THE OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 1, Number 39. September 12, 2007
Current
Issue On the Web
Past
Issues On the Web
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Education needs the same know-how as retooling the economy
The Ohio Grantmakers Forum recently hosted a conversation between Lt. Governor Lee Fisher and leaders in Ohio's philanthropic community on growing the state's economy.
Fisher also wears the hat of Director of Development and as such is the state's leader in the effort to retain, attract, and create jobs in Ohio. He aptly addressed Ohio's pressing need to deal with its shrinking manufacturing economy, urging that the state embrace innovation and opportunity in high-growth sectors like health care, nanotechnology, computer technologies, and alternative energy. Fisher made clear that manufacturing still matters and that it's vital to keep auto manufacturing and other traditional industries working here even if they aren't growing industries. But, more importantly, the future means helping new businesses grow and attracting emerging industries to the Buckeye State. According to Fisher, Ohio is engaged in an "economic development arms race" with other states and nations for about 400 projects worth approximately $16 to $20 billion.
To snag its fair share, the lieutenant governor said, Ohio must entice new businesses with financial incentives, friendly tax policies, top-notch educational and scientific resources, and talent. These are all areas in which, he said, the Strickland administration is being proactive. Fisher has even created a Rapid Outreach Response team to create a sense of urgency in state government while encouraging collaboration across state agencies.
The lieutenant governor deserves kudos for his dogged efforts at improving Ohio's economic competitiveness. But, it must be noted, this same type of energy, passion, and progressive thinking has been lacking in the new administration's education agenda. This, despite the fact that the powerful economic forces acting on Ohio require more from the state's education sector if Ohio's citizens are to benefit from this change (see here). Education in Ohio can ill-afford to remain stagnant. If Ohio wants to see its education system flourish and meet the needs of its young people, the state must apply the same innovative ideas for economic growth to education.
Many farsighted states and cities are already making this transition and are redefining what is possible in education. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is working to make New York City the "Silicon Valley of education entrepreneurs." The mayor's office in Indianapolis has created and raised several million dollars for The Mind Trust to aggressively attract, support, and empower the nation's most effective and promising educational entrepreneurs to work there. Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Delaware – are making similar efforts to recruit the most successful educational organizations and to help their successful homegrown groups develop and expand.
In Columbus, a broad network of civic, business, philanthropic, and education leaders came together to recruit the first KIPP school to the state. And what is KIPP (and other high performing school models) seeking from new expansion sites? The same things that successful businesses are looking for: a welcoming community, private and public financial support, regulatory space for innovation (the charter law), and a talent pipeline to supply school leaders and teachers.
As we work to build a 21st century economy in Ohio, we would be wise to cross pollinate Lt. Governor Fisher's ideas and policy efforts on economic development with our school- improvement efforts. The State Board of Education seems to be heading in this direction--in June it approved a new Subcommittee for Education in the New Global Economy.
Ohio's public education needs as much retooling and redesigning as the state's economy, and strong leadership from the top would surely pay big dividends.
By Terry
Ryan, Kristina
Phillips-Schwartz
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
board ultimatum
The Ohio Department of Education's recent state report card
illuminated continuing academic problems in both public district and charter
schools. The report card comes on the heels of newspaper stories highlighting
auditing and recordkeeping difficulties in some charter schools. Brian L. Carpenter,
chief executive officer of the National Charter Schools Institute, offers some
insights into both issues.
For the three people reading this column that haven't seen The Bourne Ultimatum, erstwhile CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is back in theaters this summer, more determined than ever to uncover his true identity and the purpose of the nefarious people who brainwashed him.
The storyline and action are as riveting as the first two movies in the Robert Ludlum series, but for some inexplicable reason, I no sooner left the theater when, "the board ultimatum" popped into my head. As titles go, this is admittedly thin for a pun, but here goes.
Somewhat like the Bourne character, charter-school boards need to understand their identities. Our opponents don't use guns, but the political climate in education sometimes makes opening and operating a charter school feel about as perilous as being fished out of the storm-tossed Mediterranean Sea. Like Jason Bourne, charter schools have enemies. To prevail, charter-school boards must figure out their identities and then discover their reasons for living.
As defined by board expert Dr. John Carver, the board's identity should always be as a representative of the organization's owners. For charter schools, this identity eliminates a host of plausible competing identities in which board members are sometimes cast as representatives of various stakeholders. This is to say, the role of the charter-school board is not to represent the interests of its founders, managers (whether through traditional or innovative arrangements), the second-grade teacher, the booster club, the middle school, the benefactors, the politicians, the labor unions, various board factions, or any other stakeholder. The role of the charter school board is to represent the interests of the public whose votes (through legislators) and money (through taxes) own the school. As a vehicle for education reform, the charter sector will make vast improvements when boards understand their identities as representatives of their public owners.
Once a board understands its identity, it is compelled to pursue its two-fold purpose: ensuring inarguably superior student achievement and unquestionably proper stewardship of money. As an owner mandate, the charter-school board is not permitted to fulfill one responsibility while abrogating the other. Let's briefly evaluate how we're doing.
Some charters are magnificently high-performing schools, such as those described in No Excuses (Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003). Unfortunately, too many are not. That is, in comparison to conventional public-school counterparts, most charter schools are performing at a level less than or merely equal to, the other schools in their states. If after three years in operation a school performs in the bottom quartile of public schools in the state, it has no legitimate claim to superior student achievement.
The charter movement also could stand some improvement on the issue of proper stewardship. Charter-school boards are public organizations; transparency is required. This has implications for a wide range of practices, not the least of which is board members examining their auditor's relationship to management to ensure independence of results and prohibiting the audit trail from going cold by signing over 100 percent of the school's revenues to their education-service provider (a.k.a. operator).
Who is ultimately responsible to the owners for student performance and financial stewardship in a charter school? The board.
Like the Bourne character, charter proponents are fighting a constant onslaught of people and organizations trying to kill chartering. One of the reasons, however, that proponents are unable to push back harder in response to political enemies and public antipathy, is that, nationally (and in Ohio), too many of our schools leave much to be desired.
Fortunately, the charter sector doesn't have to tolerate mediocrity and poor results. The performance contract between the school and its sponsor requires the school to either perform and adhere to good stewardship or go out of business.
That is the board's ultimatum.
Brian L. Carpenter is chief executive
officer of the National
Charter Schools Institute. He appeared at a training session for charter-school
boards of trustees in May in Columbus sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. Carpenter is the author of Charter School Board University: An Introductory
Course to Effective Charter School Governance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Envisioning
New Public Education Systems for the 21st Century:
A Report on the Eighth Annual NewSchools Summit
NewSchools Venture Fund
May 2007
The NewSchools Venture Fund recently released a report highlighting key insights from its May meeting in New Orleans, now the epicenter of educational reform efforts in America.
This quick read offers something for all educational innovators (from teachers to policymakers)--status-quo keepers beware! Read the summary from the Summit here.
The report provides summaries of panel discussions on a range of topics, including:
Among the many groups and individuals engaged in the struggle to revive the Big Easy and its schools, NewSchools Venture Fund is one of the most prominent. The organization is a nonprofit venture philanthropy supporting the efforts of high-impact educational entrepreneurs to transform American education.
At the meeting, NewsSchools CEO Ted Mitchell reminded the 1,000 participants that, "It need not take a disaster to cast a sharp light on a school system that's been failing its children for decades, nor should it take a flood to enable us to think bold thoughts or to act on them."
Michael Bennett, superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, captured the spirit of the conversation and the sense of urgency for broader change in education. "People don't want to hear that schools are failing but it's true," he said. "Entrepreneurial models are important for pointing that out, but also for giving people hope."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D'oh!
Dayton's teacher of the year cut loose, finds home in Springboro
The case against the archaic, seniority-before-all-else system of teacher retention in Ohio's schools was never made clearer than with the July "riffing" of Dayton Public Schools teacher Homer Knightstep.
After retiring from the Army Rangers and raising a family with his wife, Knightstep went back to college and became a primary school teacher. In his second year at Kemp Elementary, Knightstep was recognized as Dayton's Teacher of the Year at a "big banquet with a tux and everything." Two weeks later, however, the district let Knightstep go because of rigid and obsolete seniority rules in the district's collective bargaining agreement. He was one of about 300 teachers cut after the district's levy failed.
Knightstep has found a new home as a third-grade teacher at Five Points East Elementary in Springboro (see here) where last year's third graders achieved a whopping 99 percent passage rate on the reading achievement test and 95.8 percent on the math test. The Gadfly knows Knightstep will continue to be an outstanding educator and an inspiration and role model to a generation of youngsters in Warren County.
But what of the students at Kemp Elementary--where 100 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged and the school is in academic emergency? Couldn't they use Homer Knightstep, too?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are naive market-based ideas killing charters?
Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point looks at "social epidemics"--when popular ideas and behavior "tip" quickly (and often unexpectedly) then die out as fast as they started. Early supporters of school choice hoped parental options in education would do the former and transform public education into a world of choice, accountability, and transparency focused on students' needs and student achievement.
More than a decade into the school choice movement in America, though, the "tip" hasn't happened and school choice is spreading slowly. In some states, like Ohio, it faces the real threat of going backwards. Paul Hill, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, explains why the choice movement, despite its tremendous potential, is still fragile in the latest issue of Education Week. Provocatively, Hill shows how "naïve market-based initiatives encounter unexpected problems and produce meager results."
Hill's piece is mandatory reading for anyone who believes school choice plays a critical role in driving education reform in America. As Hill notes, "Choice can make parents full partners in education and drive innovation. Without it, public education is frozen in place by laws, contracts, and adult entitlements." Hill depicts in bullet-point fashion the many hurdles and challenges (many self-inflicted) facing choice programs and he calls on all reform-minded educators to stop waiting for the "tipping point" to happen. He urges action and provides useful guidance on what steps need to be taken.
As school choice fights for survival in Ohio, Hill's piece is hugely relevant and a good start for choice supporters looking to make things happen.
"Waiting
for the Tipping Point," by Paul Hill in Education Week, September
5, 2007.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KIPP Columbus seeks executive director
KIPP is opening the first of a cluster of schools in Columbus, Ohio, next summer and needs a passionate, high energy executive director at the helm. Learn more about this opportunity here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ohio Education Gadfly is published bi-weekly (ordinarily on Wednesdays, with occasional breaks) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Have something to say? Email us at [email protected]. Would you like to be spared from the Ohio Gadfly? Email [email protected] with "unsubscribe gadfly" in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward the Ohio Gadfly to others, and from our website you can even email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may either email [email protected] with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message or sign up through our website. To read archived issues or obtain other reviews of reports and books, go to our website and click on the Ohio Education Gadfly link. Aching for still more education news and analysis? Check out the original Education Gadfly.
Nationally and in Ohio, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, along with its sister organization the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, strives to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding high-quality education options for parents and families. As a charter-school sponsor in Ohio, the Foundation joins with schools to affirm a relentless commitment to high expectations for all children, accountability for academic results, and transparency and organizational integrity, while freeing the schools to operate with minimal red tape. The Foundation and Institute are neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.