Contents
Editorial

• All Aboard the Charters? The State of a Movement

Reviews and Analysis

• Politicians Ignore Education Funding Realities
• Using Data in the Central Office and the Classroom to Improve Student Achievement
• Leading for Learning

Announcements

• Call for Presentations

Editorial
All Aboard the Charters? The State of a Movement
Charter schools have taught us much. Since Minnesota enacted America's first charter law in 1991, 39 states have followed suit and eager school reformers have created some 4,000 of these independent public schools. About 3,600 are still operating today, enrolling approximately a million kids, 2 percent of all U.S. elementary and secondary pupils. More than a dozen cities--including Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee--now have charter sectors that serve at least one in every six children. These numbers rise annually--and would balloon if the market were able to operate freely, unconstrained by legislative compromises, funding and facilities shortfalls, and local pushback from the school establishment and its political allies.

The first lesson is that the demand for alternative school options for children is intense--and plenty of people and organizations are eager to meet it wherever policy and politics allow them to. In Dayton, Ohio, today, more than a quarter of all kids attend charter schools; in New Orleans (a special case, to be sure) it's seven out of ten children. Many schools across the nation have waiting lists.

Lesson Two: Though critics warned that charters would "cream" the best-parented, ablest, and most fortunate youngsters, actual enrollments are dominated by poor and minority kids, ex-dropouts and others with huge education deficits unmet by regular school systems--most often the urban school systems whose residents most urgently need decent alternatives.

Lesson Three: Whereas boosters and advocates, myself included, once supposed that charter schools would almost always turn out to be good schools, reality shows that some are fantastic, some are abysmal, and many are hard to distinguish from the district schools to which they're meant to be alternatives. Merely hanging a "charter" sign over a schoolhouse door frees it to be different but doesn't assure quality--or even differentness. Those running the school need to know what they're doing--and be good at doing it. Too many well-meaning (or, sometimes, greedy) folks set out to create charter schools that they aren't competent to run.

Lesson Four: Until recently, nobody in charterdom paid enough attention to the other side of a school's charter, namely, its "sponsor." We now realize that a charter is best viewed as a contract between two parties: the school's operator, typically a local non-profit organization (which may ask a national firm such as Edison Schools to manage its school), and the school's sponsor, typically a public body that licenses the school to operate, usually for a limited term (often five years) renewable on the basis of satisfactory results. The sponsor is responsible for determining whether the would-be operator has a plausible school plan and the wherewithal to put it into operation; then for monitoring the school's actual performance and blowing the whistle if it's inadequate. Too few sponsors have done this conscientiously--hence too few bad charters have closed, even as many potentially strong schools haven't been allowed to open.

Lesson Five: Although school-choice enthusiasts, myself included, insist that parents can be counted on to make wise education choices for their children, the charter-school experience shows that many families lack decent comparative information about their school options and that many are content with such school attributes as safety, convenience, a welcoming atmosphere, and "caring" teachers. In other words, the school's academic effectiveness doesn't rank high. Which means many parents enroll their kids in academically mediocre schools, cheerfully keep them there--and oppose all efforts by sponsors and state or local officials to put such schools on probation, close them down, or deny them renewed charters.

These five lessons help to explain the wildly inconsistent and often disappointing articles and studies that have emerged recently with regard to the academic performance of charter schools. These institutions, in fact, differ so profoundly from one another that placing the label "charter" on a group of schools connotes no more than the word "public," "private," or "elementary." How can analysts combine an academically rigorous "Core Knowledge" primary school; a long-day, long-year "KIPP Academy" for middle schoolers; and a four-hours-per-day remedial-instruction program for semi-literate 17-year-old dropouts? They're all charter schools, yes, but that's all they have in common.

Thus when the New York Times declares, as it did in August, that a new federal "study of test scores finds charter schools lagging," readers are misled. Even when the analysis is limited to fourth- and eighth-graders, thus omitting the "dropout recovery" quasi-high schools, it lumps together schools whose only shared feature is the name "charter." Above all, it tells us absolutely nothing about these schools' academic effectiveness because the data used by such studies are one-time, snapshot test results that may show how youngsters currently perform on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) but nothing about how far they have come since entering these schools.

Let me illustrate. The federal study found that the average fourth-grader in district-run public schools had a 2003 NAEP "scale score" in reading of 217 while the average charter-school fourth-grader scored 212. Obviously the district pupil is scoring five points higher than the charter student; snapshots are fine at showing this. But how were those two kids doing when they entered their present schools? Suppose the district pupil was at 211 at the outset of the year while the charter student was at 204. You could then fairly say that the district school added six points to its student's reading prowess during fourth grade while the charter school added eight--even though the charter pupil's score remained lower at year end.

A similar argument is being waged with regard to the federal government's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, due for renewal by the next Congress and already the subject of analysis and advice from innumerable experts and state/local officials--all of whom want to see it amended in various ways. Although NCLB's full-fledged reauthorization may await the 2008 presidential election (Congress can easily extend "current law" a year at a time), its critics are nearly unanimous in urging that it shift from gauging schools solely in relation to fixed "proficiency" standards and instead allow states to employ a "growth model" whereby school performance is judged by how much students learn from one year to the next.

My view is that mega-accountability systems such as NCLB should evaluate schools both ways. Determining how much "value" they add to their pupils is crucial--but so is knowing how well prepared their students are to meet the challenges posed by the real world of colleges and employers, typically more interested in a person's actual skills and knowledge than in how much progress he may have made.

For charter schools, it's doubly important to deploy measures of effectiveness as well as absolute performance. For these are all schools of choice that parents move their daughters and sons into instead of keeping them in district-operated schools. These youngsters have been ill-served where they were and deserve a second chance in a better school. If their parents are to make discerning choices, however, they need clear information about which schools are effective at imparting skills and knowledge to their students, not just which of them enroll pupils who possess such skills and knowledge.

Such comparisons require some sort of before-and-after testing. You can't get that from NAEP, but such data now exist at the state level thanks to NCLB's mandate that students be tested annually in reading and math (in grades three to eight). States then have an obligation to analyze these data and produce report cards on charter and district schools alike--in parent-friendly formats. Where this is done with care, we often find that charter schools look good. For example, a recent analysis for the Massachusetts Department of Education, tracking student growth over four years in charter schools versus their surrounding districts, found the charters superior in math and equal in English. It's worth noting that Massachusetts is famous in charterdom for its scrupulous school sponsorship, punctilious about which may open, and then watchful regarding their performance. It's also worth noting, however, that union-inspired state politics have imposed a tight cap on how many charter schools may operate and how many kids may attend them--meaning that Bay State residents have far greater demand for charter slots than school operators can meet.

Does the success of Massachusetts imply that policymakers must trade charter quantity for school quality? The nation's capital makes the best case for answering no, with its 25 percent charter-school market share and some of the best charter schools in the nation (as well as some that you wouldn't want to send your kid to). Rather than look to Washington for its education-policy debates, perhaps the media should look at the "other" Washington, the one where people live, and see the charter schools that are creating education hope for families and neighborhoods that otherwise lack it. They will see some lessons that are highly relevant for ill-served students across the land.

This editorial originally appeared in the October 9 issue of the National Review.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Reviews and Analysis
Politicians Ignore Education Funding Realities
Recent campaign rhetoric and debate exchanges about education funding between gubernatorial candidates Ken Blackwell and Ted Strickland have been disingenuous at best. Neither candidate has raised the most critical issue affecting school funding for whoever next sits in the governor's chair: the growing fiscal crisis facing Ohio's education system caused by rapidly rising healthcare and pension costs.

No one knows for certain how much has been promised to Ohio's educators and other active school employees in the form of pensions and retiree health care benefits. (This will change in coming years as Ohio, like all states, will have to comply with new Government Accounting Standards Board rules requiring public agencies to disclose future retirement burdens.) But promises made through the State Teachers Retirement System and the School Employees Retirement System provide a glimpse of what's to come. According to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) report for fiscal year 2005 (see here), Ohio faces over $20 billion in unfunded liabilities for state teacher pension plans alone. That's about $62,500 in promised pension benefits per active participant in the state's teacher and non-teaching staff retirement systems. Only the states of California (at $24 billion) and Illinois (at $23 billion) face a more significant unfunded liability burden.

This will come as little surprise to companies in the private sector, which have been coping with rising pension and healthcare costs for the better part of a decade. In Ohio, we've seen the repercussions for big employers such as General Motors and Delphi, whose strong unions and generous benefits packages have forced drastic cuts and shuttered several manufacturing sites. Dayton-based NCR (see here) just announced it will no longer contribute to employee pension plans, in an effort to reduce its annual retirement expenses by $40 million. And the rising costs of employer-sponsored healthcare premiums are taking an enormous toll on Ohio's small businesses.

These same health care and pension costs are putting a squeeze on Ohio's school districts. According to Standard & Poor's (see here), between 1998 and 2002, benefit costs for Ohio's school districts rose 42.8 percent on average over the four year period. In 2003, almost $1,700 of average per student spending, which comes to about $8,500 with both state and district contributions, went to subsidizing employee benefits. Such numbers, coupled with steep drops in enrollment over the past several years, are quickly emptying district coffers--particularly in urban areas. Even as it lost teachers and students, Columbus Public Schools' "instructional" expenditures, which include teacher salaries and benefits, ballooned by 52.6 percent per teacher over four years from 2001 to 2005 (see here). Cleveland Public Schools' instructional spending grew by 44.1 percent, and Dayton Public's increased by 35.4 percent, again despite dwindling enrollment and fewer teachers.

At the same time, many teacher unions have been loath to concede any portion of their generous benefit packages. A recently settled teacher strike in southwestern Ohio's Huber Heights was instigated, in part, by the district's request that teachers pay a greater portion of their health insurance costs--though only in the form of marginally higher co-pays (see here). Come October 9, Barberton City School District teachers in northeastern Ohio will take to the picket lines to protest, among other things, the district's recent announcement that it can no longer pay 100 percent of teachers' family healthcare premiums--about $10,000 per employee (see here). Instead, the district is now asking that teachers pay $45 a month next year, with monthly payments eventually reaching $85 after two years. (Most Ohioans can only dream of such healthcare premiums.) And teachers in Dayton Public Schools aren't ruling out the option of a strike (see here) if their contract concerns--healthcare premiums chief among them--aren't met.

To be sure, the massive unfunded liabilities associated with teacher pensions and healthcare benefits will eventually impact the state's general operating budget (and taxpayers' wallets). Ohio is constitutionally obliged to meet all public employee retirement costs, including those for teachers and other school employees.

There are measures that states can take to deal with these unfunded liability costs. For instance, studies by Deloitte Research and the Reason Foundation (found here and here), among others, offer guidance on transitioning to more modern and flexible pension plans. (A few charter schools already contribute to "defined-contribution" plans, which allow employees to invest money as they choose and, more importantly, take their investments with them from job to job.) Any reform will still require substantial growth in state and local revenues. And Ohio's cities are hemorrhaging residents, many of them young professionals, by the thousand, leaving fewer and fewer taxpayers to shoulder the mounting costs of education.

One thing is certain. If these issues continue to go unaddressed, policymakers will be faced with a formidable dilemma: reduce benefits to public employees or slash key services in programs such as education and healthcare.

Messieurs Blackwell and Strickland will face the polls in just under six weeks; it remains to be seen if they will face the realities of education funding in Ohio.

by Terry Ryan, Quentin Suffren

Using Data in the Central Office and the Classroom to Improve Student Achievement
Think performance statistics and longitudinal databases are just pillow talk for policy wonks? Don't tell the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), a national educational collaborative promoting better data collection and data-driven practices. DQC recently held its quarterly issue meeting in Washington DC, and the topic was the use of data from the central office to the classroom level, and how it can improve the quality of student learning.

Ohio's new longitudinal data system was one of the meeting's featured attractions. Amy Andres, chief information officer for the Ohio Department of Education demonstrated Data Driven Decisions for Academic Achievement, or D3A2 as the system is called. As a clearinghouse for smaller databases, D3A2 offers Ohio's educators one-stop shopping for student test scores, model lesson plans, and host of other educational resources. A later version of the system will incorporate the state's "value-added" assessment model, which will track individual student performance over time (beginning in 2007-08).

The benefits of such databases were illustrated by two veteran users of high-powered systems.

Edwin S. Hedgepeth of the Knox County School System in Tennessee discussed how transparent data reporting has created healthy competition among the district's schools. Tennessee has been using a value-added assessment model for several years to track individual student performance over time. Knox County's system can even illustrate the effects of particular teachers on student learning.
Holly Fisackerly, principal of Hambrick Middle School in Houston, stressed the importance of creating ownership of school data systems. Her teachers were reluctant, at first, to learn what appeared to be a complex new technology, but when they saw the capabilities and ease-of-use of the new system, they quickly changed their minds. School administrators and staff point to narrowing achievement gaps as proof of the system's worth.

DQC's meeting was an encouraging reminder that more and more states (Ohio among them) are seeking to improve classroom instruction with valuable student data and user-friendly interfaces that even the most recalcitrant technophobes could love.

To learn more about the Data Quality Campaign, click here.
Check out D3A2 for yourself here.

by Jennifer DeBoer

Leading for Learning
In 2005-06, 8,446 schools and 1,624 districts nationwide failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as required under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Many states are scrambling to improve student achievement before districts and schools face state and federal sanctions (Columbus Public Schools alone has 45 schools in this predicament). As this report shows, reform initiatives run the gamut--from creating "how-to" manuals for school improvement to hiring for-profit school reform specialists.

Two of Ohio's neighbors, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, have dispatched teams of consultants to provide district leaders the skills they need to turn around failing schools. The teams, typically comprised of former school leaders and educators with experience raising student achievement, evaluate district weaknesses and then teach district leaders how to implement necessary reforms. Pennsylvania's "distinguished educators" may stay in a district for up to two years. "It's like having four or five consiglieres," said Thomas Chapman, superintendent of Pennsylvania's troubled Reading district. The district has used the team to help institute data-informed instruction and an ambitious restructuring plan. And Superintendent B. Michael Caudill in Madison County, Kentucky insists his "voluntary assistance team" has helped him gain a "laser-like" focus on academics.

Yet the jury is still out on the efficacy of these costly programs. The only verifiable success among the report's case studies was found in New Mexico, which is using the Baldrige model to improve some its most troubled schools. Named after former secretary of commerce Malcolm Baldrige, the program employs rigorous data analysis to help administrators, teachers and students set and attain concrete goals. (The Ohio Department of Education also promotes aspects of the Baldrige model--see here). Nine of the 13 schools purged from New Mexico's list of most distressed schools in 2005 were Baldrige schools.

Leading for Learning does a fine job of showcasing state efforts to create innovative school leadership (sadly, few states are looking to thriving "leader-centric" charter models like KIPP). But with spotty track records of success and a limited pool of talented reformers, they may just be another case of the blind leading the blind.

Download a copy of the report here.

by Jack Grubb

Announcements
Call for Presentations
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools welcomes proposals for presentations during the 2007 National Charter Schools Conference. The conference will be held April 24 - 27 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the opening of the first charter school. Proposals are being sought from practitioners and experts alike--especially emerging charter leaders. Topics should conform to the conference's four broad strands: quality, capacity, policy, and advocacy. The deadline for proposal submissions is October 16. Detailed guidelines and proposal forms are available at the conference web site here.