1. With so much great news this week, Ohio’s education reporters could be forgiven if they are not sure where to focus their time and effort first. Here is a very brief look at the departure of White Hat Management from the charter school management space in Ohio. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 8/8/18) Luckily for the overtaxed reporters, Fordham’s Chad Aldis has prodigious capacity to comment on any and all important stuff. He is quoted in the above White Hat piece, and in this Gongwer piece which discusses possible next steps following the Ohio Supreme Court ruling against the remains of ECOT this week. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/9/18)
    
2. Why would reporters still be picking apart the moldering corpse of ECOT? Heaven only knows. Especially when they could just step back, declare victory silently in their heads, and let their editors go for broke with the full freedom and poetic license present on the commentary pages. Cases in point, editors in Akron opined in full-throated approval… (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/8/18) …as did editors in Toledo. (Toledo Blade, 8/9/18) Rough indeed.
    
3. Speaking of rough, the start of the school year can, apparently, be stressful for kids. “Kids carry a lot, they always have, but we’re seeing it a lot more,” said one retired school psychologist. (“Now more than ever.” ™) All the suburban folks interviewed for this piece seem to be in agreement on this point but provide no explanation as to what has changed to make the long-standing stressors show up just now. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/10/18) In the big bad city, kids in Columbus City Schools may have a possible additional stressor this year: sidewalk protests and demonstrations outside their schools. These have been made even more permissible than they already were thanks to the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court, a local professor of constitutional law, and a vote of the school board this week. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/9/18) What can be done by the schools to mitigate these stressors and help kids learn, you ask? Great question! If this piece is to be believed, the answer is colorful, comfortable, and flexible seating geared to the needs of each child. However, this piece is contemptible to me in multiple ways so I personally doubt that this is the answer. Honestly, I’m not even sure of the question any more. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/10/18)
    
4. Returning to the city from the candy-colored suburbs, we end today in Dayton City Schools where perhaps I and others can find solace in the school library. The flush-with-cash district is “reviving libraries” in every building, going on a hiring spree to do so. Every middle and high school will have a full-time, daily, licensed library media specialist on staff this year, while every elementary school will have an aide working part-time in the library and part-time overseeing in-school suspensions. Now THAT’s efficiency. At the risk of being too “edgy”, I just hope those aides don’t mix up which gig is which. (Dayton Daily News, 8/9/18)
    

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you want to “check out” such a thing—see what I did there)? Subscribe by clicking here.

Governor Kasich signs HB 87 and SB 216 into law

Last Friday, Governor Kasich signed into law two pieces of legislation that will affect charter schools—HB 87 and SB 216. HB 87 (which was signed with a number of amendments) will make changes to rules around community school audits. SB 216, on the other hand, will revamp Ohio’s teacher evaluation system, tweak teacher licensure provisions, allow districts to administer paper and pencil assessments to third graders, and make a variety of changes related to online charter schools. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools praised the bill in a statement they released last Friday.

Ohio Supreme Court rules on ECOT

More than two years of litigation appears to be coming to an end. On Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings and determined that the state acted lawfully when it ordered the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) to repay $80 million in tax dollars for unverified enrollment. You can learn more about the court’s decision here.

LeBron James’ I Promise School

LeBron James helped to open a new school in Akron last week that’s drawing deserved praise from across the nation. The I Promise School (IPS) is focused on serving at-risk students. James’ school isn’t a charter public school, but many of the school’s defining characteristics are similar to charters. A new piece from Fordham’s Jessica Poiner explains the similarities and clears up some misconceptions as well.

White Hat no longer operating schools in Ohio

White Hat Management, for the first time in almost twenty years, won’t be operating charter schools in Ohio when the new school year begins. White Hat, founded by school choice pioneer David Brennan, has long been a force in the charter school movement. This extensive piece by Doug Livingston in the Akron Beacon Journal explores the rise and subsequent fall of the high profile charter operator.

NCSRC Toolkits

The National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC) has recently developed a couple helpful toolkits for charter school board members, support organizations, and founders. The first, “Charter School Enrollment: A Toolkit for Board Members,” focuses on the role charter boards have in student recruitment and enrollment strategy and explains how strong boards can raise and use resources wisely. The second, “New School Development: A Toolkit for Charter Support Organizations and Charter School Founders,” provides a wide array of publicly available New School Design (NSD) resources from across the country.

* * * * *

Did you know you could have every edition of Ohio Charter News delivered right to your Inbox? You can subscribe by clicking here.

Michael Petrilli recently wrote an essay titled “Where Education Reform Goes From Here,” which garnered responses from Sandy Kress and Peter Cunningham, among others. These pieces include much that’s worthy of support, emphasis, and further discussion, as well as a few areas of disagreement.

Based on their collective comments, I think there is a good chance for reconciliation and a working consensus between “reformers” and those of us who have had major problems with reform policies, implementation, and assumptions. There seems to be a common emphasis on the following approaches to improving student and school performance: 

• The centrality of curriculum and instruction
• High-quality materials
• Building the processes schools and districts (or CMO’s) use for school improvement, such as improving the capacity at each school for continuous growth
• Attracting higher caliber teachers, improved induction, career ladders, and leadership, and a continued attention to improving performance for all
• Alternate pathways for high school graduation, including career and technical education
• Increased funding
• Striking a balance between school and local control and district and state expectations and support
• Avoiding the harsher anti-public-school and anti-teacher rhetoric
• Looking to both traditional public schools and charter schools for models of high performance

These ideas also drove our efforts in California—where I live and once headed up the state education agency—to improve performance.

Mike’s, Peter’s, and Sandy’s willingness to be honest about problems with the reform movement and their sincere attempt to find common ground is to be commended. Both charters and traditional public schools need to improve, and there is a growing agreement on what that takes.

Mike writes that preparing students for democracy should be one of the purposes driving any improvement effort. There is a growing interest in civics and civic engagement in the country, and excellent exemplars now exist among charters (Democracy Prep, for example) and traditional public schools.

My only caveat is to add one more important purpose of education: the classic goal of a liberal education to help enrich each student’s life so they can reach their individual potential and develop character and a high moral stance. Mike mentions in passing literature, history, and the humanities as helping to find out how the world works, and he makes a glancing reference to character development in the service of citizenship. Yet I think this goal of broadening individual perspectives to lead a more fulfilling life should be explicitly expressed. (For a discussion of this point, see my essay titled “The Big Picture: The Three Goals of Public Education.”)

Mike also deserves kudos for promoting rigorous career and technical education as a pathway for students not bound for a four-year college. For a school, district, or state, the preparation-for-work goal should be to maximize the number of students prepared for a four-year college (or a pathway on which they transfer to one from a two-year school), and to prepare all others for a specific vocation. Presently, the country is preparing about 40 percent for four-year colleges. Even if we increase that to 50 percent (a formidable goal), that still leaves a large number of students not served. Most current policy at state and district levels basically ignores these students and assumes almost all can and should be prepared for a four-year college.

I do agree with those who are wary of an early placement test because of the danger of a premature choice, as we should give some students the chance to change perspectives in later grades. As one alternative, schools in the San Diego Unified School District have a Linked Learning college program that’s combined with a career path in which students who follow the latter early on are able to shift to the four-year-college track at a later time.

Many of Mike’s comments on literacy are also spot-on, including the importance of early foundation skills, and then content and vocabulary, as the major drivers of improving comprehension, as opposed to an over-emphasis on “comprehension skills.” One of the major deficiencies of annual statewide literacy tests is the lack of connection to content and the resulting default to comprehension strategies. Louisiana, for example, is attempting to correct this situation.

From our perspective, too many reformers are still too wedded to a strict accountability model based on a faulty theory of change. The initial reform paradigm was a simple structural leverage approach: Define student performance standards (mainly for accountability purposes, not to inform instructional improvement), assess whether the standards were being met, publicize those outcomes, provide consequences for results (bad and good), get out of the way of individual schools, and let pressure from harsh consequences and competition, especially from charters and parents, force improvement.

This strategy proved to be flawed in several respects and thus didn’t produce the hoped-for results.

First, highly simplistic is the assumption that individual schools, if given freedom from district control and spurred by competition and consequences, would figure out how to improve on their own, and it proved false for most schools. Many reformers now realize that the missing ingredient in that paradigm was direct attention to and support for the nuts and bolts of school improvement: curriculum, instructional materials, professional development, team building, principal and teacher leadership, effective district (or CMO) assistance, and help with getting these elements to cohere, as well as proper funding for those efforts. (Peter Cunningham’s response to Mike’s essay therefore deserves praise for asserting the importance of funding if improvement is to occur.) By comparison, the indirect method of attempting to improve performance by standards, primarily test-based assessments, and consequential accountability turned out to be a much weaker way to influence school performance, and it produced considerable collateral damage.

Another erroneous assumption underlying this simple reform paradigm was that educators would not improve unless compelled or pressured by fear of consequences or competition. Actually, most educators want to improve, but many did not know how, did not receive proper support, or were subject to leaders who were motivated by a test-and-punish philosophy relying on fear instead of the more engaging build-and-support approach. Appealing to teachers as professionals and engaging them in the work of improvement produces results; pressuring them often backfires. Deming and Drucker still apply.

Yet many reformers want to retain or strengthen accountability with consequences and embed the more direct approach in high-stakes accountability. The two strategies conflict because they stem from two radically different theories of how to encourage professionals to improve. More often than not, pressure and competition detract from high performance. High-stakes testing encourages schools or districts to become too fixated on test results and test items, to the detriment of deep learning and learning progressions. Campbell’s law is relevant; consequential accountability encourages educators to game the system, outright cheat, or become detached from the commitment to deeper learning and long-term continuous improvement by concentrating on short-term test results. Some reformers retort that teaching to the test and test prep are fine if complex skills are tested. But the tests don’t meet that standard. Dan Koretz’s The Testing Charade and Jim Popham’s work exemplify the problems with focusing on standardized test results, which are not of a fine enough grain size to help instruction.

As an example, tests don’t reflect the emerging idea of the importance of learning progressions, such as the development of proportional thinking in mathematics. These should be driving curriculum, instruction, classroom student assessment, and personalization. (See the recently released and excellent “Illustrative Mathematics” for a free curriculum based on learning progressions that was developed by Bill McCallum—one of the authors of Common Core Math—and his team for math in grades six through eight, and which received a top rating from EdReports.) Many reformers have advocated for more personalized, adaptive instruction. One impediment was the U.S. Department of Education’s original refusal to allow the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop an adaptive test on broader strands across grades so students could adjust to higher or lower positions on these broader learning progressions. They insisted that the tests be limited to the standards of a particular grade.

Annual test results are a useful warning light and offer useful information about subgroups, but a whole array of formative evaluations, the use of instructional tasks as assessments, and teacher and student judgments are necessary to focus on what is needed to improve student performance. All too often, annual assessments drive instruction in superficial and shallow ways, instead of being one tool in the service of deeper learning. Many charters and traditional public schools, which live and die by annual test results, have become test-prep machines, narrowing the curriculum and harming student’s future performance. Also problematic is the tendency for some charter schools to trumpet bogus results by such ploys as not backfilling open slots over time and creating a rarified cohort. Competition and fear of consequences have similarly infected many traditional public schools with the same disease, including outright cheating or fiddling with who takes the test.

Finally, radical decentralization did not produce the results as advertised. The theory was based in part on the idea that districts were a main part of the problem of low performance. Districts were consumed by politics, stakeholder resistance, and/or bureaucratic inefficiencies, and were thought to be ineffective because they were top-down compliance oriented, or incapable of or not interested in improving results, but rather in protecting turf. They couldn’t or wouldn’t change. Decentralizing to individual schools, preferably charters, however, did not solve the problem of district effectiveness or individual schools and teachers needing support. Districts (or the central support structure in CMO’s) turn out to be crucial players in improving schools. Instead of end-running them, efforts should be made to improve their performance, and should be modeled after what our best districts have done. Contrary to the argument that districts were incapable of change, there is a growing number of districts in this country that have significantly improved their ability to support school improvement

Districts in California—such as Long Beach (which only has a handful of charters), Garden Grove, Elk Grove, and Sanger—as well as comparable districts across the rest of the country, were able to engender school-site improvement by reorienting their management philosophy. They made the difficult shift from compliance orientation to support and engagement, but still insisted on high expectations—which, if not met, initiated discussions on how to improve. They placed solid curricula and effective classroom instruction at the center of improvement efforts and built supportive structures and processes to facilitate instructional improvement with impressive results. That strategy should guide improvement policies. Instead of giving up on districts, we should agree on and support approaches and polices geared to help the laggards improve. 

Bravo also to Mike’s suggestion that teacher quality and teaching are not the only determinants of high student performance. Curricula, good materials, support processes, money, and community efforts are all also crucial. While reformers are now stressing the importance of curriculum and instruction, they and many traditional school leaders have not thought deeply enough about the complex school processes necessary to improve classroom instruction. Mike alludes to “professional development,” but an effective improvement strategy is much more complex than that. Educators and policymakers need to concentrate on how to develop coherence among coaching, professional development, team building, use of instructional materials, a broad array of classroom formative assessment techniques, teacher and principal leadership, support for struggling students, and what districts must do to support those efforts.

It is also gratifying to see many pro-public-school reformers become sensitive to and willing to oppose privatization forces high-jacking their rhetoric to replace or drastically cut funding for public schools, or to squelch teacher unions, as has happened in many Republican-led states and at the national level. Most reformers now resist the canard that the choice is between reformers’ policies favoring students or the status quo favoring adult and union interests. Both pro-public-education reformers and the anti-reform camp want to improve the quality of our schools; the debate is over which policies or strategies will best accomplish that goal. 

Many of us also agree with reformers’ proposals to concentrate more on the front end of the teacher pipeline. Welcome are suggestions to increase the quality of new teachers by strengthening teacher preparation programs, in part via higher admissions standards, and by lengthening the initial time for granting tenure, with streamlined due process protections as part of career-ladder progressions.

For existing teachers, many reformers have criticized the almost exclusive reform emphasis on firing the worst teachers by test-based and intricate principal evaluations. The effort was ruined by the use of faulty assessments and processes, and the policy itself detracted from more positive efforts to raise the performance of all staff. Moreover, concentrating on the worst often neglected supporting the best through such approaches as embedding the most effective teachers in a learning community and expanding their influence

Rewarding excellent teachers with more cash has not worked and has caused collateral damage by lowering morale and jeopardizing team building. There is a simple way out of this: Pay the best teachers more, but also have them take on additional supportive roles. Career ladders and teacher-leadership positions need to become much more prevalent, as some reformers have argued. Convincing a top teacher to stay in the profession improves student and school performance much more than firing a laggard.

That’s not to say that the worst teachers should not be fired or counseled out. There are some excellent examples of effective teacher evaluation strategies, such as those in California’s San Jose and San Juan public school districts, where teachers have helped design and implement the programs. When there is teacher buy-in and evaluation is embedded in a comprehensive school improvement effort that includes the participation of teacher leaders at the school, the rates of dismissal or resignations of the weaker teachers is actually higher. Incompetent teachers can’t hide in group efforts; those who can improve do so, and the many who can’t just resign. Conversely, having principals spend an inordinate amount of time and paperwork conducting multiple classroom visits of every teacher for the purpose of formal evaluation severely hampers their more productive role of organizing their schools. Even the best teachers are willing to accept improvement advice as part of a collaborative improvement effort; but they tend to shut down, narrow their teaching, or resist when it is part of a formal evaluation process, especially from someone whom they don’t believe is more skilled than they are.

There are many more issues which could be discussed, but I hope that this commentary helps illuminate areas of agreement, areas needing further discussion, and areas that are still in dispute.

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

I’ve long had a complicated relationship with screen time for my young sons, but have come to see its benefits, especially if the focus is on quality over quantity. This has inspired me to publish lists of my favorite TV shows for young kids and for families; a compilation of educational videos; and a list of recommended apps. Now for the next frontier: YouTube. My ten-year-old LOVES “Geography Now!” and “Extra History,” from which he’s learned at least ten times more social studies than he has from Montgomery County Public Schools. It feels like a miracle that there’s such good content being produced, and makes me wonder what else we should be sampling.

To that end, I had our Fordham Institute research interns take a spin around the yonders of YouTube, and I asked for help from our readers. Many thanks to those of you who responded.

Please note that I’m leaving off the list the channels for the major PBS shows—not because they aren’t worthwhile, but because there’s plenty of ways to access them beyond YouTube. Still, to be sure, if you’ve got young kids, check out Sesame Street, Word World, Word Girl, Dinosaur Train, Liberty's Kids, and all the rest. National Geographic Kids and TedEd are great, too.

Now, after checking out these offerings myself, and without further ado, here are the best YouTube channels for learning for tweens and teens, circa the summer of 2018.

History and geography

• Crash Course (8,010,109 subscribers). This is the granddaddy of educational YouTube, created by Hank and John Green, aka the Vlogbrothers, the latter of whom is already familiar to young readers as the New York Times best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars. They have built a huge library of videos across most major disciplines, including playlists of forty-eight videos on U.S. history, seventy-two on world history, and fifty on U.S. government and politics. Each episode is generally ten to fifteen minutes long and features John Green talking about the subject, mixed in with some humor and animations.  
• Extra Credits Extra History (1,486,295 subscribers). Extra Credits started as a channel for gamers, especially those interested in historical war games, like Empire Total War (yes this is a thing). And it still has a lot of content about gaming, but its creators also now make videos about history itself. They are up to over two hundred at last count, ranging all across the world and various epochs. Many are focused on military history (understandable given the channel’s genesis), with occasional diversions. Their vast offerings allow them to deeply explore topics. They dedicate four episodes, for a total of more than forty minutes, to the Punic Wars, for example. Compelling narration and cute animations combine for addictive viewing for budding history buffs.
• The Great War (875,694 subscribers). The prize for in-depth coverage goes to this channel, which follows the history of World War I, one week at a time. Do the math and you get over two hundred videos, at about ten minutes a pop, looking at the war from every angle. Historical video footage, endless maps, and an informed narrator add up to a great experience, though the endless trench warfare can be a slog. (I know, I know, not as much as living through the real thing.)
• Geography Now! (1,016,565 subscribers). Affable host Paul Barbado takes viewers on a trip around the world, with fifteen- to twenty-minute episodes on a given country. He’s working his way alphabetically through all two hundred-plus nations; at last count he made it to the M’s. It’s a bit like a video version of an encyclopedia entry, but with dashes of humor and silly graphics to boot.

Science and nature

• Vsauce (13,375,579 subscribers). Founder and star Michael Stevens didn’t start out making educational videos, but his background in comedy and video editing makes his science-oriented channel hugely engaging, as his massive following demonstrates. He enjoys taking viewers “on a journey,” starting with big questions, like “How much does a shadow weigh?” and “What color is a mirror?” He’s Bill Nye the Science Guy for the YouTube generation.
• The Brain Scoop (468,108 subscribers). Host Emily Graslie got her start with Hank and John Green, and was recruited by Chicago’s Field Museum to be its “chief curiosity correspondent.” Yes, it’s a dream job. If Michael Stevens is the new Bill Nye, she’s the new Ms. Frizzle. And not surprisingly given her employer, expect a lot of videos on the living world—both today and in the ancient past.

Literature

• Crash Course Literature (8,010,109 subscribers). As noted above, this is the granddaddy of educational YouTube, created by Hank and John Green. Their video library includes a playlist of forty-five videos on literature. The classics covered include Romeo & Juliet, Catcher in the Rye, The Handmaids Tale, and many more.

Math

• Khan Academy (4,069,528 subscribers). Surely the best-known educational outpost on the interwebs, Khan Academy’s YouTube channel is a gateway to the more extensive offerings on its own platform. But for quick refreshers and explainers, these videos are hard to beat.
• Vihart (1,255,570 subscribers). Created by Victoria Hart, a self-described “full-time recreational mathemusician,” this channel strives to make math cool. If Khan Academy is Microsoft, Vihart is Apple. It may not help you cram for your calculus test, but it will surely expand your mind. Her mesmerizing, almost poetic video “How I feel about logarithms” has over 1.2 million views at last count; “Doodling in Math Class: DRAGONS” has over 5 million. Not bad for videos of a hand scribbling numbers—and dragons—with thoughtful insights about math.

Did we leave a great channel off the list? Let us know at mpetrilli[at]edexcellence.net.

You’ve probably heard by now that basketball superstar LeBron James opened a school for at-risk kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Called I Promise School (IPS), it’s a joint effort between the I Promise Network, the LeBron James Family Foundation, and Akron Public Schools. The newly renovated building opened its doors on July 30 to 240 students in third and fourth grade, along with forty-three staff members. Though he’s taking his talents to Los Angeles, King James himself was on hand to dedicate the new school.

Just like students who are part of the I Promise Network that serves more than 1,300 children and their families across the district, IPS students were identified based on their reading achievement data. After identifying students who were a year or two behind grade level, administrators used a lottery to randomly select which children would be offered a spot at the new school. These students will receive free uniforms, transportation within two miles, tuition to the University of Akron when they graduate, a bicycle and helmet, and a variety of other resources. Their families will have access to GED classes, job placement assistance, and a food pantry.

James is being lavished with praise from the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama and Steph Curry, and he certainly deserves it. He could have done something else, or nothing at all, to help the kids of Akron. He could have chosen to just shut up and dribble. Instead, he did something remarkable that has the potential to radically transform lives.

As with all major media stories these days, folks are crawling out of the woodwork to offer their opinions. It should come as no surprise to those who work in education policy that there’s been a lot of emphasis on the fact that IPS is a district public school. Not a private school that accepts vouchers, or a charter school (which, for the record, are also public schools), but a “traditional” public school that’s part of Akron Public Schools, the sixth largest district in the state.

It doesn’t really matter what kind of school IPS is as long as it serves kids well. But anyone who’s done their homework can see that IPS is anything but a “traditional” public school. In fact, the school’s defining characteristics are similar to the schools of choice lauded by ed reformers. Extended school day and year? Yes, just like a lot of the country’s best charter networks. A serious emphasis on teacher professional development, with one day a week reserved for development? Yes, just like some other high-performing charter networks. A curriculum anchored in science, technology, engineering, and math? Yes, just like Ohio’s independent, non-district affiliated STEM schools. (IPS is already part of Ohio’s STEM Learning Network.) Alternative schedules and working conditions for teachers? Also yes, just like plenty of charter and private schools.

And then there’s the philanthropic aspect. At ISP, the LeBron James Family Foundation funds “critical elements” of the school, including technology, additional staffing, and professional development. That’s not necessarily unique, since traditional districts receive philanthropic support all the time, but it is worth mentioning because charter schools are the ones that are typically maligned for seeking charitable funding to provide extra help for disadvantaged children.

Despite these similarities, IPS is a traditional public school, and there’s a whole horde of people who are thrilled about this technical distinction. In a recent piece for Education Week, for instance, Jonathan E. Collins says that it’s a good thing IPS isn’t a charter school because “charter schools by design don’t require the same accountability to the public that traditional public schools do.” I’m no expert on the charter laws in other states, but I do know Ohio charter law—and Collins is wrong. Charters in the Buckeye State are evaluated based on the same state report card that traditional public schools are subject to. Charter sponsors—the organizations that are tasked with overseeing charter schools—are evaluated using a rigorous evaluation system that has stiff consequences for poor oversight. As a result of this sponsor accountability system, dozens of low-performing charters have been shuttered in Ohio within the past few years. In addition, should sponsors fail to correct chronic low performance, state law subjects charters to automatic closure. Moreover, as schools of choice, charters face competitive pressures. If families don’t like the way a charter school is run, they don’t have to stay there—and the school loses funding if they leave.

Collins also argues that charters’ “student-selection process has stirred controversy for being biased.” Because of the “mechanisms that some charter schools have used in order to peel off the most promising at risk-students,” traditional districts are left with “unimaginable challenges.” Although studies have shown that the success of charters isn’t attributable to “cream-skimming,” there are still folks like Collins who argue that the only way a group of “those kids” can possibly succeed is if charter schools recruit the “good ones” and leave all the “bad ones” behind. It’s a notion that’s not just offensive to the charter teachers and kids who worked their butts off to learn and achieve, but also to the kids and teachers who are “stuck” in traditional districts.

Collins isn’t the only one who seems to be concerned for the “other kids” who are stuck and left behind. Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss shared the same concern in her piece titled “Props to LeBron James and his new Akron public school—but what about the other kids?” She takes tons of jabs at school choice, including the accusation that charter supporters “no doubt would have preferred that James opened a charter.” As a charter supporter and an Akron native, I find that accusation so ridiculous that it’s not even offensive. All the charter folks I know are thrilled that there’s another high quality option available for Akron kids. Frankly, anyone who doesn’t feel that way should re-evaluate their priorities.

But what stands out most about Strauss’s piece is her supposition that if schools just had more money, then James wouldn’t have had to open IPS at all. “The fact that this school opened only because of the good graces of a very wealthy, civic-minded athlete underscores the continuing problem with education funding in this country,” she writes. “America’s public schools should not have to depend on any wealthy individual or private entity to be sustained or improved.”

She’s not necessarily wrong. It would be great to have a never-ending supply of cash. If there’s anything we can learn from this spring’s teacher strikes, it’s that there are places in this nation where schools and teachers are severely—almost criminally—underfunded. But many states and localities have limited taxpayer resources that can be used to support public education. So here, too, is a place where we can learn a lesson from charter schools. Across the nation and in Ohio, charters accomplish phenomenal outcomes with less government funding than traditional public districts enjoy. These high-performing charter organizations put taxpayer funds to good use—something that bureaucratic, big-city districts don’t always do. It’s less about how much money there is and more about how it’s spent.

Thanks to LeBron James and his partners, the I Promise School has plenty of funding. Its founding principles and leadership seem to be focused on the right thing—using resources to do what’s best for students. At the end of the day, none of us should really care whether IPS is a district, charter, or private school. What matters is what it can do for kids. And so far, the future looks bright.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on CenterPoint Education Solutions’ blog.

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of visiting a group of schools across the country distinguished by their embrace of high-quality curriculum. The tour was sponsored by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, which seeks to lift up the stories of schools that use knowledge-rich English language arts curriculum to promote educational excellence, provide equity, and inspire in students a passion for learning.

The campaign is particularly interested in drawing attention to schools and curricula that bring a joyous, knowledge-filled schooling experience to students of poverty, as they have been the ones particularly harmed by a skills-based approach that is arguably one of the most significant factors in reading scores remaining flat over the past twenty years (see this article published by the Campaign last month), to say nothing of driving out a love of learning in our young people.

Most of the schools we visited on the tour had adopted a curriculum highly rated by EdReports, the independent non-profit organization that, for the past four years, has served as something of a Consumer Reports on Common Core-aligned curriculum. Three key instructional shifts: regular practice with complex texts and their academic language; reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from texts; and building knowledge through content-rich curriculum, underpin the Common Core standards in English language arts and are what guide the reviews on EdReports.

The schools included on the tour employed a variety of instructional approaches and represented different geographic locations, demographic diversity, and governance structures. The common feature was their commitment to knowledge-rich schooling and their faith in comprehensive, high-quality curriculum, implemented school-wide, as a means of achieving it.

So, what stood out to us as we visited these schools? Without a doubt, the most salient feature—which was, in fact, a distinguishing feature (as it was in stark contrast to our experience in schools last fall that had not embraced the importance of knowledge-building)—was the fact that all students were engaged with grade-level complex texts. While we certainly saw the full range of student reading levels one would expect of a school serving high-need students (including typically large numbers of English learners), in each classroom we visited, texts were interrogated communally, thus exposing students, who may not have been able to read all the words on the page, to key vocabulary and content knowledge. Importantly, all kids got to discuss, amongst themselves, the ideas in the text. This is huge. As Jaden, a previously struggling reader at Monticello-Brown Summit Elementary School in Greensboro, North Carolina, told me, “I like it when we read it (a book) together because you can get others’ opinions. I like being in book arguments.”

Another profound experience of the tour was the amount of content knowledge these students were exposed to. A recent survey by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that 56 percent of ELA teachers worry, “not enough attention has been paid to building students’ general knowledge,” with 46 percent saying their curriculum and/or instructional materials “do a poor job of building students’ general knowledge.” A brief review of the travel blog associated with the Knowledge Matters School Tour will reveal a very different story, with topics—mind you, for K–8 students—ranging from the War of 1812, Athenian governance, medieval Europe, the lost colony of Roanoke, Galileo, animal anatomy, patterns in nature, Greek mythology, etc.

It’s no wonder, given how much kids like to “learn stuff,” that a final standout feature of the schools we visited was virtually no disciplinary problems. The look and feel—what some would call the school culture—at Maryvale, a classical school in Phoenix, and Detroit Prep/Detroit Achievement Academy, which both use EL Education 2.0 (formerly named Expeditionary Learning), were studies in contrast. But the level of student engagement was uniformly high. In both cases, and indeed in each school we visited, there was a palpable sense—among kids and adults alike—that real learning was taking place, that knowledge was expanding.

The word I most associate with the Knowledge Matters School Tour is “confidence.” While teachers told us that learning the new curriculum was the hardest thing they’d ever done in teaching, they’ve also report it being among the best things to have happened to them professionally. After years of floundering, knowing they weren’t really meeting their students’ needs but not knowing what to do about it, they report now being more certain that they’re preparing their students for academic success in the future.

When we asked the teachers to give advice to colleagues around the country who might be at the start of their journey with a new, high-quality curriculum, we generally got some version of, “have faith in the curriculum.” For many, it wasn’t until they’d gone through the school year that they developed a full appreciation. “I had to see the whole picture” says a second-grade teacher in Dayton who added, “This is by far my best year of teaching in seventeen years.”

More importantly even than these teachers’ journey to professional confidence was what we saw and heard from the kids. As Aurora, a fifth-grade student in Riverside, California, told me, “We learn higher level things and we are not afraid to share what we learn.”

The enduring images of the Knowledge Matters School Tour are of deep and shared engagements with a wide range of quality informational and literary texts; a high volume of reading; students receiving far more science, social studies/history, and art instruction than is currently seen in the average public school; and near universal confidence among students—from the smallest kindergartners to students ready to advance on to middle or high school—that they were in good hands, and that their school was preparing them for the academic challenges that lay ahead.

Would that every child could feel this way about their school…

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

1. Reporter Josh Sweigart is still digging deeply into the difficulties facing Dayton City Schools. Case in point: his look at six factors that contribute to the observed achievement gap between black and white students in the district. He takes a deeply historical approach to his analysis here. (Dayton Daily News, 8/7/18) The difference between that piece and this one – looking at the topic of student health and academic achievement based upon survey responses from schools and districts around Montgomery County – could not be more stark. Forget about cultural bias and food insecurity; these schools are apparently worried their students’ hearts could stop at any moment! (Dayton Daily News, 8/8/18)
    
2. The newest academy concept school operated by Toledo City Schools made its debut this week. The Aerospace & Natural Science Academy of Toledo opened in renovated digs at the airport. Sounds generally STEM-my and interesting, but I do wonder whether this much sauce was really required to get kids into the Air Force. Two interesting points in this brief story: First, unlike previous academies we’ve reported on, it seems that all the support for this one is coming from the district itself – $4.5 million was reportedly needed to kit out the building alone. Heaven only knows about transportation going forward! Second, though, is even more intriguing (since we know that Toledo schools are flush with cash). It is noted here that students at the academy will come from “across Northwest Ohio”. Wonder how that bit of school choice sleight-of-hand is going to happen? (Toledo Blade, 8/6/18)
    
3. Speaking of the more shadowy realms of school choice in Ohio, here’s a profile on what is known colloquially as an “08 school”, named for the section of state law that authorizes them to exist – aka a non-chartered, non-tax-supported, non-public school. Well, I say “profile” but it’s more of a deep-dive investigation piece more suited to such topics as Area 51 or chemtrails. Why all the interest? Because the Christians of Faith Academy appears to be a nascent football powerhouse which has sought out a daunting schedule of games against all the existing powerhouses. Which is something you don’t do in Ohio high school sports without your fair share of scrutiny. For what it’s worth, this non-sports fan says go Ironmen! I think. (ThisWeek News, 8/6/18)
    
4. In more-traditional-school sports news, ice hockey will return to Stow-Munroe Falls High School this winter for the first time in more than 10 years. Sounds like a big and expensive endeavor about which everyone involved clearly cares very deeply. This non-sports fan could barely care less, sadly. This clip’s for you, Jessica. Go Bulldogs! (MyTownNEO, 8/8/18)
    
5. In Lorain, the elected school board this week voted unanimously to join the legal fight against the state law that created CEO-style Academic Distress Commissions, under whose aegis Lorain City Schools currently operates. Due to, you know, persistent academic underperformance. (Elyria Chronicle, 8/6/18) Speaking of Lorain-based legal stuff, at least six former administrators in Lorain are pursuing legal action against the district after being let go from their positions in sweeping changes made by CEO David Hardy. Why? Because, as the elected school board president lays it out: “Those administrators have a right to at least a teaching position.” Among other reasons. (Elyria Chronicle, 8/8/18)
    
6. We end the day with what is great news to many across Ohio: The legal saga of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow is likely done for good as the Ohio Supreme Court today ruled against the remnants of the former school’s appeal of a lower court ruling. I don’t have anything witty or insightful (or even “edgy”) to add here, but I’m sure others’ voices will fill that void. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/8/18) While the above clip feels like a showstopper, we can’t end here. Why? Because I want to give the redoubtable Doug Livingston the final word in today’s clips. Doug’s bête noir of more than two decades—his white hatted whale, if you will—has finally been vanquished from Ohio waters. White Hat Management, he writes this week, is out of the charter school business forever. “The for-profit operator founded in 2000 by Akron industrialist David Brennan has quietly sold off the last of its contracts to run charter schools. Brennan and his company formed a primordial force that ushered these publicly funded but privately run schools to Ohio some 21 years ago.” Sheer poetry, right? A fitting end. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/7/18)
    

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you’ve vanquished your own white whale and have nothing better to do now than to want such a thing)? Subscribe by clicking here.

Her name is Alexandra. She was a student in a school where I used to work and she was one of those kids who challenges you, causes her share of trouble, and comes to appreciate and love you deeply when you’ve earned her trust. Oh, she steals your heart too.

To this day, a letter she wrote me on my birthday in 2012 sits in the drawer of my nightstand. It said a lot but most importantly, she wanted me to know how much it meant to her that I believed in her. And given her a chance. And helped her to see that she had the power to make different—and better choices—as a student and as a young woman.

I think of Alexandra often, especially when I watch debates about school discipline unfold on Twitter or Facebook or wherever else education pundits and partisans are sparring over Obama-era discipline guidance.

The problem child

Alexandra’s mother was not in her life. Her father, an immigrant from Nigeria, was struggling to raise her and her brother and while her brother shined in school and in life, as Alexandra told it, she was the problem child.

And in many ways, she was also a problem child at school. Explosive anger. Disruptive behavior in class. Rudeness. A fight or flight response that was on a different level than most, if not all, of the suburban students I had taught the decade before.

But she quickly became one of the most important and best parts of my day. She would wait for me to get in just so she could swing over for a quick hug, or laugh, or venting session about whatever had already gone wrong that morning. She was no fan of country music but she kind of became one when I started singing the Steve Holy song “Good Morning Beautiful” to her all the time. She would sing it too.

Alexandra knew suspensions well. She would lose her cool with teachers and get in occasional fights with other students. Her father didn’t have a car so for him, a suspension for the rest of the day meant he had to leave work early and take a city bus or walk to come pick up his daughter. I still remember the two of them walking out of the building together, in silence, to catch a bus. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that image still hurts my heart.

Alexandra was the quintessential example of a student who escalates and loses control, usually of her words. I would watch interactions between her and staff members that would start over a minor infraction: her phone sticking out of her back pocket, a dress code violation. The staff member would raise the issue and a back and forth would inevitably ensue.

But that back and forth would quickly go off the rails as the staff member would either not notice or choose to ignore the escalation—and her best efforts to contain it—in Alexandra’s face and voice. I could see it and I would tense up as if I was literally watching gasoline poured out over a burning fire. I knew what was coming. Why didn’t they?

And then BOOM.

The f-word would fly, usually about how much she hated this school but sometimes about how much she hated the teacher. And she didn’t hate the teacher. But she was in fight or flight mode so she would fight just enough and then run. I remember doors almost flying off their hinges as she’d leave the room.

The teacher would demand she be sent home. Suspended. Her disrespect and profanity was unacceptable and there needed to be a consequence. I agreed with most of that.

But I didn’t suspend her.

I couldn’t justify sending her home

Usually, by the time I was done talking to the teacher, I’d find Alexandra in my office, already much calmer than just a few moments ago. Often she’d have her headphones in, books open, and be doing school work. She liked to be in my office, near me, even when we were each doing our own work. I liked having her there too.

She knew she had blown up. She would ask why the teacher had been “all up in her face like that.” I’d remind that her that when the conversation started out, the teacher was right. She knew the rule and she had chosen to break it. She’d come back at me with all the times he, and other staff members, had ignored when other students did the same thing.

She wasn’t wrong. Alexandra was a student who drew attention to herself, for positive and negative reasons, and her chances of getting away with rule breaking were slimmer than most. She wasn’t that kid who slips through the cracks; she was the one who blew the cracks wide open.

As most educators in charge of behavior and discipline can likely attest, there is often pressure from teachers and staff to administer a sufficiently harsh punishment and it isn’t easy to do the opposite of what your colleague—and perhaps friend—wants. But sometimes it’s the right thing to do for the student.

Alexandra had caused a break in the relationship with her teacher. But her relationships with her other teachers were intact that day and I couldn’t justify—in my head or my heart—the decision to pull her Dad from work and send her home on a city bus, or on foot, when the best place for her to be was in school. How would it serve her to miss her remaining classes because of an incident with one teacher earlier in the day?

I decided she needed to stay. The day wrapped up without incident and before I knew it, I was walking in to school the next day. One of my first orders of business was to remind Alexandra that she needed to make things right with Mr. Wright. When I saw her just moments after walking into the building and I reminded her of her unfinished business, she responded matter of factly, “I already put a note in his mailbox saying I was sorry.”

A victory.

There was a time when Alexandra would not have taken the initiative on her own to make things right with a teacher she had disrespected the day before. She was growing and maturing as a young woman and as a student in how she managed the consequences of her anger. She had internalized the work we had been doing in school and had accepted that she had a responsibility to ‘restore’ the relationship she had fractured the day before. This was a moment of success. I was so proud of her.

The teacher confirmed with a smile that he had received the note. It was a new day and Alexandra had started it with a clean slate.

I’m confident I made the right call in not suspending her. But that was one day, one incident, one student.

Editor’s note: This essay was originally published in a slightly different form by the Education Post.

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

Geez. When you take LeBron out of the equation don’t read the sports page, there’s a lot less education news to talk about these days. What is out there is “eclectic”.

1. Dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (my quality quintet!) may recall that despite the massive efforts of CEO Krish Mohip, a recent ODE review of Youngstown City Schools’ progress on its strategic plan showed that the one place reforms have had trouble reaching was the classroom. Specifically, high-quality standards-aligned curriculum and instruction were clearly lacking in almost every building. Mohip and the Academic Distress Commission that employs him are working to fix this glaring problem through professional development, accurate assessment, and data analytics. One assumes they are in a hurry to get this nailed down since school will be starting again soon. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/4/18)
    
2. Speaking of the new school year, here’s a look at Kindergarten readiness among youngsters in Summit County. It is, apparently, not very high and school districts across the county are trying to change that dynamic. It’s been a long time since I had children in Kindergarten, but I am pretty sure the bar is higher than being able to rhyme words and tie your shoes. But those are the only two tasks listed in this piece. So if that’s all there is and the readiness numbers are still that low, something is decidedly amiss. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/3/18)
    
3. Staying in Summit County, folks in Nordonia Hills Schools have another problem facing them as the school year gets closer: the gym floor in Northfield Elementary School is shot and must be replaced. When it was first laid in 2001, it was supposed to last for 10 years. In 2011, Nordonia Hills was in such dire financial straits that it faced fiscal oversight from the state and so a new floor was off the table. Seven years later, the pigeons are home to roost, but luckily it sounds like they have the cash to get the job done (including the “correct vapor barrier”, which seems to have been missing from the start). But this one project will likely wipe out the building’s entire maintenance budget for the year. Does that mean the school will have no further repair funds? Nope. They’ll just whip up some more money! “We will have to increase our budget before we do the final appropriations in September to help us make it through the year.” Sounds like the financial sitch in Nordonia Hills has improved tremendously in the last seven years. (MyTownNEO, 8/5/18)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you have no barrier to prevent such a thing)? Subscribe by clicking here.

You’ve probably heard by now that basketball superstar LeBron James opened a school for at-risk kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Called I Promise School (IPS), it’s a joint effort between the I Promise Network, the LeBron James Family Foundation, and Akron Public Schools. The newly renovated building opened its doors on July 30 to 240 students in third and fourth grade, along with forty-three staff members. Though he’s taking his talents to Los Angeles, King James himself was on hand to dedicate the new school.

Just like students who are part of the I Promise Network that serves more than 1,300 children and their families across the district, IPS students were identified based on their reading achievement data. After identifying students who were a year or two behind grade level, administrators used a lottery to randomly select which children would be offered a spot at the new school. These students will receive free uniforms, transportation within two miles, tuition to the University of Akron when they graduate, a bicycle and helmet, and a variety of other resources. Their families will have access to GED classes, job placement assistance, and a food pantry.

James is being lavished with praise from the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama and Steph Curry, and he certainly deserves it. He could have done something else, or nothing at all, to help the kids of Akron. He could have chosen to just shut up and dribble. Instead, he did something remarkable that has the potential to radically transform lives.

As with all major media stories these days, folks are crawling out of the woodwork to offer their opinions. It should come as no surprise to those who work in education policy that there’s been a lot of emphasis on the fact that IPS is a district public school. Not a private school that accepts vouchers, or a charter school (which, for the record, are also public schools), but a “traditional” public school that’s part of Akron Public Schools, the sixth largest district in the state.

It doesn’t really matter what kind of school IPS is as long as it serves kids well. But anyone who’s done their homework can see that IPS is anything but a “traditional” public school. In fact, the school’s defining characteristics are similar to the schools of choice lauded by ed reformers. Extended school day and year? Yes, just like a lot of the country’s best charter networks. A serious emphasis on teacher professional development, with one day a week reserved for development? Yes, just like some other high-performing charter networks. A curriculum anchored in science, technology, engineering, and math? Yes, just like Ohio’s independent, non-district affiliated STEM schools. (IPS is already part of Ohio’s STEM Learning Network.) Alternative schedules and working conditions for teachers? Also yes, just like plenty of charter and private schools.

And then there’s the philanthropic aspect. At ISP, the LeBron James Family Foundation funds “critical elements” of the school, including technology, additional staffing, and professional development. That’s not necessarily unique, since traditional districts receive philanthropic support all the time, but it is worth mentioning because charter schools are the ones that are typically maligned for seeking charitable funding to provide extra help for disadvantaged children.

Despite these similarities, IPS is a traditional public school, and there’s a whole horde of people who are thrilled about this technical distinction. In a recent piece for Education Week, for instance, Jonathan E. Collins says that it’s a good thing IPS isn’t a charter school because “charter schools by design don’t require the same accountability to the public that traditional public schools do.” I’m no expert on the charter laws in other states, but I do know Ohio charter law—and Collins is wrong. Charters in the Buckeye State are evaluated based on the same state report card that traditional public schools are subject to. Charter sponsors—the organizations that are tasked with overseeing charter schools—are evaluated using a rigorous evaluation system that has stiff consequences for poor oversight. As a result of this sponsor accountability system, dozens of low-performing charters have been shuttered in Ohio within the past few years. In addition, should sponsors fail to correct chronic low performance, state law subjects charters to automatic closure. Moreover, as schools of choice, charters face competitive pressures. If families don’t like the way a charter school is run, they don’t have to stay there—and the school loses funding if they leave.

Collins also argues that charters’ “student-selection process has stirred controversy for being biased.” Because of the “mechanisms that some charter schools have used in order to peel off the most promising at risk-students,” traditional districts are left with “unimaginable challenges.” Although studies have shown that the success of charters isn’t attributable to “cream-skimming,” there are still folks like Collins who argue that the only way a group of “those kids” can possibly succeed is if charter schools recruit the “good ones” and leave all the “bad ones” behind. It’s a notion that’s not just offensive to the charter teachers and kids who worked their butts off to learn and achieve, but also to the kids and teachers who are “stuck” in traditional districts.

Collins isn’t the only one who seems to be concerned for the “other kids” who are stuck and left behind. Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss shared the same concern in her piece titled “Props to LeBron James and his new Akron public school—but what about the other kids?” She takes tons of jabs at school choice, including the accusation that charter supporters “no doubt would have preferred that James opened a charter.” As a charter supporter and an Akron native, I find that accusation so ridiculous that it’s not even offensive. All the charter folks I know are thrilled that there’s another high quality option available for Akron kids. Frankly, anyone who doesn’t feel that way should re-evaluate their priorities.

But what stands out most about Strauss’s piece is her supposition that if schools just had more money, then James wouldn’t have had to open IPS at all. “The fact that this school opened only because of the good graces of a very wealthy, civic-minded athlete underscores the continuing problem with education funding in this country,” she writes. “America’s public schools should not have to depend on any wealthy individual or private entity to be sustained or improved.”

She’s not necessarily wrong. It would be great to have a never-ending supply of cash. If there’s anything we can learn from this spring’s teacher strikes, it’s that there are places in this nation where schools and teachers are severely—almost criminally—underfunded. But many states and localities have limited taxpayer resources that can be used to support public education. So here, too, is a place where we can learn a lesson from charter schools. Across the nation and in Ohio, charters accomplish phenomenal outcomes with less government funding than traditional public districts enjoy. These high-performing charter organizations put taxpayer funds to good use—something that bureaucratic, big-city districts don’t always do. It’s less about how much money there is and more about how it’s spent.

Thanks to LeBron James and his partners, the I Promise School has plenty of funding. Its founding principles and leadership seem to be focused on the right thing—using resources to do what’s best for students. At the end of the day, none of us should really care whether IPS is a district, charter, or private school. What matters is what it can do for kids. And so far, the future looks bright.