You’ve probably heard by now that basketball superstar LeBron James opened a school for at-risk kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Called I Promise School (IPS), it’s a joint effort between the I Promise Network, the LeBron James Family Foundation, and Akron Public Schools.
You’ve probably heard by now that basketball superstar LeBron James opened a school for at-risk kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Called I Promise School (IPS), it’s a joint effort between the I Promise Network, the LeBron James Family Foundation, and Akron Public Schools. The newly renovated building opened its doors on July 30 to 240 students in third and fourth grade, along with forty-three staff members. Though he’s taking his talents to Los Angeles, King James himself was on hand to dedicate the new school.
Just like students who are part of the I Promise Network that serves more than 1,300 children and their families across the district, IPS students were identified based on their reading achievement data. After identifying students who were a year or two behind grade level, administrators used a lottery to randomly select which children would be offered a spot at the new school. These students will receive free uniforms, transportation within two miles, tuition to the University of Akron when they graduate, a bicycle and helmet, and a variety of other resources. Their families will have access to GED classes, job placement assistance, and a food pantry.
James is being lavished with praise from the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama and Steph Curry, and he certainly deserves it. He could have done something else, or nothing at all, to help the kids of Akron. He could have chosen to just shut up and dribble. Instead, he did something remarkable that has the potential to radically transform lives.
As with all major media stories these days, folks are crawling out of the woodwork to offer their opinions. It should come as no surprise to those who work in education policy that there’s been a lot of emphasis on the fact that IPS is a district public school. Not a private school that accepts vouchers, or a charter school (which, for the record, are also public schools), but a “traditional” public school that’s part of Akron Public Schools, the sixth largest district in the state.
It doesn’t really matter what kind of school IPS is as long as it serves kids well. But anyone who’s done their homework can see that IPS is anything but a “traditional” public school. In fact, the school’s defining characteristics are similar to the schools of choice lauded by ed reformers. Extended school day and year? Yes, just like a lot of the country’s best charter networks. A serious emphasis on teacher professional development, with one day a week reserved for development? Yes, just like some other high-performing charter networks. A curriculum anchored in science, technology, engineering, and math? Yes, just like Ohio’s independent, non-district affiliated STEM schools. (IPS is already part of Ohio’s STEM Learning Network.) Alternative schedules and working conditions for teachers? Also yes, just like plenty of charter and private schools.
And then there’s the philanthropic aspect. At ISP, the LeBron James Family Foundation funds “critical elements” of the school, including technology, additional staffing, and professional development. That’s not necessarily unique, since traditional districts receive philanthropic support all the time, but it is worth mentioning because charter schools are the ones that are typically maligned for seeking charitable funding to provide extra help for disadvantaged children.
Despite these similarities, IPS is a traditional public school, and there’s a whole horde of people who are thrilled about this technical distinction. In a recent piece for Education Week, for instance, Jonathan E. Collins says that it’s a good thing IPS isn’t a charter school because “charter schools by design don’t require the same accountability to the public that traditional public schools do.” I’m no expert on the charter laws in other states, but I do know Ohio charter law—and Collins is wrong. Charters in the Buckeye State are evaluated based on the same state report card that traditional public schools are subject to. Charter sponsors—the organizations that are tasked with overseeing charter schools—are evaluated using a rigorous evaluation system that has stiff consequences for poor oversight. As a result of this sponsor accountability system, dozens of low-performing charters have been shuttered in Ohio within the past few years. In addition, should sponsors fail to correct chronic low performance, state law subjects charters to automatic closure. Moreover, as schools of choice, charters face competitive pressures. If families don’t like the way a charter school is run, they don’t have to stay there—and the school loses funding if they leave.
Collins also argues that charters’ “student-selection process has stirred controversy for being biased.” Because of the “mechanisms that some charter schools have used in order to peel off the most promising at risk-students,” traditional districts are left with “unimaginable challenges.” Although studies have shown that the success of charters isn’t attributable to “cream-skimming,” there are still folks like Collins who argue that the only way a group of “those kids” can possibly succeed is if charter schools recruit the “good ones” and leave all the “bad ones” behind. It’s a notion that’s not just offensive to the charter teachers and kids who worked their butts off to learn and achieve, but also to the kids and teachers who are “stuck” in traditional districts.
Collins isn’t the only one who seems to be concerned for the “other kids” who are stuck and left behind. Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss shared the same concern in her piece titled “Props to LeBron James and his new Akron public school—but what about the other kids?” She takes tons of jabs at school choice, including the accusation that charter supporters “no doubt would have preferred that James opened a charter.” As a charter supporter and an Akron native, I find that accusation so ridiculous that it’s not even offensive. All the charter folks I know are thrilled that there’s another high quality option available for Akron kids. Frankly, anyone who doesn’t feel that way should re-evaluate their priorities.
But what stands out most about Strauss’s piece is her supposition that if schools just had more money, then James wouldn’t have had to open IPS at all. “The fact that this school opened only because of the good graces of a very wealthy, civic-minded athlete underscores the continuing problem with education funding in this country,” she writes. “America’s public schools should not have to depend on any wealthy individual or private entity to be sustained or improved.”
She’s not necessarily wrong. It would be great to have a never-ending supply of cash. If there’s anything we can learn from this spring’s teacher strikes, it’s that there are places in this nation where schools and teachers are severely—almost criminally—underfunded. But many states and localities have limited taxpayer resources that can be used to support public education. So here, too, is a place where we can learn a lesson from charter schools. Across the nation and in Ohio, charters accomplish phenomenal outcomes with less government funding than traditional public districts enjoy. These high-performing charter organizations put taxpayer funds to good use—something that bureaucratic, big-city districts don’t always do. It’s less about how much money there is and more about how it’s spent.
Thanks to LeBron James and his partners, the I Promise School has plenty of funding. Its founding principles and leadership seem to be focused on the right thing—using resources to do what’s best for students. At the end of the day, none of us should really care whether IPS is a district, charter, or private school. What matters is what it can do for kids. And so far, the future looks bright.
Online charter schools have been front-page material in every major Ohio newspaper for the past two years. The coverage, largely focused on the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), has featured the very public funding dispute between ECOT and the Ohio Department of Education, a host of legal proceedings, the school’s mid-year closure and subsequent displacement of 12,000 students, and the political rush from both parties to take credit or assess blame for the entire situation.
Last month, the General Assembly passed two pieces of legislation (Senate Bill 216 and House Bill 87) that, among other things, seek to address some of the issues that have plagued online charters in Ohio. A quick overview of the changes can be found in this summary of education-related legislation for the first half of 2018. The online charter provisions, while generally recognized as being positive, also drew criticism for not going far enough. This is likely because another piece of legislation—House Bill 707, which was introduced in mid-June by Republican Representatives Reineke and Faber—had even stronger accountability provisions, many of which came from recommendations made by Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost.
One measure included in HB 707 that didn’t make either SB 216 or HB 87 would have required ODE to adopt rules allowing online charter schools to disenroll students—with some due process protections—for not “actively participating in learning opportunities.” This is something I strongly support and recommended in a previous post.
My support was premised upon a few key ideas. First, the mode of instruction—online versus a traditional classroom—creates real differences in how students and teachers can interact. Second, data strongly suggest that some students don’t perform well in an online setting. Third, when a student isn’t learning in an online setting, the school is more limited in the types of interventions it can use. Fourth, even if the school knows there’s a problem and the student 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.
My recommendation resulted in thoughtful pushback from smart people whom I respect, so I believe it’s deserving of additional exploration. Here are the objections that gave them pause.
Issue 1: Charters are public schools and should have to serve everyone.
They are, and they should. The proposal in question still allows any student to enroll in an online school. It just gives the school another tool, the threat of disenrollment, to get parents and students to engage. Compare this to magnet schools, which are public schools that are granted a dispensation that allows them to serve students with a specific interest or aptitude and more often than not use a front-end screening mechanism for admission purposes. Online schools also serve a specific educational need, which will often vary from student to student. So while this policy would be atypical for a public school, it wouldn’t be unprecedented.
Issue 2: Online charters will cherry-pick students and, in doing so, will disproportionately exclude disadvantaged students.
Some national leaders have proposed a structure in which online charters would screen students before enrollment, and would deny admission to students they deemed unlikely to be successful. This would indeed have an element of cherry picking; however, as alluded to when describing magnet schools, there’s a subtle but important distinction between front-end and back-end screening mechanisms. A back-end screening framework gives every student the opportunity to choose the school and enroll. It’s only the failure to actively participate after being enrolled that would prevent a student from remaining in the school. The aspect of this objection that troubles me is the notion that we are doing students a favor by keeping them in an online school if they aren’t doing any work. Just imagine the impact on a student of doing virtually no work for several years, and the limited ability of the teacher to intervene because of the online nature of the relationship. It could very well create an unrecoverable gap, especially for disadvantaged students.
Issue 3: Schools will be incentivized to disenroll students as a means of evading accountability.
The argument here is that online charters will disenroll their poorly performing students in an attempt to appear more successful on state report cards. On its face, I see where this concern originates. But there are competing incentives at work here. Online charter schools are funded based on enrollment. If a student is disenrolled, then the funding leaves as well. Despite some of the well-publicized academic struggles, online charters post high enough state test scores that they are unlikely to be closed for academic performance. Why would a school disenroll a large number of struggling students to improve performance on the state report card, if the school wasn’t at risk of closure and every student disenrolled resulted in less revenue?
Issue 4: Brick-and-mortar schools can't engage every student either.
This is unfortunately very true. I’m sure there are some traditional public schools and brick-and-mortar charter public schools that would like to disenroll students who aren’t completing assignments or “actively participating.” The advantage schools with a physical location have is the slate of interventions available when students aren’t engaged. It’s easier—but surely not easy—for a classroom teacher or building principal to take steps to address inactive but physically present students. If we fail to acknowledge that the mode of instruction in online learning has some significant differences with a traditional classroom, then we run a significant risk of putting long-term student success in jeopardy.
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Online charter schools are public schools. Like all public schools, they should serve everyone, avoid cherry picking, be held accountable, and not be given any special accommodations. In this situation, as well meaning as the concerns are, they miss the forest for the trees.
At the end of the day, online charter schools have the same purpose as other schools: helping students to learn and acquire the skills necessary to lead a successful life. The primary difference between the two is the manner in which they deliver instruction. This difference allows for flexibility and personalization, but it also demands more responsibility from students choosing this model. Ohio needs to revisit this recommendation and allow schools to take steps to ensure disengaged students can receive the support they need to be successful, even if that means attending a different school. This is a pragmatic approach to ensure that online charters schools—very specialized public schools—can serve students well.
In a paper titled Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement, the Ohio Department of Education recently wrote that districts have “a limited understanding of how to build early literacy in young children.” This is manifestly troubling, as so much in life hinges on reading fluency—and it’s not as if there were a dearth of quality research on how kids learn to read. This is, in fact, one of the most thoroughly analyzed parts of schooling. (Fordham’s new literacy lifelines offer concise practical advice based in research.)
If this what-is-known and how-to-do-it knowledge isn’t well-lodged in the minds of district leaders and practitioners in Ohio schools, something needs to change. One can go back to Jeanne Chall’s 1967 book or the report in 2000 from the National Reading Panel. But a more recent and accessible review is a fine paper by Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, and Kate Nation. In what they call a “comprehensive tutorial review on the science of learning to read,” the authors review the major research findings and offer insight on how evidence can inform practice. The paper is organized around three general phases of literacy development, which they define as: (1) cracking the alphabetic code; (2) becoming a skilled word reader; and (3) learning to comprehend text.
The first building block of literacy is the ability to translate letters into sounds (or “decoding”). But studies indicate that children do not naturally intuit the relationship between letters and sounds; this must be taught explicitly through systematic phonics instruction. But why is phonics such a crucial foundation? Here, Castles and colleagues helpfully explain that an emphasis on phonics is not so much based on a “pedagogical philosophy,” but on the features of English itself. In an alphabetic language like ours, phonics enables children to pronounce the majority of words fairly rapidly. Once children can decode written symbols, they can direct their attention to making sense of word meanings.
A successful transition from decoding to skilled reading rests in large part on youngsters’ “lexical quality.” This term, the authors note, refers to readers’ ability to differentiate meanings precisely when spellings may be similar (face versus lace) or even the same (jam). How can schools promote strong lexical quality? Straight-up vocabulary instruction can help, but with thousands of words to learn, this can also be a daunting task. One approach the authors recommend is explicitly teaching “morphological awareness”—building a strong understanding of the predictable ways in which roots can be altered to change meanings (e.g., adding “–ed” to most verbs). The authors also make the commonsense point that more reading grows one’s vocabulary. “The single most effective pathway to fluent word reading,” they write, “is print experience: Children need to see as many words as possible, as frequently as possible.”
The ability to decode and understand word meanings is necessary but not sufficient for comprehending text. But how exactly do children learn comprehension skills? The authors admit that this is a complex question, in part because children’s background knowledge, cognitive processes, and memory interact and all bear on comprehension. Yet they offer useful insights here, too. First, they review the research on comprehension strategies and conclude that these can be effective in small doses—akin to learning reading “tricks.” Second, Castles and colleagues emphasize that “knowledge is fundamental to comprehension.” They make a helpful distinction between general background knowledge, such as familiarity with relevant historical contexts that can support inference making, and more specific linguistic knowledge—e.g., an understanding of idiom and figurative speech or grammar rules that help readers process text efficiently. Developing this knowledge base can be done through direct instruction. Moreover, as noted by the authors, it’s also closely intertwined with children’s own reading abilities, as well as their opportunities to read widely across various areas.
This timely paper reminds us that learning to read is complicated and gradual. But essential elements of it are firmly grounded in quality research, which provides a compass for educators and parents. Explicit phonics instruction is the critical foundation for fluent reading. Beyond decoding, children must build a rich vocabulary and broad knowledge base. While the authors don’t advocate for many specific reading strategies or interventions, their central message throughout is clear: To become good readers, children must read, read, read—and then read some more.
SOURCE: Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, and Kate Nation, “Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition from Novice to Expert,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest (2018).
While the so-called “word gap” between children from low and high socioeconomic circumstances continues, as it has for decades, to get much attention, researchers are continuing to dig deeper into the quantity and quality of language with which young children interact. There is more to successful language acquisition than just pouring more words into their ears. A new study from a University of Miami (FL) team led by Lynn Perry adds some small-scale evidence to support the primacy of quality over quantity in language interaction, but also adds a twist.
The twist is perhaps the most interesting part. Rather than focusing on the much-studied parent-child interactions at home, Perry and company looked at language interaction for children in a daycare setting, recording and analyzing the quantity and quality of language in five-minute increments during forty-two recording days over a full year. This includes adult-child and peer-peer interactions in both structured and unstructured situations. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) device, the researchers were able to collect data on the quantity of language expressed by each child, the quantity of language heard, differentiation of adult versus peer language, and language quality as defined by conversational turns between children and adults or peers (as opposed to passive language reception). No data were collected on content of language heard or expressed via recording.
All the children in the daycare center selected for study were between the ages of two and three, and all tested below the 30th percentile in expressive vocabulary size at the beginning of the study—just the type of kids whose exposure to language needs examination and perhaps intervention. Though only thirteen children ultimately participated in the full study, a sufficient number of recordings were collected to analyze the data. Children’s expressive vocabulary was tested at three time points—one month prior to the first recording date, approximately six months into the study, and one month after the final recording date—using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory Words and Sentences form (MCDI). The goal was to determine which, if any, aspects of language interaction correlated with changes in children’s language usage as recorded on the LENA device and via MCDI scores over time.
Language usage patterns showed a significant relationship between children's input from peers and their own vocalizations; in other words, kids who vocalized more also tended to receive more from other kids. Talking begets more talking. There was also a significant relationship between children's conversational turn-taking with adults and their own vocalizations, such that children who spoke more also engaged in more turn-taking. However, the quantity of input that children received from adults was negatively correlated with their own vocalizations. Though it is necessary for adults to talk for turn-taking to occur, evidence suggests that simply directing more words at a child can be detrimental to his or her own usage.
Interestingly, vocalizations of all types occurred most frequently during periods of structured activity, especially the beneficial conversational turn-taking, both with adults and peers. The analysts determined that, overall, 72 percent of an average day in the daycare classroom was spent in unstructured activities (outdoor play, lunchtime, etc.) and just 28 percent in structured activities (storytelling, circle time, etc.). As the call for more and better preschool programming grows, this script may need to be flipped if such a setting is to contribute significantly to language acquisition and development.
All students greatly increased their MCDI scores from the beginning of the year to the mid-point; all but one child did the same from the mid-point to the end of the year. These results were not surprising but, consistent with other research, conversational turn-taking emerged as a prime correlate to both increased language usage and increased MCDI scores. This was true of both adult and peer interactions, although conversation with adults was more closely correlated than conversation with peers.
The sample here is too small—again, just thirteen young children—to generalize the outcomes, but these correlational results for youngsters previously known to have limited expressive language suggest that concrete steps can be made in the preschool setting to support growth in this area. As preschool programs become more widespread, encouraging structured activities that pay purposeful and frequent attention to conversational turn-taking with adults and plentiful opportunities for children to hear and use language together are must-haves.
SOURCE: Lynn K. Perry, et al, “A year in words: The dynamics and consequences of language experiences in an intervention classroom,” PLOS ONE (July, 2018).
When news broke the other day that LeBron James was starting a school in his home town of Akron, some commentators assumed it was going to be a charter. That’s an understandable mistake, as celebrities and stars of all stripes have gotten in chartering in recent years, from Andre Agassi to P. Diddy to Pitbull and beyond. And why not, given that in most places, the charter model comes with huge advantages for philanthropists wanting to make a difference, among them the freedom from district red tape and teacher union contracts.
LeBron chose to create his school in partnership with the traditional public school district, as a non-charter—likely due to his long-standing relationship with Akron City Schools. There’s no way to know whether he considered the charter route. But if he had, he’d have discovered a challenging charter school terrain suffering from the double whammy of recovering from a long-held poor reputation and inhospitable policies for education entrepreneurs.
First of all, kudos to LeBron, whose efforts to help struggling youth and his partnerships in Akron are nothing new. You can read more about the school plans here, but the gist is that the program will start off by identifying third graders who are already behind academically. Given what we know about third-grade reading proficiency predicting future academic and life chances, this is a sensible start for the program—which will grow downward to grades one and two and then up to grade eight by 2022. The school will focus on STEM and offer “hands-on, problem-based learning” while engaging families. Six out of ten of third-grade students in Akron fail to reach proficiency in reading, so there’s a clear need for the program.
LeBron’s vision for the I Promise School sounds similar to those of successful charter school founders. And the school will presumably serve a similar student population—those who are behind academically and disproportionately low-income. While the school won’t have the autonomy that most charter schools have, it also won’t be forced to navigate Ohio’s increasingly challenged charter landscape.
Charter schools, on average, receive one-third less funding than traditional public schools and cannot access local tax revenues (except for a few instances in Cleveland). They also lack facilities resources. A study released in January showed that Ohio charters are forced to dip into operations funding to pay for facilities; on average, about $800 per pupil of their already meager foundation funding goes toward building costs. Federal start-up dollars that used to provide a vital infusion of start-up capital are now so hard to attain that King James himself would probably find it easier to take down the Golden State Warriors again—no small task—than to access those dollars. Last week, the state announced eligibility criteria for the new round of federal Charter School Program grants. It’s early still, but from what I can tell, even Ohio’s very best charter networks may struggle to qualify to earn a CSP grant to replicate. For brand new schools, it may be easier to access the money, but you can count on one hand the number of sponsors that are eligible to authorize new schools this coming fall.
Ohio’s overall charter school reboot was a necessary development, and Fordham played an active role in advocating for many of HB 2’s reforms. But we should be gravely concerned if the overall charter climate—in terms of both regulation and resource availability—becomes so burdensome that education entrepreneurs have a hard time starting new charter schools. While Ohio’s charter landscape is shaking off its reputation as the Wild, Wild West, there still must be space—and support—for good charters to replicate and innovative new models to take hold.
Best wishes to LeBron in his endeavor, and to his overall partnership in Akron where historical performance data show there is tremendous need. I’m agnostic to school type: if innovation can spring up within traditional public school districts and deliver results for at-risk kids, then more power to them. At the same time, we must remain vigilant against over-regulation and wary of any climate wherein starting up a new charter school is about as likely as making a half-court buzzer beater.
Weighted student funding, also known as student-based budgeting (SBB), is a funding mechanism that aims to allocate school resources more equitably. Rather than having districts fund schools based on staffing and resource needs, SBB requires districts to provide a base amount to each school for each student and then adds supplemental funding based on student characteristics such as poverty, disability, limited English proficiency, or academic proficiency. Transitioning to a SBB model doesn’t necessarily give schools more money—it just changes how school leaders are able to use allocated money. (For more information on SBB, see here, here and here.)
Two of the biggest differences between SBB and traditional school funding formulas are flexibility and transparency. In districts that use a traditional funding model, school leaders have limited knowledge about how central offices choose to dole out funds and almost zero control over how to spend the funds they receive. School leaders in districts that use SBB models, on the other hand, can easily determine how funds are awarded and have more autonomy to direct their schools’ funds toward student needs.
To promote SBB, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act authorized a pilot program for districts interested in this type of funding. The final application window for the U.S. Department of Education’s student-centered funding pilot program officially closed on July 15. The law authorizes the department to enter into three-year agreements with up to fifty local districts to consolidate federal, state, and local funds into a weighted student funding formula that allocates resources based on the number of students within a school and their level of need. Of the five districts that applied during the initial application window, only Puerto Rico was approved.
It’s unclear whether any Ohio districts applied during the second application window. But even if there weren’t any, that doesn’t mean the Buckeye State is uninterested in student-based budgeting. In fact, Ohio already has districts that have implemented it. Take, for instance, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD): When the Cleveland Plan was adopted back in 2012, district leaders aimed to transform that city’s schools into a portfolio district that would use a “pupil-based funding” model. Specifically, the plan proposed “transferring a majority of spending control to schools based on the number and needs of the students they enroll.” Selected schools would be able to “spend the funds they receive as they see fit to advance student learning and manage and operate a successful school.”
To implement it, the district partnered with Education Resource Strategies (ERS), a non-profit that works with some of the largest urban school systems in the country. ERS has a long history of working with SBB, including partnering with districts like Memphis, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. Its work with Cleveland included designing and implementing a SBB model, as well as training and coaching for two cohorts of schools.
CMSD chose to pilot budget flexibility with nine high-performing schools during the 2013–14 school year, but student-based budgeting is now the norm for everybody: The district’s 2016–17 budget book clearly states that each school receives the majority of its funding via the student-based budgeting model. Each year, school budgets are adjusted to reflect each school’s enrollment (which can increase or decrease due to student mobility or school choice) and their students’ needs (additional funds are allocated based on students with gifted and special education needs, English language learners, and students with high mobility, low attendance, or low reading skills.)
As promised by the Cleveland Plan, principals control the majority of their school’s budget so that they can align spending with students’ actual needs. So far, SBB has led to some significant changes: The most recent Cleveland Plan Performance Report states that nearly 50 percent of the district’s budget is now controlled by principals, compared to only 14 percent back in 2013. In addition, 71 percent of school budgets are controlled by principals, compared to a measly 1.8 percent back in 2013.
Though ERS’s student-based budgeting work with CMSD is over, the organization has identified seven success factors that other Ohio districts could learn from as they explore the possibility of implementing a model similar to Cleveland’s. Below is a brief overview of three of ERS’s most significant findings.
Academic and school-support leaders should be in charge
Traditional organizational charts would seem to dictate that districts put their finance departments in charge of student-based budgeting. Based on Cleveland’s experience, however, that’s exactly what districts shouldn’t do. When CMSD placed SBB implementation in the hands of the CFO’s office, school supervisors—administrators responsible for supporting school leaders—weren’t included in the SBB planning efforts. As a result, supervisors reported feeling unprepared to help principals implement the new model effectively. Even worse, the district was in danger of failing to connect the new budget flexibilities with school-level academic needs—the entire point of switching to SBB. Wisely, CMSD made the decision to change course and put a member of their academic team, rather than the finance office, in charge of directing SBB and preparing supervisors to support principals. By treating SBB as an academic reform instead of just another budgeting process, the district was able to ensure that principals had access to flexibilities that were actually useful and meaningful, and that school supervisors were adequately trained to support them.
Empower principals to make meaningful choices
Under SBB, there are two types of funds allocated to schools: locked funds, which are still under the control of central office; and unlocked funds, which are available for principals to spend how they choose. While it’s tempting for districts to quickly unlock as many funds as possible, it’s better to be more strategic. CMSD, for instance, chose not to unlock special education funding. Because special education services are strictly governed by students’ Individualized Education Plans and state and federal policy, principals would have had very little flexibility while shouldering all of the responsibility. Instead, the district opted to give principals control over instructional staffing and scheduling. This allowed principals to choose (with some limitations) the number and type of instructional positions at their school and the length of the school day. These choices directly impacted specific students, including those with special needs.
School leaders need support and accountability
SBB requires giving school leaders a significant amount of autonomy, but it’s important for districts to also have clear accountability measures in place. CMSD, for instance, created “Network Support Teams” made up of representatives from several departments (including budgeting, human resources, special education, and academics) to support principals as they crafted their school plans and budgets. Their feedback to principals extended beyond the kind of compliance checks that most central offices use. Teams were responsible for determining whether a principal’s plan effectively addressed the school’s needs and priority areas, as well as making recommendations for improvements. Principals reported that Network Support Teams were the most helpful form of support they received while developing their school plans.
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Cleveland’s initial implementation of the student-based budgeting model wasn’t perfect, but the district got a lot of things right. And other districts that are interested in following in its footsteps (or districts that have won a spot in the federal pilot) should consider Cleveland’s experience. SBB requires significant changes, so it’s not for the faint of heart. But for districts with flat, or even falling, budgets, it could be the key to improving student outcomes and achieving a more equitable funding system.
Since 2007, Ohio’s minimum wage has climbed from $6.85 per hour to the current rate of $8.30. Earlier this year, state Democratic leaders introduced a bill that would further accelerate minimum wage increases to $15.00 per hour by 2025. Though unlikely to pass this year, the legislation is part of a national debate about what constitutes a “living wage” for employees who may be trying to make ends meet for their families. My intention is not to jump into the rancorous discourse around wage floors for grown-ups. But it is worth examining how escalating minimum wages might affect work opportunities for teenagers. In my view, if we want to promote more teenage employment, Ohio policymakers should consider setting a youth minimum wage that differs from that of adults.
Figure 1 shows some national data on teenage employment trends. There’s been a dramatic decline in the employment of sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds over the past forty years. In 1980, almost 60 percent of young people in this age range held part- or full-time jobs; that number has since fallen to just 35 percent. This drop in teenage employment diverges from the general working-age population trend, which has remained steady over this period. Of course, many teenagers work only in the summer, but an analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that July employment among sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds has dropped from 71 percent in 1980 to just 43 percent in 2016 (these data are not shown in figure 1).
Figure 1: U.S. civilian labor force participation rates for 25–54 year olds vs. 16–19 year olds, 1980–2018
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The data are annual averages of monthly employment rates, seasonally adjusted.
Any number of factors could explain the erosion of teenage employment. An article last summer in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson explored possible explanations, including the notion that young people today prefer educational pursuits over workforce experience. There is surely some credence to this story: High-school dropout rates have steadily fallen and college enrollments have risen, resulting in fewer teens in full-time jobs. Enrolled students may now be less inclined to seek part-time jobs as they face greater academic demands; and it’s also plausible that summer school and earlier starts to school years have dampened seasonal employment.
As Thompson explains, several labor-market forces may also be driving down teenage employment rates, including increased competition for entry-level jobs from adult or immigrant workers, along with the rise of unpaid internships, which aren’t counted as employment.
He also mentions—almost in passing—another important hypothesis that might account for the drop: An increasing minimum wage. A closer inspection of the minimum wage is warranted because, unlike some of the other factors, it is under the direct control of policymakers. In theory, rising wage floors could work in opposite directions in terms of influencing teenage employment. A higher wage might induce adolescents into the workforce, thus increasing employment rates. But it could also make employers more reluctant to hire young people who likely have less experience and weaker job skills, and who may require more training and supervision.
A recent Mercatus Center paper by labor economists David Neumark and Cortnie Shupe looks at how a rising minimum wage has affected youth employment. They first show that minimum wages across the U.S. have indeed risen in real dollars since 1988—and that trend correlates with deteriorating teenage employment shown in Figure 1. This could all be coincidence, of course, so they conduct analyses that control for factors such as immigration and returns to education. They conclude that rising minimums wages contributed to lower employment rates. Specifically, they estimate that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage led to a 4 percent decline in employment among sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. The study, however, didn’t find that rising minimums affected eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, indicating that the effects of the wage hikes were limited to high-school-age teens. (For more evidence, see this accessible brief.)
Given the sensitivity to changes in the minimum wage, policymakers could promote greater youth employment by setting a floor slightly lower than that of adults—a suggestion that several policy analysts have already made. A “youth minimum wage” would create a modest incentive for employers to offer young people jobs. Moreover, with more opportunities at hand, students might be more motivated to seek employment, especially of the part-time or seasonal variety. Ohio already permits employers to hire fourteen- and –fifteen-year-olds at the lower federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. State policymakers could simply extend a differential minimum wage to cover sixteen through eighteen year olds, akin to what states like Minnesota and Washington (and other nations) have done.
Critics may raise concerns that such a policy shortchanges teens who are employed at the lower rates. But it’s far more costly to rob countless thousands of young people of all workforce opportunity just because employers can’t afford to pay them the statutory minimum rate, which is set largely based on adult concerns. And which teens are most likely to lose out on these opportunities? Odds are they’ll be young people from less advantaged backgrounds who already face significant barriers to work, such as fewer employer connections and more competition from low-skilled adults. Of course, these youngsters are the very ones who stand to benefit mightily from such workforce experiences.
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Many of us can remember working as teenagers at the local pool, restaurant, or retail shop. For me, it was a job at the supermarket down the street. That experience taught me lots, like the value of hard work and responsibility, how to get along with co-workers, and coping with criticism from a grumpy boss—things that one might call “street smarts” to go along with “book smarts.” For those who believe in the benefits of these on-the-job experiences, the slide in teenage employment should be disheartening. A youth minimum wage isn’t a magic bullet, and we should do more to unlock jobs. But in a time of rising minimum pay and shouts for even larger increases, setting a special wage floor for young people could create more opportunities for those seeking an introduction to the workforce.
