1. It was widely noted on Friday that the new school funding plan that passed the House faced less-affirmative prospects in the Ohio Senate (see what I did there?) due to the complexity of the issue and the time remaining in the lame duck legislative session. Late in the day on Friday, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee elaborated on possible courses of action, including some possible cost studies to be completed relating to the proposal. (Gongwer Ohio, 12/4/20)
    
2. You might not be able to tell this, but I have an undergraduate degree in creative writing. My first job upon becoming a newly-minted Bachelor of Arts was as an office manager at a construction company. (I know, right?!) One of the job duties I assumed—which they perhaps did not realize they needed done before I showed up—was to make sure all their advertising pitch materials were spelled correctly interesting and detailed and grabbed potential customers with the stories being told of problem jobs and successful solutions our company, and our company alone, could have provided. I am taken back to those long-ago days when reading this “sponsored” piece in School Transportation News. It is a national publication which publishes “partner updates”, the most recent of which is a detailed look at how Lima City Schools uses a partner’s technology to help smooth lots of different school busing wrinkles in the district. I include it here because it is an interesting dip into how busing functioned before anyone ever heard of SARS-CoV-2 (note district officials’ references to parents) and how such technology has adapted into the current pandemic. Here’s hoping that some of that stuff (when did bus drivers stop greeting kids by name exactly?) will continue after the rona has been vanquished. (School Transportation News, 12/4/20)
   
   

3. I won’t say that this national story on Covid-related school closures in Montgomery County counts as “sponsored content”, but it does have a narrow focus. And that is the problems of schools – the school district in Centerville and the private Alter High School in Kettering – trying to stay open for some level of in-person learning during these most recent weeks of rona rage. But honestly if you’re going leave 30 Rock and go to the trouble of stopping in Montgomery County, Flyover Land, Ohio, you should probably check in on Dayton City Schools – entirely closed for business until next year. Especially its parents. Or, indeed, any parents. (NBC News, 12/6/20)
    
4. Unfortunately, when most news outlets—even local ones—do stories on how the educational whipsaw is affecting families, they tend to prefer “expert opinions” telling us how it’s going for parents rather than parents speaking for themselves. This piece from the Toledo area is no exception, giving us two “experts” (one of whom I have no idea what she’s on about) and one actual parent. As a side note, check out just how very “school like” is the preacher’s wife’s description of their learning center. (Toledo Blade, 12/7/20)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.

NOTE: Ohio Charter News Weekly is back after a Thanksgiving break. Clips cover the period of 11/20 through 12/4.

Defeat in the Mountain State

The effort to establish the first charter school in West Virginia ended last week when district school board members in two counties voted to reject West Virginia Academy’s application. This was not a surprising outcome given the rancor over the process so far. Board members said that the application did not meet 7 of the 10 evaluation criteria required for approval. Somewhat ironically, the only criteria they agreed had been fully met was the one related to the school’s shut down plan.

Meanwhile, in California…

A new charter school law went into effect in California which gives districts authority to determine whether the opening of a new charter school would “negatively impact” their own schools and to have more of a say in charter renewal decisions. Somewhat ironically, district officials are hampered in their initial decision-making processes due to a pandemic-influenced lack of assessment data from 2020. It seems that the default is to give charters conditional renewals based on previous data trends.

The view from the Ohio Statehouse

A number of education bills are gaining momentum in Columbus as the lame duck legislative session continues. Senate Bill 358, dealing with pandemic-related issues, is one of interest for the charter school community. Among other things, the version of the bill which passed out of the Senate Education Committee this week would cancel state report cards for the 2020-2021 school year. As with last year, such a move would impact charter sponsor ratings.

The Cupp-Patterson education funding bill – pt 1

Just after Thanksgiving, House Bill 305 was amended to include the current iteration of the Cupp-Patterson education funding plan. It is a wide-ranging and detailed effort to move Ohio beyond the decades-old arguments which followed the state Supreme Court’s DeRolph decision. The Fordham Institute’s Aaron Churchill took a detailed look at the bill’s provisions affecting charter schools. A proposal to move to direct funding of charters was greeted favorably, but questions of funding equity between charters and districts remained.

The Cupp-Patterson education funding bill – pt 2

The amended version of HB 305 was the topic in several House Finance Committee hearings this week. Fordham’s Chad Aldis testified on December 1. While he was also supportive of a possible move away from pass-through funding for charters, he too had concerns over the shortfall. You can read his full testimony here.

Hitting a high note in Colorado

Empower Community High School in Aurora, Colorado, has created what is known as The Hustle Collective—time carved out of the remote school day for students to follow their passions or learn new skills of interest. The small charter school has raised funds and won grants to provide up to $100 to students for materials to pursue their interests and to hire local college students as “Hustle Champions” to mentor, assist, and cheerlead. Singing, baking, sewing, and video editing are just a few of the skills being pursued. “It’s about giving students a chance to invest in themselves,” said the school’s co-founder Olivia Jones, “It’s been definitely a course of joy for our students.”

1. We’ll start at the top. In case you missed it, the Ohio House of Representatives passed HB 305 yesterday, which includes a revamp of the state’s school funding system. According to most news outlets, including the Dispatch clipped here for you, prospects for approval in the Senate dim right now. Sing it with me! Until then it is still just a bill…  (Columbus Dispatch, 12/3/20)
    
2. That picket line in Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools we talked about on Wednesday? It was gone less than 2 hours after it started and the rank and file have already overwhelmingly voted in favor of a new contract since that time. All that’s left is for the elected school board to approve it. (Cleveland.com, 12/4/20)
   
   

3. Speaking of elected school board members, some of those who run Tipp City Exempted Village School District would like to be in charge of choosing members of the local public library’s board too. (No! Me neither.) I don’t know what all the district’s elected representatives are up to these days, but surely they’ve got plenty on their hands—what with one thing and another—that they don’t need to take on anything else right now. (Dayton Daily News, 12/3/20)
    
4. So far during the pandemic, we have heard of exactly two Ohio school districts whose officials report kids doing as well or better under remote learning than they were under the old status quo. The first was bougie Bexley City Schools here in central Ohio, who actually gave us some numbers on that way back in October. It was also noted at that time the remote learning in Bexley was being provided not by local teachers but by “a third-party provider”. This week, we learn about another “third party” helping Bexley kids (and some Reynoldsburg and Groveport kids). They are college students at Capital University, working as virtual tutors for the school’s Reading Center initiative. Sounds awesome! How do kids find their way to these helpers? Entirely by “word of mouth,” says the center’s director. “Sometimes it’s a teacher who’s had a student in the program before, and sometimes it’s a parent who approaches us.” Hmmm… We also learn that “tutors prepare individualized lesson plans and support the material being covered” in their regular district classes (or the classes provided by third-party “vendors”). This is not a new initiative, but the center director adds: “In this day and age, when state testing is so important, parents have become really concerned about trying to help their child get back up if they’ve fallen a little behind or a lot behind.” (ThisWeek News, 12/3/20) So the other district, far on the other end of the bouge-scale (ask anyone!), seeing positives for students in remote learning is Youngstown City Schools. Several weeks ago, district CEO Justin Jennings told the Ohio PTA organization that remote learning had “helped a lot of students, especially because they can work at their own pace.” He also said that he believes student data is “important overall”, especially if students and parents “know what the data means” when it comes to their own scores. Keep all that in mind when you look at a piece from this week which, ostensibly, discusses the difficulties of administering state tests—currently required by law to happen—during a pandemic. It is, as I’m sure you can probably tell just from my description, part of the effort to get spring testing cancelled ASAP…by those who want such a thing to occur. We are told that Columbus City Schools, which has remained in fully-remote learning mode since March, only managed to test 36 percent of its third graders this spring. Columbus superintendent Talisa Dixon told the Dispatch, “Was it a priority for us to have students take the test, or was it a priority for us to make sure students and families were safe?” Luckily there is a workaround for third grade testing because Columbus decided on its own to deem this test “optional” and only students whose families affirmatively stated they wanted their youngsters tested were ultimately tested. (I can’t wait to see who those families can you?!) By comparison, Youngstown City Schools, also fully-remote since March, managed to test 95 percent of its third graders in the same timeframe. While CEO Justin Jennings said would have been his preference not to have in-person testing for the same concerns over safety, he told the Dispatch, “As long as those requirements are in place…we will continue to do whatever we need to do to be in compliance.” (Columbus Dispatch, 12/2/20) On top of all of that, CEO Jennings addressed the Youngstown Rotary Club this week and told the virtual assembly that his goal as the head of the academically-distress district was to “put [him]self out of a job,” a line which I’m sure earned him a tinny whiff of electronic mirth and a couple of those Zoom-y hand clap emojis…for various reasons. But Jennings himself went on to explain why this was his aim: Because if the Youngstown City School district improves so much that the state releases it from a declaration of academic distress (and all that STILL comes with it despite years of organized pushback, hah!), that would mean that the district’s students “are getting what they need to get in our test scores, in our graduation rate, and all those different things are getting raised.” Well said, sir. (Youngstown Business Journal, 12/3/20)
   
   

5. Throughout the saga of Academic Distress Commissions (more than five years now, my dedicated subscribers, can you believe it?), we have noted the similarities between current state academic intervention methods and long-standing state fiscal intervention methods. And here we are again. Springfield Local Schools in northeast Ohio is in fiscal caution status due to a five-year budget projection in the red. While the state has recommended cuts to balance the books, as they usually do, the district instead pinned its hopes on a levy. Their prerogative, of course, but when that roll of the dice came up craps last month, they were right back at square one. (Or maybe even worse with, you know, the rona.) And so a plan of “devastating” cuts has been introduced by the elected school board, including closing one elementary school, eliminating some sports, and paring busing back to bare minimum. The rhetoric in this piece hews uncomfortably close to the line of saying the state is forcing the district to make those specific and unpopular cuts and that state officials were “compelling” these actions, but I suppose when the only thing you really want is for your voters to pony up without question, such a tack would probably make sense. And, yes, there will be another levy ask ASAP. (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/2/20)
    
6. Finally this week, back in the real world (trust me on this), who’s ready to Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumble?! Esports in Ohio have not lost a quantum of momentum this year, as you might imagine and its already time for the Varsity Fortnite Fiiiiiiiiiiinaaaaaaaaaaaals! Nerds teams from Ashland and Barberton high schools will go byte-to-byte this Monday evening, the fifth and sixth tournament seeds defying expectations to reach the finals. Best of all, literally anyone in the whole world can watch. Full send, baaaaybeeeeeeee!!!!! (Ashland Source, 12/4/20)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.

Earlier this week, the Senate Education committee passed Substitute Senate Bill 358, legislation that would extend temporary waivers from state laws that were granted earlier this year in response to the pandemic and school building closures. For the current school year (2020–21), the bill would waive—among a few other things—standard third-grade reading and graduation requirements, report card ratings, and charter sponsor ratings.

Extending some of those waivers is probably necessary given the ongoing disruptions to K–12 education. But as the legislation heads to the Senate floor, lawmakers should think twice about how the committee handles two important issues: state assessments and academic distress commissions.

State assessments for spring 2021

An avalanche of anecdotes and a raft of useful but still speculative research suggest that many students have fallen off-track during the past eight months. Yet absent statewide assessment data, the extent of these impacts remains unknown. How many Ohio students fell way behind academically? Which groups of students suffered most? Did students lose more ground in certain subjects—as one recent analysis suggests? Are there students who actually fared well in spite of all the disruptions? And why might that be?

Despite all these critical questions and the clear need for information, SB 358 wrongly seeks to cancel state assessments for the current school year. To be sure, the legislation doesn’t outright cancel tests but instead gives the state superintendent discretionary power to seek a testing waiver from the U.S. Department of Education (almost all state exams are required under federal law). If granted by the agency, the spring 2021 round of state assessment would be cancelled—and Ohio would continue to fly blind regarding the academic fallout from the pandemic.

Ohio must diagnose, as soon as possible, where students stand after months of disruption. Rather than creating a bureaucratic pathway to cancel tests, lawmakers should remain firm on state assessments this coming spring. Yes, Ohio may not achieve universal test participation. And the crisis may persist into the spring making test administration impracticable (just like earlier this year, lawmakers could cancel at that time). However, the information yielded from next spring’s assessments would offer state and local leaders a much clearer picture of achievement in the midst of tremendous turmoil and uncertainty, enabling them to start developing solutions targeted to student needs. The Education Trust and other civil-rights organizations put it this way in a statement supporting assessments this year: “The truth is that we cannot address the gaps we cannot see.” That’s exactly right. Without information, Ohio will either flail in the dark trying to figure out how to help students, or simply bury its head in the sand and fail to act.

Academic distress commissions (ADCs)

Predating the pandemic, one of the long-simmering policy debates in Columbus has been the state’s district-intervention model known as Academic Distress Commissions (ADCs). ADCs currently oversee three school districts that have struggled academically: East Cleveland, Lorain, and Youngstown. While the policy has good intentions—the state should intervene on behalf of students in certain situations—the ADC model has bred much frustration and contempt. Over the past year, legislators have mulled a wide range of ideas to address concerns—anything from outright repeal to restructuring the framework.

Even though this policy has little if anything to do with the pandemic, SB 358 simply dissolves Lorain’s ADC and it charts a ridiculously easy pathway for the other districts to get out from underneath the state’s thumb. For East Cleveland and Youngstown, the bill proposes the following steps: (1) their school boards submit a proposal to the Ohio Department of Education to transition out of the ADC; (2) a three-person committee—the governor or his designee and the Senate and House Education chairs—reviews the proposal and recommends to the state superintendent whether to approve it; and (3) the state superintendent makes a final decision about whether to dissolve the ADC. Of note, while SB 358 addresses existing ADCs, it doesn’t fully repeal the law; districts could still face intervention in future years.

As my colleague Chad Aldis and I wrote earlier this year, moving away permanently from ADCs would better position Ohio for a successful “reset” of its school accountability system, post-pandemic. But SB 358 is neither the right approach nor the right vehicle for disbanding the ADCs. The Senate committee errs in two ways:

• First, dissolving existing ADCs should be done by legislative decree—not punted to a single, unelected state official who, while unlikely to overrule the three-person committee, is given breathtaking authority to decide whether a commission continues to exist (or not). If they are intent on eliminating ADCs, lawmakers should bear full responsibility for that decision.

• Second, letting poor-performing districts off the hook without any compensatory accountability measure being added is a recipe for more of the same. In our paper, Chad and I discuss various policy avenues that could hold districts accountable in the absence of formal state sanctions. This could include expanded choice opportunities. For instance, requiring interdistrict open enrollment in all Ohio districts, subject to capacity, might open incredible opportunities for children stranded in districts like Youngstown or East Cleveland where students have struggled year after year. (Indeed, a number of Mahoning and Cuyahoga county districts are regrettably closed to non-resident pupils.) Legislators could also demand closer scrutiny of—and possibly a beefing-up of—the state’s existing school-level turnaround efforts that are mandated under federal law. Unfortunately, none of this is part of SB 358.

In the debates over ADCs, Governor DeWine has insisted that, even if the state moves away from ADCs, Ohio still has a “moral obligation to help intervene on behalf of students stuck in failing schools.” He’s right. Unfortunately, throwing in the towel—what SB 358 does—falls short of the standard articulated by the governor.

* * *

The public health crisis has brought on all sorts of challenges for schools, policymakers, and Ohio’s parents and students. Flexibility is key and giving schools some leeway in how they operate is essential. At the same time, however, we must not forget that every Ohio student still needs to achieve the knowledge and skills necessary for success after high school. Prematurely seeking to cancel state tests and repealing an accountability measure, with no plan to expand or improve educational opportunities, won’t empower students with the education they need and deserve.

Editor’s note: This is the second article in a two-part series. Part I urges readers to "listen more, empathize more, and demonize less" in these divisive times.

After the election, I shared my thoughts about how we might achieve a truce in America’s roiling culture wars. In short, I suggested a simple rule: Empathize, don’t demonize.

How might we apply that rule to the culture wars that stalk our corner of the world in education policy?

By culture wars in ed-policy, I mean those disputes that go beyond traditional interest-group politics, such as teachers unions fighting the expansion of non-union charter schools. Instead I’m referring, for example, to the 1619 versus 1776 debate over how to teach the story of our nation’s history, or to controversies about accommodations for transgender students.

Consider the issue of racial disparities in school discipline—a debate in which I have played the role of partisan. There, I now see, I could have done more to lower the temperature and find common ground.

—

For more than five years, I’ve been writing about the discipline issue, ever since the Obama administration released its much-discussed guidance on discipline, which threatened civil rights investigations into any districts with data showing racial disparities in suspensions or expulsions. I have expressed strong concerns about that guidance ever since, which I will get to in a moment, but I always try to preface my arguments with an honest acknowledgment that we absolutely need to take racial discrimination seriously, including in how schools mete out punishment for misbehavior. And I’ve always agreed that the federal Office for Civil Rights has a clear role to play in responding to any complaints of racial bias or discrimination, including those related to discipline.

Still, I understand now that I did not fully empathize with my colleagues who support significant reductions in suspensions and expulsions, especially for kids of color. That’s because I did not completely understand where they were coming from, which I now believe is from a commitment to ending mass incarceration in this country.

I could have done more to try to understand the pain, the real anguish that so many people experience as a result of that system, especially African Americans.

What must it be like to have such a significant portion of your community behind bars, or in fear of the police, or shackled by criminal records?

A few weeks ago, NPR ran a segment on the impact of neighborhood police violence on pregnant women. Yuki Noguchi interviewed a Black woman, Raven Cain, about being pregnant, after multiple miscarriages, just as George Floyd was murdered around the corner from her parents’ home.

CAIN: You know, during that time, it was constant sirens. Then they were saying that the KKK was supposedly in town, and it’s just stressful. It’s like—and then you’re trying to carry a life, and then you’re thinking about them being a Black person in this world and the things that they might encounter.

NOGUCHI: Cain tried to distract herself by hosting a family party to reveal she was having a girl.

CAIN: My dad was just jumping up and down. Like, he was so happy. He said he went in the garage and cried a little bit.

NOGUCHI: Cried partly out of relief—he told her the world wasn’t safe for Black boys.

Although improving student outcomes is an important goal for almost everyone in education, for many of our colleagues, reducing the population of Americans behind bars is even more important. And a key step in doing that, they believe, is disrupting the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

I wish I had done more to state clearly that I wholeheartedly agree with this objective, and that we need to do everything we can to keep young people off the pathway to prison. Of course we need to keep our communities safe, but it is a tragedy and a national embarrassment that we have resorted to locking up so many of our fellow citizens, destroying families and livelihoods. 

I wish I would have stated unequivocally that, yes, schools absolutely have a role to play in helping to solve this problem.

First and foremost, they can make sure that kids learn to read, given how much we know about the relationship between illiteracy and involvement in the criminal justice system. As students get older, schools must also help them get ready for success in postsecondary education and/or the workplace—to get them on the school-to-upward-mobility pathway.

But most critically, schools, from the earliest age, can help all young people learn how to control their emotions, and their behavior, so as to stay out of trouble and find success cooperating with others. That can be particularly challenging for children growing up in poverty, given the horrific challenges many face at home, from violent neighborhoods to lead poisoning to food insecurity and so much else. And when children do struggle to behave, and they break the rules, or engage in anti-social or even violent behavior, schools should try harder to help them meet behavioral expectations rather than give up on them and “put them out.” In many cases, mental health supports are key. 

About all of this I think we can all agree.

But now we get to the hard part. What to do when this all fails? When student misbehavior is dangerous, or chronic, and children aren’t responding to interventions?

Here, I would ask discipline reform advocates to show some empathy for those of us on the other side. We are not happy about suspending or expelling students. But schools that don’t have and enforce clear discipline codes will become unruly and unsafe. That’s not good for students who misbehave, and it is certainly not good for their peers who are studying and trying to learn. Given the nature of our segregated school system, when we are talking about children of color who are misbehaving, we should acknowledge that the preponderance of their peers who suffer the consequences of lost learning time are also children of color.

Many of us discipline-reform skeptics are especially concerned that some of the best- performing high-poverty schools in the country—especially those in high-flying charter networks like KIPP and Achievement First—are facing enormous pressure to ease their behavior standards in ways that may leave them unsafe or disorderly. And that would be a terrible tragedy, given how successful such schools have been in helping their students, almost all of whom are Black or Brown, achieve incredible academic and life success. 

To be sure, there are genuine and earnest disagreements between discipline reform proponents and opponents. There are fundamental differences in how these camps would handle the trade-offs between order and safety on the one hand, and the potentially negative impacts of suspensions and expulsions on the other. We also tend to disagree on the best ways to help schools get better at balancing these trade-offs and whether the threat of civil rights investigations is an effective tool for doing so.

But I hope I have demonstrated that it is possible to lower the temperature around a contentious and high-stakes debate by introducing empathy and nuance into the conversation.

If we can reach the point where we acknowledge that this issue, like so many others, is hard and complicated, that that’s a victory unto itself.

It’s now official. Unless Congress pushes back on Secretary DeVos’s request—which seems unlikely—the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests of fourth and eighth grade reading and math that were scheduled for 2021 will be deferred at least a year. That means this vital source of data on student achievement won’t tell us anything between spring ‘19 and autumn ‘22, when we can reasonably expect the next results to appear. This means, in effect, that NAEP is AWOL for the pandemic and its school shutdowns, turning a blind eye to the learning losses that they’re causing.

This also means that state testing in spring 2021 is now more important than ever—and that President Biden’s education secretary should resist all demands for another round of waivers from ESSA’s requirement that all students in grades three through eight should be assessed annually in reading and math. Absent such data, we’ll see both a collapse, perhaps permanently, of results-based school accountability and—more immediately—an appalling dearth of information about who is and isn’t learning what during these challenging times for K–12 education. (Test scores like those released this week from NWEA are welcome, but as that organization itself acknowledges, they aren’t nationally representative, especially given how many students—most of them Black, Brown, and poor—are missing from the data set.)

Bear in mind that states need not request waivers, even when they’re available. They can—and should—continue with their assessment plans, even if the incoming administration flinches when its pals in the teacher unions demand another testing hiatus. Nor do states need to pause their non-ESSA assessments—end-of-course exams and such—even when Uncle Sam wimps out. Bear in mind, too, that state tests are much less complicated to administer than NAEP during times when not all schools are open and not all students are physically present in the schools that are.

NAEP is sample-based, and the accuracy of its ESSA data hinges on whether its tests can be administered to a representative sample of students in every state, as well as the country as a whole. Even for non-ESSA data—i.e., when no state-level results are to be provided—NAEP’s contractors (WESTAT, ETS, etc.) still need a proper sample of students nationwide in the tested grades. That means properly sampling pupils from every demographic group, as well as rural and urban, public and (usually) private, district and charter, etc. This grows difficult, if not impossible, when some schools have kids sitting in them while others don’t, when this pattern varies from state to state and sometimes week to week, and when only some students are physically present in the schools that are open that week. Lacking a valid sample, NAEP data are useless. And while NAEP tests are now taken online, it seems that nobody has yet figured out how to administer it to students who aren’t physically in school on the dates when it’s given. For all these reasons, much as I regret the NCES-NAGB decision to defer NAEP ‘21, I can’t really dispute it.

State assessments, by contrast, don’t depend on sampling. They’re given to every student who is present, and they yield results for those students, results that are reported to parents for their very own daughters and sons. These data are then aggregated at various levels—classroom, school, district, and state—and are sliced and diced in various ways. It’s true that aggregations may be misleading when some kids are tested and others aren’t. But a great deal can be learned about what has and hasn’t been learned about those who are tested. And in many places, the school and district data will be reasonably accurate, at least for some grade levels, and can be compared with 2019 data to generate some of the “growth” data that will prove essential for identifying which schools and districts did particularly well in addressing the Covid-19 challenge and which face the heaviest remediation burdens.

State education leaders should also consider the possibility of slipping their 2021 assessments from spring to fall, by which time we hope that just about every school and student will be back in place. If swiftly scored, that could yield welcome information about learning levels and losses for teachers commencing the 2021–22 school year, and would also provide baseline data against which spring 2022 test results can be compared and achievement growth calculated. For these reasons, if the U.S. Department of Education opts to offer ESSA waivers for 2021, which I hope it won’t, one version of such waivers might require autumn testing in those states that punt in the spring.

Returning to NAEP, let me flag some other portentous and provocative points that Secretary DeVos made in her letter to Congress seeking a delay in the 2021 assessments. In that document, she also outlined and asked for a major overhaul of NAEP operations, stating that the current arrangements are too cumbersome and costly to sustain.

Consider the implications of this excerpt:

It is time for Congress to rethink the entire NAEP program and improve its efficiency, efficacy, and budget. Since 2002, after the No Child Left Behind Act mandated state-level NAEP tests, the program has become increasingly complicated, difficult to administer, and costly. In FY 2002, NAEP’s budget was $42 million, and $23 million was spent on the mandated fourth and eighth grade tests. By FY 2019, NAEP’s budget was $151 million (a more than 250% increase), and the budget for mandated tests was $88 million (a nearly 300% increase). On a per student tested basis, the cost of the core NAEP test has skyrocketed from $67 to $293. Despite the growing costs and complexity, the country still benefits from reliable, periodic national measures of academic progress, but perhaps not at the current pace.

It seems clear that the costs of conducting the core NAEP tests every two years far outweigh the benefits of marginally enhancing well-established achievement trend lines. This is why our FY 2021 budget request proposed exploring the option of administering reading and math assessments on a staggered, four-year schedule. Reading could be paired with writing in a given “literacy” testing year. Two years later, math and science tests could be administered in a “STEM” testing year. This cycle would repeat, providing thematically focused results every two years and covering all subjects in four years.

This would save as much as $20 million per administration—money that could be redeployed for the needed modernization of NAEP or used to expand other important tests, including civics. Other changes that I encourage Congress to explore in concert with IES, NAGB, and the assessment community include moving test administration to the cloud—to eliminate the logistical complexity and cost of sending thousands of test administrators to thousands of schools—and restructuring NAEP assessments on a foundation of technology-enabled adaptive testing, where students’ right and wrong answers drive which questions the student receives, producing more accurate results and, in particular, generating far more accurate information about the lowest performing students who are the primary focus of federal education programs and policies.

Much to chew on here, at least for NAEP mavens such as myself. Moving to a four-year cycle for ESSA testing makes sense to me, at least during non-pandemic times, as does retrieving some of a tight budget for other subjects besides reading and math (and, I would add, some budgetary slack with which to supply regular state-level data for twelfth graders). Moving to a cloud-based adaptive testing system may also make sense but risks forcing a fresh start for every trendline in what’s called “main NAEP.” It may also threaten NAEP’s long-term trend, which now reaches back almost half a century.

NAEP was last authorized in 2002, and it’s surely time for Congress to take a fresh look. But a lot of babies are now splashing around in the NAEP bathwater, and great care must be taken before any of them are discarded—or left soapy and unrinsed. 

A long simmering feud between Denver’s school board and superintendent finally burst into the open last week following months of tensions and mutual distrust. Exacerbated by the pandemic and the district’s struggle to balance education and public health, the latest discord follows Denver superintendent Susana Cordova’s recent resignation, a decision widely viewed as not entirely of her own making. The sudden if not altogether unexpected announcement has since rippled throughout the community because of Cordova’s unique standing as a thirty-one-year veteran of the district and her deep ties as a lifelong Denver resident. To many, hers was a “Cinderella story”: Cordova’s mom worked in the district as a secretary and Cordova herself was once a student, became a teacher, and rose through the ranks to eventually become the district’s top boss.

At issue is more than personality: Some members of the board are intent upon moving Denver away from the reform-oriented policies that have characterized the district’s approach for over a decade—policies that once included an acclaimed pay-for-performance system and heartily embraced a “portfolio strategy” that entailed creating new schools and replacing or shuttering distressed ones. This vision for urban public education was once popular nationally, too, but the post-Obama pendulum swing hit Denver hard last year when all of the reform candidates lost their school board races against those who were supported by the teachers union.

To wit, the newly constituted board has been waging a counter-revolution. From deep-sixing the district’s school rating system to discouraging the formation of learning pods, the board’s latest brow-raiser was a nakedly political move to delay the expansion of the district’s highest-rated middle school—run by DSST Public Schools, a local charter school network—a decision that was fortunately rectified by state officials. At the same time, Denver, like other large urban districts, has been embroiled in a racial reckoning that has further charged the political climate. For their part, reform supporters have authored well-intentioned op-eds and issued public statements in Cordova’s defense. These countermeasures have garnered national attention, but they are too little and too late.

Denver was once a shining star in the reform galaxy, but now that star has fallen. How did things go so wrong, so quickly? Many say that Cordova was unfairly saddled with the shortcomings of her predecessor, specifically a failure to adequately engage the broader community. This skepticism gained added momentum when Cordova herself emerged as the sole finalist for the superintendency two years ago. Taken together, they have helped feed a percolating narrative here and elsewhere that testing, charters, and other reform policies are a nefarious plot driven by outside interests. One board member I’ve spoken with in particular often laments neighborhoods in Denver that now lack a school within walking distance.

As both sides continue to trade barbs and point fingers, what’s gotten lost is both the sense of clarity and focus the district once had, as well as a proud albeit imperfect narrative of progress. In the definitive take of Denver’s evolution from 2019, authors Parker Baxter, Todd Ely, and Paul Teske—faculty of the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs—write:

[Ten years ago], it would have seemed wildly improbable that Denver would nearly erase its 25-point lag behind the state in average reading and language-arts proficiency, or that the Latino graduation rate would increase by 17 points, or that more than sixty-five new schools would open. But that’s exactly what happened.

It’s difficult to overstate how much all of this has fallen down a memory hole. In its stead has been an escalating series of broadsides where reform opponents have claimed that the district’s erstwhile decision-makers were racist. Some reformers have responded in kind by asserting that the board’s disagreements with Cordova were in part racially motivated. Never mind that the policies of Cordova and her predecessors were in fact designed to advance racial equity and justice. This blowback has created a poisonous atmosphere with little if any room for compromise, and where policy solutions are often viewed as a function of tearing things down rather than as an opportunity to build.

The city’s mayor and others have laid the blame for today’s predicament squarely upon the doorstep of a “dysfunctional” school board. Former board members are urging current members to seek out board governance training, but the problems facing the district are far larger than poor oversight. No, the bile and vitriol being witnessed in Denver today reflect a collision between fundamentally different worldviews and the pernicious influence of unions.

My background as a state education official pushes me toward seeing what’s happening in Denver through the lens of power politics. I earned my stripes in education reform by being on the front lines of an effort to dramatically remake student outcomes through legislative and regulatory changes that included a state takeover of five low-performing schools. The move was met at the time with equal parts consternation and approval, but the latter won out because of a philosophical alignment among those in positions of authority. Once that alignment crumbled, chaos ensued, and no amount of outside intervention made a lick of difference.

While Cordova was viewed by some as being uniquely positioned to bridge the differences between reform supporters and skeptics, in hindsight it may have been too much of a burden for any one person to shoulder. As Baxter, Ely, and Teske astutely observe:

In our broken education debate, this is the great obstacle to progress: one side wants radical, transformational change and the other wants nearly none. In the space between them, incremental improvement may be the best we can hope for. It may be that [district leaders were] wrong to settle on a middle way, or it may be that no middle path was ultimately sustainable.

Where there’s no middle ground, conflict is seldom resolved through training or mediation, but through the ballot box. Next year, four of the district’s seven school board seats will be up for grabs.

The tumult in Denver suggests that the portfolio strategy may not be politically sustainable. Low academic performance notwithstanding, failing schools still function as mediating institutions that help bind people together. Even the most carefully drawn up of plans to replace or close one can adversely affect an entire community. What might be sustainable is an approach that focuses on curriculum-based reform, but by itself that seems unlikely to yield breakthrough results either.

In the meantime, the one silver lining from Cordova’s departure is that the city may for the first time get a real sense of the district’s new direction. Now unfettered, a changing of the guard in the superintendent’s chair should also lead to a realignment of the district’s central office. Although it’s hard to imagine the academic needs of Denver’s students getting much shrift in this new regime, uncertainty is likely to linger through next fall, which is when the board is hoping to have a new leader in place. No matter who that person is, however, it could be years before the political rancor subsides enough to allow for any real rapprochement.

1. In case you missed it, Chad testified before the House Finance Committee yesterday as an interested party on the Cupp-Patterson school funding overhaul bill. He was interested in lots of parts of it, as you can tell by Gongwer’s coverage. (Gongwer Ohio, 12/1/20) The Dispatch coverage was wide-ranging and well-balanced. Parts of Chad’s testimony on proposed changes to charter school funding were included. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/2/20)
    
2. Speaking of wide-ranging, the Senate Education Committee yesterday amended and then passed a bill full of Covid response measures relating to education. These include spring testing (sic), report cards (sic), and graduation requirements (sic). (Columbus Dispatch, 12/2/20)
   
   

3. And speaking of misnomers, the recent EdChoice voucher bill signed by the governor over the weekend is said to be “not setting well” (sic) with the superintendent of Galion City Schools. “While the EdChoice program appears to provide families the simple choice to utilize funds provided to districts and funnel them to private education institutions for their child,” she tells the Inquirer, as if that’s the good part, “the system creates an unfair system for public schools.” And she tries to explain. (Galion Inquirer, 12/1/20) We learn from Supe’s explanation that Galion City Schools “loses” $40K every year due to kids using vouchers, which likely means six students in total, and also probably means just one eligible building in the entire district (although that obviously could change with the new bill). But what about districts that have performed poorly for years and which have lots of their buildings on the eligible list? (You know who I mean.) Turns out that both the ire and the misnomers are the same! Who’da thunk? What is even more interesting: a local supe whose district is awesome (sic?) and has no eligible buildings also tells the Chronicle that he hates EdChoice…although for some reason he thinks they fund charter schools. (sic) Which he also hates, just in case you also weren’t clear on that. (Elyria Chronicle, 11/26/20)
    
4. The headline of this piece—“School quality measured despite COVID impact on learning”—is just one giant misnomer. (WKRC-TV, Cincinnati, 12/1/20) But since the head of the state teachers union insists that “There’s growing consensus around us that tests are not used for accountability purposes while we continue to struggle through this pandemic” (big giant sic), perhaps the FFA’s degree criteria could be a suitable substitute for tests. (Peak of Ohio, 12/1/20)
   
   

5. Staying with rona news for a moment: One of the Ohio’s wealthiest school districts (no matter how you slice it, economics nerds) will have the capacity to livestream classes to students at home…by January. (ThisWeek News, 11/27/20) Teachers in Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools went on strike this morning, although it sounds like traditional picketing has been complicated by the rona…and by this week’s snowstorm. #CLE2020. (WKYC-TV, Cleveland, 12/1/20)
    
6. As promised Monday, here is more on Akron City Schools’ efforts to cement the awesome (sic) college and career academies pathway in their district, following the lead of Nashville Public Schools. Part 2 of the ABJ series looks at a middle school built on the campus of the Nashville Zoo. It has been there since 2003. No examples of students who followed a path into zoology were noted even after 17 years (or indeed any success stories arising from this awesome (sic) set up), but I think it’s clear that last year’s kiddos will never forget the fact that sloths don’t fart. (Akron Beacon Journal, 11/29/20) No success stories in Part 3 either, which looks more closely at the very vague-sounding changes coming for Akron middle schoolers—stated several times to be even more comprehensive than those existing in Nashville even after nearly two decades of this plan—should the revamp plan be approved. Why am I being so hard on this series about how awesome (sic) Nashville schools are and why Akron should emulate (sic) them? First is the utter lack of any observable benefit for kids, which I’ve noted. Second is that I’ve been following the Akron high school transformation for the entire five years and have never noted any gushing about the Nashville model before. In fact, a web search shows 2 passing references to similarities between the Akron and Nashville plans in 2018, and one more substantive reference in 2019. If anyone in the district administration intended for the Nashville example to be a beacon or exemplar of the changes underway, they were very late and extremely subtle in informing the media of that fact. Wonder why? And third: the one thing we have been told in the local media over and over is that despite the all-consuming career focus of the Akron schools, no student is guaranteed any sort of job or credential or training for work. As with many traditional education institutions, the only thing that matters is “opportunity”. Pricey, showy opportunities. (Akron Beacon Journal, 11/30/20) Speaking of all that, this companion story from Cleveland.com is mainly about some sizeable grants Akron City Schools has received to help with this amazing (sic) middle school opportunity generator (sic). Personally, I am more struck by the dismal third grade reading score data the district provided. (Cleveland.com, 12/1/20) While the potential cliffhanger of whether the elected board members of Akron City Schools would vote to approve the middle school career academy transformation plan might have had a bit more rhetorical piquancy if the ABJ had run the foregoing stories back in March as intended, the rona taketh away once again. So after all the words and the unbridled, unchecked, unquestioned positivity published in the last week or so, it is likely a surprise to no one that the elected board members voted to approve the changes last night. Unanimously, I assume. “Ultimately we're doing this as a central part of the workforce development in this community,” said the district’s assistant superintendent. “I think it's going to literally transform our young people's lives,” added the selected school board’s elected vice president. Just like it happened in Nashville, right? (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/1/20)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.

• The federal government should provide states with new funds that target students who struggled the most to adapt to remote learning. —Marguerite Roza
• Even during the pandemic, the Dallas school district is expanding its programs to train students in career and technical skills. —Dallas Morning News
• A call on the NAEP Governing Board to “not approve the proposed replacement of NAEP's assessment of reading comprehension.” —E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
• Virtual learning is hurting disadvantaged children the most, but affluent kids will probably be just fine. —Washington Post
• Here is how Baltimore’s school district is facing the political, social, and public safety challenges of in-person learning. —New York Times
• Parents and children wrestle together with the emotional toll of isolation and remote learning. —Washington Post
• Rhode Island is “shutting bars and gyms as the coronavirus surges—but not schools.” —Washington Post
• Most schools must stay closed this winter. The chance to make communities safe enough to reopen is now lost. —Leana S. Wen
• “This entire second-grade D.C. class fell behind in reading. Now what?” —Washington Post
• Los Angeles’s school district is making the most of virtual learning, bringing in “experts to teach topics ranging from aeronautical engineering to agricultural science.” —EdSource
• How will the pandemic change the way we fund K–12 education? —Wall Street Journal
• Experts have yet to reach a consensus on whether test gaps are growing. —Chalkbeat

NOTE: Today, the Finance Committee of the Ohio House of Representatives is hearing testimony on House Bill 305 which would create a new school funding system in the state. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy provided interested party testimony on several aspects of the wide-ranging bill; these are his written remarks.

Thank you Chair Oelslager, Chair Callender, Vice Chair Scherer, Ranking Member Cera, and House Finance Committee members for giving me the opportunity today to provide interested party testimony today on Substitute House Bill 305.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy 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 developed by Speaker Cupp and Representative Patterson 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. 

• 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 305 builds upon this system by increasing the categorical amounts for 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 of this plan? These are important questions.

• 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 requiring all Ohio districts to accept interdistrict open enrollees on a space available basis.

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 the substitute House Bill improves upon the initial version of the plan, 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. 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 hurts 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 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. The plan should include—and make permanent—this valuable charter funding initiative.

Finally, we recommend several changes to House Bill 305 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 added to ensure charters are funded through the main, multi-billion-dollar K–12 education appropriation in the state budget. This could be done by copying existing statutory language used to fund school districts and joint vocational districts. In other words, 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 305 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.

In conclusion, we believe that Substitute House Bill 305 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, and I’m happy to answer any questions.