A perennial question for high schoolers is what they plan to do after they graduate. But for many students, the answer is elusive—not because they don’t care to find it, but because they lack the information and support needed to do so.

Don’t just take my word for it. A 2023 national survey of high school students found that only 13 percent felt fully prepared to choose their path after high school. A whopping 78 percent said they believe it’s important to determine career plans before they graduate, yet roughly half have actually received career exploration assistance of some kind. For example, 40 percent of surveyed students said their high schools provided programs to help them explore potential career paths, while just 33 percent said they were provided with questionnaires or tests to help them uncover their interests.

Ohio should be an exception. Since the 2015–16 school year, state law has required public schools to establish policies that specify how they plan to provide career advising to students in grades six through twelve, as well as how they will “prepare students for their transition from high school to their post-secondary destinations.” State law also mandates that every student in grades nine through twelve have a graduation plan that maps their academic pathway to a diploma.

And yet, far too many Ohio students are in the same boat as their national peers. In an interview with The 74 earlier this year, the director of Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce (DEW), Steve Dackin, noted that most kids are “at a deficit” when it comes to figuring out their futures: “If you ask a kid, ‘what do you want to do when you get out of high school?’ they’re void of much information about what’s available.” Meanwhile, a recent survey of Ohio parents found that only 39 percent on average are extremely confident that their child will be well equipped to succeed in the workforce.

To their credit, state leaders are taking steps toward correcting this problem. In his recent state of the state address, Governor DeWine called on the legislature to “make a very simple fix in statute to insert career planning into existing graduation plan requirements.” While there are several ways to accomplish this promising idea (check out Fordham’s suggestion, for example), implementation of any kind will be difficult unless state leaders also expand schools’ capacity.

Although Ohio provides career awareness and exploration funds, public schools can spend those dollars on a wide variety of things. They may not cover career planning and advising services, and might not be enough[1] to address schools’ capacity problems. To help solve the problem, policymakers could set aside funds in the upcoming state budget to establish a career planning and advising grant. The grant would be designed to increase local capacity to provide comprehensive, consistent, and personalized career advising and planning support for students. Funding would be available to all public schools—including traditional districts, charters, STEM schools, and JVSDs—as well as nonprofits and partnerships (more on this below). And like the state did with its CTE construction and equipment grants, the application process should be competitive.

Of course, if there’s anything the pandemic has taught us, it’s that throwing money toward promising ideas doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. To ensure that this program accomplishes its goal, policymakers should establish very clear guardrails around how the money can be spent. Here are a few examples:

• Dedicated career exploration staff. If current career advising efforts are lackluster because public schools don’t have the staff to provide services to students, then grant funding could cover the cost of hiring dedicated staff to provide those services. It’s important, however, that money is only made available for full- or part-time positions that focus solely on career planning. Schools should be prohibited from spending these funds on supplementing salaries of existing staff or hiring additional staff who will be responsible for duties other than career advising. Schools are free to offer services via their current staff. But the point of this particular grant is to expand and improve career planning, thus the dollars should be limited to paying for dedicated staff.

• Programming provided through industry and community partnerships. The answer to school capacity woes isn’t always hiring more in-house staff. Sometimes, the answer is branching out and enlisting the help of those outside the education sector. Consider the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium, a group of public, private, education, and nonprofit organizations that helps ensure every student in the Cleveland region designs a career plan, and partners with schools to provide career-based learning opportunities. Grant funding should be available for existing partnerships like this, as well as for new ones that might need some financial assistance to get up and running. Individual nonprofits with promising proposals and a partnership agreement with at least one district or school should also be eligible to apply.

• Career interest and aptitude tests. A crucial part of helping students explore careers is giving them the opportunity to figure out their interests and talents. Providing funding for schools to pay for assessments like YouScience could go a long way toward providing students with personalized guidance.

Guardrails like this can help ensure that the grant program is student-focused. For further assurance—and to gauge the impact of the program—the state should review how schools spend their grant. Schools that use these funds to hire dedicated staff, as well as partnerships between schools and nonprofits, should be required to demonstrate how many students they served and the number of hours of advising and support that each student received. They should also be required to provide a detailed summary of the career-connected content and learning opportunities that students were exposed to. Schools that use grant funding to purchase career interest and aptitude tests should be required to demonstrate how many students took those tests, and identify the support and guidance they provided to students based on their results.

Gathering this information—as well as any available data on outcomes, like how many students created career plans, enrolled in CTE courses, or participated in work-based learning as a result of the guidance they received—will help state leaders determine if and how to continue funding this program. If students are benefitting, lawmakers should keep the program going.

The DeWine administration has made improving career pathways a priority. Adding career planning to existing graduation plan requirements is a good next step, but only if state leaders ensure that it doesn’t become a box-checking exercise. The best way to do that is to build infrastructure around career advising and guidance. And a grant program aimed at expanding local capacity would be a great place to start. 

The jury remains out regarding the true impact of pre-K enrollment on early elementary outcomes. Some research finds a positive impact, some a negative, and much of it shows the fading out of impacts by third grade or soon thereafter. A new report by researcher Hyunwoo Yang adds to the evidence by looking at Wisconsin 4K, a long-standing pre-K program funded and administered by state and local education agencies and offered in public elementary schools and standalone childcare centers. 

Under this program, all four-year-olds in the state are eligible to participate and can attend pre-K free of charge. However, districts may opt out of providing programming in any form, leaving thousands of eligible families without a convenient location. Those families can open-enroll in another district, but spaces are not guaranteed to non-residents and there are costs associated. A number of different scheduling options (including full-day, full-week, part-day, and part-week) provide families with flexible choices to meet various needs and to help providers run their programs in the most cost-effective manner.

According to research-recommended standards for ECE policies in the United States, Wisconsin 4K is considered “moderately high quality.” The state has established standards for teacher qualifications (bachelor’s degree and an elementary or regular education license) and learning benchmarks and set out some guidelines on content, including coverage of ten subjects in required curricula (including science, health, social studies, and art—at an appropriate level for youngsters of course), and the requirement that 30 percent of the curriculum should comprise reading and English language arts. Beyond that, program structure is variable from site to site and is described as mostly “play-based.” 4K sites can be district-run or contracted out to private providers—and can take place in district buildings or standalone sites—although districts are ultimately responsible for all programming regardless of form. As of 2018, 98 percent of districts offered 4K in some form, and approximately 75 percent of four-year-olds were enrolled. The vast majority of students attended part time and fewer than five days per week (not surprising, since only 2 percent of districts even offered a full-day, all-week program). The report cites data from the 2013–2014 school year (the last one under study for new 4K enrollment) showing the average per-child expenditure was $5,618. Newer numbers not included in the study cite a steady decrease in that average since 2017.

Yang looks at statewide administrative and student achievement data from nearly 300 districts that launched and ran 4K programs between the 2001–2002 and 2013–2014 school years. Unfortunately, precise enrollment data are not available, but Yang approximates based on the following year’s kindergarten enrollment, with appropriate cautions issued. Ditto for socioeconomic-status data, which are not mandatory for part-time 4K families to provide and thus is extrapolated based on the following year’s kindergarten demographics. The analysis likely underestimates the actual number of low-income students participating in 4K in each cohort.

Student test score data come from annual administrations of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) to third grade students each fall. WKCE testing covers more subjects, but Yang’s analysis sticks with math and reading only. Students are grouped into the four WKCE achievement categories—advanced, proficient, basic, and below basic. Overall, the data encompass 292 districts with 3,495 year-by-district observations over twelve years. Since districts implemented Wisconsin 4K programing at different times, approximately 59 percent of the observations fell into a post-treatment period (after students had participated in 4K), while 41 percent were captured prior to 4K implementation. Yang reports his impact findings at the district level due to the near universality of 4K programming, allowing him to capture any spillover effects on non-treated students, which are difficult to capture at the student level.

His analysis finds that implementation of 4K boosted district reading scores by 0.091 of a standard deviation (SD) in the model without controls (approximately a 15 percent increase in the number of students who achieved proficient and advanced levels of reading compared to pre-treatment outcomes) and 0.104 SD in the model with controls (controlling for, among other things, year fixed effects). That translates to a 20 percent increase in the number of students who achieved proficient and advanced levels of reading. Positive impacts were strongest among low-income students, at 0.165 and 0.177 SD with and without controls, respectively, equivalent to a 40 percent increase of such students achieving proficiency and advanced levels. There was, however, no statistically significant impact on reading achievement among higher-income students. The positive effect of 4K was also much greater for the reading scores of Hispanic students (0.323 and 0.333 SD with and without controls, respectively, equivalent to a 50 percent increase) than any other racial or ethnic category. There were, however, no statistically-significant effects on math achievement for 4K students, no matter how the data were sliced.

Caveats cited by Yang include the lack of data on what preschool experiences non-4K students are participating in and what other enrichment part-time 4K students take part in when not involved in the program. Additionally, the non-standardization of curriculum and programming (along with other unobserved differences from site to site) makes it impossible to suggest what specific mechanisms are driving the impacts. This research also does not address the possibility of positive impacts fading out beyond third grade. However, the positive points of Wisconsin 4K likely include the near-universal availability, some strong curricular features, and the cost-effectiveness of delivering programming in this manner. More evidence is still required for the jury to come to a verdict on the longer-term impacts of pre-K education.

SOURCE: Hyunwoo Yang, “The Effects of Wisconsin’s Universal Prekindergarten Program on Third-Grade Academic Achievement,” American Educational Research Journal (September 2024).

Author update (10/11/24): Since this piece was posted, sources have indicated Canton’s kindergarten data were misstated on its report card—a possibility acknowledged in this piece. The district's report card, as well as its elementary school report cards, now have “watermarks” flagging the data reporting error and indicating that the error may have impacted the ratings. One of the policy issues raised in this piece—that schools could implement weaker assessments to avoid accountability—remains a significant concern. However, it does not appear that Canton has done this. The original text of this piece remains unchanged, but the title has been revised (it was originally titled “Canton’s early literacy data raise questions about kindergarten assessment”).

Last week, my colleague Jessica Poiner published a terrific analysis about the early literacy results from the 2023–24 school report cards. The entire piece is worth a read. Yet one striking data point deserves additional attention, as it suggests inconsistencies in the way districts assess and report kindergarten students’ literacy skills. The result of these inconsistencies could be preventing children with reading deficiencies from accessing the supports they need to become strong readers.

The table below is from Jessica’s analysis and shows some districts’ year-to-year improvement rate among students in grades K–3 who are struggling in reading. All of these high-poverty, urban districts reported data on this measure—except for Canton City Schools. The note at the bottom of the table explains the omission, referring to a provision (loophole, if you will) in state law that exempts districts and schools from this measure when more than 90 percent of kindergarteners are on track based on a fall diagnostic literacy assessment.

Table 1. Results for the improving K–3 literacy measure on state report cards

Given research finding significant early childhood language gaps by socioeconomic status and the large number of economically disadvantaged students that Canton serves, it’s shocking to see that the district was exempt. But it’s true: Canton’s early literacy data reveal a whopping 97 percent of kindergartners were on track last fall, thus allowing the district to be exempt from the improvement measure. In contrast, a more realistic 53 and 49 percent of Cleveland and Columbus kindergarten students were identified as on track. 

Canton is a notable outlier among the eighty-three districts that were exempt in 2023–24. It is the only urban district to receive an exemption out of fifty-five such districts statewide (including the ten listed above plus several other inner-ring suburban and small-city districts). The district is also one of just twelve exempt districts that posted a third-grade reading proficiency rate of less than 70 percent. In fact, Canton’s 47 percent proficiency rate was the third lowest of the exempt districts and thirty-first lowest among Ohio’s 605 districts. 

We don’t know what exactly is behind the district’s unexpectedly high on-track rate. One possibility is a reporting error. While there is no “watermark” in the data file signifying concerns from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce about Canton’s literacy numbers, this possibility certainly warrants further exploration. If this is the case, the error would have occurred not only at the district level, but also in Canton’s nine elementary schools, which all reported kindergarten on-track rates of 90 percent or above.

Another explanation is that Canton actually had 97 percent of entering kindergartners legitimately on track in literacy. If true, this would be an incredible feat on the part of the city’s parents, caregivers, and preschools that should be cause for celebration. Yet in 2022–23, Canton reported just 21 percent of its kindergarten class was on track in reading, and as noted above, the district’s 2023–24 data are quite the outlier. The near-universal identification of on-track kindergartners also deviates from Canton’s language and literacy results on the statewide Kindergarten Readiness Assessment—but whose results the district chose not to use for the purpose of on and off track identification.[1] On that assessment, just 22 percent of Canton kindergarteners were deemed on track.

A more troubling possibility is that Canton is exploiting the kindergarten diagnostic assessment, perhaps in a misguided effort to avoid accountability for improving students’ reading skills. Recall that districts are permitted to select among more than a dozen state-approved assessments. Canton’s sky-high on-track rate calls into question which one it used—unfortunately, that’s not reported in state datasets—and whether the district has recently discovered a test that is more apt to identify students as being on track (or an assessment with a low “cut score”).

If the assessment-based explanation holds, Canton wouldn’t be the only district that may have identified a diagnostic that provides an overly rosy picture of children’s literacy skills. As the table below illustrates, several other districts with low third grade reading proficiency rates identify large majorities of kindergartners as on track. While not quite reaching the 90 percent exemption threshold, Dayton Public Schools identified 76 percent of its kindergartners as on track even though just 41 percent of its third graders achieved reading proficiency in 2023–24. To be sure, a lot happens between kindergarten and third grade, and these are different student cohorts. But discrepancies of this magnitude raise questions about some districts’ choice in diagnostic assessment. These types of disparities are evident in the prior year’s data too and—as displayed in the table below—when comparing districts’ on-track rates on a self-selected diagnostic versus those based on the statewide Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, both of which were given to the same cohort of students in the fall of 2023.

Table 2: Districts with large discrepancies in kindergarten on-track rates (fall) and third grade reading proficiency rates, 2023–24

This is all more than just a data-quality concern. These results also have implications for how schools serve children struggling to read.

First, as the case of Canton illustrates, districts and schools can duck report-card driven accountability for improving struggling students’ literacy skills based on results from the fall kindergarten assessment. This eases the pressure on schools and could weaken their efforts to improve literacy among children who need extra help. Canton’s free pass on the improvement measure may have also inflated its Early Literacy report card rating, leaving parents and the community with a false sense of progress. The district received two stars on this component last year, a notch above its one-star rating in 2021–22 when improvement was included.

Second, children erroneously deemed “on track” are unlikely to receive extra supports even though they have significant need for intervention. Under Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee, schools must implement—with parental involvement—a reading improvement and monitoring plan for children in grades K–3 who are off track. Students who are identified as on track (including the hundreds of kindergartners in Canton last year) are not entitled to such supports.[2]

An honest assessment of children’s language and literacy skills is the first step in helping them become proficient readers. The most recent data from Canton and several other districts raise questions about how some schools identify children with reading deficiencies. State policymakers should make sure districts implement assessments that provide accurate information about literacy skills, so that all children receive the support they need to become good readers.

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1. Aaron Churchill is among the voices discussing state test score data and how fast (or slow) some states are in releasing that information to families and the public. Ohio has historically come out on the better side of the scale, but in 2023, as Aaron explains, we upped the game by requiring the state to give parents access to their own children’s test scores by June 30 of each year. He suggests that advocacy and parent pressure played a role in that important change. “There was a lot of understanding that students had lost ground during the pandemic,” he surmises, “and parents have info to make decisions for their own kids and whether it requires summer school.” Pity the parents in states who are still waiting for last year’s test scores today. (EdWeek, 10/4/24)
   
   

2. Aaron also opined about the scourge of chronic student absenteeism in the Dispatch this weekend, offering some sobering data and a number of good suggestions on how to combat the problem at the state and local levels. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/4/24) The Dispatch also covered the announcement from last week that the governor and Ohio Department of Education and Workforce have a goal of reducing chronic absenteeism by 50 percent over the next five years. The piece also notes what the state is doing already. This includes attendance guides and intervention strategies for families, a focus on well-being and mental health resources, and the highly-touted Stay in the Game! initiative. We also learn that Columbus City Schools often holds events at schools with the Columbus Crew (that’s a professional soccer team; I looked it up) like “clap-ins,” pep rallies, and community meet-ups. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/6/24)
   
   

3. Aaron’s op-ed and the Dispatch’s reportage only generally cite the coronavirus pandemic as the cause of our current super high chronic absenteeism rates. But leave it to Cleveland.com to really spell things out. To wit: “Since the pandemic, families have kept their children home for a variety of reasons that didn’t commonly result in absences before, including for minor ailments, mental health days, or travel that families previously reserved for school holidays. At the beginning of the pandemic, before a vaccine was available, health officials urged the public to watch for signs of the coronavirus. People stayed home if they had been exposed, said Rebecca School, an elementary school counselor in Bedford City.” The piece terms this a “culture shift” and the problem at hand is to shift the culture back again. “One thing,” says counselor School, “is relearning, both as parents and as students, that if we don’t have a fever, if we’re not vomiting, we might not need to stay home.” She also suggests, if I read this correctly, that situations which have been termed mental health crises are often rather “uncomfortable feelings” which “don’t last forever.” Her school leaders are working to “reassure parents that they can partner with the school counselors and other social, emotional and mental health professionals, both in the schools and outside, to help those students learn how to be resilient and gain some of the conflict management skills that we all need.” Talk about a cultural shift. (Cleveland.com, 10/6/24)
   
   

4. There’s a lot going on in this story and you’ll probably have to read it all to see the various pieces in play here. Generally, it falls under our topic of the day, which is “culture shift”. But more specifically, it is (in my mind) about how the community feels toward certain high school students/teenagers. Long story short: One branch of the Dayton Public Library has changed its hours to close up shop every weekday between 2:30 and 5:00 pm to, very literally, keep Belmont High School students from hanging out there after school. This was the response decided upon after a fight among students on the library property back in September. Almost nobody is happy with the solution, it seems, but something big is going to have to change in the culture before those doors are unlocked again. Given the options presented so far, I personally don’t have a lot of hope for a quick resolution. (Dayton Daily News, 10/7/24)

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Rose Horowitch’s article in The Atlantic is getting lots of buzz. Titled “The elite college students who can't read books,” it lays the blame primarily on high schools for not assigning novels to their students, shifting instead to brief excerpts or short-form writing activities.

Horowitch certainly identifies a serious cause for concern, but her piece deserves a “close read” nonetheless, especially because it’s already leading some advocates to dunk on education reform. So now, with apologies to Matt Yglesias, my seven thoughts about elite college students who can’t read books.

1. High school and college kids should read books! Great books of classic literature, in their entirety. Horowitch and the English professors she interviews make a great case for this. As she writes in her conclusion, “To understand the human condition, and to appreciate humankind’s greatest achievements, you still need to read The Iliad—all of it.” Yes, 100 percent yes.

2. The evidence that high schools aren’t assigning books is thin. It seems plausible enough, given the American education system’s nonstop penchant for lowering expectations. But almost everything Horowitch surfaces is anecdotal—mostly interviews with college professors who relay their own conversations with students who report not having been assigned full-length novels in high schools. “No comprehensive data exist on this trend,” she acknowledges, as she alludes to college students who can’t focus long enough to read novels or even poems.

She asserts that “middle and high schools have stopped asking” students to read whole books, but the only evidence she offers is another Atlantic article that’s also full of anecdotes but no data—and nothing at all about high schools. Similarly, she later writes that “middle- and high-school kids appear to be encountering fewer and fewer books in the classroom, as well,” and links to a third Atlantic article—this one about an elementary school program in New York City that downplays reading whole books. She strikes out a third time when she points to an Education Week survey—which at least has data but, again, nothing on high schools.

In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey of about 300 third-to-eighth-grade educators, only 17 percent said they primarily teach whole texts. An additional 49 percent combine whole texts with anthologies and excerpts. But nearly a quarter of respondents said that books are no longer the center of their curricula.

The Associated Press tackled this very same topic a few weeks ago and acknowledged that “There’s little data on how many books are assigned by schools.” As the AP and Horowitch both report, we do know that kids are reading less for fun outside of school (mirroring adult declines in reading). But the idea that high school English teachers aren’t assigning books to students is, at this point, based on an assemblage of anecdotes and conjecture.

3. Many Ivy League students went to fancy private schools, so be careful about blaming public school reforms for this problem. Horowitch admits this, acknowledging that private schools “produce a disproportionate share of elite college students.” But then she claims—again without evidence!—that private schools “have been slower to shift away from reading complete volumes.” She does at least fess up to reading just one single novel in the Jane Austen class she took at her own prep school five years ago.

4. Don’t blame Common Core. You knew she would go there, and she did, writing that the multi-state standards “emphasized informational texts.” That’s true—but as some of us have been trying to explain for more than a dozen years now, that was intended as guidance across the entire curriculum. The intent was to tackle informational texts (including scholarly articles) in social studies and science, not in English class. I admit that the guidance got garbled in a classic example of the law of unintended consequences or what Daniel Patrick Moynihan might have called maximum feasible misunderstanding.

Still, it’s not too late for schools to examine their instructional materials for high school English and ditch them if they don’t focus sufficiently on novels. Education Reports could also do some good by only giving “green” reviews to products that promote reading full-length works (which may also include plays, epic poems, biographies, and more).

5. Don’t blame standardized testing and No Child Left Behind. Of course Horowitch went there, too. After these reforms, she claims, “teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages,” citing interviews with ed-school professors, “followed by questions about the author’s main idea—mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests.” I worry that this is happening too much in elementary and middle schools and shouldn’t be. But there’s very little accountability testing in high schools—usually just one English language arts exam over the course of all four years, and it’s often the ACT or the SAT, which aren’t required today by many colleges. So that’s a pretty slender reed on which to hang four years of poor instructional practice.

6. Do blame screens. Horowitch makes her most compelling argument here:  

Teenagers are constantly tempted by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the rigors of college coursework—then they get to college and the distractions keep flowing. “It’s changed expectations about what’s worthy of attention,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at UVA, told me. “Being bored has become unnatural.”

Note that screens, unlike Common Core or No Child Left Behind, impact private school students, too.

7. Do blame cheating. Perhaps the most surprising part of these discussions is how few people mention the many ways that kids can get away with not doing the reading and still get a good grade. This is not exactly new—we had Cliff’s Notes back in my day. But now kids have Sparknotes—in their pockets—along with YouTube videos that summarize book plots, ChatGPT to write their essays (or at least first drafts), and if push comes to shove, plenty of papers for sale on the open market. The problem, then, may not be that schools aren’t assigning books, but that students (even high-achieving ones) aren’t reading them, in part because cheating has become pervasive and socially acceptable.

—

In a way, I wish Horowitch was right that the problem is that high schools are no longer assigning books to students. That diagnosis lends itself to a fairly obvious solution: Start assigning books again! But if the problem is that assigned books go unread, that’s a much harder nut to crack. It means addressing grading, cheating, cellphones, and more—a comprehensive tough-love approach to schooling. Or we can just blame Common Core!

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Small win for charter school families in Columbus

After weeks of legal wrangling, Columbus City Schools announced on Wednesday that it would begin providing busing for 120 choice-using students whose declaration of “impractical to transport” is under mediation. Their service will finally start up (two months after the start of the school year) on Monday. However, district officials also issued a pretty clear warning that adding these kids to routes will definitely cause problems for other students already riding those buses. Translation: If your bus is late, it’s because of these school-choice students. Accel Schools’ Jarod Hawk told ABC 6 News that “We have had families who have lost their jobs because they have had to figure out transportation. That’s the biggest impact. We continue to have families that have exhausted their resources.” Here’s hoping that some of those families’ lives get a little simpler come Monday. Meanwhile, the district also responded to the Ohio Attorney General’s lawsuit in the matter with a motion to dismiss, arguing that it has “no legal merit”.

More parent voices

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in partnership with 50CAN and Edge Research, this week released the results of a parent survey on the topic of educational opportunity. Among the many important insights, the survey finds that Ohio’s investments in school choice have made an impact for parents. More than two-thirds of parents statewide believe they have a choice in schools for their children, and this is especially true of low-income parents. Even better: Two-thirds of parents if they had the opportunity would choose the same school again. The findings provide not only a unique window into the opportunities available to families in our state right now but allow us to compare those answers to parents across our region and across the country.

Great news from Iowa

While Great Oaks High School and Career Center in Des Moines has been serving students since August, the official ribbon cutting ceremony had to wait until last week, but the wait was worth it. Iowa governor Kim Reynolds attended the event, along with community leaders and school families. “I could just tell from that first meeting that this was going to happen, that this was a partnership that was meant to be, and we were going to do everything that we could to make sure that we make that happen,” she said as part of her remarks. Great Oaks (affiliated with Ohio’s Oakmont Education) is the first school of its kind in Iowa, creating personalized education plans that helps students get back on track to finish high school and secure a career after graduation.

The view from West Virginia

Last week, West Virginia House Bill 227 passed out of the House Education Committee on a vote of 12 to 6. It would, among other things, allow charter schools to apply to the state School Building Authority for funding to help purchase a new building. The bill next heads to the House floor for a vote, which could happen next week as the second special legislative session of 2024 winds down.

You’re invited!

On Thursday, October 17, Senior Research Fellow for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and professor at The Ohio State University, Stéphane Lavertu, will be presenting his analysis about the impacts of Ohio’s Quality Community School Support Fund. Has the additional funding helped to strengthen charter schools’ instructional staff and improve student learning? Or has the program fallen short? Join us at the Athletic Club of Columbus to find out. Doors open at 8:30 am – with a light breakfast available – and the program begins at 9:00 am. More info and a registration link can be found here.

*****

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1. All the bad news on chronic student absenteeism recently has gotten the attention of Governor Mike DeWine and Department of Education and Workforce Director Steve Dackin. Yesterday, they announced a statewide goal to cut chronic absenteeism at Ohio schools in half over the next five years. There are no specific actions enumerated to meet that goal just yet, but Gongwer quotes a media statement from our own Aaron Churchill on the topic, where he suggests state officials need to “reestablish a clear expectation of daily attendance” and work with parents to improve attendance. (Gongwer Ohio, 10/3/24)
   
   

2. Of course, transportation plays a huge part in school attendance. And that is still an issue here in Columbus (and elsewhere), many weeks after the district was sued over denial of bus service to a swathe of charter, private, and STEM school students. Yesterday, Columbus City Schools announced that it will transport 120 of these students whose “impractical to transport” designation is under mediation. Their service will finally start up (two months after the start of the school year) on Monday. However, district officials warn that adding these kids to routes will definitely cause problems for other students already on those routes. Translation: If your bus is late, it’s because of these school-choice students. Charming. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/3/24)
   
   

3. Add to the list of concerns for many Columbus City Schools parents: A lack of quality education and classroom safety for their children with special needs who attend school in the district. You can check out their ongoing concerns and worrisome stories—as well as the district’s less-than-helpful (YMMV) response—in this piece. (ABC6 News, Columbus, 10/3/24)
   
   

4. In the story above, one parent threatens to take her child out of Columbus City Schools if their special education services don’t improve ASAP. It gladdens my heart to know that this is an ultimatum with real teeth: Mom has several other educational choices to consider because she lives in Ohio. These include the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship and the Ohio Autism Scholarship—private education voucher programs especially geared to help her son get what he needs. She probably doesn’t know it—so quiet was the announcement—but the trial that threatens to end all voucher programs in Ohio has been postponed from November 4, 2024 to an unspecified date in 2025. Which is good news for everyone. (Gongwer Ohio, 10/2/24)
   
   

5. Still swirling around—and getting nastier—the story of problematic potty policies in Columbus City Schools’ high schools. According to students and parents at Whetstone High School, the district responded to the initial report with some not-very-subtle “don’t be a narc” language directed at school families who originally aired their concerns to the press. Not to be outdone, students and parents at other district schools were emboldened to tell their own stories, some of which sound even crappier than the originals. Call me a toileting traditionalist, but in my estimation, by the time you get to “security guard escorts” and students with UTIs, you’ve already lost control of the narrative and the only correct response is “Our bad; we’ll fix that right away.” But what do I know? (NBC4 News, Columbus, 10/3/24)

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One of the most pressing challenges facing American education is closing achievement gaps. Beginning with the Coleman Report released in 1966, analysts have documented large disparities in academic outcomes based on students’ backgrounds. Depending on how the gap is measured—whether by socioeconomic status or race/ethnicity and along which assessments—researchers today estimate that less-advantaged pupils are on average anywhere from three to five grade levels behind their peers.

While there are pockets of success—particularly among exceptional public charter schools—U.S. schools overall have a disappointing track record in addressing the achievement gap. In a 2020 paper, Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek and colleagues find that, although gaps by students’ socioeconomic status (specifically based on parental education and at-home resources) have slightly narrowed over the past four decades, they are not closing at a fast enough pace. They conclude that, at this rate, “it would take another century and a half to completely close the gap.”

We must do better. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds need the same level of knowledge and skills as their counterparts to succeed after high school. That’s why political leaders in both parties—including presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama—have called closing achievement gaps the civil rights issue of our time.

Unfortunately, the pandemic widened these gaps and reversed much of the progress that had been made. Ohio and other states have their work cut out to accelerate learning and ensure that all students achieve at high levels. This piece examines where Ohio stands in terms of achievement gaps on state exams and whether any post-pandemic progress is being made. The focus is on the state’s performance index scores, a composite measure of achievement on all state exams that weights higher test scores more heavily. This measure provides a broader picture of achievement on state tests than proficiency rates, which focus more narrowly on clearing the proficiency bar. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provide further perspective on Ohio’s achievement gaps—versus national and over longer timespans—and we’ll look at those when the latest data are released in early 2025.

Figure 1 displays performance index scores by the various student groups delineated in federal law. As indicated by the blue columns, pre-pandemic (2018–19) achievement gaps are clearly evident. The scores of Black and Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, and students with disabilities fell well below those of Asian/Pacific Islander and White students, as well as the statewide average (all students). The orange columns represent the most recent scores from 2023–24, and show persistently wide achievement gaps.

Figure 1: Performance index scores by subgroup, 2018–19 to 2023–24

Compared to the 2018–19 pre-pandemic baseline, achievement gaps have grown. As indicated by the figure below, American Indian or Alaskan Native,[1] Black, and Hispanic students, as well as students with disabilities, have suffered larger test-score declines. The performance index scores of Black students, for instance, are 6.9 percent lower in 2023–24 than in 2018–19, whereas the White student loss is 2.6 percent. The larger decline in Black scores has thus widened the Black-White achievement gap relative to the pre-pandemic baseline.

Figure 2: Percent change in performance index scores, 2018–19 (pre-pandemic) to 2023–24

Turning to a focus on post-pandemic trends, we begin to see some hopeful signs. Figure 3 below zeros in on the results of the lower-achieving student groups. Here, we observe steady post-pandemic improvements among economically disadvantaged students,[2] English learners, and Black students relative to their 2021–22 baselines (orange columns). Less improvement, however, is visible among Hispanic students and students with disabilities.

Figure 3: Performance index scores by at-risk subgroup, 2018–19 to 2023–24

The faster post-pandemic progress of Black, economically disadvantaged, and English learner student groups is more apparent when we look at the improvement in scores from 2021–22 to 2023–24. Scores for English learners rose the fastest during this period—up 7.5 percent—with economically disadvantaged and Black students close behind (+5.8 and 5.0 percent, respectively). These rates of improvement exceed those of their more advantaged peers and the statewide average. Thus, achievement gaps for these groups have somewhat narrowed after the widening that occurred during the pandemic.

Figure 4: Percent change in performance index scores, 2021–22 (post-pandemic) to 2023–24

* * *

The 2023–24 data present a mix of good and bad news. First and foremost, they remind us of the urgent need to significantly raise the achievement of Ohio’s most vulnerable student groups. For Ohio leaders, there remains a clear moral imperative to work towards ensuring that all students can read, write, and do math proficiently.

Yet there are also signs of progress. The faster post-pandemic improvements in the scores of economically disadvantaged and Black students is notable and may reflect the impact of federal Covid relief funding, much of which was directed to high-need, urban districts. (Vlad Kogan’s recent analysis suggests that these dollars slightly boosted math achievement after the massive pandemic setbacks.) It might also reflect the steadily improving—and, as of late, better funded—urban charter schools that serve primarily disadvantaged students. It may even be an early sign that Ohio’s renewed focus on early literacy is already yielding some academic gains (and note that third grade reading proficiency was up in all of the Ohio Eight urban districts).

Of course, more still must be done to keep the needle moving in the right direction. Federal Covid relief aid will soon dry up, and state legislators will need to seek creative ways that enable schools to prioritize academics, preserve effective programs, and retain high-performing teachers. Chronic absenteeism remains far too high—especially in Ohio’s urban communities—and state and local leaders need to push harder for regular school attendance. Finally, state policymakers must continue to hold schools accountable for academic results—and they need to press for changes when schools continually fall short of performance goals. 

Exceptionally-high-performing schools have proven that achievement gaps can be overcome. But closing the gap at a system-wide level has proven elusive. It will take a relentless focus on strong academics to ensure that all Ohio students, no matter their background, acquire the skills they need for success in life.  

In some circles today, it seems that following a teacher’s directions has become passé and cussing out teachers, tearing up furniture, and hallway brawls are all the rage. Worse, it seems that that’s OK with many policymakers and politicians. This year, California’s Senate Bill 274, which prohibits schools from administering suspensions for “willful defiance,” goes into effect. Since 2019, policies to limit the use of suspensions have passed in seventeen states.

Meanwhile, individual stories abound of classroom violence, disorder, and mayhem. Several representative surveys have found that such anecdotes are representative, not outliers. Rates of student misbehavior—including verbal harassment and physical aggression toward both teachers and fellow students—remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Whether or not the deconstruction of behavior codes caused a spike in such behavior remains unknown. Pandemic-era disruptions, broader societal disorder and crime rates, and social media are also plausible explanations.

Whatever the cause, the response by numerous activists, journalists, and policy types is to posit discipline reform as the proper solution for the uptick in misbehavior. For present purposes, we’ll define such reform as any policy that pushes schools away from punitive discipline. Stop punishing children. Talk to them, pursue “restorative justice,” or ignore their behavior. But never impose a consequence. In this article, I take up some of the most common arguments in favor of discipline reform and show why they’re wrong.

“Suspensions don’t work.”

This claim is not hard to find. Suspend a student once or a hundred times—the argument goes—and they’ll continue misbehaving. There’s simply no evidence that punitive discipline improves the behavior of a student who is prone to acting out. What’s more, suspensions depress the academic achievement of the disciplined student.

Perhaps counterintuitively, this one isn’t wrong with respect to youthful perpetrators themselves. I’ve worked at schools with strict discipline policies and students who talk out of turn, fight, or disrespect teachers continue to do so no matter how many times they miss a recess, talk to the principal, or sit through an in-school suspension. And reading the research, I cannot contest this fact: Suspensions, in particular, do not lead to permanent behavior change.

Yet focusing on the behavior of one student overlooks something important: the hundreds of other students in a school and the culture of that school. After all, a misbehaving peer is one of the single most detrimental factors to a child’s education, over and above other policies such as class size, teacher pay, school choice, or uniforms. The presence of misbehaving peers causes other students to act out and drives down student achievement. Given that high-poverty schools struggle the most with disciplinary challenges, keeping disruptive students in classrooms only widens the achievement gap.

Clear rules fairly enforced establish a system wherein every student can expect safety. They allow pupils to focus on learning without distraction, engage in discussion without a cacophony of voices, and play without a descent into chaos. One child’s desire to verbally harass his teachers or physically threaten his peers prevents every other child from safety and academic learning.

Current discipline debates in the American education system focus almost exclusively on the perpetrator. But we cannot forget the twenty-nine other children in the classroom who deserve an education.

Suspending or otherwise punishing a misbehaving child sends an important message to the rest of the students in a school: Such actions will not be tolerated because your learning is essential. Other students receive this message and act accordingly. When considering whether they should scurry to math class or slip into the corridor for a brawl, the threat of punishment incentivizes positive behavior for the majority.

Case studies, from Philadelphia to the entire state of Illinois tell the same story: When schools and districts abolish suspensions and other punitive discipline, academics plummet, disorder abounds, and the rate of extreme behavior such as drug use or violence increases. On one survey, when Illinois curbed the use of suspensions, only 14 percent of teachers reported a positive impact with 49 percent reporting that worsened both student behavior and school climate.

Consequences create healthy school environments. They safeguard the learning of the majority of students. They send a clear signal that improves the behavior of every other student. In other words, suspensions work.

“Schools are too strict.”

Last Spring, the Hechinger Report ran a long piece bemoaning the inclusion of “vague” disciplinary language such as “insubordination” or “disrespect.” This after the authors spoke to activists, district administrators, and academics, but not a single teacher.

Their journalistic bona fides aside, their argument boils down to the contention that much of the punitive discipline in American schools is unnecessary. Punish a kid for violence or drugs, sure, but are detentions really needed for a uniform infraction or talking out of turn?

Early in my education career, I held this view. Why pick a fight over hoodies or hats when kids are lighting up in the bathroom stalls? But the longer that I’ve taught in schools, the more I see that it’s imperative for teachers and administrators to hold the line on these smaller infractions—holding a student in the office until a parent can bring a pair of uniform-approved pants, for example—since doing so prevents larger transgressions.

It’s the theory of “broken windows policing” applied to schools. This theory, formulated in the late 1980s by social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, suggests that low-level disorder such as a broken store window or trash-covered streets communicates to everyone that this community is the kind of place where people throw rocks, litter streets, and more. There won’t be a consequence, so why not? And why not go on to theft, assault, maybe murder?

Conversely, focus on the little things and less criminality will emerge. Order in the small things dissuades would-be vandals and petty thieves. Moreover, if you apprehend the folks who jump turnstiles, for example, it may turn out that these are the very same people who are likely to snatch a purse or pick a fight.

In fact, student surveys find that most prefer stricter teachers. They may bristle when corrected, but they respect the order and learning that it facilitates in the long run. Furthermore, students appreciate when a teacher corrects their misbehaving peers. Walk into any rowdy classroom and the many students who just want to learn are often more frustrated than the teacher.

Indeed, the Hechinger Report piece entirely misunderstood the nature of school discipline. The infractions that they argue deserve no punishment—defiance, insubordination, direct refusal to comply with the orders of an adult—are really the root of the issue. Such behavior, however minor, undercuts a teacher’s authority. When administrators and teachers instead establish that rules must be followed, no matter how minor, fewer students will challenge injunctions against violence or drugs. Rarely are pupils suspended for “refusing to sit in their seat.” But imagine what it would mean if every student refused to do so.

“Punitive discipline is racist.”

If you’ve spent any time following education debates, you’ve likely read that exclusionary discipline maintains the school-to-prison pipeline. Students of different racial demographics are suspended, expelled, and given other punishments at different rates and so school discipline must therefore be racist. This reasoning underlies the Obama-era Dear Colleague Letter, which threatened schools with legal action if racial disparities turned up in their use of suspensions and expulsions.

While such disparities exist, these arguments ignore two basic realities: the behavioral differences that undergird these disparities and the unequal negative effects of discipline reform.

As to the first, AEI’s Max Eden has pointed out that Black students are substantially more likely than White students to report that they’ve been in fights at school, carried a gun, or skipped school. That’s not to suggest that White or Black students misbehave differently because of their race. But rather, as Mike Petrilli notes elsewhere, “kids growing up in poverty are more likely to experience all manner of challenges that make it more likely for them to misbehave,” such as growing up without a father, living in dangerous neighborhoods, or suffering abuse and neglect. When researchers control for class and underlying behavior, disparities in punishment largely (though not entirely) disappear.

Regarding the second reality, regardless of the cause, prohibiting schools from maintaining order tries to fix the problem at the wrong end of the pipeline.

When Philadelphia implemented its prohibition on the use of suspensions for low-level misbehavior, Black students actually spent more days out of school. They received fewer punishments but longer suspensions for more severe behaviors. When schools in Pittsburgh implemented an approach to discipline reform called restorative justice, the rate of classroom disruptions increased and academics fell for Black students in particular. Some studies find null effects on academics. Yet more have linked the use of suspensions to improved academics for non-suspended students.

It’s a particularly perverse approach to racial justice to try to close disparities in disciplinary measures by thrusting Black and Hispanic children into increasingly chaotic schools. It serves no student to be kept from a punishment only to attend classes that are full of vulgarity, threats of violence, and little learning.

“Alternatives to punitive discipline are more effective.”

Here’s the crux of the issue. No one argues that the current discipline structures in schools are perfect. But as with any call for reform, the burden of proof lies with those proposing change. Are their alternatives better? In this case, the two most popular discipline reforms are restorative justice and positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS), neither of which has a strong grounding in research.

To date, two randomized-controlled trials exist that have investigated restorative justice. As previously mentioned, the first (Pittsburgh) found that schools that implemented restorative justice saw an uptick in classroom disruptions, a decline in math achievement, and no difference in arrest rates. The second (Maine) found no effects on either behavior or academics, but it was particularly difficult for teachers to implement. In other words, it placed a significant strain on teachers without materially improving outcomes.

Positive behavior intervention and supports, as the name implies, emphasize rewarding positive behavior instead of punishing negative behaviors. Students can earn tickets or points, which they can use to purchase various rewards or trinkets. The research in support of PBIS is stronger than that for restorative justice, though so far it focuses only on elementary school. And even there, it must always be a supplement to and not a replacement of standard disciplinary structures.

In my own teaching and administrating, I use elements of both restorative justice and PBIS. I praise and reward students who act as they’re expected. Any time I must dole out a punishment, I make sure I speak with the student and visit them during their detention or in-school suspension. But just as gutters and insulation will only keep the elements out when paired with the rigid structure of walls and roofs, restorative justice and PBIS will do little to improve behavior without traditional discipline.

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We cannot “solve” student misbehavior. As Kant famously said, “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” When applied to schools, this aphorism means that we cannot create a utopian system in which every child feels so fulfilled, accepted, and intrinsically motivated that they’ll never talk out of turn, throw a wadded paper ball, or talk back to their teacher. We will always need discipline in schools.

However, if we take a more expansive definition of discipline reform, there are certainly steps that we can take to improve upon the status quo.

For example, a recent meta-analysis examined the effects of “structure” in the classroom and concluded that “classroom management” has a strong relationship with student achievement (along with countless other factors). It’s a necessary condition for student success. Notably, the study found that proactive steps, such as establishing clear routines, were more important than imposing consequences or enforcement. Consequences are necessary but ineffective without other behavioral instruction.

Unfortunately, our teacher preparation programs spend more time reading critical theorists and debating policy than actually training teachers in these basic and essential classroom management strategies.

Other possibilities for worthwhile discipline reform could include experimentation with punishments other than suspensions, more thoughtful in-school suspension protocols, short-term “alternative placements” instead of outright expulsions, or the use of PBIS and follow-up conversations as supplements to consequences rather than replacements for them.

Such “discipline reform” could very well result in more orderly, safer, and more productive schools. But when “discipline reform” means a blanket reduction on the use of consequences, it is misguided at best and detrimental to schooling at worst.

A few years ago, I taught a high school seminar class in civics and democracy at a New York charter school. My goal for the course was for students to see that the U.S. Constitution isn’t an ancient, dusty document, but an enduring set of principles, deeply woven into their lives and the headlines they read every day. The classroom was transformed into a space where students debated contemporary issues in the news, including college speech codes, stop-and-frisk policing, same-sex marriage, and why their education was paid for by taxpayers at no cost to them or their families.

If I was teaching that class today, I’d be inclined to launch a unit on “Banned Books Week,” an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and highlighting the harms of censorship. Launched in 1982 by the American Library Association and other organizations in response to a surge in book challenges, it raises awareness about attempts to restrict access to books in libraries and schools, usually for one week in late September or early October.

I’ll confess that I like thumbing my nose at authority as much as anyone and take some measure of satisfaction in cultivating in students an appetite for independence and even a little healthy defiance. But I can’t resist a teachable moment: If books are truly banned, how is it that they’re right there on display in public? Walk into any bookstore or library during “Banned Book Week” and you’ll likely see a table prominently displaying these illicit wares. If those books have been banned, why don’t booksellers and librarians fear getting clamped in irons and hauled off to jail?

As my AEI colleague Max Eden and Jay Greene of the Heritage Foundation have pointed out, PEN America, whose data are the most common source of “book ban” hand-wringing, has a generous definition of the term. “If a book has been temporarily removed from shelves for review and then deemed acceptable and put back, it has been ‘banned,’” wrote Eden and Greene in Education Week. “If a book is moved from a school library to a guidance counselor’s office, it has been ‘banned.’ If parent permission is required, it has been ‘banned.’ If a book is moved from one section of a school library to a section for older students, it has been ‘banned.’”

All of this is a recipe for a great civics lesson. So let librarians and booksellers have Banned Books Week. I propose that civics and history teachers deepen student thinking and engagement with a parallel “First Amendment Week.” Learning objectives would include understanding the Constitutional protection of free speech and how that squares with book bans and other forms of expression, and analyzing and evaluating arguments for and against restricting certain books in schools.

There’s no end to the rich and fruitful discussions for teachers to lead: Were there any books or types of content you were not allowed to read or consume when you were younger? Do you think those restrictions were fair or arbitrary? Does removing a book from a school library or requiring parental permission qualify as banning? Should parents have a say in what books are available in schools? Why or why not? Can age-appropriate guidelines for reading ever be compatible with freedom of speech? The most engaging civics lessons involve topics and settings that students are most familiar with, thus there is civic education gold to be mined in asking how schools should decide what is appropriate for different age groups. What are some reasons a school or library might restrict access to a book? Are any of these reasons justifiable?

They can also analyze landmark Supreme Court cases like Tinker v. Des Moines and Island Trees School District v. Pico, using these examples to better understand the role of free speech in schools and the limits of their own free speech rights in school. First Amendment Week might culminate with a structured debate in which students draw on their discussions and readings to argue whether any books should be restricted in schools.

Throughout the week, teachers can guide students to think critically about the nature of censorship, the balance between protecting young readers and safeguarding free expression, and the responsibilities of schools in promoting a diverse range of ideas. By considering questions such as “Should books ever be restricted?” and “How do we balance individual rights with community standards?” students should be encouraged to form well-reasoned opinions, appreciate the complexities of free speech, and recognize the First Amendment’s relevance in their own lives.

Unlike the ostensible celebration of freedom and (frankly) the booksellers’ marketing opportunity associated with promoting “banned” books, First Amendment Week would invite students to think actively, critically, and deeply. Banned Books Week already gets people talking about censorship, but the problem is that the conversations can often be overly simplistic or observably misleading. Civics teachers have an opportunity to raise the bar and develop a more nuanced understanding of what “book banning” really means—and what it doesn’t.