The Education Gadfly Weekly

The flurry of legislative activity shot forth from federal teacher effectiveness incentives has made it difficult to keep up with state reform policies. Since 2010, states have built on existing policies, tossed out poor ones, and created others to address areas needing improvement. In Ohio, House Bill 153 (2011 biennial budget bill) made significant changes to teacher evaluations (see detailed coverage here). To track these changes, DC-based Bellwether Education Partners examines policies in 21 states that took major legislative action in teacher effectiveness in this report.

The Bellwether report focuses on regulations that link teacher evaluations to significant personnel decisions. Bellwether gives each state’s policies an “Effectiveness Rating” based on 13 criteria that address areas like evaluation frequency, inclusion of student performance, compensation as teacher reward, and tenure. States can receive up to one point in each area, for a possible total of thirteen. Bellwether awards states with points if their policies address critical areas of teacher evaluation to foster a “more performance-oriented culture.”

Among the top rated state policies are Louisiana (10 points), Florida (9.75), and Indiana (11.75). Forty percent of states received less than half the possible score (less than 6.5). Ohio received a 5.5 rating, indicating that its state policies are not particularly suited to creating a performance-based teacher workforce. However, be careful when drawing conclusions. The report does not examine how well these policies are implemented. As the author suggests, low scores are not an indication of worse policies, but expose areas that could be improved to make a more thorough policy. For example, Ohio gained points for having both principals and teachers evaluated on a four-level system, but lost points for denying principals ability to select teachers for their schools. Being thorough is important, but will it transform into success? Readers should keep in mind that affecting evaluation does not always translate to improving teacher performance.

Martin R. West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has authored a new study focusing on the pros and cons of state policies that require retention of third-grade students who do not test sufficiently proficient in reading. Such a policy has been in place in Florida since 2003 and that policy has been used as the basis for similar efforts in other states, including Ohio which this year passed and signed into law Senate Bill 316. This law will require third graders to read at a state minimum standard to advance to fourth grade.

These policies rest upon a number of studies that show that proficient reading is the bedrock of all other learning going forward, and that a lack of reading proficiency at this critical stage of learning development leads to lower outcomes over the long-haul (e.g., higher intervention needs and increased dropout rates). West adds to this literature by examining the educational path of Florida students who were retained in third grade in 2003 over the ensuing six years to determine what impact the retention had on those students’ academic advancement.

West finds a significant short-term achievement boost in reading in the first two years in the group of retained third-grade students versus similar-achieving third-grade students who were promoted to fourth grade. There was also a less-significant but still-measurable boost in math achievement as well.

In the longer term, retention in 2003 for reading remediation reduced the likelihood that these students would be retained in later grades: students who were retained in 2003 were 11 percentage points less likely to be retained in the following year and 4 percentage points less likely to be retained in each of the following three years.

On the downside, West acknowledges the greater costs of retaining a larger-than-average number of students for a full school year as well as a steady diminishing of the early achievement boost as the students progress into upper grades.

But these downsides are seen to pale in comparison to the alternative of social promotion of students who would otherwise be retained under policies such as those in Florida and in Ohio’s SB 316. West concludes that it is likely only a matter of time before students who would meet criteria to be retained in third grade would – if not retained at that time - be eventually retained in higher grades anyway, when remediation may be far less successful and far more socially-stigmatizing. High reading proficiency at the critical third grade level appears to have far reaching implications, whether achieved or not achieved and whether remediated or not.

What do you get when a group of creative and motivated students are empowered to tell the story of their own charter school using video and music? You get a movie-style trailer that illustrates not only what the school means to them, but also what it's taught them. Check out DECA Prep's "coming soon" video, created and produced by DECA students.

In a world where cynicism and defeatism can rain down from the grown ups to the young people - and expect more of this in Ohio and elsewhere when "Won't Back Down" premieres later this month - this bit of real life from imaginative and empowered young people is worth celebrating.

Special education in Ohio – like in other states – is a maze of complexity, highly bureaucratic and compliance driven, often a point of contention between educators and parents, frequently litigious, and the single fastest growing portion of spending on public education. It has become something of a sacred cow in education and has been largely impervious to change or improvement efforts. Worse, despite the spending children in special education programs are not making gains academically.

Can special education be done better while controlling its growth? This is a question we’ve been asked over and over by school leaders and superintendents who struggle to serve all children well while dealing with tighter and tighter budgets. For answers, in partnership with the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio, we turned to Nathan Levenson, one of the country’s leading thinkers on doing more with fewer resources in special education and who has done extensive work with local school districts here in the Buckeye State and across the country. The result is a thought-provoking policy paper, Applying Systems Thinking to Improve Special Education in Ohio.

Levenson explains that Ohio’s resources for special education - $7 billion spent annually – are “siloed” not only across the K-12 education landscape but also across a dozen or more state and county agencies. In fact, he reports that “less than 50 percent of funds that help provide children receiving special education services are officially special education dollars.”

He suggests three major opportunities for making special education more efficient and better for students. Specifically, he recommends:

• Expand the role of Educational Service Centers (ESCs) through the power of competition. Ohio’s 56 ESCs already work to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of services provided to students with special needs. The Buckeye State can build on this strength by creating an information infrastructure for entrepreneurial, results-oriented, high-performing Educational Service Centers to expand their geographic reach and the services they provide. The state department of education could accelerate this process by providing the performance and cost data of ESCs to both schools and parents – this would not only make them better informed consumers but also help foster competition for services.
• Encourage the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to help accelerate the shift to more results-oriented, cost-effective special education. Levenson recommends ODE revise its rules and policies regarding identification of students with disabilities and the certification and workload of the adults that serve them. Levenson shows how this sort of regulatory relief could save districts hundreds of millions of dollars while maintaining or even expanding services for students.
• Make school districts the hubs of integrated services from many state and local agencies. Parents of students with disabilities first enter the world of special education through one of many entry points, often before their child enters Kindergarten and the traditional public schools. What is said, done, or promised for the one or two years before entering school can set the expectations for a child’s entire 15-year school career. Since school districts will provide most of a student’s education and special education services, they should be part of the planning of the services for a student with disabilities from the beginning.

Spending on special education has grown at double the pace of overall K-12 spending in Ohio in recent years, yet children receiving special education services struggle to perform well academically. By making some of the common-sense changes to state policies and local practices recommended by Levenson, Ohio could both save money on special education and improve the services that students receive.

Levenson provides concrete examples.

By lifting the current ban on the use of speech and language assistants for the state’s 30,000 students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs) that require only speech and language services, Ohio’s schools could save $100 million a year statewide and not reduce one minute of service to students.

Or Ohio could use funds and experts from the Department of Drug and Alcohol Addiction and the Department of Mental Health to provide counseling services in schools for eligible students. Levenson calls this a “Match Made in Heaven,” and describes how it could result in multiple benefits at lower costs including: a) better access for students, b) more expert counselors, c) more students served, and d) relief for school leaders who are currently asked to provide services to students they are ill-equipped to offer.

Levenson’s paper on special education in Ohio came out the same day as his national Fordham Institute special education report, Boosting the Quality—and Efficiency—of Special Education. In the national paper Levenson makes broad recommendations for achieving efficiencies in special education across the country and suggests that small changes in practice could save more than $10 billion annually. This report also draws its conclusions from a national database on special education spending—the largest and most detailed such ever built.

Taken together, these two reports offer practical ideas for better-quality, more cost-effective special education services that will require multiple partners to work together, not alone. But by integrating these efforts, coordinating policies, and playing to strengths the many partners serving children with disabilities can do the work better and at less cost.

Read the full report here.

The flurry of legislative activity shot forth from federal teacher effectiveness incentives has made it difficult to keep up with state reform policies. Since 2010, states have built on existing policies, tossed out poor ones, and created others to address areas needing improvement. In Ohio, House Bill 153 (2011 biennial budget bill) made significant changes to teacher evaluations (see detailed coverage here). To track these changes, DC-based Bellwether Education Partners examines policies in 21 states that took major legislative action in teacher effectiveness in this report.

The Bellwether report focuses on regulations that link teacher evaluations to significant personnel decisions. Bellwether gives each state’s policies an “Effectiveness Rating” based on 13 criteria that address areas like evaluation frequency, inclusion of student performance, compensation as teacher reward, and tenure. States can receive up to one point in each area, for a possible total of thirteen. Bellwether awards states with points if their policies address critical areas of teacher evaluation to foster a “more performance-oriented culture.”

Among the top rated state policies are Louisiana (10 points), Florida (9.75), and Indiana (11.75). Forty percent of states received less than half the possible score (less than 6.5). Ohio received a 5.5 rating, indicating that its state policies are not particularly suited to creating a performance-based teacher workforce. However, be careful when drawing conclusions. The report does not examine how well these policies are implemented. As the author suggests, low scores are not an indication of worse policies, but expose areas that could be improved to make a more thorough policy. For example, Ohio gained points for having both principals and teachers evaluated on a four-level system, but lost points for denying principals ability to select teachers for their schools. Being thorough is important, but will it transform into success? Readers should keep in mind that affecting evaluation does not always translate to improving teacher performance.

Martin R. West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has authored a new study focusing on the pros and cons of state policies that require retention of third-grade students who do not test sufficiently proficient in reading. Such a policy has been in place in Florida since 2003 and that policy has been used as the basis for similar efforts in other states, including Ohio which this year passed and signed into law Senate Bill 316. This law will require third graders to read at a state minimum standard to advance to fourth grade.

These policies rest upon a number of studies that show that proficient reading is the bedrock of all other learning going forward, and that a lack of reading proficiency at this critical stage of learning development leads to lower outcomes over the long-haul (e.g., higher intervention needs and increased dropout rates). West adds to this literature by examining the educational path of Florida students who were retained in third grade in 2003 over the ensuing six years to determine what impact the retention had on those students’ academic advancement.

West finds a significant short-term achievement boost in reading in the first two years in the group of retained third-grade students versus similar-achieving third-grade students who were promoted to fourth grade. There was also a less-significant but still-measurable boost in math achievement as well.

In the longer term, retention in 2003 for reading remediation reduced the likelihood that these students would be retained in later grades: students who were retained in 2003 were 11 percentage points less likely to be retained in the following year and 4 percentage points less likely to be retained in each of the following three years.

On the downside, West acknowledges the greater costs of retaining a larger-than-average number of students for a full school year as well as a steady diminishing of the early achievement boost as the students progress into upper grades.

But these downsides are seen to pale in comparison to the alternative of social promotion of students who would otherwise be retained under policies such as those in Florida and in Ohio’s SB 316. West concludes that it is likely only a matter of time before students who would meet criteria to be retained in third grade would – if not retained at that time - be eventually retained in higher grades anyway, when remediation may be far less successful and far more socially-stigmatizing. High reading proficiency at the critical third grade level appears to have far reaching implications, whether achieved or not achieved and whether remediated or not.