1. It was learned late last week that Youngstown CEO Krish Mohip is not only looking to Colorado for a new gig but also to North Dakota. He is one of four finalists for superintendent of Fargo Public Schools. Weren’t there any good gigs up for grabs in Alaska, dude? (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/17/18) Local curmudgeon Bertram de Souza opined yesterday on this state of affairs. Specifically, he wrote in support of Mohip’s fairly brutal comments about the governance landscape in Youngstown City Schools, made during his interview with Boulder Valley school officials. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/18/18) Mohip is interviewing in Fargo this week – maybe we’ll get some good dope from that one too.
    
2. Back in the real world, Lorain Schools CEO David Hardy is rolling up his sleeves and finally outlining some hard deliverables for his turnaround plan. To wit: Only 1.1 percent of Lorain students achieve remediation-free scores on the ACT. To address this deficit, Hardy says he is implementing more rigorous coursework across the board starting next school year. (Elyria Chronicle, 3/16/18)
    
3. Speaking of school leaders, it looks like Dayton’s acting superintendent will become the permanent superintendent. Perhaps as early as tomorrow, when the board is supposed to vote on same. (Dayton Daily News, 3/16/18) No such luck in Columbus, as it seems their supe search—which ended with the acting supe as the only candidate not to drop out—is “in limbo” pending review by the state auditor. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/16/18) Columbus does have a new teacher’s union president, though, after the incumbent was ousted in a vote last week. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/15/18)
    
4. This story is a little hard to follow and is lacking in details, but it seems important. It is mostly a jumble of public reactions to a possible change—not yet confirmed—to the Elyria school building master plan which was the basis of a successful bond issue campaign in 2016. The change, as confusingly portrayed here, seems to be due to the fact that costs have escalated beyond what was budgeted in 2016 and cuts need to be made which may result in at least one promised elementary school building not being built at all. More to come on this, I’m sure. (Elyria Chronicle, 3/18/18)
    
5. It seems that Cincinnati’s putative professional soccer franchise has decided to take its black-and-white-spotted ball and give up on a West Side stadium after the school district rebuffed its financial entreaties. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/16/18)
    
6. Finally today, the PD is reporting that more tentative-but-not-final-really steps are underway to launch the Say Yes to Education program in Cleveland. When the key player—the local teacher’s union in this case—is first to sign on the dotted line, then the sky’s the limit. Am I right? (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3/19/18)

There is a teacher under fire in California and knowing what I know of her alleged “transgression”, I wish my own kids could be in her class. Julianne Benzel of Rocklin High School did what every teacher should be doing—especially in Social Studies—during a week of nationwide student protest.

She pushed the thinking of her students and encouraged them to confront the complexities of political speech when it occurs during the school day and involves students walking out of school. And she has been placed on administrative leave because of it.

If the reports are true, Benzel in no way discouraged her students from walking out. She simply asked the same question that I and others asked in the lead up to the national walkout this past Wednesday.

Are schools prepared to allow students to walk out of school to protest another, perhaps less popular, viewpoint? In looking for a comparably emotional and divisive issue to cite as an example, she chose abortion.

If the local and national reporting is correct, the human resources department sent her a letter telling her not to come to work because of a discussion she held with students about the danger of double standards in student protest.

When asked by local news outlets what she may have said to upset the administration, she responded this way:

“If you’re going to allow students to walk up and get out of class without penalty then you have to allow any group of students that wants to protest. And so I just kind of used the example, which I know it’s really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time—a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for seventeen minutes’ and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration?”

Benzel says she received no backlash during or after class from her students, but administrators say they received “several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities.”

Benzel says that she was “aghast” when she received the letter from Human Resources telling her not to come to work and as a mom and former teacher who lives three thousand miles away from Rocklin, California, I too am aghast. It is unfathomable to me that anyone would think that what Benzel—a social studies teacher—discussed with her students is inappropriate let alone offensive or grounds for punitive action from the district.

She is having real time conversations and debates with her students about free speech and protest and how those very same rights must be granted to everyone—especially in the context of a school sanctioned protest—regardless of the views they may hold.

We need more teachers like Mrs. Benzel if our children are to have any chance at deftfully navigating a future in which the exchange of ideas and freedom of speech remain bedrocks of this nation.

Benzel has retained legal counsel.

Editor’s note: Mrs. Benzel was invited back to work last Friday. She chose not to return in order to take a mental health day. She hopes to return to school today because she “missed [her] students dearly.”

Editor’s note: This post was original published in a slightly different form by Good School Hunting.

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

The 26,000+ members and supporters of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) should feel pretty good about their efforts and the fruits they have produced in education policy. Together we have successfully inspired change by helping legislators and the public understand the nature and unique needs of gifted children and the supportive environments they need for learning.

A little over two years ago, NAGC embarked on a focused plan to build awareness and increase support for the unique needs of these children. The NAGC Board of Director's bold plan of action to Change Minds, Change Policies, and Change Practices set out to achieve a vision where giftedness and high potential are universally valued, fully recognized, and actively nurtured.

I am pleased to report on two visible markers that show the movement is gaining traction and producing results that are bringing this vision to fruition.

First, the U.S. Department of Education prioritized the needs of students and children with "unique gifts and talents."  Specifically, Priority 5 of the Final Supplemental Priorities and Definitions for Discretionary Grant Programs emphasizes the need for programs that develop “ opportunities for students who are gifted and talented (as defined in section 8101(27) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended), particularly students with high needs (as defined in this notice) who may not be served by traditional gifted and talented programs, so that they can reach their full potential, such as by providing a greater number of gifted and talented students with access to challenging coursework or other materials."  

The second marker is a bill awaiting signature by Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State. Senate Bill 6362 requires that school districts establish state of the art identification methods that promote equity of access for all students, particularly those who live in poverty or are English Language Learners. The bill calls for the use of multiple objective criteria; criteria benchmarked on local norms; screening and assessment in native languages or non-verbal screening and assessments, and clear guidance and best practices from the state Office of Public Instruction.

These two significant achievements are a result of engaged advocates who rallied around a collective goal of supporting children with extraordinary gifts and talents to achieve their personal best.

We have emerged from the shadows, and together we are making a difference! The National Association for Gifted Children remains committed to organizing and supporting the growing list of parents, educators, and community leaders working to Change Minds, Change Policies, and Change Practices to support gifted children, particularly the vulnerable.

We look forward to the continued success of the Giftedness Knows No Boundaries movement to SEE, UNDERSTAND, TEACH, and CHALLENGE gifted and talented children from all backgrounds.

M. René Islas is the executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children.

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

Imagine Rip Van Winkle earned a diploma from a New York high school in 1998 and worked as a printer before falling asleep. Waking up twenty years later, he wouldn’t have the skills to do his old job. In a world of rapidly advancing technologies changing most job requirements, high school is not a good end point for anyone’s learning.

Projections by Moody’s Mark Zandi confirm that more than half of all jobs by 2030 will require at least an associate degree. But supply isn’t keeping up with the demand. Only 41 percent of Americans ages twenty-five to sixty-four have at least an A.A. While some policy analysts argue that “college isn’t for everyone,” and journalists regularly write stories about the recent bachelor’s-degree-holders stuck in a low-skill job, the data shows that’s very rare. Americans are undereducated. This widens inequality and causes us to lose out on economic productivity.

The question of what standards students should meet to graduate from high school has a straightforward answer: By default, they should earn a college and career ready diploma. Indiana has been a pioneer in this space for more than a decade.

Influenced by Achieve’s American Diploma Project and NGA’s Honor States Program, in 2007, Indiana developed the Core 40. To graduate from high school, students must complete four years of English, three years of mathematics (including algebra II), three years of science and social studies. Students can meet additional requirements (e.g., foreign languages, Advanced Placement courses, and programs of study) to earn the Core 40 Academic or Technical Honors diploma. Parents can opt out their students out of these pathways and earn a general diploma.

Eighty-right percent of high school graduates have earned the Core 40 diploma (with 34 percent earning Honors). Indiana also aligned the incentives across systems. Since 2011, four-year public colleges in Indiana have required the Core 40 diploma. College remediation rates are on the decline and on-time degree completion rates are on the rise. The State Board of Education recently tweaked these requirements starting with the class of 2023, eliminating some tests and adding project-and work-based learning experiences.

In spite of these successes, less than half of states have followed Indiana’s lead. A 2017 study by Achieve found diploma requirements continuing to differ greatly from state to state. Only twenty states report data on whether or not students have completed a college and career ready course of study. As their transcripts show, too many students are “meandering towards graduation.” And in the case of some urban high schools such as Ballou, students are graduating without showing up.

One reason why college and career ready diplomas aren’t the default option is that many states have an earlier problem they struggle to solve. It’s hard to require three years of college prep math when many students haven’t been successful in algebra I.

In Florida, Maryland and New Jersey, overall pass rates on the Algebra I end-of-course exams hover around 35 percent. But unpacking this data in the graph below shows an even deeper problem. A third of the students who take algebra I are eighth graders but they are a majority of students meeting and exceeding standards.

States and districts could begin solving this earlier problem by filling in two building blocks often missing in schools: truly use diagnostic data and develop standards-based report cards.

Use diagnostic data to close gaps

At a typical urban high school in these states, the incoming grade levels of an incoming ninth grade class might look like this:

These schools have inherited problems not of their own making. Nearly half of the new high school students are three years or more below grade level. An algebra I teacher has a Herculean task trying to get everyone up to standard. What if school systems could tighten this distribution and prevent failure?

Great advancements have been made in the development and teachers’ use of daily or weekly diagnostic data to inform student learning. By diagnostic, we mean data that identifies students’ strengths and weaknesses to help the learner improve performance. As Dylan William argues, to be effective, data feedback must provide a “recipe for future action.”

Teachers in the schools using Teach to One Math are taking diagnostic data to map from fifth to ninth grade the math clusters needed to eventually be successful in Algebra. A quick look at this map shows that being able to multiply and divide fractions is an essential pivot point for students. If they move on from sixth grade without that understanding, algebra will be a steep, uphill climb. If we can ensure they have that mathematical understanding intact, they’re much more likely to be successful.

In Ontario Canada, researchers found that using diagnostic data had more a positive impact on teaching and learning more than traditional standardized tests. Any school system hoping to replicate this success also has to build the infrastructure, culture, and analytic capacity supporting data use. Over time, the typical urban high school, linked to middle schools also using diagnostic data, ought to have an incoming ninth grade class that looks like this:

Develop Standards-Based Report Cards

My friend Patrick Riccards suggests in another entry that high schools focus on mastery and move away from seat time. One way to do this would be to establish standards-based report cards.

While most states have moved to true college-ready standards and upgraded their tests, schools continue to use letter grade report cards. When a student earns a B+ in algebra I, it’s unclear what that local grade represents, especially if he struggles to pass the end-of-course exam. How can we expect large numbers of students to be successful when these systems aren’t closely aligned?

Report cards need to evolve beyond their late nineteenth century origins so that letter grades reflect the specific knowledge and skills a student has learned in that class. They need to be longitudinal across grade bands (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, 9–12) so a third grader knows how she’s meeting present and future expectations. This would also allow for parents and students to see growth over time. The grain size needs to be at the cluster level, grouping at clusters of standards, such as “equivalent fractions.” Rolling up to domains is too broad; detailing each standard is too specific.

These are initial ideas for what would be a very complex undertaking at scale. A few suburban districts, such as nearby Montgomery County, Maryland have tried it and shown it’s very easy to get this work wrong and hard to get it right. The International Baccalaureate schools suggest one way forward. Across their large network in more than one hundred countries, an international baccalaureate diploma has consistent meaning because teachers calibrate and moderate scores of external exams and teacher assessments.

With better data in the hands of teachers and a fuller picture of whether or not students’ day-to-day work is meeting college-ready standards, high school students won’t be meandering on roads to nowhere but solidly on paths to upward mobility and lives of using one’s mind well.

The recent closing of the ten Jubilee Schools in Memphis has rumbled through the Catholic schools world like an earthquake.

Those who fear the worst about the future of urban Catholic education now believe they are right. Those who felt we had turned a corner were shaken free of any illusions that incremental change will be enough. Everyone has been left on edge. We know that the next few years may well be our last chance to ensure we can continue providing high-quality educational opportunities for generations of students to come.

One of the things that has been so painful about the Jubilee news is that there is no doubt that these schools are worth saving. The “Catholic School Advantage” has been proven time and again, and it’s as strong today as it has been over the past two-hundred years.

But the harsh truth is that results aren’t enough. If we want to preserve urban Catholic education—particularly in states where we are still fighting for school choice—we need not only great, faith-filled educators, but also savvy fiscal experts and business leaders who can help build sustainable institutions in a fiercely competitive environment.

We have seen a burst of entrepreneurial energy in urban Catholic schools over the past several years in places like Milwaukee’s Seton Catholic Schools, Notre Dame’s ACE Academies, Philadelphia’s Independence Mission Schools, and in New York, our own Partnership Schools network. I believe these ground-level successes will lead the way forward, both in terms of academic excellence and in terms of financial sustainability.

In New York, for instance, we have spent the past four years focused like a laser on academic turnaround. That effort generated a significant increase in student achievement that has met, and in many areas exceeded, the results of the state’s public and charter schools. We will continue to build on that foundation in the years ahead, but we must also broaden our focus to ensure the financial sustainability we know is vital to our mission.

Diversifying our funding

One essential lesson from the closing of Jubilee Schools in Memphis is the danger of becoming overly reliant on a small number of big donors. When dollars are pouring in, even if the money is coming from just a few donors, it can create complacency. But when donor weariness sets in among those few, loyal funders—particularly if they have invested millions but have not seen the changes they hoped for—financial struggles can accelerate quickly and lead to collapse. That’s why we need to leverage the generosity of our staunchest supporters to diversify that financial foundation.

To that end, Catholic educators need to embrace our role as fundraisers, and we must aggressively court new supporters for our networks, ideally well before the initial signs of weariness kick in. Just as we wouldn’t think of having a mass without a collection, we must make seeking out new supporters the norm for our work every week of the year. When possible, we must also make our alumni into brand ambassadors for Catholic schools. They can become net promoters for their own schooling experiences, personalizing the effort to sustain Catholic education.

Identifying every possible revenue source

Even with more diverse philanthropic funding streams, we have to maximize the revenue we bring in for every student to make urban Catholic schools financially sustainable. Simply put, that means we need to advocate for vouchers and tax credits and other programs—state and federal—that can help families obtain the high-quality education they want and deserve for their children.

Convincing policymakers to support programs that help students in our schools begins with being good stewards of the funding we already receive. First and foremost, Catholic schools must ensure that they are maximizing every dollar collected from parents in the form of tuition and fees.

At the Partnership, a recent analysis found that we collected fully $1 million from parents each year to cover ancillary “fees” across our six schools. These fees cover things like graduation, after-school services, field trips, and more. Of course, these activities are important and part of our culture and tradition—but they are also areas where we can benefit from economies of scale and where we can cut costs, helping us redirect some critical parent revenue back to tuition and to cover a greater portion of our core educational model.

Second, our tuition model—the same one used by parochial schools across the country—may be ripe for an overhaul. We’ve always said we can do more with less, and our tuition rates are often lower than non-Catholic schools. Does that send the message to families that they are getting a lower quality education than they might in another private school? Have we done enough to highlight the benefits of a Catholic education to ensure that families who can afford to pay tuition are, in fact, choosing Catholic schools? We need to have a broader conversation about these topics, and we need to make sure that we are sending the message that the education we provide is worth every penny—no matter whether it’s funded by tuition, scholarships, school choice or local philanthropy.

Finally, Catholic leaders need to make sure we are aware of and using federally funded compensatory education programs that provide either money or services to Catholic schools and students. Too often, bureaucratic hurdles make it difficult for principals to maximize the potential of this government funding. It’s imperative that Catholic school leaders work together to bring those dollars—which are made available to students in other schooling types—back to our classrooms.

Working together to secure economies of scale

Traditional K–8 Catholic schools were an early experiment in hyper-local control. Schools were founded and supported by the parish community, almost entirely. This worked well when urban parishes were thriving and when most Catholic families sent their children to their local parish school.

Today, the landscape looks quite different. Urban parishes often serve our nation’s most disadvantaged students, and the number of parishioners has shrunk, sometimes dramatically. Parishes alone can no longer shoulder the burden of balancing school budgets. While dioceses have stepped in to cover deficits for years, it’s not sustainable to assume they can do that forever. We’ve already identified ways to bring in additional revenue, but we also must explore what our schools can do to become more efficient operationally.

To make every dollar count, we need to embrace a new model driven by the pursuit of economies of scale. That means eliminating the duplication of services through networks of schools and a culture of cost-sharing. At Partnership Schools, we have saved thousands by bringing together a network of six schools to negotiate contracts for simple things like phone service, copiers and building maintenance. In addition, we’ve been able to share the cost of professional development and coaching support across six schools, while still being able to nimbly respond to the unique needs of a small community of schools that share similar challenges.

Finding those efficiencies means continuing to lead the way as the value-leader in American education. Just as Amazon has built an organizational culture on doing more for less and operating more efficiently than their competition, Catholic schools from the classroom level up to the central office need to continue finding new ways to serve our students while making every dollar count.

As we reflect on this moment in urban Catholic education, the Jubilee closings should not cause us to lose faith in our future; rather, we have an opportunity to work together and identify new ways—from donor relations to cost-sharing collaboration—to maintain and grow our national network of high-quality Catholic schools, especially those that serve lower-income populations in urban areas. Those are the students who most need access to schools that meet their needs academically and spiritually, and we will not let them down.

Once you start thinking about the dollars and cents of saving Catholic schools, it is amazing how many new ideas emerge. While we can’t wish away the challenges we face, we can channel our anxiety into action. By turning the new Catholic school networks we have built into laboratories that will help us discover the sustainable path forward, we can ensure that we do our part to save these vital institutions that do so much for the communities they serve and that we call home.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared in a slightly different form on EdChoice.

Kathleen Porter-Magee is the superintendent of Partnership Schools.

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

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

In addition to fielding questions about what a charter school is, and whether charters are private or public schools, I’m often asked: Aren’t charter schools intended for failing urban districts serving low-income students of color? They do serve those communities well, but let’s talk about who else they serve.

While it’s true that over half of all charter schools are in urban districts, in the 2015–16 school year there were nearly 1,800 suburban charter schools and over 1,200 in small towns and rural communities.

It turns out that curriculum really matters to middle-income parents, and many gravitate to charter schools because they offer educational models that aren’t available in traditional public schools. Some of these models are more rigorous, some are more open and creative, and some offer unique programs. There are hundreds of examples of outstanding suburban and rural charter schools, but I’ll offer just a few to ponder.

Take the BASIS charter schools: In the 2017 US News rankings of the top 10 public high schools, nine were charter schools and five of these were BASIS charter schools. BASIS currently operates 20 charter schools in Arizona, Texas, and Washington, DC. Most of them are suburban, and they serve populations that reflect their communities. Like all charter schools, BASIS schools don’t have admissions tests—students are admitted by lottery. But once they’re in, it’s not easy. In this preschool through grade 12 program, students take biology, chemistry, and physics before they start high school and all high school students are expected to pass at least 6 AP exams. The key to success in BASIS schools is having highly professional teachers who are subject matter experts. Teachers are given considerable autonomy in their classrooms, but all of them, even kindergarten math teachers, must have a college degree in the subject they teach.

Or, what about the NYOS (Not Your Ordinary School) charter school in Austin, Texas? This school was founded twenty years ago and offers smaller class sizes, year-round school and “looping” (in which a student stays with the same teachers for several years). NYOS serves 950 students in grades K through 12, but they have 3,000 more students on a waiting list for a spot.

But many small towns are taking advantage of charter schools also. Graysville, Indiana opened Rural Community Academy in 2004 when their local school was slated to close. Since then, the school has grown to 150 students and some credit it with reinvigorating the community, saving the post office, and bringing several new businesses to the area.

Rural charters aren’t always opened to save a school, though. The Upper Carmen Public Charter School in Idaho was founded in 2005 “to complement the existing public school system by providing an alternative learning environment to enable more students from Lemhi County to be successful.” This school serves no more than 90 students and emphasizes personalized learning that allows students to progress at their own pace, rather than be grouped by age. Upper Carmen Charter School has consistently ranked among the top ten percent of schools in Idaho.

Asking if there are any good charter schools outside of major cities is like asking if there are any good restaurants outside of major cities. Of course there are. Teachers, parents, and community leaders with great ideas for educating kids are everywhere. Charter schools aren’t a perfect fit for every student, but they’re a great fit for the students they serve.

Susan Pendergrass is the Director of Education Policy at the Show-Me Institute in Missouri. This blog was originally posted on their Show-Me Daily blog.

One of the most compelling reasons offered at the time for developing new Common Core–aligned tests was that they would allow educators and policymakers to compare the effectiveness of schools across state lines. And nearly all states initially wanted in: At their inception, forty-six states originally joined one of the two consortia established to create common CCSS-aligned tests, PARCC (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Eight years down the road, however, consortia membership is faltering, and fewer than half of states remain members in either group.

A new resource released last month by Education First (in the form of PowerPoint slides) summarizes this dramatic rise and fall of consortia membership over the past decade, assesses the current state of state assessments, and identifies national trends to determine where the field is headed.

As the report describes, the once narrowing national testing landscape is rapidly diversifying: “Every year between 2013 and 2015, five to six states left PARCC and three states left Smarter Balanced.” States are instead opting to partner with vendors such as American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Pearson to develop their own tests, particularly for K–8 assessments. States are also increasingly moving to use the SAT or ACT as their high school accountability tests, despite serious concerns about whether these “aptitude” tests are well-aligned to state standards and contain sufficient accommodations for students with learning disabilities and English language learners. Still other states, such as Massachusetts and Louisiana, are opting to use assessments that comprise both state- and consortia-created test items.

This increasingly diversified landscape raises several concerns. For one, it makes it virtually impossible to compare schools’ student achievement results across the country. (The National Assessment of Educational Progress provides a regular snapshot on national, state, and large city performance, but can’t get more granular than that.) And because the vast majority of states are still implementing the Common Core State Standards or a close variant thereof, it’s also concerning that so many are walking away from tests that were explicitly designed to assess those standards—and that have been found, by Fordham and numerous others, to be high-quality, reflective of the most important content needed for college and career readiness in both ELA/literacy and mathematics, and more rigorous than prior state tests.

Nearly a decade after the creation of Common Core State Standards and accompanying consortia tests, the national assessment landscape is clearly still in flux. In addition to the dramatic decline in consortia membership in recent years, an additional “twenty-two states have nonconsortia assessment vendor contracts that expire in 2017 or 2018.” Education First’s report is therefore a timely, if cautionary, look at the rapidly evolving national testing landscape.

What’s not clear is whether the new tests are actually new—or just PARCC or Smarter Balanced in different packing. We also don’t know whether they are well-aligned to state standards—a critical gap in our understanding that should be filled pronto.

As we at Fordham have always stressed, good tests matter. Whether states are abandoning consortia tests for political, time, or cost-related considerations, it’s critical that replacements closely align to state learning standards, and that they’re are equally rigorous and, above all, high quality.

SOURCE: “Whatever Happened to All Those New and Better State Tests? The State of State Assessments,” Education First (February 2018).

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

A decade ago, the nation came to a consensus that all students should graduate from high school ready for college, career, and citizenship. Every state adopted standards that spelled out what “readiness” means and new assessments to measure students’ progress toward that goal. Unfortunately, graduation requirements were weakened, and many students are attaining diplomas without being of college-, career-, or civically-ready.

What can we do to ensure graduation means something? The debate and ideas generated by this 2018 Wonathhon brought out my personal wonkiness earned though experience as an educator, a school board member, a policymaker, and finally, a leader of an organization focused on the greater goal—success for all students. Lots of smart people have worthy ideas about how to make the shift. Some argue we need to advance a competency-based system that places value on what a student has learned—not whether they have sat in a school building for four years. I agree. Others have argued that attendance should count towards certifying graduation. Well, I also agree with that. The question is: Attendance in what? And still others have argued that what we really need is to shift away from our current system altogether in favor of personalized pathways and individualized education that puts the learner—not the school—in the center. All of these are important and promising recommendations, and we should explore them.

But even as we look towards innovative ideas, we should not forget the basics: high standards that communicate what kids need to know and be able to do, rich curricula, aligned high quality assessments, and great teachers. Yes, we can and should redesign the high school delivery model. And yes, we can and should create pathways that engage students. But we can’t backtrack on these fundamentals.

For a high school diploma to matter, we must recommit to giving all students the academic foundation necessary to complete advanced certifications or enroll in a postsecondary institution. This means we need to hold firm to high standards, whether they are the Common Core or others that are comparable in rigor. What they are called matters less than what they include: reading complex texts, writing using evidence, and doing meaningful mathematics to prepare one for college-credit-bearing courses.

But standards that sit on a shelf aren’t the end game. The next critical step is to ensure that curricula and coursework match the standards. In many states, coursework matching the rigor of the standards is not required for graduation. For example, most state standards include mathematics through algebra II, as well as some statistics. And yet in thirty-one states, students are not actually required to take those courses. And even when they are, too often the rigor of required courses doesn’t meet the rigor of the standards.  

Districts have an obligation to ensure that all students take the courses that will set them up for success. But they should also ensure the quality and consistency of courses, which they can accomplish in three critical ways.

First, curriculum matters, and districts must make good choices. This can be hard when every company claims alignment to college and career readiness and school boards have to make decisions based on little evidence. The good news is that, in recent years, organizations like Ed Reports have begun to help make sense of the curriculum landscape by a review process that cultivates quality curriculum. Savvy states like Louisiana are doing the same. Both of these resources can provide policymakers and teachers the tools they need to make informed decisions about quality and aligned curricula.

Second, districts and schools should take an extra step to ensure consistency of rigor; they should use end-of-course and/or other interim assessments as an external check to make sure all students—regardless of where they live—are getting exposed to the same level of rigorous content. Algebra II in D.C. should look like algebra II in New Jersey. And algebra II should look the same from D.C.’s Wilson High School to its Dunbar High School. Collectively, the field has been working towards this end for nearly two decades—and yet vast disparities continue to exist within and across districts. The data-based results of these assessments can help move the needle here because districts can use them to monitor schools’ delivery of content and certify that a student who passed a course actually learned the content and didn’t just accumulate seat time. Attendance matters, as others have pointed out. But if students aren’t attending meaningful courses with strong content, measuring (or counting) attendance is a poor proxy for measuring learning.

Third, beyond test scores, we must think creatively about how high school students demonstrate mastery of the content through performances of mastery before they meet graduation requirements. Graduation portfolios and presentations to community members have been implemented in the past with success. As a high school teacher, I served as a panel member for students as they presented their portfolios. Students had to share and explain their work and respond on their feet to questions from panelists. There was no gaming of this system. Either you were prepared, or you weren’t. And the public presentations provide clear evidence to community members about the quality of student work and the education that prepared them. Sure, this is a time-consuming process, but it can be another source of evidence that students are prepared to graduate. It also creates additional connections between students and adults, sending the clear message to students that they are part of a broader community, which can help motivate them and benefit their social and emotional wellbeing.

All young people deserve to be prepared for the next stage in their lives. The situation at D.C.’s Ballou High School makes clear that we as educators and public officials have fallen short. We owe it to students, their parents, and the public to get it right. Even as we explore differentiated diplomas and differentiated pathways in high school, let’s get back to fundamentals. Let’s focus on what is taught and measuring whether it is learned. That way, when we do redesign high schools, they will be built on a solid foundation—not just a house of cards.

COMPILER'S NOTE: Gadfly Bites is taking a break until Monday. See you next week.

1. By a vote of 11-4, the State Board of Education yesterday voted against supporting HB 512, the bill which would—among other things—consolidate the state’s K-12, higher ed, and workforce development apparatuses into one agency. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/13/18) Meanwhile, the Dispatch is time traveling back to look at who HAS supported HB 512, focusing on Fordham (complete with new PCA photo from last week!) and the leaders of several career tech education centers across the state. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/13/18)
    
2. CEO Krish Mohip tells Youngstown: I can’t quit you. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/13/18) Supe candidate Krish Mohip says to Boulder Valley: Well…. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/13/18) Meanwhile, editors in Boulder say: Hold up a sec. (Boulder Daily Camera, 3/10/18)
    
3. Back in the sports page: Cincinnati City Schools’ Board of Education is one of several entities who must sign off on any final deal to bring a professional soccer stadium to the city’s West End. This week, board members and other stakeholders discussed an offer or two on the table, but nothing was decided. The two sides remained some distance apart. Talks are ongoing, it seems. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/12/18)
    
4. Speaking of school boards, Dayton’s board this week heard the acting superintendent’s school closure/consolidation/rightsizing proposal. Several interesting things in there, as you might imagine. I was intrigued by the idea that some of the district’s “alternative education and in-lieu-of-suspension programs” would move into the same building in which the district administration and board are housed. Kind of like having to scoot your chair next to the teacher’s desk, I guess. (Dayton Daily News, 3/13/18)
    
5. Finally today, here’s a look at the Urban Leadership Development Program, designed to help the best and brightest teachers in Toledo City Schools move up the ladder into district administration. Props, I figure, must be given to the district for the effort to bolster the administration side, but what of the teaching corps? As a wise person once told me: For every awesome, experienced teacher you take out of a classroom in this way, you need to find another teacher to replace her. No word here on how new teacher recruitment is going in Toledo these days, but I have my suspicions. Hybrid teacher-leaders, anyone? (Toledo Blade, 3/12/18)

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

Exactly two years ago, in March 2016, I was in the trenches as a high school special education teacher. I would leap from classroom to classroom, borrowing them from the general education teachers during their prep time. I was trying to balance my job as an expert in mathematics, life science, and physical science with learning the ropes of classroom management and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) creation and implementation. I was exhausted and determined, but in the end, I didn’t have what it takes. One day, my graduate school professors realized I was more of a one-track mind, better at working one-on-one than a classroom full of kids. The next day, I left the trenches for good, leaving myself exposed but confident in using my experiences to shape our nation’s education policies.

If schools are to raise outcomes for every student, they need to provide more one-on-one counseling interactions that leave them with a set of actionable goals. Students should graduate high school based on them receiving a base-level liberal arts education and achieving a self-created action plan, akin to the IEPs we provide students in special education. Requiring these personal development plans would mean that schools are responsible for providing the resources for everyone’s success. I know all too well that as kind-hearted as we are in the education field, often the only thing that compels a school to offer more resources to a student is the menacing legal document of the IEP that’s ready to drop a gavel of them.

Graduation scandals where half the students are absent for more than three months cannot happen in places where counselors are actively building relationships with their students. In my work as a college counselor at a smaller secondary school, I am fortunate to have the chance to build detailed and personalized plans that address personal ambitions and tie them to specific academic and career interests. For instance, when students are interested in journalism, their plan might include taking a creative writing course, publishing on Medium, dream journaling, and submitting an entry to the Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest. Entrepreneurially-minded students always pull my mind in different directions. Their plan can include actions as varied as starting a store on Etsy, researching agricultural trends, taking AP Economics, learning computer programming, or investing in cryptocurrencies.

For high school to be as useful and enriching as possible, guidance counseling needs to be put at the forefront of the graduation requirements debate. Research has found a correlation between strong college counseling and academic performance.

According to the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), the average student-to-school-counselor ratio is around 480 to 1, well above the recommended ratio of 250 to 1. The hesitation to add more counselors comes from their misguided lumping with “administrative costs” and the common trope of school counselors being random people who just stumbled onto the job. In the episode “Morty’s Mind Blowers” from the television show “Rick and Morty,” Morty says, “I’m sure he’s qualified to be a guidance counselor. I mean, who isn’t?” And to be fair, I’m probably not helping the cause by going into the profession right after my gig as a teacher.

In reality, counselors are experts, and lower student-to-counselor ratio is key to making sure students feel they have a place within their school. An expertly trained person can come up with a plan for anyone. Schools with an action plan requirement will be doing their part to make sure that the “average student” is getting serviced when they are often overlooked in favor of highly talented and high behavioral kids.

In the case of my community, the counselors are a major driver for students to choose the smaller charter school I work at. One eleventh grader said, “The teachers here give you more attention. They prepare you and help you meet your goal. If I have to say the people that affected me the most, it would be [the counselors] Mrs. Chavez and Ms. Brown. I like that I can really talk to them. They would encourage me to go far away for college and to not let the money stop me from going. Now I’m not scared to go to an out-of-state college.”

On a policy level, the way the plans would work is that each year, students will be required to create a set of goals (at least one each) in the realms of mental health, wellness, education, and career. These realms are pulled from the American Counseling Association (ACA) governing council’s official definition of counseling. The plans created from ninth to eleventh grade would be non-binding, although they would be reviewed together with their high school counselor. That way a student can put in their plan that they want to sign up for the talent show and take first place at the Battle of the Bands and not be afraid to fail. High school graduation would be contingent on passing the liberal arts curriculum and meeting the goals outlined in the twelfth grade action plan.

To ensure transparency and accountability, every senior’s plan would be uploaded onto the high school’s website with the names blacked out. Community members, taxpayers, and outside agencies would be able to track what students are doing and what directions they tend to head towards. Every graduating senior would also create a resume that’s published publicly in a lookbook in PDF format on the schools’ website.

It’s my hope that as this idea continues to get scrutinized, policymakers realize how realistic and helpful it is. Rather than fearing a nightmare scenario where a girl puts in her plan that she wants to literally be Cinderella, fails, and then sues the district for a million dollars, I would like to have faith in the power of expertise. After a healthy dialogue, I expect there to be guidelines as to what constitutes a goal that is binding for graduation and legal purposes.

And if there was anyone handwringing when reading this piece, I would like to bring us back to why this matters. In this digital age, all too often “personalized learning” has come to mean a software program with an intelligent algorithm. We can’t forget the original personalized learning: one-on-one, human-to-human interactions. High school counseling, done by a person, is still important. I have seen with my eyes the power of counseling and creating action plans. It's time that every high school student in America sees it too.