The Education Gadfly Weekly

KidsOhio
June 2009

KidsOhio has produced a timely report that examines urban public charter schools and the public district schools in Ohio's eight largest cities. By evaluating data from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), the study finds that the Big Eight and public charters have similar demographic make-ups. Specifically, the proportions of economically disadvantaged students, those with special education needs, and minorities are remarkably parallel. 

KidsOhio studied the state's value-added numbers, which gauge student progress and are available for grades four through eight. After analyzing 2,688 Ohio public schools, they conclude that by including value-added data, the Big Eight schools and public charters are improving. In fact, these schools tend to not achieve high student performance scores but they rank in the middle of the pack when the focus shifts to value added from one year to the next. The study demonstrates the importance of focusing on yearly progress as well as simple student test scores when evaluating schools. Read the report here.

Edited by Michael A. Rebell and Jessica R. Wolff
Teachers College Press
2009

Michael Rebell, the executive director, and Jessica Wolff, the policy director, for the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University, have produced a thorough assessment of the No Child Left Behind Act. The book, a compilation of chapters by individual education scholars, examines the act's emphasis on proficiency and accountability, using schools to relieve social inequality, reducing the black-white achievement gap, helping students with disabilities, and other issues.

A chapter by Robert Schwartz, the academic dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, delves into NCLB's muddled accountability standards and highlights the Fordham Institute's own reports, The Proficiency Illusion (here) and To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four approaches to national standards and tests for America's schools (here).

Rebell and Wolff also present their own recommendations for improving NCLB. For example, they urge content-based learning standards for all students. But the most important lesson in the book is that No Child Left Behind is worth reforming and its historic spotlight on equity and accountability is necessary now more than ever as we move forward in trying to find better ways to educate Americans. You can order the book here.

Robin Chait and Raegen Miller
Center for American Progress
May 2009

This report offers timely suggestions for redesigning teacher pay programs at a time when the public is showing interest in paying better teachers more money. Robin Chait and Raegen Miller see paying for performance as crucial to recruiting and retaining the best teachers, although they argue it is not a step to be taken without consensus, since the idea is highly contentious politically. To ensure such plans succeed, they believe teachers must help design them.

The authors' desires to find ways to create performance-pay programs that are widely supported led them to draw ideas from school-district designs that have worked, such as one in North Carolina that gave an annual $1,800 bonus to math and science teachers. The result was a 12-percent drop in teacher turnover rates. They also offer compromises that could be palatable to pay-for-performance opponents while still achieving the objective of using pay to reward the best teachers and to spur other teachers to improve. For the report, see here.

Andy Boy received lessons in persistence, patience, and how government can operate in working up to his first day as founder and executive director of the Columbus Collegiate Academy last August.

Boy runs the 48-student, North Side charter school (see here). The school is affiliated with the Building Excellent Schools program (see here) and Boy is a BES fellow. Nine months ago he was worried there wouldn't be a school at all. Instead, he is celebrating the completion of CCA's first year-a triumph over a series of seemingly endless hurdles, from problems of finding a suitable facility, to last-minute transportation snafus, to the loss of nearly half the original student body.

CCA has survived and, if not flourishing yet, has triumphed over adversity. Students are getting the academics. "We just finished Romeo and Juliet. We never would have been able to do that at the beginning of the year," said reading teacher Jennifer Burdine.

Although the result of the state academic achievement tests are not back, the nationally normed Northwest Evaluation Association assessment - given in the autumn and again in the spring - shows the students in the school - all sixth graders - improved more than would be expected in both reading and math. In math, students entered the year performing 10 points below the average American sixth grader. When retested in the spring, they scored higher than average.

The power of the assessment is that it adapts to the ability of each student, accurately measuring what a child knows and needs to learn. In addition, academic growth is measured over time, independent of grade level or age. Test items adjust to a student's performance level, and as a result, test scores are more accurate and can be compared with the scores of millions of sixth graders across the United States.

CCA now seems poised for flight. Student and parent demand for the academy, it will serve sixth and seventh graders next year, is so good Boy had to conduct a lottery to select the 75 new students who will enroll in the school this fall.

Ian Slater, Jennifer Hurtado, and Awilda Dejesus during a math lesson at Columbus Collegiate Academy

"For two years I wondered if there would be a school at all," Boy said, recalling problems first in finding the right building in the right place and for the right price. Potential school buildings were either too expensive, or were considered structurally unsafe for a school or in need of a new roof or other expensive upgrades.

Eventually, he found space at the Seventh Avenue Community Baptist Church in the Weinland Park neighborhood in Columbus. The church, with a strong reputation for neighborhood involvement, was looking for a little more income to help with expenses. Still, plans and zoning changes to use the church had to be approved by the city. And there were last-minute glitches-the church, for example, actually never had an occupancy permit, despite decades of operation and Sunday services. Once discovered, that bureaucratic problem had to be remedied. Once granted, however, the new occupancy permit needed to be changed to allow for the operation of the school. Parking and transportation permits also had to be obtained. Meanwhile, the first day of school was coming on like a freight train.

A final, last-minute switch threatened to derail the whole enterprise in August, when the school couldn't get into the church until a week after the first day of scheduled class. So, Boy arranged for the first week of class to be at the Godman Guild House about three blocks away. No problem, until the Columbus City Schools said its school bus would only drop students at the church, not the Godman Guild. Then another school bus would pick up the children and bus them the three blocks to the temporary quarters. It doesn't make sense but, for a week that's how it was done.

Such start-up difficulties could have easily sunk the school but Boy and CCA largely escaped media attention. Reporters were more focused on the startup challenges of the Columbus KIPP Journey Academy (see here). KIPP's first principal resigned a couple of months into the school year, and there have been other start-up challenges as well at that school. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation sponsors both CCA and KIPP.

So once going, CCA was able to deal, out of the spotlight, with the normal, first-year problems of a start-up charter school. Normal parental dismay over demanding expectations and the rigid academic structure seemed almost small potatoes. There's a lot of homework, there's Saturday school, and students show up in their uniforms, no excuses. For some parents it was too much and they returned their children to the Columbus City Schools.

"We got a lot of push back on the homework and got a lot of pushback on coming to school every day," Boy said.

Ms. Abbey Kinson teaching math at Columbus Collegiate Academy

Boy is retaining all his teaching staff and will hire three more teachers for the autumn. CCA's board is also working to buy a former school building, renovate it, and move in permanently this January.

Elijah Cook, 12, can vouch for the pertinent positives at CCA. "The curriculum is much better and the teachers seem more knowledgeable. I felt I learned much more," he said of his first year at the school. "There's a lot of homework and I've stayed up a few nights on it but I manage it pretty well."

Elijah, who will be a seventh grader next year, not only wants to go to college but he wants to become a scientist or a mathematician.

Also, the principal, who has had some experience dealing with difficulties, is there for students needing a little extra attention. "He (Boy) helped me when times were tough. I was disrespecting my mom. He talked with me about it," Elijah said.

The Senate passed its version of the fiscal years 2010-2011 biennial budget last week. In K-12 education, it largely maintained the status quo. A legislative conference committee must now marry the House and Senate versions to produce a budget that also plugs at least a $2 billion revenue shortfall by June 30.

In our view, the Senate version of the budget is generally superior to both the Governor's version and the House version because: 1) it is cognizant of the fiscal challenges facing the state; 2) it provides more adequate funding for charter schools, early college academies, and STEM schools; 3) it slows the state's headlong plunge into development of new standards driven by nebulous and hard to define 21^st century skills; 4) it does not overwhelm an underfunded and understaffed Ohio Department of Education with new and costly responsibilities; and 5) it doesn't provide districts and schools with a heavy burden of new unfunded mandates.

That said, in some areas the Governor/House's version is superior and can be married with the Senate version to improve education policy in Ohio in a cost effective fashion. Following are several areas that are ripe for compromise and improvement, based on the Fordham Institute's analyses of the education portion of both versions of Sub. H.B. 1 (see here):

Charter Schools
The Governor/House's budget would mortally wound the state's charter-school sector by drastically reducing funding and adding burdensome regulations. The Senate wisely rejected these changes. However, Ohio's charter school program still needs thoughtful reform and the Senate eliminated some good proposals by Gov. Strickland and the House to do that. In addition to restoring funding to charter schools, conferees would be well-advised to follow these leads by the Governor and House:

• Put all charter sponsors under authority of the State Board of Education (even with the political shenanigans around the election of the new board president-see here, we stick to this recommendation as we have since 2006);
• Give the state authority, under well-defined circumstances, to intervene when sponsors authorize persistently weak schools and fail to provide support to turn around the schools or shut them down;
• Tighten language so that no operator currently running an Ohio charter school can open a new school unless at least one of its other Ohio schools is rated at least Continuous Improvement;
• Allow the state auditor to report on how all state dollars are spent within a "school unit," regardless of whether a private operator spends the funds;
• Ratchet up the "academic death penalty" to cull more poor performers from the charter sector; and
• Require sponsors to report to ODE annually and to alert ODE to any changes made in charter contracts.

Standards and Assessments
Gov. Strickland and the House would set back standards-based reform in Ohio by giving far more attention to nebulous 21^st century skills than to core skills and knowledge. Their plan set lofty goals for which there are no practical or valid measures of progress or performance. The House and Governor also put forth an unworkable timeline for creating and implementing new academic content standards and tests. The Senate's approach is more measured, requiring the State Board of Education and Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to draft a plan to undertake these revisions and to get legislative approval before beginning the work.

This approach leaves open the possibility that Ohio will maximize its efforts to collaborate with other states in creating and implementing common academic standards, such as the effort currently being led by the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers of which Ohio is a partner (see here). In tough fiscal times, Ohio is smart to try and leverage the expertise of others in developing world-class standards.

In short, the conference committee should embrace the governor's goal of improving the state's standards and accountability systems while retaining the Senate's proposed process and timeline for doing so. We also suggest requiring that experts in individual subjects and in psychometrics be involved in the standards-writing process.

Accountability
While its funding proposal was full of burdensome and unnecessary mandates, the House-passed budget did include several prudent and cost effective improvements in fiscal accountability. Conferees would be well-advised to retain the House's recommendations to increase fiscal accountability and transparency through building-level spending plans, performance audits, and annual fiscal report cards.

The Senate made an important move to apply the current charter school "academic death penalty" to district schools. Conferees would be well advised to retain this provision and ratchet up the closure standards for charter and district schools alike.

School Funding
The Senate scrapped the Governor's "evidence-based" funding model in favor of retaining the current per-pupil approach and created a task force to make recommendations for moving Ohio toward a funding system that funds children and is evidence-based. While the current funding system is preferable to what the Governor and House proposed, it is still in need of improvement. Innumerable expert analysts (including the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, Achieve, Inc., McKinsey & Company, the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, and the State Board of Education itself) have urged Ohio to move toward Weighted Student Funding. We concur.

Conferees should therefore retain the Senate's recommendation to examine the issue and make concrete recommendations over the next 18 months for moving forward with a new school-funding model. This study should explicitly include in its charge a careful examination of diverse school-funding approaches including: 1) student-based funding; 2) performance-based funding; and 3) input-based funding. The final budget measure should require the study group to consult with diverse national experts, hold public hearings on the issue, and closely examine the experience of other states and communities. America now has massive experience with school finance and its reform; Ohio would err to go about this important task all by itself.

Robin Chait and Raegen Miller
Center for American Progress
May 2009

This report offers timely suggestions for redesigning teacher pay programs at a time when the public is showing interest in paying better teachers more money. Robin Chait and Raegen Miller see paying for performance as crucial to recruiting and retaining the best teachers, although they argue it is not a step to be taken without consensus, since the idea is highly contentious politically. To ensure such plans succeed, they believe teachers must help design them.

The authors' desires to find ways to create performance-pay programs that are widely supported led them to draw ideas from school-district designs that have worked, such as one in North Carolina that gave an annual $1,800 bonus to math and science teachers. The result was a 12-percent drop in teacher turnover rates. They also offer compromises that could be palatable to pay-for-performance opponents while still achieving the objective of using pay to reward the best teachers and to spur other teachers to improve. For the report, see here.

Edited by Michael A. Rebell and Jessica R. Wolff
Teachers College Press
2009

Michael Rebell, the executive director, and Jessica Wolff, the policy director, for the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University, have produced a thorough assessment of the No Child Left Behind Act. The book, a compilation of chapters by individual education scholars, examines the act's emphasis on proficiency and accountability, using schools to relieve social inequality, reducing the black-white achievement gap, helping students with disabilities, and other issues.

A chapter by Robert Schwartz, the academic dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, delves into NCLB's muddled accountability standards and highlights the Fordham Institute's own reports, The Proficiency Illusion (here) and To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four approaches to national standards and tests for America's schools (here).

Rebell and Wolff also present their own recommendations for improving NCLB. For example, they urge content-based learning standards for all students. But the most important lesson in the book is that No Child Left Behind is worth reforming and its historic spotlight on equity and accountability is necessary now more than ever as we move forward in trying to find better ways to educate Americans. You can order the book here.

KidsOhio
June 2009

KidsOhio has produced a timely report that examines urban public charter schools and the public district schools in Ohio's eight largest cities. By evaluating data from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), the study finds that the Big Eight and public charters have similar demographic make-ups. Specifically, the proportions of economically disadvantaged students, those with special education needs, and minorities are remarkably parallel. 

KidsOhio studied the state's value-added numbers, which gauge student progress and are available for grades four through eight. After analyzing 2,688 Ohio public schools, they conclude that by including value-added data, the Big Eight schools and public charters are improving. In fact, these schools tend to not achieve high student performance scores but they rank in the middle of the pack when the focus shifts to value added from one year to the next. The study demonstrates the importance of focusing on yearly progress as well as simple student test scores when evaluating schools. Read the report here.