THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 2, Number 1. January 9, 2008
Current
Issue On the Web
Past
Issues On the Web
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From the Tit-for-Tat Department
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It's probably no surprise for those of you intimate with gadflies that they have, prominently, the ability to clearly and accurately predict the future. So, after many long hours in front of the crystal ball over the holidays, the Ohio Education Gadfly is blessing readers with eight insightful predictions for the Buckeye State in 2008:
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Buckeye State: Better than average
Education Week released its Quality Counts 2008 report today. This influential and objective annual report gives Ohio another B-minus. Here are some key takeaway points:
Check out the report here.
By Terry Ryan
Charter school accountability--progress has been made, but more to do
Since 2005, Ohio has ramped up its charter school accountability. The General Assembly took the lead here with legislation like H.B. 66 in 2005 and H.B. 79 in late 2006. This legislation increased accountability on charter schools, capped new school start-ups so only those operators with a track record of success can open schools in Ohio, and created an academic death penalty for persistently failing charter schools.
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has followed step with a renewed focus on charter-school quality, as evidenced in its fifth annual report about the condition of the state's charter school program that was submitted to the governor last month. But the march toward quality is not complete, as illustrated in the compliance section of ODE's report. The report's final table, "Sponsor Assignment of Community School Legal Compliance," makes clear that the state has too many lax sponsors. This, if it continues, will result in lawmakers further usurping sponsors' powers through new legislation and increased regulation.
The ODE compliance table, which is truly the most enlightening part of the report, summarizes charter-school compliance in education, finance, governance, and academic assessment and accountability. Sponsors must rate schools as overall compliant, partially compliant, or non-compliant in each area and submit these ratings to ODE each fall. As many as 17 sponsors did not submit an annual report at all, and just five sponsors--our sister organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, among them--rated any school as noncompliant.
Obviously, this table does not paint an accurate picture of the state of Ohio's charters. For example, one school that made headlines last year for being unable to make payroll was rated partially compliant by its sponsor in the finance category. Another school that has languished in academic watch and academic emergency for most of its existence is rated overall compliant in both the education and academic assessment categories.
To its credit, ODE speaks at length in its report about the importance of good sponsorship to the success or failure of charter schools and the charter school initiative. But the bulk of ODE's work toward monitoring sponsors and increasing their capacity to support schools is futile until, as noted in the report Turning the Corner to Quality issued by Fordham, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers in late 2006 (see here):
Currently, there are 65 charter school sponsors operating in Ohio. Of those 65 sponsors, only 15 have been approved by ODE and are contractually obliged to perform or face ODE sanctions. The remaining 50 sponsors (many of them traditional school districts that treat charter schools as district programs), which include the two biggest in Ohio, are accountable to ODE in a voluntary fashion alone.
What Ohio and the students in Ohio's charter schools are left with, therefore, are 65 different interpretations across 300+ charter schools of how those schools are faring in the four areas that ODE examines: academic accountability, delivery of a school's education plan to students (for example: mission and curriculum), fiscal health, and organizational viability (governance).
Kudos to ODE for attempting to bring transparency to the performance of charter schools and their sponsors and for shedding light on the continuing need for uniform standards of quality and accountability amongst Ohio's sponsors. Unfortunately, this information was buried deep in the report and is apt to be read by few and considered by fewer.
See: "2006-2007 Community School Annual Governor's Report," Ohio Department of Education, December 31, 2007. To access each sponsor's annual report to ODE, click on the hyperlinked sponsor names in the first column.
By Kathryn Mullen Upton, Emmy L. Partin, and Terry Ryan
Growth matters: Ohio's move to value-add
Last month, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released the value-added achievement test data for the state's public schools. This data, from the 2006-07 school year, shows student academic growth (in math and reading, grades four through eight) over time. ODE rates buildings and districts in three categories: green (exceeds state-level growth expectations), yellow (meets state-level growth expectation), and red (does not meet state-level growth expectations). Beginning this August, with two full years of data available, the value-added measure will appear on state report cards for schools and districts, and this growth metric will have an impact on a school's overall academic rating. Schools or districts with two consecutive years of growth that exceeds state expectations will move up a rating, while schools with three consecutive years failing to meet growth expectations will move down a rating.
In the meantime, there are at least three takeaways from the first round of data.
First, value-added data reaffirms that the ability to attain academic gains is independent of poverty or minority status. While these factors may be challenges to educating students, they are by no means excuses for failure. For example, "rural poor" districts are outpacing other types of districts in overall value-added gains, and charter schools outpace their traditional counterparts, especially in adolescent literacy. (Charter advocates are making hay of these inaugural results, as seen here.).
Second, this data raises questions about how to define "success" in a school. Some schools with high levels of overall achievement, many of these are schools in wealthy districts, are failing to show adequate growth over time; while some lower achieving schools are showing gobs of growth (kudos to the Columbus Public Schools, for example). Schools showing no achievement and no growth over time ought to be exposed, and schools showing high value-added gains should be studied for promising practices for replication elsewhere. All teachers, students, parents, and taxpayers would benefit from knowing what is happening in their schools.
Finally, it is fair to ask--as a few State Board of Education members did at this month's meeting--whether the state's achievement tests are too easy or too difficult in certain grades or subjects? And, might these discrepancies lead to poor value-added results? For example, fully 50 percent of districts, and 30 percent of charter schools, are rated "red" in fifth-grade math. At first blush this could be cause for alarm, but an October report by Fordham argued that Ohio's math tests peak in difficulty at grade five and are unevenly calibrated across the grades. While encouraging schools and teachers to reevaluate their instructional strategies based on value-added data in order to improve student achievement, state policymakers ought to take a fresh look at test cut scores and the calibration of the test across grades in light of this new information.
Ohio is to be commended for its leadership on moving toward a richer view of student achievement, and it is right to go slow here and to make improvements along the way. Much will be learned in the coming years from this data that will reshape our thinking about student performance, school performance, and even the impact of poverty on student achievement. This is all for the good.
By Emmy L. Partin, Kristina Phillips-Schwartz
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From the Tit-for-Tat Department
The OEA needs to take a long look in the mirror
Fordham president Checker Finn's December 11, 2007, Columbus Dispatch op-ed (see here) about how to better Ohio's charter school program generated a predictable letter to the editor from Ohio Education Association (OEA). The OEA's president, Patricia Frost-Brooks, took Finn's call for improvements as reason for ending charters altogether. While Frost-Brooks pointed out that 60 percent (actually it's 58 percent, but she was close) of the state's brick-and-mortar charter schools are in academic watch or academic emergency, she neglected to mention that 43 percent of traditional urban district schools, in the cities where charters operate, are also in the same boat. This despite the fact these schools receive 30 percent more state funding than charters and have been showered with new buildings. Least we forget, the reason Ohio has charter schools is because decades of evidence taught us that traditional district schools cannot meet the needs of all children.
Finn wasn't afraid to admit the shortcomings of Ohio's charter school system and call for improvements to the program. Imagine the progress Ohio could make if Frost-Brooks and her colleagues in the OEA would, responsibly, admit the failings of and seek ways to improve traditional public school districts.
For more insight, see:
"Charter
schools need more than money," December 31, 2007, Columbus Dispatch.
"OEA
needs to take care of own business," January 3, 2008, Columbus Dispatch.
And for an additional perspective,
Thomas W. Carroll, chairman of the Brighter Choice Foundation (see here),
Albany, N.Y., offers this:
In his commentary on the Dayton experience, "Sources of Charter School
Mediocrity," Checker Finn provides one of the choice movement's rare admissions
of error. His analysis is trenchant and honestly refreshing.
After recounting the lessons of Dayton's mixed experience, Finn notes that Albany
is one of the few areas in the nation that has birthed a sizable charter-school
sector "without as many quality woes."
As a person who was deeply involved in the adoption of New York's charter-school
law in 1998 and as the chairman of the Brighter Choice Foundation, which has
provided key support to eight of the nine charters in Albany, I have had a front-row
seat to the Albany experience. Although I believe that Albany will, in the end,
live up to Checker Finn's description, some early missteps are worth mentioning.
First, New Covenant Charter School in Albany, the very first charter school
in NYS, was mishandled first by Advantage, then by Edison, and now is run by
Victory Schools. New Covenant opened too fast, grew too fast, and suffered from
a series of bad authorizing decisions. The State University board, first under
Republican Governor George Pataki and more recently under Democrat Governor
Eliot Spitzer, has failed to close this persistently low-performing school.
Second, in the interest of full disclosure, one of the newer schools didn't
do so hot last year either. Eight charters are backed by the nonprofit Brighter
Choice Foundation (New Covenant is the only one we do not). So far, seven of
these eight are open. Of those seven, one stumbled badly and now is in the midst
of a real turnaround (in year three). On that one, the lesson is no more complicated
than: don't hire a weak school leader. Interestingly, though, the parents did
fit Checker Finn's description of consumers who need to be more demanding. Changes
were forced at the school because it wasn't up to snuff, but not by parents.
A significant segment of parents backed the weak principal and were unfazed
by weak test scores. As Checker Finn indicated, it wasn't top on their hierarchy
of values. Dramatic action was taken--new principal, lots of new teachers and
stricter discipline--but if this charter was a "mom and pop" stand-alone
school, the problems likely would not have been fixed as quickly, if at all.
Overall, I think the portfolio of schools backed by Brighter Choice has a pretty
good success rate thus far, but it's not flawless.
The fact that dramatic action was taken to turn around the one clunker stands
in striking contrast to the Albany district's tolerance of low performance in
some of its schools for a generation or more. By eighth grade, in the district
schools, almost nine of every 10 minority students flunk math and reading every
year.
Charter schools backed by the Brighter Choice Foundation have placed No. 1 out
of Albany's public schools in reading, math, and science at the elementary level
and No.1 in math and social studies at the middle-school level. Two of the elementary
schools are the only charters in New York to have earned an investment-grade
bond rating from Wall Street.
This fall, 20 percent of Albany's public-school students are enrolled in charter
schools, slated to rise to roughly one-third in two years.
The scale has, at times, caused great controversy, but interestingly, the Albany
district has begun to respond, albeit with baby steps. Just in the past year,
the Albany district negotiated a 30-minute increase in the length of the school
day, tried school uniforms in one school and single-gender instruction in another.
Each of these reforms mimicked key features of local charter schools.
Predicting the future is a dangerous business, but here's one possible outcome:
both the district and charter sectors will be forced to fix or close their weakest
schools, the scale of choice will encourage an intense focus on results, and
parents and their children, in the end, will be left with an enviable array
of good-to-great school options. Since the charters are doing a better job of
educating African-American and Latino students, the continued growth of this
sector also could lead to a dramatically narrowed, if not upside-down, racial
achievement gap. That's not how the Albany district looked before charters came
on the scene.
All of this is a tall order, and lots of things still could go wrong in the
years ahead, but one thing is clear: the status quo approach embraced for decades
by the Albany district had no chance of producing these potentially transformational
changes.
Just some background from the trenches here in Albany--good and bad--offered
in Checker's spirit of full disclosure.
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Promises
with a Price: Public Sector Retirement Benefits
The Pew Charitable Trusts
December 2007
There has been much written lately, accompanied by serious teeth gnashing, about the sustainability of public-pension systems in the United States (see here and here). This past summer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute joined the discussion by issuing a report on the health of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS) and its impact on the decision making of current and future teachers about when to retire or, on the other end of the career spectrum, to even get into teaching at all (see here).
The Pew Charitable Trusts has now chimed in with the release of its report "Promises with a Price." This report looks at the bills coming due in the next few decades, $2.73 trillion over the next 30 years, for public employee pensions. For Ohio, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the state's unfunded liability for its public employee pension systems (the state has four) is only $26 billion, which compares well with other states. Illinois's public pension systems, for example, have a cumulative unfunded liability of $41 billion.
However, Gadfly readers will know that the STRS unfunded pension liability is $19.4 billion of the $26 billion facing the state, even though STRS's membership is little more than one-third of the state's three other public pension systems.
According to Pew, public-pension expenses facing the 50 states are staggering, although Ohio has done a comparatively decent job of preparing itself to meet these costs. The really worrying news from Pew relates to the ballooning cost of health-care benefits promised to public employees who retire. Pew estimates the cost in Ohio alone is about $21 billion.
Fordham was able to learn from STRS over the summer that its system expects its health-care cost liability to be about $10 billion. It is these expected health-care costs that have led STRS to recently propose legislation (H.B. 315) that would obligate the system to assume retiree health-care liabilities and to fund these benefits in the same way that STRS now funds the pension liability. Money for these costs will have to come out of the budgets of hard-pressed local school districts (funded by taxpayers) and/or the paychecks of their hard-pressed teachers.
Before locking these costs in as nondiscretionary spending, the General Assembly should consider three observations in the Pew report. First, consider generational equity. Does it make sense to burden future generations with the costs of their parents and grandparents? Second, once granted, a defined benefit is very difficult to take away. Third, a growing gap between public- and private-sector benefits will fuel political debate as taxpayers notice that they are contributing to government employee retirement benefits that are increasingly unavailable to taxpayers at large (see here). The Pew report is timely and important reading for anyone worried about the future economic health of Ohio. View a copy of the report here.
By Terry Ryan
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The SEED Foundation--created in 1997 to establish college-prep, urban boarding schools--is seeking to open a new school in Ohio's Queen City and is hiring a Director of New Schools Development for Ohio to lead the efforts. Applicants should have experience in non-profit growth development and must possess enthusiasm and an entrepreneurial spirit, among other qualifications.
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The Ohio Education Gadfly is published bi-weekly (ordinarily on Wednesdays, with occasional breaks, and in special editions) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Have something to say? Email the editor at [email protected]. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email [email protected] with "unsubscribe gadfly" in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward the 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, 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 Institute, along with its sister organization the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 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.