The Education Gadfly Weekly

We know that our latest report doesn’t break new ground. There is national research going back decades on the keys to high-performing schools, and more recently there is Ohio-specific literature on the topic. We published a previous iteration of Needles in a Haystack in 2010, which looked at high-performing, high-need elementary and middles schools. Since 2002, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has identified “Schools of Promise” – high-poverty, high-achieving schools – and has published case studies of some of those schools along with Five Lessons Learned from Successful Schools. And late last year, Public Agenda – with funding from the Ohio Business Roundtable, The Ohio State University, and ODE – released Failure Is Not an Option: How Principals, Teachers, Students and Parents from Ohio’s High-Achieving, High-Poverty Schools Explain Their Success.

These studies all look at schools serving a large population of economically disadvantaged (ED) students, though the specific metrics vary. Our first Needles report focused on schools in which 75 percent or more of students were ED. ODE and Public Agenda use 40 percent as the threshold. Our new report adds greater precision in defining “high need,” applying additional metrics—three, in fact: 30 percent ED and/or 50 percent ED and/or 30 percent black. Likewise, the studies vary in how they define “high-performing.” Our new Needles report focuses on schools serving poor and black students well, zeroing in on the achievement rates of those subgroups. The other studies use overall achievement of the student body, based on state tests.

These small differences aside, what do the reports’ findings have in common? What have these independent examinations of high-performing Ohio schools found, and what can be done to encourage more such schools to rise up?

Here are the common findings across the reports:

• There are no excuses for failure. None. Zilch.
• Expectations are high, instruction is rigorous. But along with the high bar set for them, students feel supported and respected by their teachers.
• Teamwork and a common mindset prevail. New teachers must buy into the school’s vision and practices. Teachers work together and with students toward success. Everyone is accountable for and takes ownership of results.
• Building leadership matters tremendously. All of these schools have top-notch teaching staff, but their vision and direction are maintained by strong leaders who have the authority to oversee their schools as they see fit. Likewise, administrative churn is discouraged.
• Teachers use, and value data, to help individualize instruction (this is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels).
• Success is celebrated – from small accomplishments to major milestones, yet…
• No one rests on their laurels, not even for a day, because maintaining success requires ongoing effort (for example, Public Agenda reports that of all the schools that have been identified by ODE as Schools of Promise since 2002, three-quarters did not meet the criteria in 2010-11).

Yes, some of these findings seem like plain, old common sense. But the truth is, for too many Ohio schools they aren’t the norm; as a result, too many students aren’t realizing their full potentials. Some of the needed changes in policy and practice will have to happen at the local level, whether building or district. So, local school leaders and superintendents should take heed of the mounting “what works” evidence collected in these reports. But some change can be achieved by changes to state policy. As the General Assembly gears up for the FY2014-15 budget debate, members should look to these reports – and especially to their commonalities – for guidance on developing new state education laws.

That urban superintendents have short tenures—an average of three years—is well known in the education community. But little empirical research has been done to ascertain why or to determine whether this trend holds for suburban and rural supes, too. This study by Jason Grissom (Vanderbilt) and Stephanie Anderson (Washington University) seeks to do both. The authors analyze survey data (of both superintendents and school-board members taken during the 2005-06 school year), as well as administrative and student-achievement data for 100-plus randomly chosen California districts, to identify factors that predict whether superintendents will still be at their jobs three years later. Some of their findings—such as positive correlations between superintendent turnover and district poverty levels and between turnover and board-member dissatisfaction—are fairly intuitive. Others, however, are surprising: There was no significant relationship between turnover and student-achievement growth, for example. Further, district size was only associated with increased turnover in the biggest districts, with the largest 10 percent of districts averaging turnover rates 4.5 times higher than all others. Otherwise, turnover was no more likely in urban than rural districts. Nor does the study yield any evidence for the claim that superintendents generally move to districts with fewer disadvantaged students or higher academic achievement. As more attention is paid to the impact that district leaders have on student achievement, research of this stripe will become ever more relevant—and necessary.

SOURCE: Jason A. Grissom and Stephanie Andersen, “Why Superintendents Turn Over,” American Educational Research Journal 49, no. 6 (December 2012): 1146-1180.

Ohio remains an education reform leader, comparatively, yet still has a ways to go to be top in the country in school reform efforts. That’s the conclusion from this week’s StudentsFirst’s inaugural State Policy Report Card.

StudentsFirst, a national organization led by former D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee, rates how closely each states’ education policies align with broader education reform goals. This ambitious research project examines whether states’ policies embolden and encourage reform along three dimensions: Quality teaching, parental choice, and school finance. StudentsFirst, for example, looks at whether states have established policies requiring teacher evaluations, teacher tenure based on effectiveness, and clear accountability for school performance—including charter schools.

Deservedly so, Ohio receives high marks in its education reform policies relative other states. In fact, Florida and Louisiana were the only two states that received markedly higher grades in “ed-reformedness.” With a C-minus letter grade, Ohio ranks tenth. Ohio scores especially high along the parental choice indicator—not surprising given the multitude of school choice options available to parents. These choices include the state’s 350-plus charters, and voucher programs for students in failing schools or students with special needs. StudentsFirst also righty recognizes improvements in Ohio’s accountability laws, most recently through passage of House Bill 555. This legislation establishes a clear, A-F grading system for school accountability, and holds charter schools to a higher accountability standard.

A tough grader, StudentsFirst also indicates that Ohio—and other states—still have miles to go in establishing a completely reformed education system. Part and parcel of Ohio’s C-minus letter grade are weaknesses in the Buckeye State’s charter school funding laws (which currently prohibit charters from accessing state facilities financing and funds charters at about a third less than district schools), its still-codified teacher salary schedule, and its class size requirements. These are all reforms that StudentsFirst and other reformers are right to push in upcoming legislative sessions.

For Ohio’s policymakers, StudentsFirst provides a very handy overview and evaluation of how Ohio stacks up to the nation’s top reformers and offers guidance for moving forward in coming months and years. An interactive website nicely supplements the written report, which includes a tool that allows users to compare reform policies across states. One can, therefore, get the long and short of teacher evaluation policies in Ohio versus, say, Alabama. But as policy changes move swiftly, StudentsFirst’s challenge will be to ensure that the information it provides stays fresh and timely. So in the end, we first tip our caps to StudentsFirst for this impressive and useful research, as well as urge StudentsFirst to make this report an annual effort.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and AEI hosted a conversation about the findings of this report earlier today. View the video online here.

The Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Education announced last week the establishment of uniform statewide standards for students entering a two-year or four-year college or university to be considered “remediation free”. House Bill 153, signed into law by Governor Kasich in June 2011, required Ohio’s college presidents to spell out the assessment thresholds that would define “college readiness” and the methods by which this can be determined for students completing high school and wishing to move on to higher education without the need for expensive remedial courses.

The full standards and expectations document works out to multiple pages and is well worth a read, detailing the goals that our education chiefs – and this parent, for one – want to see our students meet.

How to determine whether a student has reached these worthy goals as of graduation from high school: ACT and SAT scores. The essence of the agreement between ODE and Regents is the establishing of cut scores for each content area (except science, which could not be agreed upon in the first round effort) that indicate a sufficient degree of achievement.

 Source: Ohio Board of Regents

The establishment of these standards and defining the means of assessment are significant for a number of reasons:

• This is another step – along with adoption of the Common Core and the third grade reading guarantee – toward quantifying a rigorous K-12 curriculum for Ohio’s students and making sure that those students are meeting the benchmarks set at each level to assure students are prepared to move to the next.
• No new assessments are required to determine college readiness. By retaining the widely-taken ACT and SAT tests (as well as the Accuplacer test which is more common in community colleges) as the determination of remediation-free status, no further burdens are put upon students or post-secondary institutions.
• Students who rank as remediation free will not need to waste time and money – and risk dropping out of college – on classes that do not count toward their graduation requirements. College classes are not the ideal format for taking high school level algebra in any case.
• The cooperation between the Board of Regents and the Department of Education signals an unofficial move toward the full establishment of a PreK-20 education continuum in Ohio, a movement that will continue now that Regents and ODE are office roommates.

But there are also some concerns still to be addressed in the establishment of these standards:

• No science standard could be agreed upon, mearning that subject area will possibly not have a remediation-free threshold.
• Students and their families could easily be confused by achieving remediation-free status and still having the student placed in lower-than-expected classes to start. These standards do not address academic placement.
• Students and their families could be “scared off” of college entirely if their SAT/ACT scores do not reach remediation-free status, even though it does not automatically mean that a student must be placed in remediation once accepted to a university or community college.

Kudos to the Board of Regents and the Department of Education for their cooperative efforts on this issue. We are hopeful that the adoption – and proper publicizing – of these standards will have positive effects on college-readiness of entering freshmen statewide.

We know that our latest report doesn’t break new ground. There is national research going back decades on the keys to high-performing schools, and more recently there is Ohio-specific literature on the topic. We published a previous iteration of Needles in a Haystack in 2010, which looked at high-performing, high-need elementary and middles schools. Since 2002, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has identified “Schools of Promise” – high-poverty, high-achieving schools – and has published case studies of some of those schools along with Five Lessons Learned from Successful Schools. And late last year, Public Agenda – with funding from the Ohio Business Roundtable, The Ohio State University, and ODE – released Failure Is Not an Option: How Principals, Teachers, Students and Parents from Ohio’s High-Achieving, High-Poverty Schools Explain Their Success.

These studies all look at schools serving a large population of economically disadvantaged (ED) students, though the specific metrics vary. Our first Needles report focused on schools in which 75 percent or more of students were ED. ODE and Public Agenda use 40 percent as the threshold. Our new report adds greater precision in defining “high need,” applying additional metrics—three, in fact: 30 percent ED and/or 50 percent ED and/or 30 percent black. Likewise, the studies vary in how they define “high-performing.” Our new Needles report focuses on schools serving poor and black students well, zeroing in on the achievement rates of those subgroups. The other studies use overall achievement of the student body, based on state tests.

These small differences aside, what do the reports’ findings have in common? What have these independent examinations of high-performing Ohio schools found, and what can be done to encourage more such schools to rise up?

Here are the common findings across the reports:

• There are no excuses for failure. None. Zilch.
• Expectations are high, instruction is rigorous. But along with the high bar set for them, students feel supported and respected by their teachers.
• Teamwork and a common mindset prevail. New teachers must buy into the school’s vision and practices. Teachers work together and with students toward success. Everyone is accountable for and takes ownership of results.
• Building leadership matters tremendously. All of these schools have top-notch teaching staff, but their vision and direction are maintained by strong leaders who have the authority to oversee their schools as they see fit. Likewise, administrative churn is discouraged.
• Teachers use, and value data, to help individualize instruction (this is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels).
• Success is celebrated – from small accomplishments to major milestones, yet…
• No one rests on their laurels, not even for a day, because maintaining success requires ongoing effort (for example, Public Agenda reports that of all the schools that have been identified by ODE as Schools of Promise since 2002, three-quarters did not meet the criteria in 2010-11).

Yes, some of these findings seem like plain, old common sense. But the truth is, for too many Ohio schools they aren’t the norm; as a result, too many students aren’t realizing their full potentials. Some of the needed changes in policy and practice will have to happen at the local level, whether building or district. So, local school leaders and superintendents should take heed of the mounting “what works” evidence collected in these reports. But some change can be achieved by changes to state policy. As the General Assembly gears up for the FY2014-15 budget debate, members should look to these reports – and especially to their commonalities – for guidance on developing new state education laws.

That urban superintendents have short tenures—an average of three years—is well known in the education community. But little empirical research has been done to ascertain why or to determine whether this trend holds for suburban and rural supes, too. This study by Jason Grissom (Vanderbilt) and Stephanie Anderson (Washington University) seeks to do both. The authors analyze survey data (of both superintendents and school-board members taken during the 2005-06 school year), as well as administrative and student-achievement data for 100-plus randomly chosen California districts, to identify factors that predict whether superintendents will still be at their jobs three years later. Some of their findings—such as positive correlations between superintendent turnover and district poverty levels and between turnover and board-member dissatisfaction—are fairly intuitive. Others, however, are surprising: There was no significant relationship between turnover and student-achievement growth, for example. Further, district size was only associated with increased turnover in the biggest districts, with the largest 10 percent of districts averaging turnover rates 4.5 times higher than all others. Otherwise, turnover was no more likely in urban than rural districts. Nor does the study yield any evidence for the claim that superintendents generally move to districts with fewer disadvantaged students or higher academic achievement. As more attention is paid to the impact that district leaders have on student achievement, research of this stripe will become ever more relevant—and necessary.

SOURCE: Jason A. Grissom and Stephanie Andersen, “Why Superintendents Turn Over,” American Educational Research Journal 49, no. 6 (December 2012): 1146-1180.