A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
January 10, 2007, Volume 1, Number 26
Contents
Editorial
From the Front Lines
Reviews and Analysis
Recommended Reading
Announcements
Editorial
Focus on Instructional Time, Not School Days
In one of his last official acts as Ohio’s top executive, Governor Taft used a line-item veto to purge a provision added to the Ohio Core legislation that would have affected the school calendar. Taft vetoed language allowing schools to operate for a minimum number of hours instead of days for fear that some school districts would move to a four-day week. The provision’s champion, Representative Thom Collier (R-Mount Vernon), has nevertheless promised to push the measure again later this year--believing it offers districts the flexibility to make up time when schools miss more than their allotted five calamity days.
To be sure, rethinking Ohio’s school calendar and how schools are ultimately funded is an effort worth pursuing. But if Ohio moves from funding school days to school hours, it should do so to increase the amount of time students actually spend learning, not simply to make it easier for districts to recoup “snow days” or shorten the school week.
Most states require somewhere around 180 days of school a year. Yet when these school days are broken down by hours, the disparity in time spent in school across districts can be dramatic (see here). For instance, Cleveland Municipal has a 178-day school calendar, and a school day lasting 6 hours and 40 minutes long. Houston, in contrast, has a 180-day school calendar, but students are in school 7 hours a day. In a typical school year, children in Houston spend 73 hours--roughly 11 days--more time in school than do their peers in Cleveland.
Whether or not the time is being put to good use is another matter. But there is ample evidence that extra time--if spent on instruction--can easily translate to increased learning. A 2003 study of high-performing high schools (see here) in Massachusetts found that all the schools studied had expanded time for learning. And the Center for American Progress recently observed that top-flight school networks such as KIPP and Cristo Rey in Chicago feature more instructional time for students, many of them economically disadvantaged, as a central tenet of their instructional programs (see here). These high performing schools, and others like them, set rigorous standards for student achievement--and then vary time on task, instructional strategies, and support for students to help students reach them. More time makes this possible.
As Ohio ratchets up the academic expectations for its children through legislation like the Ohio Core, it must ensure that students, particularly less fortunate ones, spend enough time in school, and receive more instructional time, to meet them. This will require taking a hard look at traditional school calendars as well as school funding formulae, for extending the school day will cost more money--though not so much as many people may fear. In a 2005 study of eight public extended-time schools, Boston education reform group Massachusetts 2020 Foundation discovered cost increases were not directly proportional to instructional time added. The report noted that when schools extended schedules between 15 percent and 60 percent, their staffing costs rose just 7 to 12 percent.
Any policy for moving Ohio's school calendar requirements from days to hours should focus on the amount of instructional time children receive. Successful implementation of such a policy will mean targeting resources at schools that utilize more hours of instruction to increase student learning and raise academic achievement.
by Terry Ryan
Turning Brick-and-Mortar to Gold
Ohio’s large urban districts are undergoing a painful transition, similar to the one already experienced by many of the state’s big manufacturers, from sprawling organizations with a corner on the market to shrinking systems struggling to compete for fewer and fewer customers.
Like the majority of the cities they serve, the “Big Eight” school districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) are suffering from heavy population losses. The Big Eight districts hemorrhaged over 64,000 students combined from 1995-96 to 2005-06. As a result, some urban districts are treading water just to avoid potentially devastating fiscal crises.
Consider a few recent examples:
Despite these spiraling deficits and perennial enrollment declines, Ohio’s urban districts have still managed to accumulate an astonishing surplus of wealth in one area: school facilities. Thanks to state and local contributions totaling in the billions of dollars, new school construction has taken off in the Big Eight districts, leaving a trail of empty buildings in its wake and making veritable land (or building) barons out of many urban districts. Columbus Public shuttered 12 buildings last year with four more tentatively set to close this spring; Dayton Public has almost two dozen listed “in transition”; and numerous other buildings in Cincinnati, Toledo and Cleveland are lying fallow with limited or uncertain futures.
These urban districts should waste little time leveraging their considerable facilities holdings for financial and academic gains. House Bill 276, recently signed into law by former Governor Taft, can help them do just that. The bill allows districts leasing facilities to charter schools to combine those charter students’ test scores with district students' scores. Thus Dayton Public Schools, whose students were outperformed in reading and math in grades 4-8, could not only bring in precious revenue from new lease agreements, but more easily secure their Continuous Improvement rating--or raise it--in future years. And Cleveland Municipal, Ohio’s lowest rated district (69 percent of its schools were rated either in Academic Emergency or Academic Watch in 2005-06), could lease much-needed buildings to higher-performing charter schools in return for a way out of chronic academic, and to some extent fiscal, distress. Other cash-strapped districts such as Toledo and Akron would be foolish not to follow suit. Columbus Public Schools is already leading the way with plans to lease a building (or buildings) to the new KIPP school(s)--see here.
Forward-thinking district leaders may want to consider leaving the facilities business altogether--while still racking up the same fiscal and academic benefits. One option would be to create a “Real Estate Trust” (Center for Reinventing Public Education has written extensively about this)--an independent nonprofit entity, perhaps in partnership with local stakeholders, that would plan and oversee new construction; broker the sale or lease of unused property/buildings; research and offer cost-savvy, creative options for districts’ changing facilities needs; and even manage existing buildings and properties. By engaging the expertise of business leaders, real estate brokers, and political officials, a Real Estate Trust could leverage district assets more effectively and get better returns on district facilities (one such trust is operating in Portland, Oregon--see here). And district officials, most of them ill-suited to brokering real estate deals, could turn their full attention to the more pressing task of raising student achievement.
With inauspicious enrollment forecasts, looming deficits, and a finite supply of local and state funding, it's time urban districts practiced a little alchemy--by turning brick-and-mortar to fiscal and academic gold.
by Quentin Suffren
From the Front Lines
Lame Duck Soup
Members of the 126th Ohio General Assembly recently packed up their bags and went home—some of them for good. But not before a flurry of activity, sometimes extending late into the night, with Republican legislators scrambling to take full advantage of the final weeks of Governor Taft’s tenure.
Perhaps the most noteworthy, and certainly the most publicized, accomplishment of this lame duck session was passage of the Ohio Core (see here and here), which toughens curriculum standards for Ohio’s high school students to better prepare them for work or college. But with so much of the spotlight on the Core, several intriguing pieces of legislation have gone largely unnoticed. Take House Bill 276 and House Bill 79, parts of which should help improve the oversight of Ohio’s charter schools. House Bill 79, among other things, established academic criteria under which the poorest performing charter schools must permanently close by July 2008. The criteria are primarily based on report card ratings of individual school performance, but factor in value-added assessment whenever possible. Such bold legislative action (much of it prompted here) was long overdue; charter schools failing to deliver academic results need to be held accountable. (Were that public schools also so held accountable.) Unfortunately, the law does not grant sponsors the ability to make a final judgment about the fate of their schools’ performances by looking at a richer set of data (see Fordham’sSponsorship Accountability Report).
House Bill 276 allows charter schools operated by highly successful organizations such as KIPP to serve children in Ohio (in Columbus beginning in 2008-09, to be exact) by expanding the definition of charter school “operators” to include those that provide programmatic oversight and support to the school (operator status was previously granted only to groups that run the day-to-day operations of a school). The bill also creates an incentive for districts to offer high-quality charter school facilities by allowing districts to include the academic performance data of a charter school located in the district on the district’s report card. The result is a win-win situation, whereby high-performing charter schools can obtain facilities--and districts can benefit academically, by counting charter students test scores, and financially, by putting unused facilities to good use.
Several bills that didn’t survive the legislative session will almost certainly get another shot in the 127th General Assembly. Most notably, Ohio Speaker of the House John Husted is vowing to create a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) school system (see here). Also look for action on school funding, teacher retirement healthcare costs, and charter school accountability--as well as efforts to modify the state’s accountability system.
Yet to make any of these priorities a reality, lawmakers will have to account for one ingredient absent in December's lame duck soup: newly inaugurated Governor Strickland. While the governor is pledging his cooperation on a number of issues, education among them, one can only hope this addition won't spoil the batch.
Reviews and Analysis
From the Cradle to Career: Connecting American Education from Birth through Adulthood
This year’s Quality Counts evaluates state efforts to create education systems whose curricula are aligned from preschool to adulthood. The result is a host of state rankings, many of them tied to the report’s Chance-for-Success Index, which includes 13 indicators spanning a student’s lifetime.
Ohio earns a “C”, ranking 27th overall on the index. High marks were awarded in K-12 academic achievement (the Buckeye State ranked 10th among the 50 states), mainly due to fourth- and eighth-graders’ achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--as well as the state’s average graduation rate, 76.5 percent, as computed by EPE. And Ohio’s 25 percentage point gap in performance between poor students and their more affluent peers on the 2005 eighth-grade NAEP math assessment was slightly smaller than (but equally appalling as) the national average of 26.7.
Cited areas of weakness include the state’s achievement gap, early-childhood education and adult educational attainment. Ohio ranked 37th for its percentage of three- and four-year olds enrolled in preschools (40.6 percent), and 48th for the percentage of eligible students enrolled in kindergarten (69.7 percent). Meanwhile, just 33.4 percent of Ohioans hold a two- or four-year degree, while only 49.2 percent of adults earn an income at or above the national median.
Absent from the report is some inkling as to where states should score on such indicators (perhaps that’s asking for too much). Yet EPE’s report offers a useful snapshot of the educational and financial well-being of Ohio’s (and other states’) citizens, one that should hopefully urge state policymakers to push Ohio beyond mediocrity--and on to greater educational attainment and increased economic prosperity.
The report is available here .
by Quentin Suffren
Funding Gaps 2006
In its annual assessment of funding gaps between more-affluent students and their low-income and minority peers, the Education Trust exposes a hydra-headed problem that is shortchanging poor and minority students at every funding level.
Federal Title I dollars, which are earmarked for low-income students, are being awarded to states that need them the least. That’s because Title I formulas award more money to states with higher per-pupil expenditures--regardless of the number of low-income students present. In 2003-04, for example, Wyoming--a state with fewer than 10,000 students in poverty but a high state per-pupil funding allotment--received $2,957 per poor child in Title I funds. Ohio, because of its lower state per-pupil funding expenditures, received just less than half that amount ($1,545 per low-income student) for almost 259,000 poor children. Arizona fared worst of all, earning just $881 per child.
States create funding inequities by allocating fewer resources to districts educating large populations of poor and minority students. In 26 of the 49 states examined the highest poverty districts received more funding in 2004 than the lowest poverty districts--a difference of $825 per-pupil on average nationwide. School districts also generate funding inequities by spending less on teacher salaries in schools serving the poorest students and providing more “unrestricted” funds to low-poverty schools. The former is hidden in dense district budgets, which typically list only average teacher salaries instead of salary expenditures at individual schools. The latter allows low-poverty schools to afford specialty and enrichment programs high-poverty schools rarely get.
Recommendations at the federal level include eliminating the state expenditure factor from federal Title I formulas and awarding dollars to states based on actual need. For states and districts, the report prescribes less reliance on local funding and adoption of weighted student funding (see here), which would tie state and district funds directly to students, rather than schools or districts--and bring some much-needed transparency to district budgeting.
The report is a quick read--state legislators, policymakers (our new governor included), and other stakeholders looking to tackle education funding inequities in Ohio can find it here.
by Quentin Suffren
Recommended Reading
Adjusting to the Spotlight
Collective bargaining agreements between school districts and teacher unions have rarely made it into the public spotlight—at least until now. The Washington-based National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently launched its new online database bursting with details about union collective bargaining agreements, school board policies and teacher handbooks for the country’s 50 biggest school districts. NCTQ director Kate Walsh contends the site will help stakeholders--from parents and taxpayers to lawmakers--understand teacher contracts and working conditions, including salary and benefits information. The one Ohio district featured is Cleveland Municipal Schools (CMS), which turns out to be a wonderful place for the sick and ailing. Teachers receive 18 sick days per year under their collective bargaining agreement (and unused days carry over to subsequent years). Union leaders are understandably disconcerted by the new database. National Education Association’s Bill Raabe is concerned folks could draw “erroneous conclusions” from the information (for instance, CMS teachers may not be sickly, just easily fatigued). “The contract is really just a piece of the picture,” he added. Perhaps, but for taxpayers (especially Ohioans facing perennial school tax levy votes), any piece of the picture is better than none at all.
“Online Database Opens a Window for Parents to Compare Schools,” by Greg Toppo, USA Today, January 3, 2007.
Announcements
National School Safety Expert to Speak at Dayton Seminar
Kenneth S. Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services and author of Classroom Killers? Hallway Hostages? How Schools Can Prevent and Manage School Crises will speak at a school safety seminar hosted by Fordham and the University of Dayton’s School of Allied Education Professions. Mr. Trump will highlight best practices in school safety, security, and violence prevention. The seminar will be held in the East Ballroom of the Kennedy Union (on the University of Dayton campus) from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm on January 16, 2007. To register, please email Beth Blanks at [email protected]. For questions, please call 937-229-3076
Fordham West Wants You
Fordham’s Dayton office is looking for a talented Project Administrator to join its small team of dedicated Ohio staffers. The Project Administrator will support Fordham’s charter school sponsorship efforts and perform general office management duties. A full position description complete with application information is available here.
KIPP Columbus Executive Director Position
The KIPP Foundation is seeking an accomplished leader to create a cluster of KIPP schools in Columbus, Ohio. The Executive Director will be responsible for the execution of KIPP's strategic plan, which includes ensuring the start-up and successful growth of a cluster of at least five schools (the first set to open in 2008-09) serving approximately 1500 students in grades K-12. See here for details.