than this sentence—“Since 2016, two different CEOs have run the district [Youngstown], thanks to the Ohio legislature.”—to know that it was not going to be worth my time. It is the third sentence. Unfortunately for me, our own Aaron Churchill is quoted further down, so I had to read more. My impression of the piece did not improve. (Cleveland.com, 10/25/21)
    
2. Back in the real world, here is a piece mainly focused on higher-education but it caught my interest for two reasons. The first is that a robotics nerd at Bowling Green State University got to demonstrate some serious acronyms technology for the Governor and the First Lady. And he seemed to have had a whale of a time showing off for them. You love to see it. The second is that the student’s story (career-tech school graduate who goes off to college only to find—oops!—that he could learn and do even more cool tech stuff than he even knew about; then gets an internship, followed by a fancy-a$$ job even before he gets to show off to Mike DeWine graduates) is exactly how all this education stuff is supposed to work. I say it again: You love to see it. Right? (Toledo Blade, 10/25/21)
   
   
3. And finally today, all six of my dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers know that I don’t care about sports. Despite that, and despite the fact that I understood the impenetrable acronyms and tech speak of the robotics piece above way more than I understood the football jargon used here, this look at KIPP Columbus’ football team—and the effort to build a sports tradition rare among charter schools—is still pretty good. (ThisWeek News, 10/21/21)

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Interesting discussion of school choice

An unusual candidate is almost guaranteed to win an open seat on the Akron City Schools board next month. Carla Jackson, the principal of Emmanuel Christian Academy, says that there is nothing anomalous about her bid to help run the local district. While some may see her school as “competition”, Ms. Jackson says that Akron—and indeed all school districts in Ohio—have anything a child could need to get a great education…except religion. That, she says, is the only reason parents should seek out private schools. She does seem to believe that charter schools are the real competition and she has some pointed words about them in this profile.

Growing the grassroots

Debbie Veney, senior vice president of communications for the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, discussed the organization’s recent report looking at public school enrollment shifts. She believes that the changes found—especially a boost in charter school enrollment—in the wake of pandemic disruptions point to growing grassroots-level involvement in public education. And she believes that this will continue even after normal schooling resumes.

More myth busting

NAPCS president and CEO Nina Rees published an op-ed in the Miami Herald last week, setting straight once again that charter schools are public schools and are subject to most of the same requirements as traditional districts.

Watershed moment

In Kansas City, Missouri, data show that the 2021-2022 school year is the first time charter school enrollment within the traditional district’s boundaries surpassed the district’s own enrollment. 13,375 students are enrolled in various charter schools this year, while 13,343 students are attending Kansas City Public Schools. While the district should likely be looking at consolidation due to a sharp decline in enrollment, KCPS seems to have a history of holding onto long-closed buildings and the officials quoted are far more interested in finding ways to “bring kids back”.

*****

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1. Repeat after me: “Report cards are just a snapshot. Tests do not define our students. Report cards do not reflect all that our students know and can do.” This mantra should hold true even when the report cards are awesome, right? (Cleveland.com, 10/21/21)
    
2. Back in the real world, here’s a nice look at the new afterschool program in Plain Local Schools called Beyond the Bell. It sounds like an hour or two of additional, STEM-based academics several days a week. Actual classroom teachers are teaching, actual buses are delivering kids home afterward, and it’s all paid for by federal Covid-relief dollars. Says the district supe: “We're not building structures. We’re not putting in new things that look nice. We are, ‘Here's what our kids need and here's what our families need,’ and we can deliver.” Fresh air indeed, sir. (Canton Repository, 10/21/21)

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Last week brought the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s Long Term Trend series, and they were sobering. Just before the pandemic kicked in, U.S. thirteen-year-olds saw statistically-significant declines in both math and reading—a first in the study’s nearly fifty-year history. Black, Hispanic, and low-achieving students saw the largest declines.

The question is why, and the answer is: Nobody knows for sure. The Nation’s Report Card is great for tracking trends across time and across subgroups, but clunky for looking inside the black box of cause and effect. So we pundits are left to float hypotheses and stitch together what evidence we can to test them.

So it was that I suggested to several reporters last week, and on Twitter, that the Great Recession might be to blame. I’ve floated the idea before, given that “main” NAEP results have also lagged of late for more or less the same cohort of students. This led to some gentle teasing from some of my edu-wonk friends, making fun of my supposedly tortured logic that blames a long-ago economic downturn, and related spending cuts in schools, rather than a more proximate cause, like the Common Core. Heck, even Checker is skeptical of my theory. (He’s more apt to ascribe the score decline to the switch from NCLB accountability to ESSA’s milder form.)

And you know what? All these folks might be right! Test scores alone are akin to a Rorschach test. Just as we don’t have consensus on why America’s violent crime rate dropped precipitously in the 1990s and 2000s—or why it’s on the rise again—we struggle to make sense of gyrations in national test scores. But allow me to make my case.

Education policy is rarely the star of the show

Test scores go up, and test scores go down. It’s powerfully tempting for us wonks to believe that policies deserve the credit or the blame. Most notably, when achievement for Black students rose sharply in the 1970s and early 1980s, especially in the South, most analysts argued that it reflected the impact of desegregation and the access to greater resources that came with it. (Later studies would question these assumptions, though they remain the conventional wisdom.)

So when test scores started shooting up again—in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially for Black, Hispanic, low-income, and low-achieving kids—pundits and politicians alike wanted to credit the major policy shifts underway at the time, especially the advent of results-driven school accountability. And indeed, rigorous studies found that accountability did cause some improvements in NAEP scores. But those impacts were relatively modest and limited to math, while the national improvements were huge and seen across multiple subjects.

A few years ago, I dug into the data and concluded that most of the achievement gain was likely the result of plummeting child poverty rates in the 1990s. For example, using the “supplemental poverty measure,” which looks at income both from jobs and social programs, the Black child poverty rate dropped from close to 55 percent in the mid-1980s to 32 percent in 2000. This was a wonderful development in its own right and meant that millions more American children came to school ready to learn. And once those kids were old enough to sit for NAEP exams, we started to see those trends reflected in test scores.

The lesson is an important one: We must be careful not to put our ed-policy selves at the center of the story. As a George W. Bush Administration alumnus who still has his NCLB pin stored away somewhere, I want to believe that it was accountability policies that lifted achievement. And I believe they did—a bit. But the forces lifting families and their children out of poverty almost surely did even more.

So why should it not also be true that the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Recession put these trends into reverse? The thirteen-year-olds who took the Long Term Trend exam in January 2020 would have been babies when the economy started falling apart in 2007. Parents were thrown out of work. Many families were thrown into poverty. And the hardship was deep and long lasting. It would have been a miracle had such shocks not had a negative impact on the academic and non-cognitive development of these children.

Then this unlucky cohort of kids got hit again when they entered kindergarten during the era of deep spending cuts—roughly 2011 to 2013—after federal relief funds had been spent and districts went over a fiscal cliff. This was no typical downturn. It was the first time in recorded history that real per-pupil spending declined nationally. High-poverty districts were hit hardest. And despite much pleading by us pundits, those districts, by and large, did not make cuts strategically, but wielded a meat cleaver—laying off the most junior teachers (regardless of their effectiveness), raising class sizes across the board, eliminating reading coaches, getting rid of tutoring programs, and on and on. This happened just as this cohort was making its way through kindergarten, first, and second grades—arguably the most important period for developing literacy and numeracy skills. So it’s not surprising that Kirabo Jackson and his colleagues have found compelling evidence that these school-budget cuts did real harm to student achievement.

We can, and should, bemoan that we allowed these kids to get off to such a slow start, that we didn’t find a way to insulate them from the storm around them. And we can wish that schools had accelerated their learning over the last eight years so they might have recovered from their early life challenges. But are we really surprised that, in general, at scale, the American education system failed to do so?

Again, I can’t be sure that I’m right. Maybe it was Common Core—though the timing isn’t quite right, given that few schools were implementing the new standards in earnest until the new tests came on the scene around 2015. The cohort of kids we’re talking about would have missed the Common Core in their most formative years.

Or maybe—Checker’s theory—it was the end of consequential accountability starting early in the Obama Administration when waivers allowed most states to take the pressure off low-performing schools, or certainly by the advent of ESSA. But if accountability can’t take too much credit for test score gains, can the lack of accountability take much blame for test score declines?

What this means for the Covid Generation

The reason all of this matters is that it helps us make better decisions going forward. If we think Common Core is the culprit for these latest scores, for example, we would conclude that we should ditch the standards. But that might turn out to be a huge mistake.

And we are entering a very challenging period, given the Covid-19 crisis and its already-all-too-clear consequences for student achievement. Needless to say, it’s the impact on kids that we should worry most about. But we also need to be smart when it comes to analyzing achievement trends now and over the next decade. In particular, we need to expect that scores will be depressed through at least the early 2030s. Think of today’s first-graders, who spent last year doing “remote kindergarten.” Many of those kids likely learned next to nothing, meaning they entered first grade a year behind. For our neediest students, who tend to enter kindergarten years behind in normal times, the challenge is even greater.

And of course we’re not yet out of the woods, given the lack of an approved vaccine for young children, the aggressive quarantine policies of many states and districts, and the disruptions to districts caused by staffing shortages. So our first-grader is probably going to fall further behind this year, too.

In three years, when he takes the fourth-grade NAEP, these scars are going to show. And they will still be apparent seven years from now, when he sits for the eighth-grade NAEP, and eleven years from now, when he takes the twelfth-grade NAEP. (If he makes it to twelfth grade, that is.)

Unless.

As the Lorax famously said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Changing the course of history for this cohort of kids is the challenge at hand today. Accelerating student learning will take commitment, smarts, and the political will to invest federal relief funds strategically. A decade ago, it’s now pretty clear to me, we failed to rise to the challenge in the wake of the Great Recession. Let us not repeat the same mistakes again.

• “What research tells us about gifted education.” —Hechinger Report
• A celebration of the late Mike Rose and his contribution to writing instruction. —New Yorker
• “School board elections will be an early test of what issues motivate voters.” —NPR
• Parents are clamoring for education reform, and conservatives should respond with a clear agenda for it. —Washington Free Beacon
• “Moms for Liberty” is mobilizing conservative parents nationwide to advocate for their interests at school boards, sometimes disruptively. —Washington Post
• Enrollment in Christian schools is booming. Is it a pandemic-related blip? Or something more permanent? —New York Times

Whether due to the pandemic, political opportunism, popular demand, or a combination, education savings accounts (ESAs) are enjoying much attention and growth in 2021. ESAs are funding mechanisms that allow families to receive a deposit of public funds into a government-authorized savings account from which they can pay for a variety of educational services. A recent working paper examines data from the largest ESA program in the country to describe how families have chosen to spend those funds.

The Gardiner Scholarship (now called The Florida Empowerment Scholarship) started in 2014 to provide support for students who have special needs between the ages of three and twenty-two (or in the twelfth grade, whichever comes first). The nonprofit Step-Up-for-Students administers the scholarship program, which has no income limit for eligible families and an account cap of 90 percent of charter school funding or 100 percent of school district funding, as well as a mandated standardized testing requirement. Students in the program may not attend a public school at the same time as they’re enrolled in the ESA, although they can receive contracted services from a public district or school (more below).

This descriptive study uses student, parent, household, and school level data from 2014–15 through 2018–19 to determine how the funds were spent, whether that changed over time, and whether it varied by certain demographic factors. For context, the program enrolled over 17,500 students in fall 2020 from nearly 1,900 schools and the Florida legislature appropriated nearly $190 million to support it for the 2020–21 school year. Families with children with special needs are not required to spend all of the funds each year; any unused amount may be rolled over and used in future years. Families can spend the funds on twenty-four different types of goods and services, but the study aggregates them into eight larger expenditure categories: private school tuition, instructional materials, curriculum (which are mostly approved online courses), standardized testing fees, tutoring, public services (from districts), higher education (like contributions to a 529 college savings plan), and specialized services (like music and art therapy).

Analysts found that the average award across the time period is $10,097 per year, of which families used an average of $8,373. They used their ESAs to make an average of twenty-one transactions to purchase four different kinds of goods and services. They spent the most (57 percent) on private school tuition—typically at a non-denominational school—followed by instructional materials (21 percent), specialized services (11 percent), and tutoring (5 percent). Families spent no more than 2 percent of their ESA funds, on average, on curriculum, public services, higher education, and testing fees.

In terms of demographics, 54 percent of ESA students are White, 30 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Black. Most Gardiner ESA students—61 percent—are diagnosed with autism, 18 percent with an intellectual disability, and 4–6 percent with multiple or other disabilities. About 85 percent of each cohort in a given year continued the program in the following year. The percentage of ESA funds spent increased each year from 60 percent in 2015 to 73 percent in 2016 to a high of 88 percent in 2019. Over all the study years, 83 percent of funds on average were used. Expenditures on private school tuition increased by 11 percent between 2015 and 2019, but the greatest change was for instructional materials, which saw a four-fold increase over the study period, amounting to $1,375 in additional spending.

Moreover, the longer students were in the program, the less the share of funds devoted to private school tuition, while the amount spent on the other categories (curriculum, instructional materials, tutoring, and specialized services) increased. However, Black and Hispanic families used both a greater percentage of their ESA funds and a greater share on tuition compared to White students (specifically, 7 to 9 percentage points greater). Whether students of color were choosing higher-tuition schools, or whether their higher tuition spending was a result of greater income constraints, or both, are unfortunately not questions the researchers could answer. That said, students with divorced or single parents also used a greater portion of their ESA funds. Finally, families over time increased their number of purchases, purchase types, and number of categories used. For instance, in 2015 they used their accounts an average of nine times, but in 2019 they used their accounts thirty times. The authors suggest that perhaps families are learning how to better maximize and spend the funds.

Eight states now offer ESAs, most of which are limited to special needs students. Arizona’s was the first program to launch in 2011, and West Virginia’s is the latest (to be launched next year). West Virginia also has the largest ESA program in terms of overall statewide eligibility (93 percent of students), while Florida’s special needs version—at least for now—has the largest in terms of participation (13,884 enrollees in fall 2020).

This study’s descriptive data are a good snapshot of what policymakers can expect to happen as new families who have children with special needs take advantage of these funds. Aside from student need, ample political will and parental appetite for options will drive the future of ESAs. Barely a decade old, they are relative newcomers on the educational landscape, so it will be key that we evaluate them in the future on any number of available outcomes.

SOURCE: Michelle L. Lofton and Martin F. Lueken, “Distribution of Education Savings Accounts Usage Among Families: Evidence from the Florida Gardiner Program,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (June 2021).

Cheers

• Eighteen states and D.C. are focusing Covid relief funds on training teachers in research-based early literacy practices. —Education Week
• “D.C.’s teacher hiring process is drawing a larger pool of high-quality candidates and diversifying the teaching corps.” —The 74
• Eric Adams, who is all but certain to be New York City’s next mayor, says he will reject current Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to dismantle gifted education in the city. —New York Times

1. In our topsy turvy tour of education news clips today, we start with Fairview Park City Schools, which appears to be heavily recruiting students to attend its swanky, newly-upgraded high school next year. That includes homeschooled kids in the district (natch), private schoolers (ditto), and its own current eighth graders who might be “shopping around for high schools” (?!). District officials play it cool, as they must, and avoid being quoted using that dreaded “r” word. Instead, they tout their new facilities, numerous athletic opportunities, and top-notch academic offerings: “Our attitude used to be ‘we’re the free school’, but now it’s ‘they’re crazy to spend that kind of money when they can come here and get as good enough if not a better education’.” Simple. But when officials also say things like “We just want those kids back,” and “We want kids from all around to feel like we’re as good as a school as anybody else and should check us out too,” I personally start to suspect that this effort is perhaps less magnanimous than it sounds, especially since Fairview Park has been closed to interdistrict open enrollment forever. If you really want your fancy schools to have more kids in them, might I suggest opening your sealed borders and see how fast your building tours fill up? (Cleveland.com, 10/20/21)
    
2. Fittingly, the word “crazy” comes up in this story too: A private school principal is one of four candidates vying for four open seats, all but guaranteeing her a place on the elected board of Akron City Schools. As you can imagine, this opens a huge discussion of school choice in most of its forms. (As an aside, it is also entirely fitting that this upside down edition of Bites includes a byline from Doug Livingston.) Carla Jackson does not see her candidacy as a contradiction, saying that private school should only be used by families looking for religious education and that religion is the only reason she is working in private vs. public education. (Yes, her school accepts students using vouchers. I told you things were topsy-turvy today.) She also lauds traditional district schools generally and Akron City Schools specifically as having anything any kid could need except for religion. She notes that parents must undertake a huge effort to opt out of the district default. “Why are they making that choice?” she asks rhetorically, “If you say it’s education, if you say it’s academics, then we have to rethink what we’re offering our parents. We have to see our parents as customers.” In fact, she believes the disconnect is simple: Students and parents simply don’t know all the great things available to them. “It’s not that the district doesn’t offer it,” she tells Doug, “But where is the exposure to all students to know this opportunity is available for you?” Fascinating, right? But very confusing to your humble clips compiler. At least everyone still seems to hate charter schools; that, at least, makes sense here. (Akron Beacon Journal, 10/20/21)

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Hot-button education topics such as masking, vaccines, and critical race theory have dominated headlines this fall. But lost in the shuffle are a few notable items that have also made news—but barely—and have significant implications for Ohio policymakers. To be sure, some are related to the pandemic and its effects on American life, but you may have missed them in the larger row. Without further ado, here’s some musings on four of these issues.

Should Ohio shift school board elections to being “on-cycle”?

It’s no secret that school boards are taking heat for their decisions on controversial matters. According to news reports, parent groups and conservatives have organized to run candidates more attuned to their concerns. Those efforts are well within their rights, as school board members are elected by local citizens. But why are these races being held this fall? The reason, of course, is that school board elections in Ohio and many other places are “off cycle.” That is to say, they’re held in odd-numbered years when national and statewide elections aren’t on the ballot. Because of that timing, voter turnout is usually abysmal. In a recent AP article, Worthington City Schools board member Charlie Wilson explained that—this year—off-cycle elections could advantage “conservative insurgents,” since they are likely supported by the most motivated voters. His analysis is accurate. Holding low turnout, off-cycle board elections favor well-organized but narrow interest groups. In most years, teachers union interests tend to have disproportionate influence. This year, it’ll probably be other groups. If we want to engage the broader community in education decisions, on-cycle board elections are the way to go. So will he and others start advocating for a legislative change to hold board elections on-cycle as we’ve suggested before? Let’s hope so.

Should Ohio remove an occupational barrier to substitute teaching?

In early October, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1, legislation that focuses largely on financial literacy. Included are emergency provisions that allow Ohio schools—public or private—to hire substitute teachers without a bachelor’s degree. The waiver applies only to 2020–21. While the temporary reprieve is welcome in the face of substitute teacher shortages, legislators should consider permanently removing this degree requirement. That’s not to diminish the importance of good substitute teachers. But requiring a four-year degree seems a bit much for what might be part-time or unpredictable work that won’t attract many college-educated people. Remember, just 28 percent of adult Ohioans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, so right out of the gate, this occupational requirement prevents schools from hiring the vast majority of Ohioans for the job. And recall, too, that schools may hire educational aides without four-year degrees. Classrooms can’t go unattended, and schools shouldn’t be left to scramble for coverage due to onerous requirements.  

Should schools be required to provide specific services to gifted students?

We at Fordham recently published a study on the long-term outcomes of Ohio’s high-achieving third graders. The results were disappointing on many fronts, including lackluster AP and ACT exam participation and college enrollments, especially for poor, Black, and Hispanic students. What happened? It’s hard to pinpoint any one factor, but many “lost Einsteins” likely went adrift because their schools didn’t appropriately challenge or accelerate them. Covering the report, Anna Staver of the Columbus Dispatch astutely notes that “The state has no requirement that gifted children get anything beyond a letter in the mail.” True, true. Although Ohio require schools to identify children as gifted, it does not require schools to actually provide such students any special services. Lacking a mandate, many gifted students do not receive services from their schools. But what about the letter? The state does at least require schools to notify parents of gifted students when their children aren’t receiving any gifted services. Parents should be livid if they receive this letter, not only at their school for refusing to offer gifted services, but at their state lawmakers for allowing it to happen. So here’s an idea: Every time a parent gets a “no services” letter, they should send their legislators a letter asking them to support mandatory gifted services or policies that open other educational options (state scholarships or ESAs for gifted children would do the trick). That type of grassroots effort might just get lawmakers’ attention.

Should Ohio stop defaulting teachers into its pension plan?

Inflation is making headlines, as prices have climbed over the past year. Persistently high inflation rates are bad news for most American households, but they could hit retired Ohio teachers especially hard. Why? Facing massive unfunded pension liabilities, the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) decided in 2017 to eliminate cost-of-living-adjustments for retirees. That’s right. Pensioners won’t see any bump in benefits that help them cover the higher costs. Making matters worse, retired Ohio teachers cannot participate in Social Security, a program that does adjust benefits for inflation—and will do so to the tune of 5.9 percent in 2022. To address this problem, STRS could certainly restore COLAs for pensioners (there’s a petition), but that approach would only add to the system’s liabilities. The long-term solution is to phase out the pension program by closing it to new teachers, as a number of other states have done, and instead provide benefits through a 401(k)-style or hybrid model. Until that happens, lawmakers could at least nudge incoming teachers towards the state’s better retirement options by changing the default away from the underfunded pension plan.

* * *

If you have read this far, you’d realize that my answers to these questions are all yeses. Who’s willing to help our lawmakers get to yes as well?

1. Toledo City Schools continues to celebrate its increased graduation rate, as per the school and district report card data released last week, with the superintendent discussing it in some detail here. He dismisses the pandemic as a potential downward force on graduation rates in 2019-20 and dismisses grading and testing waivers given away like candy that year as a potential upward force on them too. Rising grade rates, he says, are nothing less than the result of the district’s own efforts going back seven years. “Eighty-two percent of our kids come in two to three years behind already, before they even start the day off,” he explains. “We’re getting them in and 82 percent of them are performing at a deficit, and we’re graduating them at 82 percent, which ultimately is awesome because it’s a return on the investment with what our staff is doing with them in the classroom.” Well, there you go. What’s all the worry about, y’all? (Toledo Blade, 10/17/21)
    
2. Editors at Vindy.com opine today that local schools need to become “more creative” if they want to overcome their staffing shortages, be they bus drivers or substitute teachers. (Vindy.com, 10/18/21) Meanwhile, here’s a look at the candidates running for election to Youngstown City Schools’ board. Since it required several supreme feats of “creativity” for Youngstown to even have an elected school board right now (you know what I mean), I suppose Vindy.com can’t be faulted for executing the same “creativity” in setting up and publishing these profiles. These folks will be in full control of your schools soon, Youngstown. How you feelin’? (Vindy.com, 10/18/21)
   
   

3. The so-called “Test and Stay” pandemic protocol recently piloted in a number of Warren County school districts to simultaneously help limit Covid spread and avoid mass quarantines of students and staff is being called a success. The superintendent of the Warren County ESC says that the new protocols allowed more than 260 students to stay in the classroom instead of quarantining at home. That adds up to more than 2,500 instructional days which were “saved” because quarantined students are usually at home doing nothing. Kudos. (WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, 10/17/21)

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