As 2019 comes to an end, so does a significant decade for education reform. For all the Sturm und Drang over the lack of improvement, the education policy landscape is no longer the same. Granted, the first half of the 2010s looked decidedly different than the latter half, but states have largely stuck with higher standards, and the honesty gap in the reporting of student performance continues to close. It’s all easy to lose sight of in light of today’s fraught national politics and intramural food fights, which tend to shed more heat than light on what’s transpired in America’s fifty laboratories of innovation.

Consider one of my favorite labs, situated at the nation’s crossroads: Indiana. I’ve spilled gallons of ink on my former home, so it’s only fitting that my take on the decade is through the lens of the Hoosier State. In 2010, I was an official at the Indiana Department of Education during the state’s halcyon days under the leadership of Governor Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent Tony Bennett. In a short period (i.e., the first third of the decade), we successfully pushed through a dizzying phalanx of education reforms enabled by a unique alignment of political stars. Key among these were improvements to third-grade reading, teacher quality, collective bargaining, school choice, and accountability.

After our efforts were halted by politics, progress on some of these reforms stalled. But there’s one policy area where the results have been an unqualified success: school choice—especially within Indiana’s traditional public schools (i.e., interdistrict transfers). While the state’s private school voucher program—which we helped establish in 2011—garners the bulk of local and national headlines, the majority of Indiana’s students switch schools using a different system: open enrollment. In fact, the number of Hoosier families exercising the power of school choice is far more than what public policy debates in Indiana would suggest. Nearly 60,000 students (see the figure below from my recent paper), or about 6 percent of students enrolled in public schools, “choice” into a traditional public school other than the one assigned to them based on their address—a population larger than total charter school or voucher enrollment in the state.

Figure 1. Indiana school choice transfers, 2006–2019

What this means is that in spite of the turnover at the top (i.e., three governors and three state chiefs in ten years) and ongoing political turmoil, more Indiana parents are taking the education of their children into their own hands and are none the worse for wear. At the beginning of the decade, about 25,000 students statewide were able to exercise some form of choice; as we close out 2019, that number is closer to 135,000 students—a whopping increase of over 400 percent! By any responsible measure, this is a victory for education consumers and for educational freedom. More importantly, school choice in Indiana is permanent now that families have it. You cannot unring that bell.

Nationally, the choice die has been similarly cast. In 2010, less than two million students were enrolled in charter schools nationwide; today that number is over three million. Likewise, there were about one million students participating in private school choice programs (i.e., education savings accounts, school vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and individual tax credits and deductions) at the decade’s onset; in 2019, that number is closer to 1.4 million. Both sectors have experienced impressive growth in opportunity.

This is not to say that any of us could have correctly guessed today’s circumstances back in 2010. To be honest, my money would have been on charter schools outpacing the field after we lifted the state’s cap on them. I would have also predicted Mitch Daniels sitting in the Oval Office, with Tony taking his talents to the national stage. None of this panned out, but Mitch was still elected president and we still ended up with an education secretary who has no qualms about taking on the establishment heads on. History unfolds in unpredictable ways.

Turning the page on this chapter, more changes are in store. Beginning in 2021, Indiana’s governor will appoint the state schools chief for the very first time. This brings the possibility of alignment between the two offices after years of being at loggerheads. Only time will tell whether the disorienting effects can be put in the rearview mirror, but the expansion of parental options seems destined to continue. While the pace of growth does show some signs of abating for charters and vouchers, no such trend line can be observed for the state’s open enrollment policy. Yes, student performance has plateaued, and in this sense Indiana is no longer a “reform idol.” But when it comes to providing parents with a panoply of schooling options, Hoosiers continue to be worth emulating.

At the beginning of the modern ed-reform movement, getting onto four decades ago, urban Catholic schools were everywhere, serving as vital proof points in the debate about what was possible. While too many traditional public schools serving disadvantaged communities were either unsafe, failed to produce graduates with even basic skills, or both, urban Catholic schools stood apart. They inspired a wave of reform until, perhaps ironically, the reforms they inspired eventually nudged them out of the spotlight—that plus, of course, the country’s endless hand-wringing over private and religious schools.

Today, due to a combination of increased pressure from charters, fiscal woes, demographic shifts, and in many cases, failure to adapt to the brave new world of accountability and choice, more than 1,200 Catholic schools have closed. And that’s just in the past decade. It also needs to be said that news of the strong results most Catholic schools have long achieved with disadvantaged youngsters has been eclipsed by the impressive outcomes of the nation’s highest performing charter schools and networks.

Notably, those charters have achieved their results in part by borrowing some of the easiest-to-replicate practices of urban Catholic schools. Yet we also see mounting evidence that those commendable charter results are not yet translating into the long-term outcomes we all hope for the students we serve. That’s why, as I argue in a recent Manhattan Institute report, it’s time to take another look at Catholic schools and see whether, while copying their most visible practices—the discipline, the uniforms, the structure—ed reformers may have missed other elements of Catholic schooling that are key to long-term success.

Even top-performing charter networks are struggling to translate their strong test-score gains into college persistence and graduation. Perhaps no charter network has faced this reality more directly and openly than the KIPP network, which in 2011 released a “College Completion Report” that found that just “33 percent of students who completed a KIPP middle school ten or more years ago have graduated from a four-year college.” Those results fell far short of the network’s aspirations to help 75 percent of its graduates earn four-year degrees.

In response, KIPP made a number of programmatic shifts, including KIPP Through College and a “character counts” program intended to develop the values and skills that young people need in order to succeed in college and beyond. Yet earlier this year, Mathematica released a new appraisal of KIPP’s college completion results, noting that, despite its heroic efforts and hefty investments, the network is still struggling to achieve its college completion goals. While attending a KIPP charter school did have a positive impact on college enrollment, it did not have a statistically significant impact on college persistence: Just 33 percent of KIPP graduates persisted through the first four semesters of college, compared with 26 percent in the control group.

Reflecting on these and other results, earlier this week longtime charter advocate and City Fund founder Neerav Kingsland took stock of where the charter-centric approach to ed reform stands today. “The results coming out of the best charter organizations, and cities as a whole,” he wrote, “are sobering…we underestimated how stacked the world is against kids growing up in poverty.... We should admit that we failed to live up to our expectations.”

As leading charter advocate take an honest and hard look at their work, many reformers are also taking this moment to explore what else we can glean from Catholic schools, which have demonstrated more durable results. They’re looking beyond what’s easy to replicate and examining fundamental questions about the values and beliefs that may be foundational to the long-term impacts that Catholic schools have had.

That quest must inevitably lead them to the beliefs and values that form the foundation of Catholic education, for Catholic school success is not simply the product of rigorous curriculum, structure, and order. It’s also the result of a school culture animated by the belief that every child is made in the image and likeness of God and focused on drawing out of every pupil their own God-given potential.

Careful observers will also see that Catholic schools’ academic results are not actually the main goal; rather, they’re byproducts of schools that focus on forming young people not just with the skills that will make them financially successful, but also with the habits of virtue and values that will make them choose to do good and contribute to their communities.

After all, the evidence suggests that Catholic schools continue to demonstrate strong long-term outcomes, even as they struggle financially and struggle to compete for student enrollment and for solid state test scores. For example, girls who attended Catholic schools are more likely to avoid early pregnancy and boys are less likely to face incarceration. Research has also shown that Catholic school graduates are more likely to be civically engaged, to vote, to volunteer, and to give to charitable causes than their public-school peers.

Put more simply: When it comes to long-term life outcomes, students from high-performing charter schools seem to underperform relative to their strong test score results, whereas urban Catholic schools tend to overperform relative to their test scores. And at the core of these successes is the way Catholic schools think about their students and why Catholic educators do this work.

The goal of Catholic schools is not to secure top marks in a school rating system but to form students who opt to serve, who choose right over wrong, and who contribute to their communities. The goal of Catholic schools is not discipline and structure merely for the sake of order but for the sake of building the habits of self-management that lead to virtuous lives.

As ed reformers seek paths forward to the life-changing results they want for students, Catholic schools offer the simple but challenging lesson that purpose must be anchored to something larger and more enduring than individual-level achievement. As we work together to drive continued improvement and systemic change, it’s worth looking beyond easy-to-replicate programs and practices to the foundational values and beliefs that help schools build the habits and skills that serve young people long after they graduate.

Online courses have produced mixed results. They can be good tools for motivated students. But many struggling students use online courses to gain course credit without realizing they aren’t preparing them for college. These negative, unintended consequences may be caused by reduced interaction with teachers for enrolled students. With this in mind, Chad Turley and Charles Graham of Brigham Young University published a recent case study in the Journal of Online Learning Research on the impact of student-teacher interaction on student satisfaction, perception of the course, and completion time for online courses.

The study used an unnamed nonprofit in the western United States sponsored by private, denominationally-affiliated universities with 100,000 annual enrollees that offers 550 online courses from the middle school to college level. They chose two secondary-level courses: math and English language arts, which each offered two models of online education. Model One was more self-directed and had a higher enrollment, while Model Two required teachers to contact five to seven students a week with personalized emails and teach some lessons synchronously with live feedback. Furthermore, the nonprofit sent the researchers student rating data from a twelve-question survey administered at the end of the course to gauge participants’ satisfaction. It used a 1–8 scale, with 8 being the most positive, and had three yes or no questions. Turley and Graham also compiled teacher communication data using a log with eight questions that instructors filled out regarding each interaction with participants. It covered the reason for the interaction, time taken to respond to students, who initiated, and the medium used. The total number of students in the courses were 1,025, and 764 completed the end-of-course survey.

Turley and Graham then analyzed the data to find differences in student satisfaction ratings, completion rates, and teacher time investment between course models and subjects.

In both subjects, participants rated Model Two courses as having more timely and meaningful instructor feedback. And in English, students were more likely to be satisfied with their experience and more likely to recommend the course to a friend.

On completion rates and teacher time investment, Model Two students were 5 percent more likely to complete the course in math and 3 percent more likely in English. But they took longer to complete coursework: five more weeks in math; two more in English. Turley and Graham note that this is probably due to the types of assignments.

Teacher communication in both models was almost entirely through personalized emails, with a few video conference calls and none via phone call. For Model Two, teachers averaged 14.9 hours over four months responding to student emails, but Model One teachers averaged only 2.5 hours. And Model Two teacher-initiated time investments were around 99.1 hours. A large majority of those communications went towards contacting inactive students, while 45.5 and 36.3 percent of student-initiated ones were about grading and course content, respectively. The researchers also note that Model Two teachers weren’t paid more for their extra time.

Turley and Graham’s study makes a good case that some students can work independently at a faster pace, but that teachers make a difference for most students, especially in English courses. Moreover, it presents an important caveat for teachers that their time investment in online courses can end up going towards non-essentials and not be sufficiently compensated. Future studies could shed more light on this issue by looking at student motivation and performance, instead of merely completion.

SOURCE: Chad Turley and Charles Graham, “Interaction, Student Satisfaction, and Teacher Time Investment in Online High School Courses,” Journal of Online Learning Research (2019).

1. Ohio’s Report Card Study Committee released its report earlier this week. Its findings are meant to guide lawmakers in making possible changes to said report cards. But at least two lawmakers have put the committee and their process on blast right out of the gate. Predictable. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/19) As you may have noticed, there is zero discussion of the findings in the actual report in the Dispatch story. Also predictable. That is because, as Jeremy Kelley tells us, there are no real “findings”, simply an inventory of the recommendations of all the groups that were at the table. These are, he notes, often at odds with one another. I guess that was the most predictable part of the whole process. (Dayton Daily News, 12/16/19)
    
2. Staying in Dayton for a moment, this extended discussion of the $30 million the district wants to borrow and spend on building maintenance sounds shady as heck to me. Not to mention how they’ve been spending (or not spending) additional millions for years before now. Lots of money is apparently needed but no one has a list to support that claim. Lots of money is going to be spent but no one seems to know when, how much, or on what. I predict a unanimous vote regardless. (Dayton Daily News, 12/15/19)
   
   

3. Also predictable: Residents of the Village of Hills and Dales will now step up to try and interest the Ohio Supreme Court in that lawsuit the village itself was not able to get moving. The exact same arguments—copy/paste/submit. (Canton Repository, 12/16/19)
    
4. Surprise! (Not) The MJ’s editors opined in favor of the incoming interim CEO choice in Lorain City Schools. Oddly, all the stuff they laud him for was also said about current CEO David Hardy when he was hired too. I have a prediction about this… (The Morning Journal, 12/14/19) Now, while the conclusion that Dispatch editors reach here regarding the EdChoice Scholarship program is entirely predictable, the rationale they use to get there is most surprising. “Wholly unique”, one might say. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/18/19)
   
   

5. The original version of this story carried the headline “Taking A Different Route To Graduation, No High School Required.” Awesome clickbait, right? Certainly made me look. Well, the story is not about that, and the headline has since been wisely changed to the far-less-clickbaity “only some high school required”. Unfortunately, it still isn’t accurate. What the student profiled did was attend a magnet school that had an auto mechanic program. From there, he continued his high school education and graduated like everyone else. Just some different electives. That school also has visual arts and dance programs for high schoolers who are adept and interested. It has been a jewel of Columbus City Schools since I was a kid, for that reason. The benefit for the students here is on-the-job-training and a pathway to earn valuable workforce certifications for free while still in high school and, in this case, a nearly-guaranteed job working for the local transit agency after graduation. After. Graduation. What’s funny is that the student has since quit his job at the bus garage and is now making even more money with his commercial driver’s license…which he could actually have done at age 18 with—you predicted it, didn’t you?—“no high school required”. But surely the public media outlet connected with the Ohio State University wouldn’t trying to advocate for that, would it? (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 12/17/19)
    
6. Finally today, here is a mix of the predictable and the surprising. What is predictable: Folks in Cleveland love the Say Yes to Education program. And who wouldn’t, given the fantastic profiles of the students the college scholarship effort is supporting and the 4 percent boost to college enrollment that the program has, apparently, generated. But here’s the thing: all of the students currently being assisted did not experience the full support of the program since it only came around late in their senior years. These kids were college material already, weren’t they? So why the anemic growth rates predicted for future years? Surely more support for a longer time should lead to more growth shouldn’t it? Even a little more? And that 4 percent boost? Nearly all community college attendees. Supposedly this is due to the timing of the start of the program, but what if it isn’t? Shouldn’t that figure in to your future plans? Whatevs, I guess. It’s their money. But hopefully the analysis going forward will be as clear-eyed as possible. Although I predict that it won’t. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 12/15/19) 

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Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series written by the expert review team from Fordham’s recent study, The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What’s Online any Good?

In our last post, we highlighted some major pros and cons unearthed during our analysis of over 300 of the most-downloaded resources on three popular supplemental curriculum sites, Teachers Pay Teachers, ReadWriteThink, and Share My Lesson. Here we discuss the best and worst ways teachers might use them, as well as the role district and school leaders might play in adjudicating their use.

How should teachers not be using these resources? First, they should never just assume they are aligned to purported standards and are high-quality without thorough analysis and as much adaptation as needed. Second, the materials cannot take the place of a thoughtfully designed year-long curriculum. With rare exceptions, the materials aren’t designed to be integrated as is into a curriculum that already provides a holistic progression.

Instead, we recommend that teachers work with colleagues to choose one promising unit and refine it together before using it—analyzing its strengths and patching its weaknesses. Using this approach, teachers can efficiently build an effective unit without having to start from scratch, using the materials as jumping off points to generate ideas.

Online materials can also be used to glean lessons and activities for students who need instruction at more basic levels or at lower levels of cognitive complexity. However, this approach requires thoughtful evaluation, and again, modification.

If teachers were to consistently use the three above approaches when selecting supplemental resources, students would be much better off. But given the time constraints all teachers face, we strongly feel that district and school leaders could help teachers choose supplemental materials more efficiently and wisely.

Although the best entity to evaluate and curate supplemental materials likely comprises not only teachers but district and school leaders, it’s unlikely they will have the time and resources to police the materials in this way—nor, in fact, should “policing” be their primary charge.

Still, there is a crucial role for administrators in developing a review process for all materials so that teachers can readily evaluate online lessons for alignment and quality and thereby choose high-quality resources. The review process could take the form of an evaluation tool or rubric that teachers could use fairly easily, and would ideally be something that could be completed in fifteen minutes or less. Districts could then provide professional development and guided practice on the use of the evaluation rubric.

States could also provide a model rubric to be adapted by local districts to their own needs, similar to other state tools, such as the Louisiana Department of Education’s “Assessment Evaluation Tool for Alignment in ELA/Literacy.”  

In addition to or in place of an evaluation tool, districts could, as indicated, implement and support collaboration among teachers to download or purchase promising units and modify and develop them into excellent instructional units that meet student needs.

All of this said, if districts invest in or develop their own extensive, high-quality, standards-based curriculum, teachers may be less likely to feel that they have to go looking for add-on lessons online. The reality is that, when the core curriculum is lacking or nonexistent and teachers’ time is highly limited, many teachers will continue to fall back on the websites that are springing up and growing day by day. Our hope is that districts will increase their focus on coherent curricular materials—first, by providing more good curriculum, and second, by helping teachers learn how to choose quality add-on resources as needed.

The best grant I ever made? It’s a tough question after ten years in philanthropy.

In my top ten, though, is a germ of an idea I supported with seed funding about six years ago: a service that would rate the quality of instructional materials. The gist of it was that if there were a neutral reviewer—like a Consumer Reports for curriculum—better stuff would find its way into more classrooms.

EdReports, which the idea evolved into, has now rated more than 95 percent of all full-year comprehensive Math and English language arts curricula. School districts and state education offices are its primary audience. Many such agencies now require curriculum providers to have an EdReports rating to be considered for adoption.

But anyone who knows a teacher or regularly visits classrooms knows that full-year comprehensive curricula are far from the only materials teachers use. Supplemental programs have been eating into full-year market share in a big way over the last fifteen years. Widely used offerings like Dreambox, ST Math, and Newsela have made their way into the daily routines of millions of teachers and students. EdReports doesn’t rate these kinds of instructional materials. I wish they did.

Even more difficult to assess is the explosion of resources teachers download from lesson sharing sites.

Enter Fordham Institute’s latest report, The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What’s Online Any Good? Their answer? Most curricular resources on popular lesson sharing sites fail to meet the quality standards of expert reviewers.

The finding isn’t that surprising. But as is sometimes the case with such reports, I’m left with a more fundamental question: “Why?”

Why are millions of teachers adopting what experts say are sub-par materials from these sites? On Teachers Pay Teachers alone, around two out of three U.S. teachers have downloaded one billion pieces of content since its founding by a NYC public school teacher thirteen years ago.

Why do so many teachers supplement or replace core content with homegrown materials, often developed by other teachers they don’t know?

One popular explanation is that teachers have no choice—their schools and districts simply haven’t provided them with the curriculum they need for their classrooms. Most of us can probably share a couple of examples that fit this narrative.

But the empirical evidence for this assertion is thin. RAND’s American Teacher Panel indicated in 2018 that only 7 percent of math and 14 percent of English language arts teachers said they do not use an established curriculum (though much of what teachers reported using fell short of EdReports’s highest rating).

In June of this year, Tom Kane and his Center for Education Policy Research colleagues reported that in six Common Core states, more than 80 percent of schools had adopted a standards-aligned math curriculum and 93 percent of teachers reported using it in more than 50 percent of their lessons.

Even still, 94 percent of these same teachers reported using other materials from web repositories at least some of the time, with 26 percent saying they used them in more than half their lessons. Two of the top reasons for using other materials? The core textbook was “too hard” and contained examples that were “not sufficiently engaging.” “Too easy” and “not covering all standards” ranked among the lowest reasons for importing other resources.

Earlier this year, our team at NewSchools partnered with Gallup on a nationally representative survey of educator perceptions of digital learning tools. Some of what we learned might shed light on why teachers use the kind of lesson sharing sites studied in the Fordham report.

When it comes to selecting resources for their classrooms, 81 percent of teachers rate other teachers as their most trusted source of information about what works.

Teachers trust other teachers. A lot. Far more than principals (28 percent) or district staff (34 percent), more than review websites (39 percent), and more than evidence-based reports (18 percent).

Folks who propose adding expert ratings to popular lesson sharing sites are likely to be disappointed with the results. Teachers are far more influenced by each other than the judgements of experts.

What about establishing tighter constraints on teachers’ ability to incorporate other materials alongside mandated curriculum? Boosters of this idea should at least acknowledge that top down efforts to micromanage the daily behavior of three million teachers has yet to be a winning strategy for improvement.

What if teachers’ professional development helped them become more discerning pickers? Seems promising, especially if integrated into materials-specific PD experiences that high-quality curriculum advocates are currently pushing.

Another idea, not mutually exclusive, is to better understand what teachers think might be missing from existing ratings rubrics and how their front-line wisdom could be better captured in them.

Until we understand how teachers’ overwhelming trust in each other affects what they choose and use, proposed fixes to quality problems with all types of instructional materials are likely to flop.

Editor’s note: This essay was first published on Medium by NewSchools Venture Fund.

School districts, let’s face it, are the giants in K–12 education. Because states traditionally awarded districts “territorial exclusive franchises”—a gentle way of saying monopolies—they enroll the vast majority of Ohio students. In recent weeks, media coverage has been awash with complaints from district officials who feel aggrieved by policies that expand eligibility for EdChoice, a state-funded program that provides scholarships (a.k.a vouchers) enabling students to attend private schools.

At the root of the quarrel is the prospect of increased competition, particularly in districts that have long been sheltered from such a threat. School districts, with their millions in tax support, have enjoyed a major advantage in attracting students over their tuition-based counterparts. To help level the playing field, the EdChoice program has, since 2007, offered state funded vouchers that assist predominately low- to mid-income families who would prefer a private school option. With new state rules in place, students from more districts are starting to become eligible.

Although EdChoice directly supports families, it does put some budgetary pressure on districts. When they serve fewer students, their state subsidies usually decline. While there is no evidence that student achievement suffers as a result, administrators are likely concerned about the pain that comes from downsizing. That explains the saber-rattling and their demands that the legislature roll back eligibility.

Whether Ohio should encourage a more pluralistic, choice-friendly system of K–12 schools, or whether it should retain a largely monolithic system, is a worthwhile conversation. But a reasoned debate about this big-picture policy question doesn’t seem to be the goal of school officials. In their zeal to preserve the status quo, they’ve distorted some of the facts, and a few of their remarks have gone over the top. Consider a few representative statements (my colleague Jeff Murray’s news clippings have more articles).

Matt Miller, superintendent for Lakota Schools, Butler County’s largest district, said the new plan overly benefits private schools at the expense of public school systems.

Miller said that “the private schools benefiting from this program are not held to the same accountability measures as our public schools, making this whole fiasco seem like nothing more than a money grab by our state legislators.”

Talawanda Schools Superintendent Ed Theroux echoed those complaints, saying that “the EdChoice voucher system is ill conceived, poorly developed and is an attack against public education.” —Journal-News

Needless to say, calling EdChoice a “fiasco,” a “money grab,” “ill conceived,” and an “attack against public education” is strong rhetoric. But these allegations ignore the real intention of the program—to offer a wider range of school options to families. Remember: No one is compelling parents to avail themselves of a private-school scholarship. It’s strictly voluntary. Hence, the only channel through which EdChoice would “attack public education” is via the preferences and choices of Ohio families.

Turning to Northeast Ohio, a school official gave these comments to a local news station:

“Our families know that this is a very strong district. We have a graduation rate now exceeding 95%. Our students go to some of the outstanding colleges and universities throughout the country. They excel in music and arts and athletics and other endeavors,” Stephens said. “And that’s what brings people to Shaker Heights. We just feel that we and other districts deserve to be able to keep the funding that local taxpayers have approved for us.”

“We think that when local tax dollars are suddenly funneled to private and religious schools, and the taxpayers have no say in that whatsoever, that’s simply wrong,” Stephens said. “They want their local dollars to go to their local schools.” —News5 Cleveland

Schools tooting their own horn is about par for the course and perfectly fine. Unfortunately, the statement is misleading in two respects and, in my view, mildly offensive in a third.

First, it’s wrong to say that EdChoice is funded via local school taxes, a common misconception that districts often promote. The scholarships are entirely funded by state appropriations. No local taxes are involved. When a family decides to use a voucher, the local property tax revenue of a district remains unchanged. Why? Districts’ local tax revenue is equal to the tax base times the tax rate. Although student enrollment matters for state funding allocations, it’s not part of the local revenue equation.

Second, it’s wrong to assert that dollars are “suddenly funneled to private and religious schools” as if the state is transferring funds for no apparent reason. Again, the only way state dollars are “funneled” to private schools is through the voluntary choices of Ohio families. The funding transfer merely ensures that the school actually responsible for educating the child receives the money to do so. Meanwhile, it’s a stretch to say that “taxpayers have no say in that whatsoever.” Believe it or not, voucher-receiving families pay taxes as well.

Third, the criticism of religious schools doesn’t seem very respectful to people of faith. While religion and education is a contentious area, why suggest a hostility to religious families who might prefer a school that matches their beliefs?

The cascade of criticism leveled against EdChoice by school districts is certainly predictable. It’s in their self-interest to push back on increased competition and choice. But it’s disappointing to see public leaders take the low road when condemning private school scholarships and the opportunities they afford. Even with expanded choice, school districts are likely to remain the giants of K–12 education. But Goliaths should be wary of treating the lowly with contempt, for we all know how that story ends.  

According to a recent Hechinger Report article, U.S. schools overlook a staggering 3.6 million gifted students, many of whom come from less advantaged backgrounds. By failing to identify these bright youngsters—much less provide them with special services—the nation leaves vast “unrealized potential” on the table. New research on a Boston acceleration program reveals just how important it is for schools to serve these high-achieving students.

Conducted by Columbia University researcher Sarah Cohodes, this study examines the impacts of Boston Public Schools’ Advanced Work Class (AWC). The program offers qualifying students an opportunity to learn in classrooms dedicated to advanced instruction throughout grades four through six. Program eligibility is based on a third grade normed-referenced test, with approximately 10 to 15 percent of Boston students meeting the test-score cut off. Although AWC participants tend to come from more advantaged backgrounds than their peers districtwide, nearly half of them are black or Hispanic, and two in three are eligible for subsidized meals. Most students who accept the AWC offer in fourth grade stay in the program through sixth grade—on average, students participate for 2.7 years.

To estimate the effects of AWC participation, Cohodes uses a “regression discontinuity” statistical method that in general compares students just above and below the eligibility cut-off. The basic idea is that these students are essentially identical, and by almost random draw, they either qualify for the program or not. In terms of outcomes, she examines state exam results, AP test-taking, SAT participation and scores, high school graduation, and college enrollment. Because the longer-run outcomes require a wider time frame, the analysis focuses on cohorts whose students were in third grade between 2001 and 2005.

Interesting findings emerge, especially for students of color. On state tests scores, black and Hispanic participants perform at slightly higher levels than the control group, though their gains are not quite statistically significant. The results for AP test-taking are likewise positive, though again not significant. More impressive results surface when examining SAT participation and high-school graduation. Among black and Hispanic AWC participants, 86 percent take the SAT compared to 74 percent of their peers (though their test scores are just marginally higher). Meanwhile, students of color post an 87 percent on-time graduation rate versus 67 percent for the control group, a large and statistically significant gain. The program’s impact is more muted, however, for Asian and white students, with largely null findings for those groups.

Perhaps the most important finding is that AWC boosts college enrollment among students of color. Of AWC’s black and Hispanic participants, 66 percent enroll in college right after high school, while just 40 percent of the control group do so. The study also finds that AWC leads to attendance at higher-quality colleges (as measured by graduates’ earnings), and the increase in college enrollment is being driven largely by matriculation at four-year universities. Yet akin to the K–12 outcomes, the impacts of AWC on college-going among Asian and white students are insignificant. The advantages in college enrollment for black and Hispanic participants are somewhat predictable, given that they’re more likely to graduate high school on-time. These effects “do not occur in isolation,” Cohodes writes. “Instead they rely on sequential increases in meeting milestones along the way.” 

What mechanisms explain these results? Supplemental analyses explore whether exposure to higher-performing teachers and classmates are behind the gains for black and Hispanics. Her analyses rule out both as the primary drivers of these gains. Overall, the study concludes: “It appears that AWC is the beginning of a chain of events that causes participants to stay on-track for college throughout high school…. These small gains may build upon each other, with AWC providing the crucial ‘foot-in-the-door’ that begins a chain of positively reinforcing events.” Indeed, schools should strive to ensure that high flyers are identified and offered challenging coursework that enable them to “maintain their altitude.” Taking a look at the successful Boston model would be a good first step.

Source: Sarah R. Cohodes, “The Long-Run Impacts of Specialized Programming for High-Achieving Students,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (forthcoming). An open-access version is available here.

Bites is back with you after a tiny hiatus last Friday. So sorry to leave you hanging. Lots to talk about, so let’s dive in!

1. EdChoice eligibility heartburn stuff from various suburbs around the state: First up, dyspeptic details from the current holder of the Livingston Chair of School Choice Animus. (Akron Beacon-Journal, 12/11/19) Folks in central Ohio’s otherwise-awesome-I’m-sure suburban districts feel the same. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/15/19) We hear about the heartburn occurring in Lorain County for the first time here. (The Elyria Chronicle, 12/16/19) We’ve heard so frequently from the suburban districts in Butler and Warren counties—including this piece—that it may be more a case of rising gorge than simple heartburn. At least a private school parent was consulted this time. (The Journal-News, 12/14/19) The same choir masters who have been leading the Heartburn Chorus tried last week to add the state board of education to their ongoing refrain, but it didn’t work all that well. The board voted to pass along to the state legislature just two of the education establishment’s nine recommendations for “fixing” the EdChoice Scholarship program. I guess it turns out that some of these folks are actually baritones sometimes. Who knew? (Gongwer Ohio, 12/13/19)
    
2. Updates from two of the state’s Academic Distress Commission districts: The elected members of the Youngstown Board of Education last week opted to tell folks what is best to do to turn around a long-underperforming school district. I suppose that’s slightly better than the Iceberg Avoidance lecture Captain Smith had been planning to give in New York on April 17, 1912. (Vindy.com, 12/15/19) The Lorain ADC named an interim CEO for the district last week. He is Greg Ring, a former school superintendent retired from nearby Firelands Local School District and from the county ESC. Wait? Does that make him a triple-dipper? The only really positive thing I see is that he says he likes the existing Lorain Promise plan. (The Morning Journal, 12/11/19)
   
   

3. Legal stuff: The Ohio Supreme Court expeditiously decided that the village of Hills and Dales lacks standing to pursue a suit that would question the constitutionality of a new law designed to make it easier for families to get their property rezoned from one school district to another. Oops. (Canton Repository, 12/13/19) It looks like the ongoing legal action regarding the athletic league weighting system known as “competitive balance” may be at an end. The Ohio Supreme Court kicked the case back to the lower court some months ago. But it looks like plain old negotiation will come out the winner, as the Cincinnati-area Catholic Schools seem to have accepted a compromise plan with the Ohio High School Athletic Association. Remember that this is about the ways in which school choice affect a high school’s “size” based on recruiting ability outside of its own “system”. Almost any school can be a feeder into a given high school these days, and a new weighting system was clearly needed. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 12/11/19)
    
4. Online school news: A new bill aiming to make changes to online school attendance and reporting procedures got a hearing in an Ohio House committee last week. (NBC4i.com, Columbus, 12/12/19) Meanwhile, here is the announcement of the formation the Ohio Online Learning Coalition, a team-up of the state’s online schools. I am 100 percent certain these two actions are not related. (Gongwer Ohio, 12/13/19) 

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

If recent headlines are to be believed, the educational sky is falling in the state of Ohio. It appears that the Educational Choice (EdChoice) Scholarship Program is fomenting total budgetary and administrative chaos.

Vouchers are “gutting” Ohio’s Schools, according to my Forbes colleague Peter Greene. They are “exploding” according to one blogger. “It’s huge,” a representative of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials is quoted as saying.

This all seems a bit over-the-top for a program that just 22,608 of the state’s 1.7 million students used last year, according to the ABCs of School Choice. (That’s 1.3% for those of you keeping score at home.)

It’s time we all cool off.  Let’s have some perspective.

First things first, kids move all the time

Schools are funded based on enrollment. If students leave, funding drops. This is the “bite” that voucher detractors say that the program takes out of school budgets.

Now, students leave schools for lots of reasons. Toledo provides a great case in point.

We’ll begin during the six years before 2005, when the EdChoice program was established. (Note: The EdChoice program is not run by or affiliated with EdChoice, which is the national nonprofit that employs me.) Here are the enrollment figures from the state of Ohio:

1999-2000 School Year: 38,023 students

2000-2001 School Year: 37,426 students

2001-2002 School Year: 36,839 students

2002-2003 School Year: 35,742 students

2003-2004 School Year: 34,483 students

2004-2005 School Year: 32,976 students

The change from 1999 to 2005 represents a 13.3% decrease in student enrollment. Clearly, none of these enrollment changes could have been caused by the voucher program, because it didn’t exist yet. So what happened?

Students were simply moving from the district to neighboring districts, or to private schools, or moving out of the area all together. This is normal behavior for school districts. Kids move around.

Was there outrage then about the “bite” that other districts were taking out of Toledo? Were folks talking about those districts “gutting” the Toledo schools? No, they recognized that this is simply the way that the world works, and that the district would have to adjust for its decreasing enrollment.

Fast forward to today. Enrollment in the district has shrunk to 23,160 students. Was this because of vouchers? No. Only 2,019 students in Toledo take advantage of the EdChoice program and less than 1,000 take advantage of the state’s other private school choice programs. Students leaving with vouchers are a tiny sliver of those leaving Toledo’s schools, why so much focus on them?

Fixed and Variable Costs

Traditional public schools have a point when they say that they get lumbered with fixed costs when students leave. A school still needs to have a principal, it has to be heated and cooled, and the rest. Losing a handful of students doesn’t change that.

Be that as it may, public school supporters dramatically overstate their case. Not all costs are fixed. My colleague Marty Lueken estimated that in Ohio, $8,129 of the $13,452 dollars spent per student were spent on variable costs, costs that could fluctuate with changes in enrollment. So, as long as the voucher awarded is less than the variable costs, districts will not be harmed.

Want to guess the average voucher amount in the program everyone is so up in arms about? That would be $4,762, just over half of those variable costs. In order for districts to truly lose out, a whopping 68% of their costs would have to be fixed. They are not. While districts are seeing less revenue, they are seeing even less cost, so they are coming out ahead on a per-pupil basis.

It should also be noted that these fixed/variable cost arguments are only ever used to call for more spending. Have you ever heard a school district say when enrollment is growing, “Well, we already have a principal, and we’re already heating and cooling the building, so we’ll only need half the funding for those new students.” I didn’t think so. Maybe we should take those pleas with a bit of skepticism.

Playing fast and loose with data

Given these realities, how do we get to claims about the “staggering” impact of the voucher program? Well, as we just saw, detractors can only present raw numbers and not per-pupil figures. If that doesn’t work, they can quote numbers out of context to make them seem bigger than they are.

Here is a quote from Peter Greene’s article I link to above: “Toledo’s voucher costs increased by $5.7 million. In smaller districts, the dollar amount might not seem impressive, but Scioto Valley’s increase amounts to a 965% jump in voucher costs.”

Now, why might one use a nominal figure in the first sentence and a percentage in the last? Well that’s because $5.7 million is only 1.2% of the Toledo’s $454 million in total revenue. Doesn’t sound so staggering now, does it? And that 965% change for Scioto Valley is just over $100,000 for a district with $17.6 million in revenue. That is one half of one percent.

Here is another data point for context. Around 93,000 students take advantage of Ohio’s open enrollment law, allowing them to move between public school districts. This is substantially more students than the voucher program enrolls and presents the same costs to districts, and yet, the criticism is much more muted. Curious, that.

The real issue

All of this obfuscation and pettifogging is done to avoid the real conversation. No one wants to answer the question: Why are these students leaving? No child in Ohio is required to use a voucher. They only use them when they are not satisfied with their current school and want to go somewhere else. Want to keep kids, and the funding that comes along with them? Do better and they won’t leave.

Mike McShane is director of national research at EdChoice. He is also the author, editor, co-author or co-editor of ten books on education policy, and is a former teacher.

This blog originally appeared on the website of Forbes magazine.