Please note the update posted on May 15th at the bottom of this blog post.

Tucked into a raft of House amendments to the governor’s budget legislation are changes to state law that would have serious ramifications for school accountability and transparency. The House proposals, never debated in the chamber’s education committee, would drastically alter the way Ohio produces overall school ratings.

Under current law, those ratings are calculated using a weighting system that incorporates multiple dimensions of academic performance. The House’s amendment, however, would throw out this more holistic system and instead use just one measure—the higher of either the performance index or value-added progress rating—as the overall grade.  

It’s critical to get overall school ratings right, as they aim to offer the public clear, prominent signals about the performance of districts and schools. They are also used to determine when the state has an obligation to intervene in chronically low-performing schools for the sake of the students attending them. Though legislators could and should refine the current approach to assigning overall ratings (here’s our suggestions), the House proposal uses a machete when a scalpel is in order. It’s a bad idea. Here’s why.

The House proposal creates a distorted view of overall school quality

Most of us would agree that a student with a B in math but an F in English shouldn’t be considered fully on-track. Why? Students need a strong foundation in both subjects, not one or the other. In like manner, we need to consider both measures of student achievement and growth when viewing overall school quality. Recall that achievement—as captured by the performance index—considers how students fare at a single point in time, providing information about whether pupils are meeting state academic standards (answering the question, “Are kids on track?”). Growth, or “progress,” as measured by value added, completes the picture by gauging how student performance changes over time (answering the question, “Are kids catching up?”).

To their credit, Ohio policymakers have long understood that achievement and growth matter, and that both should be incorporated into the overall rating. But under the amendment, a one-sided view of academic performance would emerge. This has real-world implications. Consider an example: A few years ago, Dayton Public Schools received an “A” value-added rating, its only top mark on the measure since the state began assigning letter grades. Under the House proposal, the district would’ve received an overall “A” for the year—a rating that would put it in elite company. But such a rating sweeps under the rug the persistent achievement struggles in Dayton where only one in four students meet state academic standards, and even fewer go on to complete college. While district officials might celebrate, families and community members would likely miss important information about pupil achievement.

Though this is one example, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of cases at a school-level where the proposed system will give satisfactory-to-stellar marks to schools where tragically few students read, write, and do math proficiently. (It may also conceal schools where high-achieving students are aren’t progressing.) Ohio families and taxpayers deserve a clear sense of whether students are achieving at high levels and making solid growth from one year to the next. Unfortunately, awarding schools the higher of the two ratings covers up potential weaknesses and creates distorted views of school quality.

It unnecessarily softens school accountability

It’s no secret that accountability for student outcomes is under fire, mainly from the adults working in the systems being held to account. The House proposal is yet another push for softer accountability. Because it calls for the use of the higher of the performance index or value-added measure—instead of combining them—districts and schools would receive rosier overall ratings. Consider the distribution of districts’ actual overall ratings from 2017–18 (solid bars) and projected overall ratings under the House plan (striped bars). Predictably, the House’s approach inflates overall grades, with an additional 103 districts receiving A’s and an additional thirty-five districts receiving B’s. Conversely, fewer districts receive the less superlative grades. This is not to say that there is a “right” or “wrong” distribution. But it does suggest that this attempt to upend school ratings may be less about improving accountability structures and more about using state law to produce a cheerier picture of school performance.

Figure 1: Distribution of district overall ratings under the current method and House proposal

​

It gives low-performing schools a free pass

Since overall ratings are linked to consequences for poor performance, inflated ratings would allow some low-performing district schools to escape consequences. For instance, just a single year of an “A” rating on value-added—or any rating above an “F”—would  enable otherwise deeply troubled schools to avoid school improvement efforts under the House’s proposal that ditches district-level interventions via academic distress commissions and focuses on improvement at the school level. This is apt to occur, especially under another unwise House proposal wherein the state would revert to using a one-year, instead of multi-year, value-added score that is more susceptible to “swings” between letter grades. (Recall the example above of Dayton Public Schools, which received an “A” almost by chance in a year when a one-year score was used.) Moreover, the juiced school ratings might also allow poor performing charter schools to avoid closure. Finally, in a truly troubling move, it appears that the House legislation would extend yet another “safe harbor” period in which schools are shielded from sanctions associated with poor results. The bill prohibits the use of school ratings to determine consequences in a year when any change, no matter how minor, is made to the rating system, and it also calls for a “reset” in the timelines that determine sanctions (e.g., the three-year timetable for determining automatic closure of low-performing charter schools).  

Fortunately, there was one silver lining in the wreckage: The House, realizing that inflating school ratings would have a detrimental effect on school choice programs connected to the accountability system, including eligibility for EdChoice scholarships, passed a last-minute amendment ensuring their proposed changes don’t affect students’ choice options. Nevertheless, this move hardly redeems the larger gutting of state accountability laws.

* * *

When it comes to the House’s proposals around report cards and school accountability, lawmakers need to pause and remember their purpose: To give educators, policymakers, and most importantly parents a clear, honest accounting of how schools perform on critical gauges of student achievement and growth. Though there is room for improvement in the state’s report card system, an either-or approach to the overall rating is not the right way forward. Here’s hoping that as the bill moves through the Senate, legislators will think twice about this provision.

Update May 15, 2019: An alternate interpretation of the House overall ratings proposal has surfaced since the drafting of this piece. This blog post above was written based on a Legislative Service Commission (LSC) bill analysis indicating that the overall rating would be based solely on the higher of either the performance index or value-added progress rating (and thus excluding the other report card components such as Gap Closing or Graduation). The Columbus Dispatch also ran an article based on this reading of the legislation. However, without any change in the legislative language, LSC later amended its analysis (after this blog post was written) to indicate that the other report card components would be included in the computation of overall ratings. The actual language in the House-passed Amended Substitute House Bill 166 (see lines 23632-23654) is ambiguous, perhaps resulting in the confusion.

The arguments and conclusion of the foregoing piece are not substantively different under the revised LSC interpretation, though the projected distribution of districts’ overall ratings shown in Figure 1 below would be different. (Under the revised LSC interpretation, the State Board of Education would probably need to redo the rating formula.) Either reading of the legislation, however, is likely to yield systematically higher district and school ratings.

- Aaron Churchill

Over the next month or so, thousands of Ohio students will cross the stage and receive diplomas at their high school graduation ceremonies. It will be bittersweet, though, because many of these students will have earned their diplomas under a much-debated set of weakened graduation requirements. It will be the same story next year for students who are juniors today.

We at Fordham have been insistent and consistent in our criticism of these alternative requirements. We have called for a more careful examination of their unintended consequences, and have pointed out the serious flaws of the long-term proposal offered by the state board and the department for the classes of 2021 and beyond.

Given our persistent disapproval, one might be forgiven for thinking that that we prefer to critique ideas instead of offering solutions. Alas, that’s not true. We recently partnered with Ohio Excels, a non-profit coalition of business leaders dedicated to improving education in Ohio, and the Alliance for High Quality Education, a group representing around seventy Ohio school districts, to craft a proposal for graduation requirements that fixes some issues with the current policy without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Under this plan, students would need to fulfill three requirements in order to graduate:

If enacted, this plan would go into effect for the classes of 2023 and beyond. The classes of 2021 and 2022 would be free to either complete these three requirements or select one of the three pathways that were in law when they entered the ninth grade.

Like the proposal put forth by the department and the state board, these requirements allow more personalization. But unlike the state’s plan, each of these pathways are objective, comparable, and valid. For example, consider the options that are available to students who fail to pass end-of-course exams in math or English. Although there are several choices, students are required to complete at least one objective measure of competency—whether it’s college courses, work-ready exams or job experiences that demonstrate career readiness, or fulfilling the requirements for enlisting in the military. Unlike GPAs and capstone projects, which are key aspects of the state’s plan, these measures would be difficult to game and are out of the hands of local educators who might be pressured to pass students even if they haven’t demonstrated competency. They are also more reliable, as every student will be held to the same grading standard and the results are easily comparable across schools, districts, and geographic areas. 

The plan also recommends reducing the testing burden on students and schools without dismantling the state’s ability to track student achievement and progress in basic subjects over time. Under current law, students can accumulate points based on their performance on seven end-of-course exams to graduate. This proposal reduces the number of tests to five by eliminating the English I and Geometry assessments. Students would still be required to complete the biology, American history, and American government exams, and the results would continue to be used for school accountability. But passing all of these state tests would not be required to earn a diploma. Instead, students would only need to demonstrate their mastery of Algebra I and English II. The cut score for these assessments—referred to as “competent”—would be determined by the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board in consultation with higher education, the business community, the K–12 sector, and career-tech representatives.

Finally, and most importantly, this plan advises the state to identify no later than ninth grade every student who may be at risk of not graduating on time. Identification could include those who are behind on credits or have earned at least one F in a core academic course, are chronically absent, or have a high number of suspensions. Schools would notify families that these students are off-track and would empower educators to offer critical interventions and support.

Nationwide, there are several states and cities that have early warning systems in place. Chicago Public Schools, for example, has used an evidence-based measurement called “freshmen on track” since 2008. This indicator was developed in partnership with the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research to predict whether students are likely to graduate based on their performance during freshman year. The district uses this information to provide pupils with interventions and additional support. Even outside of Chicago, there is a considerable amount of information and research on the impacts of early warning systems—including a 2016 study of three Ohio school districts.

As lawmakers consider a permanent change to Ohio’s graduation requirements, it’s important to remember that objectivity, comparability, and reliability matter. Alternative assessments and measures like culminating student experiences and GPAs might seem attractive, but they are burdensome for local districts, easily gameable, and of questionable rigor. The last point is perhaps the most important, as earning a diploma should signify that young people are truly ready to take their next step in life.

1. It’s budget season around here, which I think is kind of like allergy season: Endless, persistent, and annoying, but with slightly less snot. Possible school funding changes remain top of mind for lots of folks, as Gongwer’s coverage of Monday’s House Finance Committee will attest. Fordham’s Chad Aldis, whose testimony is briefly summarized here, has some deeper issues on his mind. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/6/19) One specific issue near and dear to Chad’s heart – strong accountability via school report cards – is the focus of this piece from yesterday’s Dispatch. New budget provisions have him concerned for the future effectiveness of several aspects of accountability. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/7/19)

2. Columbus Urban League President Stephanie Hightower has a thought on school accountability, as expressed in a Q&A which was published in last Sunday’s Dispatch. The question was about the desirability of state intervention in Columbus City Schools, should its long line of F report cards warrant a declaration of academic distress. Hightower is realistic, I think, about both the problem and the existing solution. While she’s got an interesting thought for amending the solution, it seems interesting to me that she does not initially name report cards as a “problem” to be fixed or changed. The Q&A is only one part of a much longer profile published late in April. All of which is worth a read. (Columbus CEO, 4/29/19) Ohio Excels President Lisa Gray has a thought on the importance of graduating students who are prepared to join the workforce. She lays out her case in this commentary piece from the D. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/7/19)

3. The Strive Partnership in Cincinnati gets some national recognition in this piece looking at the evidence in support of wraparound services. Strive is praised for using data and analytics to help find the highest quality services for students. Unfortunately, there is little evidence in Cincinnati that even the best service provision will actually help boost student achievement. Just like nearly everywhere else it’s been studied. I’m not sure how long until we get to the consensus that “academic problems require academic solutions”, but since I’m already here I’ll just leave the light on for the rest of you. Link (Education Next, 5/6/19)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you want to be slightly less annoyed by signing up for such a newsletter)? Subscribe by clicking here.

In recent months, I’ve found myself cast as the designated skeptic in print and on panels dealing with topics from civic education to personalized learning to social and emotional learning. I’ve become a congenital contrarian, and a bit of a broken record, forever repeating, “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” in response to advocates arguing for various reform strategies and tactics.

Don’t mistake me. Like most folks, I have preferred flavors of schooling and favorite reform levers that I’ll argue for, sometimes strenuously. But the list of practices and strategies that I’d make mandatory, were I czar, is extremely limited. (In fact, I can’t think of any beyond scientifically-sound reading instruction including a content-rich core curriculum.) Part of that reluctance is the inevitably mediocre results when practices and policies are imposed from above as opposed to embraced with on-the-ground enthusiasm and implemented with fidelity. But the greater part is our tendency to downplay, disregard, or outright deny that virtually everything we do in schools requires trade-offs and has potential side effects, some of which may be less than pleasing.

As Dylan Wiliam has long noted, “Everything works somewhere. Nothing works everywhere.” The right question, he says, is not so much “What works?” but “Under what conditions will this work?” To that sage observation I’d suggest adding a second question: What are the side effects? Things might look very different—we might even manage to sustain promising practices and reform initiatives long enough for them to bear fruit—if advocates were required to temper their pitches with warning labels, akin to pharmaceutical ads and those tiny-font fold-outs that come with your meds. Make your case. Sell yourself as hard as you want to the consumer—but then comes the legally required disclaimers and warnings about potentially harmful side effects. Here are some proposed TV ads for few recent much-touted reform pitches, with my joy-killing sketch of some possible—perhaps likely—side effects:

“Social and Emotional Learning,” 0:30

[Warm female voice over images of smiling students speaking one-on-one with teachers who are nodding empathetically]: “Too many children feel invisible in school. There’s no adult they trust, nobody who really understands them. This prevents them from setting and achieving their goals, managing their emotions, and showing empathy for others. Fortunately, now there’s SEL.”

“Side effects may include reduced academic expectations and lower standards for student behavior. Excessive use of social and emotional learning, otherwise known as SEL, can lead to suspension of moral judgment among teachers, with a possibility of stunted character development in students. Imprecise definitions of SEL may cause chafing and irritation. Teachers have reported feeling unprepared to effectively implement SEL. Interest in SEL has been associated with vendors selling expensive and ineffective curriculum to career-minded district superintendents resulting in acute incidents of fad-driven opportunism. Ask your school district about SEL.”

“Americans for School Choice,” 0:60

[Music open over a street scene of identical suburban houses with female voice singing “Little boxes on a hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky.” Authoritative male voiceover begins.] “No one tells you where to live, work, or worship, what car to drive, or what clothes to wear. So why do we let someone else make the most important decision we will ever make: how to raise and educate our children. In most other countries, parents pick schools that teach their children in accordance with their values and beliefs. But in America, we just send our kids to the local neighborhood school, whether it’s good or bad, leaving schools with no incentive to do right by our kids. But it doesn’t have to be that way thanks to School Choice.”

“Side effects may include lower test scores, reduced public school funding, lower salaries, gentrification, teacher strikes and erosion of the civic mission of the 'common school.' Some concentration of poverty and dysfunction may occur in schools abandoned by families with choice. Incidents of profiteering have also been reported. Parental satisfaction is no guarantee of school quality. Past test scores may not be indicative of future results.”

“No Excuses Charter Schools,” 0:30

[Camera zooms from a hardscrabble city street into a bright, cheerful classroom with African American children in school uniforms raising their hands in response to a teacher’s question.] “For years, inner city schools have been failure factories, where children learn almost nothing except that education isn’t for them. But now there’s hope. No Excuses schools are well-run, safe, and orderly, putting thousands of children on the path for success in college and in life.”

“Side-effects may include curriculum narrowing, excessive test-prep, difficulties for children who can’t sit still, parents upset about strict dress codes, burdensome homework, ‘skill-and-drill’ instruction. Higher rates of student discipline including suspension have also been reported in schools using the No Excuses model. Teachers report feeling stressed by performance pressures, resulting in burnout and elevated levels of staff turnover. Ask your charter management organization if ‘No Excuses’ schooling is right for your child.”

“Progressive Educators for Project-Based Learning,” 0:60

[Opens with shots of diverse and casually-dressed students in groups of threes and fours having animated discussions over scale models in classrooms and outdoors holding notepads and scientific instruments, with teachers in the background smiling indulgently.] “School is boring. Hours of listening to teachers drone on. Bad textbooks and endless lab reports. It’s enough to make even diligent students lose their minds. Introducing Project-Based Learning, which sparks children’s imagination and natural curiosity. PBL is the cure for the common school.”

“Side effects may include unstructured classrooms, leading to undisciplined and self-indulgent students who struggle in more structured academic environments. Lower test scores may follow. Teachers who use PBL often report feeling unable to effectively plan for instruction. Helicopter parenting and parental over-engagement have also been reported. For projects lasting more than four months, consult your child’s teacher.”

“Restorative Justice,” 0:60

[Cold-open to the sound of a prison cell slamming shut. Sober and concerned male voiceover.] “America has a problem. Black and brown children are far more likely to be suspended from school than white children. Harsh ‘zero-tolerance’ discipline practices criminalize children from an early age, channeling them into the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline. But now there’s a cure. When schools adopt Restorative Justice, children learn to solve their problems and avoid conflicts under the watchful eye of caring, understanding, and well-trained educators sensitive to the challenges children face.”

“Imposing restorative-justice practices on teachers who do not willingly embrace them has been known to cause lower suspension rates without addressing underlying problems, including recurrent classroom disruptions, leading students to feel less safe. Side effects may include juking the stats, lower test scores, chaotic classrooms, and cognitive dissonance when parents who support restorative justice have a child who is assaulted or bullied. Families who raise their children in strict homes with consequences for bad behavior have reported elevated blood pressure when restorative practices are adopted, leading to higher levels of homeschooling.”

***

The lengthy disclaimers and legalese in advertising have become the stuff of Saturday Night Live parodies and a bit of a cliché. But they serve a purpose, at least in principle: They assist consumers to make informed choices and put us on guard for warning signs. A little of that would go a long way toward helping to make education reform more widely accepted and practice enhancements stickier. It’s a bromide, but it’s true: Nearly every problem in schools was the solution to a previous problem. If we were more clear-eyed and honest in pitching and adopting policies and proposals—and more candid about side effects—we might be more apt to stick with them, anticipate complications, and adjust more thoughtfully when they surface.

This essay is part of the The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress. It will run in three parts, with the second and third appearing in the next two issues of the Education Gadfly Weekly.

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.”

History shows that schools have actually changed from time to time, albeit in ways more incremental than revolutionary, as American education has evolved from the one-room schoolhouses of the frontier to include the “comprehensive” high schools envisioned by James B. Conant and others in the 1950s. Since then, we’ve seen numerous efforts to take down walls and open up spaces, to experiment with different schedules and calendars, to install at least a modicum of modern technology, to bring sundry social services under the school roof, and more. Yet across the land today, it’s still generally true that one’s children and grandchildren are being educated in schools, both public and private, that resemble far more than they differ from the schools of one’s parents and grandparents. Thus, the oft-stated quip that if Rip Van Winkle awoke today from a century-long snooze, the only institutions that he’d recognize would be schools and churches. If only we could truly reinvent rather than tinker!

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 piecemeal approach typically identifies something that seems to work—a curriculum, a pedagogy, a management technique, a program—and then gets a state or district to require its schools to implement that marvelous thing. Yet a nonstop parade of piecemeal reforms tends to make teachers and principals cynical and resistant—Rick Hess writes of “Spinning Wheels”—and pulls educators and administrators in too many directions at once, answerable to too many bosses, dependent on too many “categorical” funding streams, accountable for too many different things that may even conflict with one another, giving rise to “Christmas tree” schools. Far better to start anew, amass the best evidence, and create a coherent whole school model. (The parallel impulse at the macro level yielded the quest for “systemic school reform.”)

Reformers have also long been driven by the need to find promising ways to “turn around” failing schools, a need that intensified after enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002. Along with that law’s mandatory standards and testing came accountability requirements whereby schools that chronically failed to produce adequate achievement in some or all of their pupils got labeled as “in need of improvement.” Such a label triggered a volley of plans and interventions, “corrective actions,” and, ultimately, “restructuring.”

Labeling aside, the federal requirements—now loosened but not eliminated in the Every Student Succeeds Act—added to the desire, and sometimes the obligation, of education leaders, reformers, and elected officials to deal forcefully with chronically weak and perhaps totally dysfunctional schools. Either shut it outright—always hugely controversial and politically risky—or completely overhaul it.

This, however, has proven extremely difficult to accomplish.

Though much of the turn-around ardor came later, the appetites for school reinvention and holistic reform came together in the early 1990s in a major R & D (mostly D) initiative known as “New American Schools,” which also tapped into the country’s affection for “public-private ventures.” Such fusions of effort and resources are a familiar strategy for developing and propagating promising innovations, products, and models.

There’s much blurring in the public-private realm, and New American Schools was one of the larger, more interesting—and arguably blurrier—examples. As an idea, it was unveiled in April, 1991, when President George H.W. Bush and Education Secretary (now Senator) Lamar Alexander set forth their “America 2000” strategy to jump-start education reform in the United States in general and, in particular, propel the country toward meeting the lofty national education goals that the president and governors had recently set “for the year 2000.”

Bush and Alexander were aiming high. The president spoke of America 2000 as winning a “battle for our future.” Alexander termed it a “crusade.” And it had multiple dimensions, including some that would prove contentious both then and on Bill Clinton’s watch (and even today), such as national academic standards and exams (though the GOP team hastened to note that these would be optional for states.) Its centerpiece, however—that was Bush’s word for it—was nothing less than to “break the mold. Build for the next century. Reinvent—literally start from scratch and reinvent the American school.” Then send the new models all around the country, so people could see them in action and want more of them for themselves—and also deploy them as part of needed school turnarounds. How much better, after all, to set about to overhaul a troubled school when you have in hand a glittering and proven model of how the rebooted school should look and function.

Talk about an education moonshot!

The vehicle was not to be a rocket ship, however, but a new nonprofit entity named the New American Schools Development Corporation—known as NASDC, commonly referred to simply as New American Schools, sometimes NAS. Initially chaired by ALCOA CEO (later Treasury Secretary) Paul O’Neill, its board included many of the leading lights of American business, and its private fund-raising, after a harder-than-expected start, ultimately brought in some $130 million of the hoped-for $150 million development fund. (Publisher Walter Annenberg helped greatly with a fifty-million-dollar gift in 1994.)

NASDC’s original “theory of action” was to contract with “three to seven R & D teams,” which would then assist communities across the land to create break-the-mold schools, at least one (Alexander intended) in every Congressional district. The hope, obviously, was that these schools would be so exciting and successful that communities would want—and then create—many of them on their own, using their own resources augmented by federal dollars that would flow from the inspiration and appetite that the thrilling new designs would generate.

As historian Jeffrey Mirel wrote in 2002 in what amounted to a slightly premature obituary for the decade-long venture:

The idea was to apply a research-and-development model to a sector that too often fell for romantic—and untested—notions of how schools and learning should be structured. NASDC’s early leaders were determined to apply a no-nonsense business approach to their efforts, to create an organization that was as lean and agile as the corporations they led. New American Schools would be less bureaucratic and more aggressive in responding to new ideas than the typical government agency or major foundation. Moreover, NASDC would be a sort of venture capitalist for education, constantly evaluating its investments and continuing to fund only those designs that proved their effectiveness.

The conception was magnificent, but of course reality would prove something less than that.

Stay tuned for parts II and III.

In January of this year, we made predictions for Fordham about the future of education reform in Wisconsin under newly elected Democratic Governor Tony Evers. As the former State Superintendent of Public Instruction with a lengthy background of being hostile to school choice, we had a very negative outlook and advised education reformers to “prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Five months later, we’re trending towards the worst.

Along with our Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty colleague Libby Sobic, we recently authored a policy brief titled “A Deep Dive into Governor Evers’ K-12 Budget Proposal.” We conclude that it’s an all-out assault on school choice, touching nearly every facet, from students to schools to teachers.

Next Thursday, the legislature’s all-powerful Joint Finance Committee will be voting on portions of Evers’s budget, and have already vowed to strip away the most damaging provisions, including its enrollment freeze for the state’s voucher programs. But it’s still worth examining the direct and indirect ways the governor wants to drastically reform, or even eliminate, not only these private school choice initiative, but perhaps public school choice, too. His proposals, if successful, would turn back the clock to a time when options only existed for the wealthiest families.

As for vouchers, the aforementioned enrollment freeze would apply to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Racine Parental Choice Program, and Wisconsin Parental Choice Program. With over 40,000 students using these to attend a private school, doing so would prevent additional kids from participating in future years. There is evidence that demand currently exceeds supply. In Milwaukee, a number of high-performing schools have waiting lists for participation. In the rest of the state, the number of participating schools has more than doubled since the 2016–17 school year, and five school districts hit their participation cap. Participants score higher on state-mandated tests than their peers in Milwaukee Public Schools, are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, and are less likely to commit felonies and misdemeanors. These benefits are so substantial, in fact, that we estimate that the governor’s proposed voucher reduction would cause a $110 million loss in economic activity based on enrollment growth that would otherwise be projected for the programs.

Another causality of Evers’s war on vouchers would be the Special Needs Scholarship Program, a voucher initiative for students with disabilities that’s grown quickly from 215 students to 662 students in two years. An audit by the non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau last year concluded that parents of students in the program had a 58 percent higher satisfaction rate than moms and dads of similar children who attend public schools.

The governor would also stunt the creation of new private schools participating in these programs. He has proposed that new entrants should be fully accredited prior to participation, even though current law requires only pre-accreditation prior to joining, after which they can complete the process while teaching students. This makes sense because the complete procedure can take up to three years and be very expensive. This is therefore a rather mischievous way to slow down private school choice, especially considering public schools have no accreditation requirement and Evers isn’t proposing any.

Even those families who pay for private education out of their own pocket are under attack. The governor wants to repeal the private-school-tuition state tax deduction. Opponents try to frame this as a giveaway to the rich, but according to the State Department of Revenue, a third of families that use the deduction earn less than $78,000 per year.

Yet perhaps most insidious are his lesser-reported plans for other avenues of school choice. He would freeze enrollment in the state’s independent charter schools, a high-performing sector that is primarily used by Milwaukee’s low-income minority students. And worse, he’d decouple funding for Wisconsin’s open enrollment program from a number of categorical aids that would see a substantial increase under his budget. Open enrollment—wherein parents can send their children to any public school of their choice in a given geographic area—is the state’s largest choice program, in use by more than 60,000 students. By 2021, Wisconsin's Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates that this proposal would cost schools nearly $800 per student in state aid, a substantial enough sum that could hamper future participation from other districts.

Republican legislative leadership has blessedly pledged to strip out most of Evers’s proposals—of which this substantial list is somehow but a sampling (a complete analysis can be found in our aforementioned policy brief). But this won’t necessarily forestall his future efforts to limit choice and, in doing so, harm the Wisconsin’s most disadvantaged children.

Governor Evers’s vision for education appears to be one stuck in the past—perhaps in the relatively homogenous Plymouth, Wisconsin, of the 1950s, where he grew up and was educated in its one-size-fits-all educational model. But Wisconsin looks different today, and that anachronistic approach no longer makes sense. Its lack of competition has bred complacency, and that’s led to decades of stagnant academic growth and one of the largest racial achievement gaps in the country.

As states like Tennessee and Florida push forward new broad-based education reform initiatives that deepen, strengthen, and broaden school choice, Wisconsin can ill afford to move in the opposite direction. Yet that is what Governor Tony Evers proposes to do. So for the rest of his term, we education reformers will have to play defense. Let’s hope that, like our beloved Milwaukee Bucks, we’re up for it.

In the wake of yet another tragedy, the most recent IES report on school crime and safety is a reminder that it gets better, statistically speaking.

Among the highlights:

“Between 2001 and 2017, the overall percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being victimized at school during the previous 6 months decreased (from 6 to 2 percent). During this period, the percentage of students who reported being victimized at school decreased for both male (from 6 to 3 percent) and female (from 5 to 2 percent) students, as well as for White (from 6 to 2 percent), Black (from 6 to 3 percent), and Hispanic (from 5 to 2 percent) students.”

“Between 2001 and 2017, the percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported that gangs were present at their school during the school year decreased overall (from 20 to 9 percent), as well as for students from urban areas (from 29 to 11 percent), suburban areas (from 18 to 8 percent), and rural areas (from 13 to 7 percent).”

“The percentage of students in grades 9–12 who reported having been in a physical fight anywhere in the previous 12 months decreased between 2001 and 2017 (from 33 to 24 percent), as did the percentage of students in these grades who reported having been in a physical fight on school property (from 13 to 9 percent).”

“Between 2001 and 2017, the percentage of students ages 12–18 who reported being afraid of attack or harm at school during the school year decreased from 6 percent to 4 percent.”

All good news, which is only slightly dampened by the low-lights:

“During the 2015–16 school year, 43 percent of public school teachers agreed or strongly agreed that student misbehavior interfered with their teaching, and 38 percent agreed or strongly agreed that student tardiness and class cutting interfered with their teaching.”

Tardiness has been increasing inexorably since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released on VHS. However, the increase in distracting misbehavior started in 2007–08. And then there’s this:

“The percentage of public school teachers reporting that they had been physically attacked by a student from their school in 2015–16 (6 percent) was higher than in all previous survey years (around 4 percent in each survey year) except in 2011–12, when the percentage was not measurably different from that in 2015–16.”

Anyway, as I was saying, it gets better, assuming you’re not a teacher—or god forbid, a statistic.

SOURCE: “Indicators of School Crime and Safety,” Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education (2019).

This spring’s school funding debates have revolved around the needs of poor students. Governor Mike DeWine has proposed a significant bump in state spending targeted at low-income students. And the House budget proposal, released just last week, adds even more to this pot of funds. The focus on supporting low-income students is commendable, as they often face the greatest barriers to success in college and career.

Given all the discussion about the needs of low-income students—and all the millions in funding being directed to support their education—it might surprise you learn that Ohio faces major challenges in identifying students who are in fact low-income. In a press conference unveiling his funding plan, Representative John Patterson said “we have been unable to fully define what ‘economically disadvantaged’ is.” Meanwhile, the DeWine plan bypasses the state’s own data on low-income pupils and instead targets aid based on federal Census data about childhood poverty, a noisy proxy, since it’s not based on actual headcounts of low-income students attending schools.

Without accurate data on low-income students, Ohio cannot efficiently target resources to students that need them the most. With only a few months until the General Assembly passes the state budget, there’s little chance that policymakers will be able to implement a different approach to counting low-income kids in this budget cycle. For now, that’s okay. But a critical, longer-term project for state leaders is to devise a more reliable approach to identifying low-income students.

This piece discusses the challenges Ohio faces in counting low-income, a.k.a. “economically disadvantaged” (ED), students, in light of policy changes from Washington, and it illustrates how they have inflated poverty rates across hundreds of schools. In a follow-up piece, I’ll consider how Ohio can transition to a different method of counting low-income students—known as “direct certification”—a shift that a few other states are already undertaking.  

Policy shifts

Ohio has traditionally identified ED students based on their eligibility for free or reduced-priced lunch (FRPL). According to federal guidelines, students whose household incomes are at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level can receive free meals at school, while those at or below 185 percent poverty are eligible for reduced price meals. For many years, FRPL counts have served as a reasonable proxy of economic disadvantage in districts and schools.  

But significant changes to FRPL identification have occurred starting in 2010, when Congress enacted the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP allows certain high-poverty districts and schools to provide free meals to all students, regardless of their household income. To qualify for CEP, schools must have more than 40 percent of their students deemed eligible for free meals via direct certification—a process whereby low-income pupils are identified through their participation in means-tested programs like food stamps or flagged as in foster care, migrant, or homeless. Individual schools, or an entire district, may qualify for CEP based on their certification counts.

The admirable goal of CEP is to ensure that students in qualifying schools receive meals without stigma or administrative fuss. Yet because every child is able to receive free meals, CEP schools report 100 percent FRPL students—even though not everyone is actually eligible for subsidized meals. This, in turn, leads to inflated counts of ED students.

Inflated counts of low-income students

The table below highlights the predicament using five CEP schools in Ohio as examples. As you can see, all of these schools reported 100 percent ED rates in 2017–18 as a result of CEP participation. But their “true” rates of disadvantaged students are almost certainly much lower. Assuming similar enrollment patterns compared to the year prior to CEP adoption—a reasonable assumption given slightly declining childhood poverty rates—the schools’ actual ED enrollments are anywhere from 23 to 74 percentage points lower than what’s reported.

Table 1: Illustration of how the Community Eligibility Provision affects data on economically disadvantaged students

​

Statistical imprecision might be of minimal concern if CEP schools were few and far between. But as Figure 1 shows, a sizeable portion of Ohio schools participate—nearly 1,000 out of roughly 3,300 public schools statewide. These schools are spread across Ohio’s less affluent cities, inner-ring suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. In fact, ninety-two of Ohio’s 610 districts have at least one CEP participating school, though a disproportionate number are located in big-city districts like Cleveland and Columbus.  

Figure 1: Number of schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provision

​

To get a rough sense of “miscounted” students statewide, I estimate the total number of non-ED students who are deemed ED by virtue of CEP. To do this, the 2011–12 ED rates—the year just before any Ohio school participated in CEP—serve as a proxy for schools’ “true” ED rates. Given the proximity of 2011–12 to the Great Recession, those data are likely higher than the ED rates today and produces a conservative estimate of the impact of CEP.

Assuming the FY 2012 ED rate more reliably captures current student poverty rates, ED enrollment in CEP schools is thus inflated by about 65,000 students—about the size of Cincinnati and Toledo districts combined. This has ramifications for state funding: Under the current system, higher poverty districts receive about $800 to $1,000 in additional funding per ED pupil. If CEP inflates ED counts by about 65,000 students, roughly $50 to $65 million per year is now being misdirected.

Table 2: Estimating how many non-disadvantaged students attend CEP schools based on FY 2012 data

​

* * *

Analysts like the Urban Institute’s Matthew Chingos and our own Checker Finn have raised concerns about the impact of unreliable poverty data on research and accountability systems. CEP’s effects are also felt in the realm of school funding. As state legislators seek to effectively target resources to students who need them most, they need a more reliable method of counting poor students. As we at Fordham and others have suggested, a promising way forward is to use direct certification data to track low-income students. Such a move would be fraught with challenges, but fortunately other states are also tackling the problem so Ohio wouldn’t be going it alone.

In a follow-up piece, I’ll consider how state policymakers could carefully make this transition in the years ahead. Stay tuned.

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: Include satisfactory teacher-performance evaluations in two out of the past three years of teaching as a condition of receiving tenure and eliminate coursework requirements for tenure.

Background: Also known as “continuing-service status,” tenure provides teachers with job security until they resign or retire. Tenured teachers—those receiving “continuing contracts” that never expire—enjoy protections that include extensive hearing and appeals processes should a district seek to terminate their employment and are designated as “last out” within their area of instruction when districts need to reduce the size of their workforce (ORC 3319.16-17). In contrast, all other teachers are employed on “limited contracts,” with lengths up to five years. When these contracts expire, districts can terminate the employment relationship by nonrenewing the contract under a less onerous process. To be eligible for tenure, Ohio teachers must meet several conditions set forth in statute (ORC 3319.08). They include the following: being licensed for at least seven years, teaching in the district for at least three out of the past five years, and completing additional college coursework since initial licensing. Districts may deny tenure to eligible teachers, though this rarely happens in practice. In New York City, for example, one study found that almost 95 percent of teachers received tenure in the late 2000s. Given the significant job protections at stake—and perfunctory tenure reviews—states have moved to strengthen their tenure policies. Today, nineteen states (not including Ohio) now require evidence of classroom effectiveness as a condition of tenure; four states have repealed it altogether for newly hired teachers.

Proposal rationale: Most Ohio teachers are talented, hardworking professionals, but others are less-effective instructors, including both novice and tenured teachers. In fact, survey data indicate that most educators believe there are tenured teachers who underperform and whose employment should be reconsidered. Yet expensive, time-consuming dismissal procedures result in districts rarely attempting to remove low-performing tenured teachers from the classrooms. To better ensure that ineffective instructors are not rewarded with job protections, satisfactory evaluations should be required before districts grant tenure. Additionally, research has not shown a correlation between additional college coursework and higher student achievement, and this tenure requirement should be repealed. Moreover, this condition imposes out-of-pocket expenses on teachers (or schools, if they offer reimbursements) to take these courses.

Cost: No fiscal cost to the state.

Resources: For background on Ohio school employment laws, see the Ohio School Boards Association’s HR Reference Guide to School Law (2014); for information on other states’ tenure policies, see the National Council on Teacher Quality’s web page “Tenure”; for research on New York City’s tenure reforms, see Performance Screens for School Improvement, a report written by Susanna Loeb and colleagues and published by the Center for Education Policy Analysis (2014); for more on appeal processes, see David Griffith and Victoria McDougald’s report Undue Process: Why bad teachers in twenty-five diverse districts rarely get fired, published by the Fordham Institute (2016); and for survey data on teacher and administrator views of tenured teachers, see Patrick McGuinn’s Ringing the Bell for K–12 Teacher Tenure Reform, published by the Center for American Progress (2010).