In August, the Ohio Department (ODE) of Education and the State Board of Education (SBOE) released their five-year strategic plan for education. It included ten strategies aimed at helping the state meet a questionable goal that doesn’t ask much of students or schools. One of these strategies called for identifying “robust and diverse ways to measure performance.” Take a look:

Ohio needs to address challenges related to a reliance on standardized assessments in academic content areas, especially in high-stakes situations. Students should have multiple ways to demonstrate what they know and are able to do. The State Board of Education recognizes this point and is examining the use of alternative tools as validated, reliable methods to assess knowledge. Such tools might include student portfolios, capstone projects, presentations, or performance-based assessments.

Less than a month later, state board members are already debating a draft proposal for a new set of graduation requirements that includes alternatives to assessments. Students would be able to choose how to demonstrate their competency in English, math, and other subjects from a laundry list of options. One of these options is a non-test-reliant pathway called a Culminating Student Experience (CSE).

The draft proposal offers a relatively detailed look at what a CSE could be, though little guidance on what it must be. It is described as a “project or set of activities and experiences” that can be embedded into existing school programming and could include in-school and out-of-school activities. It’s up to students to choose which activities they’re going to complete. Provided examples of such activities include a research or portfolio project, a community service project or experience, a work-based learning experience, or the completion of a career-technical program or an in-demand credential. Despite these examples, the proposal notes that students and their advisors are free to choose “activities and experiences that are aligned to the particular student’s aspirations, interests, and future plans.”

But here’s the real kicker: Depending on the activities they choose, students could use a CSE to meet all of the state’s graduation requirements. For example, to fulfill the English requirement using a CSE, students must complete a writing demonstration and achieve a rating of “satisfactory” on a rubric. For math, it’s a mathematical competency/data analysis demonstration and another satisfactory rating on another rubric. For both the “well-rounded content” requirement (which includes subjects like social studies and science), and the leadership/reasoning and social-emotional-skills requirements, it’s nothing more than presenting a summary of the CSE to a review panel. Students who can complete each of these demonstrations satisfactorily (it’s unclear what that means because the rubrics don’t exist yet) will earn a diploma.

To be clear, the draft proposal is not a formal recommendation from SBOE and ODE. The document clearly states that it was created “for discussion purposes only,” and State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria told the board that details would still need to be worked out if the concept was approved. But any proposal deemed worthy of discussion by a group that’s been so highly critical of current graduation requirements deserves a close look. And these “details” are not small, trivial things that can be waved away as implementation concerns. In fact, stakeholders and advocates should be extremely concerned about this proposal moving forward.

For starters, the proposal does not require certain experiences or activities to be part of a CSE. Instead, in an attempt to give students the freedom to align their CSE with their aspirations, interests, and future plans, it offers blanket approval for pretty much anything: “The Culminating Student Experience could include any meaningful collection of activities and experiences” (emphasis mine). As long as a student can write about what they did, do some math related to it, and present it to a review panel, then they’re free to use it as a pathway to a diploma.

Wanting to give students the freedom to align school to their interests and goals is a laudable idea. A recent survey indicated that only half of students think that what they learn in school is relevant to the real world, and some students struggle to stay engaged in school when they don’t see it as pertinent to their lives. Schools should absolutely be working toward connecting academics to real life. But the state should not be granting diplomas based on an open-ended list of student-selected activities that it cannot prove will develop or accurately measure academic knowledge and skills.

Consider one of the few activities the proposal identifies as a possible CSE: a major community service project/experience, such as a significant leadership role in a student organization. Although such activities are undoubtedly meaningful for students, they aren’t reflective of academic mastery. Johnny may have learned a ton from his time leading a student organization, but writing an essay about his experience to meet ELA graduation requirements overlooks almost every single one of the state’s reading standards. Johnny will graduate without proving that he can make logical inferences, determine central themes, assess how a point of view shapes content and style, or compare and contrast two texts—skills that are absolutely vital in college and a vast majority of workplaces, not to mention typical adult experiences, like deciding which presidential candidate to vote for or reading a lease agreement.    

There is no way for the state to ensure that every CSE activity a student chooses is high quality. Instead, policymakers will rely on teachers and administrators to do it—a decision that will heap even more onto the already full plates of folks on the ground. The sheer amount of time and manpower it will take to not only monitor student selections but also grade and evaluate all of the associated demonstrations in addition to daily classes boggles the mind. Professional development and training will cost the state millions.

But that’s not all. In a previous piece, I pointed out the drawbacks of using GPAs as a graduation requirement (which the proposal also advocates for). Many of the same issues with GPAs exist for CSEs: an enormous amount of pressure on the teachers tasked with grading; the potential of score inflation and gaming; and wildly different expectations between schools and districts, and even for different groups of students that make comparison and validity all but impossible. That last point—the impossibility of comparing between districts, schools, and subgroups of students—should terrify equity advocates. The state has a responsibility to ensure that all children are learning, and to do everything in its power to close the achievement gap. That’s not possible if we can’t compare the graduation rates of poor, minority, and underserved children to the results of their more affluent or white peers.

And then there are concerns about reliability. The proposal suggests that students could complete a portfolio project either as part of a CSE or to complete their well-rounded-content requirements. The state of Vermont implemented a similar portfolio assessment program back in the early 1990s. Research into Vermont’s work showed that “rater reliability,” or the extent of agreement between raters about the quality of a student’s work, was low, on average, in both math and writing. The authors of the report note that when ratings are unreliable, “scores tend to spread out more than they would with reliable scoring.” This results in too many students obtaining scores on the extreme ends of the spectrum, and too few students obtaining scores near the middle. In Vermont’s portfolio system, the resulting bias was “substantial enough to undermine reporting of statewide proportions of students reaching each score point.”

Other assessment alternatives proposed by the plan have similarly questionable evidence bases. In a review of the literature on high school capstone courses, authors found that, “while the idea of such courses has been around since the 1990s, such courses have not been widely implemented and virtually no research exists on their effectiveness.” Work-based-learning experiences are promising, but still in their infancy: The ODE-developed framework for how schools should issue high school credit to students completing work-based learning didn’t go into effect until this year. The state is still working on how to reliably measure work-based-learning participation and evaluate performance.

The upshot of all this is clear: The state board and ODE promised to examine alternatives to assessments to see if they were valid and reliable. But there was no examination. In fact, given the speed with which this new draft proposal came out, it seems that their minds were already made up. That stands in stark contrast to other states that are also considering test alternatives but are doing so carefully, via small-scale pilots and extended timelines, and with the worrisome concerns of equity and reliability front and center. 

It should greatly concern parents, educators, and the general public that the alternatives proposed in the draft plan not only lack solid evidence of validity and reliability, but are also burdensome, subject to gaming, of questionable rigor, and completely devoid of the state’s reading standards. This is not to say that all alternative assessments are bad; they may very well be excellent assessment tools at the local level, and they could become an important complement to (though not a replacement of) state tests. Nor is the point to champion standardized tests as the be all and end all. Standardized tests don’t tell us everything we need to know about student potential, achievement, or ability. But they are objective, valid, reliable, comparable, and rigorous tools that gauge what students know and are able to do—something that can’t be said for the alternatives offered by the draft proposal.

1. All of today’s news revolves around school districts operating under a declaration of academic distress and all that goes along with it. First up, despite the ongoing litigation relating to the academic distress designation, the first appointees to East Cleveland’s Academic Distress Commission were announced late last week by the Ohio Department of Education. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/12/18)

2. Meanwhile, OG ADC CEO Krish Mohip announced last week that he will be leaving Youngstown when his current contract expires in June. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/12/18) Editors in Youngstown today opined on their hopes for the next district CEO. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/15/18)

3. Finally today, Lorain City Schools has released a new guidebook explaining to parents the new standards-based grading protocol in place in Kindergarten through 8th grade. It replaces typical A-to-F/GPA grading in favor of a five-point scale indicating distance from mastery. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 10/12/18)

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Editor’s Note: As Ohioans prepare to elect a new governor this November, and as state leaders look to build upon past education successes, we at the Fordham Institute are developing a set of policy proposals that we believe can lead to increased achievement and greater opportunities for Ohio students. This is the fourth in our series, under the umbrella of maintaining high expectations for all students. You can access all of the entries in the series to date here.

Proposal: Starting as students enter middle school, Ohio should provide families with clear information about whether their children are on a solid pathway for success in college.

Background: As objective gauges of student achievement, statewide exams have several important purposes, including their use in school accountability systems. But perhaps the most important role of state exams is to offer information to Ohio parents about the academic progress of their own children, thus serving as an important “external audit” that supplements the grades they receive from teachers. To this end, the Ohio Department of Education produces family score reports based on state exams, akin to those that families receive after children take college entrance exams. The state’s score reports already provide some valuable information to parents, most notably, whether students reach proficient. While Ohio has raised its proficiency standards in recent years, data suggest that a substantial number of proficient students—perhaps up to one in four—are likely to struggle should they choose to pursue a college education. In 2016-17, roughly 60 percent of Ohio students reached proficient on various state exams. However, ACT data from the class of 2017 indicate that just 46 percent of Ohio graduates taking this exam reached college-ready benchmarks in at least three of its four subject areas; even fewer (33 percent) met its readiness targets in all four. Widely seen as the nation’s gold standard for reporting achievement, data from NAEP reveal that just two in five of Ohio’s fourth and eighth graders reach its rigorous proficiency bar. An on- or off-track for college designation should not be presented as certain or fixed (and changes over time could be displayed too). But surveys find that parents tend to overestimate the academic skills of their children—due in part to the rise of “grade inflation” in schools and modest proficiency standards—and a projection of college readiness  would offer a realistic appraisal of where children stand on the path to post-secondary education.

Proposal rationale: Ohio, like most states, hasn’t fully aligned its proficiency standards with college-ready benchmarks. The result: parents do not receive clear signals about whether their children are on-track for college often until it’s too late. Although college may not be the optimal path for all young people, it’s an aspiration that many parents have for their children—and most adolescents hold for themselves. Through a partnership with the data-analytics company, SAS, Ohio already provides data to educators that forecast students’ ACT or SAT scores based on state exams results. This information should be provided to families as well. Providing projections about college prospects could inspire them to engage more actively in the educational success of their children, encourage them to seek academic help, if warranted, and support informed decisions about high school options and beyond.

Cost: Minimal fiscal impact on the state budget. The Ohio Department of Education would likely incur nominal administrative expenses to update its family score reports.

Resources: For more on states’ proficiency standards, including analyses showing that Ohio has a relatively low proficiency bar, see Daniel Hamlin and Paul Peterson’s article in Education Next titled “Rigor of State Proficiency Standards, 2017” (2018); for Ohio’s NAEP and state proficiency rates, see the Fordham Institute web page, “Ohio By the Numbers”; and for ACT data for Ohio’s  class of 2017, see ACT, “The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2017: Ohio Key Findings.” Survey data on parents’ views of their kids’ achievement and college aspirations can be found in Learning Heroes’ 2017 report “Parents 2017: Unleashing Their Power & Potential” and Jon Marcus discusses grade inflation in an article titled “Why Suburban Schools Are Inflating Kids' Grades,” The Atlantic (2017). For information about family score reports, see Ohio Department of Education, “Ohio’s State Tests, 2017–18” and for a note about how educators can access predictive analytics on ACT/SAT scores, see ibid., “Updated reports available on EVAAS value-added site.”

A couple weeks ago, the Washington Post's Editorial Board rightfully reminded D.C. residents what education in the city was like before mayoral control. “School didn’t start on time each fall because buildings weren’t ready,” it writes. “Textbooks stayed stacked in warehouses because the central office failed to deliver them to classrooms. Teachers were hired and principals appointed for who they knew, not what they could accomplish. Students didn’t learn because no one expected them to.”

Such examples are infuriating—and accurate—especially in light of two bills and a separate proposal that were recently introduced to the D.C. City Council and would chip away at the mayor’s authority over education. Again, from the aforementioned Washington Post editorial:

Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), chair of the Education Committee, wants to establish the Office of State Superintendent for Education as an independent agency and extend the term of superintendent from four to six years. The bill would strip the mayor of the ability to remove the superintendent at will and give the agency authority to hire all its personnel, rather than giving the mayor discretion in filling some positions. A proposal by council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) would go even further in the wrong direction, transferring authority over the agency from the mayor to the elected State Board of Education.

The mayor, under both bills, would still have authority over the schools chancellor, but the legislation—along with a proposal to create a new agency under the D.C. auditor to collect and analyze school data—is the opening gambit in an effort to diminish the mayor’s role.

The Post’s editorial board believes that passing these measures would be a mistake. We agree. And some background on the Office of State Superintendent for Education (OSSE), and the city’s education governance more generally, will help explain why.

Despite its lack of statehood, D.C. receives federal funds, and federal educational legislation treats it like a state. Mayoral control reflects this by untangling state responsibilities that were previously handled by the city’s public school district. Those responsibilities were placed within the Office of State Superintendent for Education, D.C.’s equivalent to a state department of education.

D.C.’s governance structure also resembles that of states in many ways. The city’s mayor appoints a superintendent, just as governors do. There’s a board of education that considers various policies, and a City Council that approves the budget and calls hearings on any education issues. And OSSE has some of the traditional responsibilities of a state education agency (SEA)—standards, assessments, accountability, and implementing federal laws for D.C.’s one traditional district and more than sixty charter school districts.

But the city is different in many ways, too, especially in regards to OSSE. On top of everything else, it also manages the city’s complicated school busing services, its popular early childhood and prekindergarten programs, the generous higher education grants given to its city’s graduates to attend college, the essential school lunch and summer food programs, and even adult education. OSSE is also co-located in the city with the U.S. Department of Education, which means that federal monitoring is constant and ongoing. Even if that’s not the federal government’s intent, it’s unavoidable given the proximity. And the city has a separate chief financial officer who oversees each agency’s budget and appoints OSSE’s top financial officer.

Moreover, charter schools have their own governing board—the highly regarded Public Charter School Board. It authorizes charter schools and ensures a high-quality education for almost half of the city’s students. Yet OSSE also has oversight responsibilities for charters.

Complicated systems increase barriers to successful school outcomes, so there’s wisdom in keeping it simple. And these measures currently before the City Council would do the opposite.

By switching authority from the mayor to the board of education, new complexities would be introduced and there’d be a greater likelihood of competing visions. The thought of splintering reporting structures also seems counterproductive. Past mayoral-control reforms, among many other positive initiatives, have been generating improvements for students. Adding another layer of oversight or introducing disparate views among leadership may not serve students and parents well. Our hunch is that there is great value in minimizing the complexity of an already labyrinthine system.

As for the proposal to create a new agency that would collect and analyze school data, that would also be a misstep. Data collection for and about students is a fundamental responsibility of agencies like OSSE and other SEAs. It’s unlikely that stripping out its data and reporting mechanisms and creating yet another agency will solve governing challenges.

We don’t live in D.C. anymore, but it’s a city we both still love. Superintendent Hanseul Kang has a difficult job in an inherently complex system, so making it harder doesn’t serve students well. D.C.’s residents are best positioned to move the education system forward, and we encourage them to oppose these proposals that would return the city to the chaotic days before mayoral control.

Kerri Briggs, a Principal at Cicero Social Impact and Ed Direction, was state superintendent for DC (2009 to 2010). Catherine Freeman Jaynes, a Principal at Cicero Social Impact, was OSSE’s chief of staff (2009–2010). 

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

Last year, the state legislature followed a recommendation made by the State Board of Education and created a series of alternative graduation requirements for the class of 2018. These alternatives were far too easy and allowed schools to graduate students who were not career and college ready.

A few of the alternatives were particularly bad. For instance, one requirement allowed students to graduate if they had an attendance rate of 93 percent during their twelfth grade year. In the district where I teach, I know that even though many students would show up late and leave early, adults wouldn’t mark them absent out of fear of eliminating the attendance graduation alternative. It’s bad enough that data weren’t tracked reliably. But missing what amounts to thirteen days a year also doesn’t add up to creating a career- or college-ready student. Instead, it rewards students for doing something that we should already be expecting them to do.

Another example is the requirement that allowed students to graduate if they completed a capstone project during twelfth grade. I watched students in my district complete this requirement by writing book reports or writing papers about what they wanted to be when they grow up. That’s the kind of project one would see in elementary school, not high school, and it in no way prepared students for the rigors of college, where research is essential to being successful.

These are just a couple of examples of how the weak alternatives available to the class of 2018 were a disservice to students and schools. Ohio needs graduates who are college and career ready, and it needs schools, teachers, and students to be held accountable for learning. But graduation requirements should also acknowledge student growth. That’s why I’d like to make the following proposal for how to change Ohio’s graduation requirements.

Under my proposal, students would still be required to take end-of-course (EOC) exams and accumulate points based on their scores. Instead of having to earn eighteen total points on EOC tests to graduate, students would only need to earn fourteen points on exams. Students who earn fourteen or more points—but less than eighteen—would be required to complete additional pathways to demonstrate their readiness.

The number of pathways that a student would need to complete would depend on how many EOC points they accumulated. Take a look:

​

These pathways would be an improved version of the 2018 alternative requirements, and would include:

• A grade point average of 2.5 or higher during twelfth grade

• Completion of a capstone project about a relevant issue in Ohio to be completed during twelfth grade

• Working 250 hours in a job or community service project during twelfth grade
  • Must include a favorable evaluation from a supervisor

  • Must be completed at one specific site for at least ninety days

• Completion of three hours of a post-secondary class any time during high school

• Earning a remediation-free score on the ACT or SAT

• Scoring a three or higher on an Advanced Placement exam or four or higher on an International Baccalaureate exam at any time during high school

• Scoring a three on each subsection of the WorkKeys exam

As you can see, many of the problems with the 2018 alternative requirements would be resolved under the new proposal. Removing attendance as an option, for example, ensures that showing up is an expectation for all students and prevents adults from gaming the system. By increasing the number of hours students must work in a job or community service project, limiting the project to one site, and requiring a favorable evaluation from a supervisor, students will be held accountable for their performance, learn what employers want, and demonstrate perseverance.

As far as EOC exam performance, as is the case under current law, students would still be required to earn at least four points in English, four in math, and six points in science and social studies. At least one of the additional pathways a student completes must be an out-of-school experience. In addition, this pathway places an emphasis on growth requiring all students to retake each year any test on which they score less than proficient until they either become proficient or graduate. It has teeth, too, as students are not permitted to graduate using the EOC pathway if they have a final score of “limited” on any assessment. If students improve their EOC scores and earn more points, they can decrease the number of pathways they must complete.

There are a few reasons this proposal is better than those currently being advocated for by the State Board of Education. First, it gets incentives right. Maintaining testing requirements for graduation ensures that students will take tests seriously and that report card measures like the Performance Index will accurately report achievement, not student effort. Removing easily gameable options like attendance also prevents adults who, though they may have good intentions, have low expectations for students. And maintaining EOC testing ensures that everyone—students, teachers, and schools—are accountable for student learning.

Second, this proposal focuses on growth instead of just compliance and achievement. By having students retake tests until they earn a proficient score, the state is communicating the importance and value of perseverance, as well as holding schools accountable for giving students intensive remediation and intervention. Importantly, a student who improves and earns additional EOC-exam points will need to complete fewer pathways to reach the required eighteen points.

As one can see, this is not a substitute for testing. It is all about achievement, growth, and accountability for students, staff, and districts. This is a compromise that all groups can get behind. It is what Ohioans expect but rarely get from Columbus and Washington—the ability to find common ground. As a teacher who has dedicated my life to helping the next generation, I implore the legislature to adopt a common-sense middle ground like this that maintains a focus on academic achievement but gives students additional, meaningful opportunities to demonstrate college and career readiness. Our young people deserve it.

Mr. Soper is an Ohio teacher. This blog reflects the views of the author and may not reflect the views of the Canton City School District, Canton Professional Educators’ Association, or the Ohio Education Association.

1. At this middle school in Dublin, Ohio, students get tech help from their fellow students. The introduction of one-to-one Chromebook use in the school has brought out the nerd herd in these 11- and 12-year-olds. (ThisWeek News, 10/10/18)

2. While there is ongoing grumbling in some corners about state report cards AND ongoing litigation to nullify the state’s Academic Distress Commission law, it is somewhat pleasing to note that some folks may actually start taking both things seriously. To wit: Columbus City Schools, hoping to avoid a declaration of academic distress (and all that goes along with it) is focusing on efforts that could boost this year’s report card above an “F”. And these efforts may even help kids learn more, which some may think is a bonus but is actually the point. Miraculous! (Columbus Dispatch, 10/11/18) In Dayton, a town hall meeting hosted by the DDN as part of their Path Forward initiative, drew 60 residents to discuss their views on how Dayton City Schools could improve. Residents seemed to be taking a bit of a longer view than is practical for the district given the ticking clock they are under. (Dayton Daily News, 10/12/18) And, while this piece is not included as part of the Path Forward series, the effort described here—adding career tech classes to every high school in Dayton City Schools—is probably actually part of the actual forward path. Weird. (Dayton Daily News, 10/12/18)

3. But, the memo of seriousness has not reached everywhere. Editors in Toledo today opine nonsensically against the state report cards, using the state’s 2019 teacher of the year (a social studies teacher at Toledo Early College High School) as their sole evidence. “The Ohio Department of Education must stop the use of phony letter grades to shame the performance of public school districts that are only doing what they are directed to do by the state with the resources provided by the state.” What? (Toledo Blade, 10/12/18)

4. Finally this week, in case you forgot, the state’s proposed strategic plan for education, which is a morass of non-academic nonsense if you ask me, has yet to be actually voted on and approved by the state board of education as the guiding principal for education in Ohio. But never fear, teachers in Lorain County (well, the tonier suburban districts of Lorain County) are already spending their PD days being trained on how to bring aspects of it into their classrooms. Wouldn’t it be just the tiniest bit embarrassing if the board ended up voting that plan down? But that couldn’t happen, could it? (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 10/12/18)

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Ohio’s charter school funding gap

Fordham’s Chad Aldis recently provided testimony to the Ohio Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The meeting, held in Cleveland, examined civil rights as it relates to education funding in Ohio. Some of Aldis’ testimony included data related to charter schools that highlights the significant gap in expenditures between charter and district schools serving similar students.

Why suburban districts need public charter schools too

The Progressive Policy Institute released a policy memo this week titled, “Why Suburban Districts Need Public Charter Schools Too.” The memo includes information about the national charter school landscape, the performance of suburban charter schools, how charter schools can benefit suburban students, and the three factors that hinder the spread of suburban charters.

New Orleans charter is using a new tactic for getting students to college

KIPP has long been focused on getting its students to and through college. This year, the network implemented a new tactic at a KIPP high school in New Orleans where they’ll combine the start of college with high school in a way that makes higher education feel attainable. Bard College, a New York-based private liberal arts college, is enrolling half of KIPP Renaissance’s juniors in a two-year program that will culminate with them earning both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. You can learn more about the benefits, challenges, and goal of the program here.

A public charter school set this student up for success in college

This week, a charter school graduate named Kamille Catala wrote an op-ed that appeared on ExcelinEd’s website. Catala shares about how her family came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico and how her mom (a teacher) immediately recognized the benefits of charter schools and enrolled all of her children in one. Catala explains that her charter school did everything in its power to set her up for success and, now that she’s at Florida State University, she has worked harder and pushed herself to excel because of the values her school ingrained in her.

Upcoming events

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for these upcoming Ohio and national events: The School Performance Institute’s upcoming workshop (October 18, Columbus), the 2018 NACSA Leadership Conference (October 22-25, Orlando), the 2018 National Dropout Prevention Network Conference (October 28-31, Columbus), the Ohio School Improvement Institute (November 15-16, Columbus), and the 2018 National Summit on Education Reform (December 5-7, Washington, D.C.).

Teachers—especially elementary ones—see a lot of weird, gross, and sad stuff. Whether it’s eating boogers, pooping in urinals, or repeated cases of lice, teachers spend their days with lots of children. Enough said? Some students are simply in the throes of normal development where farting contests and melted candy canes on radiators are reasons to fall over laughing and drive their teacher a little batty. Others may have disabilities or home situations that better explain their behaviors, eccentricities, and even outward signs of neglect. Teachers have forever been known for their ability to be discreet in helping and even protecting students from the cruelty that often comes along with being weird, different, and even unbathed. Sure, they may talk about it with their spouses or colleagues but public humiliation? Never.

Well, unless you are a public figure in the Trump administration. I am no fan of Trump nor do I find Stephen Miller even remotely appealing. But when his third grade teacher from decades ago dug up a class photo and essentially mocked his third grade self, I was left thinking, God help us if the elementary school teachers of public figures start coming out of the woodwork to humiliate their former students.

Here’s what Nikki Fiske, Miller’s third grade teacher twenty-five years ago at Franklin Elementary in Santa Monica, California had to say to the Hollywood Reporter about the now senior advisor to the President:

Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at eight. I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk—he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a strange dude.

I remember he would take a bottle of glue—we didn’t have glue sticks in those days—and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it.

She also asserts that when she wrote down all of her concerns in his school record, the principal used White-Out to erase them after his parents complained.

For the love of God, this is none of our business!

By contrast, it is certainly newsworthy that members of Millers’ family and even his former rabbi have come out publicly to repudiate the immigration policies he has helped to craft in his role at the White House. His uncle has expressed dismay that his nephew “has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”

But these critiques, while also personal, are about Miller’s comments and actions as an adult in a very public role. They are totally fair game and I happen to agree with them. Miller has a very nativist and anti-immigrant view of the world but, ahem, there is no evidence that the held those views in third grade. In fact, Ms. Fiske says, on the record, “of course, Stephen wasn’t political then—it wasn’t until later that he started to make waves.” But for some reason, she deliberately mocks and publicly shames him for eating glue and being a loner. That describes a lot of kids and I highly doubt they’d ever expect their teacher to tell it to a reporter.

Will this be the beginning of teachers outing their students who grow up to live in the public eye? Regardless of how repugnant one may find the views of a former student, it seems way out of bounds for them to be sharing information—especially about eight year olds—from twenty-five years ago. There are reasons why teacher observations are important and can be made public—school shootings and student suicides come to mind. And even in those tragic cases, privacy is a top consideration, not only because of privacy laws but also because of basic human decency.

I have to wonder if this teacher could be on the hook for some sort of ethics violation; certainly she is on the hook for unfairly casting a cloud over the countless teachers who do everything in their power to protect the privacy—and dignity—of their students. Was she paid to tell this story to the Hollywood Reporter? And is it the first in what will now be a cascade of inappropriate tabloid fodder about former presidents, first ladies, and current senators who peed their pants, ate pencils, and sniffed glue in third grade?

God, I hope not.

Update: As of today, October 11, the teacher has been suspended. The Los Angeles times has the story here.

This article was originally published in a slightly different form on Good School Hunting.

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

Teachers—especially elementary ones—see a lot of weird, gross, and sad stuff. Whether it’s eating boogers, pooping in urinals, or repeated cases of lice, teachers spend their days with lots of children. Enough said? Some students are simply in the throes of normal development where farting contests and melted candy canes on radiators are reasons to fall over laughing and drive their teacher a little batty. Others may have disabilities or home situations that better explain their behaviors, eccentricities, and even outward signs of neglect. Teachers have forever been known for their ability to be discreet in helping and even protecting students from the cruelty that often comes along with being weird, different, and even unbathed. Sure, they may talk about it with their spouses or colleagues but public humiliation? Never.

Well, unless you are a public figure in the Trump administration. I am no fan of Trump nor do I find Stephen Miller even remotely appealing. But when his third grade teacher from decades ago dug up a class photo and essentially mocked his third grade self, I was left thinking, God help us if the elementary school teachers of public figures start coming out of the woodwork to humiliate their former students.

Here’s what Nikki Fiske, Miller’s third grade teacher twenty-five years ago at Franklin Elementary in Santa Monica, California had to say to the Hollywood Reporter about the now senior advisor to the President:

Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at eight. I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk—he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a strange dude.

I remember he would take a bottle of glue—we didn’t have glue sticks in those days—and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it.

She also asserts that when she wrote down all of her concerns in his school record, the principal used White-Out to erase them after his parents complained.

For the love of God, this is none of our business!

By contrast, it is certainly newsworthy that members of Millers’ family and even his former rabbi have come out publicly to repudiate the immigration policies he has helped to craft in his role at the White House. His uncle has expressed dismay that his nephew “has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”

But these critiques, while also personal, are about Miller’s comments and actions as an adult in a very public role. They are totally fair game and I happen to agree with them. Miller has a very nativist and anti-immigrant view of the world but, ahem, there is no evidence that the held those views in third grade. In fact, Ms. Fiske says, on the record, “of course, Stephen wasn’t political then—it wasn’t until later that he started to make waves.” But for some reason, she deliberately mocks and publicly shames him for eating glue and being a loner. That describes a lot of kids and I highly doubt they’d ever expect their teacher to tell it to a reporter.

Will this be the beginning of teachers outing their students who grow up to live in the public eye? Regardless of how repugnant one may find the views of a former student, it seems way out of bounds for them to be sharing information—especially about eight year olds—from twenty-five years ago. There are reasons why teacher observations are important and can be made public—school shootings and student suicides come to mind. And even in those tragic cases, privacy is a top consideration, not only because of privacy laws but also because of basic human decency.

I have to wonder if this teacher could be on the hook for some sort of ethics violation; certainly she is on the hook for unfairly casting a cloud over the countless teachers who do everything in their power to protect the privacy—and dignity—of their students. Was she paid to tell this story to the Hollywood Reporter? And is it the first in what will now be a cascade of inappropriate tabloid fodder about former presidents, first ladies, and current senators who peed their pants, ate pencils, and sniffed glue in third grade?

God, I hope not.

Update: As of today, October 11, the teacher has been suspended. The Los Angeles times has the story here.

This article was originally published in a slightly different form on Good School Hunting.

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

A new study by Jason A. Grissom and Brendan Bartanen of Vanderbilt University examines the impact of principal effectiveness on teacher turnover. It’s well established that better school leadership leads to lower average turnover, but as the authors write, “all teacher turnover is not created equal.”

Grissom and Bartanen used data on all public education personnel in the state of Tennessee from 2012 to 2017. To gauge teacher effectiveness, they relied on observation and student growth scores. And for principals, they looked to evaluations by superiors, as well as surveys from teachers.

Tennessee’s statewide educator evaluation system, the Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) began in the 2011–12 school year and produced the data used in this study. This means that principals in Tennessee may have had better information to use when evaluating teachers than their peers in other states.

Grissom and Bartanen offer descriptive findings that add context to their examination of whether principals affect teacher turnover. Most noteworthy is that, in general, less effective teachers are more likely to turn over: 37 percent of the teachers in the least effective band turned over, compared to just 11 percent of teachers in the most effective range. Overall, 13 percent of teachers turned over each year.

As for the big question, the study echoes previous research, finding that principals with greater effectiveness have lower teacher turnover in their schools. Specifically, a 1 standard deviation (SD) increase in principal effectiveness is correlated with about a 5 percent change (0.5 percentage points) in teacher turnover.

Grissom and Bartanen also find evidence of “strategic retention,” wherein good principals are better at keeping effective teachers and getting rid of less effective teachers. A 1 SD increase in the superior rating (the superintendent’s rating of the principal) is associated with a 1.3 percentage-point decrease in turnover among teachers with comparatively high observation and student growth scores, and a 2.3 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of turnover among teachers with low marks. Their results also suggest that observation scores, rather than measures of teacher effectiveness derived from student test score growth, drive the patterns of strategic retention. This is in line with prior literature that says principals rely most on observation, and less on value-added measures because they’re opaque.

The effects Grissom and Bartanen detailed are strongest in suburban schools, perhaps because there’s more demand to teach in those areas. And indeed, if no one else wants to teach in your school, you probably shouldn’t be nudging teachers out. As the authors put it, “principals in more advantaged schools may worry less about finding quality replacements for teachers who leave, leading them to focus on pushing out low performers.”

The study’s findings are not exactly shocking. Good leaders at any kind of organization do the best with what they have, while also trying to improve their staff over time, hiring and promoting good people and sometimes nudging others towards the door. But it does demonstrate yet again that leadership matters.

SOURCE: Jason A. Grissom and Brendan Bartanen, “Strategic Retention: Principal Effectiveness and Teacher Turnover in Multiple-Measure Teacher Evaluation Systems,” American Educational Research Journal (September 2018).