The Education Gadfly

First Lady Frances Strickland is one of Governor Ted Strickland's closest education advisors. The Ohio Education Gadfly interviewed Mrs. Strickland in the wake of her husband's State of the State address, in which he proposed revamping the state's educational bureaucracy. The "over-emphasis" on standardized testing is harming public education, she argues. On the other hand, good charters have a place in Ohio and bad ones don't. For the wide-ranging, 4,000-word interview, see here. And for Mrs. Strickland's website see here. Following is a summary of some of the First Lady's key points from the interview:

While Republicans are unlikely to trust a Democratic governor's attempt to appoint an education czar answerable directly to the governor, Frances Strickland believes her husband's State of the State address has pushed Ohioans to at least consider change.

"Regardless of how it comes out, there is a conversation going on about K-12 education that has not been going on before," she said. "There is a fight over education, over who should have accountability for it. And it raises the whole view of education. I think that's a positive thing."

Many pundits saw meaning in Strickland's appointment of Eric Fingerhut to head the Ohio Board of Regents and, Mrs. Strickland said, that was prescient.

"Ted had to find some way to be personally accountable," she said. "This was a signal he really means it when he says education is the key to our economic future. Now he's sending the same signal about K-12."

Mrs. Strickland grew up in Simpsonville, a Kentucky community of about 250 people. She earned a bachelor's degree from Murray State University, a master's in guidance and counseling from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in educational psychology.

Governor Strickland is also an educational psychologist and the professional background of both husband and wife heavily influences some of the ideas they will explain to Ohioans in a series of forums beginning this autumn.

"We'll be looking for push back but we'll also be seeing whether we're hitting on something that feels right to people," she said. Explaining their educational vision is also the first step to changing how education dollars are spent, especially in resolving what she said is the continuing inequity in school funding.

"If you look at the state's ranking with the rest of the country. It's not so low," Mrs. Strickland said. "But in terms of equity the spending that goes on with the children and what they need in Jackson and Vinton counties (Appalachian counties) are far less than what is available to the children in other areas. For example, I was down in (Athens) County, at the Trimble school and they had just had to close their library because they couldn't afford the librarian."

In his State of the State address, the governor proposed minimizing the influence of the State Board of Education and making the state superintendent of public instruction directly answerable to a director of public education appointed by the governor and approved by the Ohio Senate. The governor also outlined a vision of classrooms as places that foster and nurture innovation, creativity, and competency and that substantially reduce the achievement gap between inner city and suburban students. But for that to happen, the Stricklands believe, the state's accountability and testing system must be substantially modified.

"We have to rethink education and rethink what we want in the way of outcomes. Right now in this country everything is about accountability...with the goal to reduce that achievement gap," Mrs. Strickland said. "If reducing the achievement gap does not help lead to students who are more creative and innovative we've had our eye on the wrong thing."

The current emphasis on standardized test scores is anathema to the Stricklands.

"I'm an educational psychologist so my professional life has been all about assessment...We couldn't place a child on the basis of just one test. That's just a rule of thumb. You don't get a full knowledge of what a child knows or what it takes to learn on the basis of one test. I...have known...children who just don't do well on these pencil-and-paper tests and there should be other ways for children to show how they know things. So this high-stakes testing on the basis of one test goes against everything I've ever known about assessment," she said.

It's also affecting teachers. "We do have a bunch of good teachers whose hands are tied because of the restrictiveness of this testing accountability focus," she said.

"We have to have accountability in the basics, but we can't let that drive our curriculum like it is. We have to keep an eye on what kind of a talent base do we need for the jobs of tomorrow. And if we just look at the fact that we're competing against (others) on the basis of reading, writing, and arithmetic scores and not looking for nurturing the strengths and the talents of kids, we're missing the long view for the threat of the short view."

In fact, employers, she said, have been complaining that too many Ohio graduates lack the ability to work in groups, solve problems, and communicate well with others. They show up for work wanting someone to tell them what to do.

"You can't get to creativity and innovation without that basic and procedural knowledge," Mrs. Strickland said. "But we have to push it to the next level. That's what we're rethinking right now....I've been looking more and more into the role of poverty on the achievement gap and the inner city schools; although poverty is just as much a problem in the rural areas as in the inner city."

Educators, she said, don't fully realize how much the culture of poverty competes with schooling. Creeping poverty threatens all attempts at education reform, no matter their political or philosophic underpinnings, she argues. Many Ohioans have failed to benefit from the economic rebound of the last several years. They're particularly vulnerable now that the nation is facing recession. The continued demise of manufacturing jobs, catastrophic expenses resulting from the lack of health insurance, and the loss of homes to the on-going mortgage crisis, Mrs. Strickland believes, threaten to increase poverty and permanently trap the children of the newly unemployed in generational poverty.

So where do charters fit in? They're fine as long as they produce results, Mrs. Strickland said.

"The presumption was the charter was going to be better than the public school and in many cases they find the public school is better," she said. "Certainly the achievement scores have been higher in the public schools than in a lot of the charter schools. We're not talking about across the board. We're talking about the accountability of charter schools and the fact that public monies were going into schools that were not functioning at the level the public schools were...."

"Any school that is able to do a successful job of teaching students should not be eliminated and Ted feels that way," Mrs. Strickland said. "We're not talking about good charter schools here."

By Mike Lafferty

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Capital Matters

Senate bill could boost charter schools' effectiveness, but opponents prefer killing charters altogether

Improvements have been made to Ohio's charter-school law over the past several years and some in the Senate are considering further changes to strengthen charter accountability. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives legislators are seeking to kill charters completely.

As currently drafted, Sub. S.B. 141 would tighten rules about who can serve on and work for charter-school governing authorities and sponsors, prevent schools from paying sponsors more than the maximum 3-percent sponsorship fee, and give the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) oversight of all charter-school sponsors. These proposals may sound familiar to Gadfly readers as they were also recommended in late 2006 by the Fordham Institute, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) in our joint report, Turning the Corner to Quality (see here).

Fordham, NACSA, and NAPCS offered support for Sub. S.B. 141--and additional recommendations for strengthening Ohio's charter program--to the bill's sponsors in a letter they requested last month (see here). Our support has some strange bedfellows, including the Ohio Education Association (OEA) and League of Women Voters of Ohio. Both groups are also supporting the legislation.

Unfortunately, the OEA wants to go further and has sought changes to the bill that would add costs and bureaucracy without doing anything to ensure improved school performance and accountability. The OEA's recommendations are largely about decreasing the freedom of charters while increasing the influence of traditional school districts over charters. For example, the OEA wants board members and school-district employees to be permitted to serve on the governing boards of charter schools, which would, in effect, ensure that charters do nothing that would be counter to the interests of the district or the union.

The OEA's legislative recommendations show a serious lack of understanding about the crux of charter schools--that charters receive greater operational freedom in exchange for increased accountability, which is enforced by the sponsor/authorizer. If board members or employees have their hands in both the oversight and operations of a charter school--be it a start-up or conversion charter--the accountability chain is largely meaningless. A school district, operating as a sponsor, would be hard-pressed to hold a school accountable for poor performance when its own board members and employees are effectively running the school.

The political shenanigans are even more pronounced in H.B. 454 which would place an iron-clad moratorium on new brick-and-mortar charters, require all charter-school operators to be nonprofits, and remove provisions in statute that encourage districts to partner with decent charter schools by offering suitable, unused classroom space to these schools. This bill flies in the face of the real estate dilemmas facing urban districts that find themselves with a glut of unused buildings paid for by the state and local taxpayers. Given the changes to charter-school law in the past few years, these recommended changes are largely punitive and appear self-serving on the part of district officials and teacher unions who have been opposed to charters since the first ones opened in 1998.

Charter school accountability has steadily improved over the last decade. New limits are now in place about who can open a charter school, with only proven models able to open new schools. The academic "death penalty" will start closing persistently failing charters at the end of next school year (note, traditional district schools can limp along broken forever). And the legislation encouraging districts to offer empty classrooms to charter schools has helped Ohio land the gold-standard of new school models, KIPP (see here and here)--though some would rather see buildings sit empty in already-blighted neighborhoods than be used for this purpose (see here and here).

Ohio's charter-school program has room for improvement, but many of the recommendations now being proposed by the OEA and others for S.B. 141, and even more so H.B. 454, are not improvements but rather daggers aimed at the heart of the charter-school program. This is a shame. Stealing a line from Barack Obama, when it comes to school choice we should focus on what works for children and encourage it (see here).

By Emmy L. Partin and Terry Ryan

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Recommended Reading

Fordham study shows how labor agreements can thwart innovation

Collective-bargaining agreements can have a tremendous impact on virtually all aspects of school-district operations, yet they pass under the public radar in many communities. Fordham's most recent report, The Leadership Limbo, nudges the contracts of the nation's 50-largest school districts into the spotlight, analyzing how restrictive these labor agreements actually are and finding that not all contracts are created equal.

The report has sparked debate across the country and in northeast Ohio, where the Cleveland teacher contract came in for criticism. The report raised important questions about whether contracts need to be more flexible, the causes of contract inflexibility, and if it is finally time to move from the traditional salary schedule to a performance-based pay system (see here and here).

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District was found to have the second-most-restrictive teacher contract in the country. But rather than admit that there is room for improvement within its contract with the district, the Cleveland Teachers Union attempted to discredit the study, noting that the union is "open to reform" and pointing to a new program that rewards schools (not individual teachers or even groups of teachers within specific schools) for meeting improvement goals (see here). The Cleveland Plain Dealer responded with a critical editorial of the union's response, noting that this "feather in the union's cap seems beside the point." The contract is out of sync with working Americans, the Plain Dealer opined, and this change is not enough to access the best Cleveland teachers and schools (see here).

KIDS COUNT data center valuable source of info

For a reliable, user-friendly source of data about the lives of children outside the schoolhouse, look no further than the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT data center.

KIDS COUNT houses state- and local-level data about "factors that affect the lives of children and families"--including statistics about the number of children in foster care, living in poverty, enrolled in public- health programs, and some 90-odd other data indicators of children's health and welfare. In the Buckeye State, KIDS COUNT provides data for the state as a whole, for the cities of Cleveland and Columbus, and for all 88 counties, although there is more data available for the state and cities than for the counties.

Novice users can easily pull up state and local profiles. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can create graphs showing trends over time and make color-coded maps to illustrate differences across the state or country. Serious data-miners can even download the raw numbers.

KIDS COUNT clearly defines the data and names its sources. The prominent drawback to the database is the lag in time before data is available (the most recent county-level information available for Ohio dates back to 2004 and 2005, depending on the category), but this delay is necessary when collecting and vetting information in 50 states (plus D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and hundreds of localities from a variety of sources. Access the database here.

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Announcement

Fordham to sponsor two new top-notch charter schools

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation will sponsor two new schools in Columbus, Ohio, this fall: the Columbus Collegiate Academy and the KIPP: Journey Academy.

Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA) is a college-preparatory school that will serve urban Columbus students in grades six through eight. Founded by Building Excellent Schools Fellow Andrew Boy, CCA's mission is to prepare middle-school students to achieve academic excellence and become citizens of integrity. Additional information on Columbus Collegiate is available here.

The Fordham Foundation will also sponsor the first Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) school in Ohio. The KIPP: Journey Academy will serve urban Columbus students in grades five through eight and will be led by Principal (and Cleveland native) Carina Robinson. Robinson most recently taught math at KIPP: Ujima Village Academy and she is currently completing KIPP's school-leader training program.

If you are interested in opening a charter school in Ohio sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, we encourage you to review our application (available here) and contact us to discuss how we might work together to provide a first-rate education to urban students in Ohio.

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Gadfly Readers Write...

... about the Gem City

Fordham's Vice President for Ohio Programs and Policy, Terry Ryan, wrote an op-ed piece for the Dayton Daily News that also ran in the last Gadfly contrasting the "two Daytons" (see here). This piece has garnered much reaction and following is one example of the many thoughtful responses we received:

I'm a five-year Dayton resident and read your editorial with interest. I agree with you regarding the "two Daytons" and was wondering if you'd consider answering a question. Your general tone conveys optimism. What would you say to a five-year Daytonian that's considering moving out of the city? I'm trying to find reasons to not sell out and move to the suburbs but repeatedly I'm coming up empty. I have two young children that attend public school and am part of a select group of educated urban parents that support it and embrace its diversity, even despite its reputation; I also work in Dayton and belong to our neighborhood association and consider myself an active and involved individual. But I am troubled by the immediate neighborhood, drive past boarded-up houses every day, and see blight and decay, and witness downtrodden people on a daily basis. I can't get past it, and it's incredibly depressing to live in this environment. What's even more troubling is that I have seen no improvement since I've lived here. If anything, East Dayton in particular has gotten much worse. Now they are even closing the area's last decent grocery store, the Meijer on Woodman Drive, meaning grocery shopping, along with most everything else, is now located in the suburbs. I feel like it's the last straw....

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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.