THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 3, Number 22. August 5, 2009
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It's d�j� vu for Bob Taft
Ohio's budget problems and efforts to reformulate education policy reminded former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft of his days as the state's chief executive from 1999 to 2007. Like Gov. Ted Strickland, Taft had his own economic and education pains that included disagreements with members of the Ohio General Assembly. As governor, he led efforts to reform standards and accountability in Ohio schools and to direct more state money to the neediest classrooms. He also launched a massive school building effort. As he points out in the following interview with the Ohio Education Gadfly's Mike Lafferty, Gov. Taft learned a lot about education in the process. Since leaving office, Taft has been on the faculty of the University of Dayton, where he has continued a close interest in state and national education issues.
Are you glad you're not governor right now? Do you have some sympathy for Gov. Strickland?
I miss some of the action -- not all of it -- and I miss the people I worked with. But 30 years in elective office is plenty. I'm glad not to have to campaign and raise money. It's no fun to close institutions and cut budgets. We went through some very tough times. We did that temporary tax increase. Those are painful decisions.
Was Gov. Strickland staking his governorship on education a smart move?
I don't want to comment on that but I do commend Gov. Strickland for putting education high on his agenda, overall, and coming out with proposals that focus on more than just funding....We focused very hard in making sure there were enough resources for every school in Ohio. EdTrust cited Ohio as one of the best in closing the funding gap between poor and wealthy school districts.... No matter where you lived, there were enough resources to provide a good education, not that some [wealthy] districts weren't spending more than adequate funding might require.... There was enough money to provide a good education for all kids....When I came in, the school-funding lawsuit was still unresolved. Between the additional funds for operations (forced, in part, by the DeRolph lawsuit), especially for the poorest districts, and the school-building effort, there was a lot of improvement.... Notwithstanding our efforts to improve school funding, my goal was to create a higher priority on student achievement and learning than on funding. We were focused on creating a system of clear, understandable academic standards, aligned assessments and an aligned accountability system.
What's your reaction to the education plans in the new state budget?
I don't want to cast blame anywhere. The Republican senators deserve significant credit for preserving the state's charter-school program, which was under heavy threat. Some of the positive parts of the governor's proposal made it through, including the changes in teacher tenure and standards for teacher removal, and also the move toward a new graduation standard, which includes statewide ACT testing and end-of-course exams. That's a step in the right direction toward aligning high-school standards with what it takes to succeed in college and get a good job.
It was disappointing that the budget does not fund [college-readiness] schools like
DECA [the Dayton Early College Academy]. These schools have already shown great promise for meeting Gov. Strickland's and Chancellor Eric Fingerhut's goals of increasing college attendance and success rates, especially among "first-generation" college students. The effort to water down the core academic standards with new criteria that are almost impossible to measure was also disappointing, but it is encouraging that Ohio is participating with 45 other states to craft national standards for reading and math.
It was also disappointing that the budget terminated the Partnership for Continued Learning, which was created to align elementary and secondary standards to college and beyond. I continue to believe there is a need for a formal statewide pre-K-to-16 coordinating body if Ohio is going to make real progress in creating an aligned system of education. Finally, it was unfortunate that the language in the Senate version tying teacher standards and evaluation to classroom performance through value-added data was not included in the final bill. Ohio is ahead of the nation in collecting value-added information, but that progress is wasted if we cannot push the data down to the classroom and teacher level.
Is there any state we should emulate?
Indiana is doing a better job on expanding college access by encouraging all students to take a rigorous core curriculum and also in guaranteeing college funding (through a 21st century scholars program) for low-income, academically performing students.... They also have a strong pre-K-to-16 coordinating body. Kentucky is ahead of us in promoting college access by requiring and funding the ACT test for all Kentucky students. They also require the ACT high-school readiness and tenth-grade tests which are aligned with the ACT college-admission test. This enables schools to address student-learning deficits early on and get more students prepared for college success. That's part of the governor's plan here and makes a lot of sense. Other states are ahead of us in implementing end-of-course exams although Ohio started a pilot end-of-course project this year.
Unfortunately, there is a gap in aligning what's happening in the high schools to the standards in colleges and universities. Working through the Board of Regents, the colleges and universities have defined clearly what is required for college readiness in math and English language arts and have equated that to ACT scores. Unfortunately, our high-school graduation standards haven't caught up with these college-readiness criteria..... This is why the Partnership for Continued Learning was created--to get all the players working together under the governor's leadership to create a pre-K- to-college graduation system that is aligned and integrated.
Is a good education a matter of money?
Overall, funding is not the biggest obstacle to school improvement in Ohio. It's how we can best use the time and talent of educators to improve education for all kids, particularly for kids in urban areas.... Resources are important but more important is how the dollars are used at the school level to change what is happening in the classrooms.
Is it time for a tax increase?
It's nice not to be governor right now and worry about those decisions....The temporary one-cent sales tax increase was not popular, but I believed it was necessary after all the cuts we had already made. Today, I'm not close enough to the details of the budget to answer that question.... I do believe, however, that it is important to continue the income-tax reductions underway because Ohio's rates are too high from a competitive standpoint when you put the state income tax together with our city income taxes. You don't want to be one of the highest income-tax states.... It's hard to compete with Texas and Florida [and other states without income taxes] but now we're not even competing with surrounding states.
What are we doing right in schools?
Some districts are doing extraordinarily well without spending a lot of money. This year I visited Canaan Middle School in the Jonathan Alder Local School District [in parts of Madison and Union counties] and the Fort Recovery Local School District [in Mercer County]. They were both rated excellent with distinction yet their per-pupil spending is below average. They take the standards seriously and work with teachers to develop formative assessments. In Canaan Middle School, every six weeks they do student assessments...and immediately after each short-term assessment they schedule a teacher day to allow teachers to analyze the data. There is a great deal of positive change going on in many districts across Ohio. There's a lot of innovation based on the data being gathered from our assessment systems.... That's why we're seeing improvement in many schools, even though some are lagging.
Value-added measurement has been a very important step. It allows you to see if schools and teachers are achieving expected growth.... We need to take greater advantage of value-added by pushing the data down to the classroom level as is already being done in some districts through the Battelle for Kids' T-CAP. Hopefully, teachers achieving outstanding value-added results can mentor and share their best practices. That's tremendously powerful....
And we're beginning to develop a strategy for good charter schools to recruit good operators and make sure poor schools either improve or go out of existence. But we also need to do a better job of dealing with poorly performing public district schools.... U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan [when he was school superintendent in Chicago] didn't tolerate poorly performing district schools. Urban education leaders need to address these issues. It will take greater flexibility with union contracts and collaboration with union leaders but we have to do a better job than we're doing. The urban results are simply unacceptable.
One criticism of education today is that teachers may know about teaching but too many are not expert enough in their academic fields to teach. True?
The issue goes to teacher-seniority provisions and contracts, and also to the available talent pool. Sadly, in a number of these urban districts there are teachers in math and science, particularly at the middle levels, who are not sufficiently knowledgeable in those subjects.... That's something the leadership in the district shouldn't be tolerating. How we recruit and retain good teachers in big-city districts, especially for the lowest-performing schools, is one of our greatest challenges.
What do you think of Chancellor Fingerhut's plan to boost college enrollment?
A four-year degree is important in our world today. Even more important is getting more students attending and being successful in getting a two-year associate degree. They can go on for a four-year degree but they can also go right out and get a good job. Community colleges are really tied into the marketplace.... There aren't many, if any, good jobs you can get right out of high school. College must continue to be affordable and state efforts to keep it so are important.
Beyond that, we need to focus on preparation before students get to college.... Sinclair Community College [in Dayton] has academic resource centers in nine schools around the Dayton area to provide courses in language arts and math. Then they test the students to see if they're ready. I'd like to see more efforts like that. We've got to address the reality that four out of 10 students entering Ohio's public two-year campuses have not earned a degree and are no longer enrolled three years later and three out of 10 students at four-year public universities have not earned a degree and are no longer enrolled six years later.
What did you learn about education as governor?
I didn't realize until shortly after I became governor that Ohio lacked clear, specific academic standards by subject and grade level. That was one of the first tasks we addressed.... Also, I wasn't fully aware of the potential for value-added analysis. I hadn't thought enough about how an accountability system based solely on student achievement doesn't tell you all you need to know, specifically whether schools and teachers are enabling growth in student learning. I have become a strong advocate for value-added measurement.... Another thing I learned after visiting many schools is that school leadership really matters and that you are not going to find a high-performing school without an exceptional principal.
The tools are out there for all schools in the state to do a superb job with all students. The incentives have to be right and school leaders must learn how to use their educators' time most efficiently and give teachers the data and the time to reflect on the data and learn from each other.
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Grad-rate debate and the Buckeye State
President Obama put the graduation-rate debate front and center in March, when he noted that the nation's high-school dropout rate had tripled since the 1970s (see here). The media and education community scrambled to react to the president's claim. Some pointed to data showing that graduation rates had remained steady over the past 30 years while others claimed that rates have actually improved. Depending on how you calculate graduation rates, they are all correct.
This variance has been at the crux of the grad-rate debate for the past decade. In 2005, all 50 state governors agreed to move toward a National Governors Association-recommended method for calculating graduation rates. Today, 42 states are either using the method or are rapidly moving to implement it.
Then, in late 2008, the Bush administration issued regulations putting in place a common graduation-rate measure for all states to be used for accountability purposes under Title I by 2011-2012. The Obama administration expressed its support of this common measure earlier this year.
Beginning in 2010, states will use a four-year adjusted cohort rate that is calculated by dividing the number of students who graduate by the number of students who form that class's "adjusted cohort" (an adjusted cohort is the number of students who entered ninth grade four years prior, plus any students who transferred in, minus any students who were removed from the cohort). Students who are held back from advancing a grade level because they aren't academically prepared or who enroll in a GED program remain in the cohort and so count against the graduation rate. Students who leave school for any reason other than transferring to another state-approved school (or out of the state or country) remain in the cohort and count against the graduation rate.
Though the question of howgraduation rates will be calculated has been answered, a new grad-rate debate looms. The foremost questions are whether the U.S. Department of Education will actually enforce the new regulations, and how far it will go to intervene when states and schools fail to make sure more students graduate? At least two major questions emerge for Ohio's state and local education leaders:
While the debate of the last decade around how to calculate graduation rates has quieted some, there is little doubt that a new debate is about to rage.
For more information on the various graduation-rate calculation methods, an explanation of the controversy that surrounds them, and insight into the "next frontier" of the grad-rate debate, check out Fordham's latest report, The Great Graduation-Rate Debate, by Christine O. Wolfe here.
National charter alliance unveils model charter school law
In June 2009, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) released A New Model Law For Supporting The Growth of High-Quality Public Charter Schools. The model charter law does what a good "model" document should: strike the balance between articulating a basic set of principles or guidelines (a "floor," so to speak) while remaining flexible enough to be applicable and relevant across multiple states. Indeed, the authors state that their intent was to provide the tools to strengthen existing charter school laws (40 states and the District of Columbia) and set forth a foundation for new charter school laws in jurisdictions that don't currently have them (10 states).
The model law covers student enrollment; authorizers (known in Ohio as "sponsors"); the charter application process; accountability; operations and autonomy; and funding and facilities. An important area not covered is conflict of interest. Additionally, one aspect of the model law that seems too prescriptive is a provision giving enrollment preference, limited to 10 percent of students, to children of the school's founders, governing board members, and full-time employees. Although well-intended (the rationale is that these individuals devote much time and effort to the school), a charter school is a public school and should be open to all students equally.
Ohio policymakers should take note of the following components of the model law when considering improvements to the state's charter policies:
The model law is an important read for all legislators, policymakers, and interested parties who care about charter school quality. The report can be found here.
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Flypaper's Finest
Here are two recent Fordham-Ohio contributions of note to Flypaper, the Fordham Institute's education policy blog (www.edexcellence.net/flypaper).
No offense, Frank McCourt, Jamie Davies O'Leary
Why do unsubstantiated remedies-like smaller class sizes-gain such traction in the world of education? Rather than adhering to rigorous research standards, we resort to sweeping generalizations and sentimental stories about children's lives. Read the rest here.
59 is the new 30, unless you're a teacher, Terry Ryan
Thomas Friedman wrote of golfer Tom Watson's run at this year's British Open, "Watson makes us feel like 59 is the new 30." I read this inspiring piece about Watson's near victory over the world's greatest golfers, many of whom are half his age, while traveling back from a truly depressing - but incredibly important - conference innocuously titled "Educator Staffing, Quality, and Teacher Retirement Benefit Systems." Read more here.
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Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow
Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers
July 2009
This report from President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers finds education and economics to be deeply entwined. The council believes America should prepare its workforce for the future, for example in promoting the development of critical-thinking abilities over specific technical skills. But the path to gaining these skills does not lie solely in the direction of what we now know as "21st Century" skill-based standards and their ilk. Rather, the report recommends that high-quality, primary and secondary education must focus on strong basic skills, quality instruction, high standards, rigorous assessments, and strong accountability. The report also expects the education sector to contribute to substantial job growth with more jobs in teaching and administration. A Fordham Institute study released in June supports this. That study found that many science and math majors in Ohio's top universities would consider jobs in education (see here).
Though the council's report devotes the majority of its pages to post-high school training, the bottom line is that our economic crisis should be addressed from the bottom up -- and the bottom starts young. It's an important reminder from a new administration that strong standards, teacher quality, and accountability reform are not only beneficial to the individual student, but to the nation as a whole. Read the report here.
The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools
Celeste K. Carruthers, Urban Institute & National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research
June 2009
Do charter schools siphon good teachers from mainstream public schools, or is it an unfounded accusation that we've all just grown used to hearing? This working paper by Celeste Carruthers, an economics graduate student at the University of Florida, examines data on North Carolina public school teachers (from 1997-2007) who transferred either to charter schools or to other mainstream public schools, to determine how the two teacher pools might differ. Amidst a broken record of charges against charters for "cream skimming" funds and talent from mainstream public schools, this paper prefers empirical evidence over rhetoric.
Unfortunately, like many statistical analyses comparing teacher qualifications and effectiveness, the data are mixed. On average, teachers who moved to charters were less experienced and less likely to be certified than other mobile teachers--a fact that lines up with the anecdotal evidence that young, often non-traditional educators staff many charter schools. Yet charter movers were also more likely to have at least 25 years of experience, so senior teachers were motivated to join charters, albeit probably for different reasons than younger teachers. Among certified, regularly licensed teachers, those moving to charters typically had higher licensure test scores than their colleagues moving to mainstream schools. Licensed charter movers even had higher test scores than non-mobile colleagues in mainstream schools.
The paper goes on to analyze the achievement of sub-groups of students, and determines that the effectiveness of teachers who moved to a charter school (as compared to those moving to mainstream schools) was 4.5 percent of a standard deviation higher in math, and 4 percent higher in reading. Despite this statistic, it is difficult to conclude unequivocally that mainstream schools really lose talent to charters. Teachers who decide to transfer schools may be fundamentally different from non-mobile teachers in several ways, and the latter group may deliver better student test results. Tracking the on-paper qualifications of teachers (such as certification status and licensure scores) in charter and mainstream schools can tell us what type of teacher teaches where, but questions of quality still remain unanswered.
Overall, Carruthers injects much-needed empirical evidence into debates about charter schools, the efficacy of certification/licensure, and the impact of teaching experience on student achievement. It also serves as useful fodder to counter the rhetoric-driven arguments made by Ohio's politicians and teacher unions that teacher certification and experience are necessary to improve student learning, or that charters are a wasteful diversion of funds and talent. See the full report here.
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Mansfield native joins Fordham Institute
The Fordham Institute is pleased to welcome Jamie Davies O'Leary as a Policy & Research Analyst working in our Columbus office. A Mansfield native, Jamie taught kindergarten in Camden, New Jersey, as a Teach for America corps member and is a recent graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
We are also pleased to announce that Emmy Partin--a former Ohio Department of Education staffer and education policy aide to former Gov. Bob Taft, and a Fordham staffer since 2007--is our new Director of Ohio Policy & Research.
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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.