THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 3, Number 23. August 19, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debunking the demonizers of student testing
An op-ed by Cleveland State University education professor Karl Wheatley in the August 9 Cleveland Plain Dealer argues that the pursuit of improved student achievement in our public schools is largely a waste of time (see here). Wheatley's reasons range from absurd to insulting, especially toward those Ohio children who have been denied an excellent education and whose life prospects dim each time we make ridiculous excuses on behalf of failing schools. He believes that those of us who pursue higher standards "clearly do not understand education well enough to craft wise policy." But he does not explain how a de-emphasis on standardized testing would benefit students in his home district of Cleveland, 84 percent of whom are economically disadvantaged. Given that Wheatley's attitudes against student testing are unfortunately common, it is important to dissect each of these arguments in turn. First, Wheatley argues that ending the pursuit of "student achievement" would save "billions of dollars a year." Certainly, the creation and implementation of standardized tests costs money. But it doesn't cost nearly as much as the achievement gap between black and Latino students and white students which cost the United States an estimated $310 billion to $525 billion annually (see here). This represents between two and four percent of national GDP. How can America close this insidious gap without diagnosing it first? It can't.
Another problem, according to Wheatley, is that striving for better student achievement is a guise for merely "chasing higher test scores." Further, he writes that this is motivated by "politicians and CEOs [who] want America to be No. 1." For starters, student achievement has to be measured by something. Although there's always a risk that testing will create perverse incentives, this can only be ameliorated--never fully overcome. Test scores are necessary to illustrate what students do and do not know; further, they keep schools and teachers accountable. As far as Wheatley's latter claim, the portrait of self-interested policymakers seeking to improve our global competitiveness is nonsensical. Many policymakers care deeply about advancing educational opportunities for those disproportionate numbers of low-income, minority students who have been systematically denied excellence.
The third argument is that test scores are not a great predictor of economic or life success, and Wheatley uses the canard of IQ scores to illustrate his point. Standardized tests (like the Ohio Achievement Tests) are not measures of natural aptitude. Rather, they gauge a student's learning of core content standards. A student's ability to master core curriculum content standards can decently predict his/her likelihood to succeed in life, as it reflects the ability to read, write, understand basic math, and graduate with a high-school diploma.
The economic returns to academic achievement as measured by standardized test scores are indisputable. As the economist Eric Hanushek and lawyer Alfred Lindseth show in their book Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses (see here), a worker who finishes high school will earn almost 30 percent more than a high-school dropout; college goers will earn 54 to 63 percent more, and those with college degrees will earn 125 percent more over the course of a lifetime. Furthermore, for low-income and minority students, high academic achievement and college access is often the only way to break generational cycles of poverty.
The notion that academic achievement (measured by test scores or otherwise) is irrelevant to life opportunities is not only absurd but dangerous. Children with low test scores are, simply, less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to go to college, and less likely to be productive members of society.
The most glaring of Wheatley's flawed arguments is his contradiction that testing is bad because it doesn't focus on soft skills like teamwork, personal management, and creativity. Even if we shifted toward teaching those "skills" in lieu of core content (reading, math, science, and history), how would we know that students are progressing appropriately unless we assessed their learning? Regardless of what schools teach, that content has to be tested somehow in order for us to know that students are learning it and that teachers are teaching it. Furthermore, no one is arguing that self-sufficiency and creativity are not important. But they aren't going to be that useful if students reach high school reading at a sixth-grade level and still can't tell time on an analog clock.
Wheatley also claims that testing creates "collateral damage" such as motivation problems for students and teachers, scripted instruction, and even mental health problems. While standardized testing can have unintended consequences, it is the way the testing is implemented (think "drill and kill"), and not the testing itself that is to blame. And can't one argue that testing has collateral benefits as well? How else could we diagnose a child's learning disability or shed light on achievement gaps between groups of students and schools?
Finally, Wheatley gives in to the temptation to compare the U.S. to other countries and laments that America is going the wrong way. Finland, he says, does not have testing but still has an excellent education system. True, but one in five Finnish children is not living in poverty and receiving an inadequate education. And few countries, if any, enable the level of social mobility that can occur in America as a result of an excellent education.
Those of us who advocate for higher academic standards (and standardized tests aligned to them) most often are motivated out of a sense of social justice. Too many children growing up in Cleveland are not receiving the quality of education that they deserve, and it is only through quality academic performance data that we are able to diagnose learning problems or school failure and take action to address them. Ohioans should not be upset with testing; they should be outraged by the fact that only 10 percent of Cleveland's fourth graders were proficient in mathematics according to the 2007 NAEP, and a woeful eight percent were proficient readers (see here). Testing is not the enemy. Let's stop making excuses.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Growth of school choice in the suburbs no cause for alarm
When charter schools were introduced in Ohio, they were presented as vital options for students in underperforming urban schools. Eleven years later, charters have broken through the borders of the "Big Eight" urban districts. Now, nearly a quarter of charter-school students hail from rural and suburban areas, with a surge in charter enrollment from such districts over the past five years. Evidence indicates that suburban families choose charter schools for the same reasons urban families do: to access an education that better meets the needs of their children.
E-schools enroll the majority of non-urban charter school students (more than 75 percent of e-school students come from outside the state's major urban districts) and account for much of the recent enrollment growth (e-schools first opened in Ohio in 2001, see more below).
In Franklin County, where suburban charter-school enrollment growth was highlighted recently in the Columbus Dispatch (see here), most of the suburban districts that are losing significant numbers of students to charter schools are also among the area's lowest-performing districts. Groveport Madison Local Schools lost nearly 1,100 students to charter schools last year, up from 400 students five years ago. Last year, the district failed to meet the state's minimum proficiency standards on 15 of the 23 state assessments administered in grades 3 through 10, besting only Columbus and Whitehall among Franklin County's 16 districts.
Families are also choosing charter schools at the urging of their home districts. Despite oft-repeated rhetoric, not all districts fight school choice. In fact, 55 of Ohio's 600-plus school districts serve as charter-school authorizers -- the entities that sanction and oversee charter schools.
Upper Arlington City Schools has embraced the charter-school model as a tool for increasing and improving its educational offerings. Nearly 10 percent of the district's students attend one of its three charter schools -- Wickliffe Alternative Community School, Upper Arlington International Baccalaureate High School, and Upper Arlington Community High School.
This cooperative coexistence of charter and district schools is reflective of a national trend. District leaders in cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Denver are turning to charter schools as a way to create "portfolios" of high-performing schools for their students and families. District-charter cooperation also finds supporters on both sides of the political aisle. In its version of the state operating budget, for example, the Democrat-led Ohio House of Representatives provided financial incentives for charter schools affiliated with school districts.
Smart district leaders in Ohio and beyond are moving away from a zero-sum attitude. They are embracing charters as a tool that allows for innovation and operational freedoms--like longer school days, relaxed teacher certification requirements, and innovative curricula. District leaders, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was one himself in Chicago -- understand that charter schools are public schools and that when students attend them they and their parents are choosing a public option that they think works better for them than their traditional neighborhood school. These innovative educators appreciate that results matter more than district control, and their efforts should be commended rather than lamented.
Ohio's K-12 cyber-learning community is an emerging landscape
While Ohio's higher education cyber-learning landscape is firmly established (see here), the K-12 cyber-school landscape is still in its infancy. Of Ohio's 1.7 million students, 23,000 were enrolled full-time in one of the state's 28 cybercharters in 20-2008. In addition, the Ohio General Assembly recently established the first statewide high-school interactive distance-learning pilot program. Despite these efforts, however, little is known about the scale of online courses offered beyond the cybercharter sector, although the Ohio Department of Education has just started collecting data on online classes offered by traditional schools, district coops and the like (see here).
The data emerging indicate that Ohio's K-12 school system is evolving a rich and complicated cyber-learning sector. Districts, educational service centers, magnet schools, universities and colleges, charter schools, career-tech centers, and private vendors all offer cyber courses of various types. For example, Lorain County Community College allows high-school students to enroll as part of a post-secondary option (see here). More unconventional providers of cyber-learning programs are the Columbus Zoo (see here) and the Cincinnati Art Museum (see here), both of which offer supplemental online programs for interested teachers and students.
Cyber programs can span a district, the state, or the globe and they can embrace a spectrum of courses and subjects (see here and here). Some Ohio cybercharters (11) serve one county, while 14 serve multiple counties. Three cybercharters serve students statewide. None of Ohio's cybercharters, however, offers courses to students beyond the state's borders, but Ohio students may choose courses offered by an e-school based outside the Buckeye State.
Programs can be full or part time. Online or interactive distance learning courses are offered, for the most part, as part-time options and are included as part of a school's curriculum or offered through another provider. An example is Jefferson County ESC, which offers over 80 online and interactive distance learning courses that can be taken by home-schooled students, home-confined or prison-confined students, or students needing a course that they missed in their traditional high school (see here).
While some students take course at home via the Internet, other programs are offered in a blended environment with students attending a brick-and-mortar classroom several times a week and spending the rest of the time learning at home. For example, in the New Albany-Plain Local School District, high-school Spanish IV is taught in real time through distance learning (see here) via the Internet. In other districts, such as Anna Local, students who do not have space in their real-time schedules can take courses through Virtual High School, a nationwide program that offers online learning courses, to supplement their traditional academic schedule (see here).
Online courses offer promise to spread quality instruction, and to allow students to take courses to which they might not otherwise have access. Online education also allows schools deliver programs at less cost. Yet, the promise of cyber-learning may be usurped if the e-courses lack quality. Bill Tucker of Education Sector (see here) has offered four guidelines for improving the cyber-learning policy environment. They must:
What's needed immediately is an assessment of Ohio's K-12 cyber-learning sector. The scope and scale of these offerings are not clear. How many students are served? How many provider types are there? Who are they and do they know what they are doing? Which students are being served? What is the impact of cyber-learning, or, in other words, how are these students doing academically compared to students receiving face-to-face or blended instruction? What does effective cyber-instruction cost and how should it be funded?
Also, what should be the connection between these myriad K-12 programs and the Ohio Learning Network (OLN), which supports and facilitates distance and online learning in Ohio's higher education system (see here)? What lessons can Ohio's K-12 system draw from the OLN?
Several states have implemented statewide cyber-learning programs. Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and Georgia's state-run high-school virtual schools collectively served 200,000 students in 20-2009. How can Ohio take advantage of and learn from the excellent work of these programs?
Ohio has planted seeds to grow its K-12 cyber-learning opportunities. Still, much more work will need to be done to take maximum advantage of cyber-learning's promise as online courses and programs proliferate. Ohio's students deserve every opportunity for an excellenteducation. Online learning is most certainly one of those opportunities, and now it must be encouraged with both good evaluation and practice.
by Suzannah Herrmann, Rachel Roseberry, and Matt Walsh
Survey says -- Ohio AP science students score well nationally
Ohio may be lagging in the numbers of students taking Advanced Placement courses, although students who do take the AP science tests are among the top scorers nationally, according to a recent survey.
The survey, Taking the Pulse of Bioscience Education in America (see here), places Ohio in a leading group of eight states. While Ohio education planners can take heart, the report's overall message is that America is failing to prepare its middle- and high-school students to study the biosciences in college.
The results of the study, released in May, will be examined at the BioOhio Education Summit September 1 at the TechColumbus Center (see here). The report was funded and researched by Battelle (see here), BIO (see here), and the Biotechnology Institute (see here).
The top eight states cited in the report are Connecticut followed by Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin. States lagging the most are Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia.
According to the study, 63 percent of Ohio students taking AP science exams scored grades of three or better in 2008, compared with 55 percent nationally. Looking at biology only, the state placed seventh with 58 percent scoring three or better compared with 50 percent of the student test-takers nationally. When the ACT is considered, however, achievement falls. On the science portion of the ACT in 2008, Ohio placed 16th, with an average score of 21.7 compared with a national average of 20.8.
The AP results have to be tempered with the realization that AP courses are self-selective and tend to attract students particularly interested in the field of study, said Constance Barsky of the Ohio Department of Education. They aren't directly comparable to ACT results.
While both the AP and ACT results place Ohio well up among the top half of the states, Ohio is lagging in science teacher preparation. According to the study, just 55 percent of teachers in grades 7-12 are teaching a subject in the field in which they majored in college. This compares with 77 percent nationally and ranks the state a poor 47th. Just 21 percent of seventh- and eighth-grade science teachers were certified, while 85 percent of the state's biology teachers were certified in their field.
Among the report's national findings:
Marianne Clarke, the study's lead author, said that science and technology business leaders encouraged Battelle to do the report. "They're looking to the future and are not seeing people coming out of school with the kind of skills they need," she said. Bioscience is one of the key technology areas the state is banking on for the high-tech future envisioned in Ohio's Third Frontier research program. Most bioscience jobs require some level of post-secondary education.
The report suggested a number of actions, including incorporating biotechnology into revised science standards and taking a systematic approach to teacher professional development.
Ohio is now involved in a major push to revise its curriculum standards, including those for science. The standards, which must be approved by the State Board of Education by June 2010, are likely to be more coherent than current standards. Rather than introducing a topic in one grade and then not studying it in the next grade, the standards will emphasize progressive learning. For example, they will encourage schools to take an idea from geology and add more information and complexity to it as students progress through the grades.
"In feedback, teachers say the (current) standards are unmanageable and difficult to understand, difficult to integrate materials (between subjects such as life science and Earth-space) and to apply to teaching science by inquiry," Barsky said.
Comment------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finn on American education competitiveness, by Emmy L. Partin
[Fordham Institute President] Checker [Finn] writes at Forbes.com on the role that both quality and quantity must play in American education. To stay competitive, he argues, we must increase the number of high-school and college graduates, while also improving the quality of K-12 education in our country. Read more here.
Re: The placid world of American education, by Terry Ryan
The debate in education at the local and state level is far from placid (as [Fordham Institute Vice President] Mike [Petrilli] recently described it), and is sometimes incredibly toxic because the issues affect our children and our collective future. There are many fundamental disagreements about what quality education should look like, what it costs, and how it should be delivered. We've been in the middle of many of these debates in the Buckeye State over the last decade. I've in fact been accused by a lawmaker of making "erroneous and insulting accusations" aimed at not just him but his parents. This was in response to a school choice piece I wrote in a local newspaper. Read the rest here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raising Rigor, Getting Results: Lessons Learned from AP Expansion
David Wakelyn from the NGA Center for Best Practices
August 2009
Ohio lags behind the nation when it comes to Advanced Placement (AP) courses. In 2008, the state had only about 18 percent of high-school students taking an AP exam (compared to 25 percent in the U.S.), and only 11 percent of Ohio AP students scored proficient or higher on the exams (compared to over 15 percent nationally).
In 2005, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices launched a major initiative to expand AP courses in order to include more low-income and minority students and funded AP expansion in 51 schools across the country. In Raising Rigor, Getting Results: Lessons Learned from AP Expansion, David Wakelyn checks in on how the initiative has affected student outcomes over the last four years.
The project increased the number of AP courses available and guided schools in recruiting underserved student populations through three strategies. First, schools expanded access to as many students as possible by lowering the selectivity level for AP courses. Second, schools built teacher capacity through additional training and offered extra learning support to students through seminars, summer prep classes, and study groups. Finally, the project created incentives for students and schools. Students were able to increase their GPAs in weighted AP courses, compete for special college scholarships, and even receive monetary incentives for good AP exam scores. Schools also benefited financially for making classes available.
The efforts of the initiative delivered promising results, with the number of minority and low-income students taking AP classes more than doubling. Admittedly, the extent to which there may be a tradeoff between AP enrollment and the quality of courses remains unclear (see more here and here). AP classes are proven to decrease the amount of time it takes for students to graduate from college and carry a lot of weight when students apply for college admission and scholarships. This has the potential to help more low-income and minority students go on to higher education. While this is a worthwhile goal, NGA cannot possibly fund similar projects in every high school as AP programs are very costly. States could fund more college-level learning opportunities for high-school students, but will they be willing to pay the price?
by Whitney Park------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hard work with Ohio's charter schools paying off
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) recently released a report, Quality, Diversity and Choice: the Value of Multiple Charter Authorizing Options (see here), which outlines various types of charter school authorizers and weighs the advantages and disadvantages associated with each. We're pleased that our sister organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, is listed in the nonprofit category as an example of a "strong authorizer," alongside organizations (in other categories) that we greatly respect, such as the Massachusetts Board of Education, Central Michigan University and the Mayor's Office in Indianapolis. (Fordham serves as an authorizer of six schools in the Buckeye State).
NACSA says that "good authorizing is about function more than form; there is no one particular authorizing option that works best in all circumstances... Good authorizing requires a relentless focus on quality." We wholeheartedly agree. Fordham has learned much in the last five years as a charter school authorizer (or sponsor, as it is called in Ohio). We've come to appreciate the many challenges facing schools serving the state's neediest children in an often hostile political environment. We believe sponsors must have an unwavering emphasis on school quality-academically, financially, and operationally. For more on Fordham's role as a charter school sponsor, see our annual Fordham Sponsorship Accountability Report here, which outlines in detail the status of our sponsorship duties and the profiles of each of our schools.
Save the date: World-Class Academic Standards for Ohio
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are hosting a one-day conference, "World-Class Academic Standards for Ohio," in Columbus October 5. The conference will bring together state and national education experts to share promising national and international efforts in the development of world-class standards; discuss promising practices from top-performing states; and highlight ways to improve Ohio's academic standards, assessments, and accountability system. See a full agenda here. Registration information will be available in early September.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.