Over the past decade, Ohio has had an on-again, off-again relationship with accountability and interventions. State policymakers, for instance, have rolled out accountability mechanisms such as third grade reading retention and state interventions in low-performing districts. But when the political going got tough, they lost their nerve and walked back these well-intended efforts.
It’s time for state leaders to get more serious about sticking with accountability. Last spring, one in four Ohio students scored “limited” on math or reading exams, the state’s rock-bottom achievement level. In ten districts, including Dayton, Lorain, and Youngstown, more than half of students scored at the lowest mark. Worse yet, in this same trio of districts, 53 percent of students attended an ineffective school—defined as one receiving a Progress (growth) rating of just one or two stars. Translation: Too many Ohio students are behind academically and not getting what they need to make up that ground.
Fortunately, two pieces of legislation in the Ohio Senate take another crack at accountability and intervention. Introduced by Senate Education Chair Andrew Brenner, one bill calls for stronger interventions for low-achieving students (SB19), while the other beefs up the school-improvement framework for chronically low-performing district schools (SB127). Fordham’s Chad Aldis has already provided committee testimony on these bills, and offered important suggestions for improving both. But let’s revisit the key ways they would move accountability forward in Ohio.
Senate Bill 19: Student-level interventions
Schools should be responsible—and held accountable—for providing struggling students with extra academic supports. Schools already must create improvement plans for students struggling in reading, thanks to reading improvement and monitoring plan (RIMP) requirements. Yet these plans currently cover grades K–5 only, and obviously do not include mathematics. Moreover, because current law does not explicitly call for state oversight or evaluation of RIMP implementation, it’s possible that these plans have become check-box exercises rather than guarantors of quality interventions.
SB19 maintains current RIMP requirements and adds new provisions that will better ensure struggling students receive effective support. The bill requires schools to provide “academic intervention services” to students who score “limited” on a state math[1] or reading assessment in grades 3–8 or high school. Such interventions may be high-dosage tutoring, extended learning time, or other evidence-based academic programs. Parents must be notified when their child scores limited and qualifies for intervention services. The bill also requires schools to periodically update parents about their child’s progress and provide resources on how they can assist.
Importantly, the bill also requires the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to randomly select no more than five percent of all public schools to audit the interventions they provide to students scoring limited. This audit must be more than a bureaucratic desk review, as SB19 calls for site visits by the department or third-party evaluators who gauge quality through observations and interviews with school personnel. The evaluators must produce a report with their findings and recommendations for improvement. The report will be provided to the school and made publicly available on its report card webpage. Taken together, these provisions will help ensure schools actually provide interventions to students and will encourage the use of effective practices.
Senate Bill 127: School-level interventions
Ohio has a decidedly mixed record on school improvement. On the one hand, a rigorous study of Ohio’s efforts under the federal, Obama-era School Improvement Grant program found positive results in schools that undertook more comprehensive turnarounds. On the other hand, the state recently backed off a controversial but well-intentioned attempt to reform low-performing districts through Academic Distress Commissions (ADCs). Although current federal requirements call on states to do something to improve low-performing schools, Ohio hasn’t implemented especially bold interventions.
SB127 offers a more coherent approach to state intervention in low-performing district-run schools (comments regarding charters are saved for the end). Here’s what the bill proposes.
- Creates a framework for addressing poor-performing schools—as opposed to trying to fix entire districts. Given the drama of ADCs, focusing efforts at the individual school level should be more practical and politically doable than whole-district reform.
- Creates fair and understandable identification criteria. Under SB127, any public school that is ranked—for three straight years—in the bottom five percent of schools statewide on the performance index AND in the bottom ten percent statewide in value-added[2] will be deemed chronically low-performing. These criteria will identify truly dysfunctional schools—probably around ten to fifteen campuses per year—where pupil achievement is extremely low and zero progress is being made to help students improve. [3]
- Establishes (mostly) clear consequences for poor performance. Once a school is identified, the district has five options: (1) permanently close the school; (2) contract with a state-approved management organization to run the school; (3) replace the principal and a majority of licensed staff; (4) consolidate with another district; or (5) work with a state-approved “external service provider,” likely a turnaround consultant, to improve the school. If schools choose one of the non-closure options, they have three years to improve, or else they will automatically close.
The first four options are strong interventions for district-run schools. They either result in closure, or force significant changes in school management. The fifth option—selecting a turnaround consultant—is the softest option and is almost surely the route most districts will take. To ensure it doesn’t become a way to escape accountability, lawmakers should add the following provisions to SB127:
- Require DEW to conduct an annual audit of the turnaround work at each school, and produce a publicly available report that evaluates the schoolwide improvement efforts.
- Limit the number of “external service providers” that DEW may approve (perhaps to no more than five), instead of opening the door to dozens of possible consultants. This would help to avoid a “race to the bottom” for schools to select a consultant with a reputation for leniency or low rigor.
- Require schools to notify parents—before or shortly after the start of the school year—that the school has been designated as low-performing and that improvement efforts are being undertaken.[4]
Finally, a comment on charter schools. Under current law, chronically low-performing charters must automatically close. They are not given “restructuring” options, as charters are schools of choice and (unlike district schools) do not serve as “default” options for students. In other words, charters don’t need to exist in order for the state to meet its basic obligation of providing a public school option to every student. Unfortunately, SB127 extends the non-closure options discussed above to low-performing charters, effectively weakening charter accountability. While lawmakers should embrace the heightened accountability for district-run schools, they should reject the proposal to water down charter school accountability.
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In the midst of discussions about education policy, which tend to gravitate toward dollars and cents, lawmakers should not forget about student-centered accountability measures. Strong interventions are essential to a quality education system that helps all students reach their potential.
[1] SB19 calls for a math improvement and monitoring plan for the “limited” students in math. However, the bill does not include a parallel math improvement plan for students in grades K–3, as currently exists for reading—something that lawmakers should consider adding to the bill.
[2] As discussed in our SB19 testimony, legislators should identify based on a one-star value-added Progress rating instead of a percentile ranking.
[3] This list would likely have overlap with the federal list of poor-performing schools but would almost surely be much smaller.
[4] Lawmakers should also consider adding exit criteria (performance benchmarks a school has to meet) for release from partnership with the external consultant. There is no need for exit criteria associated with options 1–4, as they are simply actions that take place (not longer-term “improvement processes”).
