Ohio legislators recently unveiled a $2.6 billion capital budget bill for fiscal years 2019 and 2020. Inside this year’s iteration are routine items like park and correctional facilities maintenance.
Ohio legislators recently unveiled a $2.6 billion capital budget bill for fiscal years 2019 and 2020. Inside this year’s iteration are routine items like park and correctional facilities maintenance. But there are also more curious requests, including $5 million for a glass-enclosed corridor at COSI, $4 million for a potential soccer stadium in Cincinnati, $1 million to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a quarter million for barn renovations in Delaware County. Enacted in even-numbered years, the capital budget generally funds building and infrastructure projects; it is separate from the state’s larger operating budget, which is passed in odd-numbered years.
A major chunk of the capital budget is also dedicated to education. This includes $485 million to higher education and $600 million to K–12. Practically all of the K–12 allotment flows to Ohio school districts (including joint vocational) through the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program or CFAP. In general, this program offers funding based on district wealth, prioritizing support for less wealthy districts in need of facility upgrades (contingent on them raising local tax revenue via bond issues). Established shortly after the first of several DeRolph v. State of Ohio school-funding cases, CFAP has disbursed over $11.5 billion to upgrade more than 1,100 schools throughout Ohio since 1997. The proposed FY 2019–20 capital budget keeps the spigot open for districts’ facility projects over the next two years.
All this brings us to public charter schools. Despite the millions budgeted for other projects, charters are provided no new facility funds in this year’s capital budget. This continues policies that have long failed to ensure that charter students learn in adequate, let alone state-of-the-art, facilities. After years of providing charters no money specifically for facilities, Ohio lawmakers began to help in 2013 by providing a small facility allowance. Today, this amount is roughly $200 per student per year, equivalent to a $16.6 million line item in the state operating budget. In 2015, legislators also enacted a $25 million Community School Classroom Facility (CSCF) program for high-performing charters. In the first round of grants, eight of Ohio’s almost 400 charter schools received a total of $17 million for capital improvements; awards for the second round of grants, worth just over $4 million, were recently announced. Unlike districts, charter schools cannot raise local tax revenue for their facility needs.
State support for charter facilities is critical, but regrettably funding still remains wholly inadequate. A study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education last year found that Ohio charters spend an average of $785 per student annually for facilities—far above the $200 per pupil allotment provided to most charter schools. This allowance is even more insufficient in light of the $2,200 per student that districts spent on facilities in FY 2017. To make up for this shortfall, charters are often forced to dip into operational funds used to pay teacher salaries and instructional materials, and most rent classroom space rather than owning a traditional school building. In our 2016 charter survey, one leader spoke of the implications of working in such inadequate conditions: “The facilities do hinder us right now because there are things that our kids could be doing in science but we can’t get the lab.” Another charter leader mentioned having to use modular units—basically classroom trailers—instead of operating out of an actual building. And our former intern Michael Periatt conducted an analysis a few years ago that found most Columbus area charters locate in commercial properties, not in buildings specifically designed to educate children.
The building in which a school operates might not be the most important factor for student outcomes, but it does matter. Ohio policymakers should do more to assist fiscally and educationally sound brick-and-mortar charters secure suitable facilities. To do so, the state should consider the following:
Too many responsible charter schools have had to scrape by with inadequate facilities. This is no longer a sustainable approach for Ohio. Charters’ ability to attract families or talented educators is hampered when their facilities lack educational, arts, or athletic amenities (much less “curbside appeal”). The lack of widespread building ownership among charter schools likely feeds a mistaken perception that they’re fly-by-night institutions. It continues to make Ohio an undesirable place for high-performing charter management organizations to locate. (Top-notch networks such as Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, or IDEA Public Schools don’t operate in Ohio.) Most troubling of all, scrimping on facilities cheats young people—many of whom come from less-advantaged families—of their opportunity to learn in a world-class environment.
In the proposed capital budget, legislators found it in their hearts to allot taxpayer dollars for stadiums, halls of fame, and barn restorations. Perhaps they can also find some money to ensure that Ohio’s 100,000 public charter school students spend eight hours a day, 180 days a year in suitable facilities.
In case you missed the headlines, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson recently resigned. Though a few scandals have plagued the district as of late, the one that spurred Wilson’s resignation was personal. He bypassed the citywide school lottery system to enroll his daughter in a high-performing school.
Wilson’s actions must be condemned as a misuse of power and a violation of public trust. He should not have circumvented district policies for his family’s benefit, and his resignation is warranted.
That being said, it’s not hard to understand why he did it. Based on media reports, the school that his daughter initially enrolled in—an arts magnet school—turned out to be a bad fit. Rather than keeping her in a school that didn’t work for her, Wilson did what most parents would do: He searched for a better option. Unfortunately, this meant using his power and connections to transfer his daughter into a high-performing school. Given these facts, it’s clear that he wanted his daughter to attend an academically strong school that was also a good fit for her.
Wilson’s situation isn’t unique. Whether it’s a low-performing school, a school that isn’t the right fit, or both, tens of thousands of Ohio families have found themselves in the same position. The Buckeye State is considered a national leader in school choice. So, in theory, its families should have a menu of educational options. But how accessible are they? Let’s take a look at a few of the most common ways parents choose schools.
Option 1: Move to a new district or neighborhood
If you don’t like the schools in your neighborhood or school district, then you could pack up and move somewhere else. In fact, many parents specifically choose their homes based on their perceptions of local school quality. But many of the best schools in Ohio are located in affluent suburbs, where housing prices are high. Some people have used the addresses of family members or friends to avoid high real estate costs and gain access to better schools. But that’s a risky move. Districts have admitted to tailing parents to check for residency, and at least one mom was already sent to jail for lying about her home address. This is likely the most common method of school choice, but it’s also time-consuming and very expensive.
Option 2: Open-enroll in another district
This form of choice permits students to attend public schools that are outside their district of residence—but only if the receiving district has available space and chooses to admit non-resident students, and only if parents are able to transport their children to the alternative. This is a feasible option for families in rural and small-town Ohio, where almost all districts permit this. But unfortunately, very few of the state’s affluent suburban (read: high performing) districts allow non-resident students to attend. Fordham’s open-enrollment report found that Ohio’s largest inner cities—including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus—are surrounded by districts with closed borders that exclude tens of thousands of nearby low-income and minority students from going to better schools.
Option 3: Enroll in a charter school
Approximately 110,000 Ohio children attend charter schools. Many of these schools are doing remarkable work with their students, who often come from low income households. Unfortunately, state law prohibits new brick-and-mortar charters from opening in many geographic areas, so lots of Ohioans—especially in rural areas—only have access to virtual varieties.
Option 4: Enroll in a private school
Ohio families have sent their children to private schools for over a century. But not everyone lives near one. And they charge tuition, sometimes a significant amount, which automatically excludes the majority of low and lower-middle income families unless the cost is subsidized. That’s where vouchers come in. The EdChoice, Jon Peterson, Cleveland, and Autism Scholarship Programs offer state-funded private school scholarships to Ohio students. But they have several stipulations that limit their accessibility. Vouchers can only be used at participating private schools—and many of the most sought after schools in the state don’t participate. Those that do aren't required to accept eligible students, so parents who want a voucher and live near a participating school still might be unable to enroll their child. And to be eligible for a scholarship, a student must have a disability, live in Cleveland, be assigned to attend a low-performing school, or have an income below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Income eligibility is also restricted by grade level—only students in fifth grade or below are eligible for the 2018–19 school year—and by available funds.
Option 5: Homeschool
Thousands of Ohio families homeschool their children each year. But it’s not a viable option for the vast majority of parents. This could be because both parents work full-time, because the family doesn’t have access to a nearby co-op they like, or because the out-of-pocket expenses are just too steep.
Option 6: Keep your child at his or her assigned traditional public school
This is the most common path for Ohio families. For some it’s a good, conscious choice. But for many, due to all of the aforementioned barriers, it’s their only option. It’s also sometimes a bad one that condemns their child to a low-performing or ill-fitting school.
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Ohio has a robust system of school choice, but it still excludes far too many of the families that need it most. This is why thoughtful state policy is so important. The decisions made in the legislature and the governor’s office aren’t philosophical debates or theoretical dilemmas. They affect real families who are trying to do right by their children. Ohioans deserve quality choices and plenty of them, and the officials that they’ve elected should work to empower—not hinder—this freedom.
Solving the “thirty-million-word gap” is not as simple as pouring more language into a child’s ears until she catches up with her peers. New research from a team at MIT points to “conversational turns”—defined as an adult utterance followed by a child utterance, or vice versa, with no more than a five-second pause between the two—as the best predictor of scores on standardized tests of vocabulary, grammar, and verbal reasoning. These findings were independent of parental education levels, socioeconomic status (SES), and the amount of language to which children were exposed in the home. The senior researcher on the team described conversational turns as “almost magical” in their ability to build language competence in children.
The study involved thirty-six children between the ages of four and six and their parents. All were native English speakers, and the children were typically developing, with no history of premature birth, neurological disorders, developmental delay, speech/language therapy, or grade repetition. All participants passed a pre-test hearing screening. The children participated in a functional MRI task (fMRI) that monitored neural activity in Broca’s area, the part of the brain most associated with language production and processing. The task involved passively listening to short, simple stories geared to their age and with incidents deemed familiar to most children (e.g., playing games, getting hurt, etc.). Children completed standardized behavioral assessments to characterize verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills. Each family was also given a recording device—worn on the child’s clothing—that recorded up to sixteen hours of audio from the child’s perspective. The recordings were processed to determine the total number of adult words spoken, the total number of child utterances, and the total number of adult-child “conversational turns.”
As other research has shown, higher parental education and SES are significantly correlated with more language exposure for children—both in number of adult words heard and more conversational turns experienced. But socioeconomic status only explained a moderate share of the differences in language exposure, indicating that there was wide variability within families of similar SES. When looking at the adjusted assessment scores, conversational turns came to the fore as the strongest predictive variable. And fMRI results on the children’s passive listening test reinforced the test score analysis. The more conversational turns a child experienced, the greater the activation in Broca’s area during language processing, independent of the child’s SES, cognitive ability, or sheer numbers of adult words and child utterances. The neural pattern observed explained 48 percent of the relation between children’s conversational turns and their verbal scores.
The researchers connect their findings with prior research on younger children showing similar importance of qualitative aspects of children’s language experiences over sheer quantity of language experienced, with the additional support of test scores and neural imaging data. They speculate on the value of context and feedback during the turn-taking process in bolstering language processing and word understanding.
Limitations to the study relate to the exclusion of all but typically-developing children, a lack of detail on the nature of the conversational turns taken (sense versus nonsense, proper English versus “baby talk,” etc.), and a concern that low SES and language “deprivation” might have registered among potential subjects as having a non-typical development. However, these findings seem to be an important addition to the research into how language is processed in the developing brain. If the suspected external elements of the word gap, such as family socioeconomic status and parental education level, can be mitigated or corrected as this research suggests, we ought to strongly encourage parents to have more conversations with their kids. Further research should attempt to account for the limitations noted here and to drill further into the mechanism by which the most meaningful language processing occurs.
SOURCE: Rachel R. Romeo, et al, “Beyond the 30-Million-Word Gap: Children’s Conversational Exposure Is Associated With Language-Related Brain Function,” Psychological Science (February 2018).
Two weeks ago I spent a couple of hours hunched over a cafeteria table, helping one of the eighth grade students I mentor outline her research paper. It brought back some fond memories of my time as a high school English teacher. But it also reminded me of one of the most frustrating aspects of teaching writing: When you’re a full-time educator teaching dozens of students, there is never enough time to provide every single student with the kind of detailed and consistent feedback that will truly transform their writing.
Maybe that’s why I was so thrilled when a few days later I came across the news that The Graide Network (TGN) had successfully raised over $1 million to expand its reach to more schools. For those who are unfamiliar, TGN is an organization that connects K–12 teachers with teaching assistants who grade and provide feedback on student writing through an online platform. Assistants, known as “Graiders,” work remotely and are undergraduate or graduate students who are enrolled in, or preparing to enroll in, teacher preparation programs.
The process works like this: Teachers post detailed information about an assignment, including a rubric and grading instructions, and are matched with a Graider based on content and grade level. Graiders with the highest ratings, strongest track records of experience, and fastest response rates are prioritized. Once matched with a Graider, teachers upload their students’ work. Graiders then grade and return the assignment along with detailed reports on class performance and personalized feedback for each student. Teachers are responsible for reviewing feedback and returning it to their students. At the end of the process they also rate and review their Graider based on quality of feedback, accuracy of grades, and professionalism.
The best part of TGN is that it offers clear benefits to all three groups involved. For teachers, there’s the obvious benefit of giving students feedback without sacrificing so much time. Teachers who have used TGN have also reported increased student engagement and learning gains, and have received useful data than can be used to plan lessons and interventions. For students, the clearest benefit is personalized and high-quality feedback that’s returned within a few days. Writing for a third party audience also helps students practice for writing exercises like AP exams, ACT and SAT writing prompts, and college entrance essays. For Graiders, it’s a flexible way to earn cash (they earn $10 an hour) while gaining the kind of practical, hands-on experience that will prepare them for the realities of a classroom and set them apart from other teaching candidates.
Quality control is incorporated throughout the process and starts on the front end. Graiders are top-performing undergraduate and graduate students who are selected based on academic performance, relevant experience and coursework, and their proficiency in providing effective feedback on a mock assignment. Once accepted, Graiders are required to complete training that includes online courses on effective feedback, rubrics and norming, and analyzing data. Graiders also receive ongoing coaching and support. If, for whatever reason, a teacher isn’t satisfied with their experience, they can request a revision or find a replacement Graider at no additional cost.
TGN is a form of edtech, though, and many folks are rightly concerned about how edtech can put students’ privacy and safety at risk. TGN answers these concerns in a few ways. For starters, students and Graiders never directly interact. Teachers are responsible for collecting and uploading student work to the platform for Graiders to access, and the teachers review feedback prior to returning it to students. This allows teachers to ensure that student work is anonymized, and to act as information gatekeepers. Interactions between teachers and Graiders, meanwhile, are limited to TGN’s internal messaging system. As an added precaution, Graiders are required to sign confidentiality agreements and teachers are required to obtain approval from authorized school administrators before working with a Graider.
The organization’s “Why” page offers some solid evidence on the power of feedback, and their case studies offer the kind of anecdotal, on-the-ground proof that their platform works in real classrooms. But as they continue to expand into more schools, an important next step is bringing in an outside researcher to evaluate their platform’s impacts on student learning. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data could solidify the organization’s reputation and persuade skeptical teachers to give the platform a shot.
In the meantime, though, TGN is a promising venture that seems to have benefited students, teachers, and Graiders. For districts and schools looking to improve student writing and expand teacher capacity, The Graide Network is worth a look.
Two weeks ago, several lawmakers introduced legislation that proposes a major restructuring of education governance in Ohio. The crux of House Bill 512 is to foster a more coordinated approach to K–12 and postsecondary education policy, with the governor taking a clearer leadership role. To accomplish this, the bill proposes a new agency that would be led by an appointee of the governor and confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Most of the current duties of the Ohio Department of Education would transfer to the new agency, along with those of the Ohio Department of Higher Education and the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation.
The governing framework proposed in this bill charts a course towards a more coherent, seamless, and unified vision for education—from preschool all the way to the workforce. This change in approach is critical as data show that too many young people in Ohio struggle to make transitions from high school to college or career. Consider the following statistics:
The changes proposed in HB 512 would better align Ohio’s K–12, higher education, and workforce development systems so that they no longer operate in separate spheres. Though many states still maintain formal separation between K–12 and postsecondary systems, New York, Florida, and a few smaller states take a more unified K–16 approach. While not without challenges, structures such as these can promote consistent expectations, align policy development and information systems, and create a culture of joint accountability for the well being of young people.
In addition to improved alignment, HB 512 would also create conditions that allow initiatives aimed at improving students’ readiness for college or career—from preschool on—to be vigorously implemented. The key is granting the governor greater leadership responsibility over education policy. In the realm of K–12, Ohio has a fragmented system in which both the governor and state board of education try to exert influence over policy implementation. On some occasions, they work in harmony. But other times, they work at cross-purposes, leading to less coherent policies or weakened implementation.
Consider the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, an early-literacy initiative championed by Governor Kasich. Initially, he had wanted third graders to meet strict reading standards before schools could promote them, but these have been diluted by rulemaking and implementation processes. Today, a seemingly impressive 94 percent of third graders are allowed to move to the next grade, despite the fact that just 63 percent of students are deemed proficient on Ohio’s fourth grade reading exams, and that even fewer meet NAEP’s more rigorous proficiency standard.
By allowing the governor to appoint the director of a unified education and workforce development agency, HB 512 would create a more cohesive policy environment. Rather than being frustrated by boards and bureaucracies, the governor—as the state’s chief executive—would be able to ensure faithful execution of the policies he or she initiates and supports. This is surely why governors of both parties, including Governors Voinovich, Strickland, and Kasich, have sought more formal authority in primary-secondary education. It is also likely the reason that the large majority of states grant governors appointments over state education boards and/or agency directors. This is not to say that governors should always get what they want. Checks and balances are essential to any governing model. But the check on the governor should come primarily via the legislature and, of course, through the will of the people who ultimately hold him or her accountable at the ballot box.
The time is right for Ohio lawmakers to make these changes. Due to term limits, Governor Kasich will leave office in January, and the fall election promises to be hotly contested. Restructuring per se is unlikely to deliver the results Ohio needs to secure its future prosperity, but the changes proposed in HB 512 would create conditions that promise more seamless transitions for students. Just as importantly, it would allow the next governor of Ohio—whoever he or she may be—to create, implement, and lead initiatives aimed at preparing more young people for college and the workforce.
Despite genetic hardwiring of babies’ brains to learn language, emerging evidence suggests that different languages are acquired in different ways based on their specific characteristics. Most of what child development and education professionals know about language acquisition in young children is based on monolingual studies and is difficult to apply to bilingual children. But a large and growing number of young boys and girls worldwide are operationally bilingual—which means they receive regular input in two or more languages between birth and adolescence. Because language instruction and assessments are typically monolingual, understanding how simultaneous bilingual acquisition affects the taught/tested language could be an important step in supporting language development for young children. Does a low English score mean that a child is academically behind and in need of intervention? Or is she exhibiting a normal pattern based on her amount of exposure at home? A group of United Kingdom–based researchers believes they have made a breakthrough in the area of language development measurement that may open new avenues of education and support for dual language learners.
Their work involved three separate projects. The first consisted of collecting data on language exposure in a cohort of 372 typically-developing two-year-olds simultaneously learning English and one of thirteen other languages. They assessed variables such as the amount of each language overheard by the child in the home, which parent spoke which language, whether parents were fluently bilingual, overall language exposure, and various demographic data. The researchers developed a checklist of one hundred familiar words in English and the other languages, remaining sensitive to cultural differences to construct the most universal lists possible, and parents reported whether their children recognized or could say the words in both languages. This resulted in development scores in both languages. As has been observed in other research and practice, the English scores for these bilingual children were generally below the average achieved by monolingual English learners. And large variations were observed among the non-English languages, which indicated that some linguistics-based “interference” caused by simultaneous bilingual acquisition might be at work in suppressing the English scores.
The second project tested the relationship between the two sets of scores, looking for the variables that most influenced English language outcomes. The typical family-based variables came into play—parental education levels, socioeconomic status, and overall language exposure—but researchers also tested an outside variable called “linguistic distance,” or the difference between English and the other test language. This distance was determined by a number of linguistic factors, including lexical and phonological overlaps—words that sound similar and mean similar things in two different languages—as well as the relative complexity of pronunciation and the subject-verb-object structure in which the words typically occur in each language. They determined that the more distant the additional language was from English, the lower the child’s scores would be in both perception and production of English test words. Put another way, two-year-olds learning both Mandarin and English at the same time will have a lower average English vocabulary score than two-year-olds learning both French and English at the same time. And both sets of bilingual children will have a lower average score than monolingual two-year-olds exposed only to English. This isn’t because they’re learning English at an improper rate, it’s because learning two very different languages at once is difficult, even for youngsters whose brains are fully capable of the task. Researchers were able to create a weighting system to determine a more accurate average English score based on this weighting, leading to a new assessment tool—the UK Bilingual Toddlers Assessment Tool (UKBTAT). It takes into account the interference that bilingualism exerted on children learning English, which results in a more accurate assessment of proficiency and better tools to help those who need assistance.
To test the UKBTAT’s validity, the final project used the tool to predict the English scores of a new cohort of fifty-eight two-year-olds bilingual in English and other languages not initially studied in the development of the UKBTAT. The researchers assessed the new languages for linguistic distance from English and plugged them into the UKBTAT protocol, along with family-based variables. The weighting factors accurately predicted the children’s English vocabulary score, confirming the validity of the tool.
The researchers believe that this new English assessment protocol, if widely implemented in the UK, will reduce the number of children who are wrongly diagnosed with language delays, and will help teachers, speech therapists, and healthcare providers more easily find children who are truly in need of services. Additionally, the types of assistance needed by young children learning two languages should, theoretically, vary based on the linguistic distance of those two languages. One size does not fit all, especially when it comes to language acquisition and development from toddlerhood into school age. The more we know and the more effective tools that teachers can have at the ready, the better.
