A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
August 29, 2007, Volume 1, Number 38
Contents
Editorial
Editorial
Educational policy by popular initiative poorly serves Ohio
Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment to mandate increased state public-education funding failed to get the 402,000 signatures needed to get their proposal on the November ballot. Yet, the debate about adequacy in educational funding is sure to go on and the group pushing the effort, Campaign for Ohio's Future, may very well try again in 2008.
An important question that is overdue for serious scrutiny is the efficacy of making educational policy through voter initiative. Does whittling down a complex issue like school funding into a paragraph on which voters then cast a "yes" or "no" vote lead to good public policy?
The Founding Fathers didn't think so. They saw such "direct democracy" leading to anarchy, replacing a government of laws with the chaos of laws without government. In the Federalist 10, James Madison warned, "It may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction."
In place of direct democracy the Constitution created a republic which derives its powers from "the consent of the governed." We elect lawmakers to make laws and if they do something we don't approve of-or they don't do something we want-we elect someone else to take their place.
In Ohio, as in states like California, Oregon, Florida, and Michigan, public frustration with politicians and the political process has resulted in efforts to make law by popular initiative, bypassing the messy legislative process. This is certainly the case with the Campaign for Ohio's Future-a group of 12 educational groups, of which the Ohio Education Association is the largest. They argue that Ohio's Supreme Court ruled four times in 10 years that the state's school funding system is unconstitutional and that the General Assembly has not done enough to fix it.
Defenders of the system-mainly Republicans who have controlled the legislature since 1994-counter that they have made serious improvements. They note that a recent federal study showed that the school districts in Cleveland and Columbus are in the top 10 percent of district spending among the 100-largest school districts in the country (see here). And they remind voters $5 billion has been allocated for new school construction.
This argument does not fly with the Campaign for Ohio's Future. There's a good chance a complicated issue that has been fought over in the courts and in the General Assembly for more than a decade could be solved by a simple "yes" or "no" vote by the citizens.
Yet, Ohioans freely admit that they aren't very knowledgeable about school funding. In a recent KnowledgeWorks poll, more than 60 percent of those surveyed said they didn't know very much at all.
Conversely, public opinion polls indicate the public does believe Ohio's K-12 funding for education is broken. Ohioans believe that the state should spend more money on poorer school districts (see here). Yet, when asked if they believe this money will actually get to classrooms, fully two-thirds don't believe it will (see here) And, when asked if they would support an increase in state taxes to ensure more money is spent on public education and on poorer districts, public support diminishes (see here). Ohioans are as conflicted about this issue as their lawmakers. They want the state to spend more on education, but not their money!
Washington Post Columnist David Broder has studied voter initiative efforts across the country. "The initiative has been used by groups of the political left and right-and of no fixed ideology-to advance their agendas," he writes, "often when those agendas have been stymied in the political tug-of-war of the legislative process." This certainly seems true of the efforts of the Campaign for Ohio's Future. Broder also observes, "...many initiatives are promoted, not in the expectation they will pass but in hopes they will put pressure on the legislature to move in the direction of the group promoting that ballot measure."
In Ohio all eyes now look to Governor Strickland and what school-funding solution he proposes. Should he disappoint the proponents of the ballot initiative, we are sure to see another attempt at a ballot amendment in 2008 or 2009. If we do, that effort won't be about taking democracy to the people, but rather it will be an act of political desperation by a collection of well-heeled special interest groups.
by Terry Ryan
Legislation Analysis
Third Frontier is doomed without a school system to match
In 2005, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a plan to spend an extra $1.6 billion in bond money (increasing the program to $2 billion over 10 years) to support high-tech science research and industries in the state (see here).
But it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars of state funds to boost technology if Ohio's education system is not up to producing the educated workforce needed to power the innovations in medicine, nanotechnology, computers, fuel cells, and energy that the Third Frontier is already fueling.
Now fast forward to 2007 when the Ohio Board of Education began mulling recommendations by Achieve Inc. and the McKinsey Group to overhaul Ohio schools and make them "world class."
Every industrialized nation is emphasizing education, especially math and science education. In the United States, a reform coalition in Delaware wants to transform its schools and has come up with six recommendations (see here) that cover much of the same ground as the Achieve report. Delaware's plan recognizes that its children will have to be educated to compete with top graduates from China, Germany, Japan, and Russia. One idea is to increase class time by 140 hours a year, part of a proposal to boost standards and graduation requirements.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Achieve/McKinsey study recognizes progress the state has made and presents a set of common-sense initiatives (see here) such as boosting standards and assessments, pushing teacher development, motivating students, and linking increased funding to accountability.
The report also defines the coming debate over what "world class" means in Ohio. Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Tave Zelman has embraced it. But state school board members are divided, not so much over the ideas in the report but on exactly what role they should play in implementing its recommendations.
The state budget the General Assembly approved in June sets priorities. The budget calls for spending $15.8 billion on education over the next biennium and it boosts per-pupil spending by 6.6 percent over the next two fiscal years. The budget, however, was in preparation months before Achieve issued its report, so the next biennial budget will be far more indicative of the reports influence on the state's leaders. A look at the current budget does, however, help to examine current state education spending related to two critical Achieve recommendations: 1) providing an educational choice through charter schools for children and families trapped in failing district schools and 2) getting students ready for college.
The Governor's initial budget proposal-counter to the Achieve recommendations which advocated for controlled growth of charters-would have put an iron-clad moratorium on the state's charter school program, cut funding for the schools, and created new and costly regulatory barriers for these schools of choice. The budget ultimately signed into law, however, does allow students access to charter schools but it does not allow the program to expand beyond it current geographic limitations (in the most troubled school districts). The budget also puts additional accountability requirements on charters.
Far more of the budget involves funding for student achievement, which is at the core of the Achieve recommendations. Achieve noted that the best school systems challenge children academically and test them rigorously. Ohio must go far beyond what it has achieved in the last decade by aligning elementary and secondary school skills with what colleges, universities, and the modern workplace expect of recent high school graduates. Achieve calls for statewide examinations in core subjects to replace local examinations, eventually leading to the elimination of the state graduation test.
Lawmakers rescinded a Senate proposal that the state education department designate on future school report cards which district and charter schools offer high school students all components of the Ohio Core Curriculum. The budget also rescinded a Senate requirement that all students complete two semesters of fine arts between the seventh grade and high school graduation.
The budget allocates state money to provide intervention to help struggling African-American males graduate from high school. It provides $20 million over two years to help create up to five new STEM science and technology schools. There's also state money for summer institute training of 150 English, social studies, and foreign language teachers and 600 science and math teachers.
But, if the Achieve report and the efforts of other countries and states is the benchmark, these efforts only scratch the surface. The next state budget will begin to show how high the General Assembly is prepared to aim. The question is whether Ohio's schools will be up to the task of producing the creative class needed to imagine new products and innovations in the future as well as the scientists, engineers, and technicians to cast those ideas into reality.
by Mike Lafferty
From the Front Lines
Not so fast: real research must supplant shell-game analyses
The debate over charter schools in the Buckeye State continued last week when the Coalition for Public Education (CPE)-a group that has filed numerous lawsuits against charters and the charter school program over the years-held a news conference to unveil its analysis of Ohio's school report-card data. CPE called Ohio's charter school program a failure, boasting that 10 years into the "experiment," district schools are far outperforming charters on the state's achievement tests.
Gadfly readers will remember that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's own analysis of this data showed that, by and large, charter schools and district schools perform relatively evenly on state achievement tests. Both types of schools in urban areas struggle to help children meet the state proficiency standards. Unlike CPE, Fordham provided a weighted comparison of charter school performance to district school performance in the same cities and charter school performance to the Big Eight district schools where the vast majority of charters operate.
While one might debate the methodologies used in these studies, the truth is that both analyses-and most other charter school "studies" available in Ohio-are limited in their usefulness to policy makers because they lack any information on student growth over time and are merely "snapshots" of student performance at a single point in time.
Unfortunately, really good studies of school performance-charter or district-are hard to come by. Fortunately, however, we are learning a lot more about what constitutes quality research and how to generate it.
In 2006, the research group Public Impact evaluated 58 comparative analyses of charter schools and district schools and found that while there is no perfect research methodology, there are some basic criteria to look for in a high-quality study:
The current "gold standard" in student achievement research is reflected in an ongoing evaluation of charter schools in New York City, funded by the federal government and led by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby. This five-year evaluation of nearly 50 New York City charter schools tracks only students whose names were entered in a school lottery, then compares the educational achievements of those students randomly picked to attend the charter school with those students who stayed in the district schools. Findings of the first-year cohort reveal that charter students are, on average, posting higher gains in reading and math than they would have had they attended the city's district schools.
No such longitudinal research has been conducted in Ohio; it is costly and time-consuming work to get right. But there is a great need for this sort of research if we are to help Ohio improve its charter school program and, ultimately, determine which schools work and which don't.
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has taken several steps in the right direction. First, it has implemented a student identifier system that allows for the tracking of student achievement over time and across schools. Second, ODE has put in place a value-added component to the state's assessment system that will ensure growth data in the coming years for measuring student performance longitudinally and gauging individual school impact.
The General Assembly also has shown that it is interested in gaining more information about the state's charter school program before deeming it a "failure" or allowing it to expand further. In lame duck legislation in late 2006, lawmakers charged the Partnership for Continued Learning (PCL) with studying the operation and oversight of community schools and coming up with a series of legislative recommendations for improving the program. Equally important to understanding which schools meet or surpass state standards is identifying and highlighting the schools that help students make significant academic gains over time. Unfortunately, the legislature has not provided the PCL with the time, money, or expertise it needs to produce a high-quality student achievement report. Without such research, the charter-school debate will continue to be based more on opinion than fact.
by Kristina Phillips-Schwartz, Emmy L. Partin
Recommended Reading
Why not get what you deserve?
Executives get bonuses when their companies excel, so why not give teachers a bump in pay when their students do the same?
Support for teacher merit pay has traditionally existed in business circles, but a new cadre of educators and policy makers are opening up to financial incentives for teacher performance. Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama advocated for it when speaking at the National Education Association's annual convention last month; a bipartisan trio of senators has introduced legislation that would include incentives (federal grant funding) for states to look at performance-pay programs to attract teachers to low-performing schools (see here); and a reform-minded coalition of local teachers unions-which includes Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo in the Buckeye State-advocates for alternative models of teacher compensation, including merit pay (see here).
But as with most education reform efforts, the devil is in the details. The design and implementation of a performance-rewards system is vital to its success.
Florida's failed STAR (Special Teachers are Rewarded) plan and withering MAP (Merit Award Pay) program failed to get teacher buy in during the planning process and were hastily enacted. On the other hand, a pilot merit-pay program in Austin, Texas is being rolled out slowly and evaluated along the way, and the teachers' union there sees it as a way for great teachers to earn what they deserve.
In Minnesota, districts are taking advantage of their state's official encouragement to consider teacher merit-pay plans.
Education is not a business, but there are some corporate-world practices that can be adapted for schools. A well-designed merit-pay system for teachers is one of them.
"Merit pay gaining bipartisan favor in federal arena," by Vaishali Honawar, Education Week, August 1, 2007.
"Teachers say yes to pay tied to scores," by Nancy Zuckerbrod, of the Associated Press, Boston Globe, August 18, 2007.
"Teachers slam state merit-pay program," by Erika Hobbs, Orlando Sentinel, August 20, 2007.
by Emmy L. Partin
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