The Education Gadfly Weekly

Shortly after Ohio lawmakers enacted a new voucher program in 2005, the state budget office wrote in its fiscal analysis, “The Educational Choice Scholarships are not only intended to offer another route for student success, but also to impel the administration and teaching staff of a failing school building to improve upon their students’ academic performance.” Today, the EdChoice Scholarship Program provides publicly funded vouchers to more than eighteen thousand Buckeye students who were previously assigned to some of the state’s lowest-performing schools, located primarily in low-income urban communities. Yet remarkably little else is known about the program.

Which children are using EdChoice when given the opportunity? Is the initiative faithfully working as its founders intended? Are participating students blossoming academically in their private schools of choice? Does the increased competition associated with EdChoice lead to improvements in the public schools that these kids left?

Fordham’s new study utilizes longitudinal student data from 2003–04 to 2012–13 to answer these and other important questions. 

Three key findings:

• Student selection: The students participating in EdChoice are overwhelmingly low-income and minority children. But relative to pupils who are eligible for vouchers but choose not to use them, the participants in EdChoice are somewhat higher-achieving and less economically disadvantaged.
• Competitive effects: EdChoice modestly improved the achievement of the public-school students who were eligible for a voucher but did not use it. The competition associated with the introduction of EdChoice appears to have spurred these public-school improvements.
• Participant effects: The students who used vouchers to attend private schools fared worse on state exams compared to their closely matched peers remaining in public schools. Only voucher students assigned to relatively high-performing EdChoice eligible public schools could be credibly studied.

Dr. David Figlio, Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy and of Economics at Northwestern University, led the research.

In its version of the state budget bill, the Ohio House included language that would place more weight on student growth measures when calculating charter sponsor ratings. The provision requires that 60 percent of the academic portion of sponsor evaluations be based on student growth measures (aka value added), instead of 20 percent as under current policy.

The Senate should retain this change and take it a step further: It should be applied to district schools as well. Such a legislative change would ensure that Ohio’s ESSA plan places greater weight on student growth in the accountability system used to gauge the performance of all public schools. The Ohio Department of Education will submit the ESSA plan early this fall and now is the right time to fix the weighting system.

As we and others have pointed out many times, rating systems that place an overemphasis on “status measures” correlated with demographics or prior achievement (e.g., proficiency or graduation rates) will flunk almost all high-poverty schools just because they enroll pupils who initially lag behind.

Growth measures, on the other hand, are more poverty-neutral gauges of school performance. They look at the trajectory of achievement over time, regardless of where students start the year. Policy makers should place considerable weight on growth in school grading systems, and the House’s 60 percent approach makes good sense for all public schools in Ohio.

Consider how ratings are likely to play out for the Columbus City Schools (CCS) when the state begins to assign them overall A-F grades next school year.[1]

The top horizontal bar in Figure 1 indicates that, based upon my calculations, the majority of schools operated by CCS will fail under Ohio’s current weights (i.e., 20 percent growth and 80 percent status measures). A whopping 94 percent of CCS schools would have received an overall D or F rating using their 2015-16 grades, and zero schools would have earned an A. This is what happens to high-poverty schools when overall rating systems are stacked with measures correlated with demographics. Almost all are destined to be labeled as failures.

But what would the A-F ratings look like if state lawmakers placed 60 percent weight on growth? The bottom bar in Figure 1 shows the shift in the distribution of CCS school grades under this scenario. The percent receiving D or F letter grades would decrease from 94 to 76 percent—still a large majority but less than under the status quo. Importantly, a more reasonable 24 percent of CCS schools receive B or C ratings, though again no school reaches an A rating. Fortunately, growth measures don’t lock high-poverty schools into low overall grades—schools anywhere can demonstrate solid growth—and it’s within the control of CCS to increase the number of high-performing schools they oversee.

Figure 1: Projected distribution of summative A-F grades for Columbus district schools under Ohio’s current weights (20% growth) and alternative weights (60% growth).

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Notes: Includes 108 schools operated by Columbus City school district. Projected ratings based on current weights use 2015-16 component grades and the state’s “summative” rating formula. Schools’ weights are adjusted depending on which report card components are available (e.g., high schools won’t have K-3 literacy grades). Overall school grades were calculated based on these adjusted weights, which provide between 20 and 35 percent weight on growth; see here for the variations. Rating calculations under the alternative system assign 60 percent weight to growth and then divide the remaining 40 percent equally across a school’s remaining components. This is the simplest implementation of the House’s provision, which does not specify how weights are to be assigned across other components. Not included in the figure above are the ratings for Columbus charters, whose projected grades would be similar to those of CCS schools

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School rating systems that rely too heavily on status measures have significant problems. If a high bar is set for proficiency and other indicators, they will assign Ds and Fs to practically all high-poverty schools. This distribution of school grades is not helpful to parents or policy makers. Consider these ratings from the perspective of a Columbus parent, seeking a high-quality school for her child: With nine in ten schools receiving a D or F, the state rating system offers little distinction in quality. Parents will not be encouraged to seek high-quality options—it appears that there aren’t any—nor are they deterred from enrolling their child in or even able to identify abysmally low-performing schools. Systematically low ratings for high-poverty schools can also demoralize education leaders or cause disinvestment in otherwise high-performing schools. It will also over-identify the number of “failing” schools, leading to invasive interventions and potentially harming schools whose students are making significant educational progress. These are serious unintended consequences of a system that is biased against schools serving primarily disadvantaged pupils.

Fortunately, there is a smarter way forward—a rating system that places more emphasis on growth over time. The House’s proposal to assign 60 percent weight on growth for charter sponsors is a great start. But it doesn’t go far enough. All schools in Ohio, both district and charter, should receive overall A-F ratings based on a formula that places considerable weight on student growth (“value added”). This approach will assist families in all parts of the state to better discern school quality, apart from the influence of demographics. It will also establish more productive incentives for educators to help all of their students—low and high achievers alike—make academic progress. Other states, like Colorado and New Mexico are turning the page on accountability by placing more emphasis on growth. Now it’s time for Ohio to do the same.

Each year, school choice advocates celebrate National Charter Schools Week. This year, they had an extra reason to break open the champagne: U.S. News and World Report’s annual best high schools ranking included a host of charter schools in its final list, including the three highest-ranked schools in the country.

Though charter success in general isn’t a surprise, the fact that more and more charter high schools are getting attention is important. High schools have remained relatively untouched by many aspects of education reform, and it shows in the data. Nationwide, high school achievement has been disappointing. NAEP scores for 12th graders are lackluster, as are ACT and SAT scores. The national high school graduation rate has hit at a record high, but there are concerns that the measure could be subject to gaming and low expectations. Effective reform at the high school level remains a mostly uncharted territory.

Luckily, there are some notable exceptions, including some high-profile charter school networks. For example, the Noble Network operates sixteen high schools in Chicago and has demonstrated remarkable achievement and growth with its largely minority and low-income student population. And let’s not forget BASIS, the Arizona-based charter network that nabbed the top three spots in the U.S. News rankings—between 2014 and 2016, BASIS graduates were accepted to some of the best colleges in the nation.

Unfortunately, neither of these networks operates in Ohio. That’s a shame, because Ohio needs more top-notch high schools. In 2016, only 33 percent of Ohio students who took the ACT met its college readiness benchmarks for all four test subjects. Report cards for the 2015-16 school year show that proficiency rates are extremely low in Ohio's high-poverty urban areas. When it comes to national rankings, the Buckeye State doesn’t fare much better: The highest-ranked Ohio high school in the U.S. News rankings was Walnut Hills High School, a selective-admissions school in Cincinnati, with a national ranking of 47. Only 19 Ohio high schools made it into the top 500, and all of them are district high schools located in wealthier suburban areas.

Obviously there are traditional public high schools that are doing an excellent job. But there are also hundreds of thousands of Buckeye students who cannot access high-performing schools because they live in the wrong school zone. Other students who received a great education from charter elementary and middle schools finish eighth grade and are left with nowhere to go but back into the district systems that their families already opted out of. These students would likely jump at the chance to attend a high-performing charter high school. While Ohio has some strong charter high schools, there simply aren’t enough. Now is the perfect time for Ohio to prioritize expanding access to charter high schools.

On May 18, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) will open the application process for the long-awaited federal Charter Schools Program grant. For the 2017-18 school year, ODE has approximately $32 million to distribute with the goal of increasing the number of high-performing charter schools. Cities like Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati that are eager to expand their number of high-quality seats should consider partnering with effective and exemplary sponsors to take advantage of these funds—and they would be wise to focus on expanding Ohio’s existing charter high schools, as well as recruiting high-performing, out-of-state networks. (I’ve already profiled a few high flying charter networks  that Ohio would do well to recruit, but there are plenty of others.)  

Of course, one of the reasons why high-performing charter high schools haven’t flourished everywhere is because of how expensive and difficult it is to run them. By the time students get to high school, many of them expect far more from their schools than elementary and middle school students do: They want a wide variety of courses, including AP options; lots of extracurriculars and sports teams; social events like prom; and guidance when it comes to career pathways and college options. All of these amenities require bundles of money, and many of them (especially sports) also require space, equipment, and additional staff. The logistics of running a high school, particularly class scheduling and transcripts, are complicated and high-stakes activities. If a school fails to do these things right, the negative consequences could impact college acceptance and job prospects.

Ohio’s federal Charter Schools Program funds are a perfect opportunity to grow more high-performing high schools. But these start-up dollars will only go so far. The operational funding and facilities issues that currently impede Ohio's charter sector must be addressed. Otherwise, the Buckeye State risks being unable to expand, recruit, and sustain the high-performing charter high schools that it so desperately needs.  

A college degree is becoming increasingly necessary in order for young people to attain the jobs they want, and yet getting to and through college in some ways has never been more challenging. Many students are ill-prepared when they arrive, needing remediation in reading or math. Many others may lack the critical but hard to measure “soft” skills necessary to succeed in a postsecondary environment, like self-motivation, organization, ability to work independently, strong executive functioning skills, and self-awareness.

Even when students are fully prepared, the cost of college is immense. College graduates walk away, on average, with almost $40,000 in student loan debt. For students who are the first in their families to go to college, these challenges can be daunting. The Charles School (TCS)—a charter high school offering a unique five-year program in partnership with Ohio Dominican University—provides a one-of-a-kind early college experience to students in Columbus. Students can graduate with up to 62 hours of college credit, tuition free, and earn not just a high school diploma but also an associate’s degree. For students like Chris Sumlin, profiled in this story, TCS illuminated a path to and through college that felt dimly lit at one point in his life. Sumlin, who will graduate from Morehouse College this month, told our interviewer that before he attended TCS it seemed “inconceivable” to go to college.

This is the opportunity provided by TCS and other high-quality charter options like it. Nearly three out of four TCS students are economically disadvantaged, yet the school earns an “A” for the progress of its lowest-income students and a “B” overall on value-added growth. TCS is part of the Graham Family of Schools—four charter schools in Columbus serving about 1,000 students in grades K-12. Graham schools are rooted in the “expeditionary learning” model, which emphasizes hands-on, project-based learning and deep reflection and inquiry about the learning process. This is evident upon a visit to any of the Graham schools, or in conversations with Greg Brown, Superintendent and CEO of the network. Brown, a former teacher himself and former employee of Columbus City Schools, has a disposition that parallels Graham’s overall educational philosophy. He is reflective, thoughtful, and intent on improving all aspects of students’ lives—recognizing that all children, no matter their background, deserve inspiring places to learn. 

TCS is one such place, and it made all the difference for Chris. May his compelling story encourage us to throw our energy and support behind any school option that is effective at closing the college-going gap and setting young people up for success.

Download and read the full profile here.

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer in a slightly different form.

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer editorial by contributor Sarah Stitzlein sharply criticized Ohio’s current private-school scholarship programs and savaged Senate Bill 85, which would expand them. The recently introduced bill would open choice opportunities to working-class families by offering them partial tuition scholarships (aka vouchers) while continuing to offer full scholarships for pupils from low-income families.

Sadly, voucher critics distort private school choice and mislead the public as to why it’s worthwhile and how it works. They also distort or overlook key elements of the relevant research and make questionable claims about private schools.

Why vouchers? It’s no secret that wealthier parents enjoy a greater choice of schools for their children. They can afford to purchase homes in high-status suburban districts or cover the costs of private school education.

Yet few low- and middle-income families have similar opportunities. They typically send their kids to a public school that is assigned to them based on residential address. Many times, this works out fine. But when it doesn’t, students with limited means are stuck in schools that don’t meet their educational needs.

School choice, including private-school scholarships, opens opportunities and levels the playing field for less-privileged families. In Ohio, more than 35,000 youngsters already use publicly funded scholarships to attend private schools of their choosing. The overwhelming majority come from low-income and/or minority households or have a special need such as autism.

Skeptics contend that this accomplishes nothing because private schools don’t perform as well as public schools. In terms of academic outcomes, however, most studies across the nation have uncovered positive results for scholarship recipients. The Friedman Foundation’s literature review informs us that 14 of 18 “gold standard” experimental studies found that private-school scholarships had positive effects.

In recent months, choice objectors have ignored those decades of research and pointed to two studies – one from Louisiana, the other from Ohio – indicating that voucher students underperform their public school counterparts. (The Ohio study was commissioned by my organization.)

Disappointing as they were to choice boosters, everyone should recognize that both studies have important limitations. In Louisiana, the results were based on just the first two years of the statewide voucher program, too soon to gauge its longer term impact. Though rigorous in method, the Ohio research was limited in scope. Lead author David Figlio, a first-rate researcher from Northwestern University, was able to analyze only the test-score trajectories of voucher recipients who left relatively functional public schools – akin to D-rated schools. Due to methodological concerns, he could not examine students from F-rated schools. Those students – who arguably had the greatest need for vouchers – may have made significant progress (or may not have), but there was no statistically reliable way of studying their outcomes.

Importantly, Figlio also found positive competitive effects—the introduction of vouchers modestly improved public school performance. Critics routinely omit this finding as it undermines their frequent assertion that vouchers damage public schools.

Skeptics also assert that voucher programs are harmful to school integration efforts. Research has found little to support their claim: A 2010 study from Milwaukee finds that vouchers had a neutral impact on racial integration. And a more recent analysis from Louisiana found that voucher transfers reduced segregation in public schools and had no effect on the receiving private schools.

Keep in mind also that African-American leaders such as Howard Fuller and Polly Williams ignited the voucher movement almost 30 years ago in Milwaukee. Their goal was to give more low-income, minority students access to high-quality schools, regardless of who operated them. Figlio’s Ohio research found that more than three in five EdChoice voucher students are African-American or Hispanic. While diverse schools are desirable for several reasons, we ought not to stand in the way of minority families who want a good education for their children with or without integration.

Finally, critics claim that private schools may, in Stitzlein’s words, “teach undemocratic values.” Yet analyses by University of Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf show that students attending private schools are more civically minded than public school pupils. Based on his review of 21 empirical studies, Wolf concludes: “The statistical record suggests that private schooling and school choice often enhance the realization of the civic values.” It seems likely that private schools’ moral direction, disciplinary practices, and academic expectations help to instill stronger civic values.

District schools may well continue to educate the majority of students, even in choice-rich areas. It’s the arrangement most of us know best – including myself, a public school graduate. Yet familiarity and tradition are no substitutes for what is just and right. With or without choice, prosperous families will continue to purchase their way into high performing school districts, or pony up for private tuitions. But without choice programs, such as vouchers, working class families won’t have those same opportunities. That’s an injustice – and one that choice initiatives strive to solve.

NOTE: This blog was first published in a slightly different form on The 74 on 5/12/17.

My first job out of college was in a construction company. I was hired as the office manager, receptionist, typist, and gofer. But I also transported enormous saw blades, delivered Christmas gifts to our best customers, called deadbeat clients to ask them politely but firmly when they were going to pay up, and even directed traffic on a busy commuter road during summer rush hour once in a while.

I graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in creative writing.

I had pursued that field of study because I wanted to be a writer and the English department at Ohio State University was pretty fertile ground for that. I took seminar classes from poets and award-winning short-story writers. Passed ‘em all too. I evolved from a lover of pulpy science fiction to an aspiring writer of literary fiction. It was thinky and boho and maybe even pretentious occasionally. The work was important, and we were all going to be the next great novelist, poet, or essayist.

And then I graduated. And life called me to dust and driving and deadlines. And you might think that nothing about my four years as an English major or my hard-earned degree mattered. Certainly Lakota Local School District English teacher Ian Avery thinks that. “I believe, as a professional English teacher,” he writes, “that vocational training is neither my role nor my responsibility to my students.” But I want to tell him that he’s wrong.

Everything about my high school and college experiences helped me to become a successful employee. Math teachers gave me the skills to measure work areas and assist in computing price quotes. History professors helped me understand why a developer was converting this former manufacturing plant into apartments. Communications instruction helped me hone marketing pitches to boost business. And, yes, I used every ounce of wordcraft I had studied and obsessed over in Brit Lit and Sonnet Seminar to write newsletters, clarify job specs, and to interact with customers. It wasn’t Fitzgerald, but it was clear and direct and helpful to business. They didn’t know they needed an English major until they got one.

And I could have succeeded in the same way in other areas too. Because above all, high school and college taught me how to think, how to work hard, how to budget my time, how to get to the point, and how to produce my best work under pressure whatever the arena. Chemistry or poetry, it was all vital preparation for the future, and my teachers and professors seemed to feel the same. A great school, to me, is one in which every adult involved – the PTA, the cafeteria staff, the guidance counselors, everyone – shows up early and works to their fullest to teach young people (and to show them by example) how to reach their highest potential.

That is why I was saddened to hear Mr. Avery say with such finality that his job is not to prepare his students for the workforce. He is specifically objecting to Governor Kasich’s proposal that Ohio teachers serve an externship in a local business as a requirement to renew their teaching licenses (a proposal since removed from the state budget bill). What I believe Mr. Avery means is that teaching English is to him about art and beauty, words and meaning – an abstract pursuit in opposition to career tech or vocational education. It’s not clear whether Mr. Avery would approve of externships for these more practical teaching professionals, but either way, his opposition to this proposal appears to embody the disconnect between teachers and the working world that Governor Kasich was trying to address. The externship proposal may not be wholly practical as pitched, but there’s nothing wrong with the motivating sentiment.

I am proof positive that “professional English teachers” have vital input into shaping their students’ aptitude for work, just as teachers of more concrete disciplines do. I know that STEM is all the rage right now and that high tech jobs are going unfilled in Ohio and elsewhere due to a lack of qualified applicants. If I were in high school today, maybe I would choose a different path based on these facts. But even though I believe the future needs more computer programmers and engineers than it does transcendentalist writers, the future also needs abstract thinkers, storytellers, lovers of beautiful words, analysts, and people who can render complex ideas understandable in all areas of our workforce. The best employee is both thinker and maker.

English teachers have as much responsibility to build the smartest, most disciplined, cleverest, and most resourceful citizens and workers as any other type of teacher. Any insistence by any teacher upon keeping practicality and imagination siloed and separate seems out of touch with the real world as I know it.

The release of this latest report from Bellwether Education Partners is fortuitously timed as school districts large and small across the Buckeye State reach the end of another school year beset by transportation problems. Authors Phillip Burgoyne-Allen and Jennifer O’Neal Schiess dissect those challenges from a national perspective and argue convincingly that the difficulties in providing effective and efficient service are the result of archaic structure, bureaucratic inertia, and siloed responsibilities. It is less a question of money, as some would argue, than a lack of wherewithal to change how that money is spent.

The topic is complicated, but the report flows well and allows for exploring the many layers from federal to state to local. The authors begin by describing the main models of student transportation: district-operated, contractor-operated, public transit, and various combinations of the three. While all of these models are decades old, the district-centered model still predominates as school systems own and operate two-thirds of all school buses on the road today. Various state funding models are also described. Some are geared to maintain the district-operated status quo, others are more student and family-centric and agnostic on form, and still others incentivize contracting out transportation or seeking economies of scale with parallel public transit systems.

Rural and suburban districts face challenges of distance and inefficient routes. Most urban districts face myriad challenges posed by school choice. With magnet schools, charters, and vouchers available to growing numbers of students, transportation coordinators must contend with varying school year starts, school day lengths, and distribution of students and schools beyond their own borders.

Despite a penchant for radical redesign of the educational playing field, Bellwether takes a two-pronged approach to their recommendations here. They lead with “inside the box” suggestions for districts unable or unwilling to change the basic structure of district-operated transportation. These include greater use of technology and data to help redesign routes for greater efficiency and better tracking, changes in funding to incentivize efficiency and lessen environmental impacts, and regulatory changes to allow more and different types of vehicles to serve students more flexibly.

For metropolitan areas where choice is increasing – and where transportation difficulties are mounting  – Bellwether has more “out of the box” recommendations (although better data use and incentive funding feature in both sets). These involve a greater integration between student transportation and overall public transit. This could mean a city bus or subway system taking on student transportation rather than simply providing free or discounted passes for students, as is the case in cities like Washington, D.C. and Columbus. Certain federal regulations currently prevent public transit from being used as student-only transportation, severely limiting such integration, but metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) hold the key to bridging this gap, say the authors. MPOs are required in any urbanized area with populations over 50,000 and are tasked with coordinating regional transportation improvement plans in collaboration with all city, county, and state governments in the region. While this has historically meant federal highway projects, a case study from Hillsborough County, Florida, found within the report is an interesting albeit preliminary peek at the possibilities of sharing technology, equipment, maintenance, and schedules among the spectrum of transit providers. The countywide school system is represented on the Hillsborough MPOs board, but the chilling effect of those federal regulations means little practical interaction can occur.

The authors suggest that proper planning and coordination, along with federal regulatory reform, could be an effective avenue for addressing school transportation issues for the 21^st century. Ohio school districts should take note and give this report a look. After all, as any student will tell you, the next school year is just around the corner, even if the bus is not.

SOURCE: Phillip Burgoyne-Allen and Jennifer O’Neal Schiess, “Miles to Go: Bringing School Transportation into the 21st Century,” Bellwether Education Partners (May 2017).