1. ECOT’s transformation from general online school to dropout recovery school drew some additional ink this week. First up, the Dispatch suggests this is an effort by the school to avoid certain areas of accountability. Our own Chad Aldis is on hand to note that if that is the case, then a new light will surely be shone on the accountability levers for dropout recovery schools as a result of this newcomer joining their ranks. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/24/17) Andy Chow of statewide public radio has a more compact version of the same suggestion and same response from Chad. (Statehouse News Bureau, 8/24/17)
    
2. In case you missed it, CREDO yesterday released a massive new study on school closures across the country over a seven year period, looking at where displaced students ended up and how they did compared to students in similar schools which didn’t close. Ohio data were reviewed by Gongwer, including commentary from Chad. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/24/17) Doug Livingston of the ABJ took a rather different tack with the Ohio data. Our own Aaron Churchill was not only able to follow Doug’s train of thought but to offer cogent analysis of his own regarding state population trends and the availability of school choice information to parents. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/24/17)
    
3. So far, local newspapers across the state don’t have many stories like this one from Mansfield: about first-week-of-school busing problems that put shivers down the spines of parents everywhere. So far so good, I guess. (Mansfield News Journal, 8/24/17) Meanwhile, here is an interesting transportation conundrum in Northeast Ohio that could have wider repercussions. Parents in tiny Oberlin schools learned that the district had for the first time deemed their private school students “impractical to transport” and would offer them payment in lieu of transportation this year as per Ohio law. The parents disagreed on a number of fronts, refused the payment, and contested the designation. First stop for arbitration of the dispute is the September meeting of the state board of education. As the parent of one student deemed “impractical” (thanks for the public bus pass!) and one student deemed “practical” (ummm…why are there no sidewalks at the dropoff area?), I am personally very interested in the outcome of this case. (Elyria Chronicle, 8/25/17)
    
4. Speaking of school choice (were we?), here is an interesting look at interdistrict open enrollment in the Columbus suburb of Reynoldsburg. This piece focuses mainly on the economics of the deal (generally seen as good by the adults interviewed) and only occasionally strays onto the topic of students utilizing open enrollment (apparently seen as worth “keeping an eye on” by at least one of the adults interviewed). Given the recent positive publicity OE has gotten in Reynoldsburg (hi there, Danya; hello, Gadah!), perhaps one or more of the district’s attitudes need to change. Just sayin’. (ThisWeek News, 8/22/17) Speaking of districts who might need to pass a levy with which to buy a clue, check out this extended comedy of errors with regard to an “open enrollment” decision gone horribly wrong in Strongsville. There are far too many satire-worthy missteps in here for me to pick just one to illustrate this clip. Just know that no students were harmed in the making of this disaster and so you are free to read it all and decide for yourself which particular misstep you find most unfortunate. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/22/17)
    
5. Efforts to overhaul Ohio’s teacher evaluation system skidded to an unfortunate halt when the recommendations of the Educator Standards Board did not make it into the state budget bill earlier this year. Board members seem hopeful that a new legislative vehicle for debating, tweaking, and enacting the needed changes will be forthcoming when the legislature goes back into session. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/23/17)
    
6. New Lorain schools CEO David Hardy visited 10 buildings on opening day and had lunch with the district’s extant community and business partnership group. Hardy got input about what these movers and shakers believe really ails the district and what they think it will take to fix those things. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/23/17) Lack of money was a recurring theme in the community/business/schools partnership discussion detailed above. Perhaps this new initiative of various foundations in the area – Lorain City Schools – Road to Excellence Fund – can help to redress whatever imbalances they see. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/23/17)
    
7. Finally this week: a new study from Ohio State University researchers indicates that children entering first grade have significantly better reading skills compared to similar kids 12 years ago. Nice. (WBNS-TV, Columbus, 8/24/17)

In 2015, two agencies (Mathematica Policy Institute and the Center for Research on Education Outcomes) published separate findings about the impact of online charter schools on students’ academic growth. The purpose of both reports was twofold: first, to inform local education agencies and policy makers about the growth of the online charter school movement, and second, to engage the general public in an in-depth discussion about the role that online schools should have in K–12 education. In short, both publications report disappointing academic growth for students enrolled in online schools. While they did not address the growth of gifted students enrolled in those schools, their findings must be further researched through robust empirical studies.

Most gifted students enrolled in public schools who are taking online classes are not classified as full-time virtual students, meaning that they are attending a traditional brick-and-mortar school and taking two or less online classes. This hybrid approach is a viable option for gifted programs unable to hire teachers with specialized expertise, too few gifted students identified in the school to justify a teacher for advanced classes, or programs looking to offer a curriculum that meets gifted students’ needs. Whatever the reason for leveraging online classes as a gifted program delivery option, it is important to understand the demographics of those teaching our gifted students in these settings.

Although the differences between teaching in an online versus a traditional classroom are vast, those differences are more about using digital technology to resolve student related issues as opposed to student related issues not being present. For example, while online teachers do not have to deal with traditional classroom management issues, there are digital classroom management issues that exist; the potential for cyber plagiarism, communicating with students exclusively through a digital medium, and troubleshooting students’ technical issues. Effective online teachers are able to leverage digital technologies to create a robust digital ecosystem that engages gifted students in meaningful instruction.

A majority of online teachers are traditional classroom teachers who also teach in an online environment outside traditional school hours. They report enjoying the flexibility of teaching in an online environment, not having to follow a bell-schedule, and the ability to individualize instruction based on student’s needs. Additionally, many online teachers purport finding fulfillment in being able to extend their expertise to students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to take advanced classes.

Those interested in teaching online classes to gifted students must possess certain characteristics to be successful, including traditional and well-researched characteristics such as, but not limited to, expertise in a subject area, ability to motivate and establish rapport with students, and ability to differentiate the curriculum to meet individual needs. While this condensed list does not begin to fully define every necessary characteristic, effective online teachers must demonstrate all of them while teaching from a distance. Their readiness level to teach with technology must be high, even if their students’ readiness levels are not. While many teachers of gifted students will bring years of teaching experience to the online classroom, they must be willing to learn new skills and become proficient in the use of a variety of instructional strategies, multimedia resources, and digital communication tools.

Unfortunately, very few educator preparation programs train teachers of gifted students to teach in online environments. As a result, teachers of gifted students must develop specific ‘online pedagogy’ skills through professional development opportunities and independent learning. For example, effective online teachers are able to utilize screen capture software to reinforce course content, customize Learning Management Systems (LMS) to meet a class’s specific needs, and leverage video conferencing tools to establish rapport.

The criticism put forth by both reports referenced above is valid and is something the field needs to address. The trend of online education is ascending. While the benefits of this trend for gifted students will be debated for years to come, we must hold online teachers of these students to the same standards we hold their traditional brick-and-mortar peers. At the same time, we must consider the robustness of the digital ecosystem when determining the effectiveness of online education, something that these two reports did not fully take into consideration.

Kevin D. Besnoy is director of ACCESS Virtual Learning and associate director of K–12 Programs at the College of Continuing Studies, University of Alabama.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in a slightly different form in the August 2017 issue of Teaching for High Potential.

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

References

Gill, B. (2005). A report of the national study of online charter schools: Inside online charter schools. Cambridge, MA: Mathematica Policy Research.

Woodworth, J.L., M.E. Raymond, K. Chirbas, M. Gonzalez, Y. Negassi, W. Snow, and C. Van Donge. (2015). Online charter school study 2015. Stanford, CA: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University.

Education reformers are committed to educational opportunities that provide upward mobility for the children who need it most. Early learning has been shown to improve long-term student outcomes, especially for the most vulnerable, so it should be a key component of that strategy—but it won’t be if we don’t even know which kids are having which early learning experiences, let alone what long-term effects those experiences are having. For states to effectively manage high-quality early learning requires data, and accordingly a comprehensive education reform agenda should include advocating for states to build and utilize better early childhood data systems.

Reformers know that high quality doesn’t happen automatically at any level of education. And just as in K–12, in early learning good information is key to great teaching and measuring impacts. So, education reformers, can you answer the following questions about early learning in your state?

• Are there kids enrolled in both Head Start and state preschool? And how many of those kids are also enrolled in a child care program?
• How does enrolling in more than one of those programs impact long-term outcomes?
• Many states are measuring the quality of early learning programs, including Head Start, preschool, and child care—which kids are getting access to the highest quality programs, and how does the quality of a child’s early learning experience impact long-term outcomes?
• With chronic absenteeism about to be a meaningful factor in many state ESSA accountability plans, what’s the relationship between chronic absenteeism in early learning and in K–12?

Unfortunately most states don’t have the data to provide answers to those questions, or to many of the other important questions about the implementation and effect of early learning. In all but a handful of states it’s impossible to even get an accurate count of how many kids are enrolled in both preschool and child care, and those are both state-run programs (unlike Head Start). When states can’t provide complete and accurate data about early learning, it’s extremely difficult to quantify the impact of those early experiences over the long term.

Early learning data are more complicated than K–12 data because the programs are typically housed across multiple state agencies. Having good data therefore requires linking multiple agency systems, and then connecting that information to K–12 data. If you’re now thinking, wow, that sounds like an incredibly discouraging bureaucratic nightmare—well, guess what, that’s what everybody thinks, which is often why people try to avoid any involvement in these kinds of projects. But this is an issue whose bark is far worse than its bite, and in fact working on state early learning data systems can be both invigorating and rewarding if you do it right.

In working toward better early childhood data, effective advocates know that you have to start with the “why” and create an appetite for better data among key stakeholders. This part should be energizing, because there’s so much we don’t know about what’s going on out there—and there will be plenty of voices in the advocacy and research communities whose curiosity will drive them to ask for better data.

Succeeding at the “why” conversation gets you to the more challenging work of “how,” which does in fact require navigating the complexities of bringing together multiple agencies with different mandates. Among other things, this requires supporting multiple agency legal offices to forge interagency agreements; persuading federally-funded Head Start programs that it’s to their benefit to be part of a state system; and ensuring that there’s actually capacity to use data at the state and local level. These may not be easy tasks but they are well within the competency of most education reformers, and a handful of states have already made meaningful progress in these areas.

To help education reformers (and others) navigate this territory, we at the Ounce of Prevention Fund have published An Unofficial Guide to the Why and How of State Early Childhood Data Systems. Having been at this work for a decade, I can tell you that there’s nothing that will make it super easy. But there’s a lot you can do to make it more fun, or at least more likely to be successful. The publication provides a straightforward roadmap to the process, with specific recommendations on approaches to clearing common roadblocks.

Better data and better early learning have been bipartisan issues where education reformers and school management groups have often found common cause. Maybe in these charged times, working on early childhood data systems can be a unifying effort that brings everybody together. And even if you’re not convinced that this work isn’t going to be the thing that saves our democracy, you can still acknowledge that it’s an important foundational stone of education reform—and given what education reformers have accomplished over the years on topics that are actually far more difficult, there’s no reason that they can’t make headway on this issue, as well.

Elliot Regenstein is the Senior Vice President, Advocacy and Policy at the Ounce of Prevention Fund.

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

As part of the most recent state budget, Ohio lawmakers created alternative graduation pathways for the class of 2018 in response to widespread fears on the part of district administrators that too many students would fail to pass the seven End Of Course (EOC) tests that are administered during high school in the four core subjects.

We at Fordham strongly opposed this move because we believe it will hurt students in the long run. We weren’t the only ones who questioned it. Nevertheless, the alternative pathways became law. Recently, State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria indicated that objections such as ours were not well founded.  Specifically, he told reporters:

The students who aren’t going to do well in college and in the workforce are those who don’t take their education seriously and a GPA increasingly both in research and in practice has been shown to be a far better indicator of a student’s readiness for college success and frankly for workforce success than any standardized test.

Whether, when, and how GPAs may be a better indicator of readiness than standardized tests is a subject for a different day. Let’s focus instead on the Superintendent’s assertion that students who aren’t doing well in college are those who “don’t take their education seriously.”

Yes, there’s a grain of truth here. Those who don’t work hard or flat out don’t care about their education are likely to struggle in school, in college, and well beyond. The greatest teacher on the planet cannot force an unwilling student to learn. But it’s wrong to go from that reality to the suggestion that every Ohio kid who struggles academically or in a job just didn’t take education seriously. Dr. DeMaria is a smart and caring fellow who surely understands that it’s not always lack of will on the kid’s part.

I taught high schoolers. I can still recite the names of those who looked me in the eye and told me they didn’t care about school or about what was happening in my class. But that list is far, far shorter than the number of kids I taught who cared deeply about their education but still failed my class, the state test, or both. They didn’t fail because they didn’t care. They failed because they read at the fourth-grade level in ninth grade, and while they may have made two years of growth in my class, that still didn’t bring them up to grade level. They failed because the school system had failed to educate them before they got to my class. Many were kids who worked hard, participated with enthusiasm, and didn’t cause trouble. Their previous teachers felt bad about failing them (and heaven forbid schools retain them) even though they hadn’t learned what they needed to learn in order to be ready for the next grade. Good kids. Well-meaning teachers. Ineffectual instruction.

Some of the students who failed my class or the state EOC arrived with straight As. Many turned in their homework every day and hung on every word I said in class. Some came in for tutoring after school, before school, and on Saturday. Do you know how hard it is to get teenagers to come to school if they don’t have to be there? They don’t come unless they care. I taught hundreds of students during my teaching career, and I can say one thing with complete and utter certainty: The vast majority of my students cared profoundly about their education and their future.

I didn’t teach in Ohio, but I doubt that Buckeye kids are much different from those I taught. I’m willing to wager that there are thousands of students across this state who care deeply about their educational success, even if they haven’t experienced much of it. But just like my students, these students have been passed from grade to grade because they show up and behave well and because they participate and turn in their homework. They get good grades, but they fail their state tests. Many of these students have probably come to the conclusion that state tests don’t actually matter. Why should they care about a score report they get once a year when the report cards they get four times a year say they’re doing okay?

But then they get to college and get pushed into remediation instead of credit-bearing courses. Or they get out into the workforce and aren’t sure how to write an email or read a technical manual or calculate percentages. Their boss is unhappy, or their professors are unimpressed, and they feel both overwhelmed and betrayed. They probably end up asking a version of the question that I was repeatedly asked by students during my teaching career: How did I perform this poorly when I got all As?   

I taught in high-poverty urban schools. But those aren’t the only places where students get high grades and GPAs that don’t necessarily match their achievement. A recent article in The Atlantic examined research on grade inflation and found that students enrolled in private and suburban public high schools are awarded higher grades than their urban peers despite similar levels of talent and potential. In fact, between 1998 and 2016, the grade point averages of students at private high schools and suburban public high schools went up even as scores on the SAT went down.

Yes, kids have a responsibility to take learning seriously. But so do the adults who are charged with making sure that they learn and are held to a high standard of achievement. Those adults include legislators who recently punted on the future of some of those kids. Those adults also include the State Superintendent. 

Peter Greene, the author of the aptly named “Curmudgucation” blog, had a post the other day lambasting a classroom management system which, assuming he’s representing it accurately, rates kindergarteners’ behavior on a spectrum from “Democracy” and “Cooperation/Compliance” down to “Bullying” and “Bossing” and—the lowest level—”Anarchy.” The post was vintage Greene, who works in mockery and derision the way Matisse worked in oils.

In the midst of his takedown, however, came an observation that stopped me in my tracks: “Here's the thing to remember about discipline systems at school—every one of them codifies somebody's value system, sets in rules and regulations judgments like ‘being compliant is good’ or ‘a good student is one who questions authority,’” Greene wrote. “When a system codifies love of compliance (and can't distinguish between compliance and cooperation) and negative labeling of any sort of age-appropriate behavior (five year olds running! zounds!!), my eyebrows go up.”

Mine too, but not for the same reasons as Greene, one of the blogosphere’s staunchest defenders of traditional public schools. A thirty-five-year veteran teacher, he’s also a deeply informed and tireless critic of reform. So it’s no small irony that in shaking his fist at the education idiocy du jour he accidentally made one of the strongest pro-school choice arguments I’ve ever read.

Greene is precisely right: A school’s approach to student discipline and classroom management is a profound reflection of somebody’s value system. And establishing any value system as a default is a surefire recipe for conflict, even chaos, possibly anarchy. When we seek to establish, valorize, or impose one set of beliefs about student discipline as the “right” one, we are functionally communicating that all others are “wrong.” Greene’s recognition of the values-laden nature of discipline systems all but begs for choice: Parents should be able to weigh, as one factor among many, schools whose philosophy about behavior management, classroom culture, and approach to student discipline most closely mirror their own beliefs and practices.

What’s true for parents is equally true for teachers. An assistant principal at my old school once described my classroom management style as “authoritarian.” She did not intend it as a compliment, but I wasn’t insulted. My South Bronx elementary school could be a chaotic place. I saw nothing wrong (I still don’t) with a classroom culture where adults are firmly in charge and held accountable for creating a safe, orderly, and respectful environment in which learning can happen. But that’s my preference as a teacher and a parent. Your mileage may vary.

And it does. Shortly before last year’s school year ended, I spent a day with Steven Wilson and several of his colleagues at Ascend Public Charter Schools in Brooklyn. I requested the visit after reading Ginia Bellafante’s column in the New York Times, which lauded Ascend’s rejection of “no excuses” culture and discipline in favor of a program called the Responsive Classroom. She quoted an Ascend staffer who worried about the “unforgiving disciplinary codes” in many urban charter schools.

“The most visible change at Ascend is the presence of a school culture that has become intensely therapeutic; teachers are instructed to be warm and present rather than distant and controlling,” Bellafante wrote. Even this fairly benign observation in a piece lauding Ascend’s transformation shows the difficulty of getting this right, and how deeply fraught is the issue of student discipline. Some (including me) might bridle at the idea of an “intensely therapeutic” school culture, thinking it an inappropriate expansion of the school’s mission, even a usurpation of parental prerogative. One man’s “distant and controlling” is another man’s “focused and intentional.”

Ascend’s staff and students are clearly bought in to their approach to discipline. It “works” for them because of that commitment, and it’s central to their beliefs about what a school should be. But it doesn’t follow that their approach should be imposed universally because it “works.” Indeed, we likely won’t even agree on how to measure “works.” Is it reduced suspension rates, higher test scores, parent and student satisfaction, or something else? Let me be clear. My visit to Ascend was impressive. This old authoritarian teacher sees the value, even the wisdom, of Ascend’s approach. I might like to try it someday. But would I set it as the default mode for all schools? Not on your life.

Shortly after Bellafante’s column appeared, I sat in a South Bronx coffee shop interviewing a parent, a New York City taxi driver and immigrant from Ghana who was drawn to his children’s charter school precisely because of its strict approach to discipline, which mirrored his own approach to parenting. I can conceive of no reason why he should be denied that prerogative, nor why the teacher quoted in Bellafante’s column should not be able to seek out a school like Ascend that is aligned with her values.

Not surprisingly, when I pointed out to Greene that he was accidentally making a good case for choice, he disagreed. “I think there are far too many values at play to make every one available in a choice school,” he responded, “particularly when those have to be cross-checked against academics, sports, activities, and all the other things folks want for their children.” In a way, he’s right, but affluent parents shopping for private schools for their kids might shrug. No school is expected to align completely with a family’s preferences, priorities, and values. But one extreme or the other—the perception that a school’s culture is too strict and prescriptive, or too permissive and lenient—might very well be a deal-breaker for some parents. Teachers, too.

Differentiation is the soul of choice. When we narrow our focus to “student outcomes” (read: test scores), we overlook the myriad reasons that schools appeal—or not—to parents. School culture, including discipline, is a big part of it, particularly for those who value school safety above all else. Indeed, if test scores are the only thing that matters, there’s little point in arguing for choice at all. Our energies are better spent improving the performance of a single flavor of school.

About the last thing I want to do is spend the next several years arguing about whose approach to discipline is “right.” The salient question ought to be, “Which is right for you?” Given the deeply held, values-driven nature of school culture and discipline, it seems increasingly untenable to suggest that there is or ought to be a default mode—Peter Greene’s, mine, or yours—and that any ideas at variance with it need to be banned or forced to defend their existence. My advice to school choice advocates is to take Peter Greene’s excellent if unintended advice and spend more time arguing for choice based on school culture and values, and less on test scores.

Last month, The Economist ran a terrific combination feature and editorial on educational technology and how, properly deployed, it can transform the old Prussian model of schooling that most of the world has followed since the eighteenth century.

It seems that fascination with the potential of technology to improve education has been around at least since psychologist Sidney Pressey devised a “teaching machine” in 1928 that he expected to liberate students and teachers from “educational drudgery.” It “had a paper drum displaying multiple-choice questions. Pressing the right key moved the drum on,” with candy used to incentivize kids to keep going.

B.F. Skinner, the behavioral psychologist famous for “Skinner boxes,” created his own version of teaching machines in the 1950’s but, after a brief fad, everyone went back to the Prussian model.

Today, despite a rough start for full-time virtual schooling, we’re pumped about the potential of technology to boost education—excited by promising models of blended learning, thrilled by the soaring example of the Khan Academy, and encouraged by the big bucks (from Zuckerberg et al.) going into the personalizing of primary-secondary education.

That’s in the United States. The Economist astutely points out that technology can be a far larger boost to education in developing countries where schools work badly or not at all and where cell phones and the internet are moving faster than sluggish ministries of education. Technology, the editors explain, can help with two important reforms. The first, which Americans generally call personalization but which they dub “bespoke education,” enables individual children to proceed through the curriculum at their own speed.

The second is “making schools more productive” by saving teachers time and boosting the efficiency of all manner of management and record-keeping tasks.

Ed-tech is not an unmixed blessing, however, and the editors go on to lay down several key precepts that are very much worth keeping in mind as we move forward.

First, “‘personalised learning’ must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as ‘learning styles’: the discredited theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information.”

Second, don’t let technology mislead us into the “falsehood” that “children do not need a broad body of shared knowledge because they can always turn to Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity and critical thinking. The opposite is true.” (Cue E.D. Hirsch.)

Third, “make sure that edtech narrows, rather than widens, inequalities in education.”

Fourth, “the potential for edtech will be realised only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But scepticism should not turn into Luddism.”

My own sense is that innovators, philanthropists, and reformers in American education are keenly attuned to the latter two precepts but aren’t paying close enough attention to the first pair. (That includes my pal Tom Vander Ark!) It’s not too late, however, to set matters right. If we do, we may yet manage to escape from Prussia. 

Confronted with the paradox of a simultaneous rise in high school graduation and college remediation rates, researchers from The Alliance for Excellent Education examined diploma pathways across the country for evidence as to how well they match college or career expectations. They found that far too many students leave high school with diplomas that do not signal preparedness for what comes next.

The Alliance’s new report looked at all fifty states and the District of Columbia and found that there were 98 different pathways to diplomas for the Class of 2014. Slightly less than half were deemed sufficient to prepare students for college or careers (CCR diploma pathways). While college and career ready can be defined in a number of ways, the Alliance’s criteria for a CCR diploma are: 1) Any pathway that requires students to complete four years of grade-level ELA, three years of math through Algebra II or Integrated Math III; and 2) Any pathways promulgated by state institutions of higher education that fully align with admissions requirements into those institutions. All of their analyses follow from these requisites.

The most frequent reason for a rating of “non-CCR” for a diploma pathway was a mismatch between state-level high school graduation requirements and state-adopted content standards in ELA and mathematics. For instance, the General Diploma in Indiana—singled out as a case study in the report—required only 2 years of math and therefore was considered non-CCR by the Alliance. Two of the other pathways in Indiana required three years of math; the most rigorous pathway, four. Not that some Hoosier students earning the General Diploma didn’t make it to and through college, but the data showed that only 24 percent of General Diploma awardees in 2014 enrolled in college and that three out of every five students who did required remediation. Students who earned one of Indiana’s other three types of diplomas (all considered CCR pathways by the Alliance) were far more likely to enroll in college and far less likely to require remediation when they get there. In addition, the data showed that many states granted waivers of either course or assessment requirements for even their CCR diploma pathways for reasons unrelated to special needs. The number of students being granted waivers is unknown, but any undermining of CCR diploma requirements seems superfluous as well as misleading, considering the plethora of non-CCR diplomas already available.

Alliance analysts also took a deeper look at states that had multiple diplomas that included both CCR and non-CCR pathways with an eye to determining how many students earned each type. Nine states fit into that category: Arkansas, California, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Texas, and Virginia. From them we learn that 1) The rate at which students graduated with a CCR diploma in these nine states was substantially lower than the adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR). For example, Nevada’s ACGR for all students was 70 percent in 2014 while its CCR rate was just 29.8 percent. 2) Traditionally underserved students were less likely to graduate with a CCR diploma than their peers, the one small exception being Black students in Arkansas. 3) The three states whose CCR diploma was the main graduation pathway and where the non-CCR diploma was “deemphasized” or seen as a less-desirable alternative (Arkansas, Indiana, and Texas) saw far lower gaps between ACGR and CCR rates. 4) The other six states did not emphasize CCR non-CCR pathways and their ACGR/CCR gaps were considerably larger.

Black students fared worst among racial/ethnic subgroups with ACGR/CCR gaps ranging from 17.5 to 33.9 percentage points. ACGR/CCR gaps between students with disabilities and their peers without disabilities were also pronounced, with gaps ranging from 11.8 to 63.1 percentage points. These statistics are all fairly alarming, but many important questions remain out of reach. Did students opt for easier pathways themselves? Were they somehow “tracked” into them? What influence do teachers and guidance counselors exert on diploma pathway choices and when? How readily can students overachieve beyond minimum requirements?

The nation’s rising graduation rate in recent years has already been challenged as consisting in part of smoke and mirrors. The rate of new college freshman requiring remediation gives us a clearer picture of what really happens when the smoke clears and students are no longer the responsibility of the K-12 folks behind the mirrors. This study brings us fresh evidence that “graduation at all costs” is widespread. States must be exhorted to set the bar for graduation no lower than college and career readiness and must make that the default diploma pathway for their students, with rare exceptions for disability and such. Non-CCR pathways and waivers should be offered only in special cases. Perhaps it is a pie-in-the-sky wish for every diploma to indicate readiness for what’s next, but to make anything less than that that the primary emphasis of a graduation pathway is a disservice to students from the outset.

SOURCE: “Paper Thin? Why All High School Diplomas are Not Created Equal,” Alliance for Excellent Education (July, 2017).

A new report from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) evaluates recent charter school performance in Texas. The study compares the math and reading growth for charter students and their traditional public school peers in the Lone Star State from 2011–2015. The report also examines the effects of a 2014 Texas law ushering in stricter charter regulations. These results build on CREDO’s 2015 evaluation of Texas charters.

At the time of the study, Texas had 659 charters with available data on more than 280,000 students. Those pupils were matched to peers from nearby traditional public schools (TPS) based on race/ethnicity, grade level, prior academic achievement, free and reduced lunch eligibility, English proficiency, and special education designation. The study examined growth rather than proficiency, looking at the overall health of charter performance, in addition to how well the charter sector is affecting the performance of Texas’ most vulnerable student populations.

The results are positive, with charter school students seeing improvement in reading by .03 standard deviations (SD), which CREDO equates to an additional seventeen days of learning, when compared with their TPS peers. As for math, there were not significant differences between the scores of charter and TPS students. While these numbers aren’t staggering, they are great news for the Texas charter school sector, which had math growth of -.04 SD (twenty-three fewer days of instruction) and ELA growth of -.02 SD (eleven fewer days) in CREDO’s 2015 study. The new results show that not only are Texas charters showing dramatic improvement, but for the first time they are showing stronger academic growth than traditional public schools.

Yet there’s striking variation among Texas charters and their pupils. Hispanic students, who comprise about 64 percent of the Texas charter population, are seeing the most dramatic academic gains, While they still lag far behind their white TPS peers, they are closing the gap faster than their Hispanic TPS counterparts with .05 SD (twenty-nine days) and .03 SD (seventeen days) higher growth in reading and math, respectively. Other groups, however, fared less well. CREDO found that black pupils, students with special needs, and English language learners in charter schools all saw equivalent or negative growth as compared with their TPS peers.

Moreover, while most Texas charters are achieving greater growth than TPS, almost one third of them see less—a situation that the state’s new regulations are meant to remedy by better replicating the good schools and closing the bad.

The concern now is whether these rules can effectively hold schools accountable without strangling innovation. The final year of the study saw a dramatic increase in charter closures and a decline in new ones, and some evidence that Texas charters are on the right track to closing achievement gaps. Choice advocates and policymakers should continue to take note as the law continues to take effect to see if it is a cautionary tale or recipe for success.

SOURCE: “Charter School Performance in Texas,” The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (August 2017).

1. Fordham is namechecked in this story noting the first day of school in Columbus. Specifically, the crack journalists at Columbus’s Fox affiliate discussed the new lowered graduation requirements for this year’s seniors. Fordham is against this, as you all know well; the state supe says we are “out of touch with the times”. Gotta say, that stings just a little bit. (WTTE-TV/WSYX-TV, Columbus, 8/23/17)
    
2. Another thing that we – or at least I – am probably “out of touch” on is the decision by Dayton City Schools to lower the academic eligibility level for participation in sports. You will recall that the district’s entire varsity sports program got into some trouble last school year for, among other things, eligibility violations. No idea if this potentially catastrophic near miss factored into yesterday’s board decision, but apparently the 2.0 GPA level Dayton previously was supposed to hold to is not the rock bottom allowed by the Ohio High School Athletic Association – who sets these things on behalf of the entire state. What is rock bottom, you ask? Currently, a 1.0 GPA – or a D average. (I here refer the gentle reader to our illustrious state supe’s comments in the above piece about the predictive power of the GPA.) The Dayton school board did include some caveats about tutoring and “study tables” and such, so there is at least one more corner for them to cut if need be. (Dayton Daily News, 8/22/17)
    
3. In a probably-not-unconnected story, the state’s largest online school is no more. Effective today, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (a.k.a. ECOT) is officially a dropout recovery school, subject to a different set of accountability rules than those which have previously gotten them into a well-covered kerfuffle with nearly the entirety of state government. Dayton student athletes; meet ECOT. ECOT; Dayton student athletes. You’re welcome, Mr. Superintendent. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/22/17)
    
4. This morning, Dispatch editors opined on the unbridled joy and boundless opportunity promised by a new school year and encouraged kids and parents to “take advantage” of it all. Given the foregoing, I have to ask whether they’ve actually seen what’s going on out there. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/23/17)
    
5. Something stinks, I’m telling you. But just like the folks at Upper Arlington High School, I don’t know what it is so I’m just going to close up shop for the day out of an abundance of caution. Yuck. (WBNS-TV, Columbus, 8/23/17)
    
6. It wouldn’t be the start of a school year without news clips about school bus transportation. In a complete switcheroo, the first two clips on the topic are both positive. First up, Cleveland Metropolitan School District this year joins the growing group of schools sharing real time GPS bus tracking data with parents. Roll out is a little slow so far, but I can only imagine it will be popular once more folks know about it. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/22/17) Meanwhile, a transportation miracle of sorts seems to have occurred in Elyria. The district has over the last few years shrunk the transportation radius from 2 miles to 1.25 miles (making more students eligible) and has extended transportation to high schoolers. All while shrinking the number of actual buses and routes and overall cost of the service. Not exactly sure how this has been able to occur, but I’m either going to credit fantastic transportation planners or the noted reduction in the number of charter school students being transported. Either way, kudos. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/21/17)
    
7. Inhospitable scheduling put a sizeable and unfortunate dent in attendance at the first public input session for parents in Lorain City Schools with their new CEO. Unsurprisingly, one of the things that the small group wanted to fix: communication and scheduling. There were some interesting discussion points around technology as well. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/22/17)

1. Lots of folks in the Dayton area seem to be angst-ing over ongoing expansion of the EdChoice Scholarship program to give vouchers to more students from low-income families each year. Even the comments section is more lively than usual for the DDN. (Dayton Daily News, 8/19/17)
    
2. Speaking of active online comments, folks in Youngstown seem to have quite a bit to say about the district’s plan to eliminate a requirement for students to carry see-through backpacks and instead instill a “climate of trust” between students and staff this year. Says East High School’s new principal: “A couple places you would expect to see... clear backpacks are airports and prisons. We are neither.” (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/20/17)
    
3. Here are yet more details on the new “freshman academy” taking shape within the Colossus of Lorain (aka their schmancy new-ish high school building, which it seems is really very tremendously large). Interesting parallels with Youngstown in regard to issues of discipline and trust, although I might suggest tucking everyone away in the “penthouse” with the same handful of teachers and a couple of “safety officers” every day could be misconstrued in that regard. But that’s probably just me. Best wishes to everyone on this new endeavor as the school year begins. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/19/17)
    
4. Six community and philanthropic organizations and a board of nearly three dozen community members of wide-ranging affiliations are planning on working hard to bring the Say Yes to Education program to Cleveland. The folks who run the program seem to think it’s mainly about college scholarships; the folks getting ready to work for its arrival in Cleveland seem to think it’s mainly about wraparound services in order to make going to college possible. Shall the twain ever meet? Stay tuned. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/18/17)
    
5. The United Way of Summit County is changing tack in embracing four new Bold Goals to improve the lives of disadvantaged county residents. Those goals are: 1) Improving third-grade reading scores. 2) Increasing four-year graduation rates and college/career readiness. 3) Empowering as many as 11,000 people with improved personal financial knowledge and skills. 4) Greatly reduce emergency room visits due to drug overdoses. Not to short change goal number 4, but, “Our long-term strategy is really goal one, two and three,” said the UW boss. This seems like a sea change for United Way work and fairly surprising to your humble clips compiler. Better yet, the United Way is planning to redirect its considerable financial support and volunteer corps to align with them. Color me impressed. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/17/17)