This piece was originally published the United States Chamber of Commerce’s website on Wednesday, July 23, 2014. Six days later, two legislators proposed a new legislative assault on Ohio’s New Learning Standards, which include the Common Core State Standards in math and English language arts.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This blog post was first published on the United States Chamber of Commerce’s website on Wednesday, July 23, 2014, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
Ohio has had statewide learning standards in mathematics and English Language Arts in the past, but these standards were not rigorous and not aligned with the demands of college and the workplace. The outcome was low academic expectations which resulted in too many students not being college ready, and a short supply of graduates with the basic abilities needed for success in the workplace, including critical thinking and problem solving skills.
The dismal statistics below underscore to a significant extent the reality of the “quality of education” in Ohio:
With the intent of reversing those trends of mediocrity (or worse), Ohio passed House Bill 1, which directed the State Board of Education to revise and issue new academic standards in the core subject areas of math, English, science, and social studies.
The math and English standards, also known as the Common Core State Standards, were developed collaboratively by state education leaders, governors, teachers, and education experts from 45 states, including Ohio (NOT by the federal government). Then, after 18 public review meetings across the state and presentations to the Education committees of both the Ohio House and Senate, the State Board of Education adopted Ohio’s New Learning Standards on June 2, 2010.
The process of implementing these new, more challenging learning standards by many Ohio school districts began the following school year and has continued through the 2013-14 academic year. To be clear, these new standards do not mandate, stipulate, or presume to tell Ohio teachers how to teach. Local school districts and teachers remain the decision makers – again, not the federal government – regarding the curriculum, textbooks, and instructional materials that will help students learn best.
As a statewide business organization representing Ohio employers competing in a highly competitive and global economy, we know that one of their most important concerns is to have qualified, competent, and highly skilled employees. Building a college- and career-ready Ohio starts with higher, yet achievable, standards. The Common Core State Standards do this.
Turning back the clock – i.e., rejecting or delaying implementation of Ohio’s new learning standards – would only hurt students and disrupt Ohio’s schools, which have been implementing the new standards for the past four years. We need to look no further than Oklahoma to see how rejecting the standards would weaken our ability to ensure that Ohio’s students are prepared to compete with their peers across the country and around the world.
While we acknowledge that there are many other important steps in preparing Ohio’s students for the future, Ohio’s new learning standards are the foundation for student success, providing the academic baseline to succeed in college, career, and life.
Daniel Navin is Assistant Vice President for Tax and Economic Policy at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
In Ohio, like many states across the nation, reading achievement has largely stalled. The state’s reading scores on the domestic NAEP assessments haven’t moved over the past decade: In fourth-grade reading, the state’s average score was 222 in 2003 and 224 in 2013. The story is the same for eighth grade. Meanwhile, on state assessments, reading proficiency rates have improved noticeably in fourth grade (from 77 percent in 2006 to 88 percent in 2013), but fifth- and sixth-grade reading proficiency rates haven’t budged. In fifth grade, for instance, statewide reading proficiency was 75 percent in 2006 and 74 percent in 2013.
Test data suggest that strong and concerted efforts must be made to stem the tide of mediocre reading achievement. The Third Grade Reading Guarantee is one policy initiative aimed at improving early literacy. And in 2010, the state board adopted new English language arts (ELA) standards—part of the Common Core—in order to increase the rigor of what students are expected to know and be able to do when it comes to reading, writing, and grammar.
State leaders have created a policy framework—Third Grade Reading for foundational early-literacy skills and long-term growth under the Common Core—to improve ELA across Ohio. And now, for many Ohio schools, it’s implementation time. This made me wonder: Which schools are already making the biggest impact on their students’ reading achievement? Have any schools consistently helped their students make large gains on state assessments? Of course, past success is no guarantee that (a) such schools will sustain their success or (b) their success will necessarily translate to other schools. Yet identifying schools that appear to have significantly boosted reading achievement is a reasonable place to start.
Before digging into the data, a short detour: it is essential to understand the dual nature of reading if test scores are to improve. Children must first learn to “decode,” to turn printed letters into sounds and words. But in order to be able to understand what they read, a school’s curriculum must be “intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades,” as the Common Core describes. The decoding piece is obvious, and the knowledge and comprehension piece is the patient work of years of schooling. It’s essential for educators to get these two dimensions of reading right and to avoid the overreliance on test prep, which can create the comforting illusion of progress but damage kids’ ability to read with true understanding over the long haul.
I look for schools that were ranked in the top 10 percent on the state’s value-added measure for reading in each of the past four years. Value added is an estimate of a school’s impact on achievement, as measured by the state assessment. The measure uses statistical methods to control for nonschool factors, so attempting to isolate the contribution of the school itself on achievement.
That said, value added in reading can be tricky, as eminent literacy scholar E. D. Hirsch has argued, especially at a teacher level and for just a single year. That is why the analysis that follows includes school-level data. Seemingly, a school’s value add would capture not only the effect of ELA-specific instruction but also the effect of social studies, science, and geography on reading gains. I also include schools that appear to have made a big difference on achievement for consecutive years—a fairly high bar that seems less prone to capturing year-to-year fluctuations in gains.
The table below displays eighteen schools that were ranked in the top 10 percent of schools statewide in reading value added in each of the past four years.[1] It’s worth noting that only one school, Columbus Preparatory Academy, was ranked in the top 10 percent for each of the past five years. Top honors go to this Franklin County charter school.[2]
Three additional things stand out:
We can’t be absolutely sure that the schools listed here possess the key to reading, writing, and grammar instruction. But these schools have been consistent high flyers along one of Ohio’s key dimensions of performance. As such, they might be worth peering into at least and perhaps learning from.
Moreover, a comprehensive look at Ohio’s school environment would also include private schools, too. Voucher students’ reading scores provide some suggestive (though by no means conclusive) evidence that private schools do good work teaching literacy. Their reading proficiency scores tend to be somewhat higher than those of comparable students in the public schools. As Ohio moves ahead with ambitious literacy initiatives, it’ll be helpful for schools, across “sector” lines, to learn from the best. Looking at some data points provides a starting point.
[[{"fid":"113445","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default"},"type":"media","attributes":{"height":"309","width":"701","class":"media-element file-default"},"link_text":null}]]
SOURCE: Ohio Department of Education. NOTES: The table displays schools ranked in the top 10 percent of schools statewide in value-added score between 2009–10 and 2012–13. It also displays their district and county, their value-added index scores (the reading gain, in normal-curve equivalent units, divided by the standard error), and percentage of economically disadvantaged (ED) students. A VAM index score of +2.0 or higher is generally considered satisfactory (e.g., +2.0 is the cut-off point for an “A” VAM rating in the state’s rating system). From 2009–10 to 2012–13, an average of 2,598 Ohio schools received a value-added score in reading.
[1] The Ohio Department of Education reports math and reading value-add scores by school and district. High-schools containing grades 9–12 do not receive value-added scores. Ohio’s VAM computation only includes test-score gains in grades 4–8 (third-grade tests form the baseline year).
[2] Since only one school was ranked in the top 10 percent in all five past years, I look at just schools receiving top 10 percent rankings in each of the four most recent years.
This new report from the University of Arkansas compares the productivity of public charter schools and district schools, both in terms of cost effectiveness and return on investment (ROI). For the cost-effectiveness analysis, the authors consider how many test-score points students gain on the 2010–11 NAEP for each $1,000 invested; to measure ROI, the authors used, among other data, student-achievement results from CREDO’s national charter school study (that matched students via a “virtual twin” methodology). The key finding: For every $1,000 invested, charter students earned a weighted average of an additional seventeen points in math and sixteen additional points in reading on NAEP, compared to traditional district students, controlling for student characteristics such as poverty and special-education status. This translates into charters nationwide being 40 percent more cost effective. The researchers calculate ROI by converting the learning gains over time by students in charter and traditional sectors into an estimate of the economic returns over a lifetime and comparing those returns to the revenue amount invested in their education. Using Eric Hanushek’s existing estimates on lifetime earnings and productivity, they find that public charter schools delivered a 3 percent increase in lifetime economic gains for a student who attends a charter for one year and a 19 percent increase for a student who attends a charter school for half of their K–12 education. It is likely that the higher productivity rests on the fact that charters receive less funding and are thus more disciplined in using those funds. If they were funded equally to the district sector, would they continue to be more productive?
SOURCE: Patrick J. Wolf, et al., The Productivity of Public Charter Schools (Fayetteville, AR: School Choice Demonstration Project, University of Arkansas, July 2014).
For the last four months, Fordham Ohio has been publishing a daily news and commentary blog. In it, we take a quick look at education news and opinion pieces from media outlets around the state, dig into the content, add our own analysis and commentary, and offer readers a sense of what these stories mean.
It is sometimes irreverent, sometimes serious, hopefully amusing, and always thoughtful. Starting Monday, August 18, you can have the blog delivered directly to your inbox with our new Gadfly Bites email service. Click here to sign up now.
Here’s a sample of recent clips and commentary:
For decades, much ado has been made over parental involvement in schools. Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), as part of the 2012 Cleveland Plan For Transforming Schools, requires by law that all parents meet with their child’s teacher by December of every school year. About 75 percent of elementary school and 60 percent of high school students had a parent meet with their child’s teacher this past school year, the first covered by the new law. District administrators call these numbers “pretty impressive” (at least at the elementary level), but the outcomes resulting from mandating parental involvement are unclear. For starters, it’s impossible to compare the totals to previous year’s totals or even to other districts’ totals, including those of suburban counterparts, since the state doesn’t require them to keep track of parent-teacher conference attendance. Despite the good intentions of the Cleveland mandate, a question remains: is there an academic benefit to this kind of parental involvement?
The answer is complicated. Some types of involvement, such as reading to elementary students at home, discussing school activities or college plans, and requesting a particular teacher, do yield positive results. But other common practices, like helping with homework, usually don’t alter a child’s academic experience or trajectory. That’s not to say that parents should be shut out of schools. Parents deserve to know what’s happening in their kids’ schools, and if they want to be involved, there should be opportunities to be productively engaged. But instead of blanket mandates for involvement, perhaps districts and policies should target the ways families want to be involved instead of telling them how to be involved. If involvement percentages are low and schools truly want engagement (not just an excuse to check off a box on a policy to-do list), then there are a few things that have to change.
First, districts have to stop thinking of parental involvement as parental involvement. Parents are important—but they aren’t the only important adults in kids’ lives. Some children are raised by grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings—the list goes on. If schools want to leverage the meaningful relationships in a child’s life to motivate and ensure academic excellence, they must recognize that meaningful involvement extends beyond parents. They must welcome family and community engagement, not just parental involvement. While it may seem like semantics, it’s important not to exclude a big brother, aunt, pastor, or coach from attending school events that were meant for “parents.”
Second, schools should provide families and communities with numerous and various opportunities for engagement that actually benefit students. Despite its heavy emphasis on parents meeting teachers, Cleveland provides an excellent example of this. Consider, for instance, the work of Tracy Hill, the executive director of family and community engagement (note the title) for CMSD. Hill is credited with building an approach that includes programs such as a Parent Advisory Committee (PAC), which allows parents to have a voice in the district’s decisions, and Parent University, a series of sessions that provide parents with vital information they may not have otherwise. Parent University also offers free college bus tours that help parents understand admissions, financial aid, and enrollment questions. Ms. Hill’s program is a prime example of how districts can go beyond traditional views of involvement that focus only on parent-teacher conferences, open houses, and the PTA.
CMSD has added more parent-teacher days, on which students do not attend and parents are free to come in and speak with teachers, to the 2014–15 calendar. This is an interesting choice, given that CMSD’s policy and labor liaison has admitted that the day they set aside in 2013–14 did not actually raise percentages; the parents who attended were largely those who had already met teachers on another occasion. Instead of devoting entire days to opportunities that do not increase engagement, the district should be looking to invest in programs that, like Ms. Hill’s, target gaps in parent knowledge that could eventually hinder students. Furthermore, the district should create programs similar to Ms. Hill’s for elementary and middle school students and families. That would be a much more effective use of district money and families’ time than entire days without instruction.
Many students in Ohio and across the nation continue to perform poorly in mathematics. In response to this chronic underachievement, schools have tried numerous interventions, including “double dosing” students who lag behind academically. “Double dosing”—most commonly utilized in middle and high schools—can be an extension of time in an existing math class or assigning struggling students to two independent math courses (one remedial, one comprised of grade-level content). In either case, the goal is to improve student outcomes through additional “time on task.” In this new study, the author analyzes student data from 2003–04 through 2012–13 provided by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) to observe whether students’ participation in two distinct math classes improves outcomes. The study examines the outcomes of middle school students scoring just below and just above the predetermined cut-off score on the previous spring’s state assessment.[1] Findings indicate that students taking a double dose of math made significantly higher gains on math assessments compared to those students who were just above the cut-off score but did not receive a double dose. Yet over time, these gains diminish. Only one year after returning to a single math class schedule, gains fell to one-half to two-thirds the original amount. Two years post double-dose, gains shrunk further to only one-fifth to one-third of the original. These results indicate that double dosing provides students a big-time short-term boost; however, there is no guarantee that short-run gains will persist in the longer term.[2] Additionally, there are trade offs associated with double dosing students. The author appropriately notes that additional time in math classes diminishes time devoted to other subjects, assuming the length of the school day is fixed. While students shouldn’t spend all day exclusively learning math, we must find creative ways to optimize learning time in order to ensure that our students—especially those performing at desperately low levels—are mastering all material necessary for success.
Source: Eric Taylor, Spending More of the School Day in Math Class: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity in Middle School (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, June 2014).
[1] Students scoring below the cut-off score are identified as candidates for the double-dose schedule. However, a variety of factors determine students’ final schedules, and as a result, not all candidates are double dosed.
