A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
February 8, 2006, Volume 1, Number 6
Contents
Editorial
Investigative Analysis
Recommended Reading
Reviews
Announcements
Editorial
Making Choice Work in Dayton
Dayton is a leader in school choice. This city of just 165,000 residents provides families with educational options not typical of a city its size.
Charter schools are well established and now serve over 7,000 students. A long-standing privately funded scholarship program provides still more options for children in troubled schools, while a state funded voucher program, slated to launch later in 2006, will make even more options available. And though underutilized, there is even choice within the traditional public school system. Dayton has an open-enrollment policy, allowing parents to choose any school in the system, not just their neighborhood school. As a result, the approximately 90 schools serving Dayton’s children are equally divided among traditional public, charter, and private options.
School choice advocates argue that all lead to increased quality as parents flock to the highest performing schools. It’s clear that Dayton parents are taking advantage of the choices now available to them, but is school quality foremost in their decisions?
GreatSchools, one of the nation’s premier suppliers of school information to parents, is trying to find out.
A series of focus groups conducted in November by GreatSchools with Dayton’s low-income parents in November began revealing how parents decide what school to choose. When these parents were children themselves, the only school choices available were the assigned public school, private schools, or moving to a different district. So it wasn’t too surprising to learn that some of these parents were not aware that their children have many more choices. Others knew options were available, but felt they could not take advantage of them because of their work schedules or of the distance of their school of choice from their home.
Yet other parents were active consumers of school choice, and they provided us with some interesting insights. These parents were mobile and willing to put their children into schools that were distant from their homes and places of employment. Most of these parents had pulled their children from neighborhood schools because they were dissatisfied with the educational fare their children were receiving. But few could be more specific than that.
Most parents, for example, could not cite a specific reason for moving their children to a new school. All said they wanted to choose a good school. But “good” remained undefined. Most parents chose a school based on the recommendation of a friend, family member, or service provider such as Head Start. Others said that they generally had heard "that it was a good school" but didn’t investigate what that actually meant in practice. The bottom line is that most parents were not basing their decisions on a systematic evaluation of schools’ educational quality. And while almost all parents said academic quality is a top priority for them, most haven’t been using this as a factor when choosing a school.
How can we at GreatSchools help Dayton parents make better choices?
Urban parents need basic academic literacy. This means understanding school choice and navigating all the opportunities and challenges this presents. While some basic school quality information exists, it’s often buried in state web sites or packaged in hard-to-read booklets that few parents have the time to understand. In our focus groups, we found that some parents understood the language used to describe academic performance in Ohio (State Achievement tests, Terra Nova exams, percent of students proficient, etc.), but many did not. It was clear that most parents needed better explanations of the testing systems, the state’s school rating system, and what their children’s individual standardized test scores actually mean.
These parents want information they can understand and use. They want specific information about test scores, after-school activities, tutoring services, and special needs programs. We also discovered that parents in Dayton are becoming increasingly savvy about school information. Some parents in our focus groups said they wanted to know the proficiency rates in their children’s schools or the graduation rates of local high schools.
Another important thing we discovered is that parents in Dayton want information about school quality, but they want this not only in a form they understand but from a source they trust. They trust people, and don’t often use Web sites (the primary mode of delivery for GreatSchools in other states). The “build it, and they will come” mentality does not always work with urban parents. Producing informational materials and posting it on the web is not enough. Our focus group parents made clear that they do not use the Internet as a regular source of information, and that, even if aware of materials available on the Web, they would be unlikely to use them. The information Dayton parents get—and trust—comes largely from existing social networks; family, friends and their churches, in the form of the spoken word. These networks are rooted deeply in their communities.
Thus it is clear to us that, if parents in Dayton are to take full advantage of the many school choice options now being presented to them, they will need community partners they trust to provide them with decent information. GreatSchools is working with allies from the Dayton Public Schools, charter schools, private schools, philanthropy, local universities, and community groups to provide Daytonians with high quality school information. In terms of dissemination, community buy-in is key because it will be up to the schools, community groups, churches and others to get this information into the hands of parents and to answer their questions.
In Dayton, we are witnessing an exciting transformation. A partnership between a nationally respected school information organization, and key buy-in from local groups committed to making certain the information is used by parents to make informed decisions about their children’s schools.
Investigative Analysis
The Charter Landscape Updated data on Ohio’s Charter Schools
The Fordham Institute has released new data on charter schools in Ohio, including their enrollment numbers, operating budgets and contact information. Summary information provides insights into where Ohio’s charters are located, the types of students they serve, the types of school operators in the state, and what types of organizations sponsor charter schools. This material owes much to Fordham staffers Terry Ryan, Kristi Phillips-Schwartz, and Allison Porch and to the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information please download our Charter School Information Directory and Ohio’s Charter School Landscape as of February 2006 (large file).
Following the money
As Yogi Berra once said: “You can observe a lot, just by watching.” I’ve been a reporter for 30 years, and have covered nearly every kind of story – except for education.
Now that I am doing some writing and editing for the Ohio Education Gadfly, I’ll be looking at education a lot.
There is an old bit of journalism advice that says, to find a story, follow the money.
Looking over the intense debate about funding charter schools, here is what I found.
Beleaguered charter operators in Ohio must sometimes feel as if they are being attacked on all sides. In many cases, they are.
The latest assault comes from critics who charge that charter schools are taking state money away from traditional district schools and making them more, not less, reliant on local property taxes. (See “Schools lose state funds”.) This is a clever ploy in a state where the Ohio Supreme Court has ordered legislators, on four separate occasions, to be less dependent on local taxes in order to reduce funding inequities between the state’s rich and poor districts. It also may be a strong emotional argument for the state’s large urban school districts which are seeing a decline in both their local property values and home ownership rates. They are witness to a declining tax-base at a time when they are seeing increases in insurance costs for employees, rising fuel costs for transportation of students, and escalating costs in employee benefits.
No doubt some urban districts are hurting and calls for new levies are doubtless just around the corner, but the argument that charter schools are the cause of their pain just doesn’t happen to have any merit.
It is true that, when a student abandons his or her low-performing neighborhood school and chooses a charter school instead, the child’s state and some of the federal money walks out the door, too. But the traditional school no longer has to educate that student. Hence, per-pupil funding, the way the state primarily figures a child’s best chance at a good education, actually goes up in the district that the child exited. District money stays in the district when a child goes to a charter school. That’s not good for charter schools but it’s financially advantageous to districts—and they know it, which is part of the reason they fight so hard to keep the charters on short rations. Still, it’s a fact that few people in Ohio fully appreciate. When children attend a charter school, the district keeps the non-state money that local taxpayers pay for their education.
As a result of local dollars staying in district coffers, charter schools educate students at a lower per-pupil rate than do traditional schools, and districts have more per pupil funding for the children who stay behind. Charter schools are public schools doing the public’s business, while providing a choice that many parents clearly want. Good charter schools also see themselves as the R&D department of the education business, but right now it is research on a shoestring.
Charters receive no state money for facilities, are limited in their growth and must fight off legal challenges to their very existence. Charters have a distance still to go in meeting state and federal testing standards, but at the same time many are exploring creative approaches, such as conducting schooling on-line, focusing directly on more science and math, and dealing with some of the state’s most ill-prepared students.
For these reasons, they need more economic parity, not less, and this is a mantra that too few hear or share.
Give parents a chance to make a fair choice, because as Yogi also said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll wind up someplace else.”
For extra credit, check out the following:
by Dale Patrick Dempsey
Recommended Reading
Making a difference
Evidence of the positive effects of charter schools appeared in two recent articles. The Dayton Daily News reported that the dropout rate in Montgomery County was cut in half between 2000 and 2005, falling from 25.6% to 12.3% That is an impressive accomplishment, and it is the result of the county’s Out of School Task Force, a network of programs linked to charter schools. Compare that to Lucas County, where the dropout rate remained at about 24%. (See “School dropout percentage cut,” by Jim Bebbington, Dayton Daily News, February 8, 2006)
The Wall Street Journal reported that an Arkansas town used its formation of charter schools to show Toyota its commitment to keeping a trained workforce. The auto company now plans an engine plant there. (See "As Detroit Slashes Car Jobs, Southern Towns Pick Up Slack," by Norihiko Shirouzu, Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2006)
Reviews
Learning on the Job: When business takes on public schools
In Ohio about 27,500 students currently attend schools run by for-profit and non-profit school management organizations. That number is likely to grow in coming years, so Wilson’s Learning on the Job has particular relevance to K-12 education in the Buckeye State. Wilson, founder and former CEO of Advantage Schools, puts forth a detailed biography of the individuals and organizations that have built many of America’s largest school management organizations – Edison Schools, Chancellor Beacon Academies, SABIS, National Heritage Academies (NHA), Mosaica Education, Advantage Schools, and the non-profit KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program). All but Advantage continue to operate schools, and Edison, NHA and Mosaica are currently operating schools in Ohio. SABIS operated a school in Cincinnati until 2002.
According to Wilson, the founders of these organizations came into the education business with different business models, different models of education, and different management styles and histories. Yet they shared the belief that they could accelerate student learning and ultimately outperform traditional district schools. These path-breaking organizations also bought into the notion of authority and autonomy in return for accountability. Wilson notes that these operators have had varying degrees of success and have grown acutely aware of the challenges of running high-performing schools in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty and myriad social ills. Wilson acknowledges that the experience humbled him and his colleagues at Advantage. He observes that “The first education entrepreneurs were sobered by the difficulty of the task.”
Despite the challenges faced by these organizations – including operating in hostile political environments – they have succeeded in at least four important ways. First, they have shown that it is possible for private enterprise to operate public schools successfully, both as businesses and as places of academic success. The challenge on the academic side—long understood by many district superintendents—is creating success across all schools and not just in isolated instances. Second, they have injected into public education the long-held American values of competition and innovation. Third, they have highlighted one of the central problems facing K-12 education generally – the problem of recruiting, retaining and rewarding high quality school leaders and teachers. Fourth, these operators have helped to demonstrate that academic success in urban schools needs to be measured not just by absolute performance but also by academic gains over time. These are significant contributions to public education, but the really exciting takeaway from Wilson’s book is that this is still a very young industry. As the lessons of these first operators are taken to heart and incorporated by current and future operators, the result should be a steadily improving collection of school models. That would mean better and more educational opportunities for America’s neediest youngsters. To get a copy of Wilson’s book go to: www.hup.harvard.edu
by Terry Ryan
Announcements
Job Openings
Are you an educator and an instructional leader who believes that all children can learn and be successful? Keys to Improving Dayton Schools is planning to operate a high quality, high performing school, and we are now looking for people who want to be one of our Founding School Leaders. We plan to set ambitious, yet quantifiable, goals for students, using the best
available data, to help them reach their full potential.
We are also seeking Founding School Teachers. To view complete job descriptions for these listings, please visit the k.i.d.s. website.