The Education Gadfly Weekly

Recently, several school districts asked to be repaid a chunk of the money that the state of Ohio is attempting to recover from the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT); House Bill 87, currently pending in the General Assembly, would grant them their wish. ECOT is the largest virtual school in Ohio and is notorious both for its political clout as well as its poor performance. It’s been embroiled in a lawsuit with the Ohio Department of Education and was recently ordered by the State Board of Education to return $60 million for being unable to prove all of its 15,000-plus students were logged in and adequately participating in learning last year. ECOT is fighting this decision and related issues in court.

ECOT’s track record may be poor, but there is something alarming in this discussion about the “lost money” that Ohio districts are now seeking. Regardless of whether ECOT could document their students’ attendance, these children were not being educated by their home districts either—because they didn’t attend their schools. That much is indisputable.

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The question at the heart of the entire ECOT case—how is it justifiable to pay a school for students they didn’t educate? —should apply to districts as well. Suggesting that students’ resident schools receive the cash anyway defies logic. It also illustrates broad misunderstandings about Ohio’s funding system for charters, as well as longstanding philosophical beliefs that K-12 dollars belong to districts rather than being paid to districts (or charters) to support children it serves.

Consider applying the same logic to entities serving slightly younger children. Let’s say I move my daughter from Off the Wall Daycare to Oak Meadow because Off the Wall was not serving her well and Oak Meadow better matches my parenting philosophy. After several months at her new daycare, it becomes clear that Oak Meadow isn’t delivering, either. My daughter isn’t receiving a key part of the program that was promised to us (there are no meadows), so I pull her out of the center. Oak Meadow did such a poor job that I’d like a partial refund. Off the Wall Daycare, after six months of my daughter not attending there, says the refund really belongs to them. They say they could use the money to purchase extra snacks for the other children or a new slide.

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In this example, it’s obvious that the dollars don’t belong to Off the Wall; a refund (if awarded) should belong entirely to the entity that paid—i.e., my family.

Ohio’s school funding system—and its pass-through formula for schools of choice—is far more complicated than my family’s personal budget. But a few things are clear and unambiguous.  For starters, districts don’t fund charter schools. The state of Ohio does, and thus the money belongs to them.

It’s hardly surprising to see local districts clamoring for a piece of the repayment pie, but they are playing on the common misconception that districts help to fund charter schools. Ohio’s convoluted funding system doesn’t help matters. The reality is that charters receive state, not local, taxpayer funding. Charter students who leave their home district take a prescribed amount of state foundation dollars with them to their new school. For an average charter student, that’s just over $6,000. These state funds are then subtracted from the home district’s state share—as it should be, since the district is no longer educating that child.

However, districts keep all locally raised funds for students they no longer educate. So, while the districts do indeed lose about $6,000 in state aid per charter pupil (sometimes a greater per-student amount than they receive from the state, especially among Ohio’s wealthier districts), they retain all local funding, which is then spread among fewer remaining students, boosting their local revenue per-pupil. (This is how it works in most states, though Colorado and Florida just enacted bills that require local school districts to share property tax revenues with charters.)

All of this is to say: there is no bottom-dollar amount that should be “refunded” to districts, despite what some would suggest by a one-page invoice. By virtue of having students leave for charters, districts have already retained those students’ local funds. And the state money that follows them to their new school should not return unless they do—regardless of how well served they are, or aren’t. Under any other circumstance (like the daycare example above) it would be preposterous to refund money to an entity that didn’t actually provide any services. If ECOT is forced to pay up, the money should go to the state and remain there.

We’ve argued before that Ohio’s funding system is way too complicated, and that charter schools and programs of choice should be funded directly from the state. This would dissolve some of the animosity between districts and charter schools and end the misperception that local taxes are funding charters. It would also make it much clearer in any investigation for the recovery of charter funding that state funds are at stake, not local dollars.

A direct funding system for charters would also challenge the disturbing notion that public school districts “own” the taxpayer dollars designated for students’ education. The victims in all of this, of course, are the students who’ve been ill-served, sometimes by several schools in a row—kids who are too often viewed by their home districts as a “drain” on school finances, rather than as children struggling academically or socially and in desperate search of a better fit.

Early last week, the Trump administration gave three states feedback on their submitted plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The nature of the comments varied for each state, but those addressed to Delaware inspired some fascinating debates around the rights and limitations of the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) under the new law.

Of particular interest is my colleague Mike Petrilli’s response to the Delaware feedback. He focused on two aspects of the USDOE’s response, in particular: 1) their suggestion that Delaware’s long-term goals for academic achievement weren’t “ambitious” enough and 2) their disapproval about Delaware’s inclusion of performance on AP and IB exams in its ”school quality or student success” indicator.

In reference to long-term goals, Mike argued:

The goals that Delaware submitted in its ESSA plan are extremely ambitious, almost irresponsibly so. In the course of a single generation of students, for example, Delaware is aiming to increase the math proficiency rate for Latino students from about 30 percent to about 65 percent. No state in the country has ever made that kind of progress—and that’s not ambitious enough?

He also pointed out that these kind of “utopian goals” were the driving force behind so many states and schools lowering their expectations in the No Child Left Behind era and more or less lying to families about their students’ abilities.

As for the second issue—the inclusion of performance on AP and IB exams—he notes that ESSA explicitly allows states to include student access and completion of advanced coursework as part of their School Quality or Student Success indicator. The USDOE flags as a potential problem including these exam results because not all high schools offer the courses and not all students participate in them—for the feds, it appears to be an issue of “statewide comparability.” But as Mike points out, the majority of college and career ready indicators available to schools fail that test. Even worse, if states follow the USDOE’s advice and focus on access to advanced courses but not performance, schools might “flood AP and IB courses with more kids, regardless of level of readiness, and then ignore the outcomes.”

For folks in Ohio, this debate may seem unimportant. Who cares what happens in Delaware—especially since we haven’t even submitted our own plan yet? But our still-in-process plan is exactly why we should care; Ohio plans to do much of what Delaware has already proposed. Take a look:

Given these similarities, it’s not hard to imagine that Ohio could be given the same feedback as Delaware. Since we’re still in the midst of revising our plan, should we take advantage of the opportunity to take into account the USDOE’s recommendations and make the changes to our plan that are being asked of The First State?

Nope. For starters, Mike is right that ESSA explicitly allows states to use access and completion of advanced coursework as an accountability indictor. He’s also right that ESSA doesn’t explicitly give the USDOE the authority to determine whether states’ goals are ambitious enough. ESSA mandates that long-term goals must be ambitious, but it also says that they will be state-designed. Given that the general theme of ESSA is to return power and control to the states, it’s reasonable to think that the term “state-designed” should mean “state designed.” Federal regulations would have been immensely helpful in this situation, but Congress and the Trump administration ditched  those back in March. Without the regulations—and in light of ESSA’s clear limits on the Secretary’s power—states like Delaware and Ohio can make a strong case that DeVos and her staff have no right to force them to significantly revise their long-term goals or college and career ready indicators.

There are folks hoping that the Department will walk this back—and Ohio should be rooting for that too. Media reports suggest that the Department may already be doing so. (These lines in a “Frequently Asked Questions” document released Friday are particularly important: “This initial feedback is not an approval or denial of a State plan; however, a State is still required to submit a plan that complies with all statutory requirements. Each State then has the opportunity to revise, further describe, add information and/or make changes and resubmit its plan; however, no State is required to do so.”)

But even without taking Mike’s arguments into account, Ohio should still resist making drastic changes to our ESSA plan. When state officials opted to delay our ESSA plan submission, it was to consider more stakeholder feedback in regards to state testing, teacher evaluations, and other issues. None of these issues were related to our long-term goals or the design of our Prepared for Success component. Why? Because both of those aspects of our plan are policies that have been years in the making. Ohio may have a history of sidestepping the consequences of accountability, but thus far we’ve done a pretty good job of setting rigorous goals and expectations. If our expectations aren’t rigorous enough, then we should by all means revise and rework our proposal. But the decision to revise should be left up to the teachers, parents, and policymakers who actually live and work in Ohio, those who will be most impacted by the plan—not the bureaucrats in Washington who only cast judgments from afar.   

A recent survey in Ohio offers, from an educator’s point of view, insights on standards implementation that are applicable in the other forty-nine states and D.C. In spring 2016, researchers from the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) surveyed 417 teachers along with 153 principals and administrators working in forty-two Ohio school districts. The survey explored three key questions: What are the most significant implementation challenges? What resources are needed to implement the standards? And are Ohio’s learning standards in math and English changing the focus of instruction?

Teachers cite time constraints as a significant implementation challenge. A majority of teachers (54 percent) say that insufficient class time is a moderate or major challenge, while 41 percent report a lack of planning time. Teachers view these time crunches as greater challenges than other organizational concerns, such as staff turnover, class sizes, or inadequate school resources. Meanwhile, principals view “inadequate lead time to prepare for implementation” as their biggest challenge. Both teachers and administrators note considerable challenges with the wide range of student abilities and the lack of parental involvement, though it’s less clear how exactly these relate to standards implementation.

When it comes to helpful materials, educators generally agree that curriculum resources aligned to standards are of significant value. Teachers also cite digital tools and professional development as important. Meanwhile, both teachers and administrators rank standards-aligned textbooks as the least useful implementation resource. What educators may be implying is that curriculum resources (such as Engage NY) are in and textbooks are out.

The survey finds that some, but not all, teachers are shifting their instructional focus to the content or skills emphasized in the new standards. Ohio’s elementary math teachers report strong coverage of the emphasized content. However, elementary ELA and high school math teachers say that they actually cover more deemphasized content. High school ELA teachers report roughly equal focus. The researchers cannot pinpoint why these patterns exist but it’s worth noting that they are not unique to Ohio; these patterns in content coverage mirror C-SAIL survey results from Kentucky and Texas. This finding has led C-SAIL analysts to conclude that “states and districts could provide more support in helping teachers move away from certain content.”

Raising Ohio’s academic standards has been a crucial school reform. While educators have had the better half of a decade to implement these more rigorous standards—they were first adopted in 2010—this survey describes some of the ongoing implementation challenges. Ohio policymakers—especially those who would have the state shift to yet another set of standards—should keep in mind that proper implementation is not as simple as flipping a switch. And those in other states would be wise to heed this lesson, too.

Sources: Laura M. Desimone, Adam K. Edgerton, and Rui Yang, “Standards implementation in Ohio: Local perspectives on policy, challenges, resources, and instruction,” C-SAIL (March 2017); and Adam Edgerton, Morgan Polikoff, and Laura Desimone, “How is policy affecting classroom instruction?” Brookings Institution/C-SAIL (May 2017).

The best advice my wife and I received on how to manage daily life with newly born twin daughters was from our pediatrician: get them on a schedule. Any schedule that works for you is fine, but it should be the same schedule for both children, and stick to it. It was a great insight from a pro and it has served us well. Our lives have gone far more smoothly than we feared they would all those years ago in the wake of the arrival of two very tiny babies needing constant care and attention.

We have continued to treat our kids as a unit in most matters, including their education, which was marked by several decision points on opting into and out of schools. Now, however, as they finish their first year of high school, we are faced, for the first time, with choosing separate options for the girls—and that process has brought some new insights.

First, school choice is not a “one and done” proposition. Parents who utilize something other than default district assignment must exercise constant vigilance. A new school leader can change focus, a school’s population can shrink or grow too much for comfort, teacher turnover can alter the trajectory of course content as well as pedagogy, and extracurriculars can come and go. Just because the school you chose spans grades K-8 doesn’t mean you have to stick around for all nine years. Sure, it’s easier, but it may not be right. Watch the signs, both in the school and the child. It’s up to parents to monitor, evaluate, decide, and act. No one else will do it for you. Nor should they.

Second, not all kids—even twins—will thrive in the same education environment. Our children have been in a Montessori school, a very traditional religious school, and an outside-of-the-box STEM/early college model. Both have exceeded our expectations largely because these schools were good overall performers (the main reason we opted in), but the efforts required of them and the areas of their best achievement varied greatly. This was a main motivator in choosing different schools for each of them for the upcoming school year.

Third, it’s all about the future. This bit of insight comes from my wife, who has prefaced nearly all decisions in regard to our kids with, “What decision now will best serve them at age 18?” And while high expectations, challenging curricula, and mastery-based learning have been strong, steady guideposts in answer to that question over the years, the focus can change when age 18 actually gets closer. Ohio’s graduation requirements, even in their most potent form, are none too onerous. A combination of good schools, dedicated students, steady progress, and every adult in the process keeping their eye on the prize can get most kids where they need to be at or before 12th grade. However, if any piece of the machine breaks down, trouble can ensue and change may be necessary. For one of our girls, the current school seems well suited to continue providing a solid pathway to her diploma and to life after high school; for the other, while the diploma would be easily achievable, the pathways available after that are not well aligned with her future goals.

And so it is that our twins will attend separate schools this fall for the first time in their lives, with one staying put in her hard-to-describe but pretty darn awesome early-college/STEM/mastery school and one moving to a secular private school with something of an entrepreneurship bent. Though this change is a departure from our pediatrician’s advice, we know why we’re doing it: it is the best choice for these youngsters at this critical juncture, based on their needs as we (and they) understand them. That’s a new insight for us, as well as a seismic shift in our family’s daily regimen—and I believe it has implications beyond our own choices.

My family is fortunate to have options near us (although this is by our design, having chosen to live where we do) and to have pretty well informed and affordable access to those choices. All parents want to make the best decisions for their children, especially in terms of education, and that desire should not be limited by ZIP code or income. Ohio’s leaders can offset any deficits that parents may have in this regard by prudent, family-friendly, and student-centric education policies. All parents should have easy access to full and clear information on every school available to them; transportation should be student-centric, adaptable, and free to families for education purposes; and doors should be open to the widest array of quality choices that their circumstances will allow.

Vouchers, charter schools, borderless STEM schools, and interdistrict open enrollment all widen the options available to tens of thousands of parents who can’t swing it on their own but whose children nonetheless deserve the best choices. But even more must be done to widen, simplify, and empower choice so that every family can experience what mine has: great schools, clear success, and a bright future. There is no one right answer, but actively recruiting strong charter networks to Ohio, statewide distribution of choice information and comparison data, centralization of school registration across sectors, increasing the number and variety of standalone schools, and decoupling school transportation from district control must be at the top of the list of options.

No further insight is required to know that choice is the right path.

Let’s go. 

I despised history, until I took AP U.S. History. From my elementary and middle school years, there remains a paper trail of get-to-know-you surveys for which I indicated that history bored me to tears, and doodles on notes of the Monroe Doctrine that subtly communicate the same reaction.

The U.S. history class I took in eighth grade is a perfect example. Almost every day consisted of hurriedly copying notes from a dim image projected on the board as the teacher read aloud the words we were inscribing. There were no lectures of substance; we were spoon-fed worksheets pulled from the dry pages of a textbook. The tests were a contest that determined who could regurgitate the highest percentage of memorized facts. Little to no analysis was ever done. We never focused on comprehending the cause and effect of critical movements or comparing past time periods to the modern era. Apparently, it was far more important to know the names of all the generals in the Civil War.

On the occasion that our daily work did not entail unhelpful note taking or memory-based testing, we took part in such educational activities as watching National Treasure or working on a slightly more involved version of a second grade project on African American leaders. I’m still curious as to why we selected one such leader for each letter of the alphabet in a three-day span, rather than learning about their actions concurrently with the rest of the curriculum.

I received an A in the class (as I did in all of my classes throughout middle school), despite having rarely studied, drawn bumblebees on my notes, and often completed my homework in the five minutes before class began. Now, a few years later, I realize it was all irrelevant; I remember almost nothing. I know now that the class demanded bland memorization with no connection to the humanity of history. It offered no tools to aid true understanding. It gave us the how of the story but never the why. I like to think of classes as a telescope through which one can catch a glimpse of a larger universe. Of course, the student must have the wherewithal and ambition to look through the telescope. But what if the lens is smudged? Partially obscured? What if the student cannot get a clear picture of history because the class is woefully lacking?

Well, the lens in my eighth grade history course was almost entirely opaque. But I never would have known just how bad it was if I hadn’t taken AP U.S. History this past school year, as a sophomore.

Our teacher still lectured on a daily basis, but he was engaging and clearly explained why people acted as they did, and how these actions fit a larger narrative. We still took guided notes from a projected screen, but there were always a few lines of text written and updated by the teacher that better explained the larger story and prepared us for the College Board’s AP Exam that we would face in May. Each day, students were called on to identify information from the day before or explain the relevance of a vocabulary term, actively prompting participation in the class. Every night, our teacher expected us to review our notes and read a few pages from the textbook, laying a solid foundation of fact upon which he laid the cultural story the following day. We read and analyzed primary sources on a daily basis that supplemented the information we gathered from our textbooks every night. We studied women, African Americans, and Native Americans concurrently with the rest of the material. There was no need for a “Women of American History” unit or a special project on African American heroes because we had always included them in the study of each time period.

The class contained few projects, but they comprised in-depth debates and essays that required students to study the time period as though their lives were the ones being affected by the decisions made. Our two large debates—one on Andrew Jackson and the other pitting Alexander Hamilton against Thomas Jefferson—demanded hours of group-based work that involved extensive study of the writing and beliefs of the time period, as well developing the ability to quickly apply relevant knowledge to support a feasible historical argument. Throughout the year, we practiced specific College Board–defined historical thinking skills (contextualization, synthesis, causation, periodization, etc.) and essay writing that showed our comprehension of the why and so what of American history. And each month, our teacher assigned us a take-home packet that required us to use historical thinking skills, employ an essay-like analysis of primary sources, and identify the causation of events. Yes, we had vocabulary quizzes that required memorization, but the terms were picked specifically for our use on the AP exam essays, and were always tied in to the overall story we were learning.

At the end of each unit, we took an essay assessment and a multiple choice test. While our primary tests were still multiple choice, the questions demanded the ability to compare one time period to another, to identify broader processes, and to contextualize and comprehend why people thought as they did.

Perhaps most significantly, A’s were not handed out like candy.

Upon completing such an excellent class, I was confused about and disappointed in the sorry state of my eighth grade U.S. history class. What explained the chasm of difference between the two? Myriad things: understanding vs. memorization, the style of tests, the expectation of hard working and self-reliant students, the development of thinking skills, the opportunity to debate differing viewpoints, the exploration of contextualization within larger historical processes, and the telling of history as change shaped by human people rather than bland caricatures.

All of this combined to create a huge and important difference: In AP U.S. History, we learned. We learned about history, we learned to exercise layered comprehension of multifaceted societies, and we learned how to develop an independent work ethic.

The College Board and its measureable standards deserve much credit. When the reality is “Your students will either learn these skills or earn tangibly low scores that will make you look bad,” work gets done. The lessons get taught. Having an achievable standard to work for is absolutely invaluable to education. Sure, participation and cooperation are important. General competence is a good bar. But at the end of day, the most essential test of effective schooling is the question, “What do you know and what can you do with it?”

Every student deserves the opportunity to learn analytical skills at a high level. And only classes like AP U.S. History adequately reveal to students their intellectual capabilities, which in turn unlock ideas, careers, and whole worlds that would be otherwise closed to them due to an all-too-common façade of simplistic worksheets.

AP U.S. History allowed me to genuinely learn the subject matter, analyze historical movements with context, compare my world to past times, broaden my understanding of politics, and truly love the story that history tells. History went from being something I despised to one of my favorite subjects. I now see the people behind the events, and the deep and inseparable humanity that accompanies them. For my entire life, I have been a reader and writer, loving how words paint a picture of a real world. AP U.S. History made that love of mine applicable to our past—and potentially to my future profession. I will always be grateful for that.

Alli Aldis is a rising junior at Gahanna Lincoln High School in Gahanna, Ohio. She is the daughter of Chad Aldis, the Fordham Institute’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy.

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

NOTE: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

Not long ago, the Plain Dealer published an opinion article by former public school educator and teacher union head Bill Lavezzi. In his article, “Calls for funding equity for Ohio charter schools overlook charters’ failures and lack of transparency,” Lavezzi offered up five “simple, common-sense” standards that all charter schools should meet if they wish to receive equitable public funding. In the article, he also suggests that charters not meeting these conditions are “parasitic” and “undeserving not only of funding equity but of public funding itself.”

The idea that equitable funding for children should be conditional in the first place—especially for those students in public charter schools who are predominantly low-income and minority—makes about as much sense as a parent doing the same to his kids. In this analogy, public charter schools are the disliked step-child struggling to prove their worth to a parent dangling approval—and resources—conditionally for one, while doling it out unconditionally for the other. I’ve long argued that charter schools and the children who go there, in particular, are not worth less.

But Lavezzi’s conclusions about public charter schools, and the doubt he casts as to whether they deserve equitable funding (or any funding), are even more peculiar considering that charters do meet these conditions. Let’s take a look at each.

First, “public charter schools should be open to all applicants.” We are. By law, charter schools must accept all applicants and are required to create a random lottery process to admit students once the school is full. Charter schools are nonsectarian, free, and cannot screen students out on the basis of disability, race, ethnicity, language, or any other characteristic (these are also protected classes according to federal law).

Second, “publicly supported schools shouldn’t be able to use suspension and expulsion policies to clear their rolls of hard-to-educate students.” I wholeheartedly agree. No public school of any kind should be doing business this way. At Breakthrough Charter Schools, we are thoughtful in our approach to discipline and to keeping students within our schools as much as possible to continue learning while keeping all students safe. An analysis by Education Week showed that public charter schools did not report using suspensions and expulsions at higher rates than those reported by traditional public schools. Still, this is a topic worth debating and examining as many schools—traditional and charter alike—have room to improve. For instance, a report this year by the Cincinnati Enquirer showed that Cincinnati Public Schools delivered 36,000 suspensions to elementary students in a year.

Third, “the records of charter schools, including their financial records, should be subject to inspection by the public.” They are. Charter schools, which are by definition in Ohio 501 (c) 3 non-profit entities, are required to be financially transparent. Charter schools undergo audits each year by the Auditor of State, who reviews accounts, financial reports, records, and files to ensure that each school is compliant with state and federal laws, regulations, and principles of accounting. Compliance reviews are also conducted by the Ohio Department of Education.

Fourth, charter schools “should operate under the same open-meeting rules as public boards of education.” We do.

Fifth, “charter schools should be required to operate under the same labor rules as other public employees. Employees are capable of deciding freely whether to unionize or not…” Charter school employees do get to decide whether to unionize, as evidenced by the fact that several in Cleveland have moved to do so. On the flipside, charter school employees should also not be compelled to unionize or pay dues into a system that largely abhors their existence.

Based on these parameters, Ohio’s public charters schools are deserving of funding equity.

While we differ on our conclusions about the merit of charter schools, Bill Lavezzi and I agree about these basic standards of transparency. I also agree with him that “true reform” should result in genuine long-term improvements. A 2014 study by Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) examining the academic gains of charter students as well as traditional public school students found overwhelmingly positive evidence in Cleveland. In the study, Cleveland students who attended charter schools learned more than their traditional public school peers (by about 14 school days) in both reading and math. The latest study by CREDO of charter management organizations further proved this, but broke the data down even further—by management group, not just city. Breakthrough Schools was the top Ohio charter network included in the study, and among the top charter organizations nationwide. Our students were ranked 11^th nationally in reading and 16^th in math, and learned the equivalent of an additional 148 days of math and 120 days of reading compared to their traditional public school peers.

High-quality charter schools like those in the Breakthrough network are making a lasting difference for children. It’s well past time that we invest in them accordingly.

John Zitzner is co-founder of Breakthrough Schools and President of Friends of Breakthrough Schools.