THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 3, Number 13. May 13, 2009
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School funds should follow the child
"Money should follow the child, not the school building," said Ohio Senate President Bill Harris last week. In one simple sentence, the senate president captured the complexity of the debate around Gov. Strickland's school-funding plan in the way that only a veteran political leader could. There is much here to unpack.
First, what does "money should follow the child mean?" In the 2008 Thomas B. Fordham Institute report Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance (see here) we observed that a system that funds the child incorporates three key principles:
A system that "funds the child" would:
By devolving most financial decision-making to principals, school districts would become school-support entities providing financial management, transportation, special education, and other important services. Funding the child represents a fundamental shift in public-education finance and redirects money from paying for programs, buildings, and administrative staff at district headquarters to paying for the education of children in the classrooms where they sit.
This can't happen overnight. Not all school principals are ready to manage their schools in this way, but capable principals can get started immediately while the less-capable ones can get the training and support they need to take on full responsibility for their schools and budgets.
This leads us to the governor's plan and the evidence-based model of school funding. In contrast to funding the child, the evidence-based model purports to show what it costs for each individual school to deliver high-quality instruction to every child and then seeks state funding to meet these costs. Such costs are, according to advocates, directed at schools as a "set of ingredients and services, identified through research that would deliver a high-quality, comprehensive, school-wide, instructional program, and would determine an adequate expenditure level" (see here).
The evidence-based model calls for a menu of staffing and service requirements in each and every school that includes things like mandatory class sizes, administrative staffing levels set per every 500 students, professional development, and other "research-based" school inputs. The underlying assumption behind the evidence-based model is that researchers know what works for every child in every school, and that the costs for delivering such education can be readily identified and quantified.
By claiming that research tells lawmakers precisely what it costs a school to educate all children to high levels, it is then possible to pass legislation that sets spending levels that meet the cost of adequate education for all children. Sounds straight forward, but it isn't. Education and children's learning are far more complicated.
Critics of the evidence-based-model approach argue that there is no scientifically derived funding formula that precisely defines the inputs needed to educate all children to a high level. These experts point to the fact that some evidence-based models call for new spending of several percent while others call for more than 1,000 percent. To understand how crazy this can get consider California where calculations of the cost of providing an adequate education for all students range from $1.7 billion to $1.5 trillion, depending on the assumptions made by analysts (see here).
A fund-the-child model, in contrast, does not claim to know the exact cost of educating all children to high levels. In fact, it accepts that there is no expert or scientific way to set funding levels for public schools. It is elected officials who must lead and determine how much the public will pay for public education. The fund-the child-model is a mechanism for allocating, in an equitable and rational fashion, whatever resources lawmakers make available (balancing those needs and limited resources against the needs of the elderly, the sick, the roads, public safety, parks, and other public services).
Given the deplorable condition of the state's economy and the resulting meager tax collections, figuring out what is needed and how it will be funded is more important than ever. And that's another very good reason for adopting a fund-the-child strategy because it is more efficient with tax dollars.
It is the governor and lawmakers who set the amount they want to devote to K-12 education in Ohio and balance education needs against all the other needs in the state (the needs of the elderly, the sick, the roads, the police, etc.). Whatever amounts they do set should, as Senate President Harris said, follow the child and not the building. Ohio's current funding system is in need of improvement, especially now when not a penny can be wasted. Funding the child is a move in the right direction while so-called evidence-based funding is a costly step back.
by Terry Ryan
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How smart is Ohio's proposed school-reform plan?
In late April, the Coalition for Student Achievement released Smart Options: Investing the Recovery Funds for Student Success (see here).This document, developed following a convening of more than 30 K-12 national education leaders, including state and district superintendents, was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The document provides states and districts with five "big ideas" for investing one-time federal recovery funds that can lay "the groundwork for real student improvement for decades to come."
Our chart, below, compares the five recommendations from Smart Options to policies proposed in the House-passed version of House Bill (HB) 1, which incorporates billions in federal stimulus dollars. Using the Smart Options recommendations as a benchmark, we rate the legislative language in HB 1.
by Emmy L. Partin and Terry Ryan
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The governor needs all the help he can get but falls short with Arne
Politically, everybody got a little something from last Friday's education rally at Ohio State University. Gov. Ted Strickland got media attention and the presence of a national education rock star to boost his education plan. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan--the rock star--got to talk about his education vision without directly endorsing the governor's school reform plan.
The governor's plan needs all the help it can get these days, given the serious drop in the state revenues that are needed to pay for it. The plan is facing a serious bashing in both the Senate and the media (see here). Secretary Duncan, however, refused to play the role of the U.S. cavalry.
Many reporters left the rally perplexed about what their story leads would be. The most interesting news--for education policy wonks--was the governor saying poorly performing public district schools should be closed and that he is thinking about pushing a plan to get several other Midwestern states to band with Ohio to seek collectively some of the $5 billion in special federal education "race to the top" stimulus funds. Ohio needs all the revenue it can get after the Columbus Dispatch reported, Sunday, how difficult it will be to meet the state's education spending projections (see here) to fully phase-in the governor's plan over the next decade.
Dale and Nathan DeRolph, of the infamous DeRolph school-funding case, put in an appearance as one of the rally's warm ups. Dale, the father, is now on the local school board. Nathan, the son, and the focal point of the case as a teenager, now is 33. Nathan said, when he was 15, he had to take an American history test sitting on the floor of his high school classroom because all the desks were already occupied. He looked around and saw conditions were far better in other schools so he decided to sue. They want the governor's school spending plan to become law.
That, however, seems less and less likely. Reacting to the drubbing the education plan is taking publicly and probably perplexed why critics don't believe him when he talks about how great this plan is, Rep. Stephen Dyer (D-Green) gave the crowd of about 1,000 a few hints as to how vituperative the coming days might become. The House-passed measure is now in the Senate where it faces serious resistance from Republicans, who control that chamber by a 21-12 margin. Dyer argued that critics oppose the scientific method (see above), oppose investing in education, oppose funding poor rural districts, and oppose the most effective funding formula the state has ever devised. So much for the caution Amanda Wurst, the governor's press spokeswoman had given the day before, warning of the dangers of rhetoric perpetuating a "toxic environment" (see here).
When his turn finally came, Secretary Duncan called for data-driven student tracking and reporting, identifying what works and what doesn't in the classroom, raising academic standards, rewarding teacher excellence, removing poor teachers and rewarding excellent teachers, turning around failing schools, and investing in and duplicating great schools including effective charters.
But, he did not endorse the governor's plan. Later, in a press conference, when asked, specifically, about an endorsement, Duncan declined to give one. Strickland, diplomatically, said he didn't expect one.
It was clear that Duncan was in Columbus to repay Strickland for helping to deliver the state to President Obama in the 2008 election, to buck up Democrats in a key state, and to promote his and the president's--not Strickland's--educational vision. If some of the president's aura helps Strickland, okay. But Duncan, clearly, was more interested in pushing the president's agenda.
Arizona joins Ohio in value-added push to close weak charters
Arizona charter-school operators are moving to cleanse their ranks of weak schools by seeking tougher state charter-school standards based on value-added test scores. The proposal is similar to language proposed in Ohio's current biennial budget and could lead to the closing of weak schools that, as in Ohio, taint the entire charter-school movement.
The Arizona Republic reports that about a dozen charter-school operators have taken over the Arizona Charter Schools Association and are pushing for testing reforms such as tougher state standards and stricter accountability for that state's 475 charter schools.
In a description that would also fit Ohio, reporter Pat Kossan points out that Arizona charter-schools have been tarnished for years by an image of poor performance and shoddy financial practices, even though some charters perform significantly better than district schools (see here).
The solution, some Arizonians now argue, is to purge the state of poor performers. The revamped Arizona charter-school association has created a value-added achievement model to measure how the state's district and charter schools are doing. The achievement data will help the state determine which schools deserve to have their contracts renewed and which should close. Association leaders believe charter schools must shift the movement's goals from growth to quality, an idea that has gained momentum in Ohio over the years. (See Turning the Corner to Quality here.)
Central to the effort in Arizona is the use of value-added achievement data (how much have student's grown in knowledge over the course of the year?). Ohio has been at the forefront in the generation and use of value-added data, and this is a richer a more sophisticated way to track student and school performance. For more information, see here.
In Arizona, Kossen reports, the state is now debating how to use such value-added data to determine which schools should close. Ohio is in the midst of the same debate and HB1, as passed by the House, would ratchet up this state's academic death penalty for charter schools. For schools serving grades K-3 and high school grades they face the death penalty if they have been rated academic emergency for three of the last four years. For schools serving grades 4-8, they face the academic death penalty if they are rated Academic Emergency for 2 of the 3 last years and, for any 2 of those 3 years, showed less than 1 standard year of academic growth in reading or math using the state's value-added indicators.
Ohio is not alone in seeking to purge itself of weak performing charter schools. Arizona's efforts are further evidence that the country's charter school supporters are no longer tolerating weak performing schools that tarnish the image of all charters.
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The Fiscal Impact of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, 2009 Update
Robert Costrell
March 2009
This report, issued by the University of Arkansas' School Choice Demonstration Project (see here), examines the taxpayer burden of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) (see here). A decade older and nearly three times the 7,000 enrolled (in 2007-08) in Ohio's EdChoice Program, the Milwaukee program offers families opportunities to use vouchers across the greater Milwaukee area to send their children to private schools. Professor Costrell estimates that the Milwaukee voucher program saved taxpayers as much as $31.9 million in 2008, which was up from $24.6 million in 2007. The program creates taxpayer savings because it is less expensive to fund a voucher student ($6,501 per pupil in 2007 and $6,607 per pupil in 2008) than a student in a traditional Milwaukee public school ($8,833 per pupil in 2007 and $9,462 per pupil in 2008). Savings increased between 2007 and 2008 because of growing enrollments in the MPCP as well as "a widening gap between per pupil public revenues allocated to the Milwaukee public schools and the MPCP." Still, not all taxpayers in the metropolitan area receive the same benefits. Milwaukee property taxpayers are negatively affected, while Wisconsin property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee reap benefits because of an idiosyncratic funding formula (see here). Regardless, the report offers a solid case that taxpayers receive a net savings, while offering students and families choices to go to private schools. See here for the report.
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...about the importance of classroom instruction
Jim Cowardin commented on the recent Gadfly story concerning Paul Hill's testimony to the Ohio Senate Education Committee.
I am sure this gentleman is extremely qualified to give this testimony, and he is, I am also sure, working hard on his research and analysis. But why do we keep talking about the peripheral issues, such as funding and organization of schools and social issues, when------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New book: Is universal preschool really a good idea?
Among many educators and public officials in Ohio, and across the U.S., there is a drumbeat for "universal pre-school"--and for government to provide it to all 4-year olds so as to close school-readiness gaps and prepare kids to succeed in kindergarten and beyond.
In his newest book, Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut (Hoover Press, 2009), Fordham's president Chester E. Finn, Jr. takes issue with this conventional wisdom, examining some fundamental questions. Which children really need preschool that aren't already getting it? Will a universal program help the kids who need it most? Will it be a costly windfall for millions of other families? What about Headstart? What defines "quality" in this area and who should provide these services? Is this more about extending the mandate of public-school systems or furnishing needy young children with important skills?
President Obama has stated that early childhood education is one of his top priorities and the federal government should spend an additional $10 billion per year on it.
"Before taxpayers commit tons more money to this venture," says Finn, "we should think twice about the benefits, tradeoffs and alternatives. Highly targeted preschool for the neediest girls and boys would be a far wiser investment of scarce dollars than a vast new program for everyone. Reshaping existing efforts like Headstart would be even more productive."
Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut examines all the crucial angles of this debate and finds major flaws in the "universal" approach to preschool education:
A pdf version of the book is available here.
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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.