1. With the announcement last week that Dayton City Schools would offer a fully online learning option along with some version of in-person classes in the fall, it is now up to parents to decide which of these they want for their children. The more information they are given—the online version is going to be an off-the-shelf, video-based thing without a live teacher; the in-class plans include only 2 feet of social distancing rather than 6; lunch, recess, sports, and extracurriculars are all likely to be up-in-the-air for a good while yet; and the fact that once an option has been selected, there’s likely no backsies—the harder I assume the decision becomes. (Dayton Daily News, 6/28/20) How about some non-district school choice, Dayton parents? I assume that’s an easier decision if it means 6-year-olds attending charter and private schools will have to take RTA to get there….which is probably the point. (WDTN-TV, Dayton, 6/25/20)
    
2. Teachers in Dayton, as per their union president, seemed to have a problem with every option currently under discussion there. In northeast Ohio, it seems the mood among teachers (union presidents) is worry over things not yet decided by the state (specifically, a “compressed” standards plan they themselves are pushing). “That’s the thing about teachers, they always know that things can change,” said the union prez from Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools (these guys again?). “It’s not like they’re not used to change and adapting.” Yes indeed. They can change from amorphous worriers to full on grouchers at the drop of a hat. (Cleveland.com, 6/29/20)
    
3. Filtering out a bit more slowly these days: the opinions of parents. Here’s a quick look at the results of a University of Michigan survey expressing parental views on next school year from Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio. While the results seem to be kinda down-the-middle on things like masks and social distancing, but the least popular safety measures are closing playground equipment (30 percent support) and eliminating extracurricular activities such as sports and music (27 percent). (Bridge Michigan, 6/29/20)
    
4. The Senate Education Committee was last week discussing what sounds like a “rescue” effort for an online charter school facing financial troubles. Specifically, it is a dropout prevention and recovery charter based in Lebanon, Ohio. The amendment under construction would likely create a temporary new funding formula for such schools (and maybe even just that one school), solely for Fiscal Year 2021. Why all this effort for a charter school? Turns out that “public school districts in the county support the e-school and want it to remain afloat.” Wow. When’s the last time you heard that around here? (Gongwer Ohio, 6/26/20)
   

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

Editor’s note: This article was first published by the Overdeck Family Foundation.

Schools and the educational organizations that support them are some of the most affected by the Covid-19 crisis. A few weeks ago, we at the Overdeck Family Foundation had the benefit of engaging in interviews with leaders from Charter School Growth Fund, NewSchools Venture Fund, Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund, Silicon Schools Fund, and Transcend. One of the questions we asked was whether these organizations, in their work supporting school systems and leaders, had seen any patterns emerge in those schools that had been able to successfully and rapidly adjust to remote learning.

While this question was originally one of many, we were blown away by the answers we received, which held within them equal doses of innovation, compassion, and agility. Against all odds, schools, organizations, and the families they support have shown an immense amount of agility and creativity as they adjust to a new, remote normal.

Ninety-five percent of students participated in distance learning in the first week at Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indianapolis. Because the school model prioritized self-directed learning prior to the pandemic, students were used to using technology in self-paced ways, creating their own schedules, and connecting with teachers, other students, and experts through Zoom.

NYC schools working with the Literacy Design Collaborative made the transition to remote learning in one day—and started virtual instruction immediately. The schools have 86–95 percent attendance daily and have all the kids set up on working devices.  

And Impact Public Schools in Tukwila, Washington raised funds to buy Chromebooks and WiFi hotspots for students without technology access and ensured families could pick up meals each day. The team also implemented a multi-phase distance learning process that includes a weekly “Impact at Home” newsletter providing suggested learning for the week with links to videotaped lessons, online read alouds, and instructions for submitting work. It includes a weekly social-emotional learning lesson and creative ideas for engaging young learners like an “Impact Radio Station.”

Patterns for success, now and in the future

These are just some of the stories we heard, but they illustrate five shared trends in what best set up schools to continue to support student learning in this current environment and beyond: 1) a deep understanding of the student body; 2) a commitment to high-quality teaching; 3) a focus on student-centered learning; 4) pre-existing use of technology; and 5) an ability to innovate.

Below, we look deeper into the patterns that emerged, and share quotes from each organization that offer insight into what they’ve seen on the ground.

A deep understanding of the student body and their needs

The organizations we interviewed all noted that school leaders that have made the transition well have aimed to meet (and continue to reassess) the needs of families and students as the crisis continues, whether those needs are academic or not.

Silicon Schools Fund said that, “Mindset is key. Schools and organizations with the mindsets of meeting the needs of students and families first; willingness and openness to redeploy resources (including people) to the areas of highest need; and design-orientation and not being wed to current practices are best set up for success.”

“We see schools succeeding for two key reasons: they have created strong human relationships that serve as the foundation for adapting to change, and they have strong leadership that brings the community of adults and young people together through trust, openness, and collaboration,” shared Transcend.

NewSchools Venture Fund added that, “Strong relationships are critical for ensuring students are still participating in their learning.... They also increase the likelihood that students and families will remain connected to their school communities.”

Understanding the evolving needs of students and families becomes even more important the longer the crisis lasts. Charter School Growth Fund noted that while many schools in its portfolio distributed Chromebooks and hotspots soon after schools closed, “Some now are doing a ‘second wave’ of distribution to support families with multiple children who have access to only one computer.”

A pre-existing and continued commitment to high-quality teaching

Schools that have been able to transition to high-quality remote teaching already had a pre-existing commitment to high-quality teaching, which includes support for teacher professional development and high-quality content.

NewSchools Venture Fund shared that schools positioned to succeed during remote learning are, “laser-focused on how to best meet students’ academic and non-academic needs, finding creative ways to sustain rigor and joy over Zoom. There is a focus on teaching new content and offering choice in how students learn it.”

The content is key, agreed Robin Hood Learning + Tech Fund. “Our partners that were already using high-quality curricula not only have a strong backbone of content, but are also able to partner with those curriculum providers as they create additional supports and resources for a fully virtual environment.”

Robin Hood Learning + Tech Fund also added that schools that have created tools and systems for strong teacher collaboration, and set time to nurture that collaboration, are in the best position to support remote learning.

A focus on student-centered learning

“Schools that have focused on student-directed learning as a key feature of their model are making the transition to distance learning more easily. Students are used to choosing which subject to focus on when, seeking help from teachers and other students, and using a range of tools to complete a task,” said NewSchools Venture Fund.

Some public charter schools have found creative ways to continue their student-centered programming, shared the Charter School Growth Fund. For example, Bronx Charter School for the Arts in NYC now teaches Music and Visual Arts virtually to all students, and Kairos Academies in St. Louis is facilitating DIY science experiments via Google Chat.

And Transcend highlighted Lindsay Unified Schools, which was conducting targeted small group sessions on Zoom two days after schools closed. “Their learners—already accustomed to setting their own goals, accessing the curriculum through the learning management platform, and gathering evidence of meeting their learning goals—just kept doing at home what they usually did in school,” they added.

Now more than ever, successful student-centered learning requires real-time data, said Robin Hood Learning + Tech Fund. “Systems for collecting and analyzing data to inform learning are key to ensuring teachers can assess and target individual learning needs.”

Pre-existing use of technology for learning

Robin Hood Learning + Tech Fund summed up what many others were thinking. “It may sound obvious, but schools that already had technology and had started using it for instruction, not just for testing or information, were already leaps ahead when they had to shift to a distance learning model.”

Silicon Schools Fund noted that, “We’ve noticed a key distinguisher for schools success based on two main factors: level of expertise using technology prior to the pandemic and overall quality and functionality of organization.”

“Although no one could have anticipated the extent to which Covid-19 would impact public education in this country, we have seen that public charter schools that had made previous investments in personalized learning were able to transition to remote learning very quickly,” said leaders from Charter School Growth Fund.

NewSchools Venture Fund agreed. “Schools that were using technology consistently as a way to enhance student agency have been able to shift more easily to distance learning because students are continuing to learn on the platforms they’d been using throughout the year.”

An ability to innovate quickly

Many schools in the Charter School Growth Fund portfolio transitioned to remote learning plans within a week or two of school closures. But their innovation didn’t stop there. “As high-performing public charter schools enter into ‘phase II’ of remote learning implementation, they are starting to plan for longer-term school closures, refine how teachers engage with students, and collect data to understand what’s working and what’s not,” shared the team.

NewSchools Venture Fund mentioned that it’s not just innovating that’s important, but the ability to quickly reprioritize. “Leaders who moved quickly to address the impact of school closure, while thinking about what lies ahead—including adjusting the school calendar, bolstering student recruitment and retention plans, and rewriting beginning-of-the-year curricula to account for learning loss—were able to best support their students and families.”

“Whether a school’s response is chaos versus coping versus truly continuing the learning is less a function of what they are doing now and more a function of choices that the school community made months and years ago,” shared Transcend.

Shining bright: More examples from across the country

There is light in the darkness, and the stories below celebrate the school leaders and educators who do the very hard work of teaching students during a global pandemic. These collectively represent a cross-section of grantees from the five organizations we interviewed. We share them with you today so that we can all celebrate the school leaders, nonprofit workers, and teachers who are doing their best work under the most difficult of circumstances.

1. Teaching Matters‘ pilot to create digital resources for K–2 students was picked up by the NYCDOE’s Chancellor’s Office, who asked them to expand the work to reach all K–8 students across the district. These resources are now being used by 55,000 teachers and have been adopted by school districts nationally.
2. By March 27, five of Valor Collegiate Academy’s partner schools had already conducted virtual faculty circles, independent of any asks or pushes from Valor. Several principals shared that Faculty Circles have played an important role in helping teams connect in this new era.
3. Aurum Preparatory Academy in Oakland, California, created a tracker for each student and are recording whether students have been attending online classes, capturing notes from phone calls with each student, figuring out who has acute SEL needs, and creatively figuring out how to respond to each student’s and family’s needs.
4. Fugees Academy, a school in Georgia that serves a large refugee population, expanded its use of interpreters and translation services to ensure all families can access information and support during the shutdown.
5. The teachers at Van Ness Elementary in Washington, D.C., developed simple class websites that make the technology feel personal (“this is specific to my class”) versus institutional. They share morning Strong Start videos that the class can watch to start their day in the same way they’d start it at school. Some teachers are even finding ways to continue to incorporate students in the learning design (e.g., include a video of a classmate doing the greeting).
6. Fortune Schools in Sacramento, California, began sharing daily live messages by the principal and daily virtual yoga lessons to help their students remain focused and calm.
7. Carmen Schools of Science & Technology in Milwaukee is helping undocumented families who do not have credit cards gain access to internet services.

If you regularly spend time with teachers, school administrators, and educators, you would likely agree that these stories are both extraordinary and unsurprising. However, from the data, we know that many students are not receiving the same educational opportunities as the ones described above. These differences are only exacerbated by the shift to remote learning given the unequal access to technology and the internet.

That is why we are so proud to support Charter School Growth Fund, NewSchools Venture Fund, Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund, Silicon Schools Fund, and Transcend in their work to ensure that schools unlock the potential for all students across the country, especially during this chaotic time. A sincere thank you for participating in these interviews with our team during such a busy time for your organizations.

David Steiner:

Across the country, preparation is underway for the new school year, with clearly justified concerns over such matters as transport to school, temperature checks and social distancing, the mental and emotional wellbeing of students and teachers, and the possibility of having to combine face-to-face with online learning in a variety of different models.

In the midst of so many challenges, school leaders are also dealing with the almost certain fact that students will have learned and retained considerably less in their 2019–2020 school year than is normally the case. NWEA has attempted to quantify the combination of the usual “summer melt” (what students ordinarily forget over the summer holiday) with the fact that they will have learned much less from online teaching or working with reading packets than had they attended school: “In mathematics, students are likely to show much smaller learning gains, returning with less than 50 percent of the learning gains and in some grades”

These learning losses are not only large, but are distributed differently across socioeconomic groups. We know that low-income students have had far less access to internet accessibility and the hardware required to access on-line instruction, and are thus likely to have been even harder hit during the Covid-19 crisis. Since such students were far more likely to be academically behind their more privileged peers before Covid-19, they will, in comparative terms, be even further below grade level when they return to school.

In these circumstances, schools may be tempted to focus on the need to” remediate” their students—indeed, to do so more than ever before. Remediation in the United States has traditionally meant that teachers try to provide students whose work is deemed “below grade level” with the material that they had not learned the first time around. Often this is called “meeting students where they are.”

This well-intentioned strategy sounds like common sense. But as I have suggested elsewhere, there is strong evidence that this approach just doesn’t work. It is deeply discouraging to students, and in most cases, simply locks them into a permanent and debilitating learning gap. Instead, in that article, my co-author Daniel Weisberg and I advocate for accelerating rather than remediating.

But what does acceleration look like in practice? One way to answer this is to look at schools that effectively accelerate their students’ learning, every day, every year. Wayman Academy of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida, is such a place. And what follows is a first-hand account from its principal, Simaran Bakshi, one of Florida’s TaxWatch Principal Leadership Award winners for 2020, who explains how the school does this.

Simaran Bakshi:

When I became principal of Wayman Academy in 2013, it was a low-performing charter school in the poorest neighborhood of Jacksonville, surrounded by other low-performing schools. More than 90 percent of the students performed one or two years below grade level. Few parents were involved in school life. There was a chronic teacher shortage because of the neighborhood’s reputation and the school’s lack of retirement benefits. My charges were simply to keep the school open and not receive another “F” on Florida’s school rating calculation, which is a combination of students’ academic proficiency and growth.

Fast forward to three years later, and the school’s grade had improved to a “B.” Then, in each of the following four years, from 2015 to 2019, Wayman outperformed every school in the district with similar demographics and earned a “high-performing status” from the Florida State Department of Education in 2019, and is now an “A” school.

How did it happen?

My motto has always been “keep it simple,” in both my personal and professional life. In the world of K–12 education, we love to make things complex—and low performance almost inevitably results. Complexity allows teachers and school leaders to claim that they are “doing more,” while the lines of real responsibility in fact become hopelessly blurred, and the overarching “system” becomes the scapegoat for the results. Overcomplicating things especially overwhelms those teachers and students who are already struggling.

So as the principal at Wayman, I have been combatting complexity in three ways. First, I focus relentlessly on clear, effective instruction. We provide teachers with the right kind of knowledge, tools, and professional development that lead to teaching practices that work. We emphasize mastery of simple, familiar practices that research has found to have the most significant impact on achievement. And professional development is not just couple of sit-down sessions. Teachers train one another, exchange skill-sets, and receive constant feedback from our Leadership Team. This helps us create a culture of high expectations for students and teachers alike.

Second, we accelerate rather than remediate. Teachers do not water down curricula for our struggling students. Instead, we focus on expediting their growth and filling in any gaps in knowledge or skills, all while teaching them grade-appropriate content on a daily basis.

One of the ways we fill these gaps is with Response to Intervention (RTI) time, which occurs outside of the regular school day, every morning. Every staff member in the school is assigned to teach a common skill or standard, under teachers’ supervision, to a group of students who are struggling in that area. Students join different RTI groups as necessary throughout the year based on their progress and needs. This helps us to stay focused on grade-level content during school hours and move everyone forward on the same learning timelines.

Third, we limit assessments to those that give us useful information about our students’ strengths and weaknesses. The assessments are carefully planned at the beginning of the school year, and instructional time is not compromised. For us, this means administering three formative computerized tests each year that monitor student learning and allow our teachers to better tailor their instruction; four growth-monitoring assessments each year to measure how much progress students have made in set amounts of time; and weekly exams to determine how close our pupils are to grade level.

Here’s how this works in two true-to-life classrooms at Wayman Academy, one each in math and English language arts.

Ms. Smith, fifth-grade math: Her first lesson to her class of twenty-two students was on adding unlike fractions. Our diagnostic assessment data showed that twelve of the children were at a third-grade level on that skill—two years behind. Ms. Smith started the lesson by teaching the fifth-grade concept to the whole class. She then had the class work on fully planned, differentiated independent work that was tailored to each students’ mastery of the prerequisite skills—skills meant to be taught in lower grades—that they’d need to understand the new concept. Struggling students had various gaps: some struggled with halves, for example, and some with breaking fractions into smaller units.

Ms. Smith did not go back to teaching third-grade work for multiple days, as it would have left the entire class behind. Instead, for each day’s fifth-grade-level lesson, she focused on filling the gaps that prevented students from grasping it. And then she used RTI hours for those who needed more help. Differentiation in her classroom, however, was relevant to what was being taught that day, so that students could follow along and soon catch up with their on-grade-level peers. The objective of the lesson was applicable to all students. She did not focus on filling the years’ worth of gaps at a slow speed by moving backwards. She pulled the students up to grade-level faster by keeping the focus only on fractions. The resulting data showed that the whole class mastered unlike fractions within the specified time.

This is a daily scenario in Ms. Smith’s class, and the data support her method of teaching. This teacher’s students have outperformed those in the best schools in the district—not just in growth, but also in proficiency, for last four years. There are several Ms. Smiths in our school.

Ms. Jones, fourth-grade English language arts: She introduced her class to a lesson on drawing inferences from a text, and the diagnostic results had shown multiple students one or two grade levels behind on that skill.

She introduced the fourth-grade standard, and then broke the students up for independent work or group activities. Her students were required to read a text, note specific details, and then synthesize them to achieve new understanding. The work was differentiated for various ability groups, but crucially, every child read the same text. The guided groups that Ms. Jones met with were based on the prerequisites required to understand what it meant to infer something. Ms. Jones helped her students slow down and list the important, relevant details on graphic organizers. Then they relied on their background knowledge to make connections, generate predictions, and draw conclusions. Reviewing those “mini-inferences” led to deeper understanding of the text. Finally, that understanding was brought to bear in whole-group discussion.

Since reading requires a broad range of foundational skills, it would have been easy for her to wander into teaching other skill sets instead of staying focused on one. If a student struggled with sounding out a word, for instance, she did not slip into teaching phonics, but rather stayed focused on the progression skills needed for inferencing. The students connected better throughout the lesson, as Ms. Jones kept them within the range of current grade-level skills.

Dealing with students’ wide range of background knowledge and skills when teaching them a new on-grade-level concept is different than simply teaching below-grade-level material. Teachers needs cadence, a rhythm all students can learn in. Explicit planning is the key to help students with learning gaps. It can be done.

At Wayman, i-Ready data over the last four years show consistent progress. At the beginning of the academic year, is not uncommon for only 15 percent of students to be proficient in reading and 20 percent in math. Yet by the end of the year, a full 65 percent or more attain proficiency in reading, and 70 percent do so in math. Tier 3 students, who require the most intensive help to get up to grade level, have a success rate of 95–98 percent of moving up by one grade level or more by the end of the school year.

A school’s performance is directly tied to what we teach and how well we teach it. When we keep it simple by focusing relentlessly on high-level instruction, good things happen. Students accelerate, teachers thrive, and schools shine.

New leadership

Veteran teacher and administrator Dave Taylor will take over this summer as superintendent of Dayton Early College Academy. Long-time leader Judy Hennessey is retiring. Judy’s work in building up DECA nearly speaks for itself, and she deserves all the kudos she will receive. Best wishes to Dave for an equally long and productive tenure at the helm.

New challenges

Dayton City Schools have proposed a new transportation plan (less than a year after announcing the previous new plan) in which yellow buses will no longer be used to transport charter and private school students living in district boundaries. Instead, all of those students will be subsidized by the district to travel via the local RTA to school. There are a ton of missing details in the “plan”, and charter school parents in Dayton have some pointed questions about the changes.

Getting into the business pt 1

Schools across the state are still working out just what next school year will look like. A number of districts, having heard from parents and teachers, have announced their intention to create their own fully online schools. It is interesting to see what is a necessity-inspired mindset change from the same suspects usually bashing online learning. A number of those districts, like Woodridge Local Schools in northeast Ohio, seem fairly confident in their ability to pull this off (“If we have to do virtual, we know we can do that,” says Superintendent Walter Davis) and are even hopeful that something good may come of it for them: Davis told the Akron Leader that the district hopes to “bring some students back” who may have gone to a charter school.

What attending an online school could do for you

Amber Bennett is a rising junior attending Ohio Connections Academy who recently earned an associate degree. She will be completing her last two years of high school while simultaneously working on her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. While Amber may be a hard-driving outlier, her story illustrates rather well the topic of this story from The 74 regarding dual enrollment access. Students who felt let down by the remote learning provided during the pandemic shutdown or students worried about what next year may bring are all, apparently, making increased use of the online offerings provided by community colleges and universities this summer.

Getting into the business pt 2

In a pre-pandemic story, The 74 recently published this late-October look at Fugees Academy in Columbus. It is a network of schools geared to supporting immigrant and refugee children who have landed in the U.S. from across the globe. The school, it’s leader, and its mission are awesome and are well worth a look if you’re not familiar. We are told that the two extant Fugees Academy schools are private but that the flagship school in Atlanta is in the process of becoming a charter school. It is also suggested that future iterations in other cities and states may go that route from the start.

1. Veteran teacher and administrator Dave Taylor will take over as superintendent of Dayton Early College Academy schools this summer when long-time leader Judy Hennessey retires. Kudos to Judy for all that she has accomplished in building DECA into the strong and successful institution that it is, and best wishes to Dave for a long and productive tenure at the helm. Parents, students, and the whole Dayton community have much to show—and will have much more going forward—for the hard work and tenacity of these two educational leaders (against some long odds) over the years. (Dayton Daily News, 6/23/20) Cristo Rey High School in Columbus is getting a new boss this summer as well, but from a far less likely source. Joseph Patrick is a CPA by training and has had a long career auditing the books of organizations like…Cristo Rey. His detailed knowledge of the Catholic school’s operations, and his strong support for its mission to help low-income students of color achieve at the highest possible academic level, learn through hands-on internships with business and non-profit partners, and to be prepared for college and career upon graduation is likely what won him the job. Congratulations to Joseph and the entire Cristo Rey family. (Columbus Business First, 6/24/20)
    
2. Speaking of school choice (were we?), here’s another of those pre-pandemic stories from The 74, this time looking at Fugees Academy, a network of schools geared to supporting immigrant and refugee children who have landed in the U.S. from across the globe. This story also looks to be based on a late-October visit to Columbus. The school, its leader, and its mission all sound awesome—and we’ve talked about them in the Bites before. Unfortunately, a lot of the oxygen in this story is taken up by national political talk, and next to no time is spent on the structure (and future plans) of the Fugees system, which should probably take center stage if you ask me. The academies, currently operating in Atlanta and Columbus, are private schools. It is noted that the Georgia school is supported by fundraising but that the Ohio school is “funded through a long-standing voucher program that originally targeted students attending failing public schools but that lawmakers expanded in 2013 to low- and middle-income families.” It would be interesting to find out which vouchers the kids are using, seeing as how many Columbus area district schools are eligible due to their long-standing poor academic performance, and how much fundraising/philanthropy is involved here as well. Well, interesting to me at least. We are also told that the Atlanta academy is in the process of becoming a charter school and that expansion plans include Indiana, Florida, and Missouri (where, we are told, there is “a favorable charter law.”) Yowza. So much to unpack…. (The 74, 6/23/20)
    
3. For some reason, the state teachers’ unions want the state—and Governor DeWine in particular—to have the final say in how schools will reopen in the fall, as opposed to local school boards. I’m not entirely convinced by the reasons they have given for their preference. (Gongwer Ohio, 6/24/20)
    
4. Perhaps the unions are worried about how well those decisions will be made at the local level. How can you blame them when one district which has had demonstrable trouble carrying out even regular school to a decent level tells you, “We try to stay five steps ahead of the state.”? (Toledo Blade 6/25/20) I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t any great shakes at regular school either; AND they seem confused as to how many feet make six. (Dayton Daily News, 6/24/20) I’m also pretty sure that, even if it comes down to a local decision, reopening schools should not be up to these particular guys. Just who is running the show up there these days? (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 6/23/20) The first two districts being humbly and gently twitted above by your humble clips compiler have this week announced their intentions to set up a fully online school next year for parents who might want that. So, too, will this much smaller northeast Ohio district. They are the only ones to publicly suggest that, with it, they “hope to bring some students back who may have gone to a charter school”. In the spirit of competition of course. (Akron Leader, 6/25/20)
   

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

David Brooks has long been a stalwart supporter of education reform, both the choice-and-charters flavor and the testing-and-accountability variety. So it was a real downer to read his recent column declaring that, when it comes to Black America, “Better education is not leading to equality.”

What he should have said is that “more education is not leading to equality,” because Brooks slipped into the tempting trap of confusing educational attainment with academic achievement.

Here’s the heart of his column:

We Americans believe in education. We tend to assume that if you help a young person get a good education and the right skills, then she’ll be able to make her way in American society. Opportunity will be bountiful. Social harmony will reign.

This formula has not worked for many African Americans.

Over generations, great gains have been made in improving Black students’ education. In 1968, just 54 percent of young Black adults had a high school diploma. Today, 92 percent do. In 1968, about 9 percent of young African American adults had completed college. Today, roughly 23 percent have.

And yet these gains have not led to the kind of progress that those of us who preach the gospel of the American dream would have predicted and that all young people are entitled to.

The median income for a White head of household with a college degree is $106,600. The median income for a comparable Black college graduate is only $82,300. As my colleagues on the editorial page noted in 2017, Black college graduates earned about 21 percent less per hour than White college graduates. Over all, Black families earn $57.30 for every $100 White families earn. These pay gaps have been widening since 1979, not shrinking.

I don’t dispute his facts, nor his depressing assertions that the wealth gaps between college-educated White and Black adults are big and getting bigger. On top of that, a recent Fordham Institute study by John Winters at Iowa State found that the “college earnings premium” for African Americans is significantly smaller than for Whites nationwide and in every state with a substantial Black population.

So, yes, Brooks is right that “Better schooling is essential to creating a fair and equal America. But it is not nearly enough.”

But “better schooling” should not be defined by degrees earned. It’s achievement, not just attainment, that matters—what one learns, not just the diplomas on one’s wall.

That’s the essential takeaway from twenty-five years of research showing that:

1. The Black-White college wage gap diminishes after controlling for differences in academic skills.
2. Black adults with moderate levels of academic achievement are more likely to go to and through college than similarly achieving Whites.
3. Higher cognitive performance is associated with higher earnings for all groups, but especially for African Americans (and Hispanics).

Let’s unpack all this.

Almost a quarter-century ago, Derek Neal and William Johnson published a landmark—if controversial—paper looking at the Black-White college earnings gap. Controlling for scores on a basic skills test given at the end of high schools, the scholars found, “greatly reduces the measured White-Black wage gap for young adults,” which suggests “that the Black-White wage gap primarily reflects a Black-White skill gap that exists before young men and women enter the labor market.”  

The paper was controversial because it implied that college-educated African Americans were not, in fact, facing much discrimination in the labor market. But as Kevin Lang and Michael Manove argued ten years later, that was an incorrect interpretation. What Neal’s and Johnson’s findings really pointed to was a strategy on the part of Black people to overcome employment discrimination. Because employers were less likely to hire Black applicants with minimal education, more of them sought and earned higher education credentials, including four-year degrees, than one would expect given their academic skills coming out of high school. As a result, the typical college-educated African American had lower academic skills than the typical college-educated White worker—which explains much of the earnings gap. But it doesn’t disprove employment discrimination.

I stumbled across this finding a few years ago when I noticed that the percentage of Black students graduating from college was higher than the percentage prepared for college, according to National Assessment data for twelfth graders. In other words, attainment for African Americans has been outstripping achievement, at least at the “college ready” level.

Which brings us back to the big question for K–12 education: If schools improve, boosting the academic achievement of Black students, does that increase their earnings as adults? If we could make more progress narrowing the achievement gap before students leave high school, especially among those going to college, could we narrow the wage gap as well?

A 2016 paper from University of Virginia scholars Dajun Lin, Randall Lutter, and Christopher J. Ruhm indicates that the answer is yes. Like the classic Neal and Johnson paper, it finds that wages are related to academic skills, as measured at the end of high school—and not just for early career workers, but over the course of a lifetime. Even more importantly, it also finds that African Americans (and Hispanics) see a greater return to cognitive skills than Whites do.

And a 2015 study by David Deming, Sarah Cohodes, Jennifer Jennings, and Christopher Jencks finds that accountability policies in Texas boosted the percentage of “at-risk” students from high-poverty, low-performing schools who passed the state’s high-stakes exam, and that more of these students went on to graduate from college and earn higher wages as adults.

None of these studies imply that education alone will end discrimination or bring about racial equality in America. Differences in academic skills explain only part of the differences in earnings. Nor do they mean that attaining college degrees is not important. The best results generally come from a combination of higher achievement and higher attainment.

Taken as a whole, however, the research literature demonstrates that looking at attainment alone—and at college earnings gaps unadjusted for academic achievement gaps—can lead to mistaken conclusions.

So to David Brooks I say: More education might not lead to greater equity, but better education almost certainly will.

Interdistrict open enrollment is the biggest school-choice program that practically nobody ever mentions, perhaps because it’s less conspicuous and more socially acceptable than its cousins, private school vouchers and public charter schools. But it could be doing so much more for the children of Ohio.

Essentially, open enrollment allows students to register and attend classes in a school district other than the one where they live. It’s popular, too. As the graph shows, more than 80,000 Ohio students availed themselves of the opportunity in 2018–19.[1]

Figure 1: Annual student participation in interdistrict open enrollment 2003-2019

​

Don’t blame us at Fordham for its relative obscurity. Open enrollment crops up all the time in the Ohio Gadfly, and three years ago we published a report by professors Deven Carlson and Stéphane Lavertu that analyzed its academic impact. They found that open-enrolling over multiple years is linked to test-score gains, albeit modest ones, and that Black open enrollees especially benefit. Open enrollment throughout high school also boosts the odds of on-time graduation.

Earlier this month, a Fordham policy brief recommended that Ohio shift away from a punitive, top-down school accountability system to one focused on transparency and school choice. As part of that, we proposed requiring every district in the state to participate in open enrollment, which is not the case today. Currently, each local school board decides whether its district will take part and, if so, whether it will admit students from any Ohio district or only from adjacent districts. Each participating district also decides how many transfer students it can accommodate and establishes a fair process for admitting them (it can’t cherry pick). That’s pretty much it.

Given how many districts participate, that process must not be too stressful. In recent years, 70 percent of districts accepted students from anywhere in the state and another 10 percent welcomed pupils from neighboring districts. But participation isn’t what most people would call equitable. Figure 2 helps visualize it:

Figure 2: Ohio school districts by open-enrollment status 2013-14 school year

​

While the map’s a few years old, the picture it shows is true today: Across huge swaths of the state, nearly every school system participates. But look again and you will see that, around Ohio’s major cities, it’s a different story. Their choice-hostile neighbors, mostly prosperous suburban school districts, are at the crux of Fordham’s recommendation. Consistent with the research of Carlson and Lavertu, we believe that Ohio’s most disadvantaged students—many of whom live in cities surrounded by districts walled off to open enrollment—could benefit from access to more public school choice.

It’s easy for districts to opt into open enrollment. The question is why so many suburban districts, one of which I live in, don’t roll out the welcome mat.

A legitimate objection to open borders is “we’re completely full.” Some suburban school districts are fast growing and their school buildings may well be full or nearly so. But surely that’s not true in every district (or every building) that has opted out of open enrollment. In any case, all we’re suggesting is that districts participate in open enrollment to the extent they have existing capacity. Participating districts would never be required to build a new school or expand an existing one. If the district has no openings, it simply doesn’t take any students that year.

The other usual objection to open enrollment is that it costs too much, and at first glance there’s something to this. The average amount spent per pupil in Ohio in 2018–19 was $12,472—including state, local, and federal revenues—but a student entering via open enrollment brings just $6,020, all of it state funds. Why would any districts take nonresident students? The answer lies in the difference between fixed and variable costs.

Suppose a third-grade elementary classroom in a non-participating district has eighteen students. This district generally aims for twenty-two pupils per class in grades three through five. Its per-pupil funding for its existing students already pays for the teacher, building administration, support staff, and other fixed costs. If the district opted into open enrollment and accepted four additional students, it would receive an additional $24,000 without likely increasing any fixed costs. As long as the variable cost of another student, such as purchasing textbooks or a Chromebook, is less than $6,000, the district still comes out ahead financially by taking part in open enrollment. Its own residents won’t have their taxes raised to “make up the difference” between the money an open-enrolling student brings with her and the average cost of education in the district.

In sum, any Ohio school district can participate in open enrollment. And the vast majority do. Yet there remains a ring of non-participating districts around the state’s urban centers. It’s not an issue of capacity or cost, as every district decides for itself how many students can enroll and state dollars more than cover the variable costs. Whatever is causing those suburban doors to remain closed, it’s time that the state insist that they open up to open enrollment. They’re public schools, aren’t they?

1. “For $3 billion dollars, African American students have scored an F for 22 straight years.” That is the assessment of Jimma McWilson, long-time vice president of the Youngstown/Mahoning County Branch of the NAACP, regarding Youngstown City Schools. It is a scathing critique and is, to him, the definition of structural racism. From the outset, he said during a recent virtual conference, racism was built into the education system and it continues today whether his district is under local control or the oversight of a state Academic Distress Commission. And the data supports his assessment. “They’re all just doing the same thing,” he said of those in charge of the system, “carrying out what’s been put in place.” He’s got some ideas for change and improvement if anyone’s willing to make those systemic changes. (Youngstown Business Journal, 6/23/20) Meanwhile, Ohio’s largest school district has hired its first ever Chief Equity Officer. While Columbus City Schools hasn’t exactly had 22 straight years of Fs, it’s been pretty close, especially for Black and Brown students. She’s got her work cut out for her. (Fox28, Columbus, 6/23/20)
   
   

2. Middletown City Schools’ report cards haven’t been so great over the last couple decades either. And while its current superintendent is happy with his community’s relatively-low Covid caseload—students are in summer classes and athletic practices are happening pretty much as normal on his campuses right now—he’s very much worried about systemic racism and its effects in his district. He’s got some plans to make changes—and Ed Dive is all about them—but I personally am not certain that those plans are as connected to academic improvements as he might think they are. (Education Dive, 6/23/20)
    
3. The current leadership of Mansfield City Schools is touting their efforts to “grow their own” future staff from within the ranks of their students and alums. The impetus behind the effort is good, and it will be great if it works out as they hope. But the most recent report cards for the district indicate that this is an uphill endeavor. Or should I say, a circular one? (Richland Source, 6/23/20)
    
4. “If we have to stay on remote learning this school year, we will lose a generation of readers,” says Dayton supe Elizabeth Lolli. I don’t think this has to be true, but I think that it will be true if the suggestions she proffered to the state are followed. (ABC6, Columbus, 6/22/20) Speaking of things that Dayton City Schools has not managed to perfect (were we?), the district is proposing to once again revamp its student transportation—perennially awful for everyone—after last year’s latest disastrous efforts. Loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers (I lost count of all of you once we passed 20) will no doubt recall the huge push last year—fueled by millions of dollars in excess cash burning a hole in the board’s collective pocket—to utilize transit agency RTA in an effort to transport kids and (especially) to boost attendance. Every part of that, except for the transfer of millions of dollars from district to RTA coffers, failed miserably. And now the district is abandoning that effort…for its own kids…and planning to let RTA be the transportation system for charter and private school students living in the district. There are a ton of unanswered questions and obvious problems here such that the whole thing will probably get nuked before it happens, but as a piece of bald-faced, anti-school choice theater, you have to admire the temerity. It’s kinda like letting the engineers who built the Titanic have another go…using people they don’t like as the passengers. (Dayton Daily News, 6/22/20)
    
5. Speaking of anti-school choice theater, it seems odd that Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools were not the first ones on board for a putative new lawsuit against the EdChoice voucher program. But a diva’s got to know when to make an entrance for maximum impact, doesn’t she? (Cleveland.com, 6/22/20)
    
6. The amount of awesomeness in this piece about early college/dual enrollment programs across the country is almost off the charts. In just Ohio alone, we have the story of Amber Bennett, a student at Ohio Connections Academy, who’s already got an associate degree under her belt as a rising high school junior. She’ll be doing that high school work at the same time she starts her bachelor’s degree via the University of Notre Dame. Awesome! From there we learn that many dual enrollment programs at community colleges and universities across the country are currently experiencing a sizeable boost in participation from students under the age of 18. The supposition—supported by anecdotes and data—is that coronavirus-related disruptions to K–12 education have fueled summer participation in college courses as both catch up from weeks of sucky non-teaching that was peddled as “remote learning” and as a hedge against future crapitude coming their way under that same guise with the blessing of education officials everywhere. (While it is true, as one student put it, that “[P]rofs have actual experience with teaching online [as opposed to her high school teachers], so they know what material to give out, so stuff makes sense,” it is also true to say that colleges’ business models require that they do this right in order to maintain their income. That is obviously not true with most K–12 public schools.) But, as with everything ‘rona-related, longstanding gaps between the haves and the have-nots are shown in strong relief here too. Lorain County Community College is actually seeing a lag in dual enrollment participation, despite some strong previous numbers from schools across Northeast Ohio, which is pinned down to a “lack of access” to high school students for recruiting purposes. The discussion of who is the gatekeeper for student access to dual enrollment is a thorny one, especially in the midst of an unforeseen school building shut down. While some colleges may want high schools to send them kids who they think are ready and able to do the work, there is something to be said for the schools being able to recruit freely on their own—especially in the midst of an unforeseen school shutdown which affected K–12 schools differently than it did higher education—and for students and families to take charge of their own access to dual enrollment. I’ll bet that’s how it worked for Amber. (The 74, 6/22/20)

    

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

Theodore Roosevelt’s statue is being removed from the front entry of the American Museum of Natural History that he did so much to help create.

Portraits of four previous Speakers were removed from the Capital’s corridors last week by order of Nancy Pelosi, although they led the U.S. House of Representatives for a total of ten years.

George Washington’s memorial in Baltimore has been defaced.

Washington and Jefferson were both toppled in Portland.

Washington and Franklin statues have been spray-painted in Philadelphia.

Andrew Jackson’s statue needed police protection to avoid being pulled down by vandals in Lafayette Square.

Christopher Columbus’s very name is turning into a four-letter word, joined by the toppling of statues commemorating him all over the place.

A group of Wisconsin protesters even brought down—and tossed into Lake Monona—the statue of a little-known immigrant from Norway who served as a colonel in the Union army.

Nor is this violent repudiation of the past confined to American shores. Churchill’s statue has been vandalized and may be moved from Parliament Square to a museum, though one must wonder if the defacers wish that Hitler had won. And Cecil Rhodes’s statue will vanish from Oriel College, Oxford, though it’s doubtful they’ll surrender the mining fortune that pays for Rhodes scholarships.

What’s next? Must Columbus, Ohio, now change its name? How about Jefferson City, Missouri? Washington and Lee University? Cortez, Colorado? Yale University? Then there’s the nation’s capital, itself, where Fordham’s main office is located. Why should its name memorialize a slave-owner? And what of that tall obelisk honoring him just south of the White House? Hmmm, “White House.” Perhaps appropriate for the incumbent but surely a poor choice of names for the chief executive’s residence going forward.

What’s happening to our history? Is it getting toppled, too, because we disapprove of some actions and practices of past individuals, never mind how central their roles may have been to the history that we want our kids to learn more about?

A clear and present risk in history education has long been what historians call “presentism,” viewing the past—and passing judgment on its events and actors—through the lens of today’s values and priorities. Viewed through that lens, what’s important about an historical event or person isn’t why it happened the way it happened when it happened, but rather our opinion as to whether it should have happened. What gets added in our hyper-woke age is the judgment that, if any aspect of an historical personage or event is now unpalatable, that person or event should be criticized, disavowed, and if possible, erased, no matter what else they may have accomplished or what difference they may have made. 

I understand, obviously, that putting someone’s likeness on a pedestal in the form of a statue, or on a high-profile wall in the form of a portrait, serves to highlight and call attention to them, perhaps glorify them. But mankind has been doing that forever. Nobody likes Satan or the goddess Kali but their images are all over the place. So, too, the unlovable members of the Borgia family, not to mention Hitler and Stalin. Those folks aren’t necessarily depicted and displayed in public venues because viewers—or the artists—think well of them, but because they are famous personages who played large roles in shaping the world we live in today.

When it comes to Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Churchill, say, they’re depicted in portraiture and statuary because they did great things that most people today appreciate and approve, notwithstanding other parts of their lives that we may now deplore. Do the deplorable parts justify defacing or tearing down their images?

I get the distinction between them and Confederate generals, most of whose statues went up during the Jim Crow era. If their principal contribution to U.S. history was doing their utmost to preserve slavery while sundering the union, I can’t defend celebrating them—though, once again, displaying Stalin’s portrait doesn’t necessarily signal praise. I do think kids should learn a lot about the Civil War, however, in which the likes of J.E.B. Stuart were as consequential as William Tecumseh Sherman. (It also needs to be recalled that Robert E. Lee was a distinguished officer in the U.S. Army—including service in the Mexican War and superintendent of West Point—for thirty-two years before, as we now say, “turning traitor” after Lincoln offered him command of the Union army.)

I also get the distinction between statues torn down because people disapprove of the person being commemorated and a few situations where it’s more about the statuary itself. The main issue with the Roosevelt statue facing Central Park isn’t about him so much—though he definitely slaughtered a lot of animals—as the depictions of a Native American man and an African man at his side. Keep in mind, though, that when that “heroic” grouping debuted in 1940, it wasn’t widely seen as offensive, however much it may appear that way to today’s onlookers.

Here’s the point: Few young Americans are learning American history in school. We have ample data showing that, including the recent NAEP results. Insofar as they’re learning and perhaps retaining some knowledge of the nation’s past, it’s mostly coming from other places, from Ken Burns documentaries, from David McCullough’s books, from watching Hamilton and from visiting Monticello and Mount Vernon and Mt. Rushmore and Independence Hall. And, maybe, just maybe, from eyeballing and driving by and walking past and perhaps visiting the statues and monuments that have been erected in traffic circles, public parks, the National Mall, and elsewhere. Do we really want them to learn even less? And do we really want them to view George Washington as a slave owner rather than the “father of his country”? To regard Churchill as an imperialist or as the leader who wouldn’t appease Hitler and roused England to fight back? Of course they should learn both. But that won’t happen if we erase them from view as if they never existed.

As the Wall Street Journal editorial board correctly noted, “This current anti-monument wave degrades what originated as a legitimate grievance: the presence of Confederate monuments, many erected during the Jim Crow era to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth and advance white supremacy. But that idea has been taken over now by what has turned into a mob intent on willy-nilly eradication of chunks of American history.”

As I noted in a recent post, attitudes toward advanced education are cyclical. From gifted education to talent development programs, from honors classes to AP, we have experienced a largely positive stretch of media attention and state-level policy gains. However, advanced education has started to come under fire, especially in urban districts. This pressure has only increased due to the economic crisis and heightened concerns about systemic racism.

Many of the current arguments against advanced programming have been around for a while: Those kids will be fine on their own, you shouldn’t separate students based on ability, teachers can just differentiate for every student in the regular classroom, advanced programs are biased against lower income students, etc. Advocates are fairly adept at countering these misunderstandings.

But a new argument has emerged over the past couple years: “Research says that advanced programs don’t work.” That’s ridiculous, but it has become increasingly common, often presented as a known fact. Over the last couple years, I have had several journalists share versions of “The research clearly says ability grouping/gifted education/acceleration/enrichment doesn’t work.”

And with concerted efforts to eliminate advanced programming in high-profile districts—New York City and Seattle being current examples—this narrative is popping up like an aggressive weed. For example, the NYC Student Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) asserted throughout its August 2019 report that gifted programs are not associated with evidence of effectiveness, recommending instead that NYC schools use enrichment instead, which is like saying pain medicine doesn’t work, so use ibuprofen! Think tanks (see this piece as an example) have jumped into the fray to support the SDAG recommendations, making similar claims. All of these attacks tend to be very thinly-sourced—if they contain any supporting research at all. For example, the SDAG report has thirty-seven citations, the majority of which are newspaper stories, think pieces, or a report of the SDAG itself—in other words, not research. Contrast those reports with the recent report commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Education, which is carefully sourced, even-handed, and—not surprisingly—generally positive in its conclusions about the effectiveness of advanced education.

Advanced learning programs are effective, and we have reams of research to support that conclusion. Do we have high-quality, gold-standard, replicated research supporting every possible intervention? Of course not. Show me a field that does. For example, we’ve spent billions to study how to help students learn to read, yet we still have a very wide range of opinions on how to do one of the most foundational tasks in all of education. Furthermore, a field that can be described in that way (i.e., everything is totally research-supported) would be largely absent of innovation, which isn’t a good thing.

What follows is a rough summary of intervention research, listed from more to less evidence of effectiveness. For the purposes of this post, “evidence of effectiveness” is defined as research on positive student outcomes, broadly defined, with a bias toward experimental studies. A colleague who provided feedback on this post made a great point that needs to be kept in mind: All this assumes that the interventions are well-designed and carefully implemented, and even in those cases, not every strategy works the same every time, even in similar contexts, for every student. But in general, research supports the following summaries:

Acceleration: One of the most-studied intervention strategies in all of education, with overwhelming evidence of positive effects on student achievement. So much supporting work that it is impossible to do it any justice here; I’ll just point people to these resources from the Belin-Blank Center and this meta-analysis. We don’t have a lot of evidence that acceleration strategies impact excellence gaps, and there are reasons to believe they probably don’t, at least not by themselves. But the effectiveness of acceleration regarding increases in student learning is hard to question at this point.

Ability grouping: Not as clear cut as acceleration research, but studies find convincing evidence that flexible ability grouping is a net positive for the student learning of our most and least advanced students. The meta-analysis linked above found evidence within-class ability grouping was most effective for promoting advanced learning among various grouping strategies, and other studies suggest that flexible ability grouping may help close excellence gaps. The field’s growing research base on curriculum models can also be placed in this category, and those studies suggest that pre-differentiated, prescriptive curricula leads to significant growth in advanced learning.

Enrichment: Much less third-party research and very few experimental studies, making it difficult to determine the actual impact of these programs. What we do have is mixed but generally promising, especially for summer, residential enrichment—such as these examples here, here, and here. (Full disclosure: I work for an organization that runs such summer program.) What would be most helpful are the types of studies done on problem-based learning many years ago, which gathered evidence that PBL-focused instruction didn’t hurt student test scores. The argument became that PBL brings the possibility for tremendous depth of student learning in addition to a range of other, highly desirable soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, creativity, interest development, all with no negative impact on test results. Having this type of research would greatly facilitate the implementation of enrichment interventions, and I won’t be surprised if enrichment-based interventions will eventually be found to be among the best, if not the best, creativity interventions. Regarding excellence gaps, we have very little high-quality research on the impact of enrichment programs.

Selective high schools: Among the oldest strategies for advanced education are public high schools that selectively choose high-performing students based on entrance exam scores, hence the label “exam schools.” Despite the long history of this approach to advanced learning, very few experimental studies exist, and other sophisticated research designs often produce mixed-to-negative results (examples here and here). The issues surrounding exam schools are complex and controversial, with longstanding questions about diversity, or lack thereof, in these schools, the value-added for students, and their ability to close excellence gaps.

Given the above evidence, educators and policymakers can reasonably conclude there are research-supported interventions to promote advanced learning. However, my suspicion is that most advanced students are currently being taught using heterogeneously-grouped differentiation. This approach, which relies heavily on teachers to differentiate curricula and instruction for the wide range of student performance levels in their classrooms, is generally the favored approach in teacher preparation programs, at least partially explaining its ubiquity.

Yet there is very little research that teachers are effective differentiators for the wide range of student ability and performance levels they find in their classrooms, and many teachers appear to understand differentiation’s limitations. Indeed, when I press my “whole-class differentiation first, last, and always” colleagues and friends for evidence that it works for gifted students, the reply is usually to list districts that are trying this approach. That’s not evidence. Lots of people drive huge SUVs, but that is not evidence that doing so addresses climate change. What evidence we have suggests teachers have a hard time differentiating in the absence of ability grouping (including programs such as Advanced Placement). And again, there’s little to no research on effects of this form of differentiation on excellence gaps, either positive or negative.

We have an abundance of research on advanced education, and on balance the evidence is positive—certainly more positive than for critics’ alternatives. Do we need more and better research, especially on how to ensure these programs and interventions work for the diverse student body in our schools, especially regarding how the interventions impact the lives of students based on class, race, ethnicity, and gender? Absolutely, but that can be said about any educational intervention. For now, advocates should be confident in the depth of the research base on advanced education.