Editor’s Note: Back in September 2018, awaiting the election of our next governor, we at the Fordham Institute began developing a set of policy proposals that we believe can lead to increased achievement and greater opportunities for Ohio students. This is one of those policy proposals.

With Mike DeWine sworn in as Ohio’s 70th governor, and with his administration now well underway, we are proud to roll out the full set of our education policy proposals. You can download the full document, titled Fulfilling the Readiness Promise: Twenty-five education policy ideas for Ohio, at this link, or you can access the individual policy proposals from the links provided here.

Proposal: Require all Ohio school districts to participate in interdistrict open enrollment. This would require a change in state law that currently allows local school boards to prohibit open enrollment entirely (ORC 3313.98). However, current rules allowing districts to limit open enrollees based on schools’ capacity should be maintained.

Background: Since 1989, Ohio has allowed districts to admit students who live outside their geographic boundaries via interdistrict open enrollment. But district participation is voluntary; that is, each district decides for itself whether to accept nonresident pupils. Today, roughly four in five Buckeye districts participate in this choice program, which enables nearly 80,000 students to attend schools outside their districts. Students may choose to open enroll for any number of reasons, including access to special academic or extracurricular programs, closer proximity to their homes, or the ability to go to class with close friends. Research also indicates that students benefit academically when open enrolling over multiple years—and the gains are greatest for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet more than one hundred Ohio districts forbid open enrollment—with most such districts located in suburban areas surrounding the state’s big cities (figure 2). This is a very cramped view of “public education,” and it removes quality school options for tens of thousands of needy children just because of their home addresses.

Figure 1: Ohio school districts by their participation in open enrollment, 2013-14

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Proposal rationale: Although many parents are satisfied with their home districts—and many choose them intentionally via where they purchase or rent their homes—others have children who would benefit from attending a different school. For these families, public schools outside of their district of residence should be accessible. Requiring statewide district participation in open enrollment, as twenty-three other states do, would ensure that all Ohio families have opportunities to enroll their children in the schools that are best for them.

Cost: No significant impact on the state budget.

Resources: For an analysis of academic impacts on open enrollees, see Deven Carlson and Stéphane Lavertu’s report Interdistrict Open Enrollment in Ohio: Participation and Student Outcomes, published by the Fordham Institute (2017). The map displayed above also comes from that report (p. 12). For more on other states’ open-enrollment policies, see the National Center for Education Statistics’ “Numbers and types of open enrollment policies, by state: 2017.” Detailed information about Ohio’s interdistrict open-enrollment policies can be found at the ODE’s web page “Open Enrollment: Overview and Explanation,” and a list of participating districts is also at the ODE’s website, under “Open Enrollment.”

1. It may be a new week, but it’s the same old news to be had it seems. The Dayton Daily News has a piece on state graduation requirements. Specifically, those put forward last week by a coalition of groups of which Fordham is a part, as compared to those put forward by the state board of education and championed by the state supe. (Dayton Daily News, 5/19/19)
   

2. Speaking of the state board of education and old news, I think those guys were using Mr. Peabody’s WABAC Machine last week—warping back to 2015 and taking a stand against HB 70 (that is, the bill from two General Assemblies ago that created the current academic distress commission paradigm). It is interesting to note that the resolution that members approved did not seem to take a stand on which of the 237 current proposed “fixes” to the ADC paradigm they would actually prefer. Wonder why that is? (Gongwer Ohio, 5/17/19) Editors in Youngstown had their eyes on the past as well, noting in this powerful opinion piece (which is firmly in support of the state’s academic distress paradigm) all of the times that the elected board of Youngstown City Schools failed the community and its children and families. That failure is still ongoing, they opine, and urge the incoming CEO to ignore them entirely. That’s new. (Youngstown Vindicator, 5/19/19)

3. Last week, I told you about the City Connects student support program at Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School in Dayton and how a group of state leaders led by the Lieutenant Governor was going to visit CJ to learn more about it. Here is coverage of that event wherein, surprise surprise, such support programs are credited with uncountable academic miracles. (Dayton Daily News, 5/17/19)

4. The Plain Dealer’s Patrick O’Donnell has been on the Grand Tour of Western Europe in recent weeks (Dateline Rotterdam!), learning about education pathways in several countries which utilize apprenticeships and concurrent school/work training to help young people find jobs even before they have completed their formal education. It is all shaded pretty rosily, especially as compared to similar American efforts, but I was left wondering why the German gearbox manufacturer still says she struggles to find qualified workers with all of this built-in pipeline from school to work? I probably just misunderstood something. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/19/19)

5. Now THIS I do understand: Toledo City Schools is using a fancy gee-whizeroo air show, complete with airplane rides, to recruit students to their new aviation-based high school academy. Clever. (Toledo Blade, 5/19/19)

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NOTES: On Thursday, May 16, 2019, the CEO of Lorain City Schools testified before the Ohio Senate Finance Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education on HB 166, the next biennial state budget. Lorain City Schools is one of three school districts in the state operating under the aegis of an Academic Distress Commission (ADC), an accountability measure which HB 166, in its current form, would end. Thursday was the first time lawmakers heard testimony from those whose job it is to carry out the day-to-day work of turning around a district via an ADC/CEO model. The following is based upon Mr. Hardy’s written testimony. Supplemental materials that accompanied Mr. Hardy’s testimony, along with testimony from other district parents and staff members who appeared on May 16, can be found here.

The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

I humbly come to Lorain as an anomaly; my own demographics and disposition are statistically more likely to represent one who has and lives in poverty on either side of the bars in a jail cell—enslaved mentally and physically by a system that has yet to be just for people like me. However, I’m a lucky one; one that has more degrees than convictions and letters after my name rather than numbers. One that is not from a very proud Lorain, a Lorain with rich history, tremendous people, many unheard voices, nor its local politics.

You have heard from those associated with the former governance structure and I am sure you heard the narrative for the perceived devastation that has supposedly been created by an ineffective governing structure, the ADC, and the chosen leadership of the district, namely me.

What you have not heard to this point are a few different perspectives. Mostly, because I aligned with the brilliance associated with Eleanor Roosevelt when she stated that great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people. Even though I am far from a great mind, I strive to improve every day, because the kids of Lorain deserve more people like the ones you see around you, who work to eradicate their education experience of the incestual corruption that has governed their district for decades and has limited their ability to be successful upon entering the real world.

I am moving out of my normal leadership style today because of the narrative you heard is coming from elected officials and the former governance of Lorain City Schools that has carried less than 3% of the Lorain community’s vote. Largely because I want to speak for those who are afraid to speak out against the establishment or who do not see that there will be any benefit in doing so. However, the idea of living in fear of retaliation or worse—another generation of young people left uneducated, referred to as n-words, commented about because of their body parts, exploited for their athletic abilities and then left for the streets, and the complete disregard for their future needs to stop.

I rarely, if ever, directly respond to criticism from angry individuals who have suffered the feeling of accountability and the lack of power to wield their continued oppression on young people and the people who care deeply about educating them.

I rarely, if ever, directly respond because the travesty of educational neglect has taken the lives of too many and has suffocated so many more from the very promise our education system is supposed to provide. However, the weight of your decision and the impact of your collective voices will shape the future of cities like Lorain in Ohio; cities in Mississippi, California and states that are watching legislatures decide governance structures for schools systems of our most precious beings, our children. The idea of making a decision that could impact the country is no small feat and I hope that the words you hear today land with an understanding of the respect I have for you and the significance of the legislation that will have your blessing. Legislation that could truly put our children first in a space where adult, privileged agendas are deemed superior to that of our most vulnerable people. The comprehensive transformation that is needed is so vast that the very work that has not been done needed immediate and uninterrupted attention. I would compare the work that is necessary to that of someone who is brought into an emergency room, bloodied, with multiple open wounds that are so deep and unfortunately unattended that without immediate medical attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week, death becomes the only option. Except in this example as extended to Lorain’s circumstances has historically had leadership who does not want to fix the open wound, because it is more profitable to let the child bleed to the end of its own misery.

I rarely, if ever, directly respond because the focus has and will be on closing this open wound and eventually helping each child to reach their full potential the past 20 months. However, to do so, we must recognize that 1 out of 4 children reading on grade level by third grade is not acceptable; that 900 failing grades from one grade level alone is unacceptable; that 1% of a graduating class being deemed college or career ready—as it is in Lorain—is criminal and all of our time and energy must be allocated to create a culture that acts on these problems is the primary work. So please pardon our team for keeping our heads down on what is important.

However, this work, albeit time consuming, has left little time or energy to be political and cater to the powers who have neglected our children, misspent millions of dollars on duplicative services, and want nothing more than control of the purse strings of the largest budget in a dying city economy. Rightfully so. So much so, I will speak of the ills in previous governance structures for a minute more. Because the people you see around me are here because they are tired of the oppression that suffocates our community. Today is the day to hear from those who are most impacted by the possibility of changes in governance. Today is the day for the full story to be heard.

Those who have lost their duties to govern our district have colluded to keep a community at bay.  Through the PowerPoint in front of you, you see the inner workings of a power structure that links individuals based on deep political guarantees, lies, and bullying that has compromised so many people.

People would rather share their voice in the grocery store, bakery, or at church, or through an email pleading with me not to share their name, than to face the wrath of their local politician and the three percent that has elected them to continue the disservice to a community that wants so much more than what it is able to produce in a town that is free of jobs and justice—absent of honesty—and who believe that the way to future prosperity is through educating its young people to be ready for a workforce that has growing needs across our state.

I think it is fair to say that no child should graduate from high school where 1 percent of its kids are deemed college ready when they are so much more brilliant than this; no child should be labeled incapable of learning and educated to the lowest denominator. No child of ours would make it to fourth grade with only one out of four of their classmates reading in grade level; nor would we want the adults who serve a community where our child attends school to talk about anything else until these realities are no longer existent. Somehow, and knowing the brilliance that sits in front of me in deep thought, commitment to servitude to its people, and soulful morality for thy neighbor you sit, realizing that the idea of reversing course on progress only satisfies the well-being of adults and again sacrifices the well-being of its future. The imperfections of legislation cannot be fixed by more legislation, but by the morality and just cause built into the policy that is investing in the future well-being of the people it serves.

Anything less would be catering to a voice of resentment for change rather than the voice of reason and progress.

Progress that is beginning to take hold.  This year alone, we will have a 54% increase in the number of scholars who will graduate high school with an associates’ degree and the highest enrollment in our Early College Programming beginning in 9th grade in the history of our district. We have gone from 3 schools with Pre-K programming to 10 schools with 5-star-rated Pre-K programs. We moved out of financial caution and have a fund balance that remains steady and a budgetary process that is solvent after eliminating a $700,000 debt that was handed to me on the first 30 days of my job, along with millions of dollars allocated to multiple lawyers every year. This all accomplished in the short, 20 month tenure of our administration after 20 years of mismanagement and disregard for children.

Here is my ask:

• I ask that you follow our current local elections and see what is happening before our community’s eyes with the resignation of our Mayor two days after winning an uncontested primary;

• I ask you to talk to some of our fifth graders and ask them what they want to get out of their education and what they need more of from all of the adults that interact with them every day;

• I ask you to take the next year to understand the complexity of this challenge, the progress that is being made even though our length of time for growth has only the age of a toddler;

• I ask you to reflect on the voice you see dominated in the media and more importantly look for the voices that are not. Some of those voices you have and will hear today.

There is a reason we are where we are in communities like Lorain and all across the country. Changing course now would do nothing more than create more, real chaos, significant dysfunction greater than what we inherited, and would derail all progress for kids and the community that has their future deep in their hearts and minds.

I truly tip my hat to you and the weight of the decisions you are set to make for the state of Ohio and its future, and its children. This is no is easy task. The idea of state intervention on local communities is significant, but I would argue in this case it is imperative and more importantly it’s your duty. The lives of 6,500 young people are at stake and the lives of future Ohioans will pay the price if local politics are the victor over its people and their children’s progress.

David Hardy, Jr., is CEO of Lorain City Schools.

In a recent floor debate, Representative Phillip Robinson made an Orwellian “pro-business” case for eliminating state interventions in chronically low-performing districts, saying: “When businesses are looking to come to Ohio, they want to go into competitive communities where they can attract employees to bring their children [to schools] there.” Criticizing the state’s approach to school ratings, State Board of Education member Linda Haycock told the Lima News, “It’s like, ‘All of your schools are failing, why would I want to bring my business here?’” 

The argument is full of baloney. You simply can’t plaster schools with “A’s” and believe that companies will flock to areas where students—the future workforce—aren’t being well educated. Let’s not be naïve: Any responsible employer looking to invest millions in a community is going to get behind the façade and find out the truth.

More pernicious, however, is that the claim ignores everything we know about the importance of knowledge and skills—“human capital”—to economic flourishing. Any number of anecdotes could illustrate this point, but consider a local story relevant to the issue of attracting businesses. Back in the 1970s, Honda was looking to build its first manufacturing plant in the United States. Wooed by former Governor Jim Rhodes, the Japanese company chose Marysville—a small town outside of Columbus—to open its plant. While records indicate that company management weighed a number of factors, they were won over by the talent, ingenuity, and character of the people, especially those working at the cutting-edge R & D center nearby. The rest, as they say, is history: Today, Honda has four plants at its Marysville site, employing more than 9,000 Ohioans.

What about some cold, hard data? Reams of research find a link between human capital formation, including K–12 education, and economic outcomes, whether at an individual or societal level. But one recent analysis by a trio of researchers, including Stanford economist Eric Hanushek, merits special attention. Based on historical returns to K–12 education, they forecast economic gains if states improved students’ knowledge and skills.

For Ohio, the returns would be enormous. If, over the next decade, Buckeye students were able to match the nation’s top-performing state, Minnesota, on math exams, Ohio would gain an additional $974 billion dollars in cumulative GDP over the next eighty years, the timeframe in which the better educated workforce would fully replace older workers. “There is a huge economic incentive for each state to improve its schools,” conclude Hanushek and colleagues.

While the authors don’t recommend specific policies, strong accountability measures ought to remain central in Ohio’s improvement efforts. Research at the national, state (including here in Ohio), and city levels indicate that accountability can help drive the improvements needed for Ohio to reach the highest echelons of student achievement. Based on this and the principled conviction that accountability can improve outcomes, business groups and civil rights organizations have long fought for tough accountability policies.

Knowledge and skills matter greatly when it comes individuals’ and communities’ economic prosperity. Though not the only contributor, K–12 education continues to play a crucial role in human capital formation. This is precisely why Ohioans continue to invest billions to support schools, and it’s also why accountability for academic quality remains essential. So, no, accountability isn’t “bad for business.” Just the reverse: It’s a crucial check on student learning—and a necessary push when pupils are falling behind—that seeks to ensure that all young people exit high school ready to take their next steps in life. When that happens, it’s good for business, it’s good for communities—and it’s good for all Ohioans.

Charter school celebrates its Seniors and Kindergarteners

On Wednesday, Horizon Science Academy hosted its third annual kindergarten and senior class commencement walk, where kindergarteners and seniors pair up and walk around campus together while being cheered on by their families, staff, and community officials. It’s an opportunity for the community to recognize their accomplishments, and the seniors in particular have a lot to celebrate—100 percent of the charter school’s senior class graduated and earned over $4 million in scholarships this year.

Ohio bill would end “right of first refusal” for charter schools

The Ohio Star recently published a story regarding House Bill 43, a bill that would eliminate the requirement for districts to offer unused buildings to high performing charter schools before selling them to other entities. Even though many Ohio school districts already work to hang on to their underutilized buildings, the passage of this bill—which isn’t as of yet making progress in the House—would be a major blow to a sector that already has too many facility challenges.

More on democratic support for charter schools

According to new data released to Chalkbeat, there’s a sharp racial divide among Democrats when it comes to charter schools. On the heels of a recent poll from Democrats for Education Reform, Education Next decided to take a look at their latest 2018 poll results by party and race. They found that support for charter schools among Democrats since 2016 has significantly decreased among whites, but not among blacks and Hispanics, though it’s unclear what exactly is driving the racial divide.

Legislative update

Neither the House nor the Senate Education Committees met this week, but there was plenty of education discussion in the Finance Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education. The subcommittee heard testimony this week on the biennial budget (HB 166), including charter-related testimony from Dave Cash (May 16), Cris Gulacy-Worrel (May 16), Tom Torkelson (May 15), Stephen Dyer (May 15), and Chad Aldis (May 14). You can read testimony from the hearings (by date) here.

Celebrating National Charter Schools Week

Nathan Barrett of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools wrote a piece this week celebrating the accomplishments of charters across the country. Barrett discusses the latest research on charter school student performance and how charters are doing what they set out to do—improving educational opportunities for students.

1. A TV news outlet in Cincinnati this week produced a short but admirably wide-ranging piece exploring the new graduation requirements proposal put forward by a coalition of groups that includes Fordham. Our own Chad Aldis is interviewed here, as are a local homeschooling parent and a local college graduate. The responses of the latter two folks are interesting and a little surprising and should hopefully broaden the discussion. (Local 12, Cincinnati, 5/15/19) I’m not sure there is such a thing as “competitive pondering”, but Gongwer posits that there is. And that such a thing is happening at least in a Senate committee over that aforementioned new graduation requirements proposal and the previous one put forward by the state board of education. At least the testimony was interesting even if some of the rhetoric leaves me scratching my head. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/16/19)

2. Speaking of that self-same committee, Lorain City Schools CEO David Hardy and several district administrators and teachers testified yesterday on the topic of Academic Distress Commissions a topic which they know very very well. At bloody last. Finally, the most important side of this ongoing story got a public forum in which to be heard. Devastatingly, the hearing went very late and there was no media coverage at all. Therefore, a huge debt is owed to Carissa Woytach of the Chronicle who pulled together pieces of their written testimony into a great article. While only a handful of (admittedly important) senators caught the live show, this is vital information which all of Ohio’s legislators need to read. Before deciding anything. (Elyria Chronicle, 5/16/19)

3. Can you stand a little more good news? I hope so, because I actually have some. First up, here is more detail on the previously-reported team up between Middletown City Schools and Miami University of Ohio to help facilitate licensure for special education teachers in the district. Great on-the-ground perspective. (Spectrum News 1, 5/15/19) Second: The Lieutenant Governor will be in Dayton today, along with a cadre of other folks who could stand to hear about the City Connects program at Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School. This is a wide-ranging student support system patterned after the highly successful Boston Connects program of which I personally am a fan (in the spirit of full disclosure). Hopefully everyone hears loud and clear that one of the best aspects of Boston Connects is how often and how thoroughly it is subjected to rigorous study to evaluate its effectiveness and efficiency. Just sayin’. (Dayton Daily News, 5/16/19) Finally, here is a generally very positive story about the Move to PROSPER program. My dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (love to all six of you!) will know that as a dude with a city planning degree and a career in education policy, your humble clips compiler is a fan of Move to PROSPER – in which families are supported to move from underresourced neighborhoods to those with more and better resources. And for the purposes of these clips, one of the most important resources on their list is a quality school. Now of course it opens up a can of worms when you ask the community (Columbus citizens and taxpayers) to contribute resources (donated personal money) to a program which somewhat pointedly calls out that the local schools (taxpayer-funded Columbus City Schools) are an inferior resource (worse than) compared to some other districts (suburban schools) nearby. You would probably be right if you believed that some influential local folks have figured out this pointed and negative-seeming comparison and are not super pleased about it. I give you all this preamble so as to explain why I note that the family profiled here was a) living in Reynoldsburg (not Columbus) and was b) supported to move elsewhere in Reynoldsburg (still not Columbus). And somehow that precious young child still appears to have gotten a better school in the process. Wow. We must tread so carefully around our good news sometimes. (Columbus Alive, 5/15/19)

4. And finally this week, here is a brief notice of a new charter school opening in Toledo next fall as it works to complete the purchase of its new building. It is said to provide “a strong language arts-based curriculum” with a focus on old-school subjects like penmanship, phonics, and history. Students will also be expected to obtain fluency in Latin. I wonder how it will be until Toledo City Schools suddenly remembers that they have “always wanted” to start a school based on Latin and the Classics? (Toledo Blade, 5/16/19)

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1. In case you missed it, Fordham is part of a coalition of groups proposing new, rigorous graduation requirements for Ohio. Rather than explain them to you, which I would do in very positive terms I imagine, I’ll let some of the news coverage from yesterday’s rollout do that for you. First out of the gate was the Statehouse News Bureau. While this piece is brief, it does note that this proposal includes requirements more indicative of “competency and readiness” than are currently in the offing elsewhere. (Statehouse news Bureau, 5/14/19) The Dispatch’s coverage played up the “competition” between offered plans – that from our coalition and that from the Ohio Department of Education. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/14/19) Testimony on both proposals was heard in a Senate committee late yesterday. Gongwer’s coverage also takes time to draw out the distinctions between the two. Specifically: who includes GPA and culminating student experiences and who doesn’t. You know who I’m talking about. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/14/19)

2. The state board of education met this week and two agenda items merited news coverage. First up: The elected board of Lorain City Schools somehow found time in its busy schedule (you know what I mean) to not only craft some kind of “turnaround plan” for the district (what took you so long, gang?) but also to show up to the state board meeting to present that plan. Assuming, of course, that they get to be in charge of such a thing again. (The Morning Journal, 5/14/19) Second: The state board approved a boost to the passing score for the third grade reading test, as they are required to. But the whiplashy discussion around that vote was revelatory in a couple of ways. While there are a couple of board members, it seems, who would like to have the passing score boosted up to “proficient” (it is still more than 15 points short of that mark), there are other folks—our state supe included—who seem none too pleased with the whole third grade reading test lark and would love to send the legislature a “credible recommendation” to adjust the policy “in the interest of reducing our frustration”. Oh really? (Gongwer Ohio, 5/13/19)

3. Speaking of folks who are probably looking to reduce their own frustration, the president of the Ohio Education Association opined this week against “test distress”. Whatever that is. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/14/19)
   

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This essay is part of the The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress. This is the second of three parts. The first ran last week, and the third will appear in the next issue of the Education Gadfly Weekly.

Part I explained how educators and ed reformers have long been tantalized by the dream of “reinventing” the school. “If only we could break away from this industrial-style arrangement,” goes the usual refrain, “with its boxy classrooms, batch-processed students, and rigid bell schedule, and create totally different schools that are better suited to modern times and to children’s needs.” A second powerful impulse animating education reformers in recent decades has been the desire to design a “coherent” model of schooling that would meld the best evidence of practices that work and thereby put research into practice in holistic rather than piecemeal fashion. The appetites for school reinvention and holistic reform came together in the early 1990s in a major R & D (mostly D) initiative. The vehicle was a new nonprofit entity named the New American Schools Development Corporation—known as NASDC, commonly referred to simply as New American Schools, sometimes NAS. The conception was magnificent, but of course reality would prove something less than that.

Bush and Alexander were soon out of office and, while the Clinton team wasn’t hostile, it was more interested in what government could do to help attain those ambitious national goals (which then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton had played a large role in formulating) than in a private sector venture funded and initially led primarily by wealthy Republicans. Moreover, as NASDC ramped up, it needed staff, procedures, credibility, and other imperatives that destined it to resemble a large nonprofit organization more than a nimble venture-capital firm.

The original plan evolved into a still-ambitious “design competition” whereby NASDC would fund design teams that would develop break-the-mold school plans that the teams themselves would then, in effect, advertise to communities and states. When a team found a taker for its plan, it would provide much technical assistance to the client district so that the novel design might be properly implemented.

Additional federal funds might one day flow for this purpose—and eventually they flowed generously—but the public-education market would decide, which at the time meant that traditional school districts would be the main customers for those teams. (The country’s first charter school opened in 1992.) NASDC would underwrite development of the new models and help publicize them, thereby seeking to build some interest, but the teams that created the supply would have to become entrepreneurial in connected what they designed to places with the desire and the means—political and fiscal—to put it into practice. As Jeffrey Mirel noted, “at some point these design teams would need to become self-sustaining, taking fees from school districts in return for their expertise.”

The competition to become a NASDC-funded designer proved to be quite a big deal, attracting nearly 700 initial applicants, which reviewers ultimately winnowed down to eleven winners, nine of which received multi-year financial support for their work.

Although Mirel reports that “The popular and media response to the NASDC initiative was generally upbeat and positive,” there was also criticism. Some came from the left, “primarily from liberal critics of the Bush administration,” asserting that this was the work of “right-wing ideologues and privatization advocates” and/or that needy children, poor districts, and minorities would be neglected. “You can bet,” cautioned former U.S. education commissioner Harold (“Doc”) Howe II, “that, when these parties get together, they will spend little time in making a diverse society work.”

Education historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban, whose acclaimed book, Tinkering Toward Utopia, came out in 1995, fretted that New American Schools would turn out to be yet another of the many “reinvention” efforts over the years that turned out to be “shooting stars that spurted across the pedagogical heavens, leaving a meteoric trail in the media but burning up and disappearing in the everyday atmosphere of the schools.”

From the right came a different concern that Mirel says proved more “prescient”: that the RFP and selection processes were “skewed to ensure the choice of safe rather than break-the-mold designs,” would reward experienced grant-writers, and would wind up funding established organizations that would not, in the end, do anything that was truly novel or that would produce dramatically different results.

The winning designs, for the most part, did indeed come from established outfits headed by familiar education names and, says Mirel, “were notable mainly for their use of progressive rhetoric in describing their approaches.” His summary of their plans is replete with concepts and terms that remain much in vogue a quarter century later, from “interdisciplinary,” “authentic,” and “community based” to “learner centered,” “active inquiry,” and “multicultural.” Several designs sought to replace traditional age-based, year-at-a-time grade progressions with multi-age groupings and plans to move students forward when ready.

If fully and skillfully implemented as designed and at scale, most of these designs would have, if not exactly shattered the mold, certainly placed children in schools that were different from the norm of the 1990’s—and from the vast majority of today’s schools as well. Contrary to concerns raised from the left, the teams focused on disadvantaged, urban communities and on helping kids whose achievement needed a major boost. When RAND conducted a three-years-into-implementation review of seven designs, it noted that their teams had “partnered with schools and districts that are characterized by a host of problems related to poverty, achievement, and climate characteristics.” In other words, they weren’t headed to cushy suburbs or other places where the going would be easy!

The focus on disadvantaged youngsters and their schools, while morally justified and politically appropriate, did raise the long-standing question of whether “progressive,” child-centered education such as most of the NAS teams were committed to is an optimal approach for addressing the education needs of such kids. A robust line of research suggests that students who don’t get a lot of structure and systematic knowledge outside school tend to do better with structured, sequential, knowledge-rich curricula and instruction—hence the impressive success of “no-excuses” charter schools and their ilk, such as New York City’s Success Academy—while more progressive pedagogies may work better with children who have plenty of order in their lives, books in their homes, etc. In other words, it’s possible that the school designs emerging from most of the NASDC-supported teams were less than perfectly suited to their target audience. (It also strikes me, in retrospect, that the educational needs of disadvantaged youngsters would better have been met by enrolling them in traditional Catholic schools than by “breaking molds” and “innovating.”)

In any case, the very elements that made the targeted schools and communities needy and deserving of help also meant that, in RAND’s phrasing, “To scale up the designs or replicate implementation in these sites is extremely difficult.”

Unlike charter schools, which were only just coming into view, and unlike the original plan for Chris Whittle’s Edison Project (another privately financed initiative—this one profit-seeking—to “break the mold” in K–12 education), which concentrated on creating brand new schools, the NASDC teams were bent on transforming existing, district-operated public schools. And that’s always a heavy lift, whether the existing schools are educational successes or basket cases. In the former situation, “it ain’t broke,” so why change it? In the latter situation, it’s tantamount to taking an education sow’s ear and striving to turn it into a silk purse. That’s hard under any circumstance; harder when resource levels are level and the staff remains in place; and hardest in schools and districts that may not be particularly well led, probably not well financed, and most likely shackled by politicized school boards, turbulent communities and rigid union contracts.

Stay tuned for part III.

To a degree most of us would prefer not to acknowledge, classroom practice tends to run less on research and empirical evidence than on some combination of philosophy, faith, or personal preference. But for those committed to a vision of teaching based on what we know about learning instead of habit or what we might wish to be true, Deans for Impact has produced a brisk and accessible guide for teachers, parents, and caregivers involved in early childhood education, which the report defines as spanning birth to age eight. It’s a worthy successor to the group’s touchstone 2015 report, The Science of Learning.

Written for “anyone who is interested in our best scientific understanding of how young children develop control of their own behavior and intentions, how they learn to read and write proficiently, and how they develop the ability to think mathematically,” The Science of Early Learning puts under one cover a summary of current research across three “domains”—literacy, numeracy, and “agency.” One dozen “key questions” are posed (e.g., “How do young children learn to count?” and “How do young children learn to self-regulate their behavior?”), each addressed on a single page with a list of “principles from learning science” that inform the answers—plus a set of “practical implications” suggested by the research. For example, on developing independence, one principle is “the need for independence is essential to human growth and learning.” The practical implication or guidance is that teachers “can help young children develop their independence by providing opportunities to make choices and decisions (within limits), and allowing them to experience the consequences of their choices.” Another cautions against “doing things that may inhibit young children from developing independence—such as offering incentives like sticker charts or rewards for good behavior—because the prize becomes the goal more than learning.”

One good sign is that the phrase “developmentally appropriate” (or inappropriate) appears not once in the brisk and efficient twenty-page report. Nor will you find false dichotomies between “play-based” and “academic” early childhood education in its pages, which overflow with helpful insights from avoiding long wait times between classroom activities (which tax little kids’ ability to self-regulate their behavior) to advice on helping children progress from concrete representations of numbers, to visual representations, to abstractions. Given the recent groundswell of concern over scientifically sound reading practice, the report is particularly strong on early childhood literacy, stressing the benefits of reading aloud to children, the development of print concepts (e.g., text goes from left to right across the page; matching spoken words to written ones), and mastering the alphabetic code in the earliest years. “Most children will not ‘naturally’ learn that the letters in the English alphabet represent specific sounds,” warn the authors, who include a pair of practicing teachers (Dylan Kane and Callie Lowenstein, Rachel Robertson of Bright Horizons, and a trio of academics, Daniel Ansari, Stephanie Carlson, and Anne Castles). “Systematic phonics instruction is the most effective, evidence-based way to ensure that young children learn letter-sound relationships.” The report also authoritatively dispatches any number of persistent myths about reading comprehension. “Children should read texts that are rich in content, not just about familiar, daily life contexts,” it notes. “Even young children benefit from learning about science, history, geography, and other cultures, and from reading classic stories that may be referenced in other works.” Somewhere, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. smiles.

When it comes to addressing—and hopefully, someday, reversing—the nation’s mediocre education performance, all roads lead to early childhood. It is there that the battle is mostly won or lost. Brisk and economical, but authoritative, the greatest strength of The Science of Early Learning is the extensive sourcing: Each “domain” is linked to over sixty studies inviting further reading, or you can just run with the principles and practical implications. In short, this is the very model of what it looks like to make educational research both understandable and actionable. More of this please, and bravo, Deans for Impact.

SOURCE: “The Science of Early Learning,” Deans for Impact (March 2019).

“Credentials Matter,” a new report released by the Foundation for Excellence in Education and Burning Glass Technologies, joins other recent studies in offering an in-depth look at the industry-credential landscape by examining how states collect data on attainment, employer demand, the types of credentials that high school students earn, and whether demand aligns with credentialing supply.

The report defines credentials as third-party verifications of an individual’s qualification or competence in skills. It further defines industry recognized credentials as those that are sought by employers and preferred or required for recruitment, screening, hiring, retention, or advancement purposes. Most credentials available to high school students are offered as part of career and technical education (CTE) programs, and the report identifies five types: license, certification, software, general career readiness, and CTE assessment. Although the report considers all available credentials reported by states, it does not assess the value of specific credentials beyond employer demand. It also does not assess the postsecondary attainment of industry credentials, since too few states provided postsecondary data, or the relationship between attainment and CTE program quality. 

To analyze the supply side of the credential landscape, the Foundation for Excellence in Education asked each state to answer questions about data collection. They report using varying methods, though nearly all of them rely on self-reported data by schools or districts. That’s troublesome, since self-reported data have an increased chance of being incomplete or inaccurate. There are four states—Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, and North Carolina—that have data-sharing agreements with credential vendors, a more reliable source for the information. States were also asked by analysts to provide data on credentials earned by public K–12 and two-year college students through CTE programs. As of the 2018–19 school year, twenty-eight states collect quantitative data on attainment, and twenty-four of them provided data for this report. Overall, their dataset includes over 780,000 credentials earned from 367 unique vendors.

Across states, there is considerable variation in which credentials students earn among the five identified types. In Mississippi, for example, 100 percent are certifications. Utah, on the other hand, reports that only 12 percent are certifications and 78 percent are software credentials. Nationally, almost half are certifications. These can provide entry-level and advancement opportunities, but their overall alignment is poor. Only two—Automotive Service Excellence and ServSafe Certifications—are on both the top-supplied and top-demanded lists. Licenses, meanwhile, are the least common credential, and are mostly misaligned with industry demand due to both an “extreme oversupply” of those associated with low-wage occupations and an undersupply of licenses for middle- and high-wage jobs. 

To analyze employer demand, Burning Glass Technologies, a software company that offers job market analytics, used its database of more than 150 million unique online job postings. Its focus was limited to postings that were localized in states; requested specific credentials, occupations, or skills; matched the same year as supply data; and paid a living wage, defined as $15 per hour. Results show that, although certifications and licenses are the credentials most likely to be required, employers often neglect to specifically request them in job descriptions. This manner in which employers communicate their needs and requirements to potential employees—known as employer signaling—is one of the key areas where states need to improve.

None of the twenty-four states with available data were highly aligned in terms of supply and demand. Twelve were rated as having moderate alignment, while the other half had low alignment. The most significant source of misalignment comes from an oversupply of credentials that are not in demand in the labor market: Only 19 percent of credentials earned by K–12 students in this analysis are actually demanded by employers. In fact, of the top fifteen most commonly earned credentials, ten are oversupplied. They include W!SE Financial Literacy Certification, NCCER Core Curriculum, and Basic First Aid. Despite the common oversupply problem, states must address misalignment on an individual basis because labor markets are vastly different from state to state.

The report includes several recommendations for a variety of stakeholders. For states, it’s important to establish statewide definitions for industry recognized credentials, codify processes to identify which credentials are valued by employers, and establish data-sharing agreements between state and credentialing agencies. Schools must improve alignment between CTE offerings and workforce demands. Businesses should better their employer signaling by clarifying the required credentials and skills needed for jobs. And credentialing entities should provide data that can be used to improve program quality—such as attempts to earn credentials, raw scores on credentialing assessments, employee placement, and wages.

In the coming months, the two authoring organizations plan to continue their partnership and add to their research. In the meantime, policymakers and advocates would be wise to give their report—and interactive website—a close look.

SOURCE: “Credentials Matter,” ExcelinEd and Burning Glass Technologies (May 2019).