THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 3, Number 21. July 29, 2009
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While Gadfly has been sunning its wings in the summer sun, Fordham's Ohio Policy and Research interns have been hard at work pulling together the latest education policy papers and reports. We're pleased to bring you this special issue of the Ohio Education Gadfly with recommendations for your summer reading list.
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Here and Now 2, Change We Can Measure: The Need for Performing Schools in Chicago's Neighborhoods
IFF
April 2009
"Change we can measure" is an unmistakable reference to "Change we can believe in," the slogan of a candidate who is now our nation's president. This president has appointed Arne Duncan as his Secretary of Education, and the schools whose change is measured in this report are the ones that Arne Duncan left for 400 Maryland Avenue--the Chicago Public Schools (including charters).
IFF, formerly the Illinois Facilities Fund, describes the schools as a mixed bag, with elementary schools performing better than most high schools and an overall lack of "performing" schools across grade levels. But IFF also points out that the schools have made encouraging improvements since the last report in 2004.
While IFF's purpose is simple--to find out if every child in Chicago has access to a "performing" school--the methodology is slightly more complicated. The city is broken up into 77 different neighborhoods. The public schools in each neighborhood are assessed on the basis of performance (62.5 percent of students at a school must meet the state standard on the Illinois Standard Achievement Test in order to qualify as "performing") and capacity (how many students they can enroll). These public schools are 'attendance area' schools, meaning they draw their enrollments from their surrounding area or neighborhoods. Then IFF categorizes the 25 worst neighborhoods in Chicago as those with the highest levels of students without access to a performing school.
The report found that 57.6 percent of CPS attendance-area elementary schools were performing, a jump from 42 percent in 2004. However, this still leaves 57,000 elementary students without access to a performing school. The high-school situation is much more dire, with no schools meeting the Illinois standard for performance. Thus many elementary students in a performing school do not have the opportunity to move on to a performing high school. In more encouraging news, CPS reforms have led to an increase of 46,516 spots for students in performing elementary schools since 2004. Additionally, the charter movement has provided 13,845 more performing spots with charters being a "bright spot," albeit a dimly-lit one, for the system.
So, as Arne Duncan continues his nationwide campaign for education reform (see here, here, here, and here), his old schools must listen and continue to search for ways to provide every student in Chicago with access to the best possible education just as other cities, and states like Ohio, must commit to doing the same.
Read the report here.
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The Nation's Report Card: Arts 2008
Institute for Education Sciences
June 2009
The National Center for Education Statistics just released the Nation's Arts Report Card, previously covered by Fordham's D.C. team here and here. The report details the state of the nation's art education after testing 8,000 eighth-grade students in visual arts and music. The findings, as noted by Fordham, were overwhelmingly average with student scores ranging from 105 and 194, out of a possible 300 for the visual arts section. Other significant findings included achievement gaps between white/Asian students and black/Hispanic students and between male and female. The report indicates students have not shown much improvement in the arts, which may be caused by the increased emphasis on reading and math skills.
It is unclear what these results mean for discussions of national standards and assessments. Arts education and students' knowledge of visual art and music appear to be on shaky footing. Regardless, the Arts Report Card is a timely reminder that we cannot put content standards in danger by focusing too much on so-called 21st century skills (see Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr. on the subject here). Finn and Diane Ravitch co-edited a book, Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children, that describes why education should be a liberal education, and in a chapter on the arts, Dana Gioia, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, stated, "The real purpose of arts education is to awaken us to the full potential of our humanity both as individuals and citizens in society."
In Ohio, the biennial budget has just been finalized. Between the larger provisions on school funding and choice are provisions on academic standards that are just as significant. But the arts receive very little mention except for a promise that they will be revised in some as yet unknown way. Whatever that revision may be, we cannot forget that the arts are important, and Ohio students deserve standards that recognize that importance within the development of a truly comprehensive content-rich curriculum.
Read the Arts Report Card here, and read Beyond the Basics here.
Stimulating Excellence: Unleashing the Power of Innovation in Education
Center for American Progress, American Enterprise Institute, New Profit Inc., and Public Impact
May 2009
This policy brief illuminates how we can encourage innovation in education reform. The authors surveyed a group of prominent education-reform entrepreneurs--e.g., Wireless Generation, The New Teacher Project, and New Schools Venture Fund--to glean their insights on the challenges and possibilities of entrepreneurship in education. They combined the survey results with their own good sense and found themselves agreeing--sadly--that inflexible bureaucracies, inaccessibility of capital, and a limited supply of talent typically work in tandem to stifle innovation. It seems that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland shares the authors' sentiments on this issue. In last summer's "Conversation on Education," he says the reformed education system needs to be "enhanced by creativity" and "innovation." However, despite the good intentions of government, Ohio is faced with a huge budget problem. Consequently, the governor's proposed Center for Creativity and Innovation at the state education department was made optional in the final budget bill.
The brief argues that school systems can encourage innovation and creativity by using data to create a performance-oriented school culture, opening public education to multiple providers, encouraging service providers to compete for business, and using public dollars as incentives. Ohio can certainly take some advice from the recommendations. The state needs to develop better systems to track student and teacher data to identify what works and what needs to be fixed. The funding formulae could be revised so that dollars follow the child (an idea we've also promoted here), and districts can speed the buying cycle by conducting audits and other transparency measures after services are purchased, rather than before. Opening up the system to innovative movers and shakers is a promising way to accelerate reform and we're heartened that analysts from across a broad swath of the political spectrum agree.
Read more here.
by Ben Hoffman with Whitney Park
Tackling the STEM Crisis: Five Steps Your State Can Take to Improve the Quality and Quantity of its K-12 Math and Science Teachers
National Council on Teacher Quality and National Math and Science Initiative
June 2009
Qualified science and math teachers are in short supply and this report explains how state laws and regulations can encourage individuals to teach in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math.
The report, released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and the National Math and Science Initiative, comes as Ohio is slashing funding for STEM initiatives.
The report tackles the problem of maintaining sufficient STEM teachers by addressing weaknesses in state standards for teacher preparation. Methods for getting the right people into STEM classrooms are listed in a report full of what states should do.
The report argues that laws and regulations should make it more challenging to teach in STEM fields, while also creating incentives/making it more appealing. For example, across the country, passing grades for entry teacher tests are as low as 40 percent. The Council recommends raising the minimum passing grade to 60 percent. In addition, elementary teachers need more math and science coursework. Elementary teacher candidates should be required to take math classes "specific to [their] needs" and they should know how to teach math. The report also recommends strengthening elementary licensing tests. Loopholes in middle-school licensure need to be closed and future middle-school teachers should pass licensure requirements for grades 7-12.
Since traditional education-school models are not working to attract enough STEM teachers, the report also says states should consider alternative ways to allow teachers to qualify. Flexible compensation packages, signing bonuses, and incentive programs should be used to entice qualified people to the teaching profession.
Read the report here.
by Whitney Park
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Is the Emphasis on 'Proficiency' Shortchanging Higher- and Lower-Achieving Students?
Center on Education Policy
June 2009
The newest report from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) addresses the belief that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) causes teachers to neglect students who are either high- or low-achieving. This debate centers on educators having motivations incentives under NCLB to focus on the middle-of-the-road children, so called "bubble kids," as these are the ones most likely to fall below or reach the proficient level.
Mining data from all 50 states, the report finds that basic and advanced students did not suffer and have better achievement levels across all grades. The center did note, however, that the proficient- and above-level students saw the most gains. The study also found that the lowest gains were made in high schools -- possibly because teenagers may be less likely to obey authority, there may be fewer teachers who teach to the achievement tests and/or fewer Title I funding dollars go to high schools.
Hampering the analysis is the non-uniform nature of individual state data. As the study points out, each state has its own tests and it is often difficult to define basic, proficient, and advanced students. Ohio, for example, has five levels of placement - limited/below basic, basic, proficient, accelerated, and advanced. Notably, this system will change as the new biennial budget reduces the placement ratings to three by disposing of the basic and accelerated levels. Data assessment is crucial to figuring out what works and state data must be readily available and easy to comprehend. National standards would allow organizations to compile more accurate statistics, which could be used to figure out measures (paid for by taxpayers) that are working. Therefore, it is encouraging to see that Ohio and 45 other states are joining forces in the Common Core State Standards Initiative (see here).
For the report, see here. Also, Fordham's June 2008 report, "High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind," offers some additional insights into the debate (see here).
by Matthew Walsh
Moving Beyond AYP: High School Performance Indicators
Alliance for Excellent Education, with author Lyndsay M. Pinkus
June 2009
The concept of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ought to be scrapped in high schools in favor of other measures, argues this policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education. AYP leads to states tailoring their tests and schools simply for basic achievement rather than college-and-career readiness. Author Lyndsay M. Pinkus believes that AYP should be replaced with several different variables linked to achievement, including attendance, course success, and promotion rates. SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement (AP) test scores are offered as indicators of high-school students' potential beyond graduation. The report discusses states, such as Kentucky, which have managed to tackle the strenuous task of following high-school students to college or a post-graduation career. Pinkus does acknowledge, however, that tracking students has its difficulties, especially when graduates leave the state. The policy brief determines that the most appropriate course to begin the journey away from AYP is to research the ways attendance and other indicators can be implemented in a productive fashion.
Ohio's new biennial budget includes a revision of the state's standards and assessments, which is a vital component of measuring student achievement. The Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) will be replaced with a combination of the ACT or other college entrance test, end-of-course exams, and a senior thesis. These alterations, especially the transition from the OGT to ACT or other college entrance exam, are good ideas, but the details of these budget provisions are largely unclear. There is also a concern that schools will fail to require challenging thesis projects. Overall, Ohio is ahead of many states in preparing high-school students for life after graduation, but it can still improve by focusing on the policy brief's reporting on the limits of AYP and the importance of college-and-career readiness.
For the report, see here.
The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy
Commission on Mathematics and Science Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Institute for Advanced Study
June 2009
Reminiscent of the post-Sputnik push, this high-profile commission report depicts what kinds of schools and school systems America needs if it is to attain excellence in math and science. Commission members started with the premise that the U.S. must make fundamental changes to the nation's schools and boost innovation. The report lays out an extensive menu of actions, reforms, and spending needed from state and federal governments, school districts, higher education, businesses, nonprofit organizations, unions, and philanthropy. It stresses mobilizing support for higher achievement; making math and science focal points of educational innovation and accountability; and creating common math and science standards with aligned assessments to account for the exclusion of science (in favor of reading and math) from other recent efforts (see here, here, and here). This last might be the most intriguing, since a Trinitarian view of curriculum merely leaves us pondering the fate of the rest of the "other subjects," like history. You can find a webcast of the report release and the report itself here.
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Building a High-Quality Education Workforce: A Governor's Guide to Human Capital Development
National Governor's Association, Center for Best Practices
May 2009
Teacher quality has been a major topic in Ohio politics of late. One of the latest installments of Gov. Ted Strickland's Conversations on Education video series features Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut speaking about teacher quality provisions within the governor's proposed education plan.
An interesting companion to the Ohio discussion of teacher quality is a National Governors Association report on what it takes to recruit, train, and retain the best teachers. It begins by acknowledging that the effectiveness of teachers has the greatest impact on student learning, and then delves into how to build that workforce.
The report first focuses on the issue of attracting teachers and recommends that states attract the best and brightest to the profession. Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr. and visiting Fordham fellow Andy Smarick both have thoughts about the feasibility of attracting these types of 'superstar' teachers (here and here). The governor's plan for education addresses this concern with the creation of a four-year residency program to better prepare all who enter the teaching profession.
The NGA report recommends improving training for both teachers and principals and licensure revision. Gov. Strickland's plan also addresses this recommendation through improvements to the state's alternative licensure program designed to attract individuals with strong content knowledge but no prior classroom experience in teaching. The education plan also creates a career ladder for teachers with four levels of licensure, providing opportunities for advancement based on credentials and experience.
Finally, to make teaching competitive with other occupations, the report recommends linking bonuses or base salary to effectiveness, student performance, or the willingness to teach in hard-to-staff schools. This is not addressed in Governor Strickland's education reform plan.
This report highlights why the quality of teachers is vital to the success of students and recognizes the inherent challenges of meeting that goal. State-by-state reforms are necessary, and Ohio has only just begun the important work of building a truly high-quality educational workforce.
Read the NGA report here, watch Chancellor Fingerhut's video here, and read more about the Governor's plan for education here.
Fixing Tenure: A Proposal for Assuring Teacher Effectiveness and Due Process
Center for American Progress, with author Joan Baratz-Snowden from the Education Study Center
June 2009
This Center for American Progress report provides a nationwide assessment of teacher tenure and ultimately concludes that most tenure models need to be fixed. The report reviews research and surveys that show teachers and the general public favor changes to the common tenure scheme. Educators, however, believe that there should still be a system of security for them, although they admit that the current model does not block enough sub-par teachers. It should not be underestimated how difficult any transformation of tenure will be, but the report is cautiously hopeful that changes can occur.
Author Joan Baratz-Snowden proposes substituting the phrase "teacher tenure," which she regards as hostile, with "continuing employment status" and "due process." Standards also play a role in evaluating teachers. After all, if there is no uniform way to track student achievement in a school district, state, or nation, the report suggests it will be impossible to put this information into the teacher-tenure equation.
Toledo, Ohio, is praised in the report for being an example of a first-class teacher tenure system (although, this contrasts somewhat with the findings of The Widget Effect, see here, reviewed below). Toledo's system connects new teachers with mentors who oversee their growth and then make a determination as to whether the educator makes tenure. The Buckeye State's new budget includes a model peer assistance and review program (see here). This model could be used to eventually tie into tenure decisions. Another promising aspect is a provision that requires teachers to be licensed for seven years before they are eligible for tenure (see here). The previous law allowed educators to attain tenure after only three years on the job.
For the report, see here.
The Schools Teachers Leave: Teacher Mobility in Chicago Public Schools
Consortium on Chicago School Research
June 2009
Chicago is the third largest city in the country and the hometown of our nation's president and as such, has naturally been playing a much larger role in the political realm. The educational research world must have noticed because Chicago and the Chicago Public School System have also had a large presence in several recent reports.
One of these recent reports, by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, discusses teachers and why they leave the district.. The report states that while CPS's district-wide turnover is normal compared to other districts, a closer look reveals that in Chicago, half of the teachers leave their school buildings every five years. It can be easily conceded that such turnover would impair effectiveness for any school and leads to the obvious question: why?
According to the study, younger, new teachers are more likely to leave than older teachers, with the exception of the oldest teachers leaving for retirement. Low-achieving, low-income, predominantly African-American schools have more turnover. Larger percentages of teachers stay in schools where they feel a "climate of collective responsibility and innovation." It is important to note that the report's authors acknowledge several flaws in the study. There is no data for charter schools and since they are only assessing CPS, they cannot tell where a person goes if he/she leaves a CPS school and does not transfer to another CPS school.
Thus, while turnover in CPS looks average when compared to other districts, it might not be average. President Obama is taking his education cue from Chicago (as indicated in an interesting, antique piece of New York Times election coverage, see here, citing Fordham's own Mike Petrilli!) and so should districts and states like Ohio by taking steps to ensure that effective, qualified teachers remain in their schools.
Read the report here.
The Widget Effect
The New Teachers Project, with authors Daniel Weisber, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulhern, and David Keeling
June 2009
This revelatory study, with as much detail, rigor, and thoroughness as one could want, proves what we've long suspected: the formal process of teacher evaluation as it exists today is soft. Evaluations have made teachers into "widgets" because they are all treated the same. Three school districts in Ohio--Akron, Cincinnati, and Toledo--are among the study's group of 12 districts in four states. The data, which comes from new surveys and compilations of teacher evaluation records, plus 130 interviews with district leaders, reveals a system of perfunctory and meaningless back-patting. Even different evaluation methods do not make results more meaningful. Toledo uses a binary rating system (satisfactory/unsatisfactory), and gave only three teachers an unsatisfactory rating over five years. In Akron, which uses a system with five ratings, teachers identified 5 percent of their colleagues as "poor performers," but not one teacher actually received an unsatisfactory rating in an evaluation. Not only does the system fail to identify poor teachers, it also leaves no room to recognize truly exceptional teachers. Cincinnati did the best job identifying "distinguished" teachers by giving only 54 percent of teachers their highest rating. The authors briefly describe some of the legal and organizational hurdles that block useful evaluation, and suggest that the process be reformed in a way that treats evaluation more like a routine check-up and less like, say, a one-time polio test everyone passes but nobody really worries about.
Read the study here.
by Mickey Muldoon with Whitney Park
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Diplomas Count 2009: Broader Horizons: The Challenge of College Readiness for All Students
Editorial Projects in Education
June 2009
This third installment in Ed Week's 2009 annual reports series (2009 editions of Quality Countsand Technology Counts were published earlier this year, see here and here) is a timely collection of research and commentary on high-school graduation rates and college preparedness. Few of the results will shock or surprise, but it's a good resource to have, especially in light of the Obama Administration's stated goal of returning the U.S. to the top of the international college-completion rankings by 2020. At minimum, its data remind us how much progress we still have to make: The national high-school graduation rate is just under 70 percent, and roughly 20 points lower than that for minorities. While these numbers have all inched forward over the past decade, there was a slight nationwide decline (of 1 percent) from 2005 to 2006, the last year for which data were compiled. (It remains unclear whether this is an aberration, a trend, or a methodological glitch.) The report includes a district-by-district breakdown based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, and uses the Department of Education's 2008-updated (to facilitate NCLB reporting) definition of high school graduation--receiving a traditional diploma within four years. Elsewhere, the Data Quality Campaign, Michelle Cahill of the Carnegie Corporation, and Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell laud Florida-style tracking and urge other states to use stimulus dollars to follow suit. You'll also find discussion of whether "college readiness" is a challenge of "how" or "if." In other words, should we presume all students should be prepared to attend a four-year university--or any post-secondary program? How we define and track graduation and post-graduation success has as much to do with settling these timeless issues as implementing the right software and hardware. Read the report for yourself here.
Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
Alan Vanneman, Linda Hamilton, Janet B. Anderson, and Taslima Rahman
National Center for Education Statistics
July 2009
This report feeds the education community's enduring obsession with the achievement gap by re-slicing 2004 and 2007 NAEP data to look at black-white disparities on both national and state levels. It repackages some of the 2007 race and ethnicity subgroup data for fourth and eighth graders and supplements it with similar data from the long-term NAEP 2004 trend (LTT) assessment. (Remember, the main NAEP test and NAEP LTT data are not the same; we explain why here.) The good news is that math scores for both black and white students in both grades are higher than on any previous LTT assessment (going back to 1978) and on any previous main NAEP assessment (going back to 1990). Reading saw similar progress for both groups in both grades, too, though the LTT data start a bit later (1980). The unsurprising news is that white students, on average, tend to have much higher scores than black students on all assessments. So, while gaps narrowed significantly in both grades on math and in fourth grade reading, white students nonetheless had average scores that were at least 26 points higher (on a 0-500 point scale) than black students in each subject. (Wisconsin, Nebraska, and D.C. posted some of the biggest gaps in both subjects, while Delaware and New Jersey narrowed them in reading and Arkansas and Texas narrowed them in math.) Though there are many ways for gaps to narrow--including, for example, the higher achieving group declining--the narrowing of these four gaps (fourth grade math and reading and eighth grade math and reading) were the result of gains for black students. A report on the white-Hispanic achievement gap is to be released next year.
Find the report, including state-level results, here.
The Condition of Education 2009
National Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education Sciences
June 2009
This annual compendium of education statistics doesn't disappoint. Like a cluttered shop store strewn with little gems, there's a lot to find if you know where to look. Consider this one: the percentage of three- and four-year-olds enrolled in school increased from 20 percent in 1970 to 55 percent in 2007 -- probably the biggest change in American education since the rise of universal high-school education during the Great Depression. Homeschooling continues to grow; NCES now estimates that 1.5 million homeschoolers nationwide, i.e., about 3 percent of the school-age population, up from 1.7 percent a decade back. Then there are the interesting trends regarding public-school choice. Almost half of all parents report having some sort of "public-school choice" available to them. And more parents are taking advantage of these choices, opting for schools other than the one closest by. The percentage of children in a public school of choice rose from 11 percent in 1993 to 16 percent in 2007. But that grievously understates the amount of "choosing" that's going on, because 27 percent of parents also report moving to a particular neighborhood in order to buy-in to a certain public school. And the patterns break down by race and region in fascinating (if largely predictable) ways, too. Blacks are more apt to opt for public schools outside their neighborhoods -- 36 percent of those with choice opportunities do so, versus 20 percent of whites. But whites are likelier to choose by moving -- 29 percent report doing so, versus 18 percent of blacks. And there's a lot more public school choice in the West and Midwest (available to 55 percent) vs. the South (40 percent) and Northeast (33 percent). That's but an illustration of the goodies available in this value vault. Take a dive for yourself, here.
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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.