THE OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY

A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
November 2, 2005, Volume 1, Number 1

Contents
Welcome to the Ohio Education Gadfly

Editorial

Recommended Reading

Reviews and Analysis

Welcome to the Ohio Education Gadfly
Now Buzzing the Buckeye State
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Ohio Gadfly, a bi-weekly source for news, analysis, and insight into the education reform effort in Ohio. This e-newsletter is written, edited, and produced right here in the Buckeye State by staff of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Dayton. Since 1998, Fordham has been out front on school reform issues in our home community and across the state. In 2005, we took the unprecedented step of putting our credibility on the line (and our ideals into action) by becoming a charter school sponsor. Our unique combination of policy expertise and practical experience will inform each issue in a way that no other publication in the state can. The Ohio Gadfly is an off-shoot of the original Education Gadfly, published in Washington, D.C., which launched in 2001 and today reaches 7,000 readers across the country. Our new publication will surely benefit from its older sibling's experience. Also, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is providing grant money that is critical to our success. We believe The Ohio Gadfly will play an important role in informing the dialogue and inspiring the debate around pressing issues facing K-12 education in the Buckeye State, and your feedback and comments are most welcome. Please share your ideas about anything we write by sending your comments to [email protected].

—Chester E. Finn, Jr., President and Terry Ryan, Vice President for Ohio Programs and Policy
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
November 2, 2005

Editorial
POLITICOS BEWARE! Ohioans are Halfway Out The Door?
Nobody doubts that the "powers that be" in Columbus have been busily tinkering with the K-12 education system. Over the past half-decade legislative changes have come on six fronts:

  1. The state launched a results-based accountability system that has been modified and shaped by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
  2. Ohio's school rating and school report-card systems are yielding high-visibility and attention-getting annual appraisals of every school and school system in the state.
  3. The state made changes in its teacher preparation and certification processes.
  4. Ohio developed a charter school system of 250 schools serving upwards of 70,000 students.
  5. The state enacted the Ohio Education Choice Scholarship Program—a voucher program for children in the state's most troubled schools.
  6. There has been nonstop revision of the state's approach to school financing, partly dictated by the courts, and partly led by the executive and legislative branches.

But what do ordinary Ohioans think about all this? How do parents, taxpayers, and citizens view public schooling in 2005? Do they like these reforms? Seek more or less of them? Have confidence that they'll succeed?

Fordham decided to find out. So, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we enlisted analysts Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett to examine the attitudes of Ohio residents toward their public schools. Nobody does this better than Farkas and Duffett, who have a combined 25 years of experience in opinion research and social policy. Their bona fides, as well as the full survey, are available here.

Ohio's politicians should heed the survey's findings—especially the one indicating that the state's residents don't have much confidence in their leaders' efforts to improve the schools. Just four percent of survey respondents say that state elected officials and legislators are "doing a good job" when it comes to public education.

This is a problem. Serious education reform demands strong, competent leadership for two reasons. First, kids don't have lobbyists to look after their interests. The inertia and resistance to change manifested by the education system and its myriad adult interest groups are so powerful that, absent first-rate leadership, one must expect nothing much to change. This is particularly dangerous for a state with weak job growth, anemic economic growth, and signs of a brain drain.

Second, while Ohioans substantially agree about many of the problems facing public education and the reforms needed to address those problems, they are split down the middle on others. Effective leadership is mandatory, else nothing will change.

This would be okay if nothing needed to change, but Ohioans surely don't think so—and plenty of objective evidence says they are correct. Only a third of survey respondents—and fewer than one in five African Americans—believe their local public schools are "doing pretty well and need little change." Virtually all others want "major change" or "a whole new system." This is no surprise in a state where close to half of respondents also see the economy as a serious issue. Ohioans know that education and economic opportunity are connected, and they're worried about both.

But there's good news in the survey, too. On many important education issues and reform ideas, Ohioans manifest broad agreement as to what's wrong, what's important, and what ought to happen.
Here are five key education topics where we see something akin to consensus:

  1. Money alone won't accomplish much. Respondents believe it would "get lost along the way" to classroom improvement (69 percent).
  2. Stop social promotion and automatic graduation. Teachers should pass kids to the next grade "only if they learn what they are supposed to know" (87 percent) and high school students should pass tests "in each of the major subjects before they can graduate" (83 percent).
  3. Free-up the front-line educators. Local schools ought to have considerably greater freedom and control over curriculum, budgets, and, especially, firing "teachers that aren't performing" (89 percent).
  4. Reward good teachers. Good teachers should be rewarded with higher pay (84 percent) and paid more if they "work in tough neighborhoods with hard-to-reach students" (77 percent).
  5. Enforce discipline. Schools should enforce strict discipline with regard to student behavior, dress, and speech (91 percent).

Putting these ideas into practice would be a good first step for Ohio education. But it's not enough. However, the public hasn't made up its mind about other promising reform initiatives such as charter schools, the No Child Left Behind Act, interventions in low-performing schools, public-school choice, virtual schooling, and vouchers.

That's no big surprise. All these reforms are new and as yet have incomplete or conflicting evidence as to how they're faring. Some charter schools, for example, are doing a superb job of educating the state's neediest children, but others are performing dismally. No Child Left Behind has only been in force for a few years and most of the actions it is supposed to trigger have not yet happened. The statewide voucher program has not even begun. So there's no reason to expect the public to have made up its mind about these efforts.

Knowing that the jury is out, opponents of such reforms will no doubt intensify their efforts to persuade people that these are bad (or even failed) ideas. Nonsense. They're innovations that need honest implementation and fair-minded evaluation. Reformers must recognize, however, that because the public hasn't made up its mind about these, much hinges on how successfully these reforms are put into place and how well they work.

But state officials also have a weighty obligation in this regard. Once they place Ohio's education system on a reform track, they need to ensure that it's properly implemented, not undone by bureaucrats, or nibbled away at the edges. At Fordham, for example, where we've recently shouldered responsibility for sponsoring some charter schools, we're reminded every day of how little freedom "to be different" these schools actually enjoy, how heavily they're still regulated, and how meagerly they're funded. That's no fair test of this promising idea, which means policymakers haven't really done their job.

Maybe that's what the public had in mind when 69 percent said that elected officials "could be doing a lot better"!

At day's end, however, observers and participants in the Ohio public education scene need, above all, to keep in mind the depth of the public's discontent with what they're being provided today. That's why this report is titled "Halfway Out the Door." Its single most compelling finding is that "if money were not an issue," only 46 percent of white public school parents and 30 percent of black parents would prefer that their child continue to attend a district-operated public school. A staggering 48 percent of white public school parents and 68 percent of black parents would opt for private (or charter) schools. Everyone who wants public education to succeed in Ohio needs to pay attention. There is profound frustration with the state's K-12 education system, and the cry for leadership is loud.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Terry Ryan

Recommended Reading
Why did it take so long?
In the short two years an Indianapolis charter school was open, it mismanaged funds and didn't prove academically viable. The result? Despite a public outcry to keep the school open, officials wasted no time in shuttering its doors. Contrast that with the long overdue closing of The International Preparatory School (TIPS) in Cleveland. TIPS's financial woes trace all the way back to 2001, when an audit showed the school had illegally spent $98,000 of public funds. Throughout the six years TIPS was in operation, the school languished in Academic Emergency. Yet, when Attorney General Jim Petro announced the school would be closing there was an outpouring of the support for the school by some of the parents whose children attended it, and there were threats of lawsuits. It appears that, after much hemming and hawing on all sides, TIPS is no more. Watching from afar, and with less than perfect information on both cases, we applaud Indianapolis for following through on its obligation to close failing schools in a timely fashion. We wonder: why did it take Ohio so long to do the same?

"Petro wants charter school closed," by Scott Stephens, The Plain Dealer, October 21, 2005
 "Auditor: Shut charter school," by Scott Stephens, The Plain Dealer, October 12, 2005
 "City threatens to shut charter school," by Kim L. Hooper, Indianapolis Star, October 6, 2005 

School attendance shenanigans
They say that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, but in the world of public education, that axiom is not always followed. Take, for example, Cleveland Public Schools' recent attendance policy controversy. For the 2004-05 school year, CPS reported an astonishingly low number of excused absences (just 620, while Columbus reported over 300,000 for the same time frame). This, thanks to a new category created in 2002 by CPS ("excused with homework") whereby students were counted present so long as they completed their assignments upon returning to school. State officials mysteriously did not notice the discrepancy. But recent legislative efforts by charter school opponents to fine charter operators and sponsors up to $5,000 for failing to report accurate data suggest that expectations are not always fair for the underdog. Fortunately, after the Cleveland scandal was exposed, the Ohio legislature announced it will hold hearings regarding public school attendance. Hopefully the result will be fair requirements for reliable reporting from both traditional and charter schools. To which Gadfly says, "Bring it on!"

"District staff aimed to skew absence data," by Janet Okoben, The Plain Dealer, October 18, 2005 
 "Schools admit attendance error," by Janet Okoben, The Plain Dealer, October 14, 2005
"Students rarely marked absent," by Janet Okoben, The Plain Dealer, October 6, 2005

Reviews and Analysis
Why do parents in Columbus choose charter schools?
What is it about charter schools that's tantalizing enough to lure families away from district schools? Is it Disney vacations? Free TiVo? According to the Kids Ohio survey, it's something less glitzy—plain business sense. Charter schools listen to their clients (parents and teachers) and offer the products (schools) that meet their varying needs accordingly. Among the top reasons why parents and guardians of Columbus charter school students made the switch: 1) the charter schools' attention to safety and discipline; 2) their focus on individual student needs; 3) their ability to address specific, unmet academic or physical needs; 4) their overall quality of education; and 5) their attention to parent-school communication. Of the 371 people surveyed, just 13 percent will return their children to district schools next year. The vast majority were satisfied with their children's new digs. Perhaps the district could lure back a few students with some bling-bling, but probably not. Parents and students have long since learned that all that glitters isn't gold. To read the report, click here.

by Allison Porch

Lone Ranger
It's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly time at the charter schools corral. And David Brennan, famed industrialist and creator of the White Hat school management company, stars in all three roles. To charter supporters he's the hero, to the teachers unions he's the villain, and as for the ugly, well, keep reading. The showdown started when the Columbus Dispatch ran a series of articles about Brennan and his White Hat Life Skills schools, which serve students that the public school system left behind—high school drop-outs. The day after the Dispatch ran its front-page story on Brennan, the Ohio Federation of Teachers charged his schools company with not testing all of its students, and thereby seeking to cover up its (ugly) student achievement record. This seems a strange accusation to make as the schools under question were all rated in the state's lowest ranking—Academic Emergency. You'd think that if White Hat were going to cheat they'd at least seek a decent state rating. So what's going on? At least four possibilities (or some combination of the following) spring to mind:

  1. The schools are waiting for students (these are young people with reading levels far behind their age-level peers) to get to a point in their studies where they feel the students have a fighting chance to pass the graduate test before administering it to the students. Why test kids when you know they will fail (this is a question with which drop-out recovery schools, and some regular high schools, across the Buckeye State are grappling)?
  2. Drop-out students, or those on the verge of dropping out, are hard to test because they are mobile and may not show up on test day.
  3. The schools messed up some of the student data by coding names in wrongly, or by not coding in names at all.
  4. White Hat cares first about the money and less about ensuring complete compliance with testing, and morally they have persuaded themselves this is acceptable because the alternative for these kids is the streets.

Regardless of the reason, or reasons, for the data problems, this is just the most recent chapter of the fight. The sheer numbers in Ohio's charter posse—over 250 schools serving close to 70,000 students—now residing in Ohio will keep school choice opponents from running charters out of town any time soon.

"Self-appointed superintendent," by Joe Hallett, Columbus Dispatch October 23, 2005
"Union says few Brennan pupils tested," by Scott Stephens, Cleveland Plain Dealer October 25, 2005
"Teachers' union claims Toledo charter school withheld test," Toledo Blade, October 28, 2005
"Charter schools' test data lacking," by Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard, Akron Beacon-Journal, October 28, 2005
 

by Allison Porch, Terry Ryan