Listen to the media, and you’ll be told that the parents’ movement is a manufactured culture war designed to dismantle public education, score cheap political points, or rake in easy money for provocateurs. Read National School Boards Association memoranda or listen to Attorney General Merrick Garland, and you’ll be told that parents’ actions at school board meetings verge on terroristic.

Quite the contrary. Many schools have fallen into disrepute because they engaged in policies and practices that tarnished their reputations. And the public has grown dissatisfied with American education because the results of the system are unsatisfactory. If a restaurant served rotten food, would we blame the customer for their anger and revulsion?

Any time parental or public dissatisfaction gets brought up, rebuttals point to an oft-cited statistic drawn from annual Kappan/Gallup surveys: Trust in public education may be low, but parents still rank their own local school highly. I myself used to read these data optimistically, but it’s unclear how much these surveys really tell us. School districts are great propaganda machines, after all. Regular emailers and press releases boast about all the good things happening, school events create warm and fuzzy feelings, and inflated grades foster a false sense of security (“It’s not my kid!”).

What’s more, there’s potential for motivated reasoning. Parents want to believe that a kid’s school is pretty good because, if not, they’d have to do something painful about it—move across town or fork out private school tuition, for example. There’d be too much cognitive dissonance to both admit public school failures and keep children there, and it’s easier to tell yourself a white lie.

Ultimately, any education reform advocate must reckon with the fact that satisfaction with public education generally is the lowest it’s been since Gallup started polling on it.

In his new book, The Parent Revolution, school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis unrolls a saga that he believes explains the notable plummet in trust of public education that’s worsened in the past five years.

As you might assume, it began with pandemic-era school closures. It’s easy to forget the excesses and corruptions exposed during debates over school openings. A teachers union official defended closures while vacating in the tropics. The Chicago Teachers Union released a cringe-inducing interpretive dance video in protest of school openings and later blamed the push for reopening on “sexism, racism, and misogyny.” A school attempted to expel a young boy who had a BB gun in the background during a video call. United Teachers Los Angeles demanded socialized healthcare, defunded police departments, and pressed for a moratorium on charter schools before it would consider teaching in-person again. And countless ludicrous exhibitionist protests cropped up in cities across the country with teachers carting around open caskets.

Amidst such silliness, there was ample evidence that schools were in fact safe to open. Months into the pandemic, it was clear that they weren’t Covid super-spreaders. European countries read the evidence early on and reopened while American school children faced shuttered school doors and continued online learning. Meanwhile, closures enacted an academic and mental health crisis among teenagers.

But such goofy examples overlook an even deeper and more important corruption. The CDC drew guidance from the American Federation of Teachers that went into its school opening guidelines, mixing politics and lobbyists with the so-called “science.” Studies found that union power correlated to the length and severity of school closures, not viral spread. Throughout the pandemic, bureaucrats and advocates actively conspired against the interests of families and students.

As one bright spot throughout all this, parents discovered a few levers through which they could exert power over and control of schools. In January 2021, instead of developing plans to open schools, San Francisco’s school board wasted meeting time on renaming schools, replacing controversial titles like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Parents mounted a campaign to recall board members, and elsewhere, parents sued districts to reopen. These were first spurts and starts of a parent’s revolt.

But there was much more to follow. After schools reopened, story after story about politicized curricula hit the headlines: mock political rallies with fifth graders, lessons that deny basic biology for kindergarteners, and policies that keep life-altering decisions from parental oversight. Soon parent organizations formed with the intent of mounting public pressure and political campaigns to counter union influence. In small-turnout elections, unions can flood the polls, but a parent constituency could shift the balance—at least in theory.

Ultimately, as a history of the parent’s movement, The Parent Revolution is a welcome and constructive contribution. Where the media exonerates school officials and slanders parents, DeAngelis tells the truth of pandemic closures and culture battles over schools. It’s an honest telling that’s doubly welcome in the face of counter media revisionism.

In the second half of his book, DeAngelis turns to potential solutions and corrections. And while I remain a proponent of school choice, he oversells that prescription. A few Tylenol might help the headache, but that doesn’t justify swallowing a bottle-full.

DeAngelis deftly surveys much of the relevant research: “Out of seventeen random-assignments studies, eleven find statistically significant positive effects and three find negative impacts.” What’s more, of the twenty-nine studies that investigate the effect of choice on traditional public schools, twenty-six find that school choice improves them. In other words, competition is better for everyone, even students not in the choice program. And school choice benefits non-academic outcomes as well: civic knowledge and engagement, crime rates, and political tolerance, for example. What’s not to love?

But most of this research investigated voucher programs targeted at low-income families. That the benefits of such policies would translate to universal ESAs isn’t clear. Perhaps research will vindicate universal private choice—and I’ll be the first to make a mea culpa if it does—but as we’ve learned from decades of testing and accountability, it’s possible to oversell a worthy policy remedy and then watch as political backlash dismantles it.

When it comes to combating “woke-ism” and progressive capture of American schools, I’m quite skeptical of school choice. If charter school networks, educators’ professional organizations, curriculum companies, teacher prep programs, credentialing and accrediting institutions, leading publications, and all of the other mediating institutions in American education share the same progressive worldview, as appears to me to be the case, I can’t see how allowing families choice will combat such institutional capture. School choice may be necessary, but it’s far from sufficient.

Amid all of DeAngelis’s data, the most moving argument for school choice comes in its opening pages, where he recounts a story from his own life: walking up blood-spattered steps in his public middle school, where violence and fights were the norm. His life trajectory changed when he got accepted into a magnet high school and encountered for the first time a rigorous education surrounded by academically-minded peers. School choice saved him from chaos and propelled him to success. This was and still is the most convincing case for school choice, each individual child who deserves something better.

In his book, DeAngelis shows that the lion’s share of American students deserves something better—something better than political interests holding them back, something better than political indoctrination, something better than academic mediocrity. The parent’s movement could, should, and very well may help to establish the institutions, staff the school boards, and win the elections necessary to achieve that “something better.”

As we observe another National Charter School Week, one fact is clear: Families are voting with their feet for charter schools. Charter enrollment has increased by almost 14 percent since 2019, the last full school year before pandemic school closures. Meanwhile, district public schools have lost around 1.2 million students since the pandemic, with thirty-seven states and two-thirds of districts suffering declines. Families are choosing charters because of their educational successes and because they are sources of community renewal.

Charter school facts

As regular Flypaper readers are aware, charter schools are taxpayer-funded, independent public schools of choice for both families and educators that are accountable for the results of student learning. The movement to create them began in 1991 when Minnesota passed the first charter law. Today, forty-six such laws have enabled the creation of 8,000 schools and campuses enrolling 3.7 million students, around 7.5 percent of all public school students, according to the Data Dashboard of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. They employ around 251,000 teachers. Almost three-fifths of charters are urban, with a quarter in the suburbs and 17 percent in rural and small-town America.

According to the Data Dashboard, charter schools have consistently enrolled proportionately more students of color and children from low-income families than traditional district schools. Currently, seven of ten (70.7 percent) charter pupils are children of color compared to slightly more than half (53.8 percent) of district students, with six of ten charter students receiving free and reduced-price lunch compared to half (50.3 percent) in district schools. Hispanic students are the fastest-growing charter student group.

As educational institutions, the focus is on teaching and learning and accountability for results. Much ink has been spilled on their academic successes and failures. A report from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes that spans the school years from 2014–15 to 2018–19 provides a useful summary of these findings:

• Charter school students have an average of sixteen more days of learning in reading and six more days in math in a school year compared to their matched peers in traditional public schools.
• Charter schools enroll and educate more diverse and academically challenged students than local traditional public schools.
• Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in poverty, have stronger growth than their traditional public school peers.

Building communities and social capital

Along with being educational institutions, charter schools function as mediating institutions in their communities that build social capital.

Charter schools are wellsprings of civic renewal and community rebirth. If Alexis de Tocqueville were to revisit America today, he would surely say that charter schools are vibrant illustrations of Americans’ enduring appetite to create new voluntary organizations to meet human needs and build communities. They serve as mediating institutions, a middle path between the impersonal agencies of government and the private affairs of individuals and families. They reinvigorate the local civic community since they interact with the people, places, and institutions where they operate.

Charter schools are also opportunities for educators to create voluntary professional communities based on shared values, goals, and instructional approaches. Teachers and principals who choose to work in the charter sector have the autonomy to choose who else works in their school, rather than having a school district bureaucracy assign an educator to the school.

Charter schools also build what sociologist James Coleman called social capital, which he saw “…as a resource for action [that includes] obligations and expectations, information channels, and social norms.” A charter school’s social capital arises out of the relationships that exist among people: the children who attend it and the adults involved with it, including parents, the educators who staff it, and the community members who support it. A school lacking social capital is not likely to be a productive learning environment nor much of a community asset.

Charters create new forms of association. While some charters are neighborhood schools in the old-fashioned sense, others transcend particular neighborhoods or geographic places. They may be organized by curricular philosophies like Montessori or classical education or by place-based geographic approaches like charters located in parent workplaces. There are also networks of charter schools or charter management organizations that cross district and state boundaries and are organized around a common mission and instructional design, like Achievement First Charter Schools, Basis Charter Schools, or High Tech High Charter Schools.

Charter schools display elements that sociologist Robert Nisbet thought essential to community association, including a high degree of personal intimacy, social cohesion, and moral commitment. As he wrote in The Quest for Community, “Community is the product of people working together on problems, of autonomous and collective fulfillment or internal objectives, and of the experience of living under codes of authority which have been set in large degrees by the persons involved.” That’s what happens in charter schools.

Stubborn particulars that unite

Charter schools are sometimes faulted for dividing communities rather than uniting them. And lately there’s been more political division around charters, though for years their support was a bipartisan political effort. Still, that hasn’t entirely disappeared. Witness the recent effort in Colorado by a bipartisan political coalition that included Democratic Governor Jared Polis to defeat a measure to make major changes that would restrict some of the freedoms that that state’s charter schools possess.

The charter model presents a vision of public education that sees K–12 schools differently than the centralized, bureaucratic view inherent in the district arrangement. The charter model emphasizes a decentralized array of self-governing, results-oriented schools run by all sorts of different providers, like educators, parents, and nonprofit community organizations.

Charter schools are “not the collectivism of organized government action from above…[but] the collectivism of voluntary groups action from below,” to borrow from the well-known management consultant Peter Drucker in his book The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition. They are at the intersection of civil society and public education.  

“Charter schooling has been arguably the most influential school reform efforts of the past several decades,” conclude the authors of a 2023 report published in the Journal of Public Economics. While this is true, it’s also true that not every charter has lived up to its promise or been a source of civic renewal in communities. Many have been closed for not serving their students, families, or communities. As we observe National Charter School Week, all this is worth recalling and recommitting ourselves to creating more high-quality independent public schools of choice that are accountable for results.

I’ve made no secret of my fervent belief that curriculum is the overlooked lever in education reform. Replacing the slapdash, incoherent, and under-nourishing mélange of materials to which the typical U.S. student is exposed with a more rigorous and thoughtfully sequenced student experience holds promise unmatched by the “structural” reforms favored by policymakers. Over the years, I’ve also crossed swords occasionally with fellow curriculum advocates who labor under the misconception (or allow others to do so) that simply adopting high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) is a magic bullet, or who obsess over minor points of orthodoxy between programs. The larger battle to be fought and won is making curriculum—virtually any decent curriculum—central to school improvement efforts.

In fact, I’ve lately struck from my vocabulary the phrase “curriculum adoption” in favor of curriculum purchases. The word “adoption” implies a much higher bar than just forking out taxpayer dollars for a new program and calling it a day. It’s a serious and sustained effort shared within and between grades to implement curriculum rigorously and with fidelity. Such efforts remain the exception, not the rule. Thus, I’m pleased to recommend a new case study published by Rivet Education, a curriculum-focused consulting group, which lays out the steps needed to turn a curriculum purchase into an adoption process worthy of its name, and that moves the needle on student outcomes.

In 2018, teachers and leaders in Wisconsin’s Mount Horeb Area School District made the decision to adopt a new math curriculum called “Bridges in Mathematics” and produced by The Math Learning Center. Students in this small town in southern Wisconsin were doing reasonably well on state math tests, but teachers had noticed that they “struggled when given more challenging math work” including problems that required them to conceptualize, explain their thinking, or apply math to real-world situations. Mount Horeb embarked on a multi-year “journey” to fully implement Bridges. This involved multiple phases, which Rivet categorizes as “exploration; program installation; initial implementation; consistent implementation; and innovation and sustainability.”

In the “exploration” phase, district officials and (mostly math) teachers “established a vision for effective and equitable instruction, reviewing and evaluating curriculum.” They reviewed high-quality math curricula, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of a number of programs, each ultimately selecting the curriculum that best aligned with the district’s priorities. Next, professional learning providers were recruited (presumably with Rivet’s input and guidance) to educate teachers on mathematical practices, assessing student work, and the role HQIM plays in student learning.

It’s the “program installation” phase that warrants the most attention and contrasts most vividly with what I suspect is the standard experience with curriculum “adoption,” wherein teachers unbox the materials, do a “walk-through” of the new program, and sit for a day or two of professional development led by a district staffer who attended a “train the trainer” workshop at a budget hotel conference room the previous spring. If they get any ongoing professional development after that, it’s minimal. I could have pulled a muscle in my neck nodding at a quote in the case study from Latricia Johnson, a math coach who worked on Mount Horeb’s implementation. “One-and-done, workshop-based professional learning doesn’t work,” she said. “Teachers need a mix of observations, lesson studies, modeling, and [professional learning communities] for a successful professional learning plan.” Hear, hear.

Yet even that elides what is almost certainly the main impediment to successful, sustained curriculum implementation: internal resistance. As my AEI colleague Rick Hess never tires of pointing out, it’s easy to get people do something, but it’s hard to get them to do it well. It’s even harder when teachers are comfortable with what they’ve been doing for years and reluctant to change practice. I wanted to know more about how Mount Horeb built teacher buy-in—not just compliance—without which even excellent curriculum tends to underperform.

Rivet’s case study pairs nicely (or contrasts vividly) with a recent article by Hechinger Report’s Jill Barshay, which paints a concerning picture of the field’s relationship with curriculum. At the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, William Zahner, a math professor at San Diego State, presented a survey of more than 1,000 math teachers. “A surprising number of math teachers,” he reported, “particularly at the high school level simply said we don’t use the district of school-provided materials, or they claimed they didn’t have any.”

Only it’s not surprising. We’ve known for a long time that nearly every teacher creates, customizes, or “curates” their own lesson plans and materials (hello, Teachers Pay Teachers!). A little of this is appropriate and beneficial but too much results in lost coherence. There’s also good evidence to suggest that teachers simply aren’t very good judges of rigor when they venture into the “curriculum bazaar.” The main screen they employ is more often than not “student engagement.”

Truth be told, the Mount Horeb “case study” is also a marketing exercise. Rivet is a consulting outfit founded by veterans of the Louisiana Department of Education who helped engineer that state’s ground-breaking curriculum and instructional reforms under then–state chief John White. They work with state and school district leaders to scale the adoption and implementation of HQIM. Nevertheless, the effort they highlight in Wisconsin is a good model for districts that seek to take curriculum seriously or wonder why their “adoptions” disappoint or fail to stick. It’s required reading for state officials, school board members, and district and building leaders who are convinced that HQIM is an essential component of student success. It paints a compelling picture of what it would look like if we took curriculum seriously as a school improvement strategy.

In an effort to avoid prescriptive top-down mandates, the school accountability provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allow states flexibility in determining what measures they’ll use to assess school quality, how much “weight” they carry, and over what time periods they’re calculated. A recent descriptive study uses data from North Carolina to demonstrate how policymakers’ decisions can influence school ratings and, ultimately, the list of schools identified for improvement under ESSA. (States must identify their most troubled schools but have considerable flexibility in what to do about them.).

Analysts Erica Harbatkin (Florida State University) and Betsy Wolf (U.S. Department of Education) draw on eight years of administrative data from the Tar Heel State—including roughly 1,900 public schools. They develop three ESSA-compliant school quality metrics, all of which include proficiency rates, student growth, high-school graduation rates, English learner proficiency, and chronic absenteeism rates. The first four elements are required by ESSA, and the last is the most popular of the flexible “fifth indicators” that states select for themselves. The metrics vary based on weighting and the number of data points included (one to three years). For each of the three metrics, analysts simulate school ratings overall, as well as which schools would end up in the bottom 5 percent that require “comprehensive support and improvement” (CSI) as required by ESSA. 

In Goldilocks lingo, the analysts undertook to identify the too-hot and too-cold tradeoffs arising from the various simulations. Their key “temperature” gauges are stability and equity. “Stability” addresses consistency, meaning whether there is volatility (unpredictable changes) at different points in the distribution. “Equity” examines whether school ratings are systematically and disproportionately lower for schools serving disadvantaged student groups—the idea being that metrics that weigh proficiency too heavily could “further marginalize” schools with students in need. Thus, analysts calculate whether the share of schools within three equal groups—defined as the 25 percent of schools with the largest share of low-income and Black students, the middle 50 percent, and the 25 percent with the smallest share of these student subgroups—would total 5 percent in each because “a perfectly equitable accountability system would identify exactly 5 percent of CSI schools in each of the quantiles.” The extent to which a given group deviates from that 5 percent threshold represents their measure of inequity (arguable as it is).

The three simulations are as follows:

• The first weights proficiency and growth mostly the same at the elementary and middle school levels, and weights proficiency twice as heavily as growth in high school (so 30 percent weight versus 15 percent).
• The second weights proficiency more heavily than growth—at 60 percent for elementary and middle schools and 45 percent for high schools.
• The third also weights growth more heavily—60 percent for elementary and middle schools again but 30 percent for high schools.

They also change the number of years of data to see how that affects their measures of interest. They toggle between a single year of data (which is what most states do, although they don’t have to under ESSA), a three-year weighted mean where the current year is weighted most heavily, and two other scenarios where they use one year of data for each of three years but alter how they classify the lowest performing schools (meaning the schools appear in three consecutive years or appear in two of three consecutive years).

Looking at stability first, they find that weighting proficiency more heavily than growth produces more stable year-to-year ratings. This is because proficiency rates are strongly correlated with student characteristics. Not surprisingly, ratings based on three years of data are three to four times more stable than those based on a single year. They also find that the “three of three rule”—meaning classifying schools for intervention that fall in the lowest performing group for three consecutive years—produces the most stable list. However, and this is important, using three years of data versus one more than offsets the loss of stability one gets when shifting from a high proficiency to a high growth index model. In other words, there’s a lot of volatility in scores when a state that once weighed proficiency heavily in its accountability system decides to weight growth heavily instead, but this volatility is taken care of (and then some) if a state uses three years of rolling data.

As for their measure of equity, the higher-proficiency index was the most inequitable and the higher-growth index the least inequitable. Specifically, under the higher-proficiency index, 75 percent of students in the lowest-rated 20 percent of schools were low-income, compared with just 39 percent in the top-rated 20 percent of schools. Under the higher-growth index, the comparable figures were 65 percent of students compared with 47 percent. Likewise, when they aggregate data into the three quantiles above, none of the simulations identify exactly 5 percent as needing CSI services, but the proficiency measure disproportionately identifies schools in the bottom that are the most disadvantaged.

Still, the bottom line for Harbatkin and Wolf is that using three years of data is imperative for consistency no matter which you weight more heavily—proficiency or growth—given that each has tradeoffs.

We endlessly debate those tradeoffs here at Fordham, underscoring the importance of a state identifying its goals before it decides how to balance proficiency and growth. If the goal is to identify schools that aren’t meeting the bar in order to target scarce resources to them, then it’s preferable to weight proficiency more heavily. But if the goal is to identify schools that are (or aren’t!) making a palpable difference in their students’ academic lives, then it’s preferable to weight growth more heavily. Another option: Follow Texas’s example and give schools two helpings of grades—and hope that bowl is just right.

SOURCE: Erica Harbatkin and Betsy Wolf, “State accountability decisions under the Every Student Succeeds Act and the validity, stability, and equity of school ratings,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (October 2023).

Cheers

• A Columbus school board member acknowledges the need, however controversial, to consolidate schools to account for reduced enrollment. —Columbus Dispatch
• Two high schoolers at the highly regarded Saint Mary’s Academy made history by developing a proof for the Pythagorean theorem. —CBS News
• A new study finds that scores on medical board certification exams predict later patient survival. In other words, standardized tests work. —Harvard Medical School
• “Gilroy Prep has higher test scores and fewer absent students than nearby schools, but experts caution against pinning this success on the teaching method.” —Mercury News

Jeers

• Continued glitches on FASFA software have left many prospective students in limbo, unsure if they’ll receive financial aid and unable to commit to a college. —CBS News
• Media continues to peddle the claim, based on dubious research, that educational segregation is getting worse because of charter schools. —Vox
• Despite its strong evidence base, states and districts remain hesitant to end social promotion. —Mitch Daniels, Washington Post

• Demographic changes have left America with too many half-full schools for too few students, and closures could dominate debates for the next decade. —Wall Street Journal
• “Segregation is wrong, but black students don’t need to share a classroom with white ones to learn.” —Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

1. In case you hadn’t heard, the House Higher Education Committee is holding a series of exploratory hearings on science of reading implementation in Ohio so far. Yesterday’s hearing included invited testimony from state and national policy leaders, including Fordham’s own Chad Aldis. Some interesting Q&A with him and all of the witnesses. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/24/24). Chad’s full written remarks can be read here, and full video of the hearing is here (Chad starts at 2:30). Good stuff!
   
   

2. Now that the Columbus City Schools’ Facilities Task Force has released its closure/consolidation proposals, it’s time for the PR portion of the process. A series of formal public input sessions begins Thursday; but before that, we got a press junket. Specifically, two members of the elected school board yesterday led members of the media on tours of Columbus Alternative (a magnet high school program operating in a century-old building with…some issues) and Columbus Downtown High School (a nicely-appointed 2009 building which hosts trade-focused classes and has a utilization of less than 46 percent capacity). One of the proposals is to move the alternative program to the downtown building and consolidate the trade classes at another career-tech-focused campus near downtown. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but we’ll see how it goes. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/15/24) Meanwhile, an impromptu “input session” happened at Marion-Franklin High School yesterday when a group of parents and teachers crashed what was supposed to be a private meeting of the task force there. Closure of MFHS—older, not well-maintained, and operating at less than 44 percent capacity—is one of the proposals, with students consolidated at South High School, nearby. Doesn’t sound like anyone who offered their input—which the task force members listened to even though things reportedly got argumentative—is in support of that plan and they offered numerous reasons to not do it. We’ll just focus on one of them for now—a common roadblock to consolidating schools used successfully before here and elsewhere: Gangs. As in, students from these two schools are in rival gangs and will attack and harm one another if forced to share space. Now I don’t doubt that this is true, but what I do have issue with is the unspoken assertion that nothing can be done about it. Honestly, wouldn’t addressing even this one gang beef via the schools be a humungous benefit to every citizen of Columbus, over and above the small but important issue of efficient use of district buildings? With tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars—not to mention having all the leaders of city/county/state/police/church/social service/sports/higher ed/business on speed dial and all raring to help the schools with anything they might ask for—couldn’t the reality of the problem be acknowledged and prepped for? (Look guys, I know what resources and pressure you can muster if you want to. To, say, pass a levy or build a new stadium or get neighbors to allow a new school building or a bus turnaround to be built. That’s the effort I’m talking about here.) What if LeBron James is there at the new high school on Day One along with food trucks and a concert? And the mayor and the fire chief are there on Day Two with donuts? And the head of children’s hospital is there on Day Three? Etc. Etc. Etc. And what if there are also 100 social service pros there every day until things are working smoothly? Feels like a much better idea than adults in charge saying “yeah no; those kids will kill each other, we can’t do that.” (ABC6 News, Columbus, 5/15/24)
   
   

3. Not to end on a down note, how about a CTE student with a perfect ACT score? Yes? Well then, meet Maryam Tunkara from Butler Tech, who is clearly awesome all on her own—no PR hype required. (WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, 5/12/24)

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Last year, state policymakers unveiled a bold plan to improve early literacy in Ohio. The centerpiece of that plan is the science of reading, a research-based instructional approach that emphasizes phonics and knowledge building.

Given the intense focus on what’s new and different about these reforms, one might assume that Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee—passed more than a decade ago—is a thing of the past. But that’s not the case. The guarantee’s controversial retention requirement was unfortunately watered down, but many of its other provisions remain in place. One such provision requires districts and charter schools that meet certain criteria to submit a Reading Achievement Plan (RAP) to the state. As the name suggests, a RAP focuses on student achievement in reading, and must include analyses of student data and measurable performance goals.

Last year, the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) released a list of districts and charter schools that were required to submit a new RAP to the state by December 31. As of this writing, DEW’s website also contains RAPs from the 2018–19 school year. Quite a bit happened between 2018 and 2023, namely a once-in-a-generation pandemic that had massive impacts on student achievement. But that’s exactly why comparing a district’s 2018 RAP to its updated 2023 plan is a useful exercise for state leaders. In each plan, districts and schools were required to identify any internal or external factors that they believed contributed to underachievement in reading. Factors that persisted through—or worsened during—the pandemic should be considered potential threats to Ohio’s latest early literacy initiative.

Several districts were required to submit RAPs in both 2018 and 2023, but this piece will compare the plans submitted by just one of them: Columbus City Schools (CCS). Columbus is an ideal case study, as it’s the largest district in the state and has a history of troublingly low reading achievement. In short, contributing factors that are consistent in Columbus over time are likely present elsewhere. Although these plans contain plenty of more obvious reading-related issues to consider, here are three significant concerns that policymakers should keep an eye on going forward.

1. Chronic absenteeism

In both the 2018 and 2023 plans, CCS identified chronic absenteeism—defined by the state as missing at least 10 percent of instructional time for any reason—as a factor contributing to underachievement in literacy. Given the well-known and far-reaching negative impacts of chronic absenteeism, it’s a no-brainer for district officials to flag it as a key problem. But it’s also important to recognize just how alarmingly high the district’s chronic absenteeism rates are in the earliest grade levels.

Table 1: Chronic absenteeism rates of Columbus City School students in grades K–3

Table 1 indicates that chronic absenteeism rates in Columbus were high prior to the pandemic—a third or more of students in grades K–3 met the state’s identification threshold—and are even higher in the wake of it. With roughly half of all elementary students missing a significant amount of school, it’s no wonder that just 35 percent of Columbus third graders were proficient in reading last year.

Student attendance woes aren’t unique to Columbus. Hundreds of districts across the state are also struggling with chronic absenteeism rates that shot up during the pandemic and have yet to come back down, and absenteeism has long been particularly problematic for the youngest and oldest students. If state policymakers are serious about improving early literacy in Columbus (and hundreds of other districts in the same boat), they must improve student attendance as a bedrock principle. That means supporting innovative incentive ideas to get kids to attend school. It means holding adults—the staff responsible for making schools the kinds of places kids want to be, and the parents responsible for ensuring kids get there—accountable. Most importantly, it means continuing to transparently track student attendance, resisting efforts to make it easier for kids to miss school, and ensuring that school calendar laws send the right message about the importance of consistent attendance.

2. Teacher shortages

Both plans reference staffing shortages, particularly in regard to substitutes, as another factor that contributed to underachievement. The 2018 plan notes that a “consistent lack of qualified substitutes” contributed to the district’s “inability to access teachers and provide ongoing and intensive professional development.” The 2023 plan also mentions substitute teachers, claiming that during the three most recent school years, there were “inconsistencies in classroom instruction due to the lack of substitute coverage.” The most recent plan also mentions broader teacher shortages that extend beyond subs. Because of these shortages, district officials say, many PreK–5 teachers “have been forced to teach outside their areas of expertise and/or with larger class sizes.”

As was the case with chronic absenteeism, Columbus is not the only district grappling with staffing issues. The good news is that after years of declines, enrollment in Ohio’s teacher preparation programs is trending upward. Also in the good news column are state initiatives like a teacher apprenticeship program, a grow your own teacher scholarship, and policy tweaks aimed at expanding the pool of substitute teachers. These initiatives should help bolster the teacher pipeline from the largest district on down.

But that doesn’t mean state leaders can rest on their laurels. It’s crucial to get right the teacher preparation audits that were included in the literacy reform package. If not, we run the risk that an otherwise welcome influx of new teachers will turn into a nightmare because they lack proper training. To avoid this pitfall in districts large and small, lawmakers will need to allocate more funding for audits in the upcoming state budget and stand strong against likely pushback from higher education.

3. Professional development

In last year’s state budget, lawmakers allocated considerable sums toward helping current teachers understand and implement the science of reading. Over the next biennium, $86 million will go toward professional development. Another $18 million will pay for literacy coaches, who will be charged with providing intensive support to teachers in the state’s lowest performing schools.

If this state investment had occurred in 2018, CCS officials likely would have been thrilled. That’s because, in their 2018 RAP, they identified professional development as a factor contributing to their underachievement. Beyond the substitute teacher issues outlined above, the plan also notes that the district needs to “further define the role of instructional coaches related to literacy,” as well as “identify a mechanism for ongoing instructional support for teachers to ensure effective implementation of high impact reading instructional strategies.”

Given these stated aims, one might think that the district’s 2023 plan would have good news on the professional development front. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The 2023 plan notes that, although the district has provided “multiple opportunities” for teachers to receive professional development related to new curriculum resources for literacy, “many teachers have failed to complete training due to professional development being outside the contractual workday.”

The good news for Columbus leaders is that professional development in reading science is no longer optional. The state budget requires teachers and administrators to complete a professional development course in the science of reading. The state also addressed concerns about teachers working outside contractual work hours by offering stipends of up to $1,200 to those who complete the course.

For state leaders, on the other hand, professional development struggles in Ohio’s largest district should serve as a warning sign. Even with mandates and stipends in place, getting every teacher on board with the science of reading will take unwavering commitment—something that hasn’t historically described Ohio lawmakers. State leaders may also need to provide more funding in the upcoming budget to cover the cost of curriculum-specific training, additional literacy coaches, and other types of support.

***

These aren’t the only potential pitfalls facing Ohio on its road toward improved reading achievement, but they are big and noteworthy. Their existence in both the 2018 and 2023 Columbus RAPs indicates they are persistent. And if they’re happening in the state’s largest district, many other districts are likely experiencing their own version of the same. Going forward, state and local leaders must do everything in their power to proactively address these issues. Otherwise, the science of reading push could founder.

NOTE: Today, the Ohio House Higher Education Committee invited testimony from state and national policy leaders as part of their exploratory hearings on science of reading implementation in Ohio. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy was one of the leaders invited to give testimony. These are his full written remarks.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy 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.

Reading is essential for functioning in today’s society. Unfortunately, roughly 43 million American adults—about one in five—have poor reading skills. 

Giving children a strong start in reading is job number one for elementary schools. An influential national study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that third graders who did not read proficiently were four times more likely to drop out of high school. A longitudinal analysis using Ohio data on third graders found strikingly similar results. The consequences of dropping out are well-documented: higher rates of unemployment, lower lifetime wages, and an increased likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system.

State leaders have long understood the need for stronger literacy in Ohio schools. In 2012 for instance, the General Assembly passed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which calls for annual diagnostic testing in grades K-3 to screen for reading deficiencies; reading improvement plans for struggling readers; and parental notification when a child isn’t reading well. Though recently weakened, the reading guarantee also required schools to retain and provide extra support for third graders who did not meet state reading standards.

While the reading guarantee created a framework for reading intervention, it didn’t directly address curriculum and instruction. In more recent years, literacy experts and advocates—often parents—have pushed for increased attention to effective teaching methods and high quality curricula. Based on a wealth of research about how children best learn to read, they have insisted (and we at Fordham agree) that schools follow the “science of reading.”

You may have heard of that term before and there are slightly varying ways to define it, but in general the science of reading refers to an instructional approach that emphasizes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—what many call the five pillars of reading. Phonics tends to receive the lion’s share of attention—and it is of course foundational to effective early literacy. But it’s important to recognize that the other elements are also crucial. It takes more than simple word recognition to comprehend a passage. Rich vocabulary and background knowledge are also key ingredients to become strong, proficient readers. 

It’s also important to understand practices that are not scientifically based instruction. The most common is a technique known as “three cueing,” which prompts children to guess at words based on a related picture or the word’s position in a sentence, instead of sounding words out. Cueing methods are embedded in widely used reading curricula, most notably Fountas & Pinnell Classroom and Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study. According to a recent survey by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW), these programs were the fourth and sixth most frequently used core ELA curricula by Ohio elementary schools in 2022-23.

Science of reading legislation

Recognizing the need for more effective curriculum and instruction, Governor DeWine and this General Assembly included language in last year’s budget (HB 33) that requires elementary schools to align their literacy instruction with the science of reading. Key elements include:

High-quality instructional materials: HB 33 requires DEW to establish a list of core ELA curricula and intervention programs in grades K-5 that align with the science of reading. It further stipulates that all public schools must use materials from the state-approved list during the 2024–25 school year.

Professional development (PD): To support effective implementation of new curricula, HB 33 requires educators to complete a PD course in the science of reading (unless they’ve already completed similar training). Upon completion, stipends of either $400 or $1,200 are provided depending on the grade and subject taught. In addition, HB 33 also calls for literacy coaches that provide more intensive support for teachers serving in the state’s lowest performing schools.

Teacher preparation: Recent research has demonstrated that not all colleges of education have adequately prepared young teachers in the science of reading, HB 33 takes steps to ensure stronger, more consistent preparation. This is absolutely essential. Ohio is spending tens of million dollars on professional development to—in many cases—retrain teachers. New teachers coming out of our educator preparation programs need to be up-to-date on how best to teach students to read. The Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) must implement audits that review programs’ alignment to the science of reading. The bill also requires the chancellor to revoke program approval if a review uncovers inadequate alignment and deficiencies are not addressed within a year.

Substantial funds were allocated to support these activities. In total, the state will spend $169 million in FYs 2024 and 2025 to support the literacy initiative, with the largest portion going toward PD stipends ($86 million) and subsidies to purchase new curricula ($64 million). Another $18 million will support literacy coaches, and an additional $1 million is set aside to help teacher preparation programs transition to the science of reading (of which $150,000 supports the ODHE audits). 

Table 1: State funding set aside for literacy reforms, combined amounts for FY24 and FY25

Early implementation

As you are all aware, it takes more than passing a bill to spur desired change in our schools. It also takes strong follow-through and buy-in from state and local leaders—what is often referred to as rigorous implementation. We are pleased to report that in recent months, Ohio has undertaken significant steps forward that lay the groundwork for effective school-level implementation. Here, I’d like to highlight two specific efforts but would be happy to answer questions you may have on other implementation elements at the conclusion of the presentation.

Establishing a list of high-quality ELA curricula. In advance of the curriculum requirement that will be in place in 2024-25, DEW—consistent with recent changes in law— implemented a vetting process to approve curricula aligned with the science of reading. In early March, the department announced a state-approved list of core ELA curricula that schools must choose from starting next school year. In total, the department approved fourteen core programs, among which include highly-respected programs that have a strong emphasis on both phonics and the knowledge-building elements needed for comprehension. This process also excluded programs that promote three-cueing.

Allocating funds to support schools needing to overhaul their ELA curricula. The department also recently allocated the $64 million set-aside to help districts and charter schools purchase state-approved ELA curricula. The allocation method relied on information collected in a statewide survey of schools’ pre-reform (2022–23) ELA curricula. The department categorized districts and charters into three groups. While the details about the grouping method are somewhat complex, the basic framework is as follows:

• Aligned districts used a state-approved core curriculum.

• Partially aligned districts used only a state-approved supplemental program.

• Not aligned districts used neither a state-approved core nor supplemental program.

Figure 1 shows the breakdown of districts according to this grouping method. At the top of the figure we see that districts statewide were almost evenly split across the three categories. To their credit, one third of districts have already been using ELA curricula aligned with the science of reading. Districts in this category will be able to continue using their current program. Another one third of districts are partially aligned. They may continue to use their current supplemental materials—for instance, a phonics program that helps fill gaps—but will need to purchase a state-approved core ELA program. The final third of districts will need to completely overhaul their ELA curricula by installing a new program. The figure below also displays the breakdown of districts by typology (e.g., rural versus urban), and indicates that suburban districts and charter schools will likely be making the most significant changes in ELA curriculum in the coming year. 

Figure 1: Districts and charter schools’ alignment (pre-reform) with Ohio’s new ELA curricula standards

Based on these groupings, the department allocated the bulk of the instructional material dollars to not-aligned districts that need to purchase new curricula to meet state requirements. On average, not-aligned districts received $121 per PK–5 student, while partially aligned and aligned districts received $101 and $37 per PK–5 student, respectively.

Final thoughts

Ohio is right to focus on literacy as the linchpin for greater student success and a more flourishing tomorrow. In closing, I would like to offer a few final comments.

First, stay the course on the literacy initiative. Right now, there is a lot of momentum behind the science of reading. That’s a good thing, as it has focused attention on the urgent need for stronger curriculum and instruction. But as we all know, enthusiasm for various reforms can wax and wane. Helping more children learn to read proficiently through more effective practices will take significant time and patience. In the days and months ahead, it will be crucial for Ohio to keep its eye on the ball, and not let up.

Second, continue to invest in the science of reading. House Bill 33 provided a generous down-payment on the state’s renewed effort to boost reading proficiency. But implementation won’t stop in June 2025. In fact, the work of fully equipping all teachers to effectively use high-quality curricula is likely to continue in earnest for several years to come. Ohio should continue to set-aside dollars that support strong professional learning, and to meet curriculum needs that might extend beyond core instruction. As the initiative progresses, policymakers would also be smart to set aside dollars for research and evaluation. Results from evaluative studies would help support school leaders as they continue to make decisions about which materials to put into teachers’ hands, and how best to support their work in the classroom.

Third, don’t forget why all this matters: Rigorous implementation of the science of reading promises higher student achievement and a more prosperous future for Ohio and its citizens. At this point, it’s worth pausing to consider the impressive gains of Mississippi, a state that was once criticized for having low student achievement. The Magnolia State recognized the need for stronger literacy instruction more than a decade ago and was one of the nation’s earliest adopters of a science of reading law.

The tables below show the average scores on the 4th grade reading National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, for Mississippi and Ohio. As you can see, Mississippi’s major student groups have made significant improvements over the past decade. The reading scores of Mississippi’s low-income students are up 10 points from their scores in 2011—and as context a 10-point gain is roughly equivalent to a grade level. Scores are also up by 6 and 10 points for Mississippi’s Black and white students respectively. Impressively, all three of these student groups read at higher levels today than their peer groups in Ohio. Let me say that again, Mississippi students in each student group read better—sometimes much better—than their peers in Ohio.

Table 2: Ohio versus Mississippi’s performance on 4th grade NAEP reading by subgroup, 2011 to 2022

No one can predict whether Ohio will ultimately achieve the same level of progress that Mississippi has accomplished. But it does illustrate what can happen on behalf of students when state leaders and local educators commit themselves to thoroughly implementing the science of reading. And based on studies by Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek, we can be confident that boosting the literacy skills of today’s students will pay off with stronger economic growth in the years to come.[1]

We at Fordham couldn’t be more excited about the next chapter in Ohio’s effort to improve literacy. A strong law is in place, and implementation is off and running. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, and continue to follow through on behalf of Ohio’s 1.6 million public school students.

This is second in a series where I examine issues in K–12 education that Ohio leaders should tackle in the next biennial state budget. The first covered the state’s science of reading initiative, and this essay looks at the way Ohio counts—and funds—low-income students.

Everyone today agrees that low-income students tend to need more resources to achieve rigorous standards and exit high school ready for college or career. Such students usually come from more challenging backgrounds and face obstacles that—without strong supports—can lead to achievement gaps. Teaches also tend to demand a salary premium to serve in high-poverty schools, which is another reason to provide extra dollars.

In line with this thinking, Ohio has long provided additional funds to needier schools. This academic year, Ohio will allocate $563 million in Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA)—one of the components of the overall school funding formula. These dollars are intended to cover the costs of providing supplemental services, such as high-dosage tutoring, extended learning time, and other interventions.

Additional funds for low-income students remain essential to the state funding system, but lawmakers must improve the way dollars are steered to districts and charter schools. The underlying problem is that Ohio misidentifies thousands of higher-income students as “economically disadvantaged,” which in turn thins the dollars available to support students who are actually low-income. Fortunately, as discussed below, there is a solution—“direct certification”—that would improve the accuracy of these data and better ensure that funding goes to support students who need it the most.

Problems identifying “economically disadvantaged” students

Along with several other states, Ohio uses a students’ eligibility for federally subsidized meals to identify them as economically disadvantaged. In the past, this method worked out reasonably well. Eligibility for free-or-reduced-priced lunches was restricted to students from households earning less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level.[1] Hence, disadvantaged numbers used to more accurately reflect students who were low-income.

Congress, however, relaxed eligibility requirements in 2010 by enacting the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). This policy allows qualifying[2] mid- to high-poverty districts and individual schools to provide subsidized meals to all students—regardless of their family income. While this has reduced the administrative burden of verifying incomes and perhaps improved child nutrition, CEP has eroded the quality of economically disadvantaged data in states like Ohio.

Figure 1 displays the marked increase in the number of districts reporting universal to near-universal disadvantaged rates after the introduction of CEP. Prior to 2012–13, the first year of program implementation in Ohio, just one district (Cleveland) reported all students as disadvantaged. With CEP, that number began to rise and since 2017–18, more than sixty districts—roughly one in ten—have reported rates above 95 percent.

Figure 1: Number of Ohio districts reporting 95 percent or more students as economically disadvantaged

As the table below indicates, many of the districts that report universal rates today had nowhere near those numbers prior to CEP. Circleville, for example, had a disadvantaged rate of 55 percent in 2011–12. This year, the district reports nearly every single student as disadvantaged. As shown at the bottom of the table, the statewide disadvantaged rate has also climbed. Note that an actual increase in low-income students cannot explain these jumps, as Census data indicate a slightly declining childhood poverty rate for Ohio over the past decade. Instead, today’s sky-high disadvantaged rates reflect the impact of CEP.

Table 1: CEP districts reporting the largest changes in disadvantaged rates in each district typology

Inflated disadvantaged rates lead to unfair allocations of state aid

Because DPIA funding is tied to disadvantaged rates, CEP districts reap windfalls while similarly situated non-CEP districts receive substantially less. Table 2 shows stark differences in per-pupil DPIA funds for CEP districts in Hamilton County versus other districts that likely have similar numbers of disadvantaged students. As the fourth column indicates, the four CEP districts receive more than $1,300 per disadvantaged pupil under a fully phased-in formula—far more than their non-CEP peers.[3] Column five indicates that two of the CEP districts receive more than $1,000 this year under the actual “phased-in” formula. These amounts are considerably higher than what non-CEP districts receive, even though they’re also high poverty. Cincinnati, for instance, receives approximately 20–25 percent less per disadvantaged pupil than Lockland and Mount Healthy. Princeton receives roughly half of what Norwood receives in DPIA, despite historically having an almost identical disadvantaged rate.

Table 2: DPIA funding for selected districts in Hamilton County (CEP districts shaded in blue)

Toward more accurate headcounts and a fairer allocation of DPIA

To ensure accurate data on disadvantaged students and to improve the allocation of DPIA, lawmakers should make two changes. 

First, they should require the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to identify low-income students based on direct certification. Rather than counting students based on meals eligibility, this process identifies low-income students through a records match with their families’ participation in programs such as SNAP, TANF, or Medicaid.[4] Tennessee and Massachusetts have moved to using direct certification to count low-income students, and this process is already used in Ohio to determine districts’ and individual schools’ eligibility for CEP. By removing higher-income students from Ohio’s disadvantaged headcounts, direct certification would yield more reliable data on low-income students.[5]

Second, lawmakers should then use these more accurate data to drive DPIA funding to schools. While fewer students would be identified as economically disadvantaged under direct certification, it would allocate dollars more fairly to districts. Moreover, with fewer disadvantaged students identified and more confidence in the data quality, Ohio could (and should) boost the per-pupil DPIA funding so that low-income students receive even stronger supports.

Properly funding low-income students’ educations should remain a priority for state lawmakers. Yet without a reliable method for identifying them, Ohio is misdirecting millions in funds. The state’s current funding formula is often hailed by supporters as the “Fair School Funding Plan.” To live up to that impressive billing, lawmakers must shift to a more accurate count of low-income students.