A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
May 10, 2006, Volume 1, Number 12
Note on guest editorials:
Gov. Taft signed the Ohio Education Choice Scholarship Program into law on June 30, 2005 (and the law was slightly modified in the recent budget corrections bill HB 530). Under the program, students who attend a district or charter school that has been rated in Academic Emergency or Academic Watch categories, the state’s two lowest ratings, for three consecutive years are eligible for school vouchers in the following amounts:
There are 14,000 scholarships available. If more than 14,000 eligible students apply, the state will hold a lottery.
The program is the largest of its kind in the nation and raises many questions. Three players in the debate—Speaker of the House Jon Husted, executive director of School Choice Ohio Susan Zanner, and University of Dayton education professor Dr. Carolyn Ridenour—share their views with our readers.
Contents
Guest Editorial
Investigative Analysis
Recommended Reading
Reviews
Guest Editorial
Editor's Note:
Gov. Taft signed the Ohio Education Choice Scholarship Program into law on June 30, 2005 (and the law was slightly modified in the recent budget corrections bill HB 530). Under the program, students who attend a district or charter school that has been rated in Academic Emergency or Academic Watch categories, the state’s two lowest ratings, for three consecutive years are eligible for school vouchers in the following amounts:
There are 14,000 scholarships available. If more than 14,000 eligible students apply, the state will hold a lottery.
The program is the largest of its kind in the nation and raises many questions. Three players in the debate—Speaker of the House Jon Husted, executive director of School Choice Ohio Susan Zanner, and University of Dayton education professor Dr. Carolyn Ridenour—share their views with our readers.
Creating Education Options for Ohio Parents
Jon Husted (R-Kettering) has long fought for school choice. He played pivotal roles both in developing the state’s charter school program and in creating the Ohio Education Choice Scholarship Program. In an interview on May 2, Election Day, with the Gadfly, Speaker Husted explained why he believes in school choice, and what he believes will result from the state’s newly enacted school voucher program.
Gadfly: What’s the status of school choice in the Buckeye State, and how will this program affect it?
Husted: School choice is here to stay in Ohio…. I think we are at a point … in Ohio where we now need to focus on quality growth. I hope that with the Choice Scholarship Program, and other reforms that we are undertaking in the state’s education marketplace, that we create a broader venue of options for parents and children, so that we can ensure that the educational offerings we provide families meet the unique needs of every child
Gadfly: What are the potential pitfalls facing the Choice Scholarship Program?
Husted: Not getting enough schools that are willing to participate in the program … could lead to a situation where there aren’t enough quality school options for all participating children.
Gadfly: The program requires participating schools to take state achievement tests. What’s the benefit?
Husted: We want to ensure that all children who utilize vouchers are making sufficient academic progress
Gadfly: Do you expect opposition to the program?
Husted: There certainly could be political or ideological challenges to the program from people who fundamentally oppose school choice. If parents and children want to have vouchers, want to keep vouchers, want to expand vouchers, they are going to need to make their voices heard.
Gadfly: How is this program different from others throughout the country?
Husted: We are aware of what is going on everywhere else, but frankly we designed a voucher program that is unique to Ohio. We made the voucher amount higher than what a lot of other voucher programs have. The voucher is enough to allow the child to attend a good non-public school, but the amount is still less than what we have been spending per pupil in the traditional public schools.
Gadfly: This spending level should enable some private schools to expand their capacities in the form of hiring new teachers and even developing facilities to meet the needs of their new students. Where does the Choice Scholarship Program fit in the overall landscape of Ohio’s school choice programs?
Husted: I believe the voucher program is a natural progression from the work the Ohio legislature has done with school choice programs like charter schools, the Autism Scholarship program, and the Cleveland voucher program. With vouchers, we are trying to open that door to students outside of Cleveland who have not had the opportunity to utilize vouchers. Really, it is past time for us to do this, and now I believe we are catching up with where Ohio’s education landscape needs to be.
Gadfly: Your recent focus on the state’s voucher program has not come at the expense of your support for charter schools. You have been visiting schools around the state. What have you learned?
Husted: You try to bolster those that have been successful while changing state law so we can eliminate the poorly performing ones.
Gadfly: What motivates you?
Husted: Education is the key to economic success, both for the state and individuals. Without a quality education, you cannot succeed in the new economy and your chances are dramatically lessened. This is what is driving me to change Ohio’s education laws to help students be more academically successful. We need to make sure that these students get a fair chance at opportunity in life.
D.C.’s Federal Scholarship Program Offers Lessons for Ohio
The new Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program faces challenging days ahead—educating parents and students who would receive the vouchers is one of the most obvious problems. As the new executive director of School Choice Ohio, I attended a recent conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Alliance for School Choice and the Friedman Foundation. I learned from other school choice program directors across the country that, while challenging, the problems of implementation are not insurmountable. I think it important to consider some of these programs as we prepare to enroll our first voucher students in Ohio.
Washington, D.C., home to the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF)—a program that allows students to use public money to leave failing schools—is a good case study. I visited the offices of WSF president Sally Sachar and her staff, recently, where they shared their early successes, along with the hurdles of marketing, implementing and participating in the research study of D.C.’s federally-funded voucher program. They also took me to see first-hand how the scholarship program worked for children.
Accompanied by WSF Outreach Coordinator Alicia Robinson, I visited Rock Creek International School, which enrolled 33 WSF recipients. As an International Baccalaureate (IB) elementary and secondary program, the school is committed to diversity, but even that caused difficulties.
The socioeconomic gaps in their student population, for example, meant that even simple things, like celebrating birthdays, were no simple matter. After all, some children arrived at school via limos while others had to negotiate new bus routes and long commutes. How would children coming from the poorest neighborhoods access after-school programs in chess and sports, and traditionally parent-supported summer enrichment programs? Such are the funding disparities that WSF and the participating schools must now address.
But the social issues may be the least of the problems. In terms of academic quality, how does a high-performing school, one enrolling the children of diplomats, maintain high standards with an influx of children performing well below grade level? At Rock Creek International School, volunteer programs emerged, along with innovative community partnerships, to help close the achievement gap.
Managing parental expectations also proved difficult. Many parents came to Rock Creek International School believing their publicly-educated children were “honor students” only to be informed that those children would have to go back a grade to make up material they hadn’t mastered.
According to Josh Schmidt, Director of Admission and Advancement, more time to prepare their school constituencies from board members to faculty to parents to students would have benefited all. Finding cultural connections and celebrating those takes precious time but makes all the difference. Allowing board members to wrestle with the financial and policy implications of committing long-term resources to WSF students requires careful planning. Teachers need some prodding and enhanced training to adequately address learning and cultural differences. The Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program allows little time for such planning and adjustment, so private schools in our state can benefit from the lessons learned in D.C.
Schmidt said that despite the problems, “The overwhelming majority of these children have adjusted beautifully to their new school. We don’t make distinctions between voucher students and our regular enrollees, and the kids don’t know the difference. We know we have saved some of these children from early drug use and pregnancy, from a lifetime of limiting expectations, even from violent death.”
Head of School Carole Al-Kahouaji went on to note that in two years’ time, children who entered Rock Creek International School with significant learning deficiencies are now performing at or above grade level. And this in spite of the school’s demanding academics, such as requiring all students to learn two of three languages in addition to English (Spanish, French, or Arabic).
The entire culture for education has changed for many inner-city families. That’s what we hope for in Ohio.
Between now and June 9, when the Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program’s first enrollment period ends, School Choice Ohio and its partner organizations, Cincinnati’s Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF), Dayton’s Parents Advancing Choice in Education (PACE) and the Dayton and Columbus Chapters of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) will be hosting school fairs in five cities, underwriting parent education events, employing direct mail and phone campaigns, yard signs, local media, and, most important, word of mouth to encourage families to apply for a scholarship for 2006-2007. Our statewide efforts are designed to help families and private schools make lasting, life-changing educational partnerships.
Susan Zanner is the executive director School Choice Ohio. Link into their website here for info about how to apply for a scholarship.
Anticipating School Vouchers in Ohio – with Great Doubt
On the eve of implementing the Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program, unanswered questions remain. Can Ohio promise eligible families that their children who are now enrolled in schools rated in “Academic Emergency” or “Academic Watch” will be better served in private, religious, or alternative public schools? And, further, what about those children who will be left behind in these failing schools? In short, will Ohioans be well served by vouchers?
There is insubstantial data to support the theory that vouchers raise student achievement. Even if the data did link vouchers to higher test scores, choice schemes are, by design, limited in number. Even voucher proponents hesitate to assert that choice will be universal across all communities in the country, including Ohio.
More troubling is the fact that advocates have too easily moved from tentative research conclusions to comprehensive policy recommendations. Even conservative policy wonks, such as Frederick Hess, have cautioned that vouchers have “too often been trumpeted uncritically by choice proponents rather than used to encourage rigorous policy considerations.”
A large-scale 2001 RAND study suggested that other policy options (such as smaller class sizes in public schools) might hold greater promise for more children. Attempts at improving Ohio’s public schools by indirectly supporting Ohio’s private schools through choice initiatives may ultimately fail both. Desperate urban schools serving poor families require substantially increased, not decreased, financial support. Families with the least access to data about school quality are likely those left behind if the choice experiment fails.
The intentions of voucher advocates are admirable—to advocate for the neediest children and to remove as many as possible from failing schools. Unfortunately, the advocates proffer a seemingly simple solution to an acknowledged complex problem. Their efforts fail to take into account the vast majority of children who will not benefit because already limited educational resources will be further diminished by a voucher system. Vouchers hold out only false hope to Ohioans and create potentially harmful consequences for those left behind.
Despite the 2002 Zelman decision, the church-state dichotomy prevails. Two-thirds of those using Cleveland’s voucher program never attended public schools, raising the possibility that a major part of these Ohio public monies may only subsidize private and religious sponsored schools and their existing students. And, finally, those religious schools opening their doors to former public school students perhaps pay a price, too. Little evidence suggests that religious schools are rushing to build classrooms; the demand side of the economic argument dominates the discourse while the supply side seems barely audible. Perhaps there is doubt that a strong faith-based school culture can withstand dilution when students are enrolled whose families do not adhere to the faith, but choose based solely on academic grounds.
Finally, perhaps some advocates for change are better at creating policy than they are at ensuring its effective implementation. One need look no farther than the creation of charter schools. A proliferation of such schools was established without adequate oversight and authorization. Chester Finn, Jr. and Michael Petrilli, both of the Fordham Institute, suggested in their recent National Review online article that while charter authorizers are getting more selective, they still found that : “…almost half of all authorizers practice limited oversight of their schools, demonstrating scant concern either for school quality…or for compliance…”
Ohioans would be well served to put their resources into improving Ohio’s urban public district schools rather than to invest in an experiment that is poorly designed and even more poorly understood.
Carolyn S. Ridenour is a professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Dayton.
Investigative Analysis
Becoming American
The current wave of Latino protests in the streets over immigration, and the policy debates over this issue in the halls of Congress will go on, but the hard task of blending millions of immigrants (legal or not) into American society marches on daily, at least in the nation’s schools. Ohio is no exception.
In 2003, Latinos accounted for nearly nine million students in the nation’s K-12 public schools, or 19 percent of total enrollment, according to an issue brief by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank examining Hispanic issues.
Statewide, Ohio’s immigrant population has risen 31 percent since 1990. In Franklin County (the Columbus-area), the foreign-born population increased by nearly 39 percent over the same period. The newcomers are not only Hispanic. Ohio’s immigrants also come from Somalia, Vietnam, China, Portugal, France and Central America. They work in the fields, they work in the expanding Honda auto plants, and in some cases, they have no work at all.
This fact of contemporary life in America’s schools presents a new array of challenges, as Ohio and other states are coming to grips with the No Child Left Behind law. Hispanic groups have pushed the federal government to include first-time English Language Learners (ELL) in state assessment and accountability systems. However, some school administrators around the country are pushing for modifications in NCLB to give schools with high numbers of ELL a break when measuring achievement.
NCLR reports that over half of Hispanic students are ELL, and their proficiency results should be included along with native English speakers in evaluating a school’s performance. This presents challenges not only for states with a history of large immigrant populations, such as Texas and California, but also for state’s like South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana that saw their number of ELL students nearly double between 1994 and 2004.
Often, children of immigrants who enter America’s school system are the only ones in the family who speak English. Lourdes Lambert, principal at East End Community School in Dayton (a charter school), and a first-generation Cuban-American, knows the situation well. Out of 160 students at East End, 23 are Hispanic immigrants and the number is growing each year. “The school is the only place they speak English,” Lambert said.
The situation is challenging for teachers and students alike.
“The hardest thing is the initial assimilation,” Lambert said. “Everybody is speaking but you don’t know what they are saying. You don’t know how to ask where the bathroom is.” At East End, language instruction starts in kindergarten. Sink or swim. There is no bilingual education at East End, but immersion in the daily culture of the school, which is in English. Lambert observes that fortunately, “little kids are such sponges.”
For older students entering the school, the transition is often more difficult, as language and thought patterns are locked in, and learning a new language is harder.
In Columbus, North Linden Elementary School has seen a decline in overall enrollment over the past five years, but their number of ELL students has increased dramatically. Last year, a full 37 percent of their students were ELL, partly attributable to the surge of Somali refugees and Mexican immigrants to the area. North Linden has hired two language instructors, one who speaks Somali and one who speaks Spanish.
At North Linden, non-English speaking students are placed in English immersion classrooms and are paired with English speaking students who also communicate using their native language. The English speaking students help teach English to the new arrivals.
Large waves of immigrants have always been central to the American experience. During the decade between 1840 and 1850, the years of the potato famine in Ireland, the number of Irish in America swelled from 1.2 million to almost 7 million. But what is new is that while in the past most U. S. immigrants came from Europe, now nearly 80 percent come from south of the border and Asia.
With the No Child Left Behind Act, both English and non-English speaking students are held to the same standard. Finding innovative and effective ways of bringing immigrant children who enter America into the nation’s language and culture will be a central responsibility for future educators, as it was for those of the past. In Ohio, as elsewhere, the public schools—charter and district alike—are at the center of the effort to ensure America remains a melting pot and does not become a collection of different nationalities living separately in one country.
by Dale Patrick Dempsey, Kristina Phillips-Schwartz
Recommended Reading
Ohio’s High School Challenge
Ohio’s high school students are ill-prepared for college level work. Evidence of this abounds. In December, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) reported, “41 percent of Ohio’s high school graduates took at least one college remedial class in math, reading or writing in the fall of 2003…. That’s up from 38 percent in fall 2000.” This number is particularly surprising when one considers that nearly 20 percent of Ohio students drop out before completing high school. The numbers are worse for minorities—only 59 percent of blacks high school seniors and 57 percent of the state’s Latinos high school seniors received a high school diploma in 2003.
Such bleak statistics were once excused because it was believed that workplace skills were less demanding than the skills required at college. A new study just released by ACT, producer of America’s most widely accepted college entrance exam, debunks this argument. ACT’s “Ready for College and Ready for Work: Same or Different?” provides empirical evidence that “whether planning to enter college or workforce training programs after graduation, high school students need to be educated to a comparable level of readiness in reading and mathematics.”
If Ohioans want education to provide all young people with the opportunity to live meaningful and productive lives, then this report makes clear that high schools must do two things it has failed to do. First, keep students from dropping out. Second, educate all high school students to a common academic expectation, one that prepares them for both post-secondary education and the workforce. Governor Taft’s “Core Curriculum” gets at the second part of this, but it falls on schools and educators across the state to accomplish that second goal without pushing up the dropout rate. This is another of Ohio’s great education challenges.
“Ready for College and Ready for Work: Same or Different?” ACT.
“More College Students Need Remedial Help: Ohio Regents Study High-Schoolers’ Transition,” by Jennifer Gonzalez and Scott Stephens, The Plain Dealer, December 6, 2005.
by Terry Ryan
Trends in Charter School Authorizing
As Ohio now has over 60 organizations sponsoring close to 300 charter schools, this new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute should be of interest to all anyone concerned about the state’s charter program.
Among the report’s findings:
1) sponsors do not renew charter school contracts because of poor
academic performance:
2) sponsors are growing choosier about the schools they approve (in part
because of the cost of sponsoring troubled schools);
3) half of all sponsors, especially smaller and district sponsors, exercise limited
oversight of their schools.
4) sponsors are underfunded, and the vast majority say they would use
additional funds to hire staff to monitor schools’ academic performance; and
5) sponsoring is still new and dominated by small-scale, school-district sponsors.
Of Ohio’s 60 plus sponsoring organizations, a full 75 percent are traditional districts that sponsor only one or two schools. These district sponsors tend to operate in the shadows, while other types of sponsors—higher education institutions, non-profit organizations, independent chartering boards, state education agencies, municipal offices and county education agencies—operate under the continual scrutiny of charter critics.
This report is a good first step in examining what types of sponsors do the best work, and how state policy can support the development of more and better sponsors.
To read the report, surf here.
by Terry Ryan
Charter School Financial Drain May Be all Clogged Up
The popular notion that public school districts are losing money because of charter school enrollment is now considered nonsense by many. The April 27 edition of The Columbus Dispatch shows that even though charter enrollment has risen in the past five years, so has funding for traditional school districts. Columbus is now receiving $20 million more than in 1998-1999, and Cleveland is receiving $67 million more. Many school treasurers still look at charter schools as a drain of resources; however, the Dispatch points out that the financial burden may be because the schools are unwilling to downsize to match lower enrollments.
“Schools Have More Money Despite Charter Drain,” by Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch, April 27, 2006.
“Money Mangers Needed,” Editorial, The Columbus Dispatch, May 4, 2006.
by Jack Grubb
Reviews
With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education
With over 60,000 private foundations in the United States—and about 25 percent of those donating to K-12 or post-secondary education—the natural assumption is that private funding accounts for a sizeable amount of education spending. In fact, the opposite is true. In 2002, philanthropy totaled $1.5 billion, just one-third of one percent of overall education expenditures in the U.S. for that year.
Why does education philanthropy continue to make headlines? And what are the effects of such giving on K-12 education? Frederick Hess addresses these questions in With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education, a collection of studies and analyses by leading education researchers and reformers.
Names such as Annenberg, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford have long been synonymous with education programs affecting a multitude of American students (National Merit Scholarships, Advanced Placement courses, and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, just to name a few). But over the past two decades, as confidence in public education has eroded, and the results of past charitable giving mixed, a new generation of philanthropists has taken a more aggressive approach to giving. Entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family have gained success in the business world by swimming against the tide, so it’s little wonder they embrace more radical, external educational reform measures, such as charter schools, Teach for America, and voucher programs.
They at least put school reform on the agenda.
There has been a startling lack of research into education philanthropy past and present, but With the Best of Intentions goes a long way towards filling the gap. Click here to order the book.
by Quentin Suffren
The Talent Challenge: What Ohio Must Do to Thrive, Not Merely Survive, in a Flat World
In 1970, half of the engineers in the world were American. Many were in Ohio, where much of the early technology that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon was developed. Flash forward to 2006. This year China will graduate over 600,000 new engineers. India, 300,000. The U.S. will graduate just over 70,000 new engineers, nearly half of these will be foreigners.
Those are just some of the findings in this troubling report.
Ohio, a once-proud home to inventors, engineers and manufacturers, fares even worse than the nation as a whole. The state has slipped to 32nd in the nation in the number of bachelor degrees in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics awarded per 100,000 residents.
Businesses are aware of this lack of preparation. And students know it as well. The report found that 62 percent of college students wished they had taken more challenging courses in core areas in high school. Of the students who didn’t go on to college, 72 percent wish they had tougher courses in high school as well.
The report, in an urgent plea to policy-makers and business leaders, says, “This is no small challenge. And the clock is ticking.” To learn more surf here.
“Taft’s $13.2M Proposal to Boost Ohio’s Math, Science Education,” by William Hershey, The Dayton Daily News, May 9, 2006.
by Dale Patrick Dempsey