A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
April 26, 2006, Volume 1, Number 11
Contents
Editorial
Guest Editorial
Investigative Analysis
Reviews
Announcements
Editorial
Can Ohio Handle Union-Sponsored Charter Schools?
Both the Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT) and the Ohio Education Association (OEA) have hinted in recent weeks that they are going to work to unionize charter school teachers. The move is not unique to Ohio. The American Federation of Teachers, for example, now represents teachers in 30 charter schools scattered across ten states.
Moreover, in New York City the United Federation of Teachers has opened an elementary charter school and has plans to open a secondary school in September. In California, Green Dot Public Schools operates five high-performing charter schools in Los Angeles and the teachers are part of Green Dot Public Schools’ teachers union.
But the overall good will that exists between charters and the unions outside Ohio is not to be found here. That’s because the OFT is aggressively trying to stop charter schools. Consider the case Ohio Federation of Teachers et al. v. Ohio State Board of Education, which is pending before the state Supreme Court. Both supporters and opponents of charter schools are watching to see if the high court rules in favor of the OFT, and decision that would mean:
It’s easy to see why charter supporters in the Buckeye State believe the efforts of the OFT and the OEA to organize teachers in existing charter schools is little more than another tactic to make life hard and increasingly costly for the state’s charter school operators.
Charter schools that are considering unionizing should remember that one of the freedoms most cherished by charter school operators is their ability to hire and fire teachers, without having to go through a long and expensive grievance process. A second significant freedom allows charter schools to reward truly outstanding teachers with better pay. Charter schools can pay teachers extra for excellent performance or for working longer hours, or teaching demanding subjects such as math; likewise, they can offer combat pay for teaching the toughest classes. Collective bargaining agreements make such flexible remuneration arrangements difficult if not impossible, and they far too often reward seniority over performance or school need.
None of this is to say that unions and charter schools cannot coexist in Ohio. In fact, the OFT and OEA could, instead of simply unionizing teachers, sponsor their own charter schools, a right afforded them under current state law.
It’s intriguing to imagine union-sponsored charter schools competing against the state’s current charters for students, teachers, and academic success. This would be far healthier competition than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars slugging it out in the courts.
Both the leadership of the OFT and the OEA have said that they aren’t opposed to the charter school idea, but that they think Ohio’s charters have got it all wrong. Okay, let them show us how to do it right.
Straight Talk About Charter Schools, by Randi Weingarten, United Federation of Teachers, April 4, 2006.
Green Dot Public Schools.
by Terry Ryan
The Schools That Dare Not Speak Their Name
That Oprah has discovered school reform is probably a good thing, if only because she adds middlebrow legitimacy and an immense audience to most of the causes that she embraces, and because far too many Americans (middle-, high-, and low-brow alike) need reminding their schools, too, not just those across town, need a kick in the pants.
Her two-part discussion on April 11 and 12 had millions of viewers. It had some fine moments and did a competent job of framing “the problem” with primary-secondary education in the U.S. It included an impassioned, convincing talk by Bill and Melinda Gates about the urgency of radical reform, in which their foundation is investing many millions. The two-part show also profiled three terrific schools that have succeeded in boosting the achievement of disadvantaged kids, thus illustrating what can be done despite the many barriers to change erected by the education establishment and the political system. Sacramento’s St. Hope Public Schools, San Diego’s High Tech High, and the District of Columbia’s KIPP school are all swell examples of schools that beat the odds.
What nobody on the Oprah show let their millions of views know, however, is that all three of these fine educational institutions are charter schools—and schools of choice. The word “charter” was never uttered—not by Oprah, not by the Gateses, not by the people describing these schools. The very omission of the word begs the conclusion that the show’s planners and producers banned it, or edited it out.
Why would this be? One can only speculate. At best, maybe they dream that schools don’t really need charter status to accomplish these things, or that the charter part of their existence isn’t all that important. At worst, it’s because they’re embarrassed, or politically afraid, to admit that critics of the public school monopoly might just be right: that it needs to be busted if kids, especially poor kids, are to have a ready supply of great schools to attend.
To be sure, not all great schools are chartered. And not all chartered schools are great. But when the fundamental attributes of three great schools profiled on national television include the facts that they operate outside the system, that they enjoy all sorts of freedom that the system doesn’t normally permit, and that they’re attended by kids who are there by choice rather than by assignment—when these features are central to the very existence and success of the schools, wouldn’t you think that Oprah and her guests might feel some obligation to let their viewers in on the secret?
(This piece first appeared as a guest comment on Eduwonk.com.)
by Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Guest Editorial
Hope for America’s Schools: Lessons for Ohio
This essay is authored by Kati Haycock, director of Education Trust, and presents an overview of the themes she will discuss on May 10 at her an address in Columbus. The event, which is open to the public, is sponsored by KidsOhio.org. To register, click here.
Every year countless children enter America’s schools lacking the knowledge and skills we expect of them. Sometimes it’s poverty that’s to blame. Other times, there is a language barrier or family problem. Regardless of the reason, however, the fact remains that they’re behind.
If we were to organize our K-12 educational system to attack early on the gap between those who enter school prepared, and those not prepared, we could lift these children up. Yet we’ve done the opposite. Instead of giving those children lacking fundamental skills more of what they need to improve, we give them less.
How does that happen? Sometimes policymakers' decisions affecting the education of poor and minority children are to blame. For example, policies that send fewer state and local dollars to schools serving advantaged children than to those serving concentrations of poor children.
But other times, it’s the decisions made by educators and school boards—especially in Ohio, where spending on high- and low-poverty schools is more equitable, and where high-minority-population schools receive a little more per student than low-poverty schools—that can be most influential. These include choices about what to expect of whom, what to teach to whom, and perhaps the most damaging choice of all, the choice of who teaches which children.
Poor choices by educators and school boards are simply devastating. Kids who arrive a little behind leave a lot behind. Indeed, by the end of high school, black and Latino students in this nation, on average, are achieving at about the same levels as white students at the end of middle school.
The good news here is that we’re finally beginning to get a handle on these problems. In urban school districts across the country, we’re ratcheting up expectations for low-income and minority students, putting all students in more rigorous curricula, and at least beginning to provide incentives for strong teachers to teach the students who need them most.
The city of Columbus is a good example of this. Because the district has decent choices for its low-income students, achievement there is rising faster than in the state as a whole. And achievement gaps are narrowing. Since 2000, for example, fourth-grade math performance in Columbus has grown at an average of 4.6 points per year, compared with 3.3 in Ohio more generally; at the sixth-grade level, Columbus students grew 2.9 points a year, compared with 1.6 in the state as a whole. In reading, the gains among Columbus fourth-graders were a bit below the state as a whole (3.5 points versus 3.7 points per year), but the gains for sixth-graders were larger (4.5 versus 3.3 points). Moreover, while both black and white students improved, the gaps between the two declined in both subjects and at both grade levels.
Gains aside, no one who has examined the data can be satisfied with the rate of progress. This is especially true at the middle and high school levels, where we are losing the ground we are gaining in our elementary schools. Somehow, we have to move further, faster.
The question is how best to do that.
Our answer as an organization has been to look closely at the practices of schools and districts that are on the performance frontier to understand what they are doing differently.
How is it, for example, that University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts, which serves a student population that is overwhelmingly poor and at least half English-language learners, manages to get 100 percent of its tenth graders to pass the Massachusetts Exit Exam on the first attempt, not the twelfth? How is it that 87 percent of those students don’t just pass, but pass at an advanced or proficient level? How is it, indeed, that this school ranks number five among all Massachusetts’ high schools, far outperforming schools that serve more affluent students?
Or what about Elmont Memorial Junior-Senior High in New York, which serves a student population of about 2,100 mostly black and Latino, blows the top off of the New York State Regents Exams? How does this school, whose demographics would make those who predict these things guess that its achievement would rank in the bottom third of the state, actually rank in the top 10 percent?
When you spend time in these places, the answers are pretty clear.
None of these things is magic. They’re mostly common sense. But they’re not, by and large, things we have typically done in our secondary schools, especially schools serving concentrations of poor children.
The good news, though, is these young people absolutely can achieve at high levels. And they will, if we follow through on these simple lessons.
Kati Haycock is Director of the Education Trust
Investigative Analysis
Teaching Rating Deadline Looms
The school year’s end approaches, and teachers in Ohio are scrambling to make sure they are “highly qualified” by the last day of class, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Under NCLB, a teacher must have at least a bachelor’s degree, full state licensure, and competence in the subject areas they teach to be considered highly qualified. The requirement differs slightly for charter schools, where teachers may hold any state license (full, temporary, conditional, or substitute) and still be considered highly qualified. This gives charter schools the flexibility to hire non-traditional educators.
Despite Ohio’s best efforts to meet the federal highly qualified requirement, it is unlikely that all teachers in the state will be highly qualified by the end of the school year. As of late 2005, the Ohio Department of Education reported that just 92.5 percent of teachers met the federal definition of highly qualified.
And what if Ohio fails to have 100 percent of its teachers rated highly qualified? Well, our state won’t be alone. Very few, if any, states are expected to have 100 percent of their teachers so labeled by this summer. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, recognizing this fact, announced last October that states will not lose federal funds if they are making good faith efforts to comply with the law. However, if they employ teachers that have not met the requirements, school leaders will have to send letters to parents alerting them to the fact that their children are being taught by non-highly qualified teachers.
No matter what the labeling requirements of NCLB, it’s important for those passionate about quality education to remember that a bachelor’s degree plus content knowledge plus state licensure do not always equal a truly highly qualified teacher. For example, research has consistently shown large variations in teacher effectiveness regardless of whether they hold traditional state licensure. After reviewing the most current research available on teacher quality, the Brookings Institute concludes that teachers “with traditional certification do not outperform those without certification in promoting student achievement.” Moreover, there’s “little consistent evidence that graduate degree attainment can identify effective teachers.”
The usefulness of traditional, generic teacher licensure tests like the Praxis to confer highly qualified status has also been called into question recently. A study conducted by Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington matched North Carolina teachers’ scores on the Praxis exam with their students’ skills on standardized tests. The study found almost no correlation.
Common sense says that the best way to identify teachers of true high quality is through the achievement of their students, and this argument is gaining ground. The Brookings report calls for lowering the barriers for becoming a teacher, identifying good teachers based on job performance, and offering bonus pay based on student achievement.
The bottom line: We should not expect to see drastic changes in Ohio schools simply because more teachers meet the federal definition of a highly qualified teacher. Good credentials are useful to consider, but results in the classroom still matter most.
Letter from Margaret Spellings to Chief State School Officers, October 2005.
“Implementation of the Highly Qualified Teacher Requirement in Ohio,” Legislative Office of Education Oversight, November 2005
“Most States Say Teachers Meet Standards,” Staff and Wire Reports, Plain Dealer, April 16, 2006.
Identifying Effective Teaching Using Performance on the Job, by Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O Staiger, Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, April 2006.
Highly Qualified Teachers and Paraprofessionals in Charter Schools: A Guide for Charter School Authorizers, by Paul T. O’Neill, National Association of Charter School Authorizers, January 2006.
by Kathryn Mullen Upton
Reviews
A Consumer Guide for School Operators
In Ohio, educational management organizations (EMOs) play a significant role in educating children in charter schools. In fact, many charter schools in Ohio are operated by EMOs, and these serve an ever expanding percentage of the state’s charter students. Unfortunately, there has been very little research available to show what impact these providers have had on children’s actual learning.
A new report by the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center (CSRQ) is one of the first in the nation to quantify the impact of CMOs on education. The CSRQ Center Report on Education Service Providers evaluates the effectiveness and quality of seven of the largest EMOs in the country; most have some schools in Ohio.
Overall, the study found that only one model, Edison, has a solid body of evidence that it has steadily and consistently improved student achievement. The other models either don’t have enough evidence to rate one way or the other, or declined to give evidence to the researchers.
To read this important report click here.
by Kristina Phillips-Schwartz
Announcements
Be a Part of the GreatSchools Network
GreatSchools.net, the nation’s premier provider of online K-12 information, is embarking on an ambitious new project to provide quality educational information to Dayton parents. This project, a part of the GreatSchools Network, will bring comprehensive, audience-appropriate material to Dayton parents in conjunction with personalized workshops to help parents choose the right school for their children and support their children’s educational success.
The Dayton Outreach Program Manager will work to bring these resources and services to Dayton parents. Most work will be conducted from Dayton; however, occasional travel to the GreatSchools San Francisco office may be necessary. To get more information on this position and how to apply surf here.