Results on the spring test of third graders' reading proficiency are in; we take a look at the data and what it means for the Third Grade Reading Guarantee as a policy and for the students and schools working within its confines.
Students who cannot read early in life are barreling toward dropping out, adult illiteracy, and perhaps the welfare rolls. Someone has to intervene in these young lives—and the earlier, the better. Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee requires schools to take early action, including retaining youngsters who do not pass their standardized reading exam. This isn’t punitive, as some critics claim, or unnecessarily harmful to kids. Rather, such interventions could be the force that knocks these kids off the dreaded “school-to-prison pipeline.”
And they’re sorely needed, as witnessed by the recently released data revealing that more than 16,000 Buckeye third graders are in serious jeopardy of not entering fourth grade, as a result of failing their reading exams. Many of these children are from Ohio’s poorer areas (over one-quarter of them live in the “Big Eight” urban districts), but thousands more reside in middle-class communities. These youngsters did not earn the minimum score on their reading exam for either the Fall 2013 or Spring 2014 rounds of testing.[1] Now they have one last chance—if they want it—to take the state’s assessment this summer or to pass an alternative one.
The fact that 10 percent of Ohio’s third graders need heavy-duty summer remediation or will probably have to repeat third grade—and that hundreds more barely passed—should give us pause. Granted, many schools are struggling valiantly to help young readers, and hats off to Ohio’s educators for upping their attention on early literacy.
But can we be certain that all this effort is actually making a difference? For instance, how can we be so sure that Columbus City Schools’ “research-based” efforts, Reading Buddies, or “books on a bus” will deliver the rocket boost that legions of young readers in the district need? Even with these new efforts and a groundswell of support for literacy in Columbus, 30 percent of the district’s students still fell short on their reading exams last year.
Such activities and sentiments at least don’t hurt. But what seems to be absent in the discussions and programs aimed at improving early literacy is the link between content knowledge and reading well. In fact, how well anyone—from child to adult—comprehends a text hinges in substantial part on the prior knowledge and vocabulary that the reader brings to the topic at hand. (The reader must, of course, also know how to decode the words on the page.) To wit, most of us find it relatively easy to comprehend a text when we’re familiar with the subject matter. I can usually decipher, for example, what an education researcher is discussing, but it’s more than difficult for me to understand new research reported in New England Journal of Medicine.
Our youngest readers face a similar challenge. Consider a passage on Ohio’s 2011 third-grade reading exam: what child would be able to correctly answer questions about the Maori people in New Zealand if she had never once heard of the nation or had zero familiarity with indigenous peoples? Or consider the “literary” passage from 2008 about a boy discovering his grandmother’s antique radio: students who knew what a radio is and that Americans in decades past listened to them at home probably benefitted mightily from this prior knowledge.
So how can we boost young readers’ content knowledge? I have two simple thoughts.
First, Ohio’s schools of education ought to require content-rich coursework for their teachers-in-training, especially those in elementary-education programs. It was dismaying to read the National Council on Teacher Quality’s (NCTQ) recent finding that just 12 percent of ed-school programs met NCTQ’s content-knowledge standard for elementary-teaching candidates. Far too few programs require an appropriate level of coursework in science, humanities, and geography. Teachers also need pedagogical skills, of course, but if they don’t possess knowledge across the content of the subjects that they teach, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to help their students “know things.”
Second, schools—especially those located in disadvantaged communities—should embrace a content-rich curriculum. They should widen, not “narrow,” the early-grade curriculum beyond reading “strategies.” Now, more than ever, kids need more time to come to terms with history, science, and geography. Yes, this seems to defy today’s laser-like focus on “reading” per se, but it is, in fact, the way to learn to read—and much more that follows. On Fordham’s blog, Lisa Hansel of the Core Knowledge Foundation quotes ACT’s Chrys Dougherty, who writes that schools should
Teach a content-rich curriculum in the early grades. Ensure that all students receive a content- and vocabulary-rich curriculum beginning in the early years, spanning a range of subject areas including not only English language arts and mathematics, but also science, history, geography, civics, foreign language, and the arts.
This line of thought has been championed by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., the University of Virginia professor who has long argued, based on cognitive-science research, that “domain knowledge” is vital for reading well. He wrote in a 2003 article, for instance, that reading “requires the reader to make inferences that depend on prior knowledge.”
Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee has rightly focused attention on early literacy. But after a year of results, it’s evident that our schools have plenty more work to do—and even more so in the days to come with the full implementation of the Common Core imminent. Are Ohio’s schools up to the task? It depends, in part, on whether they embrace content knowledge in early grades. Content is important not just in upper elementary or middle school but also early in life. In fact, when knowledge is married with reading at a young age, we form a virtuous cycle that could last a lifetime: content knowledge breeds better reading; better reading produces more knowledge. Isn’t that what kids need?
[1] For 2013–14, third graders were required to score at least a 392 on the state’s reading exam to be promoted to fourth grade. This score is slightly below the “proficiency” cut score, which is set at 400.
In our last Ohio Gadfly, we analyzed recent changes to Ohio’s Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) and suggested ways it could be improved. This guest commentary by Greg Harris, Ohio State Director of StudentsFirst, emphasizes the critical importance of evaluations.
Ohio’s new Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) is a significant step forward in improving the quality of instruction for our K–12 students. For the first time, teachers will be evaluated, at least in part, on their impact on student learning gains. (Traditionally, teachers have been evaluated only through observation.) OTES also elevates the role of principals by having them play a more active role in observing and developing their teachers—hence, reconnecting them to classrooms and making teacher quality their priority. In creating such a process, Ohio has established a robust framework for identifying its strongest teachers, as well as spotting and improving the performance of its less effective teachers.
But with the sudden emergence and quick passage by the Senate of Senate Bill 229 in December 2013, OTES was unexpectedly put on trial only half way through its first year of implementation. The bill actually seemed reasonable at first glance. Its sponsors maintained that by exempting teachers rated in the top two categories (“Accomplished” or “Skilled”) from annual evaluation, schools could focus their energies on developing weaker teachers. The problem, however, is that under previous evaluation systems, the majority of Ohio teachers had been rated in the top two tiers. If this trend held true, SB 229 risked exempting the vast majority of teachers from the current evaluation system, as well.
This occurred recently in Indiana, where 97 percent of teachers were rated effective or highly effective (its top two tiers of ratings) under a new evaluation system implemented in 2013. We could not risk Ohio also becoming a state in which only a minority of teachers receive critical feedback on an annual basis. This undermines one of the primary goals of evaluations—to serve as a tool to help all teachers improve their practice and meet the needs of students.
Our battle to preserve strong teacher evaluations was fought for months, with some lamentable rhetoric emerging from opposing interests (e.g., equating support for OTES to “an extreme attack on educators”). Fortunately, the compromise legislation that ultimately emerged on teacher evaluations is pretty good (though we would have preferred everyone left OTES alone).
Basically, it offers school districts the option to stick with OTES or choose an alternative system. The alternative system would exempt the top two categories of teachers from annual evaluation—but with the important caveat that these highly rated teachers must also achieve average or higher student-growth scores. This avoids the problem that other states face when labels like “effective” are divorced from actual student learning.
There are, to be sure, concerns in the field that OTES’s emphasis on student academic growth relies too much on testing. Yet the evidence is mounting that capturing a teacher’s “value add” as measured by student growth is a good predictor of instructional quality. It works best when done as part of an evaluation system (like Ohio’s) based on multiple measures for evaluating teacher performance (e.g., classroom observation, student surveys, portfolios, etc.).[1]
When we raise expectations for both students and teachers, results follow. The Ohio Department of Education, for example, recently reported that 88 percent of Ohio third graders passed the reading assessment in compliance with recent Third Grade Reading Guarantee legislation. This means that Ohio schoolchildren will be moving on to fourth grade based on what they learned, instead of the traditional social promotion. The fact is that remarkable gains can be made in a single academic year if we hold districts, school leaders, and teachers accountable for results. Like the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, we’d be remiss to go backwards on strong teacher evaluations that focus on the learning needs of all Ohio’s children.
Greg Harris is Ohio State Director for StudentsFirst.
[1] Recent reports from Brookings Institution (2014) and the University of Virginia and Stanford University (2013) have validated this approach for its ability to home in on teacher effectiveness. The most exhaustive study on evaluations to date, the three-year Measures of Effective Teaching Project (2013), reached similar conclusions after examining the impact of evaluations over a three-year period on 3,000 teachers in seven districts:
a) Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, Matthew M. Chingos and Katharine M. Lindquist, Evaluating Teachers with Classroom Observations: Lessons Learned in Four Districts, May 13, 2014
b) “Incentive plan for Washington DC teachers drives performance gains, Stanford/Virginia researchers say,” October 2013, Stanford Graduate School of Education
c) http://www.metproject.org/downloads/MET_Ensuring_Fair_and_Reliable_Measures_Practitioner_Brief.pdf
You’ve already read in the Ohio Education Gadfly what we think about the third-grade reading scores across Ohio. Around the state, journalists are trying to parse what’s worked and what hasn’t and what districts will do with the approximately 12 percent of third graders who are still at risk of being held back. Here’s a sampling of what the papers are saying:
The recent repeal of the Common Core State Standards in Indiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma has given renewed the hopes of Ohio’s Common Core detractors. During the just-completed Mid Biennium Review (MBR) process, the legislature agreed to a number of compromises to address their concerns, but critics remain unsatisfied. This small but vocal minority is now agitating on behalf of a discharge petition for House Bill 237, which would repeal the state’s adoption of the Common Core.
A discharge petition is a little-used legislative tactic that, if the petition is signed by fifty House members, allows a bill that fails to get committee approval to move directly to the floor for consideration by the whole chamber. Supporters for HB 237 have, thanks to the leadership of Chairman Stebelton and other members, found little success in the Education Committee and have resorted to the discharge petition process.
It’s worth noting that even if the discharge petition is successful (i.e., if it gets fifty signatures and removes the bill from the Education Committee), HB 237 would still need to secure approval from the House, Senate, and governor to become law. Although these chances are slim, consider the potential consequences.
Consequence #1: If the Common Core standards are repealed, Ohio must find something to replace it. Shockingly, shortly after South Carolina chucked the Common Core, a state administrator admitted, “We don’t have time to do that [i.e., write new standards].” It seems like the Palmetto State will substitute standards that closely follow the Common Core, just as Indiana has done. Oklahoma is supposed to write its own new standards, but in the meantime it will revert to old standards (which did earn good grades from Fordham.) Should Ohio—whose earlier standards earned a C in both English and math from Fordham—follow one of these paths? Each is fraught with difficulty and risk. And nobody should want to go back to the bubble-sheet assessments associated with the earlier standards. So, again, what is Ohio’s plan for standards if Common Core opponents get their way?
Consequence #2: If the Common Core standards are repealed, millions of dollars will be wasted. Many Buckeye superintendents and school boards have worked diligently to make room in their budgets for new textbooks, professional development, and technology. They’ve done this in the name of higher standards, because they believe the investment will eventually pay off for their pupils. If Ohio repeals the Common Core, new textbooks will sit unused and even more money will be forked over to cover new materials and teacher training. Detractors of the Common Core like to cite its cost. But what about the cost of backing out?
Consequence #3: If the Common Core standards are repealed, teachers will be scrambling to alter lesson plans…yet again. So far, Ohio teachers have been striving to implement Common Core in responsible ways. They’ve sat through hours of professional development. They’ve changed the way they plan, the way they assess students’ work, and the way they teach. They’ve worked hard so that Common Core aligned lessons are ready for use in September. Now, politicians will tell them to throw all that away. Repealing Common Core, at this juncture, would send a clear message about the value of teachers and their time and efforts.
There’s more, of course. What happens to districts that have been carefully and faithfully implementing for years now? What assessments will they use, given the new graduation requirements that focus on end of course exams? What does that mean for teacher evaluation? How can principals encourage teachers to devote themselves to new standards when the threat of another change always looms on the horizon?
The education system should be changed only for educational, not political, reasons. The members of the House should think carefully about what repeal could mean before making any rash decisions about signing a “discharge petition” that serves as the first step for Common Core repeal.
It’s a good-news-bad-news state of affairs for Ohio’s teacher-preparation programs. Let’s start with the good: the Buckeye State is the proud home to five of the nation’s best elementary and secondary programs, according to new rankings by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Ohio State’s graduate along with University of Dayton and Miami University’s undergraduate programs earned top-ten honors out of the 1,167 elementary-teacher programs that NCTQ examined. Meanwhile, among the 1,137 secondary-teacher programs, Miami University’s undergraduate and graduate programs earned top-ten recognition. On the other side of the coin, twenty Ohio programs—out of seventy-one in the state that NCTQ was able to rate—fell into the bottom half of NCTQ’s ratings. (Programs rated in the bottom half did not receive a numerical ranking.) Unfortunately, sixteen Ohio colleges refused to participate in the analysis. Caveat emptor: in Ohio, as elsewhere, we see that some programs provide a stellar training while others are mediocre or worse. Discerning employers—and college-goers—would be wise to consult this report when making their decisions.
SOURCE: Julie Greenberg, Kate Walsh, and Arthur McKee, 2014 Teacher Prep Review: A Review of the Nation’s Teacher Preparation Programs (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2014).
