1. Kinda weird: Fordham’s Chad Aldis gets more column inches than the ed board themselves in this editorial opining against the state’s academic distress paradigm. And he is definitely on the other side of the fence from them. (The Morning Journal, 5/4/19)
   

2. North Olmstead City Schools’ superintendent held his state of the schools presentation last week. In it, he mentioned two problems facing the district: charter and voucher schools “taking” $800K from the district’s budget and the district’s continued declining enrollment. Of course those two things are actually only one interconnected thing. And the district’s real problem, apparently, will remain hidden. (Cleveland.com, 5/6/19)
   

3. Finally today: Ummm… Say what now? (ABC57 News, South Bend, Indiana, 5/4/19)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you want to have all the hidden problems revealed by signing up for such a newsletter)? Subscribe by clicking here.

NOTE: The Finance Committee of the Ohio House of Representatives today heard testimony on Substitute House Bill 166, the biennial budget bill. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy provided testimony on a number of education-related provisions in the bill. These are his written remarks.

Chair Oelslager, Vice Chair Scherer, Ranking Member Cera, and members of the House Finance Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today on Substitute House Bill 166.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C. Our Dayton office is also a community school (charter school) sponsor.

Fordham believes that every student deserves to attend a high quality school. To that end, we support efforts both to improve public schools and to help all parents to exercise their right to choose the school that’s best for their children. If Ohio’s education system is to be successful, it’s critical that the state fund schools fairly by taking into account the additional needs of students living in poverty.

Governor DeWine’s as introduced budget was relatively light on education-related changes, but the sub bill made some very significant education policy changes—some good and some less so—that we’d like to address.

Support for low-income students

We support Governor DeWine’s proposal to award funding for wellness services based on the percentage of economically disadvantaged children residing in a district. It is critical for the state to provide funding to ensure the needs of our most disadvantaged students are met, and we strongly support the increases in the sub bill. On a related note, we also support the funding allocated to reduce the costs for low-income students to take Advanced Placement exams. This reduces a barrier for our high-achieving but disadvantaged students. Finally, when thinking about wellness funds, we also recommend that districts be given flexibility to spend those dollars as efficiently as possible based upon the needs of their students.

Teacher Licensure

Speaking of flexibility, we are also supportive of the language giving school districts and charter schools increased leeway in using teachers on long-term substitute licenses when necessary. In areas where there are teacher shortages, this is critical. It is also an important mechanism for attracting talented mid-career professionals into the teaching field.

State Report Cards

Fordham has acknowledged the need to continue to improve Ohio’s state report card and even published a report giving recommendations on how to do it. However, the sub bill makes some significant changes to the report card system—without debate—which gives us concern.

The sub bill would make the overall grade of a school (applies to districts, too) the higher of the performance index or the value added measure. While well-intentioned, this would result in a dramatic increase in grades around the state. Such an increase would make schools appear to be better performing than they actually are, and would result in a significant softening of accountability. The negative impacts of this change would be felt in both high-income and low-income schools, but the distortionary effects are likely to be strongest in schools where students struggle mightily to meet state achievement standards. Unfortunately, that fact would be masked by satisfactory marks on the state’s value added measure. Ohio families and taxpayers deserve a view of overall school quality that considers both student achievement and growth over time, not one or the other.

The sub bill also moves from a three year average for calculating value added to a one year measure. We are mostly neutral on this and see merit in the arguments on both sides. This change, however, is likely going to increase the volatility of the measure, with schools and districts swinging back and forth from A to F. This will diminish the credibility of value-added and could be used by critics as a basis for questioning the entire framework. A better approach might be to move to a weighted three-year average with the most current year being valued at 50 percent of the overall value added grade.

Our biggest concern, however, centers on language that would put some of Ohio’s school choice programs at great risk. The sub bill includes language that requires every school (and district) to receive either an A or B if report card grades aren’t issued by ODE by the statutory deadline of September 15. This measure would hurt parents looking for information on school quality. It could also hurt their opportunities as it would remove schools from the EdChoice eligibility list and reset the list of academically challenged districts where new charter schools could open.

A separate but similar provision would require a complete restart of all “sanctions”— including restructuring, academic distress commissions, EdChoice eligibility, and community school closure—whenever a change (even an administrative one) is made to the state report card system. Passing this language will codify an either/or provision that would hurt everyone. The state would be in the unenviable position of either leaving the school report card untouched every year—even if improvements are needed—or gutting many of Ohio’s school choice programs. This language could destroy accountability, decimate school choice, or both.

Academic Distress Commissions (ADC)

The sub bill eliminated the ADC-related recommendations of Governor DeWine and placed a moratorium on the creation of new ADCs. However, it’s widely believed that the language from the recently passed HB 154 will be amended into HB 166.

Looking to improve on how ADCs function and the role of local communities is important, and the House should be commended for attempting to address those problems. However, HB 154 was rushed and is very much an unfinished product. Here are a few of its significant weaknesses:

• There is no clear exit criteria for schools that improve while operating under an improvement plan. By failing to include exit criteria, the state exposes schools to potentially biased and ineffective measures of their improvement.

• The bill provides no additional interventions for schools that fail to improve after four years of local intervention. If local districts can’t improve on their own within four years, then the state needs to step up and intervene on behalf of students and their families.

• The bill does not require schools to use student achievement and growth as benchmarks in their improvement plans.

• The bill does not include a mechanism for making sure that school improvement plans are actually evidence-based. School improvement plans should undergo an objective review by an outside entity in order to ensure a rigorous evidence base.

Charter Schools

Since House Bill 2 reformed Ohio’s charter school laws, the General Assembly has trod very carefully on the issue and hasn’t made many changes. This time has helped to identify some areas where changes are merited. The sub bill, unlike the as-introduced version, tackles some of those issues. While we are supportive of some of the changes, others could materially weaken charter school accountability just as the sector is showing signs of improvement.

Key charter provisions in the sub bill include:

• Charter school sponsors receiving an effective rating for three consecutive years will need to go through the evaluation process only once every five years instead of annually. The sponsor evaluation process is incredibly laborious, and it makes sense not to require it every year. However, five years could be too long between evaluations. In addition, consideration should be given to requiring the calculation of the academic component every year and giving the sponsor a new rating if it receives an F on the academic performance measure.

• Dropout recovery school report cards would be put on hold until ODE does a report and the General Assembly acts on the department’s recommendations. If the legislature doesn’t act, this essentially ends report cards for dropout recovery schools. That is incredibly worrisome.

• Charter sponsors under the bill would only have to provide opening assurances in a school’s first year or when it changed locations. Currently, operating assurances provide an important annual accountability check on things like teacher licensure and background checks, special education plans, minimum enrollment and other non-building related issues. This would appear to weaken current accountability requirements.

• E-schools are required to develop an individual learning plan for each student, develop a process for notifying parents when students aren’t participating, and eventually disenrolling students that are not engaged. Given Ohio’s recent experiences, we think these are smart, sensible changes.

• When Ohio’s charter school automatic closure law was created it typically identified a handful of the very lowest performing schools each year. Without modifications, it could close many more in future years. We support the move to require three consecutive years of low performance instead of two out of three years.

• Similar to report card changes in the sub bill, if ODE doesn’t assign sponsor ratings by November 15 then every sponsor would receive a rating of effective or higher. This could be subject to gaming.

• The timeframe is shortened from two years to one year for unused district buildings to be offered to charter schools. This is an important change that we support.

• Maintains the governor’s proposal to provide additional resources to the state’s best charter schools. This is vital given the well-documented, financial inequities faced by charter schools in Ohio. Although we continue to believe that all charters should receive increased funding, this is a big step forward. Importantly, driving additional dollars to top performers not only rewards and strengthens Ohio’s top-performing charters but also creates an incentive for other schools to improve. Charter school growth in Ohio has slowed over recent years, leaving thousands of needy children without quality school options. This proposal would offer funding to promising startup schools, which could in turn lessen the demand for high quality school options.

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide testimony. I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Ohio charters recognized in U.S. News best high schools rankings

U.S. News & World Report released their annual rankings of the best public high schools this week. Nationally, charter public schools make up 10 percent of the country's public high schools, but they account for 23 percent of the top schools on the U.S. News list. Among the rankings for Ohio’s best high schools, three charter schools were recognized for their performance, including the Arts and College Preparatory Academy (76), Dayton Early College Academy (111), and the Toledo School for the Arts (227).

GreatSchools releases College Success Awards

On Thursday, GreatSchools announced the winners of the 2019 College Success Awards, which celebrate high schools that do an outstanding job of preparing students who are traditionally underserved to succeed in college and ultimately their careers. In Ohio, 143 public schools earned an award, including Dayton Early College Academy and the Toledo School for the Arts. You can find more information about the awards and the charter schools that made the list here.

Giving charters greater flexibility in hiring

Recent changes to Ohio law require public school teachers to be “properly certified or licensed,” which means they must possess one of the state’s approved teacher licenses. For charters, which rely a great deal on long-term substitute licenses, this could be an issue. But according to Fordham’s Jessica Poiner, the proposed state budget offers a simple fix.

Toledo charter becomes a district school

The school board of Toledo Public Schools recently approved a contract to open and operate Escuela SMART Academy, which will be a K-5 magnet school. To make this happen, the district will take over Toledo SMART Bilingual Elementary, a successful K-5 charter school that’s been operating in Toledo since 2014. Toledo SMART’s current principal will retain her role as school leader.

Legislative update

It was a busy week at the Statehouse. The House Primary and Secondary Education Committee heard testimony on bills dealing with school facilities, interschool athletics, and student religious expression. In addition, the committee favorably reported HB 154, which eliminates academic distress commissions in favor of local intervention. The full House of Representatives passed the bill the following day. You can find testimony from the hearing here and more information about the passage of HB 154 here. Lastly, the House Finance Committee met yesterday to accept the sub bill for HB 166. You can find a comparison document that compares the governor’s budget proposal to the House substitute version here.

School Performance Institute workshop

Are you a school leader interested in helping your team to build their capacity to lead and implement change? Then check out the School Performance Institute’s upcoming workshop on May 16th. You (and your team) will have an opportunity to visit a high-performing middle charter school during a school day (to observe how the school has been purposefully designed to get results in a high-poverty context using proven methods) and discuss concrete ways to apply these ideas in your own school. You can register here, if interested, or contact John A. Dues for more information.

1. The only education news that anyone is interested in to close this week is the passage of HB 154 out of both the House committee and out of the full House in rapid succession. You will recall that 154 is one of the bills which would, among other things, end the state’s academic distress paradigm as it currently exists. Here is a roundup of coverage of the bill’s passage from earlier in the week, all of which include quotes from our own Chad Aldis talking about the problematic retreat from academic accountability that the bill represents. Gongwer coverage is here. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/1/19) Coverage from the Dispatch is here. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/1/19) The MJ’s coverage included a number of points from Chad, but it also included commentary from folks via Twitter, too. So there’s that. (The Morning Journal, 5/1/19) The Chronicle took a couple of days to post its full coverage and so was able to include everything and the kitchen sink. While Fordham’s testimony against HB 154 is noted but not quoted, the Ohio Democratic Party’s recently (timely) approved resolution against a “school privatization agenda”, which named Fordham as Public Enemy Number 2 (thanks gang!), is discussed in a bit more detail. (Elyria Chronicle, 5/2/19)
   

2. If you read the foregoing pieces thoroughly, you may have noticed a bit of skepticism toward HB 154’s ultimate chances for enactment. The following pieces lean into that skepticism as the focus of their coverage. Since Dayton City Schools is the only district currently at risk of falling into academic distress at the end of this school year, HB 154’s proposed ban on new Academic Distress Commissions is characterized in DDN coverage as the only way – the Hail Mary, if you will—by which the district can avoid having an ADC take charge. In the subhead, the district is once again said to be “in limbo” as to a declaration of academic distress, as if there is literally nothing the district can do to improve its odds of not being held accountable for sucking academically for many years short of praying for 154’s enactment. I figure that if anyone in Dayton has that mindset, dialed up pessimism about the bill’s chances makes some sense for them. While reading the piece, you can hear about how nearby Trotwood-Madison City Schools was able to avoid a declaration of academic distress (and, of course, all that currently comes along with that) by improving its district report card. You know: changing their way of doing business so as to boost student achievement. This was actually pointed out in testimony on the House floor prior to the vote on HB 154 and is quoted here. This simple fact alone gives lie to the “helpless, in limbo” business as we have noted several times previously in these clips. What is, unfortunately, missing from the DDN coverage, is a similar observation about Dayton City Schools also made on the House floor. In that testimony, local state Rep. Niraj Antani described some actual actions being taken by Dayton City Schools in the last year to try and improve teaching and learning all because of the district’s aversion to an imminent declaration of academic distress. It may be too little and way too late, but it ain’t “limbo”. How low can you go? (Dayton Daily News, 5/2/19) All that testimony is also absent from this editorial from the Canton Repository, opining in favor of HB 154. While the editorial contains the words “Failing school districts must be held accountable. No one should get a free pass, nor is anyone asking for one” at the end, it is the headline that matters. In it, it is the ADC law which is failing and which must be addressed first and foremost, according to the editorial board. (Canton Repository, 5/2/19) The pessimism expressed most clearly in the Vindy coverage, interestingly enough, is that HB 154’s replacement for ADCs might not be quite as robust (let’s call it) as what Youngstown City Schools has experienced for the last 2+ years. Those experiences are shorthanded here for your erudition. (Youngstown Vindicator, 5/2/19)
   

3. The president of the elected board of Youngstown City Schools (who has been pretty quiet recently, if you ask me—but of course no one has) also seems to have a little skepticism about the ultimate fate of HB 154. And about the other bills concerning ADCs, and about all the court cases concerning ADCs, and about the state budget which could also include stuff about ADCs. With all of this “uncertainty” in the Northeast Ohio air, Madam President is advising Youngstown’s Academic Distress Commission members to hold up on signing a contract with their newly-chosen CEO. At least until the dust settles, you know. In case we don’t need him. (WYTV-TV, Youngstown, 5/2/19) But no one up in Muskegon, least of all the new CEO himself, seems interested in holding up his departure to Ohio for anything. (Muskegon Chronicle, Michigan, 5/3/19)
    
4. Finally this week, in only peripherally-ADC-related news, we have a follow up from Wednesday’s sad tale of Dayton’s elected school board having difficulty giving their supe and treasurer well-intentioned marching orders without falling afoul of the Ohio Revised Code. Later in that same five-and-a-half-hour meeting (!), the board members were able to do what they came there to do—pass an agenda. Unfortunately, even when Dayton’s board manages to get down to business, it all seems pretty depressing. (Dayton Daily News, 5/3/19)
   

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

Next year, states will for the first-time report actual school-by-school spending as required under ESSA. This effort represents a quantum leap from the typical practice of tracking and reporting average district per-pupil spending, and is arguably the most complex piece of the law—so much so that states were given an extra year to comply with the new requirement. Marguerite Roza and her team at the Edunomics Lab have ably taken the lead on addressing the many policy related and technical questions involved, but there’s an even larger question of whether we are preparing ourselves for the political challenges that lay ahead.

As I see it, there are at least four of them.

First, some school districts are actually doing a decent job of spending more money on low-income students than on affluent ones. For example, this was generally found to be the case in the nation’s capital according to an analysis done by Fordham a few years ago. Perhaps surprisingly, this finding did not anger affluent parents in D.C. Instead, it was difficult to get anyone to pay attention to the data one way or the other.

If school-level financial transparency lands like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, this effort might be all for naught. To wit, about fifteen states have already released some school-level spending data, and the complaints thus far have been limited (e.g. more paperwork) and relatively benign. And while there’s been some national attention to this new mandate, local media coverage has been spotty, presumably because school finance—in spite of being inextricably linked to all major education policy decisions—is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Second, in some districts, schools with affluent students are spending significantly more per-pupil than schools serving low-income students. In fact, the shortchanging of low-income and minority populations is what most advocates expect to find. When School A is spending $12K per pupil and School B located a few blocks down the road is spending double that amount, the local newspaper headlines won’t be the only thing that’s jarring. This data will also raise uneasy questions about how teachers are distributed across schools because 80 percent of school expenditures are personnel-related.

Consider a four-quadrant chart that visualizes actual school-level spending against student outcomes. For the first time, we’ll be able to see which schools punch above their weight (i.e. Q2: Lower spending, higher outcomes) and which ones leave more to be desired. Under this scenario, the arguments could become zero sum rather quickly, pitting communities against one another along the lines of both race and class. Educational gerrymandering could gain additional steam as one of several unintended consequences.

Third, while it’s still too commonplace to find low-income students getting the short end of the stick, it is largely because of spending differences between districts rather than within them. In states like my adopted home of Colorado, many agree that the state’s funding formula doesn’t do right by the state’s neediest districts, but the moment you get into the mechanics of redivvying the pie, hard feelings ensue and progress grinds to a halt before it can really get started.

Finally, the shadow of the recent wave of teacher labor unrest could cloud the illuminating potential of this effort. In today’s ethos of reflexive and unaffordable cash drops, it’s possible that politicians will be uninterested in improving the efficiency in how dollars are allocated. In fact, some might even see financial transparency as a Trojan horse whose true aim is to eliminate the traditional “step and lane” salary schedules that reward pedigree and perseverance over performance.

The forces of resistance and repeal have long regarded education reform as an attempt to blame the maladies of education upon unionized teachers and to provide justification for their replacement. Efforts to reform higher spending, lower outcomes schools could be taken in this vein with skepticism and suspicion. From there, things could go south very quickly.

Experience teaches us that stranger things have happened. Not too long ago, there was another putatively game-changing initiative that ended up going sideways: the Common Core State Standards. Before that train got off the rails, states had earnestly believed the biggest obstacle to success was a potential backlash to lower test scores as a result of the higher standards. In hindsight, those were the halcyon days of the rollout before the black helicopter theorists joined the fray, stirring up a hornet’s nest in the process. While states largely ended up with the standards, or a slightly modified version of them after the dust settled, it would be imprudent to assume a less rocky path for financial transparency.

As a silver lining of sorts, the anti-Common Core forces currently have their hands full with personalized learning and their sustained attacks on Silicon Valley. And on a note of encouragement, Roza has found that parents anecdotally understand why districts must spend more on students with greater needs. But we shouldn’t let down our guard on the laws of political physics when it comes to this potentially high-voltage issue. Money talks, but it remains to be seen if people will like what they hear when the data comes out next year—or whether they’ll be listening.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The Ohio House of Representatives, after rushing the legislation through the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee late last night, passed House Bill 154 today. The bill, introduced ostensibly to address issues stemming from the state’s system of school district turnarounds via Academic Distress Commissions (ADCs), weakens the intervention to the point of making it meaningless.

“The state has an obligation to taxpayers and, most importantly, families to step in when students aren’t being served well,” said Chad L. Aldis, Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “While Academic Distress Commissions can and should be improved, HB 154 creates a framework that represents an outright abdication of the state’s duty to intervene on behalf of Ohio’s most vulnerable students.”

The Fordham Institute has conducted a detailed analysis of HB 154 and found merit in a few of its provisions allowing for earlier intervention in schools, focus on school rather than district improvement, and engagement of a broad group of stakeholders in creating a reform plan. However, in its haste to act quickly, the Primary and Secondary Education Committee failed to address some key weaknesses. The bill:

• Doesn’t provide additional intervention for schools that fail to improve after four years of local control.

• Fails to establish clear, objective exit criteria for schools operating under an improvement plan.

• Ignores student achievement and growth as benchmarks for districts to include in their improvement plans.

“Rather than providing important fixes for ADC implementation issues, HB 154 dismantles any sort of accountability,” Aldis added. “If this legislation becomes law, students who attend persistently low-performing schools will be hurt.”

I’m a confirmed school-discipline hawk. I believe that the first obligation of schools is to keep kids safe and their second obligation is to create and preserve a calm environment in which those who want to learn are able to do so with minimal interruption. While I may understand and even empathize with the travails and demons that cause other kids to disrupt that environment, it is nonetheless the school’s responsibility—if it cannot speedily and durably solve the problem within its classrooms—to put the disrupters somewhere else. Period.

So it was disheartening to learn that the terrific California-based nonprofit Innovate Public Schools, in its hot-off-the-presses list of “Top Bay Area Schools for Underserved Students,” decided this time around to exclude schools (many of them charters) with stellar academic performance but relatively high suspension rates—according to the state’s complicated school “dashboard.” (Never mind how squirrely and inconsistent is self-reporting by schools on all matters disciplinary.) We’re told that that new exclusionary criterion on the part of Innovate led to the banishment of more than half a dozen schools that would otherwise have made the grade as places that, in marked contrast to the overwhelming majority of their counterparts in the area, do really, really well at educating “underserved” kids.

In the same troubling vein, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is dinging top-performing Roxbury Prep, founded by former U.S. Education Secretary John King and a highly admired member of the Uncommon Schools charter family, because of its suspension rate. According to the Boston Globe, “State officials mandated lower suspension rates when they renewed the school’s five-year operating license in February. The school must demonstrate significant improvement in discipline rates by December 31, 2021, or it could face probation. School officials must also develop an action plan based on a comprehensive evaluation of Roxbury Prep’s discipline policies, climate, and cultural practices.”

What we’re seeing is the crusade against school suspensions now warring against schools that successfully educate thousands of poor and minority kids. It’s a fact that one of the secrets—not the only secret—of their success are behavioral standards as rigorous as their academic standards, and little or no tolerance for youngsters who cannot or will not meet those standards. Though the phrase “no excuses” has gone out of vogue, the fact is that great schools such as Roxbury Prep—and Eva Moskowitz’s fast-growing Success Academy network in New York City—simply refuse to accept excuses for infractions. Which doesn’t mean they hurl kids out of school willy-nilly. As a spokesperson for Roxbury Prep told the Globe, “We are committed to educating every one of our students, and suspensions are always the last option to ensure that all students can learn and grow in a joyful, safe school environment.” (My emphasis.)

Students crave “joyful, safe” classrooms. Teachers fear for their own safety, as well as that of their pupils, in schools where chronic miscreants are allowed to stay in class. As for parents, if any prefer “stolid, unruly” schools for their kids, that’s what choice is for. Schools differ in so many ways, among which are the tradeoffs they make, the priorities they adhere to, and the norms they enforce. Which is why it’s especially galling to see equity hawks and discipline doves go after charter schools, which are all about choice. While they are obliged to admit all comers, they aren’t supposed to be forced to retain everyone who stumbles in but then can’t or won’t do the work and abide by the rules. The really good charters, like all schools of choice, are transparent about both workload and rules and do their best in advance to make clear to families what is expected if in fact they choose that school (and, in most places, also win the admissions lottery, because the supply of these great schools doesn’t begin to match the demand for them). Clarity in advance minimizes the risk of conflict later. But this is supposed to be a transaction between family and school. And the in event that someone feels discriminated against, there are umpteen ways to make that known and seek redress. But regulators and do-good organizations that care about closing achievement gaps and expanding opportunities for needy kids ought not punish schools that do those things just because they maintain the very standards, both academic and behavioral, that make it possible to do those things!

One of the hallmarks of charter schools is their unique ability to align closely with parents’ values. Every American has fundamental moral and ethical principles, some of which can’t always be accommodated by traditional public schools. Their comprehensive approach is meant to serve the broader society or “entire community” and is a good fit for millions of families—but not for all. It’s one reason we ought to embrace charters, especially those designed to serve families who otherwise would be stuck sending their kids to schools that violate their beliefs, particularly the millions who can’t afford private or home schooling.

King Charter School, which hopes to open in Pinellas County, Florida, minutes west of Tampa, is such a place. If approved, it would be America’s first vegan charter school. Yet because of bizarre federal regulations that favor the agriculture industry and an all-too-familiar local review process that’s stacked against charters, its application may be denied.

For readers unfamiliar with veganism, minimizing or forgoing the consumption of animal products in favor of a plant-based diet has become important to a significant portion of Americans. According to a recent Gallup poll, 3 percent identify as vegan, meaning they consume nothing produced by animals, be it meat, milk, cheese, butter, etc. Another 5 percent are vegetarian, going only without meat. Combined, these groups comprise 27 million people. And their proportion is higher among those most likely to have school-age children, topping out at 11 percent of those between the ages of thirty and forty-nine.

Some go vegan or vegetarian for health reasons, but many are driven by deeper motivations. Research has found that plant-based diets have reduced effects on carbon emissions, water consumption, and other ecological factors. So they’re more common and important to those who are especially concerned about climate change and environmental degradation. The same is true of people who are passionate about improving the welfare and protecting the lives of animals. In these cases, foregoing meat and related byproducts is a moral choice, and is the basis for what practitioners believe to be ethical behavior. It is, in other words, a very important part of their lives, and more than just a fleeting preference.

It makes sense, then, that some vegan families would like to send their children to a school that embraces these values and thereby helps further the causes they hold dear, perhaps one that looks at ecology, economics, biology, and history within a frame that aligns with their beliefs. Similar value-based institutions exist and thrive elsewhere, such as the decade-old Ethical Community Charter School in New Jersey, founded around principles of ethics, service, and social justice. So long as such places are open to all children and educate them in a manner that satisfies sensible school accountability measures and parent expectations, they should be permitted to open and continue running, even if they’re not what you or I would choose for our own children.

Instead, as too bedevils charter schools in America, political reasons threaten to block King Charter School’s approval until at least next year.

One hurdle is a federal regulation related to the free and reduced-priced meals available to all low-income public school students. Normally, schools provide breakfast or lunch to these children, and then get reimbursed by the government. Yet King may be ineligible because of a ridiculous, dairy-industry-induced regulation that says schools “must not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk at any time or in any place on school premises or at any school-sponsored event.”

Another impediment is the Pinellas County charter approval process. Florida law requires applicants first to seek approval from the local school district in which they hope to open. Though denials can be appealed to a non-district entity, this can be prohibitively challenging for prospective operators. States with the strongest laws permit applicants to initially submit to independent authorizers. Doing otherwise, as Florida does, improperly empowers competitors to be gatekeepers. It’s akin to allowing Walmart to veto Amazon’s arrival in a community.

And indeed, Pinellas County doesn’t seem very friendly to charter schools. In 2017, for example, the school board voted 7-0 to join a group suing the state legislature to block a bill that gave charters greater access to local property taxes. This is a funding source that traditional public schools enjoy but charters often don’t, which contributes to their $5,828 per-pupil national funding deficit. The district may also, according to one Florida charter consultant, be prone to rejecting applications that would pass muster in Broward, Hillsborough, and Palm Beach counties.

It’s therefore unsurprising that King Charter School founder Maria Solanki told Reason that the officials were prepared to reject the school’s 400-page application due to a minor technical error that mistakenly allocated the wrong amount of time between classes. They also reportedly took issue with the curriculum, “even though it was far more comprehensive than what state law requires and written by a board member who once served as the state's science curriculum expert.”

Obstacles like these exemplify the various forces that prevent millions of American families from having access to schools to which, given the opportunity, they’d send their children. In their way are laws, rules, and attitudes that too often have little to do with academics or what’s best for children. Most harmed are the kids and families stuck in schools that don’t serve them well—or, in the case of vegans, practice in plain sight behaviors that they find immoral, offensive, and destructive.

Better would be approving distinctive places like King Charter School, provided their applications promise and describe institutions of sufficient quality, and then holding them accountable for results. If their academic outcomes are inadequate, officials can close them down. And if they aren’t supplying appealing options for families, moms and dads will send their kids elsewhere, and the buildings will shut their doors.

More importantly, embracing schools like King honors and strengthens American pluralism—the idea that diverse groups can and should be able to coexist and cooperate. Preserving this important principle, present in many ways since our country’s founding, is especially important today as our populace fractures and its fissures deepen. Our school systems, tasked with molding our young people to be good productive citizens, must resist these divisions. And in Pinellas County, Florida, supporting the opening of America’s first vegan charter school would be a worthy step in that direction.

I’ve beaten the drum forever about the importance of building students’ content knowledge if we want to improve their reading comprehension, but another key insight from rigorous research is that kids will read better only if exposed to complex texts. This insight was embedded into the Common Core and other high-quality English language arts standards. But alas, this latest annual survey of K–12 reading habits from Renaissance Learning indicates that we still have a long way to go. If the data reported are to be believed—and there are some caveats—the bad news is that America’s students aren’t reading very much. But there’s worse news: Their reading is mostly low-level fare, despite the loud and consistent call over the last ten years for children to be pushed to read more complex texts.

A common assessment software in U.S. schools and classrooms, Renaissance Learning’s “Accelerated Reader” (AR) program allows teachers to track their students’ independent reading performance, including the amount of time they spend reading, their comprehension, and the complexity level of the books they read. Students select books and take short AR quizzes afterward. The cycle of reading and quizzes organically creates over time a database of the books read by 8.7 million students in over 28,000 schools, representing all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

Collectively they read 289 million books in the 2017–2018 school year. But that’s a lot less than it sounds. The data show that about half of U.S. students read less than 15 minutes a day. Moreover, time spend reading peaks in the late elementary years, then declines sharply as kids enter middle school, and craters in high school when they read just eight minutes a day in eleventh and twelfth grade.

More concerning is the low level of challenge the data surface. Not surprisingly, students choose more challenging texts as they move up in age and grade. However, the increases in complexity are small from year to year, and without exception at the very bottom of the recommended reading range for any given grade. Accelerated Reader scores books using something called an “ATOS” score—a proprietary measure of readability and text complexity. So for example, during the 2017–2018 school year, the report shows that “869,110 sixth graders each read, on average, 15.9 books and 391,419 words.” The average ATOS level for those books is 4.5, meaning the text could likely be read independently by a student whose reading skills are typical of a fourth grader in the fifth month of school (remember this is for sixth grade). By twelfth grade, reading volume collapses to 4.7 books read and, on average, about 246,000 words, while complexity has crept up only incrementally. As the report notes, “a huge disparity exists between the books high school seniors are reading (ATOS: 5.6), compared to materials they will likely need to comprehend and use upon graduation, such as college texts (13.8), fiction and nonfiction best sellers (7.3), popular media (10.4), and career documents (10.6).”

Despite the massive dataset, a few cautions are in order. We can’t assume that every book a kid reads gets captured. The program may not capture a significant volume of reading outside of ELA classes. Only the books on which they take AR quizzes are counted, so it could lowball the data. And the program is much more commonly used in middle school and (especially) elementary school. It’s also possible that AR isn't fully accounting for more rigorous texts kids are reading in guided reading groups or other more intensive forms of small group instruction, but even if the dataset only captures independent reading, it's not a pretty picture. The report is shot through with concerns from Renaissance itself about the low level of challenge in What Kids Are Reading.

Finally, a quick glance of the lists of the twenty most popular books read at each grade level, a fascinating feature of the report and a glimpse into the habits and tastes of kids, show that series like Captain Underpants and Diary of the Wimpy Kid books dominate upper elementary and middle school grades. (The Harry Potter phenomenon appears to have crashed, with those books appearing near the bottom of the top-twenty lists, and only in middle school.) By high school meatier reads like To Kill a Mockingbird (the #1 ninth grade book), Romeo and Juliet (#3), Elie Wiesel’s Night (#5), and Animal Farm (#8) are still well represented—and with “ATOS” scores that often belie their thematic nuance and depth. So perhaps all is not lost.

SOURCE: “What Kids Are Reading,” Renaissance (2019).

Governors and legislative leaders in almost every state have made expanding and improving career and technical education (CTE) a top priority, yet the importance of quality data is often overlooked. The recent reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which governs how states implement and expand access to CTE, offers a crucial opportunity to redesign related data systems. But to do so successfully, leaders must understand how they’re currently using CTE information and the barriers that prevent leveraging it in more effective ways.

To assist policymakers, Advance CTE, which represents state directors of career and technical education, partnered with a host of other organizations through the New Skills for Youth initiative to conduct a national survey of those directors. The response rate was impressive, with fifty-one state-level directors from forty-eight states, two territories, and Washington, D.C., responding. Based on these results, Advance CTE reports on the quality of data systems, identifies common challenges, and offers recommendations for improvement.

The report identifies four commonly used and broadly accepted indicators of career readiness at both the secondary and postsecondary level: completion of a work-based learning experience; attainment of a recognized postsecondary credential (including industry-recognized credentials and postsecondary degrees); completion of dual or concurrent enrollment; and successful transition to further education, employment, or the military. According to surveyed directors, nearly every state is able to collect individual data on these measures, though they are stronger at the secondary than postsecondary level. The majority of states are also able to disaggregate their data by career cluster, CTE program of study, and subgroups of students.

States use this information most frequently to inform technical assistance and program improvement efforts. For example, Idaho’s CTE Program Quality Initiative rewards excellent program performance by providing incentive funding. Most states also use data to inform state policy and planning, such as Arkansas, which referenced a Fordham study of post-program outcomes for career and technical education students to demonstrate to lawmakers the benefits of completing a sequence of high-quality CTE courses. States like Ohio also publicly report career readiness data via their accountability systems, though this is far more prevalent at the secondary level than the postsecondary. And although there are some outliers, most states seem reluctant to use this information for high-stakes decisions like linking funding with program quality. Less than half use it to transform career pathways.

The report identifies several reasons why states may not be fully leveraging their CTE data. One issue is that leaders don’t trust its quality. Many states rely on self-reported information to measure post-program outcomes. This includes surveys of former students or program participants, which are especially vulnerable to errors, misreporting, and low response rates. There are a large number of states that don’t actively validate and verify the accuracy of their career readiness measures. And many states have disparate and disconnected data systems, which makes it difficult to track young people during transitions from high school to postsecondary education and the workforce.

Improving the quality and reliability of CTE data is critical. The report recommends that states move away from self-reported information and toward more reliable sources. North Carolina does this by tracking the attainment of industry-recognized credentials through the institutions that grant them. States should also embed rigorous protocols for validating their data. Arkansas, for instance, requires schools to get employer validation when participants complete a work-based learning experience. And leaders should work to align definitions, measures, unique identifiers, and collection cycles across programs and disparate systems. Kentucky has done this since 2012, when it established an independent agency with authority over all education, workforce, and labor data.

As states implement the reauthorized Perkins Act, redesigning and aligning data systems will be vital. This reports offers valuable assistance.

SOURCE: “The State of Career Technical Education: Improving Data Quality and Effectiveness,” Advance CTE (April 2019).