An unhappy episode in Montgomery County, Maryland, (where I live) reminds us that the quest for accountability options other than standardized assessments can open the door to new forms of chicanery.

First, a bit of background. Maryland’s high school graduation requirements include statewide end-of-course exams in science, algebra, English, and government. Students may substitute passing scores on AP or IB exams in several of those subjects, but it’s accurate to say that the Old Line State has stuck with mandatory EOCs even as a number of jurisdictions have backed away from them. Still, there are kids who have trouble passing those exams, and Maryland has long offered a work-around known as the Bridge Plan. Students who twice fail the EOC in a subject can undertake an individual project in that subject, and if they successfully complete it, their exam failure won’t preclude them from graduating. Ten or 11 percent of Maryland diplomas are typically achieved with the help of the Bridge Plan, and in some parts of the state it has become a major highway to the graduation stage: Almost a quarter of the diplomas in Prince George’s County and close to two-fifths of those in the city of Baltimore are Bridge-dependent. Which is to say, sizable fractions of the girls and boys in those jurisdictions would not be graduating from high school if they were actually required to pass the state EOCs.

The Bridge Plan has been controversial for years now and was much debated—and deplored—during my time on the State Board of Education and the Kirwan Commission, the obvious issue being whether kids who graduate with its help are, in effect, getting diplomas they don’t truly deserve because they haven’t actually met the state’s none-too-demanding academic standards in core subjects. Legislators are currently weighing the Kirwan recommendations, and if those get adopted in full, the Bridge Plan will eventually be history, though much finetuning will need to be done by state education officials before new standards and metrics for “college and career readiness” are set for the long haul, and there is certain be continued pressure to allow some sort of workaround.

Meanwhile, however, myriad incentives are at work to ensure that as many kids as possible get their diplomas, and Maryland’s twenty-four local jurisdictions currently have the Bridge Plan available to assist with that quest.

The state has taken steps to try to build rigor and reliability into the ways that localities deploy the Bridge Plan, but at day’s end it’s the educators in one’s school district—and usually in one’s own school—that evaluate a student’s project to determine whether he or she deserves credit. (The state is unable or unwilling to disclose data on how many of those who actually complete their project “fail” it.) Because of pressure to get kids across the graduation stage—and to see that the high school’s graduation rate looks good for ESSA purposes—there is ample reason to suspect that the criteria and rubrics by which Bridge projects get evaluated are rather elastic.

The recent episode in Montgomery County, however, points to something worse than elasticity. There, a feisty, veteran whistle-blowing high school social studies teacher named Brian Donlon reported that he saw students planning their Bridge projects in government with the help of a worksheet that someone had filled out for them in advance. He viewed it as cheating. “If a student was taking an actual test and gave the student some guidance toward the answer, I think this is exactly the same thing,” he told a Washington Post reporter. “It’s a highly improper level of assistance.” He reported his concern to district officials, but in the absence of any evidence that they were doing anything about it, he contacted the state. State officials looked into the matter in what may have been a cursory way and reported back to Donlon that the district had adequately handled the matter. The district insists that only one pupil—an ELL student—was helped, and that the help given was within bounds. Donlon disagreed and wrote back to the state, saying this wasn’t an isolated instance but something more like a pattern. He also testified before the State Board, noting that the state’s own guidelines say that Bridge monitors “should not complete any portion of a student’s project” and yet declaring that he had seen this done in his school.

How the particular episode gets resolved remains to be seen, but the issue it poses is self-evident, worrying, and I think unavoidable: Educators under pressure to get diplomas to kids and to boost their schools’ and districts’ graduation rates are obviously tempted to help in every way they can. But at some point “helping” crosses a blurry line and becomes “cheating.”

The temptation is obvious in exam-based accountability systems where we can point to documented instances of school officials leaking test questions, changing test responses, and in other ways falsifying information. But exam-based systems have well-established protocols and security provisions that are nearly always implemented. Test booklets are kept under lock and key (or online test questions appear on the screen only when the correct test taker is sitting there). Student identifications are validated. Cellphones and cheat sheets are barred from the testing room. Proctors hover. The completed test books are gathered up and locked away or sealed and shipped for scoring—or the online equivalent is similarly secured.

None of those measures is foolproof, and clever adults with powerful incentives to manipulate the results will continue to seek ways by which to do so. Yet the security protocols are well known and widely adhered to. (Moreover, those doing the scoring have ways of detecting cheating, and periodically one reads of scores being invalidated and exams retaken because something was fishy the first time around.)

When we seek alternatives to the proctored and monitored exam form of high-stakes accountability, however, the challenges multiply. Nearly always, those alternatives—whether classroom work, teacher-administered exams, student projects, performances, portfolios, you name it—are judged subjectively, almost always by adults who know the kids’ identities and academic track records, and most of the time by adults who also have reasons to seek student success, whether it’s because they care about a kid passing and graduating or they’re being hassled by parents or principal or they know that the school’s passing or graduation rate is on the line. And how on earth can anyone actually monitor the criteria by which that alternative work gets judged or what kinds of assistance are given to students while they do it? (Parents and paid outside tutors and counselors may also get involved in “helping,” not just educators. Remember “Varsity Blues”?) Few intentionally cheat—but there’s no foolproof way effectively to monitor where the lines get drawn by whom.

Sure, there are ways to ameliorate the risk. Teachers from other schools can evaluate kids’ projects or portfolios. Student names can be “blinded” from evaluators. External reviewers can double-check the work or at least audit a sample of it. At day’s end, however, we’re still wrestling with the same challenges of incentives, familiarity, and “wanting to help.” Nobody likes to see kids struggle, flounder, or fail.

I, too, worry about over-testing and placing excessive pressure on test scores. I understand that, even under the best of circumstances, tests—including the very best kinds, such as AP and IB have developed—can only yield limited information about what students have learned and what they know and can do. I understand that there’s much more we want to know about kids and schools than test scores can tell us. But I also understand this: Accountability systems are meaningless (or worse) if they lack integrity, and when we rest them on subjective judgments by adults who face many pressures and incentives, we heighten the risk of mischief. A secure, well-proctored assessment may not yield an optimal accountability system, but at least the data will have integrity. Project-based alternatives such as Maryland’s Bridge plan contain far greater risks of finagling.

Maybe the “reading wars” will never end, no matter how definitive the research on what works with beginning readers and what doesn’t. Back in dark ages when I was a graduate student (1967), the late, great Jeanne Chall published Learning to Read: The Great Debate, which should have put an end, then and forever, to arguments over “phonics versus ‘whole language’” and which foreshadowed the definitive 2000 report of the National Reading Panel, which spelled out the elements of what today is commonly referred to as “scientific reading instruction.” For the vast majority of children starting to learn to read, the Panel made clear—as Chall had done thirty-three years earlier—that the best instructional approach includes:

• Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness.
• Systematic phonics instruction.
• Vocabulary instruction.
• Methods to improve fluency.
• Ways to enhance comprehension.

There is no reason to expect a nascent elementary teacher to arrive knowing this, much less how to do these things effectively in a classroom full of squirming five- or six-year-olds who come with widely varying degrees of exposure to books, reading, being read to, vocabulary, and much more. Hence systematic preparation of those who will be teaching the early grades matters as much as the systematic phonics instruction they must provide once on the job.

Thus it feels like a no-brainer to lodge scientific reading instruction at the center of what elementary teachers are being prepared to do. Getting their young charges to be fluent readers with good comprehension is their foremost instructional responsibility. Period.

Yet when Education Week surveyed 530 professors in late 2019 who teach early-reading courses, the majority of them, 57 percent, turn out to “ascribe [sic] to what’s known as a balanced literacy philosophy” while barely one in five “said their philosophy of teaching early reading centered on explicit, systematic phonics with comprehension as a separate focus.”

“Balanced literacy” sounds great, of course—sort of like “balanced diet” or “balanced budget”—but in fact it balances a multitude of good and not-so-good things and most of the time does not emphasize—or even include—the first two bullets above, which is to say it slights the core of scientific reading instruction. (Picture a protein-free “balanced diet.”)

Somewhat more encouraging data emerged the other day when the National Council on Teacher Quality released its most recent review of the curricula of a thousand programs, both undergraduate and graduate, traditional and “alternative,” that prepare elementary teachers for what lies ahead. This is the third time NCTQ has done this, and a key element of its inquiry is whether those preparation programs “provide adequate instruction in each of the five components of scientifically-based reading.” The good news—as far as it goes—is that, for the first time, this review showed that slightly more than half of the traditional programs deserved honors grades in this realm, meaning that at least four of the five elements were satisfactorily covered. Non-traditional programs fared less well and, interestingly, undergraduate programs did markedly better than post-graduate.

In 2013, when NCTQ first excavated this information, most programs got D’s and F’s, while just 35 percent received A’s and B’s. So this is progress. In NCTQ’s terminology, “the field of teacher education is at an inflection point, with the momentum favoring the science of reading.”

I’m on NCTQ’s board and view its courageous, no-holds-barred analyses of teacher preparation and related state policies absolutely vital for the renewal of American K–12 education. And I’ve never deviated from Chall’s or the Reading Panel’s findings. So of course I’m pleased that the NCTQ team has detected some “momentum” in the right direction, and of course I hope it accelerates. But for Pete’s sake, how are we to view the 49 percent of teacher-prep programs that still equip their alums with three or fewer of the five pillars of reading science? And how are we to view the 57 percent of professors in this field who (Education Week says) favor “balanced literacy” instead? How long must we wait for more momentum to build? After all, just 35 percent of fourth graders were “proficient” readers on the 2019 round of NAEP—actually down a bit from 2017 and identical to 2013 when NCTQ first reviewed teacher-prep programs in search of reading science.

Another way to say it: The curricula that NCTQ examines have undoubtedly improved on this front, but so far that hasn’t translated into better reading proficiency among fourth graders. Could it be because the professors who prepared their teachers maybe aren’t changing their ways at the same (slow) pace as their syllabi, textbooks, and test questions would suggest?

If almost half the prep programs aren’t teaching it, and two-thirds of the kids aren’t getting it, we’ve got an awful lot of inflecting still to do. Is it time to take this injustice to the courtroom, as Mike Petrilli has suggested?

Considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict [individuals’] future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” report Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. What’s true of people is also true of countries: “Growth in the economic productivity of a nation is driven more clearly by the math proficiency of its high school students than by their proficiency in other subjects,” they add. And no students are better poised to turn their mathematics education into economic advancement for the country as well as themselves than high-ability kids. They’re the young people who hold perhaps the greatest promise for making major advances in science, technology, medicine, and more.

Yet America’s high achievers have fared poorly for decades on international math tests, particularly in the upper grades, before they enter college and the workforce. The latest results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), released late last year, suggest that—despite heroic efforts by school leaders, teachers, parents, policymakers, and reformers—nothing’s changed.

PISA assesses fifteen-year-olds and organizes its scores into seven levels from 0 to 6, with high scorers commonly defined as those reaching levels 5 and 6. Table 1 shows the percentage of test-takers who reached those levels in math over PISA’s last three iterations for the United States and every country whose results were the same or better than ours in 2018, as well as each country’s international rank in each of those years. (The list is ordered by countries’ performance on the 2018 round.)

Table 1: Percentage of high scorers on PISA math and rank among participating countries, 2012–2018, for countries matching or exceeding U.S. results

As is immediately clear, the United States has consistently fared worse than virtually all of our competitors, often by a wide margin. A whopping twenty-nine countries have a larger percentage of high achievers—including almost the whole of Europe and East Asia, Canada, and a smattering of countries elsewhere around the globe.

Moreover, despite some recovery from 2015’s somehow-even-grimmer results, our proportion of high achievers is a point lower than in 2012. And our rank is the same, placing us on the negative end of the year-to-year-progress spectrum: twenty of the thirty-five countries improved their rank; just eight fell, and all but one of them still outscore us. In fact, our percentage of students scoring at levels 5 and 6 hasn’t improved in almost two decades. Back in 2003, 2006, and 2009, our results were 10, 7, and 10 percent, respectively.

The problem is also deeper than these aggregate results are able to show. Five years ago, Checker Finn and I wrote a book about these very issues. Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students relied heavily on PISA math results, but also looked at TIMSS scores, which report on fourth- and eighth-graders, and dug into a number of socioeconomic indicators. Our conclusion then was more than alarming on both equity and excellence grounds:

Be it PISA or TIMSS…SES status, parent education, or the language spoken at home, America’s secondary students never do better than most of our competitors—not once. And we’re often at or near the bottom of the list, a deficit that deepens when we examine disadvantaged populations.

Yet here we are, a half decade later, evidently no better off.

Our book also examined reasons for this dismal situation, but those don’t appear to have changed, either. For starters, the United States has fared poorly at producing high achievers because we haven’t made this a priority. One-third of American schools don’t have any gifted programming at all, meaning they do nothing different or special for these kids during school, after school, or on the weekend. Among the two-thirds of schools that do something, many supply just small “enrichments” for an hour or two, better than nothing, of course, but unlikely to make much difference in students’ achievement. Among those that manage to offer more robust gifted programming, many staff it with teachers or non-teachers who have not been trained to educate bright students. And in the relative handful of schools that avoid the preceding pitfalls, many under-identify and under-serve low-income, black, Hispanic, and Native American children.

Yet the failure arises from more than simple oversight and neglect. Its roots include disputes over ideology, disagreement over the definition of “gifted” and how to identify children who meet that definition, squirrely data, feeble political support, fretting about “elitism,” and more.

Yes, there are a couple of bright spots. Given America’s large population, we have a greater total number of high achievers than many other individual countries—though, importantly, not the European Union as a whole, and perhaps not China. Recent fourth and eighth grade scores on the Nation’s Report Card also suggest that we’re doing something right for these kids, particularly in math, and maybe those results can be sustained in high school. But there’s little historical support for that. And we’re never going to truly turn around this big and persistent problem until we acknowledge it and set out purposefully and diligently to tackle it. That we should do for at least two big reasons. First, high achievers, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, need and deserve our help. Second, better results are essential if America is to continue competing successfully in the global marketplace. As it stands, our place in the world is threatened by our educational shortcomings.

Partisans of social-emotional learning are wont to make their case in utopian terms: Create better learning environments and good things will happen to kids, to academic achievement, to the society in which we live, etc.

From the home page of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):

Our work is critical at a time when educators, parents, students, and employers increasingly recognize the value of SEL. Together, we are united in our call for schools to educate the whole child, equipping students for success in school and in life.

Here’s how Aspen’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development began its final report a year ago:

After two decades of education debates that produced deep passions and deeper divisions, we have a chance for a fresh start. A growing movement dedicated to the social, emotional, and academic well-being of children is reshaping learning and changing lives across America. On the strength of its remarkable consensus, a nation at risk is finally a nation at hope.

Even when addressing policymakers, the utopian impulse remains strong. The Commission developed an entire separate “policy roadmap” aimed at those folks and urging to advance the cause. Here’s its pitch:

Policy can play an essential role in moving efforts to support the whole learner from the periphery to the mainstream of American education, and from the realm of ideas to implementation. This document is rooted in the belief that policy should create enabling conditions for communities to implement locally crafted practices that drive more equitable outcomes by supporting each and every student’s social, emotional, and academic development.

Nothing wrong with any of that, except…that’s not actually how policymakers tend to think or set priorities for actual actions that are within their power to take. Keep in mind how concrete and finite are almost all of those actions. They can pass laws, issue regulations, hire people, create budgets and appropriations—and sometimes use their bully pulpits and hearings and such to draw attention to things.

That’s about all the weapons in their arsenals. But what do they deploy them against? By and large it’s not against utopian goals and ambitious change-the-world schemes and top-to-bottom institutional rebootings, no matter how worthy. There’s very little constituency for such things.

What they are motivated to attack are concrete problems in the here and now, the kind that worry their constituents, that have some political payoff, that rectify injustices, advance tangible goals, and boost positive metrics that people notice and care about.

Concrete problems, immediate challenges, visible irritants, attainable goals—things that are clear and present and mostly tangible. Not utopian.

That, I believe, is the big divide between most SEL proponents and their policy language, and bona fide policymakers and the sorts of things they focus on.

But it’s a bridgeable divide, bridgeable if the SEL crowd will recognize that a nontrivial number of the clear-and-present problems already on the minds of policymakers would, if successfully addressed, advance the SEL cause in big ways. Not just “recognize” this but also strategize with policy folks about tangible solutions to here-and-now problems that, viewed another way, are manifestations of the need to do something about SEL (and, often, students’ mental health, safety, and wellbeing).

Let me illustrate with six examples. Remember: Start with the problem that’s already on people’s minds, not a grand vision of how to make the education world a better place:

• Bullying, violence, weapons, and discipline. These could be viewed together or separately, and there’s not always a consensus on policy remedies. Yet almost everyone agrees that schools need to be safe places for kids, both physically and emotionally. Nobody wants weapons (much less shooters) in school, kids hurt by other kids, or classrooms so disrupted that learning is interrupted. Easing any—much less all—of these problems in schools would be a huge boost for SEL.


• Drugs—opioids especially, plus vaping and other addictions. The generic “drug problem” has been on the policy agenda for a long time, and there are sundry school-related programs to address it, as well as much research, mainly in the medical arena. (See, for example, “The Role of Schools in Combating Illicit Substance Abuse” from the American Academy of Pediatrics.) But today’s opioid crisis is tearing apart families and communities, with dire consequences for kids and schools. As with so many big challenges, much of it arises outside school, and it’s not something that schools alone can solve. But it would behoove the SEL crowd (and the many educators who want to advance it) to ally themselves with broader efforts to curb the drug problem.


• Homelessness. Schools can’t solve the underlying problem here, either, but many actions within their power can ameliorate its education effects, such as enabling kids to remain in the same school when they move or enter a shelter. Longer school days and help with food, clothing and hygiene are also beneficial.


• Over-testing and over-reliance on test scores to judge schools, kids, etc. This is obviously a hot issue, much on parents’ minds as well as teachers’, and a nontrivial part of the push for SEL and whole-child education stems from concern that U.S. education policy is too narrowly focused on the things that tests purport to measure—and in just a few subjects. Among the problems on my list, this one is most squarely within the purview of ed policy, yet changing anything major would require coordinated efforts across all levels of government, as well as substantial changes in school structures and practices.


• Drop-outs. There are umpteen efforts to reduce drop-out rates and boost graduation rates. Some—such as ersatz credit recovery—introduce their own problems. But top-notch, fully-aligned schools and systems that are able to serve kids successfully, engage their interests and meet their needs from K (or pre-K) through high school, often customizing and personalizing their school experiences, are the best possible antidote. And by engaging their interest and meeting their needs—social and emotional, as well as academic—much good will be done for those kids, their peers, their families, and our society.


• Civics, citizenship, and character. These can get controversial within SEL ranks, but there’s huge policy interest across the country now in better civics education and in developing young people into good citizens, with all that that entails. There’s also much parental concern with children developing sound character and values. As I see it, the case for SEL will be strengthened in many quarters if the explicit linkages are made and—once again—if SEL promoters ally themselves with purposeful efforts to advance character and civics education.

Whatever you think of these particulars, I hope the strategic point is by now obvious: The policymakers that SEL devotees seek to engage in advancing their mission are more likely to resonate with an approach based on problems that they (and their constituents) already recognize and want to do something about than an approach that basically portrays an idealized form of education and urges them to help make it happen.

Children’s screen-time is an important issue. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids from ages two to five consume only high-quality programming, and only for an hour a day. And studies demonstrating the potential harm of too much screen-time are released regularly, such as one from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center late last year that found that exceeding AAP’s limits was associated with reductions of brain structures that “support language and emergent literacy skills.”

Yet alongside the stern warnings and unsettling findings is evidence that screen-time, when used smartly and in moderation, can have significant benefits, and that a big part of reaping them is choosing good content. To that end, the Education Development Center and SRI Education enlisted Todd Grindal and a team of researchers to examine how a single multi-platform media property—TV show, app, website, physical materials—focused on science and engineering education impacted the learning of young, disadvantaged children.[i]

The researchers picked The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, which comprises videos, digital games, hands-on activities, and printed descriptions of science and engineering activities. Content areas include friction, sound and soundwaves, inclines, bridges, buildings, object sorting, using all five senses, and making observations. Big, well-known corporations were involved in its development, including PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (both non-profit organizations), Random House, and Portfolio Entertainment, a private firm that distributes television programming to more than ninety countries.

Grindal et al. randomly assigned 454 low-income four- and five-year-olds from five large American metropolitan areas to receive either the Cat in the Hat material or alternative content. Both groups received a tablet computer and eight weeks of internet access and data. The treatment group’s tablet had access to the Cat in the Hat materials, while the control group had that and similar content blocked. Parents in both groups were asked to have their children watch and interact with educational content, and all moms and dads were provided with study information, basic tips for using the tablets, and text message reminders. Using assessments and a parent survey, the team collected data on the subjects’ science and engineering knowledge and practices before the experiment and then again eight weeks after it commenced.

The researchers found that, compared to the control group, “exposure to The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! resources had meaningful impacts on four- to five-year-old children’s physical science knowledge and their ability to engage with science and engineering practices.” This was particularly true in the kids’ understanding of how the strength and length of physical materials affect the stability of structures, and how texture and friction affect an object’s movement down an incline. The exposure also had a clear and positive impact on the children’s interest and engagement in science.

Despite the study’s rigorous experimental design, it has limitations that reduce its generalizability. The sample is not nationally representative. Families were also recruited on social media, so they could be different than families who aren’t on such platforms. And the entire experiment is based on kids having both a tablet and regular internet access, which isn’t true for millions of families, especially low-income ones.

Still, the study’s findings are noteworthy. They suggest, as the team writes, that “educational media designed to focus on critical science and engineering concepts and skills can help young children understand science and engineering concepts and practices.” High-quality screen-time can also improve young kids’ content knowledge—something that’s essential to teaching reading, as E.D. Hirsch argued for thirty years and cognitive scientists like Dan Willingham have later proved. Grindal et al. rightly add that “These findings are especially important given the relative scalability and low per-child cost of media-based interventions.” Technology is ubiquitous, and the degree to which it permeates our lives will only increase in the future. It’s vital that we develop methods of using that it that help rather than harm—especially when it involves our children and their education. This study suggests we can.

SOURCE: Todd Grindal et al., “Early Science & Engineering: The Impact of The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! on Learning,” Education Development Center and SRI Education (November 2019).

[i] According to lead author Todd Grindal, “The study was conducted as part of the Ready To Learn Initiative, which is funded through the U.S. Department of Education. Ready To Learn supports a range of public media developed to serve the needs of children living in low-income communities. This study is part of a series of studies that have been conducted by researchers at EDC and SRI to support this goal.”

1. Sorry we have to tease out the updates on the voucher groucher saga a bit today. That’s the trouble with not posting daily (and don’t you dare suggest doing that either!). Let’s start with a piece posted yesterday by the good folks at Kent public radio that was premised on a simple and important question: What led to Ohio’s current “school choice conundrum”? The answer, from a key voucher groucher? “[A] small change made in Ohio law seven years ago” which has led to the current expansion of EdChoice eligibility over which a bunch of people are losing their collective mind. What?! Seven years ago!! Seven! All this panic over something which everyone and their brother has had seven years to prepare for?! Y’all still think I’m wrong about the arbitrary deadline? Get outta town. (WKSU-FM, Kent, 1/28/20) In this case, why is it that the media outrage is dominated by schools and districts? The folks being blindsided by change in short order are in fact parents who were eligible for EdChoice—and have been behaving accordingly—but who are now pawns in some game to find an “acceptable” number of eligible schools or students played by folks who should have been ready for this all along. Luckily, when parents are the focus of the voucher story, the tone does seem to change a little. But is anyone listening? (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 1/27/20) In this piece from the PD, one dad puts forth his perspective very succinctly: “If parents make the choice to send their children to another school, the schools really need to look at themselves and ask why.” One private school leader interviewed is even blunter: “We hear statements that they are the district’s kids or that the district is losing funding, that the children belong to districts. We at the Catholic church do not believe that children belong to districts. That’s a financing formula.” Nice. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/28/20) Can you guess which side Dispatch editors landed on? (Columbus Dispatch, 1/28/20) As if the “financing formula” wasn’t a bad enough emphasis, how about this ridiculous sideshow? A private school in Cleveland erroneously sent an EdChoice eligibility postcard to…*gasp*…a family that wasn’t eligible. The head of the school said he didn’t know how it happened. Well, I can tell him: It’s because reaching out to let families know about eligibility should be the job of the Ohio Department of Education or, more rightly, of the eligible schools themselves. They know all the names and addresses without fail, and it’s their doing that the families are eligible in the first place. Instead of being the family’s right to be informed about and assisted with their options, private schools themselves must discover those eligible—requiring public records requests, the occasional Supreme Court case, and indeed the rare mistake—and reach out to them on their own. Seems to me this is the same distinction between folks being allowed to take maternity leave from their jobs if they need it and being actively given assistance in obtaining maternity leave simply and easily. Imagine if it was some third party’s job to determine who might be needing parental leave in the near future, finding their contact information, and then sending a postcard to tell them that if they are or may be in need of leave that they can have it but only if they know how to access it. Just pick up the phone. Maybe we can help! Yeah right. (Cleveland Jewish News, 1/28/20)
    
2. I had a whole bit here about the voucher “fix” waiting game between yesterday and today, but I’m bored of this already. Let’s cut to the chase. A legislative “deal” was hammered out over some marathon bargaining sessions in the Ohio Senate late into last night. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/28/20) What’s the “fix”? Don’t make me laugh. There’s only one thing that would keep Ohio legislators up and working that late. It’s all about the money kids money. Look, even I can’t hide that. You can check out the deets in the Dispatch…  (Columbus Dispatch, 1/29/20) …the Dayton Daily News… (Dayton Daily News, 1/29/20) …or the Cleveland Plain Dealer. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/29/20) Reading these pieces, no one seems entirely happy with the final product, which makes sense for the reasons we discussed on Monday (“a lose-lose win-win). The bill will go to the House today for more sausage grinding.
   
   

3. One notable Senate addition to the higher ed credit transfer voucher “fix” bill is the provision that Lorain City Schools would be released from state oversight via a CEO-style Academic Distress Commission because it rose from an overall F to a D last year. In other words: power would be given back to the folks that ran the district into the ground because the folks that took over from them did such a good job in correcting their mistakes so quickly. (I mean, a really good job. Check out this laudatory piece on preschool improvements in the district that happened under the brief CEO/ADC paradigm.) While the guy who did all this did get a bonus for his work, he also got fired as a result. Unanimously. All about the kids baby! (Morning Journal, 1/28/20)
    
4. We end today with unequivocally good news—and a nice way to celebrate National School Choice Week—in this look at the four charter schools in Dayton who earned additional funding from the state due to their high quality. (Dayton Daily News, 1/28/20)

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While education reform conversations about social and emotional learning (SEL) often include the value of interpersonal skills in creating and maintaining relationships, a new report from the American Enterprise Institute calls for increased emphasis on expanding student access to relationships and networks. From peer mentoring to group projects, discussions with guest speakers to video chats with experts, or job shadows and internships, schools can provide opportunities for students to form new relationships. In this way, SEL can unlock access to social and professional networks that would otherwise be out of reach.

Author Julia Freeland Fisher examines the potential harm in concentrating on SEL skills at the expense of network building. She claims that even if students possess the interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies to thrive socially, they can’t put those skills to use if they’re not a member of existing networks. And because one’s access to networks largely depends on one’s family, community, and geography, the focus placed on improving skills perpetuates a “myth of meritocracy,” ignoring the role that relationship access plays in increasing opportunity.

She also cautions that excessive attention to improving school climates—without cultivating students’ out-of-school relationships—may lead to school buildings that are insular to the point of isolationist. Although developing tight-knit relationships and school communities is one important goal of SEL, another should be forming connections beyond school to broaden students’ long-term options in their professional lives and build their social capital.

Fisher offers five recommendations for achieving balance between teaching SEL skills and opening up access to relationships. One is to expand our perception of relationships—treat them as SEL outcomes, rather than as sole inputs for skill development. Another is to utilize SEL tools that teach and assess skills in authentic peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationships instead of through simulations (to level the playing field for students with fewer opportunities and less robust networks). Third is to diversify students’ professional networks through connections with community members and industry experts. Fourth involves determining which relationships and SEL competencies align with one another so that schools can adopt SEL approaches with specific intent, e.g., empathy fosters tolerance, and communication skills enable productive participation. Finally, Fisher suggests that SEL researchers conduct studies at the intersection of SEL, youth development, and social network analysis in order to gather data on the interaction of skill and network development.  

For advocates, practitioners, and leaders, this report shows how SEL can be used as a tool for alleviating (or exacerbating) inequality. Framing the national SEL conversation around the development of skills alongside increased access to networks could help ensure that all students gain the social competencies and supportive connections needed to succeed in their academic, personal, and professional lives. Thus, future investment in SEL should mean investing in skills and relationships.

SOURCE: Julia Freeland Fisher, “Can social and emotional learning models aim to create relationships?” American Enterprise Institute (January 2020).

1. We’re back! With lots to talk about. But we’re not going to start where you might expect. Let’s hit some reality first. Proponent testimony was heard last week on a bill which would give online schools in Ohio “another tool in [their] toolbox” to “deal with chronically disengaged students.” Witnesses included the leader of Ohio’s second largest online school and our own Chad Aldis, whose testimony called the measure a “meaningful improvement” for online education policy. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/23/20) This is clearly important stuff. How do I know this? Because the leader of Ohio’s second largest online school also had an editorial in the Dispatch on Friday promoting, among other things, the value and importance of the measure in potentially helping students to succeed. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/24/20) Wonder what the opponents will say about it when they get their turn in front of the committee tomorrow?
2. OK. With that out of the way, now we can make our required visit to voucher-insanity-land. How do I know the discussion is going to lack sanity? Because we’re starting with an editorial about EdChoice that suggests what the authors claim would be a “huge change” to the program (make the state “take on 25 percent of the cost of these vouchers”) which doesn’t make a lick of sense since the program is entirely state funded already. (Toledo Blade, 1/23/20) Whatever changes are made legislatively to quell the voucher grouchers are bound to be problematic. On what do I base this prediction? The fact that whatever schools are still left on the eligibility list after the horses have been traded will still be complaining that the report cards that put them there are “flawed”; the fact that some legislators don’t want a huge expansion of income-based vouchers, which will likely occur; and the fact that a bunch of kids will still be underserved and their parents will still get jerked around due to the primacy of the needs of “the system”. Let’s call it a lose-lose win-win. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/23/20) How do I know the districts are going to be sore no matter what? It’s the fundamentals, man. Here’s just one example: Marion City Schools, despite having hundreds of EdChoice-eligible students, sees just $164,000 of its cold hard cash 36 of its students opting to leave the district via a voucher. Despite this, supe says, “We know the report card itself is broken and needs fixed, but yet we're still relying on that as the data and the information to make those decisions. I have a fundamental problem with that.” Something is definitely “broken”, dude. If only we could correctly legislate which “something” that is. (Marion Star, 1/26/20) It is interesting to note that the balance of discussion about vouchers in Lorain County is somewhat different than in ‘burbs. A bit less disdain for parents and kids is in evidence, which is a nice change. I wonder if it’s because Lorain County is an area where chronically low-performing schools are par for the course (you know what I mean)? (Elyria Chronicle, 1/24/20) The whole voucher brouhaha looks different in Cleveland, which has had its own separate voucher program for a lot longer. But that’s not stopping district officials from jumping on the bandwagon…all in the name of money. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/24/20)
3. How do I know this voucher jazz is big enough to be classed as a “brouhaha”? Because the Dispatch ran dueling op-eds on the topic this morning. First up, the leader of School Choice Ohio with his case for vouchers, although the headline is set up to make him argue the negative. Clever that. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/27/20) Second, a man who needs no introduction (seriously, he is only identified by name and photo, like we all know who he is), makes somebody’s case against vouchers. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/27/20) No dueling is required at the Beacon Journal, as you might imagine, even though they are in the same newspaper family as the Dispatch these days. Nope. Editors in Akron opined over the weekend that “hurting many to help a few makes no sense” to them. I think you know what that means. (Akron Beacon Journal, 1/25/20)
4. Not sure if this goes in the realm of reality or not, but the residents of Hills and Dales who would like their houses rezoned to a neighboring school district are moving their efforts forward into the legal buzzsaw again. How do I know it’s going to be a buzzsaw? Because that loss is going to feel pretty real for whoever comes out that side. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/24/20)
5. We end today with some actual real stuff. How do I know it’s real? It doesn’t get any more real—or more important—than attempting to end years of academic mismanagement in Ohio’s largest districts. First, we learn that not only is Columbus City Schools getting ready to face down the results of a new curriculum audit—one which its lead author guarantees us “isn’t going to be pretty”—but we also are reminded that two previous curriculum audits have occurred over the past 40 years. Both of which were also ugly, and both of which were entirely ignored by board(s) and administration(s). Says the author of the new, upcoming report: “You have to face the brutal facts in order to get better.” Sounds right. But will they? (Columbus Dispatch, 1/26/20) We noted with a bit of concern over the last year as Dayton City Schools threw everything and the kitchen sink at its longstanding academic malaise (including an effort at a curricular upgrade), with little seeming rhyme or reason to the efforts. The main motivator of this flailing was to avoid a declaration of academic distress (and everything that, at that time, went along with it but for some reason no longer does). The interesting bit: it actually worked to some extent. The district as a whole moved from an F to a D on its state report card. But guess what else happened? Dayton City Schools is also no longer on “Watch” status in the state’s ESEA-centered “differentiated accountability” system. While the district is still among the worst performers in the state, it is just a little less terrible than it was, which, surprisingly, is a win for students and families. Still hate those report cards, y’all? Still think they “don’t reflect what is really going on” in your district? (Dayton Daily News, 1/27/20) I wonder if either of these stories of realness will have the media drawing power of self-serving, BS-filled, sanity-defying voucher grouching?

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Facilities struggles

A recent article in the Columbus Dispatch describes a long-simmering issue over school facilities between Columbus City Schools and the United Schools Network. USN has offered to purchase a long-unused school building from the district, only to be told that CCS had “plans” for it and would not sell. The situation came to the media’s attention after Columbus prepared to sell another set of buildings—unused for less time—but still refused to address USN’s offer.

School choice fair

The Northwest Ohio Scholarship Fund will be hosting its second annual K-8 school choice fair next week, coinciding with National School Choice Week. Families in Allen and Van Wert counties can visit with representatives and compare area district, charter, and private school options.

Transportation struggles

In Ohio, there is often a gulf between parents having a choice and accessing that choice in a reasonable manner. Hope Academy, a small charter school for students on the autism spectrum and with learning disabilities, provides a timely example via busing. Hope Academy is located in Youngstown, but many of its students live in various surrounding cities. Families in Warren have been trying to get the district to provide busing for their students for some time (all the other districts of residence provide transportation), to no avail as yet.

The media spotlight

The Ohio Department of Higher Education released its annual report on math and English remediation rates for the state’s high school graduates going on to college. The news is, on the whole, good: remediation rates continue on a steady downward trajectory. But does this really mean that graduates are better prepared for credit-bearing college work? The report is frustratingly silent on that point. The Dispatch should get thumbs up for including charter schools in their analysis, and for talking to a representative of one of those charter schools in depth. But they deserve thumbs down for only namechecking the poorest performing charter schools while failing to mention any high performers.

Parent voices growing louder

If you haven’t heard about it yet, here is a nice introduction to the newly-formed National Parents Union, a grassroots group dedicated to challenging educational injustices. They are already making their support for charters, vouchers, and high-quality educational choices heard loudly and clearly in the national discourse.

NOTE: Today, the Primary and Secondary Education Committee of the Ohio House of Representatives is hearing testimony on House Bill 409 which would, among other things, make changes to the way that online charter schools track and report attendance. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy presented proponent testimony before the committee; these are his written remarks.

Thank you, Chair Jones, Vice Chair Manchester, Ranking Member Robinson and committee members for giving me the opportunity today to provide testimony in support of House Bill 409.

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

As many of you know, Fordham has been a staunch supporter of school choice for decades. We believe that every family deserves the right to choose their child’s school; however, we also believe that state and local leaders have a duty to ensure that these options are high-quality. Although the Ohio General Assembly has done a considerable amount of work in the last few years to improve charter school laws, the unique nature of online schools and the well-publicized closure of The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has made any policy changes in the online space—even when warranted—difficult to enact as there’s a concern that any changes could be perceived to weaken accountability.

With that context, it was good to see the introduction of HB 409. It provides a framework whereby an online charter school can disenroll a student for unexcused absences and for failure to participate in instructional activities. It’s an idea—already being used in Indiana—that we have supported for a number of years.

The bill allows online charters to adopt a policy related to engagement in instructional activities and requires schools to provide notice to parents and make an attempt to improve student engagement before disenrolling a student. When a student is disenrolled, the legislation requires that parents be provided a list of educational options and notice be given to the local school district.

The proposal—somewhat unorthodox—is premised on the acknowledgement that in a traditional classroom, teachers are able to directly observe students and select instructional strategies that increase the likelihood of student engagement. Teachers in online schools, on the other hand, are far more limited in how they can interact with students. Under current law, online schools are only able to monitor and enforce a student’s attendance; they have little power to hold students accountable for active participation. This means that hundreds or even thousands of online students could be cruising through school and not learning anything simply because they log in every day but don’t complete any work. Even if the school knows there’s a problem and the student isn’t learning much or isn’t engaged, its hands are largely tied. In such cases, students are being academically harmed and taxpayer dollars are being wasted.

This change would be a meaningful improvement in Ohio’s law regulating online education. One thing of note that we think should be clarified involves existing law (3314.03(A)(6)(b) O.R.C.) and is known as the 72 hour rule. It provides that students missing 72 consecutive hours be automatically withdrawn from a school. HB 409 doesn’t explicitly remove this provision, but it references the subsection in a manner that would make it prudent to modify the language to ensure that safeguard isn’t accidentally rendered moot.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony. I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have.