THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 2, Number 13. June 18, 2008
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The Ohio Education Gadfly is going on vacation to do a little fishing. We'll see you once in July and then be back to our regular schedule in August. Have a safe and pleasant summer!
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One might think that leaders of the Buckeye State who have at least one eye focused on education would be struggling to prepare tens of thousands more kids with the skills and knowledge that global competitiveness demands in the 21st century: math, science, engineering, history, languages, and writing as well as prowess in "creative" applications of such skills and knowledge. No state is in greater economic peril than Ohio in 2008.
One might also think those leaders would be struggling a la the No Child Left Behind act to narrow the achievement gaps that separate Ohio's more fortunate young people from its growing numbers of poor, minority, and immigrant youngsters, and to prepare far more of the latter to complete high school and go on to succeed in college.
And one might think they'd be preoccupied with boosting school productivity, creating more strong schools, and fostering the ability of families to move among them to tailor the right fit between a child's educational needs and the school best able to supply them--not to mention liberating kids from dreadful schools and getting them easier access to good ones.
To be sure, some of all that is going on. One thinks of the STEM initiative and some of Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut's bolder moves. But it's not nearly enough. And that's not where the energy is.
No, at a time when Ohio's leaders should be more hard-nosed than ever about education, they're going squishy.
While former Florida governor Jeb Bush hosts a superb gathering of hard-nosed education analysts and policy makers from across the nation in Orlando these next two days, Ohio's Ted Strickland has invited several hundred Ohioans to a fiesta of education psychobabble, full of every loopy idea ever encountered in this field and as lacking in teeth as a three-month old. The "Governor's Institute on Creativity and Innovation in Education" (see here and here) will have plenty of facilitators, tons of background reading--get ready for such notions as "learner as center (finding their sweet spot)," "positive deviance," and more diagrams with circles and arrows than you can shake a stick at. Sorry, that martial imagery doesn't accord with the therapeutic feel-goodism that will infuse these hours--with continuing education credit available, of course!
Alas, it isn't just the governor. Monday the Plain Dealer reported a $1.3 million grant by the Gates and Hewlett Foundations (see here and here) to the Ohio Department of Education to explore "alternatives to assessment"--such as portfolios, projects, and the like.
It could be a good idea, provided that one is supplementing objective assessments with such valuable add-ons as essays, art projects, history reports, and so on. There are plenty of things one wants to know about kids' learning that cannot satisfactorily be appraised through multiple-choice test items. But alternatives to assessment is another matter altogether. Every state that has previously trod this path (famously including Vermont) has found that the unevenness and subjectivity involved in evaluating portfolios makes them costly, slow, and unable to withstand expert scrutiny and legal challenge.
Why is a state with so many urgent education needs and challenges moving toward soft-headed romanticism?
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Getting high school in sync with college is a good start
Talk about streamlining education. This month, some Ohio high school seniors will be earning not just high-school diplomas but also associate-college degrees. In Columbus, 19 seniors have already taken enough courses to earn associate degrees from DeVry Advantage Academy (see here). Some students knock off as much as 18 months of future college classes toward a bachelor's degree under the program paid for by the Columbus City Schools.
And qualified students in 42 Ohio school districts are gearing up to take their senior year in high school on a state college campus under Gov. Ted Strickland's Seniors-to-Sophomores program. Under S-to-S, high school seniors will receive their high-school diplomas next June and also, hopefully, earn enough credits to be college sophomores (see here). Such programs look good to students and parents because they keep kids learning during their senior year and they cut the cost of higher education. Knocking a year off a state college education would save thousands--at Miami of Ohio about $21,000 and that doesn't include a student's personal expenses.
The idea of making K-16 education seamless is generating powerful and positive innovations that are central to the Ohio Board of Regents' plan to boost the number of college graduates in the state. By 2017, Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut wants to have 230,000 more students enrolled in Ohio colleges and universities, boosting the total to 830,000.
Fingerhut's basic ideas have been circulating for a couple of months, but he has recently provided more detail, especially in connecting the dots between the state universities and primary and secondary schools. Basically, Fingerhut's plan calls for high schools to be more like colleges, at least for some students. "We have not been good partners with primary and secondary education," he told the Ohio Grantmakers Forum in May. "We intend to become aggressive, supportive partners." At a minimum, the Regents want to expand Advanced Placement high-school courses and tutoring programs. Fingerhut envisions professors teaching college courses in high schools as well as high-school seniors taking classes on college campuses. "I'm embarrassed that higher education hasn't offered more courses in high school," he said. "We have resisted in the past offering college courses in high-school buildings. Now, not only are we not resisting, we are aggressively moving toward it."
The chancellor is moving in the right direction for young people, families, and the state of Ohio. Fingerhut, however, needs to tread cautiously and not inadvertently cripple this program by pushing too fast, too soon. While only about 12,000 Ohio students took so-called dual-credit, college-level courses last year, according to the Ohio Department of Education, the number has nearly doubled in a decade. Ironically, Fingerhut's emphasis comes when universities are starting to resist recognizing dual-enrollment courses for college graduation requirements (see here).
"Places like New York University...are rejecting credit for high school students because they can't be sure of what the student experienced," said Thomas J. Lasley, dean of the School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton. But, he said, money also may be a factor: "My guess is it could also affect the number of courses a person takes on campus and that could eventually begin to affect a university's income."
Lasley advocates rigorous state guidelines to ensure that the college courses taught in high schools are truly college-level. A lesson, he believes, should be drawn from the charter-school movement in Ohio, which expanded rapidly and at the expense of quality. Based on a model developed at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, the University of Dayton has offered college-level math, political science, philosophy, and other courses in Dayton-area high schools for several years. The courses are taught by qualified high-school teachers and UD professors oversee the instruction, curriculum, and assessment. Despite these safeguards, the university's dual-credit courses are sometimes turned down by colleges and universities when students begin college.
Dual-credit programs in Ohio are concentrated more among high schools and two-year colleges, in part, because students and their parents are trying to save money, agrees Frank DePalma, superintendent of the Montgomery County Educational Service Center. Because they could produce shorter high-school and college careers, dual-credit programs likely threaten the jobs of some high-school teachers. And, since the courses have to be taught by licensed instructors with at least master's degrees, if one can't be found then a college instructor or professor might have to come to the high school to teach the course. While that instructor probably knows the subject material, he or she probably won't have a high-school teaching license, so school districts risk being dinged on their state report cards, DePalma said.
Additionally, union worries over potential staff cuts and report-card accountability have already been raised. Fingerhut has not said how much all of this will cost in the short term, nor is it clear where the money will come from. But he is absolutely right to be seeking ways to streamline the K-16 education system and to help young people who are ready to take college level courses take them at the age they can manage them. This streamlining will benefit young people, their families, and ultimately the state of Ohio.
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More money does not equal more learning
Can Ohio afford Gov. Strickland's education reform plan? Not without a tax increase, according to Richard Sheridan, of the Center for Community Solutions, writing in the latest issue of State Budgeting Matters. Sheridan is surely right--after all, with the full implementation of scheduled tax cuts in a few years, Ohio will see billions of dollars less in revenue annually. Those tax cuts, in addition to other economic development stimuli, are designed to boost business. If the resulting tax take doesn't offset the future lower rates, then every state-spending program will be up for substantial reductions. Sheridan, however, is wrong to assume that improving Ohio's public-education system means spending more.
Sheridan chronicles the public-education changes Ohio governors have made throughout the 20th century. He highlights three major instances--under governors White, Gilligan, and Voinovich--that he says can be considered real reforms. In each instance, Sheridan argues, education reform and increased taxes were inextricably bound. The changes he points to, however, were really just modifications to how the state funds its schools and how much it spends on education. They were not wholesale transformations of the education system. And, while Ohio's K-12 education needs a transformation, it is not the one Gov. Strickland is probably contemplating.
Sheridan looks at education through the lenses of the educational producers, who never seem to see that successful education reform does not necessarily mean more teachers, more programs, more requirements, and more money. A recent report by the World Bank entitled "Education Quality and Economic Growth" (see here) looked at the impact of educational spending in 25 countries since the early 1970s. The researchers discovered that, "pure resource policies that adopt the existing structure of school operations are unlikely to lead to necessary improvements in learning." In short, there is no relationship between spending and student performance across the 25-country sample of middle- and higher-income countries. What does make a difference, according to the World Bank, are good teachers, strong and transparent accountability systems, school autonomy, and high-quality choice programs.
It's still too early to tell what the governor's reform plan will include and how it will be financed, and it is wise not to over-speculate. In the meantime, Sheridan's brief is a terrific, lay-friendly primer in the evolution of school funding in Ohio and a good refresher for those, including The Gadfly, who follow Strickland's every move.
Appropriations bill stuffed with extras, including some for education
The General Assembly approved the state's $1.3 billion biennial capital appropriations and budget-correction bill (H.B. 562) last week and it is now awaiting Gov. Ted Strickland's signature. Like every appropriations bill, H.B. 562 is stuffed with lots of extras, in addition to the cash, including these education-related items:
The bill also tweaks Ohio's charter school law:
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Casey Foundation series provides valuable lessons learned
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (of which Fordham board member Bruno Manno is a Senior Associate for Education) recently released a series of publications entitled Closing the Achievement Gap (see here). These concise education briefs provide insights and lessons concerning major aspects of the foundation's work over the past seven years to improve education by supporting all stakeholders (e.g., school principals, community organizations, parents, education reform organizations, philanthropists, and policy makers). The series makes clear the broad scope of Casey's work and influence in education, yet at the same time, zeros in on key strategies that the foundation has used over time to improve educational opportunities for young people.
Topics covered include the importance of making early strategic investments. One example is Casey's seed funds to the mayor's office in Indianapolis that enabled the mayor to become one of the country's premier charter-school authorizers. Another is how critical it is for parents, students, teachers, governing boards, and community members to speak a common language and share a common vision in raising student achievement. Funding is always a key topic in the world of education, and perhaps the most interesting lesson learned is that investments needn't be large to attract additional resources and produce change, but they do need to be well-calculated and targeted.
The series titles tell the story: Getting to Results; Creating Quality Choices: Charters; Creating Quality Choices: District Schools; Exploring Quality Choices: Vouchers; School, Community, Family Connections; Strategic Funding Attracts Co-Investment; and, The Anatomy of Influence. As one can tell from the titles, there is something of interest for anyone involved in working to improve public education for young people.
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Cleveland schools see spike in homeless kids
CLEVELAND--The city has poverty, a troubled education system, too little opportunity, an epidemic of home foreclosures, crumbling city infrastructure, and now a 43-percent jump in homeless children in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. According to an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the city schools now serve 2,200 children who are homeless and there's a significant risk that these numbers will get larger as the home foreclosure crisis continues to spread (see here).
In the meantime, the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports Ohio has slipped from 28th to 30th among states in the well-being of its children (see here). The report from the foundation's Kids Count program is for the 2005-2006 period and indicates that 8.7 percent of all babies born in the state were low birth-weight children in 2005; that's up slightly from 2004. Infant mortality was 8.3 per thousand in 2005, up from 7.7 per thousand in 2004, while child deaths remained steady at 20 per 100,000, and teen deaths declined from 64 to 61 per 100,000. In 2006, 34 percent of children were living in a home where no parent had steady, year-around employment, the same level as in 2005; 19 percent of the state's children lived in poverty in 2006, also unchanged from 2005, and 33 percent lived in single-parent homes in 2006, up a percentage point from 2005.
They were just too busy being videographers to help
CINCINNATI--A Taft High School student has been suspended for 80 days after a videotaped fight with another girl, in May, was posted on YouTube. The fight broke out just before a sophomore English class May 20, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer's Eileen Kelley.
It's clear that multiple people were recording the fight with cell phones, according to Kelley, who reports the victim was repeatedly punched in the face, kicked, and knocked through a row of chairs before being struck aside the head. She escaped with bruises and abrasions according to Kelley (see here).
The attacker will miss the first 80 days of the 2008-09 school year, but the suspension could be reduced to 45 days if the student enrolls in an anger-management program.
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In response to a June 4 Gadfly article about Ohio's proficiency standards, State Board of Education member Colleen Grady comments about board members' consideration of student proficiency testing:
As recently as the May meeting, the state board did briefly discuss the need to raise "cut scores" for some of Ohio's assessments. Three years ago when the first set of cut scores were adopted, the board included a provision to "review and revise" within three years. The board was told that the initial recommendations were a "starting point" that could/would be changed as districts became accustomed to tests and alignment of instruction improved. Based on that understanding, the board should have received new recommendations this month. Unfortunately no changes have been presented by ODE for board consideration.
While Ohio has made substantial
progress, that progress has come against some fairly low expectations. If we're
serious about "best in the world" our definition of proficient must
rise and our definition of excellence at the district level has to be more than
75 percent of students meeting minimum requirements.
Colleen
Grady
State Board of Education, District 5
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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 email [email protected] with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message. 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.