1. We start this week with a profile of the new Ohio Senate President, focusing almost entirely on education issues past, present and future. Not everyone had nice things to say, but there were lots of comments from other legislators (and our own Chad Aldis too) about how thoughtful, detail-oriented, and refreshingly compromise-y said new Ohio Senate President has always been. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/25/21)
    
2. Nearly ten months after remote-only learning became the primary method of instruction across Ohio, students at the Graham School here in Columbus received a vital charitable donation that allowed students to have laptops of their own. While that may seem a long time to operate remotely while using borrowed computers, remember that charter schools do not have access to the same reservoirs of money that big urban districts do. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 1/22/21) Speaking of which, the extremely-deep-pocketed Columbus City Schools was able to provide every student with their own laptop pretty quickly after remote-only learning commenced last March. And now a bit of change from between district couch cushions ($100K)—along with funding from the city and some philanthropy—has helped fund a group of liaisons to help connect non-English speaking families with tech help on those laptops and other services they might need. This is all good, and perhaps is another of those pandemic-influenced innovations that will stick going forward. But I can’t help wondering why the one Somali family featured here seems to have been muddling through for a very long time before the coming of SARS-CoV-2 without having access to someone who actually spoke their language. Hasn’t Columbus been one of the largest Somali immigrant hubs in the country for like ten years? (Columbus Dispatch, 1/24/21)
   
   
3. In case you were worried about Columbus and other school districts running out of money: never fear. State sales tax revenue is beating the dire pandemic-influenced estimates of six month ago and thus $160 million in previous K-12 education cuts will be reversed. So saith Governor DeWine. (Cleveland.com, 1/22/21) Something else the governor has decreed more of: his stay-at-home order. In central Ohio, that means the overnight curfew for residents will be extended to at least February 6. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 1/22/21) However, this change did not deter Columbus City Schools from restarting sports competitions as promised on January 25. This date was chosen, we were told, because the original stay-at-home order was to end the day before. And since it didn’t, it seems like sportsball should have held up too. Shouldn’t it? The reasons which trumped the health warning this time around are kinda spelled out in this piece if you’re interested. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 1/24/21)
    
4. Meanwhile, a couple of state lawmakers are introducing a bill to cancel state testing for this school year. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/22/21)
    
5. We end today with a Tale of Two Districts. Despite the pandemic, it is still the best of times in Grandview Heights City Schools, according to its superintendent and a slew of data he provided… (ThisWeek News, 1/22/21) …and it still seems like the same old worst of times in Youngstown City Schools, if the comments of the new president of the elected-school-board-that-should-not-exist are to be believed. (Vindy.com, 1/24/21)

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Quality

A new blog post from Fordham’s Aaron Churchill provides a vital look at Ohio’s Quality Community School Support Fund. Included in the last biennial budget, it provides eligible charter schools supplemental dollars—sorely needed given the funding gap between charters and traditional district schools—to increase their ability to serve more students. This is a great primer on how the program has worked in its first two years.

Red flags

While President Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education seems to have garnered approval across the board ahead of his confirmation, Biden’s nominee for Deputy Secretary has not been as well received. Charter school leaders and the NAACP in San Diego argue that Cindy Marten’s track record as superintendent of San Diego Unified School District contains a number of red flags for their constituents.

Obstacles

A new issue brief from the Pacific Research Institute, titled “New and Emerging Obstacles Facing Charter Schools”, provides some stark details of the playing field on which charter schools are competing today. Despite research that shows strong benefits of charter schools for students of color across the country, lawmakers in many states have enshrined in statute “handicaps” that will likely hinder efforts to serve more students.

Celebration

National School Choice Week starts on January 24! The national kickoff event will be held virtually on January 25 at noon ET. You can register to attend here. Observances in Ohio include a virtual school choice fair for families in the Toledo area on January 30, hosted by the good folks at the Northwest Ohio Scholarship Fund. And you can find the entire list of online events, observances, and activities on the NSCW website.

Conference

Registration is now open for the 2021 National Charter Schools Conference, to be held virtually June 20-23. The dynamic event will include plenty of opportunities to meet with peers across the country, exchange ideas, and make new connections important to your work. Click here to register today.

1. I cannot and will not say that Fordham’s recent report on interdistrict open enrollment had anything to do with the announcement this week that Washington Local Schools was going to consider opening up their borders for open enrollment for the first time. In fact, given the blatant and repeated comments emphasizing money money money in this piece, I think we can safely conclude that Fordham’s research findings did not factor into the decision at all. Luckily, our findings on OE do seem to indicate that this could be one time where students might actually benefit from a district’s single-minded pursuit of money. Shhh… Don’t tell them though! (Toledo Blade, 1/20/21)
    
2. It is interesting to think about what “open enrollment” really means in a time where lots of kids are attending school remotely. (Let’s think for a second what that might be like…) But that time may be starting to come to a close. Chagrin Falls Exempted Village Schools started back to fully in-person learning this week after being in hybrid or fully-remote modes variously since the start of the school year. The elected school board president said students told him it was “strange to be back in school but great.” We did learn that approximately 15 percent of district families opted to stay fully remote. (Cleveland.com, 1/21/21)
   
   

3. Cincinnati City Schools is sticking with its plan to transition to a hybrid learning model starting February 1. The transition plan seems pretty complex and several aspects are incomplete. One interesting aspect covered here is that families not comfortable sending their children into the buildings in February will be required to attend a virtual school which some of those parents feel will be inferior since it’s run by a third party provider. Additionally, it sounds as if that choice will be locked in for the rest of the school year—no backsies!—no matter what might happen in terms of learning model changes for everyone else. Sounds messy. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/21/21)
    
4. Lots of teachers around Ohio also seem concerned by the “unrealistic expectations” of state and local leaders in the vaccine-fueled move to get more kids and teachers back in school buildings by March. As I sit here, I honestly have no idea how this will all shake out. You? (Cleveland 19 News, 1/22/21)

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Besides pumping tons more recovery dollars into schools, getting more teachers vaccinated, and trying to get many more kids back into classrooms, what might the Biden-Cardona team do in K–12 education that would actually be worthwhile?

The big relief package that they’ve already outlined contains $170 billion for schools and colleges, which is roughly thrice the total annual federal outlay for elementary and secondary education. So significant funds are in play, but they’re nearly all earmarked for immediate recovery of school operations and student learning. Urgent, yes, but not the whole education story. More details will doubtless emerge from the new administration as to what they intend, and Congress will have a say, too. But—writing on a very welcome Inauguration Day—I have a few suggestions of my own. Most could be melded into the relief package. Or they can wait for the new FY ’22 budget request that the White House will shortly have to send to Capitol Hill.

I’ll set aside for now what we already know to be forthcoming efforts to undo parts of the Trump-DeVos era that the new team doesn’t like. In my view, some of that undoing will be harmful, especially at the Office for Civil Rights, and I’ll object. Perhaps partisan warfare is unavoidable, though my colleague Bruno Manno, who is always worth taking seriously, has offered a thoughtful “call for détente in the K–12 school wars” in The Hill. But putting politics and hot buttons aside for now, what else might Washington usefully contribute, not just to the revival, but also to the renewal of primary-secondary education in America over the next four years? Herewith an octet of recommendations:

1. Put the two most obvious conditions on those billions of additional school dollars. Insist that schools getting them actually reopen fast, especially for the hardest-hit kids. And insist that all schools, including charter and private, get their fair share of these funds. They, too, enroll millions of hard-hit students, and they, too, have been hit hard by the pandemic.

2. Beef up research and evaluation. The Institute of Education Sciences has a solid leader in Mark Schneider, whose term still has three years to run, but it has been starved for funds. All manner of important research has been neglected, especially pricey longitudinal studies and significant experiments. And the Covid-19 recovery period is a terrific opportunity to investigate a range of interventions. Schneider recently rekindled the idea of a “DARPA for education“ and has invited path-breaking research initiatives as a way to juice that idea. Assuming the Biden crew wants to “follow the science” in education as well as health, there’s no better place to focus than the one governmental entity dedicated to education science.

3. Revitalize the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Secretary DeVos’s letter to Congress explaining why the 2021 NAEP reading-and-math cycle needs to be delayed because of Covid-19 also contained a number of ideas for a NAEP refresh. Some of its testing practices are archaic. Tight budgets have forced long delays in assessing other subjects—and often make it impossible to do so in all three of NAEP’s grade levels (four, eight, and twelve). There’s an inexcusable dearth of state-level NAEP data for twelfth graders. And the NCLB-ESSA mandate to assess reading and math every two years for grades four and eight could easily be stretched to three or four. For better and worse, achievement just doesn’t change that fast!

4. Make a serious but cautious stab at strengthening civics education. Any number of recommendations are already available, some good, some pretty awful. More will soon be forthcoming from the Education for American Democracy project. This strengthening mission may prove fractious, and is surely a heavy lift, but something much needed by the country. At the federal end, it should continue to be shared with the Humanities Endowment and perhaps the Corporation for National and Community Service, not just the Education Department. Uncle Sam has to tread carefully here, of course, as he mustn’t mess with curriculum, and civics is inherently a touchy topic. (For example, “action” civics versus governmental nuts and bolts?) NAEP has a role to play here, too. So might some version of a “blue ribbon schools” award program? Summer institutes for teachers? A “presidential scholars” type program for kids? Support for a “civics bowl” or “civics bee”? And a lot of bully pulpit! Note, too, Bruno Manno’s suggestion in the aforementioned Hill op-ed that strengthening civics be linked to economic mobility and personal success.

5. Beef up career and technical education. This one needs to be shared with the Labor Department and other agencies, but it’s time for full-throated and sophisticated implementation of the re-enacted Perkins Act, now known as the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act. Combine this legislative update with an earnest push to legitimate high-quality career preparation as a worthy high school outcome and diploma pathway, while also connecting it to post-secondary opportunities that incorporate apprenticeships, as well as college and employment.

6. Refresh IDEA. Maybe this is politically unattainable, but only politics has kept special education from the overhaul that it has needed for at least twenty years. It’s too expensive. It’s too litigious. It’s overregulated. It encourages far too many kids to be “identified” after the fact instead of teaching them to read from the get-go. And once identified, far too many special ed students learn far too little. It’s been more about “rights” than about actual education, and that should change.

7. Hold the line on accountability. This is no time to give up on testing and school accountability—and one of Secretary Cardona’s toughest early decisions will be whether to offer another round of ESSA testing waivers. He shouldn’t—and if he does, states shouldn’t take them. (Or if they must wait until autumn to get most of their pupils back into classrooms, states should schedule 2021 testing for first thing in the fall.) That doesn’t mean this year’s scores need to be used for school accountability, but information on where kids are—and aren’t—academically is vital if recovery is to occur. Thereafter, however, it’s essential to recommit to results-based school accountability. That doesn’t mean current state ESSA plans are perfect. It may be time to encourage a rewrite. Which brings me to the final instrument in this octet.

8. How about another summit? It’s been an astonishing thirty-two years since Bush 41 assembled the nation’s governors to focus state and federal education leaders on the urgency of reform, and frankly, a lot of governors seem to have tuned out even as much has changed. Without renewed high-level attention from state and national leaders, we’re apt to slip back into our tired old ways instead of formulating bold plans for recovery, determining what changes from pandemic-era schooling to keep, and more generally, charting the next generation of K–12 reform at every level.

—

To repeat, some of these suggestions could be worked into stimulus funding, others into the Fiscal 2022 budget. The summit and one or two others could be done via executive action. Others need legislation. Détente among all the battling education factions may be a bridge too far, but bipartisanship on a handful of worthy federal initiatives may not be too much to hope. It’s got to start somewhere, however—and the new administration’s first hundred days feels like the right place to begin.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. Find the first one here.

With a fair amount of luck, almost all students will be back in classrooms five days a week by September 2021, as a vaccinated population allows Covid-19 to fade into the rearview mirror. That will mark the beginning of a new and monumental challenge for our nation’s schools: educational recovery. Most will likely go back to something approaching normal, with some supplemental strategies, like high-dosage tutoring and beefed-up mental health supports added to the mix.

But that’s not the only path to recovery and it may not be the right one. It is my fervent hope that at least a handful of schools will experiment with much bolder approaches, especially strategies that blow up our traditional thinking about moving kids through the grade levels in lockstep fashion, as we have done for over a hundred years. In coming weeks I’ll explore some of these options, such as getting away from grade levels entirely and embracing “personalized pacing“ instead.

Today we’ll dig into another radical idea, though one that doubles-down on grade levels. Quite literally: Experimenting with adding a “second 2nd grade“ to elementary schools, or at least some high-poverty ones. In my opinion, this was a good idea long before the pandemic, is an especially good idea in the wake of the pandemic, and is a good enough idea to embrace long after the pandemic is history.

The reason is that even our very best elementary schools fail to prepare all of their students for the rigors of middle school. To my knowledge, not a single high-poverty school in the country gets all of its students to grade-level standards by the end of the fifth grade. Few schools even come close. As I wrote a few years ago, even KIPP-DC, which starts with three-year-olds, spends over $20,000 a year, embraces evidence-based practices, and provides extended learning time, doesn’t reach this lofty mark.

And that was before the pandemic stole a year or more of classroom instruction from many of our disadvantaged children—kids whose schools were more likely to be remain shuttered throughout the crisis, and for whom remote learning has proven particularly challenging.

The failure to prepare students for middle school results in much of the educational dysfunction that follows. Teachers face the impossible task of instructing students who are two or three or four grade levels behind; adolescents experience frustration and failure; and few teenagers reach the finish line having tackled the challenging academic or technical courses that will prepare them for success in higher education or beyond.

How much better off we’d be if we made sure that most students mastered the elementary school curriculum before moving on to the next level, with strong foundations in reading, writing, and mathematics, plus a growing knowledge base of American and world history, geography, science, and the arts. Not to mention the social and emotional skills to succeed in school and in larger society.

This is what excellent elementary schools have forever aimed to achieve. But because of the tragic challenges of poverty, few schools serving disadvantaged children can claim to come close to hitting these goals. The best ones get in the ballpark, thanks to a strong curriculum, excellent and well-supported teachers, an obsession with maximizing instructional time, and the other timeless elements of effective schools. But true readiness for middle school is a very high bar—especially since the adoption of the Common Core and other college-and-career readiness standards—and poor children continue to enter kindergarten with academic skills that already put them years behind their more affluent peers. They need and deserve highly effective schools. But they also need a whole lot more time to get on track for success in sixth grade and beyond.

Great schools have long known this, and have found smart ways to give their charges more time on task. They reduce disruptions to a minimum, they lengthen the school day and school year, and they expect their students to work hard at home, too. Some are lucky enough to start with their students at age three or four. And this works, and gets their scholars much closer to grade level by the time they leave their care.

All of this is worth trying by all schools, everywhere, especially when recovering from the pandemic. Expanding the school year is particularly worthwhile, if vaccinations allow for universal summer school this June, July, and August.

But it still won’t be enough. Not for kids who were already behind, and will have been effectively out of school for fifteen months or more. So why not give them a whole extra year of instruction? Rather than taking six years to move through grades kindergarten through five, why not do it in seven—a boost of 17 percent more instructional time.

Next fall’s kindergarteners, especially those in high-poverty schools, are going to be even less “kindergarten ready” than normal. This year’s kindergarteners, especially those who have yet to set foot in their actual schools, are going to be in no shape to deal with the academic demands of first grade, given that they missed out on all of the in-person kindergarten activities designed to acclimate them to school in the first place. And this year’s first and second graders probably aren’t doing great shakes either.

An extra year of elementary school, for the Covid generation, may not be enough to get them all to middle school readiness by the end of the fifth grade, given the massive learning loss they have experienced. But it will get them a lot closer than doing business as usual. And for the kids who follow them, 17 percent more instructional time just might be enough to send most into middle school ready for grade-level material.

Here’s how it might work.

Introducing grade 2.5

The leaders of Innovative School District decide they like the idea of giving their students more time to master the elementary school curriculum, so they add grade 2.5 to all of their elementary schools, starting with the 2021–22 school year. Today’s second-graders matriculate to grade 2.5 instead of third grade. Today’s third, fourth, and fifth graders keeping move forward as usual.

Over the summer, district officials and early elementary teachers work together on adjusting the scope-and sequence for grades K–2, spreading out the material over four years instead of three. Third grade teachers work together on their plans for grade 2.5, which is the level they will be teaching going forward.

In the short term, the addition of grade 2.5 poses few logistical challenges. The elementary schools in Innovative School District haven’t grown any larger, and its third grade teachers just switch to grade 2.5. But bigger changes are coming. In the 2022–23 school year, today’s second graders will be ready for third grade, to be taught by today’s fourth grade teachers. In 2023–24, they will be ready for fourth grade, to be taught by today’s fifth grade teachers. And in 2024–25, they will be ready for fifth grade, to be taught by today’s sixth grade teachers—teachers who are currently at Innovative Middle School.

That’s also the year that ISD’s elementary schools will have seven grade levels instead of six. That could pose logistical challenges in terms of finding extra space, though it helps that student enrollment in the early grades is down in Innovation, like most school districts, because of the nation’s ongoing baby bust.

As the first cohort of grade 2.5 students matriculate through the system, there will be other challenges to tackle. Innovation Middle School will shrink for a year when it has virtually no sixth graders; Innovation High School will do the same the year it has virtually no ninth graders.

I say “virtually” because it will be important for ISD to identify students who are ready to accelerate through this new, slower pace of instruction. (That may be particularly important for kindergarten-age students whose parents “redshirted” them this year rather than enroll them in remote school.) High-achieving kids may not need grade 2.5, or might be ready to leap over other grade levels in the progression. ISD should make it feasible for them to do so. The difference between today’s practice is that an extra year of elementary school will become the norm, the default. This isn’t about “holding students back” because most kids will get the opportunity of the additional learning time.

And what about the money? The student population of Innovation School District won’t actually grow until this year’s second-graders reach the twelfth grade, a decade from now. At that point, the district will have fourteen age-cohorts of kids instead of thirteen, an increase of 8 percent. Which also implies in increase in costs of 8 percent. That’s a hefty price tag, but the good news is that the district has ten years to prepare—and lots of time to convince state officials to pay for the added expenses.

That raises another important question: Will it be worth it? Some economists may say no, since an additional year of K–12 schooling also means that students will spend one less year in the labor market. Others will worry that more students will drop out of high school, given that they will hit the legal age for leaving school before they cross the graduation stage. That age, of course, could be raised.

So the answer to “Is it worth it?” is surely “It depends.” If the extra year of instruction is maximized, then more students will enter middle school and then high school ready for the challenges therein and graduate ready to succeed in post-secondary education—and the extra investment will have been worth making. Plus, if students are experiencing more success as adolescents because they are better prepared for their courses, they will be less likely to drop out. But if ISD just takes longer to do the same old same old, then you have what Secretary of Education Bill Bennett used to call the thirteen-egg omelet problem: You don’t improve a bad twelve-egg omelet just by adding another egg.

—

Discerning readers will notice that there are more questions than answers here about how adding a grade 2.5 might play out in the long run. That’s another good reason for embracing this idea as an experiment. Allow a few school districts to try it, and promise to cover their costs ten years hence. Design an evaluation with treatment and control districts, and see if students who get the benefit of extra time in the early elementary grades do better as they move through school and beyond. What happens to the high school dropout rate? College attendance and completion? Do students enjoy gains in wages that would make up for the year in lost income? There’s only one way to know for sure, and that’s to give it a try.

Still reeling from the assault on the Capitol and the subsequent impeachment effort against Former President Trump, the education sphere’s attention has understandably returned to the need to resuscitate the teaching of civics and history. If schools did a better job of grounding our students in the principles of a free society and a basic understanding of U.S. history, laws, and institutions, the thinking goes, the body politic might be less susceptible to the inflamed passions animating today’s self-destructive behavior. Calls for addressing America’s civic ignorance are nothing new, but they’ve taken on heightened urgency in the dark shadow of sedition and insurrection.

Sadly, Americans’ thumbless grasp of civics and history is well documented and nearly a cliché. According to the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, as of 2018, fewer than one in three adults could pass the U.S. Citizenship Test (the old, easier version). A survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only a quarter of Americans can name all three branches of government—a task that my daughter, who is in kindergarten, has already mastered. And the National Assessment of Educational Progress reminds us that students’ knowledge of civics remains dismal and underwhelming. Indeed, former talk show host Jay Leno famously made a mockery of all of this in his “Jaywalking” segments, where ordinary Americans provided cringeworthy responses to questions from the nation’s naturalization exam.

The importance of an informed and engaged citizenry is unassailable. But what if it’s just the tip of the iceberg for getting schools back on track? That’s the thrust of a thought-provoking piece Andy Rotherham recently wrote in which he challenged the prescription of civics education as a remedy for the problems that were on display in our nation’s capital earlier this month:

I’m not sure a better understanding of our civic traditions might have dissuaded [the mob that stormed the Capitol]. They were there because they believed the election was stolen or were opportunists hoping to create chaos, launch a race war, or set up a white or Christian ethnostate—among other toxic and batshit crazy theories.

Seems like that is more about a toxic blend of misinformation and ideology more than it is about civics? I’m not arguing the rioters were paragons of civic knowledge… But to say [the assault] owes to a failure of civic education seems like blaming a shooting on a lack of understanding of firearms laws.

Rotherham goes on to posit that there are larger forces at play, namely the negative polarization and nationalization of today’s politics as well as the gradual erosion of civil society. The internet and social media in particular have inundated us with a river of misinformation that Americans are drowning in. Rotherham asks, “What if math and logic are a more powerful intervention than civics?”

People are always going to disagree, which is why civics education is important. It can help our students to keep those disagreements within (non-violent) bounds. But what’s happening now is part of what Rotherham calls a “post-modern information nightmare.” When 70 percent of Republicans believe the election was illegitimate, it means we have a far deeper problem than just how civics and history are taught. There are no easy answers, but it often feels like education—of any variety—is weak medicine for this dark phase of America’s politics.

Perhaps what’s really needed is a recommitment to the values of the Enlightenment: reason, facts, and science. The rabble that ransacked the Capitol probably wouldn’t have changed if they had been better versed in the theory behind America’s founding. But from an education standpoint, they might not have become so strident if they hadn’t been so vulnerable to brainwashing in the first place—a vulnerability that could have been inoculated against in school as part of a curriculum that trains students to think critically and instills a respect, even a reverence, for knowledge and evidence.

What’s more, the Founding Fathers prized reason and wisdom, regarding a well-educated citizenry as requisite for our survival as a free people. The starting point for the early American republic was a literate and virtuous electorate that could read the newspapers being printed everywhere and distinguish fact from fiction, as well as conspiracy from reality. Reason could override the tyranny of the masses, which the Founders—particularly James Madison—were presciently concerned about as a lurking threat to the American experiment. Now more than ever, schools must impress upon the minds and souls of our young people the importance of sound judgment, integrity, modesty, and dignity.

Plans, road maps, and studies abound for tackling this daunting assignment. To wit, my colleague Checker Finn wrote a smart paper last summer arguing for a national citizenship curriculum. My other colleague Robert Pondiscio just authored a beautifully written piece on the need for students to weigh present circumstances against like challenges of the past. Both articles offer compelling ideas worth pursuing, but broadly translating them to schools and classrooms has proven to be an elusive exercise—in large part because civics education is a harrowing landscape fraught with major fault lines and potential minefields.

Few will accuse schools of doing a good job teaching about any of this, but the breaking points are by now obvious. The violent endgame of Trump’s presidency echoed the all too frequent tendency among schools to teach our students why American institutions are fundamentally irredeemable rather than inheritances for which to be grateful. Although the two aren’t mutually exclusive, this split will be uniquely difficult to bridge if students are reared without clear moral principles and aren’t explicitly taught how to argue and disagree in good faith.

Gifted education is usually thought of as comprising separate classrooms that participating students attend for part of the day, and that move faster through curricular material or examine it at greater depth than “regular education” classrooms. This, of course, is only possible because all of the students in gifted classrooms are up to the challenge of this enhanced instruction. In this way, among others, gifted students benefit from being in a class with other gifted peers.

But if gifted students benefit their gifted peers, do they also benefit their peers who aren’t given that designation when they sit with them in heterogenous classrooms? If so, by how much and in what ways? Those questions are the focus of a new study conducted by Simone Balestra, Aurélien Sallin, and Stefan C. Wolter, faculty members of universities in Switzerland.

They use student-level data from the Swiss education system. This, they say, is an ideal environment for such a study for two reasons. One, giftedness is “assessed and determined by the school psychological service, an independent and centralized institution that provides students and their families with diagnosis and counseling for school-related issues.” And two, those identified as gifted aren’t grouped into separate programs or schools, though they may receive enrichment outside of the classroom. Their final sample includes 31,625 students in 1,592 classes from eighty schools, and comprises ten consecutive school cohorts from 2008 to 2017.

The researchers identify giftedness using a combination of IQ scores greater than 130 and more qualitative diagnoses and comments of caseworkers employed by the aforementioned school psychological service. In other words, they’re equating the “gifted” label with intelligence and clearly differentiating it from high achievement. Then they measure the effect these students have on the academic achievement and career choices of their peers who were not given that label. They use linear regression and control for gender, native language, and age.

They measure achievement using the math and language arts components of the Stellwerk test, which is administered to every eighth grader in the Canton of St. Gallen (the Swiss equivalent of a U.S. state). They also determine career trajectory using administrative data on students’ choice of “track,” which in Switzerland is done at age sixteen, and includes a “selective track” (the equivalent of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the U.S.), a “vocational track” (usually apprenticeships), or the option of ending their education altogether.

There are four key findings. First, daily exposure to gifted peers over two school years has a consistent, positive, statistically significant effect on non-gifted students’ academic achievement, with the greatest impact on non-gifted students who are male or high-achieving. Second, as the researchers write, “male students benefit from the presence of gifted peers in all subjects regardless of their gender, whereas female students seem to benefit primarily from the presence of female gifted students.” Third, these benefits don’t occur when gifted students have emotional or behavioral disorders. In such cases, these gifted students can actually have a negative effect on the academic achievement of their non-gifted peers. And fourth, effects of prolonged exposure to gifted peers extend beyond secondary school, increasing non-gifted students’ likelihood of pursuing Switzerland’s “academic track” (again, much like a U.S. bachelor’s degree program), as opposed to opting for the vocational track or no track at all.

Although these findings occur in Switzerland’s education system, they’re very relevant in the United States. In many of our schools and districts, gifted programs don’t exist at all. When they do, they are often unsubstantial, comprising a smattering of gifted courses among mostly heterogenous ones. In other words, American gifted students spend a lot of time in heterogenous classrooms—where, according to this study, they’re ostensibly having mostly positive effects on their peers’ achievement and college plans.

It bears emphasizing, though, that we ought not take these findings to mean gifted programs should be abandoned. Quite the opposite. For one, the study didn’t examine the effect gifted students had on their gifted peers in heterogenous classes. Two, it didn’t compare the effects it found to the proven beneficial peer effects within gifted classrooms. And three, the idea that the potential to maximize gifted students’ educations should be sacrificed so they might boost those of others is misguided and wrong.

Nevertheless, these findings are actionable stateside. They suggest that U.S. school leaders should be more active in identifying giftedness, and more deliberate in how they compose classrooms where these students are mixed with peers of varying ability levels. This would not only maximize their peer effects, it would also set the stage for improved gifted programs—something, I’ve long argued, the U.S. would benefit greatly from pursuing.

SOURCE: Simone Balestra, Aurélien Sallin, and Stefan C. Wolter, “High-Ability Influencers? The Heterogeneous Effects of Gifted Classmates,” CESifo (December 2020).

• In Newark, New Jersey, newly opened public schools dedicated to fashion, data science, and international studies are raising criticisms over their strict admission criteria. —Chalkbeat Newark
• Children with dyslexia and who were receiving special literacy supports were severely set back by school closures. —Boston Globe
• Men were already falling behind women in college enrollment. The pandemic made this even worse. —Hechinger Report
• Replacing exam-based admission to elite high schools with lotteries for equity’s sake might actually lower low-income students’ odds of attending a selective college. —Max Eden
• Matt Yglesias believes curricula can be culturally relevant without choosing between traditional literary works and diverse authors. “Only culture warriors want to force that choice...” —Eduwonk
• Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is backing education bills to address pandemic learning losses and to improve literacy rates in a special state assembly session. —Tennessean
• Biden made good on his promise to nominate educators to the Department of Education: nominee for Deputy Secretary, Cindy Marten, was serving as San Diego Unified’s superintendent and has over a decade of teaching experience. —EdSource
• “How can we, as [education] researchers, inform debates about highly charged issues without becoming partisans ourselves?” —Jon Valant
• This survey finds that “in-person instruction is both least common where it is most likely to be safe, and vice versa,” raising concerns about the decision-making process around school reopenings. —Education Next
• Experts worry about the babies and toddlers with disabilities who aren’t being referred to for special services, since referral rates fell during pandemic daycare closures. —Chalkbeat New York

For the past decade, Washington, D.C., schools have shone as a success story, with achievement for all students rising steadily in elementary and middle schools and more quickly than the national average. But several years’ worth of that growth has been wiped out by the Covid-19 learning slide, and racial disparities in achievement have widened dramatically, a new analysis by my non-profit research organization, EmpowerK12, has found.

In analyzing three different types of assessments for nearly 20,000 D.C. students in both traditional public schools and charters, we have assembled one of the most complete pictures yet produced of the pandemic’s impact on urban education.

Figure 1. Percentage of D.C. students achieving expected annual growth in math and reading, grades three through eight

As in many cities, the impact of the Covid slide in D.C. is most severe for students who are identified as at-risk, those who receive TANF or SNAP benefits, experience homelessness, are in foster care, and high school students who are more than two years behind. While the city’s students on average have lost four months of learning in math and one month in English language arts during the pandemic, at-risk students, who make up 47 percent of Washington’s public-school students, lost five months of learning in math and four months of learning in English language arts.

The picture is very different for more affluent students and White students. All D.C. students have suffered losses in math during the pandemic. Yet students who are not considered at-risk produced 14 percent more growth in reading than expected on the MAP and i-Ready assessments used in the nation’s capital. While Black students produced 38 percent less than expected growth on the tests, White students gained 76 percent more than expected.

Not surprisingly, students in the city’s poorest neighborhoods suffered the greatest learning loss. Schools east to the Anacostia River, serving many of Washington’s most disadvantaged communities, fell 51 percent below their expected growth rate on the MAP and i-Ready tests, while those in schools west of the river were 10 percent above expectations. All of D.C.’s traditional public schools and most charters provided distance learning during this period. We have no data showing the differences among students learning in-person or virtually at this point.

The pandemic has also undermined the progress of Washington’s youngest students in reading, a key building block of both the city’s school reform effort and student success.

We also looked at whether D.C. students are on track to achieve proficiency on the national Partnership for Assessment of Readiness in College and Careers (PARCC) tests given in grades three through eight. Again, we found declines after several years of citywide growth. And again, the results exacerbated the city’s deep racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

Figure 2: Percentage of D.C. students on track for PARCC proficiency for reading in fall 2020, grades 3–8

Figure 3: Percentage of D.C. students on track for PARCC proficiency for math 2020, grades 3–8

We partnered with seven D.C. charter school networks and local school-based mental-health experts to gauge the pandemic’s impact on students’ emotional well-being through a DC Student Well-Being Survey. Most students reported anxiety related to the pandemic, with 77 percent concerned that their family would be exposed to Covid-19; nearly half reported that their family’s financial situation has become somewhat or significantly more stressful due to the pandemic. Nearly one in five students recently experienced the loss of a family member they live with.

The erosion of learning gains in the District during the pandemic suggests how fragile the benefits of school reform are, and thus the importance of staying the course on reform. And the fact that some students have fared better in reading during the pandemic while others have fallen further behind points to the importance of close connections between schools and families in closing achievement gaps and furthering the cause of educational equity.

Read the study here.

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published by FutureEd, an independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

Two years ago, Governor DeWine and the General Assembly enacted a bold initiative that boosts funding for quality public charter schools. The Quality Community School Support Fund provides eligible charters up to an extra $1,750 per economically disadvantaged (ED) student and $1,000 per non-disadvantaged pupil. To tap this $30 million per year allocation, a charter school had to meet certain performance-based criteria (discussed more below). These supplemental dollars narrow the sizeable funding gaps that exist between Ohio’s urban charters and districts, and they help successful charter schools build the capacity to serve more Ohio students.

With two years in the books—and reauthorization looming in the upcoming budget—it’s time to take a closer look at how the program has worked thus far. The analysis below first offers a big-picture snapshot of the program in its first two years of existence. Then it takes a closer look at the newly qualifying schools in year two, as some may wonder whether those schools were worthy additions. Last, it considers how the program might be fine-tuned moving forward. 

Basic overview

To receive supplemental funds, a charter school must achieve one of three conditions. In general, the criteria are as follows:

• Criteria 1: The school posts a performance index score higher than its local district for the past two years and achieves an A or B rating on the state’s value-added measure in the most recent year. Report card results from 2016–17 and 2017–18 were used to determine the first round of qualifying charters (FY 2020), while 2017–18 and 2018–19 results determined the second round (FY 2021).

• Criteria 2: The school is in its first year of operation and is modeled after a school that meets the criteria 1 conditions.

• Criteria 3: The school is in its first year of operation and is managed by an out-of-state operator that meets certain conditions.[1]

The table below offers an overview of how many Ohio charter schools met these criteria in the first two years of funding.

Table 1: Ohio’s Quality Community School Support Fund, FY 2020 and 2021

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Source: Ohio Department of Education. *To fit the $30 million per year appropriation, the “base” ED and non-ED amounts ($1,750 and $1,000 per student, respectively) were multiplied by 88.57 percent in FY 2020 and by 58.45 percent in FY 2021 to yield the actual amounts that qualifying schools received.

Four observations:

1. Overall, the program parameters appear to be reasonably stringent, with 20 percent of Ohio charters qualifying in year one and 29 percent in year two.

2. The number of qualifying charters rose quite significantly from the first to second year—from sixty-two to ninety-one schools. It must be noted that schools retain their “quality” status for two years after initial designation. Thus, notwithstanding a school closure, the list could only have expanded in year two.

3. Consistent with the expanding list, we also see a jump in the number of students who attend qualifying charters. In the first year of the program, the extra funds supported just over 20,000 students who are overwhelmingly economically disadvantaged. That number rose to more than 30,000 in the second year.

4. The rise in the students enrolled in qualifying schools led to a noticeable decline in the per-pupil allotments. Due to the limited funding pool, the program was able to only provide an extra $1,023 per economically disadvantaged pupil in FY 2021.

Newly eligible schools in year two

As the table above indicates, a somewhat surprising number of new schools qualified for the second round of funding. What do we know about these schools? Did they make noticeable improvements to achieve the quality designation?

The figure below displays the year-to-year changes in the performance index (PI) scores and value-added ratings of the twenty-three additional schools qualifying under criteria 1.[2] Encouragingly, a large majority of these charters posted improvements in their PI scores. In fact, the average increase among these schools was 4.1 points, well above the statewide increase of just 0.5 points, and most of the newly qualifying schools also received higher value-added ratings. It’s true that a few schools registered lower PI scores. In a couple cases, however, the school posted high PI scores (despite the one-year decline) and solid value-added ratings, but was simply ineligible for the first year of funding because it lacked 2016–17 PI scores. On the whole, we see that the large majority of the newly qualifying schools improved on two important dimensions of performance, enabling them to join the program in the second year.

Figure 1: Year-to-year changes in performance index scores and value-added ratings of schools first receiving quality charter funding in FY 2021

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Note: The color of the bar indicates the schools’ change in value-added ratings from 2017–18 to 2018–19. An empty bar indicates no change in value-added rating, a light green bar indicates an improvement of one or two letter grades, and a dark green bar indicates an improvement of three or four letter grades.

Looking ahead: Make the program permanent

Hats off to lawmakers for establishing this funding program that serves important purposes. While it’s premature to evaluate whether the program has achieved all its goals, it’s definitely on the right track. Many well-deserving charters are now receiving extra dollars that allow them build on their successes and serve more Ohio students.

Yet as currently designed, the major limitation of the program is a funding structure that causes per-pupil allocations to fall when more schools are identified. In the next round of funding, that should change. Legislators have a few options to address this specific problem. Among the more temporary alternatives, they could either: (1) increase the line-item appropriation from $30 million per year to an amount that better aligns per-pupil funding with the number of charters likely to qualify in the next biennium,[3] or (2) slightly raise the performance bar in an effort to concentrate funding on the very best charters.

More ideally, however, lawmakers would cement the program into permanent charter school funding law, thus ensuring that the funds are drawn from the main K–12 education appropriation. Rather than funding the program via a separate line item in the state budget with temporary appropriation language, this option would treat the high-performing supplement like the other components of the charter funding formula (e.g., akin to the extra funding schools generate based on special-education enrollments). Importantly also, this could and should be directly funded by the state and not result in larger deductions from school districts. Overall, this option would ensure that qualifying charters receive the full per-pupil amounts called for under the program, protect the funding from politically-driven reductions or a line-item veto, and give charters more budgetary certainty moving forward. This type of permanency and fiscal certainty is especially crucial for successful charters seeking to open new schools in Ohio—one of the central goals of the program.

As a recent evaluation shows, Buckeye charter schools are making positive impacts on thousands of Ohio students. The schools that have qualified for this supplemental funding are almost surely the ones that are driving these gains. To keep the momentum going, state legislators should proudly reauthorize this valuable program and make it permanent.