Despite last week’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Education that it won’t grant blanket testing waivers this year, a number of states have decided to push for one anyway. Some of them read the guidance from the feds and see an opening to use local formative assessments in lieu of large-scale statewide summative exams. To wit, Michigan will seek approval to use their “benchmark assessments” to fulfill federal testing requirements.

In weighing the trade-offs of using local assessments for this purpose, it may be instructive to look at how the National Football League is handling the cancellation of its premier, “high-stakes test” for college football players: the NFL scouting combine.

For the uninitiated, the combine is a week-long evaluation ordinarily held every February at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where pro-football prospects perform physical and mental drills in front of general managers, coaches, and scouts. The event allows personnel directors to evaluate players in a standardized setting, and it enables athletes to affect their draft status, salary, and career trajectory. A player with a sub-par college record, for example, can improve their “draft stock” considerably through a strong showing at the combine. According to NFL analyst Chris Trapasso, the cancellation of this year’s combine will have a profound impact on the entire draft class—the fallout from which offers lessons for the current testing debate in education.

First, going back to education, expect an honesty gap if states solely rely upon local exams. Absent the combine, the NFL will use their “pro days,” a decentralized process that involves evaluating athletes at university campuses. Trapasso believes football fans must take these local evaluations with a grain of salt:

Be ready for some insane times and measurements. It’s been difficult to trust pro days because of their exaggerating tendencies. This year, they're really all we have (along with any “combines” held by workout facilities). And we all know college programs love pumping out those 4.2 [second] times in the 40 [yard dash] and those lightning-quick three-cone drills.

Trapasso’s concerns about the variation in performance between the combine and pro days also get at the differences between formative and summative assessments in our schools, and the variable investment we’re inclined to make in each. This is not to say summative tests will present a flawless picture of student performance during the pandemic, but they will provide a useful check against the other measures schools and systems have employed thus far.

Second, standardized tests are an invaluable tool for revealing human potential. The combine is known for unearthing NFL-caliber talent at lower levels in college. Without the combine’s standardized process, small school draft prospects will have a harder time standing out. In education, the stakes are arguably even higher. Few understand this dilemma better than congressional sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has often noted that her own public school teachers didn’t recognize her promise. “It wasn’t until I took a high-stakes test where I scored in the 99th percentile across the board where they figured out I did not need remedial education,” she once recalled. “It took a test instead of understanding the child in front of them.” Testing skeptics like to dismiss comments like Ocasio-Cortez’s out of hand. But for students like her, objective and standardized tests are a veritable lifeline.

Finally, there’s the complementary relationship of formative and summative assessments. Even the combine includes a standardized exam, the Wonderlic Test, and the standards for various evaluations like bench press and vertical jump are customized depending on the position. But as helpful as these analytics are, teams will still make bad predictions about who will become a star player. Similarly, state summative exams are but one measure and, importantly, the only one states have that offers comparability from district to district. Of course, local assessments are more instructionally valuable, but they’re often not peer reviewed to control for quality or bias. Which is to say, states should be considering the assets and limitations of both rather than pitting one against the other.

The upshot is that, while state test results will be tough to interpret this year, the alternatives are even worse. Forgoing large scale testing altogether made sense last spring when the pandemic first hit, but there’s little excuse to put our collective heads in the sand this time around. If distancing is the obstacle to testing this year, we should be turning performing arts centers, hotels, and empty arenas into testing sites and, if necessary, leveraging weekends and evenings, too. The dearth of creativity and imagination on the administration of state testing—one year into this calamity—is simply beneath our nation’s dignity.

If the feds give these states the green light on subbing out summative exams, they should do so with eyes wide open. There’s a reason why some state leaders won’t cancel state testing regardless of what Uncle Sam says, while others will comb every avenue to weasel out of them. At least the NFL has game film as a fall back to evaluate athletes. Schools do not. But states can and should encourage their districts to test as many students as possible. Anything less would be an abdication of their responsibility to exercise de minimis oversight over the largest budget item on their books.

Yes, I blurbed it—and I like it. Yes, a visitor to our home, a worldly and skeptical sort, hefted it and looked at the title and asked me “Isn’t that awfully thick for a book about optimism regarding American public education?”

Maybe he’s right. I blow hot and cold about the future prospects of our K–12 system. (Mike Petrilli usually calls me “Mr. Glass Half-empty.”) But Jay Mathews’s new book is well worth your attention even though you may wind up wishing he hadn’t written it.

For one thing, he’s wonderfully readable. For another, after many, many decades reporting on the subject, both in the Washington Post and in nine—count ‘em—nine previous books, he knows as much about American education as anyone alive. And he knows it in a truly rare combination of “up close and personal” and “coolly analytic.” He’s got both street cred and authorial cred.

So why, after all of that, all that he’s seen, all that he’s reported, all that he’s uncovered, does he call himself an optimist? In this book, he concentrates on three large sets of developments—“movements” he calls them—that give him reason for hope.

In a section called “challenging average kids,” he delves into Advanced Placement—which he’s long touted, so long as it opens its doors to all who might benefit—and other strategies for filling students’ minds with more than anybody might have thought they could handle. Not just the platitude we know as “high expectations,” but actual difficult material to learn and master. He’s a strong believer that almost every child can rise to the occasion and handle more than our standard-issue curriculum doles out. And he sees more and more of that happening around the country. Which gives him hope.

Then come “super charters,” the high performing charter schools and networks that he’s written about over the years—including a great book on KIPP—and that have demonstrated their ability to boost the skills, knowledge, and life prospects of tens of thousands of poor and minority kids. They’ve shown that it can be done—is being done—which leads Mathews to the obvious optimistic conclusion that a lot more of it can and should be done.

Finally comes a somewhat tortured section in which Jay declares himself an aficionado of “progressive education,” which he finds “old but vibrant” and therefore a basis for optimism. In this part, however—the part I personally find least persuasive—Jay ends up debating himself and arguing with famous proponents of educational progressivism, including, at some length, my former close colleague Diane Ravitch. He finds some appealing examples, but he also points to ways that progressivism can go off the tracks of rigor and equity.

Be warned, fellow education reformers. There’s much here that you will probably nod in agreement with. Yet “The three significant movements examined in this book,” he writes in the epilogue, “have all been led by teachers...[N]early everything I have learned about American education over the last four decades has come from teachers and principals.” Which is to say, it hasn’t come from researchers, technocrats, politicians, philanthropists, or self-styled reformers. None of them, he concludes, has anywhere near as many truly effective strategies for giving kids what they really need as do school-based practitioners.

Put that in your pipe and take a puff.

SOURCE: Jay Mathews, An Optimist’s Guide to American Public Education (Santa Anita Publishing, 2021).

States embraced school turnaround efforts in the wake of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the early 2000s. These took various forms at first, as each state pursued their own turnaround strategies per NCLB’s requirements. School Improvement Grants were added to the mix in the Obama years—that is, funding to assist improvement efforts specifically in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools—kicking that transformative work into overdrive. Most pundits have been bearish on the outcomes writ large, especially in terms of scale and cost. But what have researchers found? A recent meta-analysis of impact evaluation studies published by the Annenberg Institute provides a detailed look from across the country.

Researchers from the University of Virginia, Harvard University, and the Education Trust initially identified an astonishing 11,120 published studies related to school turnaround efforts between 2000 and 2018. Refinement for content and rigor brought the total to 207. The final criteria focused on specific types of interventions studied (such as charter conversion, state takeover, technical assistance, “transformation,” or “turnaround”), academic outcomes examined (seven outcomes were identified, including test scores, suspension rates, attendance, graduation, and grade progression), and research methodology utilized (difference in differences, regression discontinuity, randomized control, instrumental variables, and matching). Sixty-seven studies met all the criteria, which between them included 141 total academic outcome estimates upon which the meta-analysis was conducted. Both the intervention types and the academic outcomes were coded and then compared.

Researchers found that the average intervention effort demonstrated modest but positive results on math test scores, and positive but not significant effects on English language arts (ELA) scores. Results suggested positive effects on school attendance, reduced disciplinary infractions, and increased graduation rates. Importantly, there was no evidence of negative effects on low-stakes testing or tests in other subjects like science or the humanities, which suggests observed improvements were a result of real learning gains rather than data manipulation or other systemic gaming. It is noteworthy that math test score improvement was most pronounced among Hispanic students.

Researchers found that there weren’t really any outstanding differences in effects by intervention type. Still, charter conversion was observed to be more successful at improving math outcomes than other strategies, and districtwide interventions yielded larger results than those targeted at individual school buildings. The two most effective features were extended learning time and teacher replacement, both of which produced statistically significant improvement in both math and ELA outcomes. Tutoring and wraparound services were shown to have positive albeit modest effects. Positive results began to appear one year after the start of intervention, which stands to reason given the traditional school year calendar. But the longer the duration of the intervention, the larger the effects observed.

Taken as a whole, school improvement efforts had a small but statistically significant average effect of 0.062 standard deviations on math achievement, and a smaller but not significant effect on ELA. While this is not necessarily a reason to jump for joy, small positive effects in a wide range of outcomes and no observed negative effects are a far cry from the conclusion that “it’s all bad.” Unfortunately, there were no data provided on the cost of interventions, nor an analysis of the return on investment. It seems likely that the costs outweighed the benefits observed, even at this level of detail. However, it cannot be denied that improvement is improvement, especially for schools which have been underperforming for years.

Other research, including our own, has shown the benefits of charter schools in terms of both teaching and learning, thus the fact that charter conversion showed strong positive results on math achievement makes sense. Ditto for teacher replacement. In the end it seems as though both schools of thought can be correct at once: Small pockets of positive outcomes clearly resulted from the turnaround effort, and the effort as a whole can still be thought of as not entirely successful.

SOURCE: Beth E. Schueler, et. al., “Improving Low-Performing Schools: A Meta-Analysis of Impact Evaluation Studies,” retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University (August 2020).

• States weigh their options to comply with Biden’s request that standardized testing resume this year. —EdWeek
• Iowa’s governor signed a bill requiring all schools to offer in-person instruction five days a week, overpowering reluctant school boards and teachers unions. —Washington Post
• “For some Black students, remote learning has offered a chance to thrive.” —NPR
• Policymakers should fund career and technical education to boost the income and marriageability of young men. —AEI
• Richard Carranza resigns as NYC School Chancellor after disagreements with Mayor Bill de Blasio over gifted and talented programs and school segregation. —New York Times
• Only 37 percent of kindergarteners are on track to be proficient readers, compared to 55 percent last year. Gaps are especially pronounced for Black and Hispanic students. —The 74
• A proposed bill in Oregon would allow school administrators to retain teachers based on merit and race/ethnicity instead of seniority when budget crises require layoffs. —MSN News
• Philadelphia parents are frustrated with school closures, and are running for office, opting for private school, and taking other actions. —New York Times
• No, it’s not racist to discuss achievement gaps or how to close them. —Ed100 Blog
• States did not lose as much tax revenue as we may have feared, with some actually taking in more money in 2020 than in 2019. —New York Times
• Our nation’s struggle with the pandemic was caused, in part, by poor leadership. But it was also a result of the inherent fragmentation of decision making in American federalism. —Matthew Yglesias

It’s state budget time in Ohio, and as experts like to remind us, budgets reflect priorities. In the area of K–12 education, legislators should maintain a focus on empowering parents to take more control of their kids’ education and improving the educational outcomes of less advantaged students.

On both counts, public charter schools—also known as “community schools”—are answering the call. In terms of meeting parent needs, these independently-run, tuition-free schools have long offered choices that allow families to find a school that works for them. Some have benefitted from specially designed charters that tap into students’ artistic talents or nurture their academic gifts. For others, a charter school has meant a fresh start after rocky experiences in their local district.

Due to longstanding geographic restrictions, Ohio charters serve predominately disadvantaged students. And there is clear evidence that they’re getting results. A study by CREDO found that Black students fare better when they attend an Ohio charter school (as opposed to a district school). Likewise, a more recent report by Ohio State University professor Stéphane Lavertu estimated that the average Black student moves from the 25th to 40th percentile in statewide achievement by attending a brick-and-mortar charter in grades four through eight.

Despite these undeniable benefits, charters are still treated like second-class schools. Ohio’s urban charters receive on average about $4,000 per student less funding than urban traditional districts. The disparity is driven by charters’ lack of access to local tax revenues—which account for on average just over 40 percent of district funding—and the state’s decision not to fill the hole. These funding gaps are problematic in two ways. First, they violate the basic principle of equity. Students of similar backgrounds should be funded at comparable levels, but charters receive far less than their district counterparts to educate the same child. Second, these gaps disadvantage charters in retaining talented teachers, providing essential supports, and ensuring students learn in properly-equipped school buildings.

What can state legislators do to rectify these problems and more fully leverage the charter model to meet parent and student needs? Here are four ideas.

1. Make the Quality Community School Support Fund permanent. In 2019, Governor DeWine proposed and shepherded through the legislature a new funding stream that supports high-performing charters. During FYs 2020–21, this $30 million per year program provided up to $1,750 per economically disadvantaged student to roughly a quarter of Ohio’s best charter schools. Given the budgetary constraints facing charters, these extra funds are vital to increasing their capacity to scale and serve more students. The governor’s FY 2022–23 budget rightly reauthorizes this program. Legislators should not only approve these funds, but go one step further by making it part of the permanent charter school formula (rather than funding it as a standalone appropriation). 
    
2. Treat charters fairly in the state funding formula. The current funding formula provides charters with full base amounts in the major components of the formula. For instance, recognizing that charters have no local tax authority, Ohio allots the entire $6,020 per student base amount for their Opportunity Grant—the component that delivers the bulk of state funding to both districts and charters. Even though charters receive full base funding, they still miss out on tens of millions in local revenues. Legislators could narrow funding gaps by setting charters’ base amounts somewhat above districts, or by including a multiplier that applies only to charters. What legislators shouldn’t do is treat charters as inferior, as is the case for House Bill 1—a House rewrite of the school funding formula. Under that proposal, charter schools would receive 10 percent less funding in three of the cost components that determine base amounts. Policies such as these would widen funding gaps, not narrow them.
    
3. Provide adequate resources for school facilities. As several reports have documented, Ohio charters face an uphill battle securing suitable facilities. Their challenges are rooted in policies that shut charters out of the state’s main school construction program, deny them a share of local capital improvement levies, allow districts to withhold underutilized buildings, and provide them with inadequate facility specific funding. Legislators should pursue various policy avenues to better meet facility needs. First off, they should significantly increase the Community Schools Facilities allowance that currently provides a modest $250 per student—well below annual facility costs. Legislators should also invest in solutions that address capital needs on a broader scale, such as allowing charters to tap state construction dollars. Lastly, legislators should consider programs that lower the cost of debt through “credit enhancement,” as other states have done.
   
   

4. Ensure local tax dollars follow students to their school. Courageous lawmakers could get to the root of the problem—charters’ lack of local funding—and require local tax revenues to follow students to public charter schools. This would adhere to the principle that funds—yes, all funds—should follow students to the schools they actually attend. It would also be fairer to charter school parents who pay local taxes, whether directly or through rent. To be sure, this would be a heavy political lift and likely require technical changes to the state’s charter funding model (to account for newfound local revenues). But a true “fair funding” plan for all public school students—and their parents—would guarantee that dollars from every level of government follow students to the school they attend. 

***

Ohio legislators should be laser focused on empowering parents and accelerating learning for needy students. By further leveraging the proven power of the charter school model, Ohio will take strides in creating a more student- and parent-centered system of public schools.

1. Some testimony was heard in the legislature this week on the latest version of a school funding overhaul bill, including from our own Chad Aldis. Gongwer’s coverage of the hearing focuses a lot on charter school supporters’ testimony—which boils down essentially to ways of undoing the huge gap between funding for charters and traditional district schools—but Chad was quoted as talking about some of the positives in the bill and about the plan’s gigantic overall price tag. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/1/21)
    
2. Hold onto your hats for this one: More seniors in Columbus City Schools are reportedly on track to graduate this year than at this same time in 2019, long before anyone had ever heard of SARS-CoV-2. Bombshell, right? “It's good to be at 55 percent,” said the district’s Supervisor of School Counseling and Student Support Services, adding that “we're not done. We (still have) the quarter to go. And I think there’s things in the works that will hopefully accelerate and raise that number, a lot.” If you’re like me, you might feel a little unsettled by that last cryptic comment, seeing as how some of the things the district has already done to get them to this lofty point are to “waive two graduation requirements” and to “adjust grading”. And seeing as how this monstrosity is being heard in the legislature right now. (Spectrum News 1, 3/1/21) It is noted in the above piece that Columbus City Schools seniors are still, with a handful of exceptions, learning fully remotely. They are scheduled to shift in phases to a hybrid learning model starting March 15. But there are already huge logistical difficulties transporting the elementary students who started back in hybrid mode this week, and those do not look to be abating for district, charter, or private school students anytime soon. The district is buying public transit passes for its own students (no word on passes for charter or STEM schoolers already going to school) in advance of their return in an effort to do…something. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/3/21)
   
   

3. Day One of in-person schooling in Dayton seems to have gone pretty well—minus afternoon busing—but that likely would have been a problem even if the district wasn’t jumping directly from fully-online to fully in-person in one fell swoop. (Dayton Daily News, 3/1/21)
    
4. While Dayton’s superintendent says that hers is a school district “that needs to be face to face” (and she vows never to go back to remote again), fully-online education in Parma City Schools is a big old hit and will continue for the foreseeable future for any kids who want it. “It’s built to last,” said the district supe. “It’s something that can serve our Parma families much better than previously when they just had to find a charter school if they wanted that type of remote education.” Well, isn’t that just precious? (Cleveland.com, 3/3/21)

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NOTE: On Monday, March 1, 2021, members of the House Finance Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education heard testimony on House Bill 1, which would create a new school funding system for Ohio. Chad L. Aldis, Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy, gave interested party testimony before the subcommittee. These are his written remarks.

Thank you, Chair Richardson, Ranking Member Troy, and House Finance Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education members, for giving me the opportunity to provide interested party testimony today on House Bill 1.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C. Our Dayton office, through the affiliated Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, is also a charter school sponsor.

The Fordham Institute has long advocated for reforms that put Ohio students and parents at the center of school funding policy. We strongly support principles such as “funds following students” to the schools in which they actually attend, and “weighted student funding,” in which extra resources are devoted, for example, to low-income, special-education, and English language learning students.

The plan before you in HB 1 proposes some important improvements that would better align Ohio’s funding system with these core principles. We strongly support the following aspects of the plan:

• Funding all school districts via the funding formula, instead of through caps and guarantees. A good funding formula drives resources to the places that most need state support. Ensuring that the formula is actually being used to determine funding amounts is critical to a fair, well-functioning system. While this is a stated goal of the system being proposed in HB 1, it does appear to maintain guarantees through its use of targeted assistance dollars when district residents use a non-district education option and by providing temporary transitional aid to districts based on funding levels from three years prior.   

• Increasing the funding for economically disadvantaged students. To its credit, Ohio has long recognized the additional costs of supporting low-income students, and the funding plan in HB 1 builds upon this system by increasing the categorical amounts for disadvantaged students. This is a really important change. We urge the House to go a step further and base the count of low-income students—currently exaggerated by the use of Community Eligibility Provisions to distribute more free lunches—on direct certification of students based on participation in other assistance programs. This shift would better target dollars to the neediest students and might even allow an increase in the $422 base amount for economically disadvantaged students.

• Funding schools of choice directly rather than through a “pass-through” method, whereby charter and voucher students are first counted in their home district and then funds designated for their education are deducted. Moving away from the current model would be a step in the right direction, but as I’ll discuss in more detail later the shift must be done with utmost care.

Of course, there is always room for improvement, especially with something as complicated as a school funding plan. Here are a couple of concerns that we have:

• Uncertainty about a funding source. Even with a proposed six-year phase-in, the $2 billion per year sticker price (more, according to some estimates) will be a heavy lift for future General Assemblies. Is it fair to kick that can down the road to future lawmakers? Will they be pressured to raise taxes to fully implement the plan? If so, which ones? Will funding need to be cut for other programs? Again, which ones? If legislators are unable to fully fund the significant outlays demanded under this proposal, will they be accused of failing to properly fund Ohio schools? Could the state be subject to another round of school funding lawsuits because this plan sets a specific cost for educating a student and then doesn’t meet it? The Ohio Constitution doesn’t appear to allow for “phase-ins” of a constitutional funding system.

• Interdistrict open enrollment. While the plan’s approach to funding students based on where they attend school is commendable, it should not create disincentives for districts to accept non-resident students. It appears that wealthier districts will be heavily disincentivized from participating in open enrollment and providing important opportunities to students from higher poverty districts. This could reduce the already limited options available to families in some areas. We suggest either retaining the current funding structure for open enrollment or developing an alternative calculation methodology as appears to have been done for some career and technical centers.

As for charter schools, we’ve written extensively on the large shortfalls, relative to their local district, that they face in terms of overall taxpayer funding. Despite educating children of similar backgrounds, brick-and-mortar charters in the Ohio Eight receive on average about $4,000 per-pupil less than their local district. The discrepancy is due to the fact that local funding, with limited exceptions, does not follow students to charter schools.

As a matter of fairness to charter students—most of whom come from low-income families or are students of color—the state should work towards funding equity for charters. While HB 1 improves upon the initial version of the plan that was in HB 305, the treatment of public charter schools remains concerning. On a positive note, recent estimates indicate that Ohio Eight charters would see an average funding increase of $1,389 per pupil under this plan. This is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the plan does not narrow funding gaps between Ohio’s urban charters and urban districts. Because the average funding for Ohio Eight districts increases $1,713 per pupil, the funding gap actually grows.

This inequity puts charters at a tremendous disadvantage relative to their nearby districts in competing for talented teachers and offering comparable academic and non-academic supports. Also worth noting is the relatively small increases that general-education charter high schools would see under the proposal, often below $1,000 per pupil. One of the state’s finest urban high schools—Dayton Early College Academy (DECA)—actually loses $82 per student under the plan.

Leveling the playing field between charters and districts is a heavy lift, but the following tweaks to the funding plan would improve equity for charters:

• Calculate charters’ base costs in exactly the same way as districts. To its credit, the updated plan generally moves charters into the same base-cost model as districts. But, without any obvious policy rationale, it doesn’t provide full base amounts in three of the cost components. It also appears to exempt charter schools from some minimums when determining the number of special teachers funded. If the plan has indeed captured the costs of educating a student, it should apply to charters just as it does to districts.

• Revisit the base cost model for operating high schools. The base cost model calls for fewer teachers per student in grades 9-12, hence lowering the assumed costs. Such an approach might be okay for entire districts, which can redistribute centralized resources to high schools, but it could hurt standalone high schools that often face higher costs. For instance, high schools may need to purchase expensive science equipment, pay higher salaries to attract teachers, fund extracurriculars and athletics, and offer college and career counseling. Though it could further increase the plan’s price tag, it may be worth reviewing the cost assumptions for standalone high schools.

• Incorporate the recently enacted supplemental funding program for quality charters. With the backing of Governor DeWine, this $30-million-per-year initiative—increased to $54 million per year in the Executive Budget—provides up to an additional $1,750 per economically disadvantaged student to charters that qualify based on academic performance. These dollars help narrow funding gaps, provide extra resources that enable charters to serve more students, and make Ohio a more attractive locale for excellent national charter networks. HB 1 should include—and add to permanent law—this valuable charter funding initiative.

Finally, we recommend several changes to HB 1 to ensure that charters are treated fairly over the long term. They are as follows:

• Ensure charters are not subject to a line-item appropriation. In any move to directly fund charters, a concept that we support, clear statutory language must be used to ensure charters are funded through the main, multi-billion-dollar K–12 education appropriation in the state budget. HB 1 is a big improvement from HB 305 in this regard, but more can still be done. This could be accomplished by creating a new section that parallels existing statutory language used to fund school districts and joint vocational districts. In short, charters should never be funded via a line item that exposes them to unilateral budget cuts or a targeted veto.

• Remove language that calls for a study of charter school costs. The developers of this funding model have asserted that it captures the costs of educating a typical student. That model applies to all Ohio districts, large and small, urban and rural. If that model works for districts, why wouldn’t it apply to charters?

• Ensure charter representation on a School Funding Oversight Commission. The latest version of House Bill 1 calls for a commission that would make recommendations about how to adjust the formula in the years to come. Despite a rather large commission, charters would not be represented. If such a commission is deemed necessary, charters should have a seat at the table.

As a final note, you’ve probably noticed that my testimony doesn’t describe the current school funding system as unconstitutional. There’s a good reason for that. In a paper that we published in December, we think the scope of the legislative changes since DeRolph have given Ohio a fundamentally different school funding system than the Court examined in that landmark case. Assumptions that the current system is unconstitutional are just that—assumptions. That being said, we share the bill authors’ belief that the current funding system can and should be improved.

In conclusion, we believe that House Bill 1 has important strengths that would significantly improve the state’s funding system. Yet uncertainties remain around financing the plan’s costs and its approach to funding public charter schools. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony.

With Covid-19 cases dropping, teachers getting vaccinated, and new data and guidance coming in all the time showing that schools can operate safely with mitigation strategies in place, more Ohio schools are shifting to in-person schooling. For some families, that means a long-awaited return to a five-day-a-week in-person schedule. Their children will once again benefit from face-to-face learning and daily interactions with teachers and peers. Given the serious concerns about students’ academic and social-emotional well-being, this couldn’t come a minute too soon.

Sadly, other Ohio families won’t be as fortunate. Their schools will be open for in-person instruction a couple days a week, but remote learning will drag on in the form of “hybrid” models, a structure that is hard on both teachers and learners. As of the end of February, the Ohio Department of Education reported that one in three Buckeye districts were still using only remote or hybrid models without the option of full in-person education for any pupils.

The holdouts include some of Ohio’s largest school systems. In Columbus, for instance, elementary students recently began hybrid learning, but the district has no plans for returning to daily in-person instruction. Most Columbus high school students will remain in full remote mode until late March when they will finally transition to a hybrid schedule. But, again, no full-time option if you’re a district high school student, even as a number of private and public high schools have been fully open since last fall.

Cleveland recently unveiled its much-anticipated plan to begin in-person instruction, but that plan also centers on hybrids. For parents there, as in Columbus, the well-documented frustrations and learning losses associated with remote learning and “half-school,” as one parent recently put it, are sure to continue.

For now, the state is allowing this. For priority status in the state’s vaccination program, Governor DeWine asked schools to offer at least hybrid learning. That was a successful nudge for school systems to move away from fully-remote offerings and get some students back into classrooms at least part time. But it doesn’t help families who are sick of remote learning and want their children back in school full time.

What to do? One option, albeit blunt, is for lawmakers to wield their authority and require all schools to offer full in-person instruction to any family that wants it. This route—currently being discussed in Massachusetts—would be controversial, of course, likely provoking an outcry from district administrators and teachers unions. Another option is for parents to pressure their local school boards to reopen five days a week, something that’s happened in parts of Ohio and other places in the country.

Yet another possibility is to give families access to private schools that are open five days a week. As national surveys indicate, private schools are more likely to have continued to operate in person over the past year. That’s true here, too, as we see in a recent article from Southwest Ohio. In their enrollment efforts for next fall, those private schools have even promoted their ability to stay open and offer in-person instruction. The problem, of course, is that only families with the disposable income to afford tuition—or those who are eligible for the state’s private-school scholarships—have access to these schools. Under current law, EdChoice offers scholarships for students attending low-performing public schools or from low-income households.

A straightforward adjustment to Ohio’s EdChoice program could open private-school opportunities to parents who aren’t satisfied with the hybrid learning available at their district schools. State lawmakers need only expand scholarship eligibility to include any child attending a public school that is not offering in-person instruction five days a week. This is something that legislators in Georgia, Maryland, and New York have proposed. Students would immediately become eligible for an EdChoice scholarship if their public school offers only hybrid or remote learning opportunities. If legislation passes quickly, this could enable students to transfer to private schools later this spring. But given the time needed to enact bills, it would more likely apply to children whose schools announce they’ll start the year in remote or hybrid mode or switch to such learning models for an extended period during the year (absent a public health emergency declared by the governor). 

Some will say that there’s no need to change the scholarship law because schools will surely be open in person, full time by autumn. If that turns out to be the case, terrific. We all want to see schools open and operating normally next year. But we can’t count on it. Some U.S. school systems are already planning for remote learning in fall 2021. Labor challenges could also impede progress in fully reopening schools. Returning to Cleveland, for instance, the local union immediately blasted the district’s reopening plan. “CTU members will return to in-person learning when it is safe for us and our students to return. Until then, we will continue educating Cleveland’s children remotely,” said its president.

Parents and students who want to be in a classroom shouldn’t have wait on the sidelines if their local district isn’t offering daily in-person instruction. That’s not to say parents should be rushed. Remote options should be offered until all families are comfortable sending their children to school. Some may have legitimate reasons to prefer the online version. But polls indicate that a sizeable number of parents (about one in three) want daily in-person instruction for their kids. That demand will only rise if cases continue to decline and schools prove that it’s possible to operate safely. The best way to ensure that all families have in-person opportunities—should they want them—is to empower parents with a full menu of public and private school options.

Last week, the Ohio House unveiled House Bill 110, the legislative vehicle for Governor DeWine’s budget proposal. The bill contains plenty of smart education provisions, including $1.1 billion in additional Student Wellness and Success funding, an increase in supplemental funding for high quality charter schools, and initiatives aimed at improving the technical skills of Ohio high schoolers and adults.

But tucked deep into the bill are troublesome changes to graduation requirements. At first glance, they seem small. But if they’re included in the final version of the budget, they’ll devalue an Ohio diploma and undermine years of work by a wide variety of stakeholders to create fair and robust graduation requirements.

First, some brief background on the long road to our current graduation requirements. Back in 2014, the state passed House Bill 487, which gave students in the class of 2018 and beyond three pathways to a diploma. The primary route required students to earn points based on their scores on seven end-of-course (EOC) exams. The remaining two paths allowed students to earn a diploma either by completing career and technical education requirements or earning remediation-free scores on college readiness assessments.

These new requirements passed without much fanfare, and were considered to be rigorous but attainable standards. By 2016, though, several education groups had changed their tune. District leaders claimed that the EOCs were too rigorous, and that Ohio would soon face a “graduation apocalypse” because students weren’t capable of passing the assessments. The legislature responded by temporarily weakening graduation requirements, allowing students to earn a diploma based on non-academic measures like attendance, work experience, or community service. Advocates for high standards—including Fordham—pushed back, and a years-long battle ensued.

The debate finally came to a close in 2019, when the last state budget enshrined into law a new and permanent set of requirements that went into effect with the class of 2023. In addition to earning twenty credits in certain subjects, students must earn competency scores on two EOCs (one in math and one in English), fulfill career and technical education criteria, or meet military-readiness targets. They must also earn at least two diploma “seals,” which are designed to give students an opportunity to demonstrate skills that align with their particular interests. High schoolers are free choose which of the twelve approved seals they wish to pursue, but one of them must be state-defined (as opposed to a locally-defined seal with standards set by a district). Taken together, these new requirements set high but attainable expectations for students while also providing a variety of ways for them to demonstrate their competency.

Unfortunately, the recently proposed budget takes an axe to this hard-fought compromise that was put into law only two years ago. The bill makes several changes to graduation requirements, including to the social studies (referred to as citizenship) and science seals that students can earn. Under current law, a student can earn a citizenship seal in one of three ways:

1. By earning a score of proficient or higher on the American history and American government EOCs.

2. By earning a score equivalent to proficient on an appropriate Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exam.

3. By earning a final course grade of B or higher in an appropriate College Credit Plus (CCP) course.

The budget, however, would allow students to obtain a citizenship seal by earning a final course grade of B or higher in American history and American government courses offered by their high schools. Such grades would take the place of proficient scores on the EOCs for both these courses. The same change has been made to the science seal requirements. Rather than demonstrating proficiency on the biology EOC administered by the state, students need only earn a B or higher in one of a laundry list of science courses offered by their high schools, including chemistry, physics, physical science, advanced biology or other life sciences, astronomy, physical geology, or other earth and space science courses.

The upshot? Rather than asking students to demonstrate that they’ve mastered science and social studies content on an objective assessment that’s either aligned to state standards (EOCs), nationally recognized (AP or IB exams), or based on college-level content (CCP), state leaders only want to require a grade of B or higher in high school courses that students are already required to pass for graduation.

It’s unclear why this change was included in the budget. But it’s likely that this is yet another attempt by some state leaders to shy away from traditional academic measures. It doesn’t seem to matter that students have ten other seals from which to choose, and several of them don’t require passing a test. Never mind the research that indicates widespread grade inflation, or the relatively recent grade manipulation scandal in Ohio’s largest school district. Forget the intense pressure that’s put on teachers when their course grades become a key part of graduation standards. And certainly don’t pay attention to the fact that course grades and GPAs aren’t comparable across schools and districts, aren’t predictive of college performance for all students, and aren’t clearly linked to workforce success. State leaders would prefer for you believe that letting kids earn two of the seals they need to graduate based on a grade in whatever course their high school decides to offer is definitely in the best interest of everyone.

If a push to allow students to “demonstrate academic competency and mastery in ways beyond state standardized tests” sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same debate Ohio had for years over graduation requirements. This debate was supposedly settled during the last budget cycle, when a wide variety of stakeholders banded together to create a solution that—unlike a competing proposal offered by the State Board of Education—was objective, comparable, and valid. Editorial boards at the Columbus Dispatch and Akron Beacon Journal sung the praises of this solution. Legislators agreed on its merits, and so did the governor’s office. That’s how it became law in the first place. Why, then, does the newly proposed budget undermine such a hard-fought compromise? If cooperation is a worthy goal, then we successfully achieved it. It took us years, but we got here. And now, in one fell swoop, the budget would eviscerate a key component of the compromise.

But lest you get the wrong idea and assume this is just about politics, let me be clear: This provision is not in the best interest of kids. Weakening graduation requirements—even in seemingly small ways—is a slippery slope that ends with students earning meaningless diplomas that don’t represent mastery of the content and skills they need to be successful in college and the workplace. When diplomas become worthless, students pay the price. They enroll in remedial college classes that cost money, waste time, and decrease the chances of completion. They face a constant struggle to keep up with better-prepared peers. And they have difficulty finding and keeping well-paying jobs. High school diplomas are supposed to pave the way for kids to succeed. But when they don’t mean anything, they can’t.

The worst part about all of this, though, is that the students who are most likely to be impacted by this change are low-income students and students of color. Graduation data from the class of 2018—back when the State Board helped get those non-academic standards temporarily in law—suggest that Ohio’s low-income students used the weaker graduation options more frequently than their peers. There’s also a correlation between districts that enroll more students of color, either Black or Hispanic, and those that were more likely to allow students to graduate via the alternatives. The state of Ohio has a responsibility and a moral obligation to all its students to serve them well. But that obligation is particularly strong for economically disadvantaged and minority students, who face challenges that their white and affluent peers do not. This change is a massive disservice to the kids Ohio should be most committed to serving.

Graduation requirements reflect a state’s priorities and beliefs. If we believe that every student deserves a quality education that prepares them for the real world—whether its college or a job—then we have a responsibility to make sure kids are actually prepared. If we believe that our teachers and school leaders are the best in the country, then we shouldn’t be afraid of objective assessments of student learning. And if we truly believe all kids can learn, then we shouldn’t be afraid of high expectations.

With four years of student-level data available, a recent report from the College Board evaluates its own effort to boost the participation of traditionally-underrepresented students in computer science and other STEM fields.

In 2016, the College Board, with support from the National Science Foundation, launched a new Advanced Placement course called Computer Science Principles (AP CSP). While designed as a standalone—earning successful students college credit as with other AP offerings—the new course could also serve as a gateway to the longstanding Advanced Placement Computer Science A (AP CSA) class, and could provide a rigorous but less technical springboard into it for students long missing from such pathways.

AP CSP is described as “hands-on, project-based, collaborative learning” with students “exploring the big ideas of computer science and internet concepts.” Most importantly, teachers are given the flexibility to choose the programming language for their course, unlike AP CSA, which is limited to the college- and industry-standard Java language. There is no listing of which languages are utilized, but the popularity of simpler options such as Python, HTML, or Ruby make them likely candidates. And the end-of-course assessment process, in addition to a more traditional exam, comprises a unique performance task that students complete over the length of the course in which they create a program to solve a problem, enable innovation, explore personal interests, or express creativity. Students can collaborate with one or more partners during some parts of the task, such as the development of program code.

When it launched in 2016, the new class attracted more students than any other debut course in AP’s history. Approximately 65,000 U.S. students in the graduating class of 2019 completed the course and took the AP CSP exam. The College Board researchers studied 36,848 students, half of whom completed AP CSP by 2019 and half of whom were from the class of 2016 and did not have the opportunity to take AP CSP. Students were matched on academic performance and background characteristics. They looked at students’ course-taking behavior and college major choices, the latter data coming from the National Student Clearinghouse.

The analysts found that students taking AP CSP were more diverse than those taking the higher-level AP CSA and included a greater proportion of female, Hispanic, Black, and first-generation students. The new class was the first STEM-focused AP course for more than half of the Black students (68 percent), Hispanic students (59 percent), and first-generation students (60 percent). AP CSP students were more likely to go on to AP CSA and other AP STEM courses than similar students who did not have the opportunity to complete the new class. Black AP CSP students were three times more likely to enroll later in AP CSA than were their non-CSP peers. And AP CSP students were three times more likely than their non-CSP peers to declare computer science and other STEM majors in college, even if they only took the new course. That effect was boosted to 16.5 percent if AP CSP students went on to take AP CSA in sequence before college.

Opportunities in high-paying STEM jobs are expanding, and the number of jobs for computer science and research scientists is expected to grow 15 percent between 2019 and 2029, compared to 11 percent for all computer occupations and just 4 percent for all occupations. Thoughtful efforts to ease the entry into these education and career paths should be supported, especially ones that clearly work.

SOURCE: Jeff Wyatt, Jing Feng, and Maureen Ewing, “AP Computer Science Principles and the STEM and Computer Science Pipelines,” College Board (December 2020).