1. Our own Chad Aldis, an expert in charter school policy if the press it to be believed, is quoted in this new piece regarding pending legislation designed to “return” money clawed back from charter schools to the district schools from which it was “taken”. Sorry for the overuse of quotation marks, but it can’t be helped in this context. School funding is hard. Sadly, Chad’s remarks on the substance of the bills in question only come after an intricate and lengthy discussion of bill language plagiarization, which you will be forgiven for concluding is actually the most important thing here. (WYTV, Youngstown, 8/15/17) Speaking of claw backs, in a completely unrelated story (probably), another online school bit the dust (probably) less than a week before school starts this year. Their school year is currently on hold due to financial stability concerns in the face of those aforementioned claw backs. Kudos to everyone involved. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/14/17)
    
2. Meanwhile, Youngstown CEO Krish Mohip abruptly ended a consulting gig with a district vendor after questions of propriety were broached by the Vindy. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/16/17) In a completely unrelated story (probably), the Youngstown ADC has agreed to ask the state for a pay raise for Mohip. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/16/17)
    
3. Just when today’s clips threatened to send me into a funk, something wonderful dropped in my inbox (thanks, Sweetheart! I owe you!) To wit: The arrival of the Family Independence Initiative in Cincinnati, reported far too quietly for my liking in the Enquirer earlier this week. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 8/14/17) What’s the big deal? I hear you ask. Doesn’t Cincy already have the curative presence of Our Lady of Oyler to solve all its poverty and education-related issues? Maybe so. But how about while we continue to wait for that particular miracle to evanesce, we take a nice long look at the life and work of Mauricio Lim Miller, founder of FII, courtesy of this profile and interview written by David Bornstein. In it, you will find what I might call “anti-Oyler” efforts. Or, if you will, an actual answer for poor families. (New York Times, 8/15/17)
    
4. Ohio is well known for its financial support of private schools. No, not vouchers. So-called “auxiliary funds”, which have supported private school students for many years across the state. But, as noted above, the “deduction-based” funding mechanism for such things has been a bane for both districts and private schools for almost as long. Things are starting to change for the better, at least for a group of non-religious private schools, who for the first time this year will receive their auxiliary funds (transportation, textbooks, etc.) directly from the state. No word on whether the districts involved are happy about the change or not. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/14/17) Speaking of state support for private schools, Cleveland Catholics seem to like the sound of new voucher legislation pending in the General Assembly. (Northeast Ohio Catholic Magazine, 8/15/17) Speaking of Catholic schools, here is an awesome idea for helping Columbus Cristo Rey high schoolers better interact with the adults who may be interested in mentoring or even employing them in the future. But it is topped by a very unfortunate headline. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/16/17)
    
5. Happy belated birthday to Dayton teachers union prez David Romick. School board members awkwardly celebrated with him during their meeting last night, right after they unanimously ratified the tentative agreement with his union that averted a triple dog dare strike at the eleventh hour before school started for the year. I can just imagine the scene: little Davey clutching his celebratory balloon surrounded not-at-all ominously by all the folks with whom he had been tussling publicly and privately for the last six months. With the dirgey, off-key strains of “Happy Birthday to You” dying off in the background, the birthday boy steps forward to give US a present on his big day: next round of negotiations start in just 18 months, folks! And many more… (Dayton Daily News, 8/15/17)

The big news out of this year’s Education Next poll is the sharp decline in support for charter schools, even among Republicans, which is going to leave us wonks scratching our heads for months. But don’t miss the findings on what we used to call “standards-based reform.” Support for common standards has rebounded, with proponents outnumbering opponents three to one. And a strong plurality of Americans want states—and not the feds, and not local school boards—to set academic standards, determine whether a school is failing, and if so, determine how to fix it.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this is precisely where Congress landed two years ago when it passed the Every Student Succeeds Act. Lawmakers pushed key decisions to the states and, in some cases, to local communities. But there were limits. When it came to standards-setting and testing, the feds made it clear that states could not delegate their responsibilities. Uniform, statewide systems are still required, just as they have been for over twenty years.

Alas, someone needs to explain that to Arizona and New Hampshire. While both states deserve plaudits for innovative moves in recent years—Arizona for its excellent approach to school ratings under ESSA, and New Hampshire for its work on competency-based education—they have erred in enacting laws that would let local elementary and middle schools select among a range of options when it’s time for annual standardized testing. That’s bad on policy grounds, and it clearly violates ESSA.

First let’s tackle the substantive concerns. The reason that policymakers have embraced statewide standards and assessments for more than two decades is that they are proven ways to raise expectations for all students. In the bad old days, before statewide standards, affluent communities tended to ask their kids to shoot for the moon (or at least 3s, 4s, and 5s on a battery of Advanced Placement exams), while too many schools in low-income neighborhoods were happy with basic literacy and numeracy. These expectations gaps haven’t disappeared, but they have narrowed. And statewide standards and assessments at least point to a common North Star, plus provide transparency about how close students and schools are coming to achieving college-and-career-ready benchmarks.

The risk with Arizona and New Hampshire’s approach is that some schools will opt for easier tests—and that will exacerbate the expectations and achievement gaps.

As for the legal question, as this brief from Dennis Cariello makes clear, Congress debated whether to allow states to let districts choose among a menu of tests, and decided against it—at least for grades 3–8. It did open the door to such an approach in high school, where kids are already taking lots of other tests. And there’s good evidence that getting everyone to take the SAT or ACT is smart policy. But not for younger students.

To be sure, the testing landscape is going to continue to evolve, and federal policy should be supportive. Already, for example, several states have asked for waivers from ESSA to allow them to give an algebra test to some of their middle schoolers, rather than the regular assessment, so as to avoid double-testing. That strikes me as perfectly reasonable. There’s also ESSA’s “innovative assessments pilot,” which provides space for breaking new ground.

But a general balkanization of standards and testing is not allowed, for good reason. Local control has its place—but, as Americans told Education Next, it also has its limits. 

The possibility of a new federal tax credit for private-school choice has highlighted the lack of legal protections for LGBT students in school settings. This absence stands in marked contrast to the extensive legislative and judicial mandates on schooling and race, as Michael Petrilli noted recently. Each protected class of U.S. citizens—racial minorities or individuals with disabilities, for instance—has its own distinctive historical contours and interacts with education in distinctive ways. It is possible, though not easy, to create single-sex public schools or charter schools that serve autistic children, but the prohibitions on racial discrimination are absolute.

The Supreme Court did not stop with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), after all. Later rulings reinforced its principles by limiting the practices of private schools, too, even those that had made a religious-liberty case for segregation.

• In 1973, the Court ruled that Mississippi could lend textbooks in secular subjects to religious schools, but not if they discriminated on racial grounds (Norwood v. Harrison).
• In 1976, the Court held that private schools could not hold racially discriminatory admissions policies without violating federal law (Runyon v. McCrary).
• In 1983, the Court upheld the IRS’s revocation of the federal tax exemption from Bob Jones University, because of its policy of racial discrimination (Bob Jones University v. United States).

Significant work remains to be done to overcome residual forms of racism, but, as constitutional scholar John Inazu has put it, racial non-discrimination has become a “super-norm” no longer questioned by reasonable people.

Will non-discrimination on sexual orientation follow the same path and influence education to the same extent?

The cultural trajectory suggests that it might. While Americans disagree about whether sexual orientation is chosen or innate, whether gender is fixed or fluid, and whether same-sex marriage is acceptable or not, public opinion is broadly moving in a progressive direction, even among religious conservatives. (Note this recent Pew Research survey.) Consider the extent and pace of change: In 1972, the psychiatric diagnostic manual still listed same-sex attraction as a mental illness, but in 2015, the Supreme Court rendered marriage equality constitutional in all fifty states. Now some health insurance covers gender reassignment surgery, national organizations track laws that protect LGBT citizens, and television shows and movies reflect a variety of sexual orientations. “Heteronormativity,” a pejorative term, has entered the academic lexicon. Most public schools embrace non-discriminatory hiring policies and allow students to form LGBT support groups, and the National Association of Independent Schools expects its members to follow non-discriminatory policies on sexual orientation. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Alliance’s most recent National Survey of School Climate, conducted in 2016, indicates that private, non-religious schools provide safer and more supportive school environments than do public schools, and that religious schools are more mixed but not negative.

Today’s kindergartners will not remember the myriad battles leading up to Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), but they will certainly experience sexual orientation and marriage on very different terms than have Baby Boomers or even Gen X-ers. Maryland’s small private-school scholarship program, enacted in 2016, forbids participating schools from using sexual orientation as an admissions criterion. Given this pace of change, it is reasonable to expect an incremental shift towards non-discrimination in all school settings.

LGBT advocates and activists may note that the racial desegregation of schools ultimately rested upon the Supreme Court’s intervention against the principles of federalism and religious liberty. They can certainly push for changes to state statutes and constitutions, as Dick Komer of the Institute for Justice noted recently. The same is possible at the federal level. But, as I suggest elsewhere, the Brown precedent could point to another legal strategy: the categorical-psychological-harm threshold.

In the decade before Brown, psychologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark had found in multiple trials that black children chose to play with white dolls over black dolls and that they associated positive attributes with white dolls but not with black dolls. The Clarks interpreted this as evidence that black children had internalized “negative self-regard” from a segregated society.

The Clarks served as expert witnesses in the school-segregation cases that led to Brown  (1954), in which unanimous decision Chief Justice Earl Warren elaborated upon psychological harm:

To separate them [Black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the negro plaintiffs: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

The Court therefore held that racial segregation was inherently damaging academically as well as psychologically to an entire group of children.

Note that the Court’s threshold for federal interference was not whether any school activity potentially harmed any individual student, but whether a school or school system inherently and inevitably harmed entire categories of students. It’s no secret that exposure to contrary beliefs and practices can be distressing to individuals. Yet democratic culture is predicated upon, and citizenship advanced by, exposure to contrary beliefs.

In Brown, the Court determined that race belonged in an entirely different domain: The consequences of being a racial minority should be subject neither to individual beliefs nor to variations in state laws. Evidence of psychological harm helped the justices arrive there.

What if a robust body of research found that heteronormative schooling inevitably damaged children who were not heterosexual, or children whose parents were not heterosexual? One can imagine a Brown-like moment at the Supreme Court. The consequences for education policy might be to withdraw funding, and possibly even tax-exempt status, from private schools whose hiring, admissions, and retention policies discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. Neither the federalist principle nor the religious liberty argument would override this determination.

Scholars have long argued about the validity of the dolls test, contending that Kenneth Clark’s depiction of the findings was selective and therefore “misled the courts”; that dolls tests, properly administered, produce considerably more nuanced results; and that the dolls test itself reflected a flawed, post-World-War II vision of racial identity. The trustworthiness of social scientific research more generally is also open to debate. In a widely noticed August 2015 article, Science Magazine reported on “a painstaking yearlong effort to reproduce one-hundred research projects” that had appeared in peer-reviewed journals. The analysts who repeated the psychological studies found that only 36 percent of their efforts yielded significant findings, versus 97 percent of the original studies. Clearly, the standard for research findings to serve as the basis for public policy should be high and should rest, at minimum, upon replication in multiple contexts.

Educational pluralism inevitably involves accepting—and funding—schools that we wouldn’t choose for our own children. Secularists think religious schools perpetuate mythology; Evangelicals feel the same way about district schools; Waldorf schools, with their utter rejection of commercialism, appeal to a particular subset of American families; progressive parents look askance at traditionalist pedagogies; Jewish day schools differ appreciably from one another. Nor is this sort of variability—of approach, of belief, and of attitude—limited to education. Taxpayers in democracies end up supporting wars, economic policies, and social programs that they do not endorse.

Educationally plural democracies crossed that bridge a long time ago, having concluded that funding diverse types of schools benefits the body politic more than uniformity. At the same time, however, a democratic nation will—and indeed must—wrestle with the limits of freedom. Categorical psychological harm might provide a federal foundation upon which to foreclose schools’ right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Ashley Berner is deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and assistant professor at the School of Education. Palgrave Macmillan released her book, Pluralism and American Education: No One Way to School, last November.

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

As the ink dries on the recently enacted gifted education law, Public Law 17–82, Connecticut has the opportunity to lead the nation in empowering local school administrators and teachers in how to best serve our gifted and talented students.

The field of education knows what works to serve gifted and talented students, including how best to identify these students, how to appropriately use acceleration strategies and how to best prepare teachers to work with this population. Best practice guidelines called for in the law will offer direction and clarity to districts on gifted education practices; guidance many practitioners lack today.

To move this forward, we encourage state officials to follow three important steps.

First, they should remove policy barriers to learning and establish a sound statewide policy on acceleration. Research demonstrates that acceleration strategies—such as advancing students an entire grade or in certain subjects—are one of the most effective approaches to help ensure all children, regardless of background, receive quality gifted and talented programing.

Acceleration strategies allow students to access advanced content, skills, or understanding before their expected age or grade level. Rather than load students up with more content they have already mastered, acceleration helps truly challenge these learners with more stimulating and enriched content.

Second, Connecticut must commit to providing teachers and administrators quality pre-service training and on-the-job professional learning on how to best spot and subsequently support gifted students, especially those from underserved backgrounds.

On this point, the state can leverage the designated staff member charged with supporting those on the ground who serve gifted students by focusing their energies on this significant need.

The state can assist districts in accessing and delivering such content, including through partnerships with organizations like the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), to deliver cost-effective and evidence-based professional development.

Third, the state should build on its new assessment and accountability system and monitor the progress of its gifted students. Connecticut should include high achieving students as a measured sub-group in its accountability system and establish targets for continued growth and excellence. By doing so, the state will send the clear message that all children deserve to learn every day.

By enacting Public Law 17–82, Connecticut’s elected officials have acknowledged that gifted and talented students are important. These three points are examples of how the new law can be leveraged to create guidelines that will give every Connecticut school district the information it needs to implement evidence-based and high-impact gifted education programs.

Absent such guidance, districts are largely left to do as they please and this has created a widely uneven playing field with a few haves and far more have-nots in the state’s most disadvantaged districts.

To evaluate the law’s ultimate impact, NAGC and our allies in the Connecticut Association for the Gifted will carefully scrutinize future reports for hopeful upticks in numbers of students receiving specialized gifted services. Nearer-term, we are eager to support the state in developing the best practice guidelines and with districts to put the guidelines into practice.

Public Law 17–82 positions Connecticut to become a national leader in helping school districts appropriately serve all gifted and talented children. We urge all parties to seize this opportunity to, at long last, make strides in supporting these students as they reach to achieve their personal best.

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

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

July and August might otherwise be sleepy months best reserved for recovering from Ohio’s biennial budget process, lounging beachside, and avoiding one’s smartphone and computer. The downtime also creates space to reflect. In the world of education policy, there is much to ruminate about, especially when it comes to the words and actions of our state leaders and the impact their decisions will have on Ohio students.

One such group of decisions makers is the State Board of Education, a nineteen-member board of partially elected, partially appointed leaders whose stated vision is: “For all Ohio students to graduate from the PK-12 education system with the knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary to successfully continue their education and/or be workforce ready and successfully participate in the global economy as productive citizens.”

Unfortunately, board members’ vacillations in recent months on foundational elements like testing, accountability, standards—even the basic belief that schools can make a real difference in helping students—seem to undermine that vision. The board most visibly took up the mantel of mediocrity this spring during the state’s debate over what should constitute appropriate graduation requirements. In April, members adopted recommendations (later adopted by the legislature and passed into law) that set Ohio on a pathway to essentially require nothing of its 2018 high school graduates. It’s a quintessential example of state leaders peddling low expectations for students if ever there was one.

Other recent actions and remarks from board members seem to reinforce their tendency to waver. It’s important to note that the board’s official power is fairly limited—focused primarily on oversight of the state education department, teacher licensure, and decision-making on technical matters. Yet the nineteen members do play a leadership role within Ohio’s K-12 system. They regularly engage with the media, visit classrooms, speak with superintendents, and act as the de facto public face of education leadership in our state.

So what have they been saying lately on the state’s education matters? Have a look at July’s board meeting.

Third-grade reading guarantee

In a 12-5 vote, the board moved to increase the proficiency cut score for the third-grade reading assessment that students must pass in order to move on to fourth grade. This increase was explicitly required by the Ohio Revised Code (through past legislation that put in place the state’s third-grade reading guarantee), so the board’s vote should have been perfunctory.

Meryl Johnson voted against the heightened standard, explaining herself this way (as reported by Gongwer News):

“I also understand the importance of children being able to read, having been a teacher for so many years, but I just feel we have not taken the time or done the research to really find the best way to make that happen.”

I’m not sure what’s more alarming: that a veteran teacher admits to not knowing the best way to get a child to read or that a current state board member would suggest that Ohio should spend additional time conducting research when most everyone recognizes the importance of helping children read before exiting the primary grades. That’s not to say further reflection and research are a bad idea—but the lack of urgency here is striking.

Also weighing in on this issue were board members Stephanie Dodd and Martha Manchester, troubled that the threshold rose not only for kids taking the regular third grade reading test but also for those who take alternative assessments.

As the Plain Dealer reports, Dodd said:

“We have school starting in five weeks and we have children that could be retained when they shouldn’t be. That’s not right.”

Manchester said:

“This is a really big deal. I’ve known nothing about this, and all of a sudden I hear that there’s all these children that could be affected and it tears at my heart.”

To be clear, these remarks refer to students who failed the state reading exam and also failed the alternative exam. It’s hard to see why such pupils should be promoted, given that state law requires they be retained. The State Board of Education’s role as an executive agency is to enforce the law, not find ways around it. I understand the empathy shown by Manchester, but the fact that there are nine-year-olds who can’t read is just as gut wrenching. Moreover, what’s really “not right” is that local education leaders are asking the state to give them another reprieve rather than doubling down and doing what it takes to get more students reading on grade level.

“We can’t fix schools before we fix poverty”

The board also discussed the academic distress commission model that now affects Youngstown and Lorain schools. School districts that are chronically low performing will see a series of consequences that include lessening the power of their elected board (abolishing it after four years of no improvements). Gongwer noted that members “continued to use the words ‘dismantle,’ ‘privatization,’ and ‘takeover’ to describe the policy change.”

Meryl Johnson’s remarks would seem to reflect more concern about the rights of the adults in charge of the state’s worst-performing schools than about the children trapped in those schools:

“If we’re going to talk about stepping in to other districts and taking away the power of their elected school boards… I would like to see the kind of resources and assistance that we’re offering to those districts here on out so that we really give them the help they need instead of stepping in and taking their districts away from them.”

This seems to ignore the tremendous resources that Ohio taxpayers have already invested in their lowest-performing school districts with virtually nothing to show for it.

Linda Haycock obfuscated the issue at hand with her remarks, though she at least mentioned children:

“I wanted to express some of my skepticism for any system, any governance anything that is put in place to educate children if the socio-economic culture of the community isn’t addressed. It’s not going to surprise me at all if we get down the road and wait and see… the schools, the educational indicators still aren’t happening because the real issue is the financial security, the mobility of the children.”

Such comments aren’t atypical from our state’s leaders, unfortunately. But they are largely unhelpful. If Ms. Haycock plans to wait until poverty is eliminated before tangible improvements can be made to schools, she has a frustrating road ahead. And if she doesn’t believe that schools can make a real difference for poor kids, then why is she serving on the state board of education?

Ohio’s ESSA Plan

The board’s July meeting brought approval of Ohio’s draft ESSA plan (which now awaits the governor’s sign-off). That plan reduces from 30 to 15 the minimum number of students in a given subgroup (e.g., students with disabilities, students of different races, etc.) required for reporting and accountability purposes. Linda Haycock put forth an amendment to ax that change, citing a common but unsubstantiated refrain about student privacy:

“When you have such a small subgroup in a school district, it’s easy to identify the people who are included in that subgroup.”

Kudos to the members who defeated the amendment and who spoke in support of reducing Ohio’s subgroup size. Meryl Johnson noted that she would:

 “hate to see groups being left out… It’s very easy to ignore students some times.” 

This is essentially the premise of standards and accountability-based reforms in a nutshell—the public deserves to know how well schools are serving all students. ESSA’s requirements around annual testing and reporting information on student sub-groups is a key part of ensuring that schools are on the hook for it.

Meanwhile, Laura Kohler shared real-life experience from her term as a local school board member, noting that her district “learned valuable information about whether it was closing achievement gaps for students in subgroups.”

Live streaming

Finally, Nick Owens deserves credit for proposing that state board meetings be live-streamed, not only to inform “everyday Ohioans” but also so new members could get up to speed on past meetings. On that issue, Board President Tess Elshoff had this to say to Gongwer News:

"I've tried to work really hard this year on encouraging everyone to speak up and state concerns or issues and things of that form and I guess I'm a little hesitant because sometimes when cameras are on, people get shy and I don't want someone to not object to something that they disagree with because cameras are rolling… I guess my biggest concern is just that it may possibly change the direction of dialogue from board members, be it good or bad.”

Here’s hoping that our state board members can get over feeling hesitant, shy, or equivocal and act boldly on behalf of the 1.7 million kids they were elected and appointed to serve.

1. As all my loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers know, your humble clips compiler is consistent in believing that, aside from you, very few others take this little news clips lark seriously (and that both of you should probably find additional hobbies; just sayin’). It is in that spirit of humility that I say truly that I’m sure this had nothing to do with me and my lengthy ramble at the start of Friday’s clips and instead had everything to do with thorough journalism. To wit: Jim Siegel was able to find all of the other online schools to which State Auditor Dave Yost’s (…) new guidance, issued last week, currently applies. Interestingly, he gives a good update on how those schools have handled the results of their attendance audits, but how they’re planning to comply with the new guidance remains a mystery. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/12/17)
    
2. As noted in the above piece, at least two online charter schools to which State Auditor Dave Yost’s (…) new guidance currently applies have simply closed their doors in reaction to the monetary “claw back” required of them due to the results of their attendance audits. Here is a more detailed story on one of those schools: Marion City Digital Academy. The decision to close MCDA was made just last Monday – a week before school was supposed to start, leaving some parents in the lurch if this piece is to be believed. The school was sponsored by the Marion City School District, so I’m sure that the monies owed to the state in “claw back” ($600,000ish!) will not go astray. As for the new guidance and its requirements, there is no information included here either on how that will be handled by MCDA, but one supposes that the district itself was the primary provider of services, so the state is probably well covered in that regard. Phew. The supposition herein that MCDA officials will have to go door to door to deliver the closure news to some families is simply an additional eyebrow-raising irony to this whole episode. Think of it as the MCDA IRL Farewell Tour. (Mansfield News Journal, 8/10/17) Speaking of collateral damage (were we?), the superintendent of the state’s largest online school announced his retirement from said gig, effective this week. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/11/17)
    
3. Finally today, charter school sponsors chatted with Gongwer about year two of the state’s new evaluation system, which recently concluded. Sounds like, in general, folks were happier this year. Although the bar was pretty low for that after year one and, of course, it probably ultimately depends on how those evaluations turn out. We’ll see come November. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/11/17)

My memory is a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure the first time I heard the term “Nazi” was when I was nine or ten and watching the “Blues Brothers” on TV. All I remember is that the neo-Nazis were having a parade, and getting in the Blues Brothers’ way, and the whole thing was treated as farce. They were clearly a bunch of losers and idiots, not even worthy of fear. They were a punchline, the butt of a joke.

Of course, as I got older, the ugly, evil reality of Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists became clear to me, thanks in large part to Mr. Klein at Parkway West Senior High School, and his World History and AP U.S. History courses. I’m pretty sure Mr. Klein didn’t just care about making us “college and career ready”; he wanted us to understand the full scope of humanity’s history, both the wonders of our cultural achievements and the depravity of totalitarianism. Today I feel a special sense of gratitude for Mr. Klein, and all his compatriots in social studies departments across the country, who gave us the gift of understanding the beauty, and evil, of which humans are capable.

So it was that the image of a mob of angry white men carrying torches in front of a church in the Old Dominion touched a nerve, and triggered an immune response among Americans far and wide. And that the cowardly attack on peaceful protesters by a homegrown terrorist brought to mind Selma and Montgomery, not to mention Oklahoma City.

Vice President Pence finally said the words appropriate to the horrific events: “We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo-Nazis or the KKK,” which he called “dangerous fringe groups.” President Trump should say those words himself (update: he more or less just did), should make it clear that these groups are full of losers, that he wants nothing to do with them, that they aren’t welcome in American public life or in the Republican Party or the conservative movement.

And he should tell Americans of all backgrounds, but especially the descendants of slavery and the relatives of Holocaust survivors, that he appreciates the pain and suffering triggered by these idiots, these losers, these terrorists, with their torches and their angry chants. That he understands history and will not let it repeat itself, not on his watch.

As for the rest of us, let’s try in the days ahead to treat each other with a little extra love and compassion. And if you feel despair, read some history, and be reminded that the idiots are a small minority, that most of our fellow citizens have good hearts, and that evil is no match for America. 

1. In case you missed it, State Auditor Dave Yost (…) issued some guidance this week. What’s the big deal, I hear you ask. Doesn’t he do that literally every week? Well, probably. But this is rather special guidance with some potentially far-reaching effects for charter schools across the state for years to come. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/9/17) Of course, you might not get that impression if you read the foregoing Dispatch piece, or indeed this version of the story from the PD. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/9/17) The D and the PD and the Blade are focused solely on how this guidance affects Ohio’s largest online charter school, which, as both of my dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers know, is currently involved a kerfuffle with seemingly every facet of state government over matters of contract law and the results of an attendance audit. Of course, said school’s sponsor is located in Toledo, so kudos to the Blade for the local angle at least. (Toledo Blade, 8/9/17) Not even the analytical and thorough folks at Gongwer could think of the name of any other charter school – online or otherwise – to which this guidance currently applies. But I am assured by reputable folks, including our own Chad Aldis, who is quoted in support of the common sense guidance and its aims in this and in all of the pieces herein, that it does indeed have the ability to apply universally and currently does apply to other online schools besides the most obvious example. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/9/17) I’ve read the guidance letter myself and am convinced it’s not simply targeted at that one humungous online school, whatever the focus of the press coverage. Perhaps we should think of it similarly to HB 70 – a favorite topic of discussion for your humble clips compiler (see below) – which is still called the “Youngstown Plan” despite applying to another school district currently and potentially to any other one in the future. It’s always the “Some Other Town Plan” until it lands on your doorstep. Probably appropriate then to conclude our rundown of coverage of Yost’s guidance issue with the AP version, which has got like 40 hits from around the state already, aside from this one in the ABJ. You all (may) have been warned. Or “guided”. (Associated Press via Akron Beacon Journal, 8/9/17)
    
2. It was pretty late in the day before anyone saw it, but smoke was indeed spotted emanating from the chimney atop the building where Dayton’s teachers were voting in conclave on a new contract offer. It was gray smoke, however, which indicated good news/bad news. Good news: the teachers voted to approve the offer, likely averting a strike. Bad news: the teachers voted to approve a motion of no confidence in the district board and supe (wait – that was on the agenda?!). To which I say whew (and “get in line”)! (Dayton Daily News, 8/10/17) Nobody seems particularly happy about the deal in this follow up piece and “moving on” seems to be predicated on some folks having to perhaps eat a little crow-flavored breakfast cereal, but there’s always the first day of school to look forward to next week. I’m sure that won’t be awkward at all. Not to mention the upcoming school board race. Wonder if anyone will mention this strike stuff during the campaign? (Dayton Daily News, 8/10/17)
    
3. Speaking of supes, the honorable gentleman from Columbus – Dr. J. Daniel Good – yesterday announced his retirement from the lofty height of superintendent effective no later than the end of December. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/10/17)
    
4. And speaking of school boards, let’s see if the folks in Louisville have gotten over their strike-related rancor after eight months. If the comments of the school board candidates quoted in this piece – all frantically trying to correct the record after a previous Rep piece they felt erroneously stated their views – are anything to go by, the answer is a decisive no. (Canton Repository, 8/10/17) Of interest in the foregoing piece is a quote from the current Louisville board prez, who is not seeking reelection seemingly because of the aforementioned strike-related rancor: “I felt badly about the way things were, and I thought if stepping away helps things to heal and bring about peace, then I’m all about that.” Noble in a sense, I suppose, but riddled with retroactive contradictions. Let’s contrast that with the school board race in Sylvania, which you’ll recall faced its own rancorous debate over redrawing attendance boundaries within the district. “If I’m going to complain about it, then I’m going to step up and do something about it,” said one of three candidates running because of the uproar. Logical in a sense, I suppose, but riddled with problems of its own. Personally, I prefer “I’m an expert in this, I could really be helpful. I should lend a hand,” as a motivation for running for office, but sadly no one is on the record as saying that. Ever. (Toledo Blade, 8/9/17)
    
5. I am remiss in clipping this, but it’s worth a look even a week late. Stephanie Klupinski of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and John Zitzner of the Breakthrough Network of charter schools opined together in praise of the Cleveland Compact. Lots of interesting facts leavened in with the opinion as well. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/4/17)
    
6. At last we’ve reached the What the Heck is Going On in Lorain portion of our clips. Sadly I’m not sure this collection will actually answer that question. But here goes. First up, the Morning Journal took a look at TNTP, the NYC-based entity who will be spearheading the effort to solicit public input to help the new CEO to formulate his turnaround plan. Both the organization and the VP who testified before the Academic Distress Commission seem focused in the right areas, if I may say so. Work begins next week. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/9/17) At the same meeting, Lorain CEO David Hardy’s 90-day timeline was laid out. From public input to final submission of his Academic Improvement Plan. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/10/17) Meanwhile – and returning to our theme in Item 1 above – Lorain School Board Prez Tony “The Tiger” Dimacchia seems to have reached something of a breaking point as the “Youngstown Plan” has morphed rather decidedly into the “Lorain Plan” right under his very nose. He seems to have determined that tattling to Papa Paolo may not work and has decided to go find Grandpa John instead, tossing Youngstown under the bus along the way. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 8/10/17)

If you're anything like me, you can't help but grow really discouraged at what seems like a lack of progress toward improving public education. I’ll admit there are days when I just want to throw in the towel.

I keep noticing, though, that there is actually a substantial amount of good news about American education that never seems to get any traction in either traditional or social media. I also suspect education reformers are so accustomed to calling out the bad news in order to incite action that we fail to appreciate the importance of good news. I’ve discussed this previously, but feel the need to revisit it as there’s been a spat of generally unheralded good news.

There is new clear evidence that we are making slow, gradual gains adding up to significant change. Though you almost had to read between the lines to appreciate the genuinely good news in a recent Department of Education report, “The Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups,” and good news it was, indisputably. It cited the following progress:

• Since 1992, on the fourth grade NAEP reading assessment, the white-black score gap narrowed from 32 points to 26 points. This was not due to a drop in white scores, which went up by 8 points, but results from an even larger gain of 14 points among black students.
• Similarly, on the eighth grade reading NAEP, the white-Hispanic gap closed significantly from 26 to 21 points. Again, Hispanic students made larger gains than did white students (12 points compared to 7 points).
• Since 1990, high school completion rates for young adults have gone up for all students, but most impressively for Hispanic students?increasing from 59 to 88 percent. Black students made great gains (from 83 to 92 percent), with both groups outpacing white student gains (from 90 to 95 percent).
• The number of bachelor degrees earned by Hispanic students doubled since 2004. It went up 46 percent for black students.

From another source altogether, a new report by Richard Whitmire for The 74/The Alumni found that some of the better-known charter organizations—including KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First, and YES Prep—are improving college graduation rates for poor kids by three to five times what our traditional public schools are doing. While charters aren’t NCTQ’s core issue—we’re agnostic about where kids find great teachers, just as long as they find them—I am hugely impressed by this result and extend my congratulations to the thousands of teachers who worked so hard to prepare their students for college.

Advocates of education improvement need to start calling attention to these success stories so that Americans understand that progress is being made and that decades of reform are showing results. Of course I’m not arguing that it’s time to declare victory and go home to rest on our laurels. We can all agree that America still has significant work ahead to raise the quality of the schooling provided to all students. And the media must share the blame as their bombardment of negative news buries the success stories. But we need to acknowledge reforms that work so we can learn from, replicate, and build on the gains they produce.

Kate Walsh is president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on the NCTQ blog.

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

When you think about education, it’s worth asking two questions over and over again: Why is this thing the way it is? And does it have to stay this way?

One thing you hear often in education is that your ZIP code shouldn’t determine your educational destiny. This is something even folks who say they oppose “education reform” ostensibly believe.

So if that’s true, why is your house the overwhelming predictor of the sort of education you will receive?

I am willing to concede that during the early days of public education—open to all, paid for by taxpayers, and free at the point of delivery, as Sir Ken Robinson describes it—it might have made sense to organize compulsory schooling for children around small localities, principally because, in the absence of state and federal revenue streams or even state mandates and responsibility for education, taxing a community via its wealth in property probably made sense.

It was also probably easier to ask your neighbor to chip in on the financing of the local common school than it would have been to get someone from another town to do it. This was a policy decision grounded in localism and local identity, and it remains baked into our schools today.

Not that there was no schooling going on while states were organizing their local public education systems. People homeschooled, or they sent their children to schools with a religious affiliation—the Catholic Church is notable for its contribution in this space. And, too, as James Anderson writes in The Education of Blacks in the South, there were efforts by African Americans to set up systems of education for black children during slavery and, after its ending, on their own.

These efforts are noteworthy in particular because they show a deep understanding by blacks—both enslaved and liberated—that freedom is only half achieved without education, and that in the absence of a way to have education provided for you, you must somehow find a way to get it for yourself.

Fast-forward to now, and you can see lots of things have happened as a result of letting your house be the proxy for the kind of school you attend:

• America’s public schools are more segregated now than they were before the Brown v. Board decision.
• We see a growing movement of municipal secessions (U.S. News: “The Quiet Wave of School District Secessions”) in which wealthy, whiter districts are withdrawing from larger geographies to set up their own school systems and sequester their own school aid.
• We see a sort of hyperlocalism that threatens common comparisons of student achievement even within states, let alone across them, undermining the promise of high expectations for all students, and minority students in particular.

And education, which ostensibly was not meant to be a market, has turned into one. More pointedly, it’s turned into two:

The first one is the housing market, which is now in every way the proxy for the buying and selling of school that is supposed to be free but which is really priced into your mortgage. And if markets can be unfair to people, there are some people they are more unfair to than others: young families who have to buy into overheated housing markets, and those who still suffer the long-term effects of redlining, chief among them.

The other is the black market that arises when people lie about their addresses to gain entrance into better-performing schools in towns where they may not live.

New Jersey, for example, employs the pernicious practice of having off-duty police officers follow children home to make sure they reside in the correct school district, to make sure no one steals “free school.”

When we’ve criminalized the pursuit of a good school, we must ask whether the mission and intent we ascribe to public education are really being served.

So, again, why is this thing the way it is? And does it have to stay this way?

Buried in these questions are many others about rules and identity…questions about your own values and your own priorities as individuals and as a community. If you value the housing structure and how it links to school access more than you value unwinding that link, you’ll behave one way. And to be clear, there is a lot wrapped up in that decision: history and identity, economics and prosperity—all important things.

But there’s lots of bad in there, too. And the best and worst thing here is that you, and only you, have the opportunity and responsibility to do something about it.

Now, wrapped up in the housing discussion, but also existing in its own complicated sphere, is, of course, race. And though I know there are many issues of race that affect more relationships than just those between white and black Americans, I use the black-white achievement gap as my example because its closure has driven state and federal policy and expenditures in a way I don’t believe any other civic issue has or could have. I also pick this because, as a grown black man who once was a small black boy growing up in one of America’s most difficult neighborhoods, this is the lens through which I have seen the world. It’s the one I feel best equipped to discuss.

I think fights over resources—over weighted-student formulas and bonus weights for concentrations of poverty, for instance—are important when we talk about attacking the achievement gap, or any gaps that have grown out of the interactions of race and our public systems and institutions over time. But they don’t seem consequential when you consider the dynamics of the systems into which we introduce the money in the first place:

• A recent Johns Hopkins study showed that having just one black teacher between grades two and five made black students more likely to consider college and reduced their likelihood of dropping out by 29 percent. For low-income black kids, the likelihood is decreased by 39 percent. In stark contrast, America’s teaching force is over 80 percent white.
• A study titled “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children” involved 264 mostly white, female undergraduates from large public U.S. universities. In one experiment, students rated the innocence of people ranging from infants to twenty-five-year-olds who were black, white, or an unidentified race. The students judged children up to nine years old as equally innocent regardless of race but considered black children significantly less innocent than other children in every age group beginning at age ten.
• A report released under the Obama administration showed that a quarter of the high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer any Algebra II courses, while a third of those schools do not have any chemistry classes.

I am not trying to be provocative just for the sake of doing it. But I am trying to put a couple of important thoughts before you.

Our school systems are not neutral. They are the creations of generations of political, social, and financial history. So consider that your school systems aren’t actually broken, but are instead working precisely as intended. Which is to say, the results you get are not the unintended consequences of policies poorly implemented or people improperly placed, but instead a statement of things you prioritize more than whether every child is well educated.

Again, let’s assume there are lots of interests, including student achievement, that intersect in schools. Which are most important to you? Are you OK with where minority student achievement ranks against, say, the value of property? Is the maintenance of a segregated system that prioritizes the interests of those who can cluster in the wealthiest areas more important to you than whether a young child of color has the early reading intervention necessary to unlock a future of possibility?

There are a dozen questions like this you have to answer. Each and every one of them will be difficult, but each and every one of you needs to answer them. Your fellow citizens, and the students of your community, deserve to know where you stand.

This essay was adapted from an address the author delivered as part of the Robins Foundation’s 2017 Lora M. Robins Speakers Series on the topic “Exploring Education Reform.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in the 74.

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