The Education Gadfly Weekly

Need a handy nutshell summary of state charter school laws and how they stack up against the Model Charter School Law developed by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS)? Then check out the third edition of NAPCS’s Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws.

The report highlights the gains and losses of each state’s ranking against the Model Law, and contains capsule summaries of existing state provisions and how they measure up (or not). While Ohio made some positive changes to certain charter school provisions in the most recent budget bill (e.g., improvements to authorizer accountability, lifting outdated moratoriums, expanding the areas in which new start-up schools may open), other states made more substantial changes and, as a result, Ohio ranks 28^th out of the 42 states with charter laws.

According to the Ohio Department of Education, approximately 106,534 Ohio students attend charter schools as of February 2012. Regardless of rankings, Ohio policymakers should continue to seek improvements to Ohio’s charter school program. Removing the two school limit on board membership for trustees of high performing schools, scrutinizing transportation funding to ensure that charter schools that choose to transport their own students are funded fairly, examining potential conflicts of interest between sponsors (aka authorizers) and updating existing Ohio law to align with federal language regarding single gender charter schools would be a solid start.

In addition to the written report, NAPCS also provides an interactive, state-by-state map, available here.

There has been much discussion recently about teacher effectiveness: can it be measured, how much of it should depend on student outcome, and what are the consequences of these evaluations. The Obama administration placed its seal of approval on teacher evaluations by releasing yet another round of Race to the Top, this one aimed at improving teacher effectiveness. Leading up to the U.S. Department of Education’s release of RESPECT, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released the 2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook.

The 2011 release makes the fifth edition of the State Teacher Policy Yearbook, in which NCTQ takes a look at the laws and policies concerning teacher quality in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each state receives a grade for five specific goal areas, and an overall grade that summarizes how the state matched up against the five goals. The goal areas are:

• Delivering well prepared teachers
• Expanding the teaching pool
• Identifying effective teachers
• Retaining effective teachers
• Exiting Ineffective teachers

Ohio ranked seventh in the nation with an overall grade of C+, beating the national grade of D+ by a whole letter grade. The Buckeye State’s best score, a B-, was in “Expanding the teaching pool”. In this goal area, our policy strengths are alternative licensure routes that require evidence of content knowledge, flexibility for nontraditional students, and licensure for content experts to teach part-time. Ohio ran into trouble with “Delivering well prepared teachers,” receiving a meager D+ grade. Our policy weaknesses are in that category are generic K-12 special education licensure, no requirement of proof of effectiveness for those selected as cooperating teachers, and teaching programs not held accountable for the quality of teachers they produce.

NCTQ also notes that this 2011 report card only takes into account policies already in place, not legislation in the works or changes yet to be implemented -- specifically noting that most state recipients of Race to the Top funds have not fully implemented the promises each made in their applications. Thus, any of Ohio’s policy changes promised in our Race to the Top application, like a new teacher evaluation system, are not reflected in this report card. The Buckeye State was ranked number 11 in the nation for progress since the 2009 report card, and with changes on tap through Race to the Top and the state budget bill, we should only improve before the next report is issued.

In the ed reform world, we’re accustomed to hearing, and making, calls for students to spend more time in school -- especially those students who are lagging behind their peers academically. But a bill pending in the Ohio General Assembly would make it possible for students to spend far less time in school than they do now.

House Bill 191, co-sponsored by Rep. Patmon (a Cleveland Democrat) and Rep. Hayes (a Republican representing rural east-central Ohio), would change the definition of a school year from 182 days (of roughly 5.5 hours in length) to 960 hours for K-6 (excluding half-day kindergartners) and 1,050 for 7-12, define a school week as five days in length, and eliminate calamity days.

The bill would also make true for Buckeye teachers the old joke that “there are three good reasons to become a teacher: June, July, and August” by prohibiting schools from operating between Memorial Day and Labor Day and banning extracurricular activities over Labor Day weekend. Such proposals are offered in the legislature here every year or two, pushed by the state’s two large amusement parks and other summer tourist destinations that want cheap, teenage labor available for the full summer, not to mention more summer days when families can visit. (Rep. Hayes readily admits he sponsored the bill in order to boost the state’s tourism industry.)

Much of the clamor over the bill, which has been panned by several newspaper editorial boards and education groups, regards the fact that districts could essentially shave five weeks off the current school year if they adhered to the minimum hours. That’s certainly a risk, though perhaps not as likely as critics worry. Charter schools in Ohio are required to offer only 920 hours of instruction annually but most outpace that by at least ten percent. And with all of the new accountability provisions for schools and teachers that were put in place via last year’s budget bill, school leaders would be foolish to drastically curb the amount of time students spend learning and teachers spend teaching.

My problem with the bill is that while it unties districts’ hands in one regard, it shackles them in others. Changing to a school year based on hours could provide schools a tremendous amount of flexibility in scheduling. For example, charter schools relish the ability to schedule frequent half-day professional development sessions for teachers but still get “credit” for the several hours of instruction provided to students the other half of the day, while district schools are limited in the number of such PD days they can offer and “count” as school days. The bill also admirably eliminates calamity days, requiring schools to make up missed instructional time.

But requiring that a school week lasts five days removes the opportunity, as just one example, for districts to save money on transportation and energy by moving to a four-day week. And it’s well-documented that students slide back academically over summer break. Lengthening that break (few, if any, districts in Ohio currently adhere to a Labor-Day-to-Memorial-Day schedule) would only worsen the regression. Changing those provisions could make this bill a model for states providing true flexibility and autonomy to districts when it comes to how and when they offer instruction.

White Hat Management has been the Goliath of Ohio’s charter school operators since its first schools opened in 1999. The company currently operates 33 schools in the Buckeye State. White Hat’s CEO David Brennan was a pioneer in Ohio’s school-choice movement and his efforts in this realm have long faced criticism– some deserved and some not. In recent years White Hat’s schools have faced a series of legal and academic problems. Among them, the fact that none of White Hat’s schools are rated above a C on the state report card, increased competition resulting in lower enrollment, legal action brought against the company by the governing boards of some of the schools it operates, and a related fight over the disclosure of certain financial records.

These issues have made White Hat a fixture in the press, most recently with a report that the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) rejected four of six White Hat applications to the department to authorize new schools that were slated to open in the fall of 2012. (ODE is allowed to sponsor up to five new charter schools a year as part of a compromise in the biennial budget that made the department a charter authorizer almost a decade after being forced from that role by an earlier General Assembly.)

The rejection of the White Hat applications will come as a surprise to many observers because ODE has rarely challenged large, not to mention politically well-connected, operators. It appears, however, that the department has committed itself to quality and performance. Its rejection of the White Hat applications appears to be based on merit – they simply weren’t very good applications and lacked basic clarity on matters of separation of authority between the operator and the schools’ governing authorities

This decision by the state department comes on the heels of the biennial budget passed last June that put in place several measures to advance the charter quality agenda in Ohio. These changes included stricter rules on the opening of new charter schools via stronger parameters around sponsor accountability, with the law now prohibiting sponsors from opening any new schools if their portfolio of schools (dropout recovery and special needs schools excepted) is ranked among the lowest 20 percent of community school sponsors based on student achievement.

While the Ohio Department of Education botched sponsorship in the early 2000s, this new focus on accountability and performance is to be commended. Ohio’s charter school program will be stronger and better if decisions around schools, and the opening of new schools, are based on merit and performance rather than politics and influence. ODE’s “sponsorship 2.0” is off to a very good start.

Since the birth of the No Child Left Behind Act more than a decade ago, state and local education officials have not kept quiet their disdain for the federal law. So when President Obama announced in September that his administration would offer states freedom from components of the law it is no surprise that states around the country jumped on the chance. Ten states (Colorado, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, and Oklahoma) have already been granted waivers from the Obama Administration with the understanding that they must demonstrate how they will prepare children for college and careers by setting new academic targets to improve achievement among all students, reward high-performing schools, and help those that are falling behind.

Ohio is one of 26 states, along with the District of Columbia that applied for a second-round waiver. If approved (and most observers believe it will be), what will the waiver mean for the Buckeye State? What changes will it bring about in the coming months and years? The chart below breaks down some of the biggest changes and outlines what Ohio schools can expect to see under the plan. (Please see chart below)

State Superintendent Stan Heffner hopes that the proposed changes will result in more students being prepared for either college or the workforce when they leave high school and help end the academic disparity among students. According to the most recent achievement data from the Ohio Department of Education the graduation gap between white and black students is 24 percentage points, a gap of 26 percentage points exists between white and black students on the seventh-grade reading test, and the gap is even larger when looking at fifth-grade math where 37 percentage points separate white and black students.

Ohio has already implemented numerous reform efforts such as smarter performance and accountability laws for charter schools, a meaningful teacher evaluation system, and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards. Yet, the state’s increased focus on rigorous standards, accountability, and performance will make for a rough transition, as Heffner warns: “parents won’t see as many As on school report cards.”

Need a handy nutshell summary of state charter school laws and how they stack up against the Model Charter School Law developed by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS)? Then check out the third edition of NAPCS’s Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws.

The report highlights the gains and losses of each state’s ranking against the Model Law, and contains capsule summaries of existing state provisions and how they measure up (or not). While Ohio made some positive changes to certain charter school provisions in the most recent budget bill (e.g., improvements to authorizer accountability, lifting outdated moratoriums, expanding the areas in which new start-up schools may open), other states made more substantial changes and, as a result, Ohio ranks 28^th out of the 42 states with charter laws.

According to the Ohio Department of Education, approximately 106,534 Ohio students attend charter schools as of February 2012. Regardless of rankings, Ohio policymakers should continue to seek improvements to Ohio’s charter school program. Removing the two school limit on board membership for trustees of high performing schools, scrutinizing transportation funding to ensure that charter schools that choose to transport their own students are funded fairly, examining potential conflicts of interest between sponsors (aka authorizers) and updating existing Ohio law to align with federal language regarding single gender charter schools would be a solid start.

In addition to the written report, NAPCS also provides an interactive, state-by-state map, available here.

There has been much discussion recently about teacher effectiveness: can it be measured, how much of it should depend on student outcome, and what are the consequences of these evaluations. The Obama administration placed its seal of approval on teacher evaluations by releasing yet another round of Race to the Top, this one aimed at improving teacher effectiveness. Leading up to the U.S. Department of Education’s release of RESPECT, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released the 2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook.

The 2011 release makes the fifth edition of the State Teacher Policy Yearbook, in which NCTQ takes a look at the laws and policies concerning teacher quality in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each state receives a grade for five specific goal areas, and an overall grade that summarizes how the state matched up against the five goals. The goal areas are:

• Delivering well prepared teachers
• Expanding the teaching pool
• Identifying effective teachers
• Retaining effective teachers
• Exiting Ineffective teachers

Ohio ranked seventh in the nation with an overall grade of C+, beating the national grade of D+ by a whole letter grade. The Buckeye State’s best score, a B-, was in “Expanding the teaching pool”. In this goal area, our policy strengths are alternative licensure routes that require evidence of content knowledge, flexibility for nontraditional students, and licensure for content experts to teach part-time. Ohio ran into trouble with “Delivering well prepared teachers,” receiving a meager D+ grade. Our policy weaknesses are in that category are generic K-12 special education licensure, no requirement of proof of effectiveness for those selected as cooperating teachers, and teaching programs not held accountable for the quality of teachers they produce.

NCTQ also notes that this 2011 report card only takes into account policies already in place, not legislation in the works or changes yet to be implemented -- specifically noting that most state recipients of Race to the Top funds have not fully implemented the promises each made in their applications. Thus, any of Ohio’s policy changes promised in our Race to the Top application, like a new teacher evaluation system, are not reflected in this report card. The Buckeye State was ranked number 11 in the nation for progress since the 2009 report card, and with changes on tap through Race to the Top and the state budget bill, we should only improve before the next report is issued.