If the purpose of school is to prepare students for adulthood, developing their financial literacy ought to be an important goal. So a new Brookings report by Matt Kasman, Benjamin Heuberger, and Ross A. Hammond examines what—if anything—states are doing to promote it. They find that forty include “substantive financial literacy material” in their standards, but that they “fall along a wide spectrum in terms of rigor.”

Part of the variance stems from the difficulty in defining “financial literacy.” Combining definitions from previous researchers, the authors present financial literacy as a dynamic relationship between five key components. A few of these are intuitive: foundational skills like basic math, knowledge of core financial concepts, and psychological factors such as confidence and self-control. The other two components, opportunities to interact with financial services and lasting behavioral impact, are rarely included in financial literacy research. All five of these factors should interact and build towards “long-term financial security and the avoidance of suboptimal financial decision-making.” Financial education, then, can focus on any of these individual aspects, especially depending on the age of the student; second graders may find more use in multiplication than in a simulation of the stock market, for example.

With this vision of financial literacy in mind, Kasman, Heuberger, and Hammond surveyed standards in all fifty states. Indeed, forty states include substantial financial literacy requirements, but only three (Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah) require actual financial literacy classes for high school graduation. More often, the standards are integrated into the standards for another subjects, such as economics or social studies. The authors emphasize that requiring districts to implement these standards, regardless of their form, is more important than developing independently-listed guidelines.

Topics covered in the standards overlap quite a bit. Some of the most common are saving and investing, credit and debt, and investment strategies. Notable are states that connect finance and postsecondary education. Take Mississippi, which teaches students how to use W-4 and 1040EZ forms, or Utah, Texas, and Alabama, which all require lessons on how to complete the FAFSA. Twenty-seven states also have standards for basic financial education in grades before high school. These focus mainly on foundational skills, such as identifying short-term financial goals.

Brookings also examined the materials each state offers its educators to prepare them to teach financial literacy. Some states provide online curriculum, such as Florida’s Finance Your Future platform, which allows teachers to build custom, interactive finance lessons. Private organizations sometimes partner with states to offer weekend training seminars or their own curriculums. As the authors point out, the confidence teachers gain through professional development is critical to boosting student learning.

Studying the effects of financial literacy programs is challenging. Some studies have correlated robust financial education with higher savings rates and better credit scores later in life. But other research finds no effect on future behavior, and a handful of studies find that better math education is more strongly correlated with future financial success than is finance-specific coursework. Financial literacy education is hard to study on a wide scale because every state, even every district, approaches it so differently. The authors here call for more research, not just into financial well-being before and after the implementation of standards, but also into the effects of varying implementation efforts between districts in the same state.

The stakes of financial education are high. The average teenager earns $290 per month, and before long they’ll have to navigate the student-loan landscape. Fortunately, more states than we may realize are integrating financial literacy standards into their schools.

SOURCE: Matt Kasman, Benjamin Heuberger, and Ross A. Hammond, “A Review of Large-Scale Youth Financial Literacy Education Policy and Programs.” Brookings Institution (October 2018).

Last month, Emily Hanford of American Public Media filed a withering indictment of reading instruction in U.S. schools. Her radio documentary, “Hard Words,” exposed how much “decades of scientific research” have taught us about reading—and how little of it has reached classroom practice via teacher training. Her conclusion was simple and unsparing: “Schools aren’t teaching reading in ways that line up with the science.”

Hanford is echoing arguments that have been made by a generation of researchers and advocates, but timing is everything: I can’t recall a similar reaction to any other recent piece about classroom practice. And it has legs. It’s been a month since the documentary was posted, but I’m still seeing teachers sharing and discussing it on social media daily. One such response, posted to the Facebook page of Decoding Dyslexia-Arkansas, was a letter from teacher Patricia C. James to the dean of the Arkansas State University, where she graduated with a double major in Elementary Education and Special Education. James wrote that, while her teacher preparation was mostly very good, she was “totally unprepared to teach reading, especially to the struggling readers that I had at the beginning of my career in my resource classroom.”

“Having been taught phonics in elementary school, I knew my students needed more than the Balanced Literacy ‘3 cueing strategy’ that basically encourages students to guess unknown words,” James wrote. “Reading should not be a ‘guessing game,’ which is exactly what Balanced Literacy and Whole Language reduces it to.”

Another educator, Susan L. Hall, the CEO of the 95% group, an educational consulting company, posted a link to James’s letter on Twitter and wondered what might happen if every teacher who felt ill-prepared to teach reading wrote a similar letter to their ed school deans. I second the motion and hope others will do the same.

Here’s my letter to the current dean of my ed school.

***

Dear Dean Rose Rudnitski:

On a shelf, three feet from my elbow, is my diploma from Mercy College, awarding me the lordly title of “Master of Science, Elementary Education.” It’s hard to look at it without wincing a bit. I mastered no effective literacy practices in the two years I spent in the “New Teacher Residency Program,” a program designed specifically for the New York City Teaching Fellows, the alternate certification program I joined in the summer of 2002. Nor was there very much “science” in my coursework. I’m grateful for the professional credential, which allowed me to enter the teaching profession. But if there’s anything one might expect an advanced degree in elementary education to include, it would be teaching reading. It wasn’t part of my program.

There is a science of reading and we owe it to all future elementary school teachers that it be taught and embraced so that it might improve outcomes for children. In his recent book Language at the Speed of Sight, cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg makes a pointed and persuasive case that “the principal function of schools of education is to socialize prospective teachers into an ideology—a set of beliefs and attitudes.” There is a radical difference between what he derides as the “culture of education” and science. The two have “different goals and values, ways of teaching new practitioners, and criteria for evaluating progress,” Seidenberg writes.

It’s hard not to agree. Last weekend, I dug out the thick portfolio of papers, written reflections, and student work samples that members of my cohort were required to collect and curate as indicators of the learning outcomes our masters program demanded. To earn my degree, I had to demonstrate my “passionate commitment to learning” and show proof that I was a “reflective practitioner.” Teaching the “whole child” required me to show that I teach “responsively” and “in context,” but there’s no visible evidence, in my portfolio or in my memory, that suggests any attention to psychology, cognitive science, language development, or the rich body of research in those fields that might shape our views of teaching and learning.

Indeed, if someone unfamiliar with our field had only my portfolio as evidence, they might conclude that the most important challenge a new teacher faces is not learning and mastering a body of professional knowledge or demonstrating skill as a practitioner, the hallmarks of a true profession like medicine or the law. They would likely assume that the key to classroom success is developing a “personal philosophical vision” of education—another of the essential outcomes I was required to articulate to earn my masters degree.  

Emily Hanford’s radio documentary focused on the efforts of a school district in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to diagnose and reverse the rampant reading failure in the district—and not just among low-income kids. “When chief academic officer Jack Silva was examining the reading scores, he saw there were plenty of kids at the wealthier schools not reading very well either,” Hanford reported. “This was not just poverty. Since he knew nothing about reading, he started searching online.” Dwell for a moment on that anecdote and what it portends. When the CAO of a school district, someone in a position of expertise and authority in an American school system, is in the dark about effective reading practice and has to Google it, it’s says something unsettling and alarming about the lack of a common professional knowledge base in our field. Ultimately Hanford’s documentary traces much of our failure not to teachers, but those who prepare us—or fail to. “Why aren’t kids being taught to read?” she asks. “Too many teachers, school administrators, and college professors don't know the science,” Hanford concludes. It’s cold comfort to know that my teacher preparation program at Mercy College—long on my development as a “reflective practitioner,” short on effective practice—was not anomalous. But that did not help my South Bronx fifth graders.

I don’t wish to be unkind. I remain deeply grateful for the efforts of my Mercy College instructors and mentors. Rereading many of the dozens of “moments that matter” reflection pieces I wrote in my first two years in the classroom are plaintive; some are nearly despairing. I’m impressed in retrospect at the humane and empathetic tone of the many and extensive handwritten comments on those papers. But I cannot help but wish that less attention had been paid to the development of my “philosophical vision” and willingness to “explore one’s deepest beliefs about teaching.” This is the language of ideology and religion, not the professional practice of a field grounded in science and research. It’s not what I needed to be effective. It’s not what my students needed from me.

Sincerely,

Robert Pondiscio

1. Columbus City Schools is in the money, it appears. What’s the secret formula that has led to this great news? More revenue than expected and greater savings than expected. Simple. The teachers union president seems unhappy at this news, but don’t worry, chum. I’m sure the board is spending as fast as it can to take care of the excess. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/9/18) Here’s a surefire burn of at least $300K that Columbus might think about: Akron City Schools has built a health clinic exclusively for district staff and their dependents. That supplements the other exclusive clinic already in operation which was deemed to be less centrally-located than is generally needed. (Akron Beacon Journal, 10/9/18) Or how about this? Dayton City Schools, which appears to be rolling in dough as we have noted a lot recently, is poised to spend nearly $600,000 on advertising in the next two years. It is, among other things, meant to increase enrollment. I’m not sure what exactly the message will be, but I do know you can buy a lot of lipstick for half a mill. (Dayton Daily News, 10/9/18)

2. Speaking of money (when aren’t we, I ask you again), Akron City Schools may be rolling in even more money soon. (ACS General Hospital and Orthopedic Rehab Center, anyone?) The board this week approved the disposition of ten unused buildings which will be auctioned off over the next 18 months. I do think perhaps the Akronites may have forgotten who gets first crack at those buildings once up for sale, but I’m sure it’s OK. However, can I just ask: how many empty buildings?! (Akron Beacon Journal, 10/8/18)

3. You know who’s not rolling in dough? Most charter schools in Ohio. So said the head of the Ohio teachers union anyway, as she stood side-by-side with unionized charter school teachers in Parma this week getting ready to negotiate a new contract. You know how the old saying goes: The only good charter school is a closed charter school. The next best charter school is a unionized charter school. What, you don’t know that saying? Wow. Just me, I guess. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/10/18)

4. In Toledo, folks are still talking about the district’s state report card…and money. (Toledo Blade, 10/9/18) No money talk in Lima as state supe Paolo DeMaria came to visit this week, but there was talk of Lima City Schools’ lowly report card. Amid the happy talk and photo ops that go along with these types of visits, supe was asked about the possibility of an Academic Distress declaration in Lima—and all that comes along with it—in the near future. To his credit, dude didn’t hold back the realness. (Lima News, 10/9/18)

5. Speaking of districts operating under the aegis of an Academic Distress Commission, the elected school board in Youngstown is holding its three day retreat this week. (How many days?!) Here is some coverage of Day One of the retreat, in which very little seems to have occurred. IMHO, that is. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/8/18) Day Two, in which the Youngstown board members heard from representatives of Trotwood-Madison City Schools, was rich with irony. You will recall that a.) Trotwood is no longer in danger of an Academic Distress declaration and all that comes along with it because they improved their report card by a tiny fraction, and b.) Trotwood’s interim supe Tyrone Olverson, who did a lot of talking yesterday, used to work in the CEO’s administration at Youngstown. But he left. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/10/18) Saving the best for last, Youngstown CEO Krish Mohip is the guest of honor for the closing ceremonies today. That should be fun.

6. Back to report cards for one more item: Districts in far eastern Ohio have a lot to say about theirs. Well, mostly the same thing: Don’t judge our district by its letter grades. Ironically, all of the district officials quoted in this piece go on to describe their districts in the exact way the report cards do. “You should see our kids who are doing great!” they cry. Yes, supe/spokesperson, we do see them. The report card reflects that some kids ARE doing great. (More so in hard-scrabble Steubenville than almost any similar district in Ohio, BTW.) But those Ds and Fs? They reflect the students that maybe aren’t doing so great. And maybe, just maybe, there are more of the latter than of the former. That would, by my rough calculation, result in a fairly bad grade in a number of categories and probably overall too. See? Simple. Perhaps you could make an effort at moving the latter students into the former category instead of wasting your energy disputing the report card that indicates they exist. (Steubenville Herald-Star, 10/9/18)

7. Finally today, two pieces of good news. The Dayton Regional STEM School is on the grow, expanding its classroom and laboratory space to support a new partnership with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It is also getting ready to celebrate its 10^th birthday this year, or as I like to call it: their Tenth Awesomeversary! (Dayton Daily News, 10/9/18) The Strive Together program, including the one in Cincinnati, is the subject of ecstatic love in David Brooks’ column from Monday. (New York Times, 10/8/18)

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Editor’s note: Last week, leaders from many of the nation’s leading education reform organizations gathered in New Orleans for the twelfth annual Policy Innovators in Education Network conference. Louisiana’s State Superintendent of Education, John White, gave the keynote remarks. Here they are, edited slightly for readability.

Louisiana is a state that still bears very deep scars of the most horrific conditions that were perpetrated on behalf of nearly half of its population for centuries: enslavement, segregation, institutional racism. It’s a state that is digging itself very visibly out of a nineteenth-century economy and scraping to get into a twentieth- and twenty-first-century economy. Louisiana is a place of extraordinary assets, yet it’s also a place of tremendous struggle.

But the fact is, you can go into any corner in Louisiana today and you can see in its schools, in its Head Starts, in its childcare centers, in its vocational programs, and in its community colleges a level of professionalism, and a level of acumen, that would have been unimaginable here in the 1990s. Unimaginable in a state with schools that were not racially integrated forty years ago that you would see the level of professionalism, the skill, and the learning to standard that you see today in Louisiana’s classrooms. And that has become an accepted condition, and there is an accepted expectation of measurable learning gains in every classroom in this country. That is a tremendous victory.

There are tangible, quantifiable gains to be made, and we can look back on investments in federal, state, and local education policy to see the dividends that they have borne. Dividends in early literacy and graduation gains higher than ever before in this state, higher than ever before in this country. Even dividends in postsecondary education. We have a more college-educated population achieving higher things in our colleges and our postsecondary institutions in Louisiana and across our country than ever before. And there is a reason for that. It’s called education reform.

Education reform has made positive gains in this country for the people whom it’s set out to serve without question. And whereas, when I started out my career in the 1990s and people ask you, “Point me to a set of schools where large groups of students are beating the odds, and are achieving some semblance of hope in the American dream in spite of challenging conditions as a child,” you could count on your hand how many schools met those criteria. Today, there are hundreds of them.  Education reform, largely thanks to the advocacy that you and your organizations have enacted, is to be thanked for that.  

And yet for some reason, today we have a political climate in which—whatever side of the Common Core issue you are on, whatever your take on school vouchers, wherever you come out on standardized testing or what have you—you cannot question the fact that politicians are running from education and not toward it. They are running from our elementary schools, our middle schools, and our high schools. And where they are even remotely interested in our education, it is in thin solutions for our postsecondary education and thin solutions for early childhood education. Somehow it’s the thirteen years, the thirteen deeply formative years, of school that they seem to want nothing to do with.

The 2016 presidential election was evidence of this, during which there was an intellectually impoverished political agenda on both sides of the aisle regarding education. Doubtless the midterms will be that way, and doubtless that, if they continue on this course, the next presidential election will be the same. Our issue, unfortunately, has moved from being a front-page issue in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, and in every one of your communities, to being at best a back-page issue—and one for which Republicans and Democrats alike see little political currency to be gained. And that is a serious, serious problem.

Because my hypothesis would be that the brilliance represented in this room and in your organizations is not actually in the extraordinary elegance of your ideas, it’s not in your ESSA plans, your accountability systems, how great your evaluation systems are, or your curriculums. It has very little to do with the actual policies. And it has to do with the fact that over two or three decades, some of the nations most committed, invigorated, finest people, rich and poor, from west and east, from all racial backgrounds, have actually come together to focus on public education, or publicly-funded education. They have brought tremendous and uncommon energy to this issue, Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. And we have achieved the gains we have, not because we are smarter than everybody else, but because we have great people who saw this as an issue to which they wanted to dedicate their life.

But when governors and gubernatorial candidates run from our issue, when big city mayors run away from our issue, and most certainly when presidential candidates want nothing to do with our issue other than a couple of throwaway lines, how can you expect the next generation of people sitting in your chairs today to want to serve your organizations? To want to serve this issue in your communities? And I would posit that more than any crisis of accountability, more than any crisis of school choice, whether you like testing or not, whatever you think of teacher evaluation, or whatever your issue, that is the single biggest crisis facing education reform today: the relevance of our issue, and therefore the attractiveness of our issue, for the next generation of activists, advocates, philanthropists, and politicians. They will run to easier solutions with popular taglines because education is hard and because the tail of change is long unless great people work on the issue.

I used to think that I had answers to the problem that I am outlining. And I hope it is a problem that you share a sense of, but I don’t have great answers. I used to think that the answer was maybe in the biggest cities, like New York, Chicago, L.A., and D.C., taking up the mantle of reform there and putting it up on the front pages of the New York Times. I used to think that maybe the obstacle was us finding a better set of issues, moving off of the longstanding principles or topics that we have held so stringently, and finding value in things that offer more value to a more diverse audience. I also used to think that maybe it was about moving our focus away from places like New York, D.C. and San Francisco, where extraordinary wealth exists alongside extraordinary poverty, because that is an intoxicating combination that doesn’t exist in most parts of the country. Maybe we needed to spend more time in suburbs, and in secondary cities, and in rural communities. I used to think that it was some billionaire who could break us out of either being a choice advocate or being a systems advocate or being a kind of newness-for-newness’s-sake advocate, which is where I say the foundations are today. And now I am a little more modest and humble about it, and I don’t know if any of those are the answer. Maybe all of them are.

But I do know that, if we want more Bill Haslams, more Mike Bloombergs, more politicians who put all the noise to the side, who invent, who create newness, who expand opportunity in real ways, at great scale, in every corner of every jurisdiction, we have to change something. We have to reinvent. We have to be new. And I look forward to the discussions today because maybe we can begin to tease out a little bit of this. But I hope that, as you come together, you understand how rare of an opportunity this is, how rare it is for advocates to cross partisan lines and unite. And it shouldn’t just be an opportunity for an echo chamber about issues that are well tried. It should be an opportunity to think about how we remain relevant. How we remain on the front page. I believe it’s possible because the good news is, whether you are in New Orleans or New York or anywhere in this country, there is one force that we can harness, that no other issue can harness, and that is the love of Americans for their children. Everyone knows that children are our most precious assets, and therefore we have a tremendous platform from which to get advocates. But for some reason we are not converting that into attention, into political capital, and into new ideas. And that has to change.

John White is the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education.

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 third in our series, under the umbrella of supporting great educators. You can access all of the entries in the series to date here.

Proposal: Form an independent review committee at ODE that evaluates the quality of curricular textbooks and materials. These evaluations would help to inform districts’ purchasing and instructional decisions, but districts would not be required to adopt or implement any particular curriculum, textbook, or learning material.

Background: Smart, hardworking teachers are a critical part of the school-quality equation, but so too are the curricula deployed in their classrooms. Studies from California, Florida, and Indiana all indicate that curricular decisions—referring to the textbooks and materials that schools deploy—make a difference in student learning. These studies also find that high-quality materials seldom cost more than mediocre ones, suggesting that curricular reform could be a cost-efficient way to boost learning. However, surveys find that educators often struggle to identify which resources are most likely to boost achievement. This isn’t surprising, given limited planning time, as well as an increasingly crowded marketplace for educational products, both digital and in print. Several efforts have been undertaken to help educators better discern quality materials. For example, EdReports, an independent nonprofit, evaluates math and ELA textbooks based on alignment to college-and-career-ready standards. Louisiana undertook its own evaluations—carried out by veteran teachers—that aimed to inform schools’ curricular decisions. Ohio does not have a central process for adopting textbooks or materials—under state law, local districts and schools make those decisions—nor does it have a review or rating process for curricular materials, à la Louisiana. Although Ohio’s decentralized approach ensures local control over curriculum, it also leaves educators without clear, impartial information that can guide decisions on curriculum.

Proposal rationale: High-quality instructional materials, properly deployed, benefit students at little additional cost to schools. By creating a system to evaluate materials—but not requiring their use—Ohio would both provide important information that can sharpen educators’ decision making, while maintaining local autonomy over curricular decisions. To incentivize the use of high-quality textbooks and materials, the state could begin to offer quality materials at a discount, something that Louisiana has done.

Cost: Though exact costs are indeterminate, allocating an additional $5 to $10 million per year to support a review team that evaluates curriculum and periodically updates those evaluations as new materials come to market would likely achieve the desired goal. The funds would be used for administrative expenses and to create an online tool through which educators can access reviews and ratings. Once evaluations are completed, Ohio could then offer materials and textbooks deemed high quality to districts at a discount.

Resources: For a broad summary of curriculum research, see David Steiner’s report Curriculum Research: What We Know and Where We Need to Go, published by Standards Work (2017); for a study from California on math textbooks, see Cory Koedel and Morgan Polikoff’s article “Bang for Just a Few Bucks: The Impact of Math Textbooks in California,” published by the Brookings Institution (2017); and for more on Louisiana’s curricular efforts, see Robert Pondiscio’s 2017 article “Louisiana Threads the Needle on Ed Reform,” published in Education Next. EdReports’ reviews are available on its website.

NOTE: On September 14, 2018, Chad Aldis was invited to provide 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. The big question in front of the committee was “whether the state’s school funding system contributes to a disparate impact on educational outcomes for student groups protected under federal law.” The following is a summary of Chad’s remarks compiled from his notes.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s long-term focus on school quality and student achievement makes us very appreciative of the work of this advisory committee. Any aspect of the education system that could be contributing to the racial achievement gap must be identified and corrected.

Today, I’ll provide information in a variety of areas that are likely to be relevant to the analysis this committee will conduct, including student achievement, funding data, the relationship between funding and academic achievement, and data related to charter schools. Finally, I’ll identify a few areas where Ohio can improve its funding system and offer a few final thoughts.
 

Achievement gap data

Using data from the 2016–17 school year, compiled by the Ohio Department of Education, the following figures reflect student achievement by race and ethnicity.

Figure 1, focused on elementary grades, shows a pronounced achievement gap in fourth grade by race/ethnicity in both math and English language arts. White students (in blue) achieve proficiency at a much higher rate than both Hispanic students (in orange) and black students (in green). 
 

Figure 1: Fourth grade state exams proficiency by selected race/ethnic subgroups, 2016–17

Figure 2 shows the same data for eighth grade, giving us a look at middle school. The only change, depressingly, is that the proficiency level goes down for all students in both subjects. The gaps, however, remain largely unchanged.

Figure 2: Eighth grade state exams proficiency by selected race/ethnic subgroups, 2016-17

Figure 3 looks at high school achievement. Specifically, average composite scores on the ACT for the Class of 2017. Even in high school, the sizable achievement gap remains.

Figure 3: ACT composite scores by selected race/ethnic subgroups Ohio’s class of 2017

Source: ACT profile report for Ohio.

Just for context, in past years, roughly two in three students in Ohio took the ACT. Starting with the Class of 2018, all public school students are required to take either the ACT or SAT, including those who are not planning to attend college. Given the increased number of students taking the exam, this is likely to reduce scores across all subgroups.

While the focus is on Ohio students, we also thought it would be worth knowing whether similar achievement gaps were present across the nation. As Figures 4 and 5 show, the Ohio achievement gap in eighth grade on the NAEP assessment (often called the Nation’s Report Card) is similar to the national gap. Ohio has a slightly narrower achievement gap than the nation between white and Hispanic students and slightly wider between white and black students.

Figure 4: Eighth grade NAEP reading scores Ohio and national averages by selected race/ethnic subgroups, 2017

Figure 5: Eighth grade NAEP math scores Ohio and national averages by selected race/ethnic subgroups, 2017

These data make it clear that the achievement gap problem isn’t limited to Ohio.
 

Funding

Having established that there is a difference in educational outcomes by race, I’ll shift my focus to school funding data. It is important to note that the expenditures in the following figures are operational expenses—things like instruction, support services, and books. It excludes such things as construction, interest, and land. Districts spend on average about $1,500 per pupil on non-operational expenses. And Ohio’s statewide average for FY 2017 is $11,603 per pupil. Importantly, the expenditures analyzed here include federal dollars, which are often targeted to low-income and minority students.

The scatterplot in Figure 6 shows the expenditure per pupil by district (each blue dot represents a district) compared to the percent of black and Hispanic students in that district.

Figure 6: Operating expenditures per pupil versus black and Hispanic enrollment Ohio school districts FY 2017

Source: ODE, District Profile (Cupp) Reports (FY 2017).

As you can see by the cluster of blue dots on the left side of the chart, a large majority of Ohio districts enroll less than 10 percent black and Hispanic students. Per-pupil funding in these districts varies widely, with most spending between $9,000 and $15,000.

Overall, the trend line is slightly upwards. This means that as the percent of black and Hispanic students in the district increases, so does the per-pupil funding.

Figure 7 shows the same data in a slightly different way. Here, districts are split into five equal enrollment groups (quintiles) based on their percentage of black and Hispanic students. Scatter plots are nice, but they don’t tell the entire story because each point is treated as if each district were the same size. The bar chart helps show that the large urban districts, because of the large number of black and Hispanic students they serve and their relatively high per-pupil spending, increase the average expenditures.

Figure 7: Operating expenditures per pupil versus black and Hispanic enrollment by quintiles of Ohio school districts FY 2017

In fact, districts with the highest percentage of black and Hispanic students spent on average $14,235 per pupil, while districts with the lowest percentage of black and Hispanic students spent $10,425.

It is worth noting that Quintile 5 represents districts that have 32 percent or more black and Hispanic students.

As this chart shows, Ohio’s funding system drives significantly more dollars to districts with higher numbers of those students.

Figures 8 and 9 offer a similar analysis but for economically disadvantaged (ED) students. Figure 8 places the percentage of ED students on the horizontal axis instead of black and Hispanic students. The trend line is more or less flat. You will notice the number of districts between 30 and 50 percent ED below the trend line. These are mainly rural, lower spending districts. Districts at the far left and right sides of the chart (very low-poverty and very high-poverty, respectively) tend to spend more than those in the middle.

Figure 8: Operating expenditures per pupil versus economically disadvantaged enrollment in Ohio school districts FY 2017

The cluster near 100 percent is due in large part to the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) that allows districts with high poverty to declare every student to be low-income—primarily for school lunch purposes.

Figure 9 shows that districts with a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students spend more than others.

Figure 9: Operating expenditures per pupil versus economically disadvantaged enrollment by quintiles of Ohio school districts FY 2017

Figures 1 through 9 make it clear that black and Hispanic students in Ohio have lower academic achievement, on average, than their white peers. But in terms of funding, the picture is more nuanced. Although black and Hispanic students can benefit from additional supports, they already tend to be in districts with higher per-pupil funding amounts. This is not to say that black and Hispanic students receive “enough” funding, just that they receive more. There still is very much a lack of consensus on what constitutes “enough” when it comes to school funding, and whether spending more would help Ohio’s schools get better results.

To start to get at these questions, Figure 10 compares academic achievement versus a district’s per-pupil expenditure. The achievement measure used on the vertical axis is Ohio’s performance index (PI). PI is a weighted measure of student proficiency on state test scores, calculated by ODE, and scores can range from 0 to 120. Per-pupil spending is on the horizontal axis.

Figure 10: Student achievement versus operating expenditure per pupil expenditures for Ohio school districts FY 2017

This comparison attempts to illustrate the relationship—if there is any—between spending and academic achievement in Ohio. A common theory suggests that if the achievement gap is caused by a lack of adequate funding, these data might provide some evidence of that. If more spending indeed results in higher academic achievement, we would expect to see an upward trendline. But in Figure 10 we see that the line is actually slightly downward sloping. This doesn’t necessarily imply that more money causes lower achievement, but it does suggest that there isn’t a clear and obvious correlation between spending amounts and achievement levels.

Of course, the pattern in Figure 10 might be driven mostly by student demographics. Since we have already illustrated that districts with higher proportions of students of color, and low-income students, tend to spend more than others, it is possible that the negative relationship is driven by students’ background characteristics rather than funding per se.

Figure 11 repeats the previous one but highlights—using orange circles—districts whose black and Hispanic student populations comprise 50 percent or more of its total enrollment. Now we can control for student demographics and look at the spending versus achievement relationship more directly.

Figure 11: Student achievement versus operating expenditure for Ohio districts serving 50 percent or more black and Hispanic students FY 2017

The chart not only shows a graphic representation of the achievement gap—notice how the student achievement trend line is shifted lower—but it also demonstrates that the trend lines are flat for all districts. This indicates that student achievement doesn’t appear to increase in either cohort as per pupil funding increases.

Charter schools

Ohio’s robust charter school sector serves many black and Hispanic students, so its expenditure data is also relevant.

Figure 12 plots per-pupil expenditures in charter schools versus their percent of black and Hispanic enrollment. The data clearly show that most charters serve a majority of black and Hispanic students. These data are from ODE’s Advanced Reports, and mirror the district operational expenses used in previous charts.

Figure 12: Operating expenditure versus black and Hispanic enrollment for Ohio public charter schools FY 2017

Distressingly, there is no clear relationship between spending and percentage of black and Hispanic enrollment in charters, which is far different than what we found in our earlier analysis of traditional public school districts.

Finally, note the green dots. These are schools where more than 50 percent of pupils are students with disabilities. Schools such as these that focus on educating students with special needs are recognized as a distinct group under state law. As you’d expect, per-pupil funding is rightly much higher in these schools.

Figure 13 adds districts (blue dots) to the scatterplot of charters (orange dots) and charters that specialize in students with disabilities (green dots).

Figure 13: Operating expenditure versus black and Hispanic enrollment for Ohio districts and public charter schools FY 2017

As you can see, charters are more likely to be in the bottom right part of the graph, indicating that they educate predominately black and Hispanic students but do not receive increased funding as a result.

Figure 14 converts the scatterplot into a bar chart. In this case, it compares charter funding statewide, charter funding in the eight largest urban districts in Ohio, and funding in several specific urban districts. For context, the percentages of black and Hispanic students are displayed in parentheses under each bar.

Figure 14: Expenditures per pupil for Ohio charter schools and districts FY 17 (percentage of black and Hispanic students in parentheses)

A couple of notes on the comparison in Figure 14:

• All Big Eight charters are brick-and-mortar

• Statewide charter average includes both online and brick-and-mortar

This analysis reveals a fairly significant gap in expenditures between charter and district schools serving similar students. Note that Big Eight charter schools spend less than districts statewide but enroll a much higher percentage of black and Hispanic students—75 percent to 20 percent.

Areas for improvement

There are some definite areas where we believe that Ohio’s school funding system could be improved to better serve all students, including minority pupils: 

• Shift from providing a funding boost to students based on their free-or-reduced-price-lunch status to basing it on direct certification—a truer measure of poverty and student need that would drive more resources to the most disadvantaged students.

• Eliminate funding caps. Columbus and Dayton school districts lost $100 million and $10 million, respectively, as a result of caps. If you have a formula, fund the formula.

• Ensure charters receive funding that’s more on par with the districts whose students they serve.

Final thoughts

Achievement gaps between black and Hispanic students and their white peers are demonstrably real, and it’s imperative that we continue to find ways to increase minority achievement, whether through increased funding or some other means.

Spending among districts serving primarily black and Hispanic students is higher than most other districts. We should exercise caution when making school funding comparisons because many proponents of additional per-pupil funding cite a handful of small, high wealth suburban districts that outspend Ohio’s big-city districts. For example, Orange City School District in Cuyahoga County spends $24,000 per pupil. Beachwood City Schools, also in Cuyahoga County, spends $21,000 per pupil. And Indian Hill Exempted Village Schools in suburban Cincinnati spends $18,000 per pupil. They are largely outliers, and there is no reason to think they should be the floor for comparison purposes.  

And finally, public charter schools are serving a large percentage of Ohio’s black and Hispanic students. Yet they are significantly underfunded relative to similar districts.

I appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony to you today and commend you for digging into this very important issue.

1. The topic of the week appears to be “state takeovers of school districts”. Or, if you’re less into incendiary terminology: Academic Distress designation for long-struggling districts, and all that goes along with it. First up, a roundtable of Plain Dealer editorial board members weighs up the case against a “state takeover” of East Cleveland City Schools. They seem divided, the way I read it, but with terms like “stealth heist” thrown in there, the rhetorical deck appears pretty well stacked.  (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/5/18) The Path Forward for Dayton City Schools may or may not be via an Academic Distress Commission. The clock is ticking and so the Dayton Daily News sent a reporter to Youngstown to see what might be ahead of them on that path. A lot of words here, mostly discussing the path behind them for some reason. (Dayton Daily News, 10/7/18) And how is the public perception of the Academic Distress Commission in Youngstown currently? Well, the guest speaker at the local NAACP chapter’s Freedom Fund banquet over the weekend seemed to want things both ways. He acknowledged the importance of students leaving school with the education they need to be successful, but made no mention of how that circumstance does or does not come about. He also noted his opposition to ADCs generally, but said that Youngstown City School should probably go ahead and work with the state since the ADC is already in place “…because it’s all about children. We need to concentrate on their education.” Um. Yes. Quite. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/6/18)

2. Cliff Park High School, a nationally accredited dropout recovery charter school in Springfield, is on the grow! New space will mean new programs and room for new students. Nice! (Springfield News-Sun, 10/8/18)

3. Our title quote today comes from the co-founder of the IDEA charter school network. The network’s efforts sound fantastic and IDEA is on the grow also. Could the Queen City could be on their radar for expansion? (Chalkbeat National, 10/4/18) Perhaps the folks at the Enquirer have gotten wind of the above possibility. How else to explain this editorial diatribe against charter schools published today? The old boy throws everything and the kitchen sink at them. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/8/18)

4. We end today with validation. A couple of weeks ago, I told you about the results of a survey of student access to art classes in Ohio’s schools. At that time, I surmised that this looked like good or even great news and that folks could stop starting sentences with, “In a time when access to arts education in schools is declining…” Today, we hear corroboration for at least the first part of my statement direct from the horse’s mouth: the folks who commissioned the survey and some Franklin County area educators. I fear it may be a little bit longer before some folks amend their long-cherished conversation starter. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/8/18)

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Over the past decade, I’ve deepened my belief in the power of letting educators form non-profits to run public schools. Both experience (walking into amazing public schools) and research (a track record of reading and math gains) have shown me that non-profits are an incredibly valuable tool in making public education better.

I’ve also deepened my belief in unified enrollment systems. They can give families a lot of information about public schools and make enrolling in public schools much easier.

I do not have deep confidence in my views on accountability. I often find myself moving up and down the spectrum of: no accountability (just let parents choose), to accountability-lite (require testing, share this information, but don’t intervene), to accountability heavy (require testing, give schools letter grades, intervene in lowest performing schools).

I think reasonable arguments can be made for all three approaches.

Recent NWEA Research

NWEA just published a new report using a national data set from the tests they license to schools. Many schools we work with use these tests. I’m not expert enough in statistics to evaluate the reliability of their findings, but the report raised some important issues.

Absolute test scores are highly correlated with poverty. The chart below shows that test scores rise as income increases. This is not new information.

Student growth is not tightly correlated with poverty. Unlike absolute achievement, individual student growth does not rise significantly with income. Many high poverty achieve growth that mirrors those of their wealthier peers.

Schools with similar levels of poverty perform very differently on growth. The red line in the chart below represents how schools with high poverty perform on academic growth. It is a fairly wide curve. Many schools achieve low growth, while others achieve very high growth. To the extent you believe that growth is a pretty good measure of school performance (the researchers do), this performance spread might increase a policymaker’s willingness to intervene in low-performing schools and expand high-performing schools.

Focusing on absolute test scores will cause you to misidentify many, many schools. The graph below is tricky to read, but it’s very important. The red line represents all schools that are in the bottom 5 percent for absolute test scores. And it shows that 77 percent of these schools (the bottom 5 percent on absolute) are close to the average or better on growth. In other words, if you just closed the bottom 5 percent of schools based on absolute achievement, nearly 80 percent of the schools you’d close probably would be mistakenly closed (given their growth scores). This is pretty damning evidence against those who want to focus mostly on absolute achievement in accountability measures.

When does a good policy idea become indefensible because of bad practice?

Over the past few years, most states reworked their accountability systems during the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

Unfortunately, this report found that only eighteen states weighted growth for at least 50 percent of the total accountability score, with another twenty-three states weighting growth at least at 33 percent.

On one hand, this is an improvement over old accountability systems. On the other hand, this means a lot of states are unfairly rating high poverty schools that have decent growth but low absolute scores.

I think a fair critique of test-based accountability is that it’s a reasonable idea that has very little hope of being reasonably implemented.

My own thoughts

Again, I do believe deeply in letting non-profit organizations operate public schools. And I do believe deeply in enrollment systems that make it easier for families to find a great school for their children.

I’m uncertain about accountability, but here’s what I think I’d do if I were superintendent of a school district:

• Calculate a letter grade score for growth and a letter grade score for absolute achievement score.
• Publish the higher of these grades as the letter grade that appears most prominently on the online enrollment system. I would also include the lower letter grade, as well as a bunch of information about school programs and curriculum, on the school’s online profile.
• Allow for government intervention in schools that are in the bottom 5–10 percent for both growth and absolute (you need to perform bad on both).

This type of accountability system gives parent’s good information, avoids the political war of giving low letter grades to schools with high absolute scores, and avoids the error of intervening in schools that have low absolute scores and higher growth scores.

It does give an accountability pass to schools with high absolute scores and low growth, but I view this as OK in that it’s both politically useful and it does reflect the notion that parents really want to get into these schools.

It also still uses test scores as the primary way to evaluate schools. This sits uneasy with me, as I think schooling is about much more than tests, but I haven’t seen any other way to measure schools that feels more reliable. I hope this changes.

I’m not very confident that this is the best system, but I think it’s the best of a bunch of options that all have reasonable drawbacks.

Another hard question would be what to do if local politics did not allow for the creation of a system like this. At some point, if the drumbeat for absolute scores was too much, I’d probably walk away from accountability as a superintendent.

But I’m not sure. If you scan my blog’s history, I’m sure you can find me saying conflicting things about accountability. I’m conflicted about it. But the above reflects my current thinking of what makes for a good accountability system. And as I wrote at the outset, reasonable arguments can be made for everything from no accountability to heavy-handed systems that require testing, give schools letter grades, and intervene in lowest performing schools. Nevertheless, research like NWEA’s recent study is worthwhile and helps shed further light on whether good policies are being implemented well.

Neerav Kingsland is the Managing Director of The City Fund. He first published this essay on his blog, “relinquishment.”

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

1. Slim pickings for clips today. But at least one of them involves Fordham, so score! That is an op-ed written by Fordham President Mike Petrilli, which appeared in the Dispatch yesterday. What’s he on about? The timely topic of grade inflation and its long term consequences for students. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/4/18)

2. Did you know that Ohio has a goal of having 65% of working-age adults with a degree or credential attainment? The deadline for achieving this goal is 2025, which means that focus must be on both K-12 and on adult education efforts. The latter got a boost this week with the announcement of a $2.1 million grant from the Gates Foundation to four Ohio-based entities already working together to achieve the goal. These include the state’s community colleges and four-year institutions. Efforts include clearly structuring courses of study for all majors, aligning "gateway" math and English courses to majors, implementing corequisite remediation programs at scale, and targeting efforts at poor students, students of color, and first-generation postsecondary enrollees. Nice! (Gongwer Ohio, 10/4/18)

3. And just to show my loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers (all six of you!) how far I am willing to go to bring you relevant, up-to-the-minute clips wherever they occur, here is a piece from VegNews posted this very morning. Dateline: Cleveland. The story: Students at Beachwood High School will next week be attempting to break the world record for the longest sandwich line. If they do, the vegan sunflower-butter/grape jelly monstrosity will be over 13,300 feet long. The sandwiches created will go to non-profit organizations in Northeast Ohio to feed those in need. (VegNews, 10/5/18)

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Lorain charter school works to engage families

Horizon Science Academy, a charter public school in Lorain, hosted their annual Kindergarten Parent Partnership Breakfast last week. Parents got to hear from a State Board of Education member and attend an interactive presentation led by school leaders. Many parents look forward to this annual breakfast, where they can learn about Horizon's education goals and successes and build relationships with staff.

How to get innovative with federal Charter Schools Program dollars

The U.S. Senate recently passed a spending bill that includes $440 million for CSP, an increase of $40 million. CSP funds are indispensable for states looking to grow their sectors. Fordham’s Jessica Poiner argues here that advocates, charter networks, and state leaders would be smart to consider creating new and innovative charter high schools, instead of just replicating the usual suspects.

NAPCS receives grant to establish the Charter School Facilities Center

Last week, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) was awarded a $2.4 million grant over three years to establish the Charter School Facilities Center (CSFC), the first-ever entity solely dedicated to helping charter schools access better and more affordable facilities and facility financing. The CSFC is set to capture and share existing best practices for improving and funding facilities for charter schools and will develop new, innovative solutions to address this challenge. Given the struggles that Ohio charters face in regards to facility funding, it can’t happen soon enough.

A reminder: ECOT does not reflect all online charter schools

Matt Norton, President of the Ohio Virtual Academy (OHVA) Board of Trustees, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Dispatch recently. Norton explains that what happened with ECOT should never happen again but that blaming other online charters (many of whom are adhering to the rules and putting the interests of kids first) for ECOT’s mistakes is akin to blaming the entire education system for scandals that occur in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. OHVA took in 4,000 students in the wake of ECOT’s closure—the largest number of ECOT transfer students of any school in the state.

Upcoming events

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for these upcoming 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.).