Last year, NBA superstar LeBron James opened I Promise School (IPS), a school for at-risk kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. In its first year (2018–19), IPS served 240 students in grades three and four. This year it expanded to include fifth grade, and now serves 344 students.

IPS is a joint effort between Akron Pubic Schools (APS), the I Promise Network, and the LeBron James Family Foundation. It’s not a charter school; it’s overseen by APS, the state’s sixth largest school district, and holds a lottery to admit students. But it also offers a host of things most district schools don’t, such as free uniforms, tuition to the University of Akron when students graduate high school, and family services like GED classes and job placement assistance. The school also has some unique characteristics that are more often associated with schools of choice: an extended school day and year, a STEM curriculum, and alternative working conditions for teachers, such as required home visits.

The school’s grand opening in July 2018 made national headlines and earned James a considerable amount of well-deserved praise. There were plenty of hot takes to go along with the praise, including some folks who saw an opportunity to take potshots at their least favorite education policies, namely charter schools. But by and large, most people were excited about the prospect of another high quality school, and eager to see if IPS could follow through on its promise (pun intended) to change the trajectory of hundreds of kids’ lives.

The first round of results arrived this spring. The school announced on Twitter that 90 percent of its students had met or exceeded their expected growth in math and reading. These results were based on NWEA MAP, a national computer adaptive assessment that measures academic growth over time. Coverage in USA Today called the results “extraordinary.” The New York Times offered additional details: In reading, both the third and fourth grade classes initially tested in the 1st percentile. MAP results showed that third graders had improved to the 9th percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders moved from the 1st percentile to the 18th, and fourth graders jumped from the 2nd percentile to the 30th.

USA Today was right to call these results extraordinary. But as significant as they are, they are only one measure. Even NWEA will tell you that multiple measures matter. To be considered successful, IPS was going to have to do more than demonstrate growth on diagnostic measurements.

To their credit, most media outlets recognized that. The New York Times pointed out that “time will tell whether the gains are sustainable and how they stack up against rigorous state standardized tests at the end of the year.” Locally, the Akron Beacon Journal noted in August that state test results would be “unlikely to show the school in a positive light.” The piece quoted APS school improvement coordinator Keith Liechty-Clifford saying, “We’re prepared to receive an F” because “our students come to us low, and it’s going to take some time.” But he also noted the school expected to show growth, and that “we are all operating under the belief we will not be an F school.”  

Well, it’s mid-October in Ohio. That means school report cards have been out for a month or so. So, did IPS get an F?

Nope. In its first year, IPS earned an overall grade of C. For a brand new school that purposely targeted students who were performing a year or two behind grade level, that’s very impressive. It’s even more praiseworthy considering the school’s demographics: 100 percent of the student population is economically disadvantaged, 29 percent are students with disabilities, 15 percent are English language learners, and more than 80 percent are minorities.

A more detailed breakdown of state report card components shows a mixed bag. On the achievement component, which measures how well students perform on state assessments, IPS earned that F it feared. That’s not entirely surprising, considering the achievement measure looks to see how well students have mastered grade level material, and most of I Promise’s students entered the school far below grade level. IPS still has plenty of room to grow in this area, and their teachers and staff are fully committed to getting the job done. In the coming years, it will be important to keep an eye on whether the school’s Performance Index (PI) scores increase. If IPS is able raise its PI score each year, that will be a sign that kids are headed in the right direction.

The progress component, meanwhile, determines the growth of students based on their past performance. Unlike the achievement component, progress gives credit when students—including those below grade level—make significant growth during the year. IPS really shined on the progress component, earning an A. For reference, Akron Public Schools is home to twenty-eight elementary schools, of which only four (including IPS) earned an A on their progress components. In English language arts, evidence shows that IPS students made progress similar to statewide expectations—about one year’s worth of growth. In math, however, there is significant evidence that students made far more progress than expected. The school also earned high marks for progress in certain subgroups: receiving a B for students identified as the lowest 20 percent statewide in reading, math, or science, and another B for students with disabilities.

The upshot? Both the state report card and in-house MAP growth data indicate that students at IPS are learning a lot. In many cases, they’re learning more than their peers in other schools and districts. If this growth continues, the school will be well on its way to keeping its promise to Akron families and the community. The New York Times is right: Only time will tell if these gains are sustainable. The job is only going to get harder as the school expands to more grade levels. But so far, students, school staff, and the Akron community should be proud of their progress. And so, too, should LeBron—the coolest thing he’s ever done is already paying dividends for kids.

Editor’s note: This is a submission to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we ask participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?” This entry does so via answers to hypothetical queries.

Q: A struggling sixth grader arrives to his new school. He failed the state’s math exam in grades 3, 4, and 5. Typically, what’s the problem?

A: The “knowledge/skill” problem? He probably cannot multiply or divide whole numbers very well, let alone handle fractions, decimals, percentages, or negative numbers.

Teacher: "What is one half plus a third?” Sixth grader: “I don’t know."

The bigger problem, now that he’s a sixth grader, is actually his mood/attitude/motivation/confidence. He’s frustrated. Math class to him is like being thrown in a swimming pool each day and thrashing about, gasping for breath.

Q: You focused on basic arithmetic. Common Core promotes “math understanding” and relevance to real life. Where does that fit in?

A: Teachers fiercely debate this point. I would say that for sixth grade strugglers, these well-intended goals make them worse off.

Let’s imagine a beginning basketball player who struggles to make a layup when shooting alone. Now we add a defender. Sometimes he manages to dribble past the defender, but still can’t make the layup. Sometimes he would have made the layup, but the defender steals the ball or blocks his shot before he can even try.

There are now two paths to fail and just one to succeed. From his point of view, you’re just being mean.

Q: No-excuses charter middle schools, like KIPP, succeed with struggling sixth graders. What do they do?

A: Some context first.

First, no-excuses charters have generally done better in math than in English, where gains remain frustratingly low. Second, no-excuses charters like KIPP have changed over the years. These days many CMOs start with pre-K students instead of new middle schoolers. Third, an MIT study showed that no-excuses charters do not help their top students much; the “average gains” come from large gains with the lowest students. Fourth, per a submission to Fordham’s 2014 Wonkathon, charters have unusual teacher populations; efforts to take charter “methods” alone, and bring to other schools without these unusual teachers, have not succeeded.

So what do these unusual teachers do when faced with a room of twenty sixth graders, ten of whom are really far behind?

They try not to despair.

Q: What do you mean? That sounds dumb and new age-y.

A: Math is not a subject like, say, history, where you have a “blank slate.” “Hey, kids. Today we’re going to learn about the Ming Dynasty. I’m going to assume nobody knows about that. So I’ll start at the beginning.”

To oversimplify, the sixth grade math teacher has two groups. One is ready to learn today’s new topic—like “how to solve for X.” The other is simply not. Teachers face an unpleasant choice.

A typical teacher will plow ahead anyway with the new topic. They despair because they know that many kids will be lost and frustrated. But the teacher can’t say, “Let’s go way back to second grade math.” That would create a different type of frustration. Moreover, the ten strugglers aren’t a coherent group: different gaps, different “false” understandings that need to be unwound.

Q: What does a charter teacher do differently?

A: First, the system—department head, principal, fellow teachers—allows more “re-teaching” in a given day of what kids didn’t grasp in previous days. There’s often permission to “slow down” as needed (though admittedly this is often quite choppy).

Second, more teachers “pull” kids to their afterschool sessions. It’s an inverted version of simply offering help after school (then shrugging when nobody shows up).

Many non-charter teachers also use these tactics as lone wolves. But that's easier when it is the norm across a whole school.

Q: How do you get students to show up?

A: Teachers build relationships with students, and perhaps more so, their parents. This means a lot of Sunday afternoon and evening phone calls home meant to parents, often to convince reluctant ones. It’s time consuming. But it allows teachers to get strugglers to at least accept some help.

Q: What happens in those afterschool sessions?

A: You’re not solving for “root cause" limitations right away. You’re solving for attitude. You’re looking for any “win” you can generate.

Often that means getting them to complete tonight’s homework, or to pass the next quiz and test, even if it’s a hazy understanding. There’s a certain “fake it until you make it” you can do around concepts. If today in class you introduced the topic of “solving for X,” you can get a kid to grasp that concept. At least he can then solve for X in “2X = 10,” even if he can’t solve for “1/4X = X - 10.5.”

If you’re lucky, you get enough time to help students on their “root cause” weaknesses, like basic multiplication.

Q: That seems inefficient.

A: Logistically, each struggler may need a few hundred hours of one-on-one tutoring to really solve her root cause issue. No teacher has that much time.

Q: It’s more than just time, right? Doesn’t the instructor need to tailor the strategies?

A: Tailoring helps, sure. But we can take a lesson here from politicians: authenticity sometimes matters more than policies.

Teacher authenticity—being “themselves” pedagogically, teaching in a way they believe in and thereby bringing more positive energy and enthusiasm—sometimes matters more to a struggler than technical math teaching “moves.”

Some star teachers take very different approaches than what I’ve outlined above. It’s not just struggling students affected by mood/attitude/motivation/confidence. That affects teachers, too. They can’t squirm into whole new personas to fit each student.

Q: Can’t we arrange that sort of high-dosage one-on-one tutoring and free up the teacher?

A: High-dosage tutoring (HDT) worked in Houston turnaround schools. Now it’s gone. It worked in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Now it’s gone. HDT is expensive. It continues to thrive in Chicago and a few other places with philanthropic support. It requires great execution. Like outlier charter schools, HDT succeeds when delivered by an unusually skilled team. Its effect seems muted with “regular” implementers doing it on the cheap. Often it’s better in those cases to do nothing at all because the remedial effect is zero and there are opportunity costs.

For political and cultural reasons, though, no matter how high its efficacy is, HDT has struggled to generate staying power.

Q: What are the political and cultural components?

A: In China, even poor parents spend huge sums to buy tutoring for their children. Here in the U.S., it’s mostly wealthy parents who pony up for one-on-one help.

As for public schools paying, HDT does not have any natural advocacy base. Class size reduction, social workers and other specialists, teacher raises—these are far more popular.

Q: Can’t technology help?

A: At the fringes. The quiet truth is that many high-performing charters just use ed tech as a way to keep students productively busy so human teachers can try to work with smaller groups.

Unfortunately, though the likes of Khan Academy are great tools for thriving learners, they’re not as good with strugglers. Motivation remains a thorny issue.

I’m sure AI will get there one day, where computer tutors will beat human tutors, just like in chess. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are working on this issue. But for now, humans beat computers at helping struggling students. Alas, our time is expensive.

A new report evaluates whether and to what extent U.S. schools use discriminatory practices when suspending students with disabilities (SWD), including children of color. Particularly, it examines whether the well-documented greater risk of suspension for SWDs is attributable to disability status and/or racial bias or to alternative explanatory factors such as differences in student behavior.

The researchers synthesize the best-available empirical evidence on suspension risk for SWDs. Their search produced eighteen studies, only four of which controlled for student behavior (i.e., the infraction that led to the suspension) and just two of which controlled for students’ prior behavior, assessed by teacher ratings and parent- and self-reports. For each study, they calculate the ratio of significant estimates—that is, those indicating that SWDs are more or less likely to be suspended than students without disabilities—to the total number of estimates, and then calculate the percentage of significant estimates across studies by individual- and aggregate-level characteristics.

In general, they find little evidence that SWDs are more likely to be suspended than similarly behaving students without disabilities. Within the four studies that control for individual-level infractions (e.g., disobedience, fighting), over half of the estimates (58 percent) fail to indicate that SWDs are more likely to be suspended. Likewise, only two studies control for individual-level reported behavior (although they do analyze nationally representative, longitudinal data sets), and of those seven available risk estimates, five of them (or 71 percent) fail to indicate SWDs are more likely to be suspended.

Furthermore, the authors couldn’t find any rigorous studies that compared suspension rates for white and minority students with disabilities. In other words, there is no existing evidence that SWDs who are of color are more likely to be suspended than similarly behaving SWDs who are white because such contrasts have yet to be conducted.

Although students with disabilities are suspended at higher rates than students without disabilities, there is little evidence that this difference is attributable to teacher bias. The disability conditions for which most SWDs in the U.S. are identified (e.g., learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders) are associated with impulse control, self-regulation, and attentional difficulties—that is to say, behaviors that might make suspension more likely. In theory, federal law prohibits educators from suspending students for behaviors that are related to their disability. But in practice, this directive is as clear as mud. And the fact that students who are classified as disabled are generally more likely to misbehave has predictable consequences for the rates at which they are suspended.

SOURCE: Paul L. Morgan et al. “Are U.S. Schools Discriminating When Suspending Students With Disabilities? A Best-Evidence Synthesis,” Exceptional Children (September 2019).

1. Wow. It’s not often we get to welcome brand new media outlets to the family. But the closure of the Youngstown Vindicator really did bring out the next tier of journalistic endeavors, didn’t it? Too bad that online-only outlet Mahoning Matters had to step in this pile of doo-doo as its first big foray into education. Specifically: the insanity that seems to surround the idea of creating a charter boarding school in the area. (Mahoning Matters.com, 10/22/19)
2. I am pretty sure the majority of the insanity mentioned above stems from the fact that a version of this plan was originally championed by former Youngstown Schools CEO Krish Mohip. (Another large chunk came from the Devil Facebook, I imagine). Doesn’t matter that he is gone or who else might be supportive of it. Ditto for the entire CEO/ADC paradigm that currently runs Youngstown City Schools. But wait! Perhaps there is hope on the horizon for these inveterate haters. Vindy.com—direct spiritual successor to the late, lamented Vindicator—reports that after all of folks’ efforts large and small to cripple, hamstring, and outright stop the “state takeover” of Youngstown Schools, the biggest day of all is finally at hand: a hearing on the constitutionality of HB 70 before the state Supreme Court. (Vindy.com, 10/22/19) That’s right. Likely as you are reading this, the Ohio Supreme Court is in the process of hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the process by which HB 70 was enacted (the ADC parts, not the wraparound services parts, you know) back in 2015. As we have noted before, this hearing is being held out in the hinterlands of Ohio, in a high school auditorium, as part of the Supremes’ education outreach program. It is intended to give young people throughout the state a better idea of what goes on in the judicial branch of government. Given the performative nature of the haters’ 4:30 am bus boarding (covered by all the local news stations, natch), the history of this entire sorry “resistance”, and the stated intentions of the group for today, those kids attending the hearing should be in for quite a circus. (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 10/23/19)

3. Meanwhile, also as you read this, the current CEO of Youngstown City Schools is quietly doing his job trying to boost the educational attainment of the district’s young people against what sound like some difficult systemic obstacles. (Vindy.com, 10/23/19)

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Americans today are woefully uninformed about our democracy, and many blame the poor state of civics education for it—and they have a point. How can we expect people to participate in meaningful and informed public discourse when two-thirds of Americans can’t even pass the rock-bottom basic U.S. Citizenship Exam? With this problem in mind, University of Notre Dame’s David E. Campbell recently published a literature review that found that a robust civic education makes a significant impact on future political knowledge and participation.

Campbell examines political science studies on civics education in secondary schools and draws from related fields, such as economics and psychology, for his literature review. Then he groups the studies into five key findings that look at the effect of classroom instruction, extracurricular activities, service learning, school culture, and public policy on civic outcomes such as political knowledge and participation. He begins with a seminal 1968 study that found that formal civic education did not improve civic outcomes for most students, but that it did improve them for African American students. This is termed the “compensation effect” because African American students’ civic education made up for the disparities between politically active white and African American students’ home and community experiences. But most scholars interpreted its results as saying civic education had no impact on students, producing a decades-long research gap.

The author proceeds to cite later studies, which found that classroom instruction in civics does, in fact, produce small improvements on knowledge, test outcomes, and likelihood to vote. This applies more to classrooms that are open to sharing differing opinions. He also cites studies showing that adopting specific civics curricula in classrooms, such as We The People, produces significant learning gains, but does not affect students’ attitudes towards civics or politics. Moreover, Campbell cites studies that find two “incidental outcomes” of classroom instruction: a “trickle-up effect,” where students improve parents’ and relatives’ civic knowledge and participation; and a correlation between developing verbal aptitude as a teen and being politically active.

Campbell’s review also finds that student participation in extracurricular activities (excluding sports) and volunteerism is correlated with more civic participation. He notes, however, that the literature is unclear whether it’s because students with a proclivity towards civic engagement self-select into those activities. Furthermore, Campbell comments that studies have yet to examine the role of motivation for volunteerism (e.g., resume-building versus altruism) in improving civic outcomes. Furthermore, he finds that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to be involved in extracurriculars, so there may be a stronger causal link between involvement and civic outcomes for disadvantaged students who do participate.

The literature review distinguishes between studies on volunteerism and service learning because the latter is mandatory, either for course grade or as a graduation requirement. The author finds that most service learning studies are observational and thus unable to prove causation, and that findings are mixed on whether they positively or negatively affect civic participation in early adulthood.

Campbell’s review of the research on school culture finds that an emphasis on being an engaged citizen in high school correlates with increased rates of civic engagement, political knowledge, and a sense of empowerment to solve community problems. He notes that charter schools’ lottery admission policies make it easier for studies on charters to determine causal effects on civic outcomes and that they tend to have a positive effect on political participation. He cites a recent charter study finding that students admitted to Democracy Prep had a “16 percentage point increase in voter registration and a 12 point increase in voter turnout” over a control group. In addition, Campbell finds that students who feel unfairly treated by school discipline practices are less likely to vote or have as much trust in government, especially students of color.

The final major finding is that state education policy is associated with improved civic knowledge and participation. The author cites a twenty-year-long randomized study showing that an intervention education-model called Fast Track emphasizing psychosocial skills such as self-control, fair play, and empathy in early education incidentally produced long-term effects on voter turnout for high-risk background children. He notes that this can translate to policy impacts if schools apply similar interventions. And while some studies show little correlation between state-level policy and civic outcomes, Campbell cites a recent study of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds showing that when states imposed high-stakes civics test requirements for graduation, students—especially immigrant and Latino students—had higher NAEP scores and more political knowledge after high school. It suggests that the compensation effect that applied most strongly to African Americans half a century ago now applies more strongly to Latinos who tend to have low levels of political participation.

Campbell concludes his literature review with six recommendations. First, he recommends that education studies should test for incidental effects on civic outcomes. Second, he suggests more attention to the compensation effect in all future studies. Third, he encourages civics studies to test for “trickle-up” effects. Fourth, he invites researchers to study variation in school culture within the public, charter, and private school contexts. Fifth, he believes scholars should look beyond conventional forms of civic education, such as the effect of elected officials visiting a school. Sixth, he stresses the need for studies that determine causal pathways and not just correlation.

After decades of studies, we have learned that civic education certainly translates to political knowledge and participation in early adulthood. Campbell’s most salient findings are the impact of school culture, the positive effect of adopting high-stakes civics exams, and the compensation effect of civic education on students of color. Schools should be aware of the positive effect their culture can have on political participation and of the negative impact of poor discipline practices. And states should consider designing quality, mandatory civics exams because they can translate to learning gains. Indeed, a Bellwether study shows that Louisiana and Washington are already doing this. Lastly, researchers should pay close attention to the compensation effect and “trickle-up” of civics interventions on students of color’s political knowledge and participation in future studies.

SOURCE: David E. Campbell. “What Social Scientists Have Learned About Civic Education: A Review of the Literature,” Peabody Journal of Education (January 2019).

Part I discussed Robert Pondiscio’s “Tiffany Test”: How do high-achieving students fare as they move through a high-poverty elementary school? Among the eleven states in the Smarter Balanced consortium, 120,000 fewer elementary students—48,000 of them economically disadvantaged students in California alone—were achieving at or above math proficiency by the end of fifth grade, compared to where they were in third grade. The news in reading is considerably better and potentially earth-shaking.

Across the classes of 2024, 2025, and 2026—in the Smarter Balanced states, the average increase in English language arts (ELA) is “just” 6 percentage points. This turns out to be a substantial number: 160,000 more students in fifth grade are meeting and exceeding ELA standards than they were as third graders. See figure 1.

Figure 1. Rise in elementary English language arts achievement

In California alone, 71,000 of these students are from economically disadvantaged families. In every cohort, more elementary students are scoring at progressively higher levels in ELA as they move through school. For example, figure 2 below shows the ELA achievement of low-income students in the class of 2025 as they go from third to fourth and then to fifth grade. The gray bars (Levels 1 and 2) are shrinking and the blue bars (Levels 3 and 4) are rising upward. If you’re a teacher or a system leader, this is precisely what you hope to see.

Figure 2. Rise in reading achievement for California’s economically disadvantaged students, class of 2025

There are two reasons to suggest this trend over time is not a peculiar feature of the Smarter Balanced tests. First, this same pattern is evident in NAEP reading scores. NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students each year, and we can compare how each cohort of eighth graders performed four years earlier. When we look at the percentage of students reading at NAEP’s “basic” level and above, we find a similar trend to the one we see in the Smarter Balanced states. Each new class has a slightly higher starting point in fourth grade and finishing point in eighth grade. See figure 3.

Figure 3. Rise in NAEP reading scores, fourth to eighth grade

Second, a recent equating study published by the Institute for Education Sciences shows that most states have considerably raised the rigor of their assessments in the last decade. The cut scores for most state standards and tests, for both grades and both subjects, including the Smarter Balanced states, were mapped at the mid-range of the NAEP Basic achievement level.

What then might explain the rise in reading and writing achievement? Here are some conjectures: Maybe schools are spending more time on reading. Maybe, for all the philosophical hand-wringing, teachers are emphasizing decoding, along with all the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. Maybe students are reading more grade-level texts. Maybe students’ background knowledge is improving. Maybe the preparation and support of teachers has gotten better.

The success described here isn’t sufficient for where all students need to be as readers and writers, but it is substantial. If the math story showed schools and districts aren’t learning from their failures, they don’t appear to be studying the sources of their successes either.

In her book Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke describes how this is what expert poker and chess players do after they win a big match. They replay each move, needing to separate their skill from luck, and to carefully understand what moves might work well again.

Districts and state departments of education need to do the same with their early literacy teachers. While half of fifth graders in Smarter Balanced states are reading proficiently, economic projections from Georgetown University and Mark Zandi at Moody’s show that we need at least 65 percent of our students by 2030 to be on track to college readiness. All of the students in our classrooms—the Tiffanys, the Trevors, the Eduardos, and Zoes—deserve nothing less.

1. Call it the Ghost of Gatehouse Past. A story from several weeks ago—regarding some recent education research and including a vintage quote from our own Jessica Poiner—resurfaced over the weekend in a number of Gatehouse Media publications. (Alliance Review, 10/20/19)
2. Oh look. It’s yet another suburban teen entrepreneur. Those lucky prisoners. (Canton Repository, 10/18/19)

3. Speaking of money, a bunch of public and private schools across the country got burned to the tune of more than $10 million when a third party ticket sales and services firm went bust recently. This includes a number of district and Catholic schools here in central Ohio. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/20/19)
4. Still speaking of money (honestly, when are we not?), Monroe Local Schools in Butler County has been out of state fiscal oversight for about five years. I can only imagine it went the same way as most of these things do. But today the district’s got that new shine of creditworthiness thanks to a bond rating bump, and now they’re ready to borrow and spend like nothing ever happened. Let the good times roll! (The Journal-News, 10/19/19)

5. Plain Local Schools has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against the state to try and stop the enactment of a new law which is aimed at making it easier for families wanting to rezone their property to another school district to do so. Not because they don’t still hate it, but because they’d rather wait and fight later when those families (you know who you are) do actually make a request to rezone. And yes, this is about money too. (Canton Repository, 10/21/19)

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Congratulations to Ohio’s high quality charter schools!

This week, the Ohio Department of Education released the list(s) of Community Schools of Quality in the state. The law was complex, so there are three sets of criteria and separate lists of eligible schools. Each list is separate and posted as a spreadsheet which must be downloaded from the link above. But all schools earning the designation will be eligible to receive additional state funding per pupil. And that should be celebrated loudly and proudly. Fantastic news for the schools and the families they serve.

More good news

Although there was no discussion of charter schools from the myriad Democratic presidential candidates debating in Westerville this week, a recent poll conducted by Democrats for Education Reform indicates that this could—and should—change. Nearly 80 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, including nearly 90 percent of black Democratic primary voters, support expanding access to more choices within the public school system, including to charter schools, according to the poll results.

The view from the classroom

A new study published in Education Week surveyed more than 19,000 Teach for America applicants from 2007-2015. Researchers compared the responses of applicants who were admitted to TFA but did not teach with those who were admitted and did ultimately serve around a variety of hot button issues in education. The findings are wide-ranging and nuanced, but appear to indicate that participating in TFA changes one’s perception of the things that really matter in increasing education quality and broadening access to it.

Show us the money

Here is a profile of Charter School Capital, a financial services firm based in Portland, Oregon. The firm works exclusively with charters, providing loans to buy buildings and renting property it owns to schools. It also provides capital to cover budget gaps, building renovations and other expenses, as well as offering marketing expertise to increase enrollment. Since 2007, Charter School Capital has invested more than $2 billion in 700 charter schools nationally. Its revenue increased 24% in 2019 compared with last year. Its biggest markets are California, Arizona, Florida and Ohio.

Relay Leadership Training event

KIPP Columbus is hosting a one-day training event on January 16, 2020, focusing on teacher observation and feedback. It is ideal for anyone who coaches at least one teacher or who will be preparing to coach in the coming year. Leaders will learn the four keys to effective observation and feedback, including locking in frequent and regular observations, identifying the one or two most important areas for growth, giving direct face-to-face feedback that practices specific action steps for improvement, and creating systems to ensure feedback translates to practice. In addition, leaders will have opportunities to practice skills by participating in simulations and video reviews. For more information or to register, click here.  Registration is now live, with seats on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact Cecilia Shanahan with any questions.

1. We start today with another heartwarming story of a suburban teen entrepreneur. Seventeen-year-old Will Feldman of Bexley runs a business called pausecircleplay. He sells t-shirts and stickers featuring “a distinct logo with a message, appealing to young people” according to the story. I’ll just stop there. (WBNS-TV, Columbus, 10/17/19)
2. There is, according to this piece, a plan for some serious downsizing of school buildings in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District being floated right now. Personally, I might say “right-sizing”. But then I would also say, “haven’t we been here a couple of times before?”. So maybe I should just shut up. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/18/19)

3. Speaking of buildings, more delays and sniping in Dayton over the renovations to the district’s new central office. Despite being awash in cash, Dayton City Schools apparently tried to cheap out on the project by supplying existing drawings to architects and contractors rather than paying for new ones to be done. Unfortunately, it seems, those drawings were more than 20 years old and were deemed “inaccurate and incomplete”. This has led to a number of costly changes in the work mid-project. The latest additional amount approved by the board is more than $300,000. (Dayton Daily News, 10/18/19)

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Author’s correction and update: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that Columbus had increased the minimum test score needed to be classified as “on track” in third-grade reading and to not be placed on a reading improvement and monitoring plan (RIMP). In fact, according to information presented to the school board on Oct. 15, the district has increased only the “cut score” for RIMP eligibility but not the threshold for being identified as “on track.” This means the district is not engaging in the most egregious form of state report card manipulation, as the piece originally suggested, but several other Ohio districts do appear to have done so.

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

As I often like to remind my Ohio State University students, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. One illustration of this aphorism is how well-meaning efforts to increase accountability pressures on public schools in hopes of improving learning can backfire by perversely incentivizing school administrators to take actions that only end up hurting students. Although we’d hope that school leaders would respond to greater accountability by taking steps to improve educational quality—as they should be doing all along—it seems that local officials often react by finding ways to game the system instead.

Ohio’s current school report cards—which assign letter grades to each of the state’s public and charter schools and districts—are vulnerable to precisely this kind of gaming, as evidenced by recent efforts by Columbus leaders to raise the district’s report card grade without actually improving student performance.

At issue is a section of the report card titled “Improving At-Risk K-3 Readers,” which grew out of a 2012 law requiring all Ohio third graders to demonstrate proficiency in reading before advancing to fourth grade. The intentions behind this law were quite well-meaning and sincere; there is clear evidence that mastering reading by the end of third grade is a strong predictor of future academic success. This report card section is designed to hold schools and districts accountable for ensuring that all students stay on track to become proficient readers by the time they take their third-grade state exams.

Specifically, districts are required to administer reading assessments starting in kindergarten to identify students who are not on track to reach proficiency and to put in place reading improvement and monitoring plans (RIMPs) designed to get these students back on track. The “Improving At-Risk K-3 Readers” component of the state report card essentially awards points for each initially at-risk student whom schools move back on course to achieve proficiency.

Since state testing does not begin until third grade, school districts have considerable discretion in how they implement these requirements. Fortunately, there are some guardrails built in by the state. For example, school districts may use only the diagnostic assessments that have been approved by the Ohio Department of Education, and for each available assessment, the state also sets minimum scores that districts must follow in flagging “off-track” students. In addition, districts and schools are penalized for each student who fails to achieve proficiency on the third-grade reading test but who was not previously placed on a RIMP.

While these safeguards prevent districts from setting their bar too low (which would help them avoid losing points for at-risk students who remain off-track in earlier grades) and incentivize identifying students likely to struggle on the third grade reading assessment, Columbus has figured out that it can improve the calculation by setting the bar too high. Under a directive issued by the district’s new superintendent, third graders will be placed on RIMPs even if they are reading at the sixth-grade reading level at the beginning of the year! Indeed, under the district’s new minimum reading “cut score,” third graders scoring below the 93rd percentile nationally would be placed on such improvement and monitoring plans.

How does setting the bar so ridiculously high help inflate the district’s grade? Putting nearly every student on a RIMP at the beginning of the year will avoid the penalties for the subset of these students who not already identified as “off track” but who fail to attain proficiency on the state exam, a deduction that cost the district more than 400 points on last year’s report card calculation

When confronted by teachers angry that they must now write RIMPs for many more students, district officials denied trying to game the system and claimed there were merely “raising the bar” and trying to help all students improve their reading, even high-performing students. However, the district’s other actions (or lack thereof) suggest that this explanation should be taken with skepticism. The superintendent increased only the district’s third-grade reading requirements, leaving the minimum diagnostic “cut scores” that identify students in need of reading intervention woefully low for kindergarten, first, and second grade. At the most recent school board meeting, one board member asked (at 3:24:00 of the video) what to tell community members who accuse the district of making the change solely to improve the district’s report card. “A concise answer for me,” responded the district’s chief accountability officer, “honestly, would be, ‘Let’s give the students the interventions they need to succeed and achieve.’”

Unfortunately, what looks like an effort to “juke the stats” is likely to come at the expense of student learning. Third grade teachers estimate that writing each student’s RIMP takes between thirty and forty-five minutes, not counting the time necessary to administer ongoing assessments also required for each student placed on a reading plan. Requiring teachers to complete the required paperwork and follow this process for their highest-achieving students, who are already reading well above grade level, is likely to come at the expense of time and resources that could otherwise be spent helping the district’s lowest-performing third graders, who are most at risk of getting retained.

In addition, the policy change has also created mass confusion among both teachers and parents, many of whom assume that every student placed on a RIMP has also been identified as “off track.” (Both the coverage in the Columbus Dispatch and the original version of this blog post repeated this mistake, likely further exacerbating the confusion.)

The attention the district’s decision attracted has also revealed an important weakness in the calculation used to assign grades under this section of the report card. Had the district also raised the cut score for identifying “off track” third graders to the same high level (as early reports indicated), it would’ve earned even more points on the state report card. Labeling more high-achieving, already-proficient third graders as “off track” in the beginning of the year would have let the district earn credit for moving the same students back “on track” when they passed the state’s reading exam. This would result in a better report card grade without actually improving student reading.

Columbus did not take the additional step of increasing its third grade on-track cut score, but it appears that a handful of other districts may have. Examining last year’s state data, at least three other districts saw a big jump in the share of students identified as being off track between second and third grade. At the same time, these districts also brought larger fractions of third graders back on track than had occurred for the same cohort in second grade. This pattern—more kids classified as behind in the fall, but also more brought back on track during the year—strongly suggests that the districts changed their cut scores between second and third grade and had set a higher bar in third grade than was necessary to pass the state test later in the year.

In an ideal world, the state accountability system would not incentivize such numbers games. And all school districts would have leaders who spend their time and ingenuity dreaming up ways to actually improve student learning, instead of coming up with new strategies for manipulating the district’s report card grades.

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