The Education Gadfly Weekly

The recent unveiling of Governor Kasich’s budget plan for the 2018-19 fiscal years has kicked off Ohio’s biennial ritual of debating school funding. Caps and guarantees have long been a central part of that discussion, and it’ll be no different this spring. As I’ve argued before, state leaders should get rid of these pernicious policies.

To allocate state dollars to school districts, Ohio lawmakers have crafted an intricate funding formula designed to drive more aid to districts that need it most (e.g., those with more students to educate, more pupils with special needs, or less capacity to fund education locally). They’ve done a pretty decent job of it, too. Don’t just take our word for it: EdTrust has said Ohio is one of the best in the nation at it. Both caps and guarantees throw a wrench into this system.

Caps limit the increase in a district’s state formula aid from year to year. Conversely, a guarantee ensures that a district won’t receive less funding than it received in a previous year. Caps are generally associated with districts experiencing enrollment growth, while guarantees typically apply to districts with declining enrollment. Changes in district property values and resident incomes can also play a role.

The Kasich Administration has repeatedly urged a phase-out of caps and guarantees to no avail. Each year, the legislature inevitably feels the heat from local districts—particularly from those facing flat or reduced funding—and walks back the governor’s attempt. Caps are also tough to get rid of, as doing so would cost the state millions; moreover, because they affect some (but by no means all) wealthier districts, it could create the appearance that the state is spending more on less needy pupils. The administration, perhaps learning its lesson, structured this year’s budget proposal in a manner that retains the caps and guarantees but modifies them in a few ways.

The governor’s budget imposes a gain cap of 5 percent, meaning that a district cannot receive more than a 5 percent boost in state formula aid relative to a prior fiscal year. According to state budget projections, the governor’s proposal would cap 130 districts in FY18 and deny them $466 million in state funding. Compared to the current year’s cap—set at 7.5 percent—the proposal actually places a tighter cap on funding increases, somewhat at odds with the Administration’s desire to phase out caps. That being said, eliminating (or lifting) the cap would increase costs to the state which itself faces a budget crunch.

To illustrate the effect of the cap on three selected districts, the table below displays estimated capped amounts under the governor’s proposal. Licking Heights, a district with considerable increases in enrollment, loses $9.2 million in state aid that it would otherwise receive under the FY18 formula.

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Source: Ohio Office of Budget and Management Note: The average change in enrollment across the 130 districts on the cap was +0.4%; median was -0.4%

The governor’s proposal reduces the amount of guarantee aid for districts with declining enrollment. Generally speaking, if a district covered by the guarantee experienced enrollment declines of more than 5 percent from 2010-11 to 2015-16, it would receive only part of the “full” guarantee amount under the proposal.[1] It’s important to note that such declines are not due to students leaving for charters or inter-district open enrollment, but to factors such as families moving out of the district and/or slowing birth rates.[2] Projections for FY18 indicate that 315 districts would receive guarantee aid at a cost to the state of $181 million.

For illustration, the table below displays the guarantee calculations for selected districts under the governor’s proposal. East Cleveland, a district with large student declines, under the formula would lose $8.5 million in FY18 relative to the prior year, but is shielded from most of that loss via $6.93 million in guarantee aid.

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Source: Ohio Office of Budget and Management Note: The average change in enrollment across the 315 districts on the guarantee was -6.6%; median was -5.9%.

If the governor’s plan were to pass today, a whopping 445 out of 610 districts in Ohio would be affected by either the cap or guarantee in FY18—and thus not funded according to the formula.[3] Despite the political pressure they’ll face, the legislature should eliminate these policies. Here’s why:

1. Both caps and guarantees subvert the state’s own funding formula, which is designed specifically to ensure that more aid goes to districts with the greatest needs. All of us should embrace this type of approach to funding schools rather than one driven by politics—be it partisan, provincial, or special interests. Ohio has made strides in developing a sound formula, but in the words of state budget director Tim Keen, caps and guarantees continue to “short circuit the formula.” Instead of working around it, lawmakers should focus on driving dollars through the formula—and if necessary make refinements to better ensure that all districts receive the proper amount of aid.
2. Caps deny scores of districts the funding increases they deserve according to the state’s own formula. Some of these capped districts have experienced increases in enrollment, requiring additional resources to make sure they’re meeting the needs of more and more students. Perhaps contrary to perceptions, capped districts are not necessarily wealthy (though some certainly are). Several high-poverty districts would have millions withheld in FY18: Canton takes a $4.2 million hit; Dayton loses $4.0 million; and Columbus—which has seen relatively large enrollment gains—is capped at a staggering $92.6 million. Such districts are educating some of Ohio’s most disadvantaged youngsters, and it’s shameful that the state is denying them dollars they should receive under its own funding formula.
3. Guarantees squander state taxpayer dollars on pupils who are no longer attending a school district. As discussed above, districts with fewer students are often sheltered from funding reductions through the guarantee; this in turn means that Ohio funds a certain number of “phantom students.”
4. Guarantees also pay districts based on a previous year’s funding amounts. However, this is not how the rest of the world works, which bases budgets on current or projected economic conditions. No one thinks that any company should get paid based on its customers from years ago, but that’s essentially what the guarantee does.
5. The common argument in favor of guarantees—districts need time to adjust—is a red herring. That might be fine if guarantee aid were offered temporarily, like Ohio’s catastrophic cost reimbursement program, a short-term funding pool for schools facing sudden costs increases associated with special needs. Instead, guarantees allow districts in long-term decline to avoid making difficult changes about how they do business. This could include restructuring unwieldy labor agreements, moving to shared services, shifting to a more flexible cost structure, and in some cases reducing staff and facility expenditures when enrollment declines are significant.

Caps and guarantees will be among the most urgent matters before the state legislature this spring. True, these policies won’t get droves of citizens to protest at the Statehouse and the political pressure to resort to the status quo will be intense. But if we as a state truly want to fund K-12 education based on the children our schools actually educate, Ohio lawmakers should finally drive a stake through the heart of caps and guarantees.

On February 2, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released the first draft of its state plan to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act. ESSA, the year-old federal education law, is the successor to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While many of ESSA’s accountability provisions are similar to those found in NCLB, a new requirement is for states to have an indicator of “school quality or student success” that goes beyond state standardized test scores or graduation rates.

Ohio’s plan proposes two measures that meet this requirement. The first measure, Prepared for Success, is a carryover from the state’s current report card. It uses multiple indicators to determine the number of students ready for college or career at the end of high school, and is exclusively used for districts and high schools. The second measure, on the other hand, will be used by all schools and districts: student engagement as measured by chronic absenteeism.

Although the threshold for being considered chronically absent depends on the state, the idea behind the term is the same—chronic absentees are students who miss too much school. In Ohio, these students are known as “habitual truants.” They earn this designation by being absent without “legitimate excuse” for “thirty or more consecutive hours, forty-two or more hours in one school month, or seventy-two or more hours in a school year.” Serving these students well has been a struggle for districts and schools in the Buckeye State for years, so it makes sense that the state would use ESSA as an opportunity to address the problem. Putting chronic absenteeism under the umbrella of student engagement makes sense too: If a student misses too much school, they’re not fully engaged in their education—and probably not learning much either.

But chronic absenteeism is a smart addition to Ohio’s state report card for a number of other reasons as well. First, it’s consistent with and supportive of a policy direction already identified by Ohio leaders. The Buckeye State recently revised its truancy laws in House Bill 410. This legislation updates the state’s definition of truancy and prohibits schools from suspending, expelling, or removing students from school solely on the basis of attendance. Instead, the bill outlines an intervention structure for districts and schools to follow that should “vary based on the needs of each individual student.” While unintentional, this structure aligns well with ESSA’s emphasis on locally driven interventions.

Second, Ohio’s new truancy law also revises what schools and districts must report to ODE in regards to chronic absenteeism based on the law’s new definition and intervention structure. Aligning the new measure with data that the state was already planning to start collecting is smart and efficient. It’s also a measure that can be easily disaggregated by subgroup, school, and district, making it potentially more useful.

Finally, and most importantly, reducing chronic absenteeism can increase achievement. In elementary school, truancy can contribute to weaker math and reading skills that persist into later grades. In high school, where chronic absenteeism rates are higher, students often experience future problems with employment, including lower-status occupations, less stable career patterns, higher unemployment rates, and low earnings. Ohio could raise student achievement by lowering its chronic absenteeism rate, and making absenteeism part of the state’s accountability system is a signal that districts and schools must start paying more attention to attendance numbers.

ODE has proposed a statewide long-term goal for chronic absenteeism of 5 percent or less. Recognizing that some groups of students were starting off with much larger absenteeism rates than others, ODE also assigned goals to each subgroup using the 2015-16 school year as a baseline. Furthermore, it devised a transparent equation that results in “consistent annual increases” of expectations.  Here’s a look at the goals for the state as a whole and for various subgroups of students.

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In order to successfully meet the student engagement indicator, districts and schools will either have to meet the benchmark percentage of 5 percent or less or meet an improvement standard determined by ODE. (For example, the department lists “reducing the percent of chronically absent students by at least 3 percentage points from one year to the next.”) If districts and schools accomplish either of these goals, they will be deemed meeting the indicator. It’s important to note that this indicator is graded based on a “meets” or “not meets” standard, not with an A-F grade. ODE plans to incorporate this student engagement/chronic absenteeism measure into the Indicators Met portion of the state report card’s Achievement Component. It will be one of many subcomponents within the measure and will likely play a very small role in the overall calculation of school grades.

Nevertheless, this measure could unintentionally create an incentive for districts or schools to expel truant students in order to improve their attendance numbers. Recognizing this, ODE proposes that data on expulsions be used as a “check.” The plan notes: “To ensure that districts do not expel truant students as a way to reduce their chronic absenteeism rate, the calculation will include a review of each school’s or district’s expulsion data. Districts or schools that otherwise would meet the indicator but show a significant increase in their expulsion rate with the discipline reason listed as ‘truancy’ will have their ‘met’ demoted to ‘not met’ for this indicator.”

Overall, ODE’s plan for incorporating chronic absenteeism into the state’s accountability system is both thoughtful and nuanced. The state plan reinforces the newly revised state law while also following ESSA guidelines—and shedding light on a problem that, if solved, could improve student achievement in the Buckeye State.

Citizens Leadership Academy (CLA) is preparing Cleveland middle schoolers for success in high school, college, and life—and not just academically. CLA, whose population is 79 percent economically disadvantaged and made up almost entirely of students of color, is second among all public schools in the city on student growth. The school’s eighth graders reach and surpass proficiency at a rate that is more than three times that of their peers across the city. Reading and math proficiency rates at CLA are more than double those of Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s.

No matter how you slice the data, CLA is providing academic preparation that would likely be unavailable to them if the schools—and its broader high-performing charter network (Breakthrough Schools)—did not exist. And yet its academic prowess is just the tip of the iceberg.

The school’s model—as captured in its name, Citizens Leadership Academy—prioritizes and cultivates broader attributes and mindsets necessary for long-term success. As you’ll read in this profile about one student, Keith Lazare Jr., CLA asks students to consider what it means to be active, engaged citizens and community members. Students are asked to grapple not only with tough math problems or reading passages—strengthening the stick-with-it-ness known in education circles as “grit”—but also to develop a sense of responsibility, ownership, and persistence in all aspects of their character. And this is not done in top-down fashion, either. Instead, CLA’s leaders and staff have created an environment where students advocate for themselves. These are skills that will no doubt serve them well in high school, college, professional and personal relationships, job interviews, board rooms, and beyond. CLA cares as much about empowering students and helping them hone their voices as it does about high test scores. This is a testament to their commitment to their students’ lifelong success as well as to the school’s deep understanding of what it takes to lift students in poverty and propel them toward the success they so deserve.

We invite you to read Keith’s story and see for yourself how good charters like CLA are good choices for students in Cleveland and across Ohio.

NOTE: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

In the last Ohio Gadfly, I described the many similarities between Washington State’s lengthy debate about high school graduation requirements during the years that I worked there and the debate underway in Ohio now. 

As has been Washington’s habit as well on everything from funding to accountability, the Ohio State Board of Education has kicked the issue to a study panel for the time being. At its meeting on December 13, the Board, after first rejecting proposals to delay or reduce the college and work-ready requirements adopted in 2014, directed the State Superintendent to appoint a work group to “review the graduation requirements and consider alternative approaches." The up-to-twenty-five-member work group with broad representation from the education community is to make a recommendation to Superintendent DeMaria by the Board’s April 2017 meeting.

Following is some immodest advice to the work group from someone who may be new to Ohio but is not new to work groups, task forces, and their brethren.

Set a specific end date for any transition to the new graduation requirements and make equivocating on it hard. As the nonprofit League of Education Voters put it when Washington was addressing the same task, “A transition period is understandable. A transition period with no end date or specific plan does not serve our students’ best interests, nor does it display any urgency for closing our state’s growing achievement and opportunity gaps.” Adopting minimum cumulative scores on the end-of-course (EOC) tests and effective dates in rule makes it more difficult to back away from the requirements when they draw near, because a rule once done would have to be undone. 

Don’t attempt to make your recommendation through a consensus process. The work group is made up of an unwieldy number of members (currently twenty-three) representing interests across the education spectrum, with little time before it’s asked to report in April. The wide representation ensures the Board will have the diverse input it wants and needs. But it also means that the people around the table are not likely to agree on a direction for moving forward. An insistence on consensus is more likely to lead to paralysis than to an actionable recommendation. While seeking as much common ground as possible, the work group should be prepared to vote at its last meeting and to submit a minority report to the Board if needed. Otherwise nothing is accomplished but to delay a decision that is better made sooner than later.

Don’t presume that the “right” answer can be found through data. The work group’s recommendation should be informed by data, but not be driven by it. The first consideration in any decision to revise present graduation requirements should be what best prepares Ohio students to be successful in life beyond high school and what it takes to get them there and not on whether graduation rate projections are politically acceptable. I’ve staffed and followed more than one study committee that operated on the assumption that the answer would come clear if there were just enough data. It won’t.

Consider the inclusion of an evaluation component. Any new graduation requirements are intended to alter behavior, or they would not be worth the effort. The fact is we cannot know with any level of precision how districts, schools, and students will respond to higher standards for achievement on assessments or how they will utilize the options made available to obtain a diploma. The work group might consider recommendations of an independent evaluation when there’s been enough experience with the graduation requirements, such as that California formerly conducted on its high school exit examination. Such an evaluation might examine, for example, impacts on four-year and five-year graduation rates by student subgroups; the strategies used by districts to improve performance on the EOC’s; the use of alternatives such as industry certifications and career readiness assessments, and post-secondary outcomes from those alternatives; and the effectiveness of local and state interventions. 

Finally, keep front and center the central question of what a high school diploma is and what it should represent. The Legislature made clear in passing HB 487 in 2014 that Ohio could no longer persist in granting high school diplomas that provide no assurance to students, parents, colleges, and employers that a student receiving one is ready to move on to post-secondary education or a career. A diploma can no longer be the rite of passage as it was when most of us were in high school, awarded when we’d passed enough courses to “walk” on graduation day. It should be a demonstration of accountability for both the student and the school that the student has attained the skills and learning needed to take the next step on whatever path chosen. A work group recommendation that does not meet that mark—and not just for some generation ahead but for students in the system now—will not meet the expectations of the Board, the legislature, or the public.

Jack Archer served as director of basic education oversight at the Washington State Board of Education until his retirement in 2016.  He lives in Fairview Park.

Ohio just released its draft ESSA plan. While there’s much to applaud, the state’s proposals for improving the most chronically underperforming schools are underwhelming—serving to further remind us that sixteen years after the federal government began pushing states to turn around failing schools, our ideas for doing so are still scattershot.

Compared to past federal requirements for school improvement, ESSA is turnaround-lite—intentionally backing away from prescriptive solutions regarding school turnarounds embedded in NCLB and the School Improvement Grant program (SIG). Schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB faced a series of consequences including replacement of school staff, new curriculum, decreased authority of school administration, help from outside turnaround specialists, or restructuring of the school. Restructuring (similar to the more rigorous options that SIG put in place) included alternative school governance, reopening the school as a public charter school, replacement of most or all of school staff and leadership, takeover by an outside entity, or state takeover.

In Ohio, hundreds of millions in SIG dollars were spent with little to show for it. Low-performing schools were allowed to choose from a slate of turnaround options in exchange for funds; unsurprisingly, the majority of Ohio schools selected the least disruptive school improvement option—a professional development plan, an extra hour of learning time, and other supports that tinkered at the edges of change.

ESSA doesn’t require even these minimal efforts at turnaround; it merely mandates that states make districts do something, anything to address their worst schools—and step in if they fail to do so.

The nine pages of Ohio’s draft ESSA plan dedicated to describing its plans to improve low-performing schools (identified thusly) are unremarkable. That’s because Ohio’s ESSA draft contains many of the same elements as school improvement plans of the past that didn’t work, often reading like a SIG application: districts will “build capacity of school principals,” provide “targeted professional development,” and “work collaboratively with their community and stakeholders to determine… specific, evidence-based strategies.” It’s not that any of these concepts are bad, just that if chosen and applied at random they most definitely don’t result in systemic, long-term positive change. Under ESSA, low-performing districts and schools are often the arbiters of their own improvement plans. There exists a certain degree of madness in hoping that low-performing schools/districts will wake up one day and figure out how to fix themselves. Rather than push back against this premise, Ohio’s plan mostly appears to focus on simply complying with the (limited) federal requirements.

And there are few high-stakes repercussions for chronic failure, at least at the school level. Schools that languish in priority or focus status (see Table 1 for how these are to be categorized) will be subject to “additional Department [ODE] oversight on federal expenditures,” subject to more reviews, more paperwork, and more improvement plans (unless of course they are charter schools—then they are likely to close).

Table 1: Quick overview of Priority, Focus, and Watch Status

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Ohio should also be cautious before creating a plan that defers too much to the “community” or ignores that school improvement is largely about changing what happens within a school in the way of teaching and learning. While the inclusion of mental health services in Ohio’s plan seems like a good one (this acknowledges the role that trauma and mental health play in truancy and academic performance), and there indeed may be a need for “a more coherent focus on addressing the needs of students, families and communities in struggling schools,” the plan’s lack of emphasis on changing what actually occurs within the four walls of a school on a given day is disconcerting. In fact, the section describing how Ohio will support low-performing schools in their quest to improve includes more references to community groups and organizations (e.g., “Community groups… want more of a voice in developing those local plans”) than it does to teaching and learning. This seems problematic.

There are some positive aspects of Ohio’s school improvement plans: the creation of an online evidence-based clearinghouse to provide resources to schools and districts as they go about selecting improvement plans; the department’s plans to “build its research capacity” and conduct performance monitoring in addition to compliance monitoring; the creation of a peer-to-peer network for districts to engage directly with one another; and incentives for districts to participate in random control trials and other research (important for building the evidence based referenced frequently in ESSA).

So what can Ohio do to strengthen its school improvement plans given that much of its blasé nature stems from an intentionally open-ended federal law? The state could consider two vestiges from the NCLB era that preserve parent agency. Under NCLB, parents whose children attended low-performing schools had more power than under current law. Children in a languishing school were given the option to transfer to a better performing school within their district and were also eligible for supplemental educational services such as tutoring. Despite historically low uptake rates for these options, they provided a safety valve for families.

Ohio’s draft plan lists “direct student services” as one possible intervention that might be required in instances where schools fail to make significant progress. The plan outlines expansion of Advanced Placement, “transitional coursework,” and early literacy initiatives among direct services. (ESSA also allows for high-quality academic tutoring—which Ohio should include in its list.) Ohio’s current wording for direct services is too wishy-washy: the state should commit to providing these services as a clear and consistent option for families when their students attend chronically failing schools. Ohio should also consider reinstating the student transfer option, perhaps even looking into incentives for higher performing districts that take on students from outside their borders.

As Ohio collects public comment over the next month, it should consider strengthening parent choice, guaranteeing the provision of direct services for students in chronically failing schools, and consider reinstating the “transfer out” student option. Improving chronically low performing schools is a monumentally difficult task requiring immense leadership and innovation. While Ohio districts take a crack at it themselves, the state should at least guarantee stronger options for parents and students who lack the ability to exercise choice by moving elsewhere.

Stay tuned for another look at how Ohio can improve its ESSA school accountability plan—specifically by walking back key portions that appear to go beyond what federal law requires.  

Do incentives nudge students to exert more effort in their schoolwork? A recent study by University of Chicago analysts suggests they do, though the structure of the incentive is also important.

The researchers conducted field experiments from 2009 to 2011 in three high-poverty areas, including Chicago Public Schools and two nearby districts, with nearly 6,000 student participants in grades two through ten. Based on improved performance relative to a baseline score on a low-stakes reading or math assessment (not the state exam), various incentives were offered to different groups of pupils, such as a $10 or $20 reward, or a trophy worth about $3 along with public recognition of their accomplishment. The analysts offered no reward to students in a control group. To test whether pupils responded differently to immediate versus delayed incentives, some of the students received their reward right after the test—results were computed on the spot—while others knew the reward would be withheld for one month.

Several interesting findings emerged. First, the larger cash reward ($20) led to positive effects on test performance, while the smaller reward had no impact ($10). This suggests that, if offering a monetary reward, larger payouts will likely lead to more student effort. Second, the $3 trophy and public recognition also had a positive impact on achievement, though not as big of an effect as the $20 incentive. In addition to being cost-effective, this finding is important because in practice, non-cash incentives may be more acceptable in school environments. As the study authors note, “Schools tend to be more comfortable rewarding students with trophies, certificates, and prizes.” Third, incentives that were withheld from students for a month after the test did not improve performance. This suggests that sooner, rather than later, disbursement is an important feature of an effective incentive structure.  

It is possible that external incentives could “crowd out” intrinsic motivation—students may be less likely to work hard once an incentive is removed. The authors find no evidence of this when examining treated students’ low-stakes test scores after the incentives ceased. Instead, they conclude that incentives, when structured well, can help motivate students to put in just a little more effort.

Source: Steven D. Levitt, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, “The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (November 2016).