1. I realize that Willard, Ohio, is a long way from Columbus. I will also grant that school superintendents are busy people even in the summer. But for the leader of Willard City Schools to stand up before his elected school board in mid-August and to announce for the record that schools only just found out about graduation requirements changes included in the recent state budget bill defies all sense. Supe also said that requirements are “clear as mud”, especially among the different high school grade levels. I wouldn’t have thought it was that hard, but either the supe or the journalist believe that capstone projects are required by state law for all members of the Class of 2023. God save the high schoolers in Willard. (Norwalk Reflector, 8/18/19)
   

2. Speaking of journalistic confusion, I think it is a good thing that the Warren Tribune Chronicle has acquired the Vindicator name and will begin publishing Youngstown news under that banner starting September 1. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/16/19) Why is that good? Because the first entity to announce it was taking up the journalistic slack of the departing Vindy has published this mess of a piece regarding the proposed expansion of a dropout recovery charter school in the region. There is very little information about what The Mahoning County High School is, how it functions, and how an expansion to include a residential component might be helpful for serving more students better. Instead, we’ve got a blow by blow of who told whom what and when and who didn’t explain what in the proper time frame. It’s like overhearing an argument at the next table in a restaurant and trying to figure out the story with no further context. (Youngstown Business Journal, 8/16/19) But maybe there is just no sense to be made of the story at this point, seeing as how the more seasoned news mavens at WKBN couldn’t arrive at a much clearer version. Or maybe it’s just Youngstown being Youngstown. (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 8/16/19) Not to tell y’all how to do your job, but has anyone thought of interviewing the leaders of MCHS?
   

3. Here’s a profile of a new all-boys Catholic middle school in Cleveland with a very interesting model. It is starting small this year in borrowed space, but eventually it will expand to 75 students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Welsh Academy is open to students in Cleveland and inner-ring suburbs and is tuition free through a variety of means that include sponsorships, state voucher programs, and diocesan contributions. Leaders are specifically recruiting students not already in Catholic schools and who are earning “solid” B and C grades. They hope to attract students of color to better reflect the diversity of the city they serve. The extended school day includes project-based curriculum and a program called Affinity that will expose students to things like aquaponics and cooking classes via community partnerships. Should be interesting to see how it develops. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/17/19)
   

4. When I was in school in my small but geographically sprawling country district, the height of cool was to be able to take a different school bus to the home of a friend after school. The rules said you needed a note from your parents every time, but if you did it often enough, the bus drivers would usually be cool if the decision was made at the last minute and a note was not forthcoming. That was more than 35 years ago. Apparently, folks in Sylvania City Schools in suburban Toledo were utilizing these alternative bus rides as recently as last year. But no more. While preplanned alternative bus routes may be possible with the right form and the right amount of lead time, the practice of last-minute notes from Mom and Dad has been officially banned for 2019-20 for safety reasons. (Toledo Blade, 8/18/19)

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Public education is no stranger to controversy. Whether it’s standardized testing, academic standards, graduation requirements, charter schools or school funding, discussion and disputation are part of the deal. At present, the K–12 issue triggering the liveliest arguments in Ohio is academic distress commissions, or ADCs.

ADCs are Ohio’s current method for driving change in persistently low-performing schools by establishing new leadership in them. Though operating today in just three districts — Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland — ADCs have triggered lawsuits, contentious town halls and a growing cadre of opponents pushing to eliminate them.

In recent months, legislators have labored to figure out what is and isn’t working under the ADC law and how to improve the process going forward. Many hoped the issue would be dealt with in last month’s state budget, but the House and Senate couldn’t seem to get on the same page regarding ADCs.

When lawmakers return from their summer break, both chambers can expect to find ADCs high on their to-do lists. They’ll face an array of details and trade-offs needing to be weighed and resolved as they struggle to craft a new system that (we hope) will work better and with less controversy than the current one. As they struggle, three key lessons should shape their decisions.

First, as Gov. Mike DeWine has made clear, Ohio has a “moral obligation to help children in failing schools.” The districts currently under ADC control have long histories of low achievement, weak academic growth, meager college completions and few students who even reach proficiency in basic subjects. Such schools produce too many graduates who aren’t prepared for college or the workplace, and their communities, families and local employers pay a high price for this, along with the young people themselves.

Lawmakers must ensure that any system they adopt maintains a mechanism for state intervention when local attempts at improvement are unsuccessful.

Second, critics are right to note that lasting, positive change is unlikely without local buy-in. While any new ADC strategy must default to intervention by the state, local leaders must be given both ample warning when things are amiss and a fair chance to rectify matters before the state steps in.

Many promising solutions don’t start in Columbus, but in districts. Consider the positive efforts in the Akron Public Schools around college and career academies and innovative partnerships like the I Promise School. A new ADC system must ensure that local leaders get the first opportunity to right the education ship.

Finally, struggling districts will need assistance if they’re to succeed with major changes. This includes both financial support and technical expertise. Change is hard, and resources will be needed to identify problem areas and craft and execute a plan.

The Ohio Department of Education has information about evidence-based programs that work, and districts should look to these (and other) sources for guidance. While deciding what approach to take should remain a local decision, it’s important for the state to pursue every opportunity to help districts identify proven solutions based on rigorous research.

After years of overheated rhetoric, Ohioans can expect more passionate debates about academic distress commissions when the General Assembly reconvenes. But a solution is reachable if lawmakers commit to giving local districts a chance to improve, providing the resources necessary to do it, and preserving state intervention as an essential last resort if local efforts continue to fall short.

The stakes are high. Poverty and achievement gaps are steep mountains to climb, but they are not insurmountable. Every Ohio child is capable of learning and deserves to be held to high expectations. It is imperative for state leaders to craft a workable school intervention policy. Ohio’s students deserve nothing less.

This blog first appeared as a commentary in the Akron Beacon-Journal.

School report cards, the primary mechanism through which Ohio maintains transparency and accountability for academic outcomes, have been a hotly debated topic. Critics argue that the ratings track too closely with pupil demographics, some decry the shift to the more transparent and easily understood A–F rating system, while still others are just unhappy with the results. As an annual checkup on schools’ health, we at Fordham strongly support robust report cards, though we too have offered suggestions for refinement.

Under pressure from traditional education groups, legislators recently mandated the creation of a ten-member committee tasked with reviewing the report card and making recommendations for its improvement. The legislation specifies that three members must be district superintendents appointed by their statewide association—a group that has been critical of the current report card—so it’ll be important that the Senate and House appointees bring other perspectives to the table, such as those of parents, employers, charter leaders, and higher education. Meetings are slated for the fall and the committee must submit a report by the rather ambitious deadline of December 15, 2019.

Our hope is that the committee will recognize and support the strengths of the existing framework. These include the report card’s emphasis on objective measures of student achievement and growth, the use of a transparent rating system (A–F is surely the most intuitive), and the implementation of a user-friendly overall rating. But there still remains room for improvement, and the budget bill directs the committee to investigate several of the most contentious report card-related matters. The following discusses three of the key questions singled out in the legislation and how I believe the committee should proceed.

Question 1: How many years of data should be included in the Progress component? An essential piece of the report card, the Progress component uses the state’s “value-added” measure to gauge student growth over time. Because value added controls for students’ prior achievement, the results don’t correlate closely with demographics, thus offering an important look at school performance apart from pupil backgrounds.

It may sound wonky, but significant debate has emerged around whether Ohio should use a single-year value-added score or one averaged over multiple years. Currently, the state relies on a three-year average. For instance, a school whose value-added scores are 5.0, -1.5, and 0.5 over the past three years would have an average score of 1.3, and this score would be used to determine the school’s value-added rating. The upside of a three-year approach is that, akin to a moving average that smooths stock prices to make larger trends visible, it helps to iron out fluctuations that arise in yearly results, which have in the past led some to question the measure. The tradeoff, however, is that older data may not reflect current school performance. This is particularly problematic for schools that are undergoing turnarounds and are starting to show stronger results but continue to be dragged down by previous scores.

Proposed solution: Ohio should maintain a multi-year average but modify the calculation by implementing a weighted average that places more emphasis on the current-year score than prior years. This would help to guard against large “swings” in school ratings from year to year—e.g., going from an “A” to an “F”—but also ensure that the most recent performance is more heavily reflected in the results. A straightforward way to do this would be to weigh the most current year at 50 percent and each of the two prior years at 25 percent each.

Question 2: How should grades be assigned for the Progress component? To generate the component’s ratings, Ohio relies on value-added “index scores,” measures of statistical certainty that indicate whether student growth is more or less than what was expected for the year. Ohio wisely translates esoteric value-added index scores into more intelligible school ratings. But the grading scale that determines these ratings has stirred controversy, likely due to the near pass-fail distribution of ratings. In 2017–18, 76 percent of schools received either an A or F on the overall value-added measure, a percentage that doesn’t appear to reflect the wide range of underlying scores. Seemingly dissatisfied with the ratings distribution, legislators recently enacted substantial changes to the grading scale in the state budget (HB 166). As shown in Table 1, the new grading scale—expected to come into effect in the fall 2020 report-card release—lowers the performance standards for each rating, which will in turn inflate value-added ratings across the state.

Table 1: Grading scale used to determine value-added ratings

​
* This grading scale is likely to be used for the 2018–19 school report cards as HB 166 goes into effect on October 17, 2019 (after the release of the report cards). The scale displays the value-added index scores (the value-added gain or loss divided by the standard error) associated with each rating.

Proposed solution: Value added remains a rigorous and valid measure of pupil academic growth and it’s one of the few measures that doesn’t correlate closely with student demographics. Legislators would be smart not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, given the continuing frustration with present reporting and grading systems, Ohio should transition from its use of value-added index scores (recall, they are measures of statistical certainty) and instead focus on the amount of academic growth occurring in a school—data that are available but not currently used for report-card purposes.

Such a shift, also suggested recently by two Ohio State University researchers on this blog, would fundamentally change the question that report cards seek to answer. Instead of asking, how sure are we that students made statistically significant gains/losses, the Progress component would instead ask how much achievement growth is the average student making? Educators, parents, and taxpayers are more apt to care about how much growth happens in a school than questions about statistical certainty. This approach could also support a more defensible rating system: It’s harder to argue with a “D” or “F” if data indicate that the average student slid from the 30th to 20th percentile. It should also allow us to better identify extraordinary high-poverty schools that are helping students make up large chunks of ground (not just eking out a barely positive but “statistically significant” gain).

Question 3: How should the Prepared for Success component be designed—and should additional indicators be added? First appearing as a graded component in 2015–16, Prepared for Success is a relatively new feature of Ohio’s school report cards. It has a two-tiered structure: On a “primary” level, when students earn remediation-free scores on the ACT or SAT, an honors diploma, or industry credentials, their school receives credit (i.e., one point). Above that is a “bonus” structure whereby schools receive extra points when students pass an AP or IB exam, or earn college credit through dual enrollment. Although a career-oriented indicator exists—industry-recognized credentials—concerns have been raised that the component focuses too heavily on college-ready metrics. Suggestions for additional indicators have included military enlistment, job readiness “seals,” or apprenticeships after graduation. Debate has also revolved around the possible removal of the bonus structure, and instead placing the AP/IB and dual-enrollment credits on the same “tier” as remediation-free scores, etc.   

Three key considerations should be kept in mind as they examine the Prepared for Success dimension. First, policymakers should be careful not to cram too much data into the system and thus create an immense, complicated component. Second, for formal report-card purposes, they should depend on reliable data and deploy metrics that are difficult to “game.” It’s not clear whether the state yet collects sound data on military enlistment or apprenticeships[1] and policymakers should be wary of the subjective job-readiness seal as an accountability measure. Third, policymakers should be mindful that post-secondary outcomes—e.g., college enrollment or apprenticeships after high school—are not necessarily in the control of K–12 schools. That is likely why Ohio reports college enrollment and completion rates within this component but it refrains from rating schools based on those data.

Proposed solution: Provided that Ohio collects reliable data, the state should add military readiness and enlistment as a “primary” indicator, especially now that it’s an approved graduation pathway. As for the component structure, shifting to a single tier whereby schools earn one point when students meet any of the seven indicators of readiness—the current six plus military readiness—would produce more interpretable results (e.g., 75 percent of students meet a college-and-career ready target). That being said, the approach removes incentives for schools to encourage their highest-achieving students—perhaps those that earn remediation-free scores earlier in high school—to meet even higher goals such as passing AP or IB exams. While a close call, my own view is that Ohio should retain the bonus structure as-is for the purposes of assigning ratings but it should also begin to report the percentage of students (unduplicated) who meet any of the primary indicators to create a clearer picture of readiness in each district and school.

* * *

As an annual check on the performance of schools, robust and transparent report cards remain critical to a healthy K–12 education system. The current iteration of Ohio’s report cards, which has won praise from national education groups, has important strengths for which the committee should voice support. But it’s always worth examining ways to improve the system, and with some careful adjustments, legislators could create a report card that is more usable for Ohio families and communities and fairer for educators. 

1. Things are quiet in the Statehouse these days. Too quiet. The lull is allowing Capitol Square reporters to branch out. Case in point: Fordham’s Chad Aldis and OEA’s Melissa Cropper trading quotes in response to the findings of a recent PDK poll on teacher satisfaction. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/15/19)

2. In this piece, Chad trades quotes with Innovation Ohio’s Steve Dyer on the topic of charter school enrollment in Ohio, which is predicted to be down approximately two percent over last school year. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/16/19)

3. Events, prizes, and an 88-strong team are just part of Dayton City Schools’ latest effort to combat a chronic absenteeism rate which has been among the worst in the state for some years. (Dayton Daily News, 8/14/19)

4. One of the approximately seven thousand lawsuits related to Ohio’s academic distress paradigm was dismissed this week. That’s the one where the elected board of East Cleveland City Schools was disputing the state report card that gave them the third F. Interestingly, East Cleveland’s other suit, essentially now the same as others currently pending (minus the report card thing), was also put on hold awaiting the outcome of the other 6,998 suits. (Elyria Chronicle, 8/15/19) Unfortunately, we’re back up to 6,999 again with this lawsuit, filed by the elected board of Lorain City Schools in order to force the departing district treasurer (whom they say they love, need, and depend on, but I think really don’t) to stay on the job. Among other things. (Elyria Chronicle, 8/16/19)

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Charter student enrollment numbers decline again

Although full data is not yet available, enrollment in Ohio’s charter schools for the 2019-2020 school year is expected to be down by nearly two percent from the previous year. The decline is attributed to a combination of school closures and fewer new schools opening.

Charter opposition

The former board president of Marion Preparatory Academy has apparently become its biggest critic, launching a tirade against the soon-to-open charter school at a recent Marion City Schools board meeting. The usual anti-charter charges were laid at its door. Marion’s superintendent was even handed in his response, and one Marion City teacher went even further to counter the nasty rhetoric: “There's only one reason that school got to be here; it's because of the state of our schools.”

“Chaos”

The definition of “chaos” is somewhat fluid these days, but the uncertainty experienced by parents and students enrolled in Georgia Cyber Academy is real. A rancorous behind-the-scenes “divorce” between the online school’s board and operator K12, Inc. spilled out into the real world with predictable consequences.

A culture of coaching

The executive vice president and superintendent of schools at ACCEL Schools in Ohio argues that the culture of charter schools, very different from that of districts, creates unique challenges for teachers and administrators. That same culture, however, can allow for creative solutions as he explains in this new blog post.

A generous gift

Teachers in two Dayton charter schools were happily surprised when all of their crowdfunding requests on Donors Choose were fully funded by none other than Lady Gaga! She was giving back to both Dayton and El Paso following the devastating tragedies in those cities.

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 executive vice president and superintendent of schools for ACCEL Schools, I’ve had the challenge and opportunity of guiding nine historically underperforming schools – a portfolio we’ve dubbed our “turnaround schools” – as they re-envisioned how they serve their students and not only got back on track, but in some cases became top performers in their cities.

The key to our success has been our three pillars to turnaround. The first two pillars are academics and culture. I think any educational organization is going to say those are basic foundations, but our third pillar is coaching, and I don’t think that’s quite as common. We’ve developed an all-encompassing culture of coaching – beginning with leadership coaching for our principals and flowing down to instructional coaching for our teachers and even coaching for our school office managers.

Unique Challenges Facing Ohio Charter Schools

Charter schools in Ohio can only operate in certain cities, which prevents the creation of charter schools in high-performing suburban districts. As a result, all the charters are local to low-performing districts, with the vast majority concentrated in Northeast Ohio. Our turnaround schools are all urban, and they all serve a largely socioeconomically challenged demographic.

The percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunches at these schools ranges from 97 to 100 percent. The racial and ethnic diversity varies more across the schools. In some of our turnaround schools we have no English language learners and in others we have as many as 10 to 15 percent. In terms of students with disabilities, our schools range from 12 to 24 percent.

Demographically speaking, then, pervasive poverty is the only near-universal trait of the student bodies across these schools.

Those economic challenges are mirrored to an extent in the schools themselves, with funding being the number one challenge we faced in turning them around. Charter schools in Ohio are funded at 30 to 40 percent less per student than traditional public schools.

Another big challenge: reputation. Ohio has a very challenged reputation when it comes to charter schools, or as they're called, community schools. That has had an impact on not only student enrollment, but also teacher recruiting and retention.

Outside of that, we are consistently working to stay ahead of the regulatory changes in regard to charter schools that individual traditional public schools don't have to deal with in our state. Those regulations may come from the Ohio Department of Education directly or from each school sponsor. Additionally, each school operates as its own district, which means they are responsible for a substantial list of regulatory items that they are required to submit for each individual school. It’s a very large volume and quite a burden. Ensuring that doesn't take away from resources that would otherwise be directly impacting student learning is a challenge.

Finding Solutions in Coaching

One of the fundamental tenets of our school turnaround theory of action is ensuring that, starting with principals, the work is laser focused on those who they are there to serve, which is students, families, and educators.

Charter school principals in Ohio have a lot on their plate that isn’t directly focused on serving those people. To ease their burden, we work hard every day to take that off their plate. For example, we’ve built out a central office team that works largely on operations, compliance, and reporting on behalf of our schools.

With those nuts-and-bolts issues out of their way, we then ask our principals to re-envision their school community. That's done through a summer institute during which, over a few weeks, principals focus on the academic and cultural framework of their schools. Throughout that process, they receive intensive support and coaching, both internally and through one of our external partners, Insight Education Group.

When we first started working with these turnaround schools, I was a bit surprised to find out that very few of our school leaders had ever worked in a high-performing school before. When you're asking a school leader to do things fundamentally differently than what they’ve been exposed to, the learning curve becomes very steep.

Our partnership with Insight provides an external reference point for what high-performing schools look like, along with a thought partner for our principals. As a superintendent, I made a conscious choice to have no line of sight into what was happening in this outside coaching of our principals. They can be more vulnerable with outside coaches because they’re not their boss or some other authority figure. And the length of the partnership – we’ve been working with them since 2015 now – offers a stability and a deep working relationship our principals can count on.

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

I think one of the more important things we’ve learned over the last few years is that coaching works, not only for principals but for teachers. Our principals did not have deep experience with coaching prior to our model, but they have taken what they were living through with their executive coach and used it as a framework for their coaching of teachers.

Another lesson stems from the fact that we are not trying to replicate a model. Our schools look, feel, and sound vastly different not just from traditional schools, but from one another. To allow for that, we’ve given our principals the autonomy to determine their own path and what their schools will be like through their summer institutes. What we weren't expecting is that there are times when our principals just want a blueprint. Some of them just did not feel strongly about a particular school model, but I think there's value in having principals struggle through that and wrangle with it for a while. But it was eye-opening to learn that autonomy in all areas is not necessarily universally valued by our school leaders.

We've come a long way, but there are definitely areas where we want to keep moving the needle. For our first cohort of turnaround schools, we’re continuously trying to improve our student outcomes, and we’d also like to start thinking a little more broadly, looking beyond the academic and social emotional growth of students with experiences like student government, sports, band, cheer, dance – the sorts of things that are often overlooked in charter schools in Ohio.

We also want to keep growing those schools. As a charter school organization, we’re very aware that full enrollment brings in funding and allows us to do a lot more for teachers, students, and families than we could if we’re under-enrolled.

For our second cohort, which we just started working with this year, we’re expecting the rate of improvement to be accelerated owing to our experience.

This blog originally appeared on SmartBrief.com.

Ten years ago, then U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a clarion call to turn around 5,000 of the nation’s most distressed schools, serving nearly three million students. It was an audacious goal set by an audacious leader—the likes of which are in terribly short supply these days. Agree or disagree, one of the things I’ve always admired about Duncan was his unapologetic response to the criticism that he tried to do too much, too quickly. Duncan’s response being that he didn’t go fast enough.

Ten years later, states have fallen far short of his challenge, but the sticky problem of failing schools refuses to go away. Look around the country, and there’s no shortage of schools in troubling situations that require attention. The calamity in Providence has been uncomfortably brought to light, as has the ongoing debacle in New York City. Moving west, Tennessee is planning big changes in response to flagging outcomes, while Houston appears to be on the brink. Here in Colorado, the first state-ordered outside interventions are being challenged in court. And the list goes on.

The research on school turnaround is, in a word, complicated. R Street Institute’s Andy Smarick has written extensively on the issue, and makes a compelling argument that the entire endeavor is a fool’s errand. Instead, Smarick believes states should follow a four-step alternative: “Close failing schools, open new schools, replicate great schools, repeat.” Few actions are as politically unpalatable as shuttering a school, but the evidence suggests that chronically bad ones are impervious to improvement. And this doesn’t get into the exorbitant costs involved. For example, at one point Colorado was spending an astonishing $132,800 for each student moved into proficiency. Suffice it to say, scalable solutions remain elusive.

It’s not for lack of trying. In 2011, I helped to orchestrate Indiana’s first takeover of low-performing schools. It was a decision that we did not make lightly, and one that we undertook with eyes wide open regarding the fiendish level of difficulty. One of the most challenging aspects of the takeover may have been the complex racial dynamics involved. Author Eve L. Ewing recently wrote a book that explores these issues in the context of the 2013 school closings in Chicago. When the schools identified for intervention primarily serve students of color and the decision-makers involved are mostly white, the racial politics are invariably brutal.

One of the schools we identified for takeover that year was located less than thirty miles southeast of Chicago, in the city of Gary. On the school’s opening day under state authority, Gary’s Democratic state senator stood shoulder to shoulder with then Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett in addressing the community and calling for collective action. It was a remarkable image for both the media and city residents—one that hadn’t been previously rehearsed. Their unified front underscored the importance of working collaboratively with affected communities throughout the process.

Nevertheless, the results from those efforts have thus far been mixed. But when recently asked whether he would do it again, Bennett said,

I would absolutely. We would make the same decision to intervene. Would we take different strategic and tactical steps? Yeah, there's no question. Looking back, I still believe that we have an obligation to children and communities to intervene and improve schools. I think that's a moral and legal obligation the state has. Has anyone gotten the process perfect across the country? No. And we have to learn from each other. We have to talk.

Politics played an unfortunate role in how our efforts shook out. Since that time, Indiana’s appetite for aggressive school intervention has precipitously declined. It’s an understandable if not disquieting sentiment, and one that is shared by many who are currently engaged in this work. Taken in total, I recognize the low probability of success, but I remain a staunch supporter of states’ efforts to lift up their cellar dwellers.

How do I square this circle? Am I refusing to allow the unembellished facts on what works (very little) get in the way of my opinion on the need for muscular—and potentially community disrupting—improvement measures?

Consider that asking “What works?” when it comes to school turnaround is probably the wrong question because, as Dylan Wiliam is wont to say, “Everything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere.” To wit, there’s a dizzying constellation of school improvement strategies out there. From teacher coaches and turnaround specialists to alternative governance models and student tutoring, everything under the sun has been tried at least once. A better question would be, “Under what conditions does school turnaround work?” Reflecting on my time in Indiana, I can think of at least three.

First, leadership at all levels—federal, state, and local—is essential, but it’s a must from state officials. Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels once said that anyone in an elected position, or aspiring to be in one, should be able to name one cause he or she would be willing to lose an election over. For Bennett, the issue was Indiana’s students. One would be hard pressed to find his variety of gutsiness and tenacity among the current occupants of governors’ mansions and leaders of state departments of education.

Second, because there’s no clear evidence on a single strategy that works, school turnaround must be viewed as one piece of a comprehensive policy agenda. There is no single, 100 percent solution to the problems facing failing schools, but rather a hundred individual 1 percent solutions. Among these are boosting the supply of excellent schools via a pluralistic education sector, installing a clear and transparent A–F accountability system, and expanding access to rigorous and engaging coursework. The key is to provide parents and families greater agency, and the means with which they can opt out of circumstances that are detrimental to their children’s well being.

Finally, leaders must be willing to seize upon windows of opportunity when they present themselves. Indeed, there was an alignment of the stars in advance of our decision to enforce Indiana’s school takeover statute. Heading into his reelection campaign in 2008, Daniels had become impatient with the incremental approach of Bennett’s predecessor. In Bennett, Daniels found a likeminded ally who was interested in pushing for big changes. Nationally, the same election marked the first time in forty-four years that a Democrat had carried Indiana in a presidential contest. The rare bipartisan alignment on school turnaround and education reform supplied additional wind at our backs.

Despite today’s remarkably different landscape, states would do well to consider these three conditions alongside whichever strategies they elect to pursue. The urgency of improving our nation’s lowest-performing schools is no less pressing today than it was then. But it’s only when courageous leaders exert their influence and risk their political capital that the herculean task of school turnaround stands a snowball’s chance of succeeding.

For more than half a century now, back-to-school time has brought another Phi Delta Kappan survey of “the public’s attitudes toward the public schools.” They invariably recycle some familiar questions (e.g., the grades you would give your child’s schools and the nation’s schools). Other topics, however, come and go. This year’s survey, for example, pays no attention to school choice but includes a section dealing with teachers’ opinions on their own status, pay, and school conditions. Also to be found here are probes on civic education, school discipline, and workforce preparation. There’s much of value, but there are also problems with this presentation, including some highlighting that seems designed to emphasize issues that evidently matter most to the authors, their advisors, or the PDK organization.

Most evident is their appetite for more funding for public education, which is palpable on many pages of their report, as well as in how the survey questions are phrased and the data analyzed. Consider:

[I]n an open-ended question, 25 percent of all adults say inadequate financial support is the biggest problem facing the public schools today. It’s far and away the top-cited problem, with all other responses in the single digits. Among teachers, even more—36 percent—call lack of funding the schools’ biggest problem. [emphasis theirs]

That teachers want more dollars for their schools is no surprise, but one must wonder how the public’s responses to this open-ended question were aggregated and coded. Suppose one said “inadequate funding” and another said “not enough computers for kids to each have one.” Were those combined under “inadequate financial support”? Then suppose one respondent said “violent classrooms” and another said “too many suspensions.” Would those be aggregated under “discipline problems” or treated as two separate problems, which would inevitably result in a lower score for each.

That this is Kappan practice emerges from a “biggest problem” chart showing “national totals” over the past half century. Here, “lack of discipline,” “use of drugs,” and “fighting/gangs/violence” are treated as three separate categories even though it would be reasonable to view all three as manifestations of a troubled school culture.

To be fair, as a friend commented, “We see the same thing in other political polling. For example: A poll will ask what’s the number one issue, then break up deficit, government spending, taxes, and waste/fraud into four categories while health care gets one category. What's the number one issue? Never anything related to government spending or taxing, notwithstanding that often a strong plurality of people responded with an issue clearly related to government spending and taxing.”

With that off my chest, let’s focus on several items of interest in the 2019 survey.

Discipline. On the touchy topic of school discipline, we see some confusion combined with a kind of common sense that policymakers are rarely able to capture in laws and rules.

Discipline is definitely a concern, with 51 percent of public-school parents saying it’s not strict enough in public schools—up from 45 percent in 1969. More alarming is that 64 percent of public school teachers say this, too. Nor is there great trust in schools to handle this challenge, with barely half of teachers and far fewer parents expressing confidence on that front.

Perhaps that’s why “zero tolerance” has broad support—71 percent of those surveyed—when applied to drugs and weapons. Yet slightly more than half would not employ automatic suspension or expulsion in “common school situations,” such as a kid who inadvertently brings a knife to school in his backpack. (Note, though, that non-white respondents are much more disposed to do so.) And there’s much support for mediation and counseling, with two-thirds of respondents viewing that approach as more effective than suspension or expulsion for addressing student misbehavior.

That many favor both “zero tolerance” and “mediation” shows how fraught this topic is—and why it’s hard to craft workable policies.

Civics and Character. Hoorah! Americans are nearly unanimous that public schools should teach civics—and seven in ten say it should be required, even though many states do not require it. There’s some concern among parents (29 percent)—less among teachers (16 percent)—that such classes may include political content they don’t agree with. Indicative of a possible headwind, however, is that conservatives and Republicans are more troubled on this front than liberals and Democrats.

That schools should “teach values” is, by contrast, more important to conservatives than liberals (and to older respondents than younger), but overall, support for this is strong across the board.

Workforce Preparation. Considering the recent upwelling of interest in career and technical education (CTE), it was a good year to inquire into public support for this. Not many—about 20 percent—think that preparing kids for the workforce should be the main goal of schools, but there’s much support for schools preparing them for both jobs and further study. Blurry and complicated as this is in policy and practice, “college and career” does appear to enjoy broad public backing.

A noteworthy difference between teachers and parents emerges, however, when the survey sample is split and they’re asked what’s the foremost mission of public schools: a plurality of teachers (45 percent) puts preparation for citizenship first while most parents give top billing to academics—as does the wider public.

Yet when asked what kind of additional course they’d have their high schooler take, almost half of parents would opt for a “jobs skills” course versus 37 percent who would choose advanced academics and 18 percent favoring art or music.

Teachers. The big news emerging from this part of the Kappan survey is that teachers are grumpy, frustrated, feel underpaid and underappreciated, often consider quitting—and a wide majority say they’d vote to strike for such goals as higher pay, greater school funding, and more say in what happens in school. (More remarkable: Slightly more than half of public school parents say they’d support teachers in such strikes.)

The survey also supplies some interesting data on teacher demographics. We see, for example, that teachers have higher household incomes than Americans in general, although lower than the college-educated part of the U.S. population. We also see that teachers are more likely to be married, that 37 percent say they’re “evangelical Christians” (nearly identical to “all adults”), and that their ideological and political leanings nearly match the population with college degrees, which is to say they skew liberal and Democrat.

It’s good that other outfits also survey public opinion on education issues. I’m particularly bullish, for example, about the annual Education Next series, now a dozen years running. (I’m also an occasional contributor to that publication.) The teachers unions periodically survey their members on sundry topics and often report the results. So, too, the National School Boards Association. All naturally focus on issues of particular interest to them and do their best to shape the interpretation of their findings. The Kappan’s is no better or worse, but is valuable in its way and not entirely predictable, at least not when new topics are introduced. Even some of its old chestnuts have served their purpose, such as its vivid depiction—for decades running now—of the wide discrepancy between the low marks Americans tend to give the nation’s schools, even as they assign honors grades to their own children’s schools. When one is reminded of that chasm, one better understands the NIMBY challenge that education reformers face.

For me, the 2019 survey is also heartening on several fronts, even while yawn-provoking on others. Pinch me and I’ll settle for its evidence that parents and teachers both seek better school discipline—and want schools to work at civics and character, too.

I have been there; every teacher has. The clock is ticking, you've got just fifteen minutes left to wrap up the lesson, and the time is being chipped away by a student who is disrupting the classroom. How you respond to that situation involves the balance of dozens of different factors. It's complicated, and some of that complexity is captured in a new report out this week.

The Thomas Fordham Institute is a right-tilted think tank that has advocated for many education reform causes, from Common Core to charter schools. Earlier this week they released a new survey, produced in conjunction with RAND, entitled "Discipline Reform Through the Eyes of Teachers."

Cautions and limitations

The survey used the RAND American Teacher Panel a large (over 84,000) collection of teachers intended to be a nationally representative sample. From that larger group, RAND selected 2,077 teachers, and 1,219 actually responded. The sample was constructed to have an emphasis on New York City, so of the respondents, 243 were New York City teachers. Respondents were broken down by black and white, and by over/under 75 percent of students on free or reduced-priced lunch (FRPL) (a commonly used shorthand for indicating poverty levels in a school). They are also broken down by grade bands (3–5, 6–8, 9–12). By the time you have done all this breakdown, you get some seriously tiny sample sizes. Black teachers of grades 3–5 in NYC at schools with less than 75 percent FRPL? There are only three of them as respondents in this survey.

The report notes that most respondents feel strongly about their answers, but if you don't feel strongly about the subject, that makes you likely to be among the people who don't bother to fill the survey out.

The survey spins off the arguments surrounding the Obama administration guidelines meant to reduce suspensions of students of color—the same guidelines that Betsy DeVos had done away with in 2018. Fordham is not without bias; they believe that DeVos "got this one right." The survey focuses in particular on out-of-school suspensions (OSS) as well as disciplinary alternatives.

The report offers five major findings, each of which raises additional questions. Because this is complicated.

Teachers in high-poverty schools report a more disorderly and unsafe environment.

Asked about physical attacks, student fighting and verbal disrespect, teachers in high-poverty schools (over 75 percent FRPL) reported far more of these behaviors than teachers in low-poverty schools (under 25 percent FRPL). Break the results down by teacher race, and there's no big difference in percentages.

The big question, of course, is why. The worst possible conclusion to reach would be to argue that Those People's Children, children who grow up in poverty, are just naturally more poorly behaved because of their defective culture of origin.

High-poverty schools have a high teacher turnover rate. A younger, newer staff will be likely to have more disciplinary issues, both because of inexperience and because they haven't had the time to build the kinds of relationships that create a more positive environment. Research shows that poverty creates a variety of effects that interfere with education. Students may also have difficulty buying into a system that feels hostile to them.

Most teachers say that discipline is inconsistent or inadequate, and that suspension numbers have dropped at least in part because of bad behavior that is tolerated or underreported.

Two-thirds of the respondents said that school policy was inconsistently enforced. This was ranked a bigger problem than community factors such as poverty; uninvolved parents or troubled families topped the list.

About a third of high-poverty school teachers report that administrators tell students to stay home without recording it as a suspension at least some of the time. The use of suspension numbers as part of school evaluation opened the door to Campbell's Law; school discipline is complicated, but suspension numbers are simple, and simple to game in easy ways. By insisting on such a simple measure, government ensures that the measure will be at best not useful, and at worst will interfere with the disciplinary process, pushing administrators to watch their numbers rather than the context and details of an individual situation.

When it comes to school discipline, inconsistency is the worst. When neither students nor faculty know where the lines are drawn, the lines cease to be effective.

While teachers see value in newer approaches, most also say that suspension can be useful and effective.

As one teacher put it, "NOTHING works for all students." For every method listed, from positive reinforcement systems to restorative justice, at least 80 percent of teachers said the technique was at least somewhat effective.

That same over 80 percent margin said that they at least somewhat agreed that OSS can send a useful message to parents about the seriousness of the student behavior, and that OSS can remove disruptive students so that others can learn. Teachers also felt that OSS was for use only with serious offenses and not, for instance, cutting class or verbal disrespect. Context also matters, especially when the behavior is repeated and other methods have been tried already.

As with many educational issues, policymakers may argue the philosophy, but teachers are more focused on the pragmatic questions. What will help this student? What will keep this classroom a space for learning? What will actually work? When policymakers limit the workable tools that teachers can use, that's frustrating.

Most teachers agree the majority of students suffer because of a few chronic disrupters.

Seventy-seven percent agreed. In what may be an alarming result, 70 percent of general-ed teachers agreed or somewhat agreed that students with IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) were treated too leniently. Sixty percent of special ed teachers agreed. This hints at one of the eternal issues of education—should students with special needs be placed in "regular" classrooms, or have their own classrooms that more directly focus on their needs. This pendulum has never stopped swinging, and likely never will.

There's an issue that this survey overlooks—class size. In a classroom of ten students, making adjustments for individual issues is easier. Building relationships and respect, addressing individual student concerns—in short, many of the things that keep disciplinary issues from erupting—become nearly impossible in a classroom of thirty or more students.

African American teachers believe that disciplinary results are racially biased. They also believe that suspensions and expulsions should be used more often.

All things being equal, the survey asked, if a black and white student commit the same offense, will the results be harsher for one or the other. Seventy-seven percent of black teachers said results would be harsher for black students; 24 percent of white teachers agreed.

White teachers were slightly more likely to have suspended a student last year. But all teachers in high-poverty schools said that in school and out of school suspensions, alternative schools and expulsions were used too little.

It is no surprise that schools disproportionately discipline black students. In the justice system, when blacks and whites commit the same crime, blacks are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, and likely to receive a longer sentence. Adults view black girls as less innocent, and black boys as older and less innocent. We have issues with systemic racism in this country; it cannot be a surprise that those issues extend into schools.

The fact that black teachers see uneven application of discipline, but still call for more disciplinary measures, has been the big takeaway from this report. But this shouldn't be a surprise, either, unless you are someone who assumes that black teachers and parents somehow don't value discipline as much as white folks. That's an assumption that goes hand in hand with the racist notion that black folks have more trouble with the law because they come from a culture that doesn't value law and order and self-discipline, that Those People come from a culture of violence and disrespect and that's why they get in trouble with authorities so often. If you are someone who was surprised by the conclusion that black teachers see a lot of racism in disciplinary practices, but still call for more effective and consistent discipline, you might want to ask yourself why exactly you found that surprising.

The big balancing act

When a student acted out in my classroom, I was aware that the behavior was probably the result of many factors, from family issues to personal struggles to frustration with the material to learning challenges to any number of failures on my part. I was also aware that the business of establishing a respectful, functional learning environment had been going on, or not, weeks and even months before this particular moment of misbehavior. I was aware that this moment was a signal that I needed to work on some things with this student going forward.

But I was also aware that there were twenty-some other students in the room whose education had just come to a grinding halt.

Teachers need a variety of tools at their disposal to deal with student discipline issues, and it is not particularly helpful to have someone sitting in a far-off office limiting the choices available.

But teachers need to be more aware of and sensitive to their own biases, and they need to be part of disciplinary consistency within a building.

Oppressive, punitive, authoritarian discipline can create an atmosphere that blames and shames students, creating a school culture that absolutely destroys trust and respect and stifles any hope of learning.

But a lack of boundaries and rules can create a culture in which learning can never really take root.

Oversight of school discipline needs to be a part of how we address greater equity and justice in our society as a whole. It's destructive and wasteful to criminalize children and teenagers. The goal should be to keep students in school and to get them an education, somehow.

But that oversight needs to be meaningful, and not simple and simply gamed numbers.

Finally

This survey is a rare policy paper that actually consults the voices of teachers. The report has some interesting data, but a large number of respondents included long-form responses with their surveys, and those have all been included in the report. They are by far the most interesting reading here, and convey as well as anything could just how complicated the issues are. If you look at the report, take the time to read them all.

Editor’s note: This essay was first published by Forbes.

The education solar system is endlessly distorted by the extraordinary presence within it of two separate suns with gravitational fields that tug the policy planets in different directions.

Around one sun revolve the satellites of utility, instrumentality, and achievement. On their surfaces, education must be purposeful and structured so that societies can cohere and prosper. Left in a state of nature, children would grow up ignorant and wild. Adults—and schools—exist to form, instruct, discipline, acculturate, and socialize them.

Orbiting the other sun we find the heavenly bodies of romanticism, naturalism, and liberation. There, education frees the individual to become a unique being. Left to explore its own nature and unconstrained by external forces, the child will unfold like a flower. Adults’ job is to keep her from serious harm and provide options for exploration, not to expect, demand, or discipline.

If those were separate solar systems, we might hear only music from the spheres. In reality, however, the education planets are being pulled in both directions.

The American K–12 world spent recent decades with its orbit mostly shaped by the gravity of the utility star. Thus we focused on boosting achievement, prepping more kids for college and career, strengthening school effectiveness—and holding elements of the education system to account for their results, gauged mainly by test scores, graduation and matriculation rates and other formal markers of success.

Today, however, education in the U.S. is swinging rapidly toward the liberation star. Tests are being scrapped or their results diminished. “School climate” is getting weighed more heavily, achievement less. “Social and emotional learning” vies with knowledge, and “21st century skills” loom larger than the three R’s. “Personalization” and “collaboration” are crowding out all forms of standardization.

Enter Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle with a plump, readable, earnest tome from the Oxford University Press that celebrates children’s play. (The book’s subtitle: “How more play will save our schools and help children thrive.”)

It opens with a heartfelt foreword by British arts educator Sir Ken Robinson, perhaps best known for his 2014 TED talk about how modern schools kill children’s creativity. The top jacket blurb comes from Howard Gardner, famously the inventor of “multiple intelligences,” including the “bodily-kinesthetic” and “naturalistic.”

The authors clearly bask in the rays of the naturalism sun—and it’s no secret that most of my own tan comes from the instrumental one. So it will surprise no-one that I find much of their message misguided, even harmful. Perhaps more surprising is that some is spot-on.

Sahlberg, many will remember, is a Finn (no relation) who for years functioned as the foremost booster of Finland’s vaunted approach to education, which was (for a time) validated by robust PISA scores and drew many to Helsinki to see how a gentle, teacher-centric system with little formal accountability could yield such good results.

Co-author Doyle (a sometime TV producer and previous author of worthy books on history and other subjects) spent several years in Finland, put his young son into school there, and was charmed by the experience, during which he came to know Sahlberg and clearly imbibed much Finnish education Kool-aid (or stronger quaff).

Of late, some of the bloom has gone off Finland’s education rose—PISA scores have slid since 2009—and both authors have left town, with Sahlberg now living in Australia and Doyle back in New York. Yet that Nordic land’s laid-back approach to schooling and child development reigns over these pages. “Unlike in many other countries,” they write, “Finnish parents favor a full, enjoyable period of childhood rather than an earlier start of formal learning. Childhood is, they say, the time when children discover the world within them while learning how to be with other children.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau could not have better evoked educational naturalism.

Doyle was particularly taken with his son’s experience in a system where formal schooling does not normally start until age 7 and “play was commonly understood to be both the whole point of childhood and the bedrock foundation of effective childhood education.” Sahlberg was, of course, one of the architects of that system.

But they’ve spotlighted some bona fide issues and they support these observations with research from sources as varied as the National Academies of Science and the Centers for Disease Control. Young children do indeed need to play—perhaps we all do—in order to develop healthfully, socially, even intellectually. Recent decades’ focus on scores and rates has caused many schools to limit recess and extend instructional time. Sometimes gym and extracurriculars also get squeezed. And it’s true that hyper parents often pressure their kids to buckle down and study, cramping their ability to play, dream, make believe, and goof off. The authors are correct to fault this mindset—even as they have fun labeling the policy overkill “GERM” for “Global Education Reform Movement.”

They’re also right—the Academy of Pediatrics concurs—to skewer our obsession with technology for letting kids substitute “screen time” for healthy outdoor activity as well as such old-fashioned indoor pleasures as reading books and playing board games, all of which yield valuable learning experiences of their own.

And they’re on target when they condem today’s helicopter parents and overblown worries about safety and competition for blocking youngsters from experiences that carry the teeniest risk or might yield winners and losers. Thus we crack down on “free-range parenting,” eliminate team competitions and dodgeball, and don’t let our children climb trees, explore a riverbank, or take themselves to the park. Those experiences, too, are part of becoming educated, as important in their different ways as long division or the causes of the Civil War.

Nor is this just “An American Tragedy.” That’s Chapter 7. Chapter 8 is “The Global War on Play.” Kids, say the authors, are increasingly being denied their childhood in much of the world.

So there’s wisdom and documentation to be found in these 440 pages. Find time for recess in school. Tell parents to cool their overprotective jets. Limit screen time. Absolutely. But the authors’ central policy message for primary-secondary education, particularly as it’s certain to be interpreted and implemented in today’s gravitational field, portends damage to children and society at least as severe as the practices the authors rightly deplore.

It’s crystallized in this prediction: “Someday soon, the parents, teachers, and children of the world will rise up and join together to build a new generation of schools for all children, schools built not on stress and fear but on play, joy, learning, and love.” Once that utopian revolution is complete, kids will enjoy a “school experience rich in discovery and experimentation, encouragement, conversation, intellectual challenge, free play and guided play, playful teaching and learning, and respect of children’s voices and individual learning differences.”

Sound familiar? It should, as it’s a formula straight out of Rousseau, Dewey and a million other “progressive” educators. As with all such nostrums, there’s nothing in it that you wouldn’t want for your own child. But wait. We’re living in a time when academic achievement is flat at the end of high school; when scads of young people emerge unready for either college or career success; when American employers must look overseas for skilled personnel; and when results-based accountability for kids, teachers, and schools alike hangs in the balance and “soft skills” are in the ascendancy. We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm to middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty of “play” of various sorts in their lives, even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.

Are we—bizarrely and cruelly—to exacerbate the achievement, economic and mobility gaps that already plague us as a nation, while turning a blind eye to the academic mediocrity that already afflicts even those on the up side of those gaps, all in the name of modeling America on a charming small country in northern Europe? The evidence the authors cite is persuasive that kids need to play but not that we should diminish the quest for stronger skills and knowledge or should try to organize U.S. schools the way they do in Vuohtomaki, the rural village where Sahlberg grew up. Appealing as that model is in its way, it doesn’t transplant at scale to the Bronx, nor would it pave a path out of poverty for children who live there (or in Memphis, Houston, etc.)

I think I’ll stick with GERM—and keep doing what I can to infect others. It may be too late to block America’s migration from one education sun to the other, but it’s a dreadful mistake to accelerate it.

SOURCE: Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle, Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Editor’s note: This essay was first published by Education Next.