1. Unless your school or district cut short its regularly-scheduled instructional calendar (I’m looking at you Revere, Elida, Orange, etc.), the current school year is still in session for most kids. But folks are already looking ahead to next year, including Cincinnati City Schools. Here’s a look at the many hybrid options Cincy’s considering. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 5/21/20)
   
   

2. What’s interesting to me in all the discussion about next year is that some folks seem to have written off summer as an option to either make up for this year’s losses now or as a running start for next year’s effort to make up for this year’s losses. (Or both!) Staying in Cincinnati, here’s some information about a nonprofit organization who isn’t missing that trick: offering an intensive online learning program to combat “the COVID slide” over the summer. This includes free instruction, laptops, and WiFi hotspots as needed. And that’s not all! The boss promises kids will be reading a full grade level ahead before they even enter school this year. Who’da thunk this would all be possible for rising Kindergartners? (WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, 5/20/20)
    
3. The COVID slide, what can be done about it, and fears about the next school year disruption (whatever that might be) loom large around this discussion of yet another trial balloon floated by CMSD boss Eric Gordon this week. This time, it’s the “bold” idea to adopt so-called “mastery” grading in the district, scrapping seat time and traditional annual grade promotion for a measure of proficiency as the trigger for kids to move on, however long it takes for them to get there. Unfortunately, the discussion is all about how this is a better approach for our pandemic-riddled times than the old ways. But I am far more concerned about the lack of transparency around what would constitute mastery, who would determine it, and how it would be assessed (especially since the plan scraps A-F grades). Not to mention that problems with the system in schools where it was tried are completely glossed over or are attributed to parents who “just didn’t understand” how it worked. I know you’re tied up working on contract at the moment, Patrick, but whenever you’re free I’d love to see a couple articles on those failures done with your usual level of detail. I can pay you in homemade bread! (The 74, 5/20/20)
   

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When the National Parents Union (NPU) met for the first time in New Orleans in January, things were just a little different. We knew we had a fight on our hands, but we never imagined what the next few months would bring. Instead of just being parents and advocates, as if that’s not enough, we are now superintendents, principals, teachers, hall monitors, IT professionals, cafeteria aides, school security, architects (turning living rooms into classrooms), and of course, we’re still parents and advocates.

As the debate in this country is shifting to how and when to reopen schools, it is more important than ever that parents have a legitimate voice that is heard, that is accounted for, and that is impactful. We simply can’t expect that the status quo warriors are going to have our best interests at heart. They never have before, and they certainly won’t now when their stranglehold on the education system is at risk. If there is a silver lining during the pandemic, it’s that parents have far greater insight into their children’s education—information that can be used to force change.

At the National Parents Union, of which I’m the president, our goal is to make parents voices heard. To do that, we are always seeking input from our coalition of families and from the larger public. That’s why we began a weekly COVID-19 survey to learn how parents feel about a variety of issues around education, financial support, and health. These surveys are also helping us develop our “Family Bill of Rights.”

The poll, conducted by Echelon Insights on behalf of NPU, surveyed a nationally representative group of 500 parents of public-school students in grades K–12, from an online web panel on May 11–12, 2020.

Here are a few key insights from the poll.

To begin, we learned just how few parents trust elected officials to establish and evaluate school safety procedures. Just 5 percent said they would trust President Trump the most, whereas 24 percent said the CDC, 14 percent said state health officials, and 12 percent said local health officials. Also ranking low were governors, at 9 percent. School leaders didn’t fare well either: Local school district leaders were trusted by 8 percent of parents, state departments of education by 5 percent, the U.S. Department of Education by 3 percent, and the school principal of parents’ own children by 2 percent.

We also learned from parents how important certain measures are for schools to take:

• Require students and staff members who may have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 to stay home for fourteen days before returning to school: 81 percent of parents said this was extremely or very important, and 56 percent said it was absolutely necessary, and that if it it’s not implemented, they will not send their kids to school.


• Send out notices to parents of students who may have been exposed to a student or staff member who has tested positive for COVID-19: 79 percent rated it extremely or very important.


• Provide all students with the technology needed for online learning at the beginning of the year in case they become ill or schools close again, including laptops or tablets and internet access: 76 percent rated extremely or very important.


• Provide face masks to all students and staff and replace the masks regularly: 70 percent rated it extremely or very important.


• Provide an individualized education plan for each student based on an assessment of their academic and mental health needs, as well as input from their parents or guardians: 65 percent rated it extremely or very important.


• Provide mental and emotional health assessments and counseling for students and staff: 65 percent extremely or very important.


• Stagger schedules so that there are fewer students in classrooms and desks can be spaced six feet apart: 63 percent extremely or very important.

The days of parents being left out of the conversation around their children’s future are over. We are at a critical junction in our nation’s history, and we are not going to let special interests decide whether our kids have access to a high-quality education in a safe environment. We will have a voice, and schools will have no other choice but to listen. Our children have a right to a high-quality education, and we will not rest until they get one.

The school year continues

Here’s a great look at the practice of “lunch bunches” at Menlo Park Academy – where students gather with a teacher to chat and unwind between their demanding classes. Lunch bunches have gone virtual during mandatory school closures, but they remain popular and engaging.

Distinguished graduates

As the school year ends for high school seniors across the country, some fantastic stories are emerging. Here’s one from Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy in Wisconsin: Twins Arielle and Arianna Williams are graduating at the top of their class and were accepted at more than three dozen colleges with $1 million in scholarships offered to them. They will be attending Marquette University, together, in the fall—the first in their family to go to college. Congratulations to them and best wishes for a great freshman year!

Governor DeWine discusses next school year

Ohio’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has created an ever-evolving barrage of information. As the 2019-2020 school year winds down, there are questions aplenty about 2020-2021…and information too. Breakthrough Schools’ John Zitzner interviewed Governor DeWine to try and find whatever answers may be available.

The broadband gap

Breakthrough Schools are included in this story as well. It looks at an idea proposed by Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon to help bridge the broadband gap for students and families in northeast Ohio which has been brought to the full light of day by the school closure order. 

The future of school funding

Whatever shape K-12 education takes in the fall will be affected by school funding cuts ordered by the governor. We have seen details on the first wave of cuts already and, unfortunately, battle lines are already being unnecessarily drawn between traditional district and charter schools.

Editor’s Note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

In early May, Columbus City Schools released a searing 450-page external audit that took the district to task and called for improvement on many dimensions of governance and performance. Some of the most alarming findings, in my view, concern the failure of the district’s teacher evaluation process.

Last year, only two of the district’s roughly 3,500 teachers were rated as “ineffective” on their official evaluations, and only about 5 percent received the second-lowest “developing” rating, according to district data. But when auditors asked school principals for their honest opinions, more than a third reported that at least 10 percent of the teachers in their schools were ineffective. In some buildings, principals rated nearly 20 percent of their teachers as ineffective. “That’s the highest I’ve ever seen, I was shocked to see that!” the lead auditor told the school board in her presentation of the findings.

There are devastating implications for the thousands of Columbus students assigned to ineffective teachers. Yet the audit findings also raise serious questions about the state’s investment in the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, the framework used by Columbus in recent years. Unless district leaders learn from the failings of the past system, the audit bodes ill for the revamped evaluation system (dubbed OTES 2.0) that will be rolled out in the coming months. Consider the following three lessons.

Lesson 1: Using locally designed assessments and metrics can lead to inflated performance ratings

Ohio’s teacher evaluation system was first implemented as a response to the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top competition. The federal initiative was based on two striking findings that were emerging from education policy research at the time. The first showed that, despite the importance of teachers in improving student achievement and substantial variation in their effectiveness, existing evaluation systems failed to differentiate teachers based on their ability to improve student learning. Instead, more than 99 percent were consistently being rated as “satisfactory” regardless of how well their students actually performed. The second finding suggested that a class of statistical models, known as “value-added,” could accurately and reliably identify teachers that were doing the best and worst job of improving student achievement as measured by standardized test scores.

To remain competitive for federal funds, states were required to develop evaluation systems that could differentiate teacher effectiveness and were based, at least in part, on student achievement growth, as measured by value-added models. Since Ohio already had a value-added system in place, it was well positioned to incorporate this information into its new teacher evaluation system.

The original OTES model based half of a teacher’s overall evaluation on student growth. But the problem is that value-added information is available for only a small subset of teachers—those teaching subjects and grades included in annual state tests, which are primarily math and English language arts in grades four through eight. It turns out that 80 percent of Ohio’s teachers don’t receive a value-added designation from the state, and even those who do also teach other subjects that are not covered on state tests. To address these gaps, the state implemented a process for teachers to create their own tests and metrics—called “student learning objectives” (SLOs)—to document their impact on student learning.

The flaw with SLOs, however, was that individual teachers in effect got to decide how their performance in improving achievement would be measured and evaluated, a system obviously vulnerable to abuse. As the Columbus audit and district data show, teachers have taken full advantage of SLOs to inflate their scores. Consider the roughly 1,000 Columbus teachers who received a state “value-added” designation last year. More than half were rated as below average by the state, and 37 percent received the “least effective” designation based on their ability to raise student achievement on state tests. Because few educators exclusively taught subjects covered by the value-added measure, the vast majority were able to incorporate SLOs into their evaluation calculation. As a result, more than three-quarters of these least-effective teachers were still rated as above-average, and half were rated “most effective,” using teacher-designed SLOs. Indeed, as the Figure 1 reveals, educators whose students demonstrated the least amount of growth on state tests look essentially identical to teachers who improved student achievement the most when we compare them using SLOs.

Figure 1. Comparing value-added and SLO measures of student growth for Columbus teachers (2018–19)

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Although the state put in place requirements to ensure that teachers developed valid SLOs, and Columbus appointed committees to review them, it turned out that it is almost impossible to effectively police this process. As one Columbus principal told the auditors, “Teachers could more or less make stuff up for the data part of the teacher evaluations.”

For illustration, consider one Columbus teacher who was rated as “least effective” through value-added, but who received the highest possible student growth rating using SLOs last year. One of her SLOs was based on the book Word Journeys, an impressive framework that divides the development of orthographic knowledge into stages, from “initial and final consonants” to “assimilated prefixes.” The book comes with a screening tool composed of twenty-five spelling words designed to cover each of the stages, and this teacher’s SLO set the goal of increasing the number of words each student spelled correctly between the beginning and end of the year by twelve. Not surprisingly, every student met or exceeded this target.

The problem is that it is impossible to know whether student spelling in this class improved because the teacher did a great job teaching the underlying skills—each of the stages in the Word Journeys framework—or because the teacher simply had students memorize twelve of the twenty-five words she knew made up the book’s screening tool. The former is true learning, while the latter is the very epitome of teaching to the test—a test that teacher herself got to handpick.

Thus, the SLOs were a true Achilles’ heel in the state’s old teacher evaluation system. While OTES 2.0 scraps SLOs, I worry that similar problems will emerge with the alternative growth measures that will replace them.

Lesson 2: Principals need incentives and time to do evaluations right

Under Ohio’s old evaluation framework, student growth—measured either through value-added or SLOs—accounted for only half of each Columbus teacher’s overall evaluation score, and even less in some other districts. The second half came from principal observations. Historically, observations were perfunctory exercises using simple checklists, but to win Race to the Top funds, states had to create much more thorough rubrics. Ohio developed a rubric called “Standards for the Teaching Profession.”

Despite the well-defined criteria on the rubric, Columbus principals appear to have been quite lenient in their evaluations. For example, among Columbus teachers identified as “least effective” by the state through value-added last year, principals rated 90 percent of the educators they observed as “skilled” or “accomplished,” the two highest categories.

Of course, it’s possible that principals were looking at broader aspects of teacher skill and quality not captured by test scores. However, it seems more likely that many principals just didn’t follow the rubric. As one Columbus principal told the auditors, “I don’t use the actual teacher evaluation; it’s very cumbersome. I just fake it.”

I suspect there are two primary reasons many principals failed to embrace the state’s observation protocol. First, the job of a principal in a low-performing, urban district is already overwhelming. From managing student behaviors to taking care of other responsibilities, it seems unrealistic for most principals to find the necessary time in their packed schedules to thoroughly observe and carefully evaluate every teacher with the effort and diligence the process truly requires.

Second, the ability of teachers to inflate their overall ratings using SLOs made the principals’ evaluations pretty toothless. Consider the example I describe above, wherein the teacher’s SLO set the goal of her students spelling twelve words correctly. Not only was the teacher identified as “least effective” by the state based on value-added, she was also rated as “developing” by her principal, the second-lowest possible observation category. Yet, because of her stellar SLO scores, the teacher earned an overall rating of “skilled,” the second-highest available. Knowing that teachers would use SLOs to inflate their final scores, there was little incentive for principals to be critical or honest in their own evaluations since they would not be able to replace the ineffective teachers. Doing so just created unnecessary conflict and awkwardness in their buildings, hardly an outcome that benefited students or made the school better.

Lesson 3: Tie evaluation to teacher support, professional development

Of course, the purpose of evaluations is not simply to identify struggling teachers. It’s also to help them improve when possible, and replace them with someone better if they fail to make progress. Ohio’s Race to the Top grant application assured that “performance data will inform decisions on the design of targeted supports and professional development to advance their knowledge and skills as well as the retention, dismissal, tenure and compensation of teachers and principals.” In practice, none of these appear to have happened in Columbus.

Since SLOs made it almost impossible for teachers to receive the “ineffective” rating, teachers didn’t have to worry about dismissal. More importantly, there is little evidence that the evaluation and observation process helped low-performing teachers improve their craft.

Part of the problem is that principals provided struggling teachers with little useful feedback. As the auditors noted, “the comments recorded on the teacher evaluation instruments by the administrators were generally not constructive.” When examining teacher improvement plans—the actionable product that is supposed to emerge from the evaluation process and guide future instructional improvement—the auditors found “that the goals were written by each teacher, and there was no connection between the comments made by the administrator and the goals and action steps written by the teacher.”

Although former Columbus Superintendent Dan Good sought to achieve better alignment between the district’s professional development spending and its teachers’ actual needs by decentralizing funding and control to individual schools, the auditors found little evidence that the investments were being targeted effectively or producing any measurable returns in terms of better teaching. “The auditors found that professional development in the Columbus City Schools is site-based, uncoordinated, inconsistently aligned to priorities and needs, and rarely, if ever, evaluated based on changed behaviors,” they wrote.

Lessons for OTES 2.0 and Beyond

Is Columbus an outlier? Or is its experience symptomatic of broader problems with the theory of action on which the first iteration of Ohio’s teacher evaluation process was based? The available evidence suggests the latter—and not just in Ohio.

To our state’s credit, Ohio policymakers have recognized many of the issues documented in the Columbus audit, and have attempted to address them in the development of OTES 2.0, which is being rolled out across the state over the coming months. The updated framework eliminates the standalone student growth metric, embedding the assessment of growth with the principal observations instead. It also replaces SLOs with a requirement that district use “high quality student data.” However, I’m pessimistic that the new system will prove to work substantially better than the old one.

First, there is no reason to think that principals will have any more time to complete thorough evaluations or greater incentive to be honest when critical but constructive feedback is deserved than they did under the old model or in the pre-OTES 1.0 days. Second, it seems likely that many district will turn to “district-determined instruments” to assess student learning. As with the SLOs, district officials will likely face considerable pressure from teacher unions to make these assessments easy and highly predictable. If these new assessments rely on relatively shallow question banks, teachers will again be tempted to respond strategically and teach very narrowly to the tests, without realizing broader improvements in student performance. Third, districts like Columbus will surely continue to struggle to deliver sufficiently targeted professional development and other supports that are necessary to address the diverse needs of struggling teachers.

Of course, I hope I’m wrong. Columbus students cannot afford another lost decade.

Vladimir Kogan is an associate professor at the Ohio State University Department of Political Science and (by courtesy) the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. The opinions and recommendations presented in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily represent policy positions or views of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science, or the Ohio State University.

Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.

School districts across the country are at odds over how to grade students during this national school shutdown. Reasonably so. Any approach we take is mired with limitations and the very real risk of penalizing students unfairly for circumstances well beyond their control.

Whatever the policy, we believe the grades we give students must have integrity. If the grades are to communicate substantive information about learning as students and families deserve and expect, they must be fair, honest, and individualized.

But, by design, grades are a coded shorthand for academic achievement. Grades are not—and cannot be—a stand-in for the precious feedback loop embedded into good classroom instruction.

This constant stream of information is the stuff that learning is really made of. Keeping the feedback loop intact is the only way students know what they have successfully understood and integrated into memory for the long haul, and what they have yet to master.

At Partnership Schools, our teachers are tireless about giving students the meaningful feedback they crave–feedback that relieves the isolation of distance learning, meeting each student where they are to propel their thinking forward. Every day, teachers signal deep engagement in their students’ intellectual work through this intentional feedback.

Education researcher Harry Fletcher-Wood’s recent thread on the impact of explanatory versus correct answer feedback got me chewing on the different ways our teachers craft feedback for students and how they ensure that it is maximally impactful on learning—both inside and outside the classroom.

In short, our teachers frequently use feedback to:

• Praise accuracy and acknowledge errors.
• Cause students to recall knowledge they’ve previously learned and apply it.
• Habituate skills that build student autonomy.

Praising accuracy and acknowledging errors

In the example below, seventh grade math teacher Corey Kuminecz praises Samantha’s “exemplar-level” answer, before giving bite-sized, actionable feedback. Corey narrowly draws a manageable “re-do” for the student to ensure they have an opportunity to resolve their error and lock in the skill he wants her to master.

We also loved that Corey leveraged Samantha’s first answer as a sample for the class. This “Show Call” helps students to evaluate their own work independently, while building a celebratory culture around publicly sharing student work.

In the example below, sixth grade teacher Kelly Simpson highlights one student’s analysis of a passage from Chains to help set clear expectations in advance of the day’s reading.

Here’s a final example from eighth grade history teacher and Academic Dean Will Beller. He is intentional about reinforcing the key content knowledge that the student nailed, while also addressing an important nuance about global instability that he wants the student to walk away with.

Here’s the assignment and the student response:

And Will’s feedback:

Excellent careful reading of the article that addresses a new topic. You clearly identify the goal of containment and the way the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine were related. You also do a great job of identifying why the nation was involved in “proxy wars”—not everyone agreed with the US or capitalism, which is an important point to remember throughout our study of this unit. Awesome work!

One thing to consider: The Marshal Plan and Truman Doctrine tried to keep things stable, but there was still plenty of instability in the world at this time.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend. Keep up the good work and take care!

Causing students to recall knowledge and apply it

In previous examples, we’ve seen teachers ask students to apply knowledge they’ve previously learned (e.g., “What math operation can we do, to be left with…”).

Here is just one more example from third grade teacher Kelly Quinn. Below she reminds a student of language they’ve studied to compare and contrast ideas in their writing. Wisely, she provides a clear model and asks then asks the student revise their writing and apply it.

Habituating skills that build student autonomy

Pre-K teacher Saramarie Colandra proves that even our youngest learners benefit from feedback. Below, Saramarie gives some helpful feedback to Liam via his parents to help him prepare for the classroom discussions he’ll encounter next year. This helps to habituate the skills that’ll be expected of him in the year ahead. And she also provides the feedback in a way that is clear and actionable for his parents to support.

In this final example, Kelly Simpson redirects students back to the novel to reread a key passage for accuracy. Socializing rereading is so critical, especially as students encounter more complex and sophisticated texts in the upper grades. We love how she does this, with a clear focal point to frame the students’ reread.

These examples are just a few of many. Partnership teachers are providing literally hundreds of bits of feedback like this per week. And it’s not just any feedback. It’s thoughtful, carefully wrought feedback that shows they have their finger on the pulse of student learning and know how to push it forward in objective-driven ways.

1. While the sample is small and unrepresentative, the details on student engagement with distance learning in Northeast Ohio as covered in this report seem pretty interesting. It includes input from districts large and small, Catholic schools, and an unnamed charter school. None of this is surprising, really, except for the fact that none of the parents interviewed appear to be teachers themselves! Which also makes this information even more important to pay attention to. (Fox8, Cleveland, 5/18/20)
    
2. Speaking of Northeast Ohio, Patrick O’Donnell is back on the beat up there! His first piece for The 74 came out Monday and shows that he’s lost none of his keen edge. The piece covers the topic of student access to the internet at home, which has had a bright light shone upon it during pandemic-mitigation school closures everywhere in the state. A giant, pre-existing gap has been illuminated, and the CEO of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has a plan, with the assistance of a local non-profit, to help address it for CMSD students. Charter schools in the CLE might even get to participate too. (The 74, 5/18/20)
    
3. Staying in NEO for one more clip: Imagine that you found out mid school-year that the school building your children have been attending was not actually the correct one. And that the correct one was in a different school district. And that your children have been attending the wrong school for three years without anyone from either district noticing. And that you found out because you got a letter saying that the only way for them to remain enrolled for the rest of the school year was to pony up more than $20 K in tuition. And that the deadline for any other legal option to remain in that district had passed a few days earlier. How do you suppose you would feel? That is what happened to four families in Pepper Pike, Ohio in the last few weeks. Yes, that’s right. In the midst of a world-altering, once-in-a-century, pandemic-mitigation lockdown, your school district decides to immediately “correct an error” that’s been on the county books since 1967 to the tune of $20K out of your pocket for literally doing as they have told you to do since you moved in three years earlier. Luckily, some good sense prevailed because the immediate tuition bill has been “waived” (how generous of them), but the ultimate outcome of this ridiculous situation is still to be revealed. (Cleveland Jewish News, 5/19/20)
    
4. In non-NEO news, I could be wrong but I think that Toledo Central Catholic High School is the first in the state to publicly commit to fully in-person classes this fall. (Toledo Blade, 5/19/20)
   

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The COVID-19 crisis has cruelly reminded us not only of the fragility of human life, but also of the chasms in our economy and society, many of them caused by fault lines in our educational attainment. That’s not just because the white-collar jobs that come with obtaining a college degree tend to pay more and are more secure when the economy tanks, but also because those jobs can be accomplished more easily from the safety of home. Yet “remote work” is not an option for the millions of service-sector employees who risk getting sick every day for a modest paycheck.

The current crisis thus yields another cautionary tale about the perils of entering the workforce with nothing but a high school diploma. But does it also mean that everyone needs a four-year college degree? That those of us involved in K–12 education should tell all our young charges they would be wise to go “to and through” college? And that we should build our high schools around that singular mission?

The answer, of course, is no. In the real world, young people need not make a binary choice between four-year college or no college. In between are multiple options, including all manner of industry credentials, certificates, and two-year degrees, any of which may provide buffering—economic and otherwise—against hardship during troubled times and open various career doors during better times.

It’s true that innumerable studies demonstrate a significant “college earnings premium” from four-year degrees. But it’s also true that people tend to get paid more with an industry credential or two-year technical degree than with just a high school diploma, especially in certain fields. Also important is that not everyone wants to get a bachelor’s degree or to work a white-collar office job. There’s ample reason to tell young people who may be more interested in a trade or a technical career to go that route, rather than enroll in an academic degree program that is apt to yield frustration, debt, and regret.

It struck us that this would be even truer in places where the cost of living is low and the cost of college high. We surmised that workers in some parts of the country may do just about as well with industry credentials or two-year degrees as with bachelor’s degrees. So we enlisted John Winters, associate professor of economics at Iowa State University, to author our new report, What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas.

The primary analysis is focused on how college earnings premiums vary across states and metropolitan areas, as well as by metro size and degree of urbanization. It includes profiles and online interactive figures for average earnings by education level for your own state and its large metro areas.

Winters finds yet again that bachelor’s degree holders strongly outearn workers with just high school diplomas. That’s true everywhere in the nation and is no surprise. What is somewhat more surprising is the degree to which bachelor’s degree holders strongly outearn workers with associate degrees, too: They make at least 25 percent more in all but three rural states—North Dakota, Alaska, and Vermont, all of whose economies tend to rely heavily on natural resources.

Yet Winters’s analysis also reveals significant variation across the country. College earnings premiums are substantially greater in large cities and urbanized areas—as we hypothesized. For instance, among the largest metro areas, defined by the Census Bureau as those where populations exceed 500,000, the three with the largest earnings premiums for a bachelor’s versus associate degree are the New York City metro area, southern Connecticut near New York City, and Brevard County, Florida, which is home to the Kennedy Space Center. The larger the metro area, the greater the premium to higher education. Bachelor’s degree holders in greater New York City earn roughly 70 percent more than those with an associate degree—$125,123 versus $73,617.

“The results are consistent with rising concerns that workers with less education struggle to keep up with their more educated counterparts,” writes Winters. “Competition for housing and other services in big cities drives up prices and further threatens the economic security of the least educated.” This means that a four-year degree is likely necessary for living comfortably in a large metropolitan area, but less so in smaller ones and rural communities.

It also means that we shouldn’t just ask high school students what they want to be when they grow up. We should ask them where they want to live. Teenagers should take geography into account when they make decisions about whether and what kind of higher education to pursue.

We’re not the first to offer this advice. Recent research from the American Enterprise Institute finds that workers who never went to college earn less in denser areas after the cost of housing is accounted for. Richard Florida’s work on geographic inequality reaches a similarly somber conclusion: “Once we factor in huge differences in housing costs between expensive cities and the rest, members of the working and service classes actually have little to gain financially from living in expensive cities, despite the fact that these places may offer slightly higher wages or more job opportunities.”

The encouraging news is that many states are recognizing the importance of providing students with better information to plan their lives after high school. Several enterprising states are introducing Right to Know initiatives that provide high schoolers with information about that state’s in-demand and/or promising careers, including average wages and common degree requirements, as well as the average cost of college and student loan payments. States are also coming together to define what a high-quality non-degree credential looks like.

Also welcome is that there are multiple cities across the nation where individuals with an associate degree can afford to buy a median-priced home, taxes and all. Take Pittsburgh, where such individuals earn an average of $57,081 and homeowners need $36,581 in salary to afford a median- priced home ($152,000). Likewise, those with associate degrees in Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Louisville, Kansas City, and a number of other cities can afford to buy median-priced homes.

The coronavirus won’t be with us forever. We will defeat it. Still, 2020 will long be remembered as the year when lives were upended—some tragically lost, some mercifully recovered, and some merely inconvenienced.

But let’s also remember that those facing some of the greatest challenges amid the pandemic and economic downturn are the non-college-educated service sector workers in large metro areas who are on the wrong side of the largest college earnings premiums and who face exorbitant housing costs. They are the ones most likely to be out of work or working on the front lines at the risk of getting sick.

Many of our colleagues in the education-reform movement have internalized these realities, considering how many of us live in the coastal, “creative class” meccas ourselves, which also means we see the hardship faced by young people without four-year degrees up close and personal. So the “college for all” impulse is understandable. But let’s not forget that in much of America, there are highways to middle-income lifestyles whose routes don’t pass through leafy university campuses. Our high schools should take this fact into account and offer students quality pathways into apprenticeships and technical postsecondary programs, not just academic ones.

Yes, what you make depends on what you know and what credentials you carry. But let’s not forget that it also depends on where you live.

With everything going on in the world, one can be forgiven for forgetting that we’re in the midst of an election year. But in 167 days, Americans will decide whether to give President Trump four more years. Joe Biden has essentially locked up the Democratic nomination, so the next big question is whom he will tap to be his running mate.

Back in March, the seventy-seven-year-old suggested that he understood the importance of the VP pick when, with Senator Kamala Harris and Governor Gretchen Whitmer standing behind him, he said, “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.” These words suggest that, if Biden wins, his VP selection could be one of the most consequential in modern political history, given that Uncle Joe is unlikely to serve more than one term. And because the former vice president has already committed to selecting a woman, her views on education will be important to consider, as they could potentially shape how things play out in our sector over the next four to eight or even twelve years.

Who will be the Democratic VP nominee? Let’s take a look at some of the top prospects according to the Washington Post and their views on education:

1. Sen. Kamala Harris (CA): Sure, California is dependably blue regardless of who’s in the race, but some argue that Harris would bring much needed enthusiasm to the campaign. On education, she was first out of the gate last year with a proposal to increase teacher pay at a cost of $300 billion over ten years, though it’s unclear how anything like that would be remotely possible now with the looming economic shortfalls. Harris is also remembered for launching a pointed attack at Biden on school busing and desegregation, but she ended up backpedaling when pressed on her own views. All told, what she’s said on education hews tightly to the union playbook.


2. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN): Boasting centrist credentials, Klobuchar—who earned the praise of conservative columnist George Will—would be viewed as a pragmatic selection. She’s used her own family’s trying ordeal to raise awareness of the coronavirus. Klobuchar’s record on education is relatively thin, and she notably dropped out of the race prior to releasing a K–12 education plan. On the campaign trail, she often drew attention to her mother’s role as a public school teacher and the need for more mental health services in schools.


3. Stacey Abrams (GA): Of all the women actively auditioning for the veepstakes, none has done so more conspicuously than former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams—who has been unusually direct in gunning for the job. Her outlandish bravado belies her timid beliefs on education, especially her votes against creating a statewide charter authorizer and empowering state takeover of low-performing schools.


4. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM): A three-term congressional veteran who served as chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Lujan Grisham is one of a handful of governors who would bring experience governing a state through the coronavirus pandemic to the Democratic ticket. But she created an educational crisis of her own by campaigning on dismantling New Mexico’s reform edifice. Indeed, with a stroke of the pen on her first days in office, Lujan Grisham withdrew from the PARCC consortium and decoupled teacher evaluation from student performance. One would be hard pressed to identify another state that has done as dramatic a 180 on reform as New Mexico has under her watch.


5. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (MI): Representing one of three “Blue Wall” states that Trump narrowly carried in 2016 (the others being Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Whitmer makes a ton of sense strategically. Up until very recently, her stock had been rising, in no small part due to her being one of the current president’s most vocal critics during this pandemic. Unfortunately, her combative approach doesn’t neatly translate to schools. After taking a tough stance against a low-performing high school in Benton Harbor, she backed down from her threats of closure. Whitmer also vetoed funding for charter schools, but the money was eventually restored. Last month, she proposed a GI Bill program for essential workers, though her legacy on education may rest with the recent settlement of a landmark federal appeals court ruling on the right to basic literacy.


6. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (NV): As the nation’s Hispanic population continues to trend upwards, there’s a good argument to be made that a Latina should be on the ticket. Along with Lujan Grisham, Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to the U.S. Senate, has the best shot at it, albeit a considerably long one. Elected in 2016 to fill the seat of then Democratic minority leader Harry Reid, education has not been one of Cortez Masto’s main issues. Yet this might be the best reformers can hope for in a field chock full of status quo sympathizers.


7. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA): In her seventies as well, it’s hard to see how Warren would inspire confidence if Biden is serious about quickly passing the torch. An unapologetic technocrat, Warren had a plan for everything during her campaign, including an $800 billion one for education that my colleague Checker Finn described as “pretty awful.” Suffice it to say, she would be the least encouraging choice for reformers.


8. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (IL): A combat veteran who lost both of her legs in the Iraq War, Duckworth, a religiously unaffiliated Asian American, would be seen as a middle-of-the road choice. More workhorse than show horse when compared to others, her personal record of service and sacrifice would make a formidable addition to the ticket. However, Duckworth’s record on education is far less impressive. She’s against private school choice of all stripes, and is a reliable ally of the teachers unions.


9. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (WI): Being the first openly gay person ever elected to the U.S. Senate, and from a true battleground state no less, Baldwin would be a low-profile choice who checks off a number of boxes for Democrats. She’s served on the Senate education committee since she was first elected to the Senate in 2012 and served in the House for fourteen years before that, where her focus has been on higher ed, career and technical education, and combatting the opioid scourge. Otherwise, her record in supporting the education establishment is nothing to write home about.

Taken together, there’s not much to get excited about vis-à-vis the contenders. Most of them are content to plagiarize from the unions’ talking points, and those that haven’t have been relatively mum on the subject. The theatrics of his unity task force aside, it seems likely that Biden will be thinking more about the crisis and the economy than about education as part of the vetting process. Nevertheless, a review of their education records portends a bleak future for reform—certainly when it comes to the federal role.

In the summer of 2013, After New York’s adoption of new, more rigorous testing benchmarks under the Common Core State Standards Initiative, student test scores plummeted around the state, wiping out years of paper gains. Fewer than one in three New York City School District students scored proficient in math. Yet students enrolled in the Success Academy charter school network stunned the education establishment with their performance: More than 80 percent achieved proficiency in math.

Now, amid the pandemic-driven national experiment in compulsory homeschooling and online learning, Success Academy and its president and CEO, Eva Moskowitz, appear poised to shock the education system again—serving as both inspiration and rebuke. Two months into the state lockdown, the network of forty-five New York City schools serving 18,000 students is close to replicating itself remotely, with full days of instruction, professional development, and planning meetings for staff. Principals are observing teachers giving online lessons. In a matter of weeks, Success has converted itself into a functional digital school, while eliminating none of its ambitious regimen of academics, internal assessments, and progress monitoring—even as New York, like every state, has abandoned standardized testing for the year.

Only 44 percent of U.S. school districts are providing instruction online and monitoring students’ attendance and progress, according to data compiled by the Seattle-based Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). “For most children, the school year effectively ended in March,” observed University of Michigan’s Susan Dynarski in the New York Times last week. Even schools and districts making “remote-learning” efforts have mostly limited themselves to reviewing material covered previously in an attempt to prevent learning loss. Most U.S. school districts have adopted pass/fail grading for what’s left of the school year; the San Francisco Board of Education has considered giving every student an A in classes disrupted by the pandemic.

Moskowitz will have none of it. “We don’t think it’s fair for kids who have to be prepared for the next grade to just dispense with grades,” she said last week on Fox 5’s Good Day New York. Success Academy is pressing ahead, with average daily attendance holding steady at 97 percent among a predominantly low-income, minority student body.

Never one to be paralyzed by indecision, Moskowitz decided on March 12 to close her schools, and announced that decision to Success families the following day. At the time, Mayor Bill de Blasio was still insisting that Department of Education schools should remain open because health and hospital workers needed child care while fighting the pandemic—a questionable stance even then, and one that now looks close to reckless.

“This is a time for simplicity and being careful not to throw in too many bells and whistles,” Moskowitz advised in the early days of remote learning. Elementary school staff, she said, would focus on “inspiring and engaging” students. Teachers were initially instructed to call students twice a day to check in and discuss reading assignments and math problems that they would complete independently or with parental supervision. Two months later, even the youngest Success Academy “scholars” spend a full day of online instruction in all subjects, including small-group math and “guided reading” with their teachers.

“You hit a routine with the younger kids and then they add another layer,” notes Erica Woolway, who works with school districts and charter-management organizations nationwide as an education consultant. Her three children, in first, third, and sixth grades at Success Academy, follow a schedule from 9 a.m. through 3 p.m. daily. As we spoke, her middle son participated in a network-run soccer practice with his coach via Zoom.

Woolway is impressed with the effort Success is making but clear-eyed about how challenging it would be for other schools to match it—and for parents of younger children to monitor and keep pace. “I’m healthy and an educator. Is working from home and supporting my kids’ online learning the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do?” She pauses. “Maybe. If I had more kids, health or housing issues, or if I were a front-line worker, how in the world would I be able to do it?”

The answer, at least in part, is that Success Academy is reaping the harvest of the habits, expectations, and culture that Moskowitz has carefully built for more than a decade. Its admissions process and academic model require deep parental commitment. Success Academy has long required parents to read nightly with their children, update reading logs, check homework, drill sight words and math facts, and maintain frequent contact with teachers. The parents are more conditioned than those at most other schools, charter or public, to play an active role in their children’s schooling. The expectations and level of engagement resemble what parents have come to expect from elite private schools.

Success entered the COVID-19 crisis better positioned than most for the transition to remote learning. Every student from grade four onward already had a school-issued Chromebook. By fifth grade, children take digital assessments and get feedback electronically from teachers. Middle and high school students, as well as their teachers, have Audible accounts and can access online-learning resources that include DreamBox, Mathalicious, BrainPop, Newsela, and Lichess. When it became clear that in-person schooling would not resume anytime soon, network staff acquired and distributed more than 10,000 Chromebook tablets to students in grades K–3. By May, every student had one. Digital communications between home and school, which many disrupted schools have struggled to set up and maintain, has long been a standard feature of life at Success Academy.

The contrast with the experience of most American students could not be more stark. “Kids in the majority of districts, which are either providing no instruction or offering instruction but not tracking progress, have little or no chance of finishing their current grade and being ready for the next grade in the fall,” observes CRPE’s Paul T. Hill. With no state tests by which to compare Success Academy’s performance with New York City district schools or competing charters, it will be at least a year before reliable third-party data exist to gauge pandemic-related learning loss at schools in New York or across the country. But it should surprise no one if, when the dust clears, Success Academy students are once again defying the odds.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by City Journal.

Editor’s Note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

Author’s Note: The School Performance Institute, of which I am the Director of Improvement, is the learning and improvement arm of United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter-management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. This essay is part of its Learning to Improve blog series, which typically discusses issues related to building the capacity to do improvement science in schools while working on an important problem of practice. However, in the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing how the United Schools Network (USN) is responding to and planning educational services for our students during the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures.

As we are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered how our society has functioned over the past few months. The education sector is no exception. As science teachers can attest, one of the unfortunate, enduring realities for life on this planet is that a minuscule virus, just microns in diameter, can leave an outsized impact on life as we know it. Yet a second enduring reality is that the form of life known as Homo sapiens is awfully resilient, and educators across the country are thinking creatively to ensure continuity of education for our students in a remote setting. One of our most pressing challenges is engaging our students and families in remote learning, a fundamentally different system than the brick-and-mortar landscape to which we’re accustomed. Yet that brings us to a core question: How exactly do we define student engagement in the era of remote learning?

Even in “normal” times, student engagement is defined in a wide variety of ways. Does engagement equate to student participation in a class discussion or raising their hand a certain number of times? Does it mean completing a specific lesson component, submitting independent work, or acing the exit ticket? Or is it simply looking in the teacher’s general direction for the duration of class? Clearly, there are a plethora of ways to define engagement, and the challenge of defining it is only exacerbated in a remote-learning setting. For those of us used to having our students within arm’s reach—looking over shoulders at work, reading body language, reviewing written responses, tracking drifting eyes, responding to the positive energy of hands in the air—defining engagement is hard!

Yet defining engagement in the remote learning setting is as important as it is challenging. Imagine that you are a school leader crafting an entirely new system of instructional delivery, and weeks later, you start getting reports of “Last week, we had 87 percent engagement.” Or, “We currently have 63 percent of our students engaged in online instruction.” How would you react? You may look for the low percentages and hold a conference with the applicable grade levels or teachers. Or you may say “great job!” to the teachers or grade levels with high engagement percentages. However, before you begin evaluating the data, you must ensure that engagement is defined consistently. If the teacher with 87 percent engagement simply counts logging onto Google Classroom as engagement, is that really “great” engagement? Similarly, if the teacher with 63 percent engagement counts a student as engaged if they complete the independent practice component of the lesson with clear evidence of thought, is that really so bad? The point is this: Until you establish operational definitions for core components of remote learning, it is impossible to complete thoughtful analysis and reflection.

One way to create these operational definitions is to utilize the wisdom of W. Edwards Deming and his System of Profound Knowledge, which has four components of thought that are highly interdependent: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. Organizations can use this to create a single, unified way of measuring the extent to which students who are learning remotely are engaged in their lessons and work.

The United School Network (and I state this with deep empathy, as, like all schools, we had to get plans together incredibly fast) was defining student engagement differently across its four campuses. Using Deming’s system, and after many discussions, we landed on distinct definitions for and elementary and middle schools.

• Elementary: A USN elementary school student demonstrates engagement in a remote lesson by completing the assigned packet pages and sending a photo or other form of evidence that the assignment was completed. Teachers then track the completion of these assignments in engagement trackers and mark them as complete, missing, excuse provided, or needs assistance. In addition, teachers in grades three through five may post the same packet pages in Edulastic as an additional way for students to complete work online.

• Middle: A USN middle school student demonstrates engagement in a remote lesson by completing the accompanying practice set in its entirety. Teachers should address student’s accuracy and effort issues through the mechanisms used for providing feedback.

We may have to modify these definitions as we learn more. But for now, they function as a consistent way of thinking about student engagement across campuses and across our network.

The next step was creating a way to measure engagement, which we did by creating separate trackers for elementary and middle school. This lets us analyze data in an informed way—which is the difference between information (“59 percent engagement. Meaning...what?”) and knowledge (“59 percent engagement, meaning that proportion of my students completed the practice set in its entirety last week.”). The gap between the two is everything when you are establishing a new system like remote learning and trying to improve it. Doing this well means our network leaders, school leaders, and teachers all know exactly how to interpret our student engagement data.

Elementary Example

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Middle School Example

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This spring is flying by, and soon this unique academic year will be over. However, it appears that a complete return to normalcy next school year is unlikely, so we may find ourselves in the business of remote learning for a while. If that is the case, it is vital for us in the education sector to define core remote learning concepts like student engagement. This will allow our students, families, and teams to have clear expectations, to intelligently analyze our data across grade levels and schools, and to easily see where improvement is necessary. All this will ensure that our most struggling students get the informed support they need.

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This post has focused on how establishing consistent, unified operational definitions of important concepts like student engagement can help school systems and networks establish effective remote learning systems. It was informed by W. Edwards Deming’s theory of knowledge, which is part of his System of Profound Knowledge. In my next blog post, I will focus on how another component of Deming’s system—the importance of possessing a knowledge of variation—can also help improve remote learning. Stay tuned.

Ben Pacht is the Director of Improvement of the School Performance Institute. The School Performance Institute is the learning and improvement arm of the United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter-management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. Send feedback to [email protected].