The Education Gadfly Weekly

Education will always be one of Ohio’s highest priorities. It bonds communities together, provides the foundation for the state’s long-term economic success, and—most importantly—helps students across the state to realize their potential and pursue their dreams.

Data is imperative to understanding Ohio’s education policies, practices, and outcomes—both at a state level and locally. This guidebook offers simple and easy-to-use vital statistics about Ohio’s schools and the students they serve. The facts and figures contained within this report offer an overview of who Ohio’s students are; where they go to school; how they perform on national and state exams; and how many pursue post-secondary education. In addition, we present a few key statistics on Ohio’s educators, and how much Ohio taxpayers contribute to K-12 education and how those dollars are spent.

For those preferring a web version, try out www.OhioByTheNumbers.com.

The 2017 edition of Ohio Education By the Numbers can be accessed here.

If you were on vacation earlier this month—lucky you—you may have missed the release of the 2017 NAEP results. On the whole, you didn’t miss much. With NAEP results flat in much of the country, the prevailing narrative is that education progress has stalled. There were some exceptions around the country, like Florida, that continued to make impressive gains. Unfortunately, Ohio wasn’t one of those exceptions, as my colleague Aaron Churchill has explained.

Don’t take my word for it though, here are some data comparing Ohio and Florida’s NAEP performance.[1]

In summary, Florida is now cleaning Ohio’s clock on NAEP. But that wasn’t always the case: Notice how in 2003 Ohio had better NAEP scores in both fourth and eighth grade reading and math for black and low-income students. In 2017, Florida was superior in EVERY one of those categories. Florida’s most disadvantaged students made tremendous gains while Ohio’s languished. The progress hasn’t been limited to historically disadvantaged students, either. In fourth grade, improvements among Florida’s white students also noticeably outpaced Ohio (though eighth grade appears to be more comparable).

If you’ve followed Ohio’s education reforms closely, you might be saying “wait a minute.” Ohio adopted many of the same reforms that Florida implemented during Jeb Bush’s tenure as governor—things like instituting A-to-F school grades, providing incentive funding for performance, requiring third graders to read on grade level before promotion to fourth grade, raising expectations for high school graduation, and implementing vibrant public and private school choice. Why is Florida making progress but Ohio is mostly treading water?

To put it simply, success rests on both sound policy and robust implementation. Florida is a positive example for both. Ohio, conversely, despite good intentions, has repeatedly faltered on either policy details or its commitment to implementation.

Before we dig in, though, one caveat is necessary. Education is both complex and complicated. It’s difficult in all but the rarest of circumstances to distinguish between causation and correlation. That disclaimer aside, it’s also fair to say that the reforms highlighted have dominated education policy in Florida for the better part of two decades and student academic outcomes have never been higher.

A-to-F school grades

Issuing every school a summative A-to-F letter grade was one of the first reforms in Florida. Since implementation, the state has been unwavering in its commitment to school grades to make certain that parents and the public knew which schools were performing well and which needed help. In fact, at several instances along the way, Florida increased the level of achievement necessary to earn an A, a clear example of using school grades to both raise expectations and drive increased school quality. Living in the Sunshine State at the time this reform was implemented, I can attest to the controversy that it created and that the resolve of Florida’s leaders didn’t waver. Ohio, on the other hand, came later to A-to-F school grades and adopted the policy in late 2012. The Buckeye State opted to take it slow and implement the grades over time, adding additional graded measures each year. By the 2016–17 school year, there were fourteen separate graded categories but not a single summative grade—that critical piece of the accountability system was delayed for several years, and will finally appear this September.

The difference between the two states here supports the old adage that you really can, as we’ve written, have too much of a good thing. Assigning as many as fourteen school grades to a single school or district assures that virtually every school will earn a failing mark in one category or another, thereby playing into the false claim that the purpose of school grades is to make schools look bad rather than to drive improved academic performance. This has led to a major push in Ohio to jettison A-to-F grades before they’ve truly taken hold. Moreover, the delay in assigning a single summative grade to schools has made it a far less useful tool for parents seeking to use it a source of information for choosing their children’s school, let alone using it to drive an increase in school quality.

Incentive funding for academic performance

For almost twenty years, the Florida School Recognition Program has awarded bonuses to any school that earns an A on the state report card or improves its letter grade from the prior year. The funds, $100 per pupil, are awarded to the school and can be spent on staff bonuses, educational equipment, or temporary personnel to assist with improving student performance. The policy’s real genius is that staff and school advisory councils jointly decide how the dollars are allocated. In 2017 alone, more than $129 million was distributed to 1,723 schools.

In the last few years, Ohio has experimented with its own version of incentive funding by providing additional funding for schools with high third grade literacy and graduation rates. Unfortunately, the provisions are structured in a manner that is unlikely to have any impact. Ohio’s framework spreads a little money ($35 million in fiscal year 2016) to each and every school, which effectively minimizes the likelihood that it will act as an incentive for anyone. Finally, unlike their colleagues in Florida, Ohio teachers have no say as to how the dollars are allocated. Ohio could learn much from Florida’s approach in this area.

Third grade reading

Florida ended social promotion for third graders who couldn’t read on grade level in 2002. Research has largely reinforced the importance of ensuring students can read proficiently before entering fourth grade. The Sunshine State held back fourteen percent of third grade students in the policy’s first year. Working near the capital at the time, I still recall the tearful testimony of parents imploring legislators not to enforce the requirement. To their credit they didn’t take that advice; instead, Florida leaders provided summer reading camps, created a system of reading coaches and mentors, and established a framework allowing for mid-year promotion for students who caught up with their peers the following year.

Ohio, like many states around the country, has followed Florida’s lead and adopted its own version of the policy it’s dubbed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. The law spurred a statewide emphasis on identifying and assisting struggling readers in grades K–3. Attempting to soften the effect of the new policy, Ohio legislators asked for the state board to adopt a promotion score below the proficiency threshold at the outset and to raise the required score over time until the two scores were aligned. The first year saw only 4 percent of third grades students retained. Now in its fifth year, Ohio still promotes students with reading scores below proficient. In fact, in 2016–17, 18 percent of third graders were promoted, even though they scored below proficient.

If Ohio continues to put off aligning its promotion and proficiency scores, it’s hard to see how the policy will boost third graders’ reading level any further. Florida, in both word and deed, believed that it was critical its third graders read on grade level before advancing to fourth grade. Ohio does in word but time will tell if it does in deed.

Rigorous high school graduation requirements

Florida and Ohio have followed a similar path on graduation requirements. Both states have long mandated specific coursework and passage of required examinations to receive a high school diploma. Florida has transitioned more seamlessly to using robust end of course exams (in algebra I and tenth-grade English language arts) as a graduation requirement. Ohio has found itself mired in controversy as it moved from the very basic Ohio Graduation Test to more rigorous end of course exams. A feared drop in the number of students likely to graduate generated an outsized response aimed at undercutting the increased expectations even before implementation. In what’s become an all too common response to such concerns, the Ohio State Board of Education urged the legislature to adopt a watered-down high school diploma pathway for the class of 2018 that didn’t require students to pass a single assessment in order to get a diploma. The state board has again asked for alternative graduation pathways, this time for the classes of 2019 and 2020. It’s hard to determine if students are ready for post–high school success when expectations are repeatedly lowered. Again, failure to stick with this reform threatens to derail Ohio’s effort.

Vibrant public and private school choice

Both Ohio and Florida are rightfully thought of as national leaders in school choice. Ohio has five private school choice programs, more than 300 charter schools, and open enrollment is allowed in more than 400 school districts. Once again, though, Florida has gone a couple of steps beyond the Buckeye State. Florida’s four private school choice programs serve almost three times as many students and include a tax credit scholarship which makes every low-income student—regardless of where they live—eligible for a scholarship.[2] In the charter school space, Florida hasn’t been plagued by the same quality questions as Ohio and, potentially as a result, has grown more quickly with more than 650 charters. Moreover, recent legislation in Florida has given charter funding a big boost and contributed to closing the charter-district funding gap that exists in much of the country. Finally, Florida has made statewide open enrollment the law. This allows students to attend school in any district as long as it has open seats. Meanwhile, Ohio’s opt-in open enrollment model has resulted in districts near the state’s neediest districts closing their schoolhouse doors to non-residents. While there is much to praise in both states, the opportunities available to low-income Floridians far eclipse those enjoyed by their Midwestern brethren.

*****

The message for Ohio policymakers and those around the country is clear: If you really want to change the way things are done, passing good laws isn’t enough. You may breathe a sigh of relief—especially if the measure is controversial—when your governor signs new education policy into law, but don’t think for a moment that the work is complete. As this analysis of Florida and Ohio demonstrates, similar policies can—if NAEP is to be believed—result in very different outcomes depending on implementation and the political resolve shown by a state’s leaders. If you believe a policy will help students learn, you need to have the courage of your convictions and not walk it back at the first sign of controversy. After all, anything worth doing should be worth doing well.

Last month, Paymon Rouhanifard announced that he would be stepping down from his position as the superintendent of Camden Public Schools in New Jersey at the end of the school year. Though leadership changes are nothing new in urban districts like Camden, his decision is newsworthy because of the positive academic results he’s leaving behind.

In a piece for The 74, Laura Waters outlines both the history of the district and the improvements during Rouhanifard’s tenure. These include a high school dropout rate that’s been halved, as well as an impressive collection of hybrid charter/district schools that significantly outperform the district’s traditionally run schools. Although there’s still plenty of work to be done in Camden, these successes should offer new hope for turnaround efforts across the country.

But lessons aren’t exclusive to success. As any younger sibling can attest, we often learn just as much from the mistakes of our older siblings as we do from their achievements. With this thought in mind, I did a deep dive into an array of analyses, reports, and case studies on various district and school turnaround efforts. Some of these efforts—like those in Camden—were relatively successful. Most were not. One thing they all have in common, though, is the lessons they offer other turnaround efforts, including those in several of Ohio’s urban districts (we’re looking at you, Lorain and Youngstown Academic Distress Commissions, and you too, Cleveland). Here’s a look at six important takeaways.

1. Turnaround leaders need the “big yes”

The words “autonomy” and “authority” are repeated almost ad nauseam in the literature on turnarounds. A 2009 brief written for the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) dubs this one-two punch the “big yes,” and defines it as granting leaders full authority from the start to make critical decisions based on what works for students. The first of seven tenets for sustainable school turnaround offered by the Center for American Progress (CAP) points to the importance of granting leaders the authority to intervene directly in struggling schools, especially in areas like staffing, budgets, scheduling, and the implementation of interventions.

But the big yes isn’t just a policy-wonk recommendation—it’s something that experienced turnaround leaders identify as crucial. Back in 2014, Public Impact gathered the leaders of some of the most well-known turnaround efforts in the country, including Louisiana’s Recovery School District and Tennessee’s Achievement School District. These leaders emphasized the importance of having the authority to take over schools and make significant changes. It’s also vitally important that the previous structures of authority be addressed; if not, struggles for power will surely occur. New Jersey’s turnaround process handled this by eliminating the elected boards in districts taken over by the state, and replacing them with “advisory boards of education” appointed by the local mayor. Members were incentivized to support the superintendent with the promise of a return of power in exchange for measurable progress. Just this month, Paterson City Schools earned the right to emerge from state takeover. A new board will soon be elected to take full control of the district after twenty-six years.

2. Teachers and principals matter

Common sense suggests and research shows that teacher and principal quality are significant factors in student achievement. That’s likely why almost every piece of literature on turnarounds emphasizes the importance of recruiting, retaining, evaluating, and developing teachers and principals. For instance, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spent four years analyzing the differences between low-performing schools that improved student achievement and those that didn’t. One of the four turnaround practices they identified as leading to success was the presence of systems that monitored and improved instructional quality, including regular classroom observations that resulted in specific, actionable feedback. Meanwhile, a case study on a successful turnaround effort in Lawrence, Massachusetts, highlighted the importance of creating teacher leadership roles and redesigning career ladders. A similar report on Project L.I.F.T.—a turnaround effort in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina—outlined the importance of the initiative’s efforts to recruit, retain, and reward excellent educators. Both Lawrence Public Schools and Project L.I.F.T. also recognized the importance of effective principals: They offered principals increased autonomy, turnaround leadership training, and higher salaries in exchange for greater levels of accountability.

3. Rigorous standards, curriculum, and assessment are vital

What students learn matters just as much as who teaches them. That’s why the most successful turnaround efforts include rigorous standards, curricula, and assessments. In 2017, The Center on School Turnaround released a four domain framework for school improvement. The third domain, instructional transformation, contends that rapid improvement is only possible when schools begin to diagnose student learning needs, implement effective supports and interventions, and use assessments to adjust and adapt. Rigorous, evidence-based instruction is vital for all students and should be aligned with high academic standards and a standards-based curriculum. Education Resource Strategies (ERS)—a non-profit that works with some of the largest urban school systems in the country—also lists college-and-career-ready standards and aligned curricula and assessments as key strategies for transforming districts.

4. School choice can help

Camden shows how school choice can enhance system-wide turnaround efforts. As explained in The 74, Camden families are empowered to choose their child’s school via the city’s universal enrollment system. Families can choose between traditional district schools, independent charters, and renaissance schools (hybrid charter/district schools that guarantee enrollment for students living in the neighborhood). Renaissance schools have demonstrated meaningful improvements in reading and math proficiency, and are operated by well-respected charter networks like KIPP, Mastery, and Uncommon. In New Orleans, Boston, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and various other places, charter schools have also been proven to benefit students, embodying as they do the autonomy-for-accountability strategy. Moreover, a recent study from New York City shows that students who attend district schools also benefit from charters—a rising tide that is lifting all boats.

5. Communication and engagement are crucial

For turnaround efforts to be successful, they must be done in collaboration with students and families instead of being foisted upon them. A recent CREDO report on the charter model used in New Orleans and Tennessee notes that schools in both states “consistently nominated the lack of strong family engagement as a hindrance to school success.” The aforementioned 2009 USDOE brief highlights the importance of proactively engaging the community by publicly acknowledging previous poor achievement results and outlining a clear vision for change that will leverage the surrounding community rather than push it to the sidelines. The Center on School Turnaround echoes these sentiments and emphasizes the importance of celebrating early successes, which can “promote an expectation for further success and engender confidence.”

6. Accountability is non-negotiable

The Center on School Turnaround also notes that every adult role must have clear expectations for professional performance. This includes the leader of the turnaround effort, but it also extends to district administration, principals, and teachers. These expectations must be monitored and measured, and a lack of progress should lead to what the 2009 USDOE brief calls “rapid retry.” The authors explain: “District leaders must not wait five to seven years to see results in a turnaround school…. [O]ne or two years without dramatic improvements in student achievement should prompt districts to retry major change.” Several successful turnaround efforts are marked by strong measures of adult accountability: At Union Hill Elementary School in Massachusetts, school leaders visited classrooms daily to ensure that teachers were receiving personalized feedback and incorporating it in their classrooms. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, turnaround leaders replaced 35 percent of principals and 8 percent of teachers due to chronic underperformance before the school year even started. Measurements of success can and should be different for each school, but consequences for a lack of progress must be in place.

***

Successfully turning around a district or school is hard, complicated, and expensive work. It requires strong but nimble leadership that’s capable of balancing quick wins with long-term, sustainable change. There isn’t a single silver-bullet reform that can lead to lasting transformation. Instead, successful turnarounds benefit from all of the six habits listed above—and probably a few more. Doing this well is difficult, but places like Camden and Lawrence prove that, with the right leadership and buy-in, it can be done. 

One of the animating spirits of the rise of STEM education is the push for innovation—new technologies, new applications, new solutions to intractable problems. But is cultivating that creative ability as common an outcome in students as tech enthusiasts would lead us to believe? A recent study by a team of researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) attempted to determine whether a gift for innovative thinking is merely something that prompts students to choose STEM classes, or whether it can be cultivated among those who believe they do not have that gift. The conclusion is that with billions of dollars of investment in STEM, American K–12 education could be putting its eggs in an unstable basket.

The locus of their work was an app-design contest open to all undergraduate students taking classes at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, whose winners would be determined by a panel of tech entrepreneurs and executives. Prize money was offered for the top three finishers, and the winners need not have progressed as far as a useable electronic prototype in order to compete; judges would be looking at things such as written plans and design mock-ups as seriously as they would live products. Motivated by outreach such as newsletters, emails, and information sessions, 103 students applied to participate in the contest as “self-selecting innovators.” A random group of students who did not sign up for the contest was then offered a $100 financial incentive to sign up. Eighty-seven students did so, and the researchers categorized them as “induced innovators.” These two groups were then randomly split with half of each group given a further treatment in the form of confidence-boosting emails (a “motivational treatment”) through the first several weeks of the contest. Data collected included pre-contest and post-contest surveys and the amount and quality of contest submissions.

Predictably, the majority of self-selecting participants were engineering and computer science majors, while the induced innovators were less likely to be drawn from these fields of study. Additionally, the induced innovators had lower GPAs than their self-selecting peers.

The results: The financial inducement seemed to achieve the goal of expanding the number and diversity of contest entrants. More importantly, the two groups ultimately submitted projects at more or less the same rate despite the difference in assumed capability and motivation for innovation. The submission rate for the full cohort of participants—approximately 10 percent—was deemed normal for such contests. The motivational treatment, however, showed an insignificant impact on both the number of projects submitted and the quality of those projects overall, although the small submission numbers made definitive analysis difficult. In the end, average judges’ scores were indistinguishable between self-selecting and induced innovators; the quality of their work outputs were essentially equal.

While the evidence suggests that “innovativeness” is not strictly an innate trait of certain individuals, the effects of financial inducement and motivational treatment interacted in surprising ways and had some counterintuitive effects on student performance. For example, though the induced innovators with below-median GPA performed the worst of all the groups, they were the individuals who benefitted most from the motivational treatment. Motivational treatment led to a small boost in project submission rates and project quality ratings. Additionally, those individuals receiving motivational treatment who did not ultimately submit a project were more likely to report that lack of time was the reason rather than perceived lack of ability to compete. The highest performers in the contest overall were self-selecting innovators also with below-median GPA, but the motivational treatment appeared to exert downward pressure on their average scores by comparison to the above-median GPA self-selecting innovators. The researchers concluded by raising questions related to individual characteristics not tested. What stops a student who can succeed in the innovation task from self-selecting into the contest? How much financial inducement is enough to incent innovation? Why do motivational messages received by self-selecting students with the most apt background and qualifications appear to interfere with the highest levels of successful innovation?

Although this study examines a STEM initiative in a college setting, who participates in and who benefits from the boom in K–12 STEM education is also a vital question. Future English majors, future attorneys, and many other students could be left behind if technology education becomes the pre-eminent focus of K–12. Additionally, STEM education without innovation could easily become a muddled mess of poorly coordinated traditional lesson plans cloaked in twenty-first-century buzzwords. This new research asserts that the pipeline of innovators is larger than it would at first appear. Proper incentives along the way seem to be a promising way to bring more students into the STEM fields, but we also need to know how to help them be successful once they’re in.

SOURCE: Joshua S. Graff Zivin and Elizabeth Lyons, “Can Innovators be Created? Experimental Evidence from an Innovation Contest,” National Bureau of Economic Research (February 2018).

For charter school supporters, it can be frustrating. There’s always something new in the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) saga. The most recent allegation, by a whistleblower who’d worked for the online giant, is that officials from the school were ordering staff to manipulate student attendance data—after the school had already been ordered to repay $60 million in state funds as a result of a review of student participation by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE).

At about the same time, Senate President Larry Obhof mused that it might be time for the General Assembly to “take a look” at how the state calculates attendance and funding. “When the legislature’s able to do things or has the responsibility for doing things,” he said, “it should be the legislature, not an administrative agency, that does that.”

President Obhof is right. It’s time for legislative action. Thoughtful policymaking could not only hold online schools accountable for their work but also strengthen the virtual school sector and improve outcomes for students. Here’s a look at a few common sense reforms that the legislature should consider.

Commission a study on performance-based funding

Performance-based funding is an attractive solution that’s been pitched before, most notably by State Auditor Dave Yost. Done well, it could be a strong accountability measure that would align incentives with funding—when students complete coursework, virtual schools generate revenue. Switching abruptly to a completely new funding system is risky and logistically challenging, so the legislature should immediately commission a study to examine performance-based funding systems used by other states. This study could be led by the ODE, along with representatives from district, charter, and online schools. The study should explore the pros and cons of this type of approach, create a list of recommendations for how Ohio could create and implement its own system, and devise a pilot program to test for strengths and weaknesses. To prevent a repeat of the ECOT situation, Ohio needs to resolve this issue of funding virtual education, but do so in a thoughtful rather than reactionary manner.

Adjust the number of hours used for automatic withdrawal to sixty-five

Under current law, contracts between sponsors and governing authorities must include procedures for automatically withdrawing students that have failed to participate in 105 consecutive hours of learning opportunities without a legitimate excuse. Although the state calculates student attendance based on hours and not days, 105 hours is roughly equivalent to fifteen full school days—an entire three weeks of consecutive absences. This provision is too permissive, considering that state law considers students attending brick-and-mortar schools habitually truant if they have been absent without legitimate excuse for only seventy-two hours (approximately ten days) in a single year—regardless of whether those hours are consecutive. This is a simple change that would ensure a student failing to engage would be required to move from the more flexible online environment to a more structured classroom setting.

Allow online schools to disenroll students who aren’t actively participating

In a traditional classroom, teachers are able to directly observe students and select instructional strategies that ensure student engagement. Teachers in online schools, on the other hand, are far more limited in how they can interact with students. Under current law, online schools are only able to monitor and enforce a student’s attendance; they have little power to hold students accountable for active participation. This means that hundreds of online students could be cruising through school and not learning anything simply because they log in every day. Even if the school knows there’s a problem and the student isn’t learning much or isn’t engaged, its hands are largely tied because the student is meeting minimum attendance requirements. In such cases, students are being academically harmed and taxpayer dollars are being wasted. To remedy this, Ohio’s online schools should be permitted (but not required) to take a page out of Indiana’s book and disenroll students who they can prove are actively refusing to participate. To minimize the potential for students to fall through the cracks, online schools should be required to document their attempts to contact families about student engagement issues, and to notify the student’s school district of residence when a student is being disenrolled.

Modify graduation rate calculations to be based on the percentage of time spent in each school

Ohio’s current method of calculating graduation rates, the federally mandate adjusted cohort graduation rate, places the entire responsibility of a student’s graduation on the last school he or she attended. For example, consider a student who attends Lincoln High School for his first three years. Behind on credits and frustrated, the student transfers to Jefferson High School for his senior year. If the student fails to graduate, Ohio attributes the student’s performance entirely to Jefferson. This is extremely unfair to schools that receive large numbers of transfer students who are close to their expected “on time” graduation date. These schools are often held accountable for students who spent very little time enrolled in their programs. To make graduation rate calculations fairer and more accurate, the legislature should create an enhanced adjusted cohort graduation rate to supplement the current calculation and report this rate in the state accountability system. The enhanced cohort method would break each student’s high school attendance into eight semesters, and attribute credit for whether the student graduates to whichever school the student attended for the majority of that particular time period. This calculation would ensure that schools would be held responsible for the proportion of time students spent actually attending, rather than their most recent place of enrollment.

Limit sponsor fees for schools with more than 2,000 students to 1.5 percent

Under current law, sponsors may charge the schools they authorize oversight fees of up to 3 percent of the total amount of payments received from the state. These fees are an instrumental part of maintaining quality authorizing practices. But as schools continue to grow, the economy of scale should be taken into consideration. Limiting sponsors to oversight fees of 1.5 percent for schools that educate more than 2,000 students acknowledges this principle. It also prevents authorizers from relying on a single school for a disproportionate amount of their funding, a practice that could create perverse incentives for keeping a low-performing school open, essentially making it too big to fail.

Limit sponsorship of statewide online charters to statewide authorizers

Online schools are unique in that they aren’t automatically constrained by geographic boundaries. As a result, in Ohio, some online schools serve students from all over Ohio while others limit their services to particular school districts or regions. While a school’s service area doesn’t necessarily require the school to alter its general operating procedures, it does impact an authorizer’s ability to provide effective oversight. In other states, for example, individual districts have opted to sponsor statewide online schools and then struggled to oversee them because of the varying needs and contexts that come with such a broad geographical base. To prevent these challenges, Ohio should ensure that only authorizers that have gained approval from ODE to oversee charters statewide can sponsor schools that take students from every district.

*****

Online schooling has many benefits and it’s an option that thousands of Ohio families take advantage of each year. But the state legislature has a responsibility to make sure that the students in these schools are learning, and that taxpayer funds are being spent well. The provisions outlined above would be a step in the right direction for Ohio’s online charter sector, and should—sooner rather than later—be considered carefully by members of the General Assembly.

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.

During the raging debate in recent years about whether Kentucky would join America’s education civilization by allowing charter schools, Ohio’s dismal charter performance became a favorite whipping boy of school-choice opponents.

Less than three years ago, the headline atop a 1,000-word exposé in The Washington Post on the Buckeye State’s charter schools read: “Troubled Ohio charter schools have become a joke -- literally.”

Ohio’s bad charter schools provided piles of fodder for Kentucky’s anti-choice zealots committed to keeping these schools out of the Bluegrass State.

Worse is that Ohio’s failures gave charter-school opponents nationwide a convenient ploy to divert attention away from the decades-long academic failure of many school districts in other states, including Kentucky’s largest in Jefferson County, where parents would leap at the opportunity of enrolling their children in charters – if only they had it.

However, as an old Bob Dylan hit heralds: “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Confirmation of the truth in Dylan’s lyrics is found in the newly released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results showing dramatic improvement black charter school students’ performance in Cleveland, formerly a most-troubled area for Ohio’s charter schools which led in large part to the Post’s article.

Cleveland’s black charter-school students demonstrated a surprisingly quick turnaround and now significantly outperforming blacks in the Rock and Roll Capital of the World’s traditional public education system.

NAEP reports that fourth-grade and eighth-grade blacks in Cleveland’s charter schools outperformed their black peers in traditional public schools by 13 points or more in reading and mathematics, including an immense 22-point difference in fourth-grade reading.

Bluegrass Institute analyst and national NAEP expert Richard Innes notes that for blacks in Cleveland charter schools to outperform their peers in traditional schools by such margins is “something very hard for charter schools to do” for many reasons. 

“For one, it takes a really big score” to achieve such a “statistically significant difference,” Innes said.

The challenge of turning in a performance like Cleveland’s charters is better understood by keeping in mind that, as Innes notes, “students don’t instantly turn into scholars when they enter charter schools.”

Sound analysis like that done by scholars at Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) shows it takes students about three years after enrolling in charter schools to fully benefit.

After all, the reason many parents choose charters in the first place is that their children had fallen behind in a traditional public school.

Since NAEP tests include charter students who haven’t fully blossomed, the scores often understate great work occurring in these schools of choice.

All of which offers a stark contrast in the recent performance between charter and non-charter students in Cleveland with the financial mismanagement, corruption and academic failure that dominated the news regarding charters from Cincinnati to Cleveland a few years ago.

Plus, this turnaround occurred without causing financial harm to the city’s traditional schools.

During the 2016-17 school year, the ACCEL Turnaround Schools performed better than the Cleveland Community Schools and at nearly the same level as the municipal city school district although 99 percent of its students were classified by the Ohio Department of Education as “economically disadvantaged” and the charters spent only $8,500 per student compared to the $21,000 the municipal district expended to get nearly identical results.

Not only do Kentucky’s school-choice opponents no longer have Ohio’s -- or at least Cleveland’s -- charter schools to kick around anymore, but here’s a city that turned around its failing charter-school performance in just a few years and at half the cost.

What a contrast with our state, its 27 years of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, increasing achievement gaps and gobs of additional money?

It’s an amazing achievement which even the most irrational and vociferous charter-school opponent cannot credibly dismiss.

Jim Waters is president and CEO of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Read previous columns at www.bipps.org. He can be reached at [email protected] and @bipps on Twitter.