The Education Gadfly

Bringing long-term positive change to the Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD) and reversing the district's decades-long slide means not only beefing up test scores but also closing poorly performing schools while opening innovative new ones that will give the district the edge in pushing change.

That's why the new Office of New Schools, created with a $1.65 million grant from the Cleveland Foundation and the George Gund Foundation, is so important. The office, charged with opening new schools and ensuring their success, represents the board of education's huge stake in this new direction.

This public-private partnership in educational reform will be watched closely in Ohio and beyond. The good news for CMSD leaders, however, is that this is not uncharted territory. There are lessons to be learned from Chicago, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and other cities where high-quality schools have been successfully opened and operated. There also are lessons to be learned on what works, and what doesn't, from the charter experience right here in Ohio.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has sponsored nine charter schools since the summer of 2005 and we expect to sponsor two new schools in 2008 (the state's first KIPP school and a Building Excellent Schools school, both in Columbus). We've learned many lessons, beginning with the tremendous challenge of successfully educating acutely disadvantaged children. While we certainly have not figured it all out, here are five lessons that the CMSD Office of New Schools should consider:

Dare to be different. Embrace innovation and stick by it. CMSD stepped off in the right direction when it started single-gender schools last year and stood by them despite the protests of some parents who didn't like the change. There are other areas of school operations such as instituting longer school days and an extended school year that new and existing schools should embrace, even if such changes are unpopular. Many high-quality urban schools have already made the switch to more class time. These schools utilize the extra hours to help all students succeed academically. But such changes simply can't be decreed. Teachers have to embrace the importance of longer hours and they have to be rewarded for doing so. KIPP, for example, pays teachers 20 percent to 30 percent more than the district average but expects its teachers to work 50 percent more hours.
The bureaucracy must adjust. The district bureaucracy needs to embrace being different by, for example, ensuring that buses are available to take children to school earlier and home later, sometimes hours after schools normally close. Children also need to be transported on Saturdays and over the summer. District business as usual has not worked in the past and will not work in the future.
Be highly selective in who is allowed to open new schools. Opening and running a successful school is hard work fraught with peril. The budget is always tight. There is always worry about whether students will show up, and finding and hiring great teachers is never easy. New schools should be opened only by 1) organizations with a track record of success or 2) prospective operators that can bring significant money, credibility, and expertise to the enterprise. Ideally, you'd have both, but saying 'no' to a new school idea, or at least asking for far more detail before saying 'yes,' is far less costly than opening a school that is troubled from the start (see here).
Seek out the best and brightest to work in these schools. It makes no sense to open new schools that then draw their leaders and teachers from existing local schools. The single most important factor for student achievement is effective teaching. For new schools to deliver and sustain results they need teachers and principals committed to doing things differently and going the extra mile. New schools should seek new talent. To help fill the talent pipeline the district should reach out to national groups like Teach for America, the New Teachers Project, and New Leaders for New Schools.
Embrace accountability and transparency. New schools should be held to the highest academic standards and their performance should be clear to all. The best way to do this is by issuing a comprehensive annual performance report. This achievement report should be widely heralded by the district and widely reported by the media. Performance should be celebrated and mediocrity exposed.

The long-suffering Cleveland Municipal School District is to be applauded for embracing a new reform strategy. This effort needs to succeed and one way to up the odds of success is to learn from others.

By Terry Ryan

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Capital Matters

General Assembly gets in gear

The Statehouse is bustling with activity as the legislature ramps up for 2008. A slew of bills are being debated in the education committees. One proposes doing away with paddling, a longstanding tradition in some schools. Another bill would ban teacher strikes and a third would curtail some teacher collective-bargaining rights.

Picket signs outside of schools might become a thing of the past. The Senate education committee is debating the merits of S.B. 264 that would prohibit teachers from striking. The legislation would require binding arbitration to settle collective bargaining disputes. Teachers would be treated like police, firefighters, and EMS workers, all of whom are prohibited from striking because the services they provide are far too important to go without during a work stoppage. This bill deserves serious debate. While strikes are not terribly common in Ohio, when they do occur they are incredibly disruptive to students, parents, and the entire educational process (see here and here).

A bill (H.B. 423) proposed by Representative Arlene Setzer would no longer allow collective bargaining in policies surrounding paying teachers wage-rate differentials, the length of the school's instructional year, and the length of the school's instructional day -- all essential freedoms that should be determined at the school level. If passed, these decisions would be left up to the school administration and/or the school board.

And, misbehaving students will no longer be subject to in-school paddling (ouch!) if State Representatives Brian Williams and Jon Peterson have their way. These two don't always see eye-to-eye on educational issues but they are cosponsoring a bill (H.B. 406) to ban corporal punishment in all Ohio schools. (In the past two years, 17 Ohio school districts reported using corporal punishment.) The co-sponsors note that corporal punishment is used disproportionately among poor and minority students and those with special needs or disabilities. Passing this bill would make Ohio the 30th state in the nation to end corporal punishment in schools. But if this bill does not become law, students should think about wearing extra pairs of underwear to school when they fear a paddling, just like Gadfly used to do.

By Kristina Phillips-Schwartz

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News & Analysis

Good work in Cincinnati but reform has only just begun

The spotlight has been shining brightly on the Cincinnati Public Schools' (CPS) reform efforts, including a segment January 15 on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight that highlighted the changes at Withrow University High School. CPS has embarked on real reform in its high schools and has school leaders and educators--including Withrow principal Sharon Johnson and her team--who are producing big results. The district's improving graduation rate is an example. At the same time, it must be said that the district's work is far from over:

The district didn't meet the state level for proficiency on a single one of the state's 18 achievement tests last year.
Achievement gaps in the early and middle grades are large and persistent.
Leadership limbo (as it seeks its fourth superintendent in 10 years) and a looming financial crisis (see here) have some experts calling the front office "dysfunctional" (see here).

With these handicaps, it is impressive that the district has posted such tangible achievements in its high schools, and these improvements are reflective of much hard work by administrators, principals, teachers, and students. It is also reflective of serious philanthropic investment by KnowledgeWorks, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and others who are dedicated to high-school reform in the Queen City.

However, the Cincinnati Public Schools cannot afford to rest and must now figure out how to expand its reforms and improvements throughout the entire K-12 system. (The district's recent move to replace the entire staff at long-failing Taft Elementary shows that CPS understands it will take more than incremental adjustments to bring about real success [see here].) The district must address large and persistent achievement gaps among younger students, while also managing tough fiscal and operational challenges. The task is great, but the district has early successes it can build on for the betterment of all students.

See also:
"How Cincinnati Turned Its Schools Around," by Joe Nathan, in January 9, 2007, Education Week.

By Emmy L. Partin, Kristina Phillips-Schwartz

Ohio's charter-school law under the microscope

Charter opponents often claim that charter schools in Ohio are unaccountable. But this claim is wrong and utterly indefensible. To see why, check out the PowerPoint presentation put together this month for charter-school board members and operators by the law firm Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur (see here). This presentation details in painful specificity Ohio's charter-school law, showing that Ohio's charter-school program is highly regulated and that charter schools are held accountable for their academic performance, business operations, and fiscal probity. In fact, Ohio's charter law is strong, even if it isn't perfect. What's less clear is whether all charter-school sponsors--the organizations responsible for ensuring charter school accountability-- are actually enforcing the charter law (see here).

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Recommended Reading

Science, Evolution, and Creationism
National Academy of Sciences
2008

It's sad to think, but 50 years from now Americans will probably still be debating the credibility of the theory of evolution. Opponents, whether they describe themselves as creationists or intelligent designers, will still not accept evolution, despite the ever-growing mountain of scientific evidence supporting the theory.

Teachers, of course, ought to be weighing in on this issue, although in some districts they may be afraid to. Toward that end, the National Academy of Sciences has released a new bulletin on evolution. It describes new research that supports the theory and explains why it is so important for Americans, including students in the nation's science classrooms, to understand the scientific explanation of how we all got here.

Unlike the academy's two previous books on evolution, the current effort takes head-on the issue of evolution and religion. The upshot--there is no conflict and many mainline religious leaders say so, the academy points out. Explaining the science against a religious background is a new and welcome shift for the academy and more scientists need to explain evolution to religious doubters in similar, non-confrontational ways.

More than anything, however, the bulletin is an accessible, information-packed, finely illustrated, and first-rate explanation of evolution and how scientific understanding of the theory has changed since Charles Darwin first posited it in 1859. It also provides a wonderful explanation of the scientific process. An example: a scientific theory is a lot more than what lay people regard as a theory. In science, a theory must have already accumulated a whole bunch of evidence supporting it. Also, it must successfully make predictions. Just as Einstein's relativity theories successfully predict nature, so does evolution. In contrast, no scientific evidence has ever been discovered supporting creationism or intelligent design.

Bottom line, this is a great text that ought to find its way into high-school and college classrooms. Members of state and local boards of education ought to have copies also.

Fundamentalists, threatened by science they see as increasingly complex, alien, and hostile, will reject the bulletin. Still, the academy has thrown an olive branch to fundamentalists. Science and religion address separate aspects of the human experience, the bulletin's authors point out, and it's possible to be a member of both clubs. Society as a whole, however, is best served when science, not religion dressed up as creationism and intelligent design, is taught in science classrooms. While religion ought to be kept out of science classrooms, this bulletin ought definitely to be in them. Read the bulletin online here.

By Michael B. Lafferty

The Education Mayor: Improving America's Schools
Kenneth K. Wong, Francis X. Shen, Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, Stacey Rutledge
Georgetown University Press
2007

It seems like every state chief executive is a self-proclaimed "education governor," and now more and more mayors are getting into the education game. Just in time comes The Education Mayor: Improving America's Schools, an examination of mayoral control of urban schools through quantitative data and case studies of mayor-run districts across the country. The authors set out to learn the impact of mayoral control on student achievement and classroom practices, what school governance looks like when a mayor is at the helm, and what factors contribute to the success or failure of this school-governance structure. In the end, they make a pretty good case for marrying the schoolhouse and city hall, particularly that this move clarifies who is ultimately responsible for reform and results. But they warn that a host of factors play into whether this strategy sinks or swims.

Of particular interest to Buckeye State readers should be the sections pertaining to the Cleveland Municipal School District, which has been under mayoral control for about 10 years and where 70 percent of voters voiced their support of this governance structure in a 2002 referendum. Cleveland's mayor-led system is an anomaly in Ohio, making it difficult to evaluate the district's governance and administration compared to the state's other big urban districts. This book provides a look at Cleveland in the company of its peers across the country.

The Education Mayor has the empirical research and statistics jargon to satisfy wonkish types but those features don't detract from this comprehensive and compelling analysis. Buy the book here.

By Emmy L. Partin

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From the Front Lines

Two districts decide to tango with one superintendent

Two Wayne County school districts that have decided to stretch budgets by sharing a superintendent. Orrville City Schools and the neighboring Rittman Exempted Villiage Schools estimate that both districts will each save about $100,000 now and even more down the road by sharing Orrville Superintendent John Ritchie and several other officials.

"It was my idea. I looked at how business and industry does things, how they streamline," Ritchie told The Gadfly. "We have to make the effort to be creative to make money last longer."

While several Ohio districts share treasurers, it's believed sharing a superintendent is a first, at least in Ohio. In addition, the two districts will double up on an assistant superintendent and treasurer as well as EMIS, operations, and business-services directors.
Ritchie, 40, is a 1986 graduate of Rittman and the arrangement became possible when Rittman's superintendent retired.

Running just one district is a full-time job, he said, yet there is lots of duplication. "If I attend a county superintendents' meeting it's not like I can't listen for both districts," Ritchie said. The most challenging task may be attending plays, sports, and other events in both districts. While Ritchie said he is ready to attend more events there will be some nights when he will be unable to be in two places at once.

The two districts will maintain two school boards and separate budgets. Under the deal, which began January 1, Ritchie will continue to make $99,000 a year. The first year, Orrville will pay 80 percent of his salary and Rittman will pay 20 percent. The split will eventually be based on relative enrollments. Now, Orville has about 60 percent and Rittman 40 percent of the students enrolled in the two districts.

By Michael B. Lafferty

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Gadfly Readers Write...

Selected comments from our readers

Jane Shaw, of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, writes to let us know of a new report:
George Cunningham has just written a report on education schools in North Carolina (which are a lot like education schools across the country!). His findings have serious implications for K-12 education. Most education schools are imbued with the culture of progressivist/constructivist theory. He lays this out--and the damaging effects--in his paper, "UNC Education Schools: Helping or Hindering Potential Teachers?" published by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. View the paper online here.

If you have something to say about The Ohio Education Gadfly, say it in an e-mail to an article author or to the editor, Mike Lafferty, at [email protected]. Correspondence may be edited for clarity and length.

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About Us

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.