THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 3, Number 24. September 2, 2009
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Schools scratching heads, crossing fingers over new ed. plan costs
Two years in the making, it will probably take local school officials at least two years to figure out all the changes in the state's new "evidence-based" education model.
School officials have to wrestle with new concepts such as organizational units. There's a new funding formula to learn, new student-teacher ratio requirements, a mandate for all-day kindergarten, as well as plans for different accountability and testing systems.
"It's going to be challenging because of the different way in which schools will be operated," said Akron City School District Superintendent David James.
School officials, however, seem more interested in understanding the new education requirements than in criticizing them. Gov. Ted Strickland's evidence-based model has several goals -- the most important of which is molding Ohio's K-12 education system to mirror what the governor's education experts say works, according to the evidence they have accumulated. There is plenty to dispute over the so-called evidence (see here) but opponents, including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, lost that fight in the General Assembly.
James said he is willing to give the model a chance. Valid or not, it will try to bring regularity to public schools, which James appreciates. The uncertainty lies in the idea of organizational units that seek to organize elementary, middle, and high schools into the most efficient groupings for staffing. It's possible to have more than one organizational unit in a school but basically, one organizational unit is the same as a school building.
For example, the state calls for an elementary organizational unit of 418 students, although Akron has tried to keep its elementary schools smaller. The requirement is about pre-determined inputs that the state feels are necessary, although local school districts may not. "We have tried to keep ours near 350 [elementary students in a building]. If they're saying 418 students are optimal, the higher we go in terms of school population you have to expand school boundaries. If we expand boundaries we must transport additional kids and that drives up our costs," James said.
Much depends on how the Ohio Department of Education writes rules to implement the new law. School finance officials especially need to understand how the new funding formula works because they will soon be asking voters to approve new levies, said Damon Asbury, a lobbyist with the Ohio School Boards Association, which supports the new state plan. No one really knows yet, since the Ohio Department of Education hasn't finished the official form that districts must complete to calculate their state funding. The department promised the form would be ready in September, then October. In all likelihood it could be January before the job is done.
A new wrinkle gives districts a five-year window in which to ask voters to approve converting one or more existing levies to allow the levies to produce more income automatically as property grows in value. That hasn't been allowed in Ohio in decades and it's now a very foreign concept. Despite levies being organized on the basis of millage, voters actually approve a dollar amount -- say $1 million a year for five years. The school district can never collect more on that levy, and as property values increase property owners don't pay any more.
To take advantage of the increased value, districts have to pass another levy. Converting an existing levy to a conversion levy, however, would allow the district to collect more to take advantage of increasing property values. It seems odd to think about it right now since property values have declined so dramatically as a result of the recession. School tax collections have suffered with the decline in property values.
"At some point we're going to have to have a levy on the ballot. A conversion levy would allow our revenue stream to grow a little bit," James said. "It's absolutely critical to have new money as we look out at projected deficits." Akron, which carved $10 million from its budget last year, is facing a $10 million deficit in fiscal year 2011, a $49 million deficit in 2012, and a $99 million deficit in 2013.
Despite Gov. Strickland's desire to give districts some breathing room in having to constantly ask voters for money, it seems unlikely that taxpayers will allow themselves to be taxed without the chance to vote on the future increases. "Right now in Akron, nothing is going to pass when you look at the state of the economy. I just don't see it happening," James said.
To placate funding fears, the state's new, two-year budget promises districts they will receive per-pupil funds based on last year's funding levels -- minus one percent. So district treasurers have a general idea what kind of money they'll have to work with -- at least if current state income estimates prove reliable. Still, districts won't know precisely what that amount is until district student counts are conducted in October.
Looking ahead to October, Columbus expects state funding in the new school year to equal what the district received last year, according to district spokesman Michael Straughter. State funding counts for about 32 percent of the district's budget. Akron, which receives about 61 percent of its budget from the state and federal governments, will receive about two percent ($3 million) less in state funds, James said.
The state's new operating budget provides Ohio's charter schools with funding close to last year's levels. The schools are also exempt from many of the mandates of Governor Strickland's evidence-based funding model. But no matter what happens financially for charters there will be fewer operating in the next several years as the state's academic death penalty closes chronically low-performers. Sixteen schools face automatic closure after the current school year (see here). This bodes well for the overall health of charters since pruning the weak schools should result in a stronger charter tree.
The new state plan is only able to provide level funding for the next year -- and perhaps the year following -- because it relies on one-time federal stimulus money, funds that will be gone in two years. Democrats are gambling that the state's economy, which was in the doldrums well before the recession hit, will recover in time to support funding when the stimulus money runs out (see here). That's a huge "if." There's little guarantee that the planning for the new $50.5 billion, two-year budget will make it past December because of anemic tax collections stemming from Ohio's still-sick economy.
The budget allocates a bit more than $16 billion in state funding for K-12 education over the next two years. "If it weren't for the stimulus money there would be draconian cuts (in education)," Asbury said. Tax collections may not recover in time and gambling, including the Ohio Lottery, may not produce the $933 million the state hopes to collect. Keno, for example, has failed to bring in anywhere near the amount of income its supporters predicted (see here). In fact, gamblers are holding onto their money more tightly than the state. In nearby West Virginia, for example, the Mountaineer Casino has laid off more than 200 employees as a result of slower gaming during the recession.
There are also two imminent legal threats to the budget. The state faces a pair of Ohio Supreme Court cases that, if it loses, could cost $1.6 billion in tax collections and really harm state spending plans (see here). First, the Ohio Grocers Association wants to overturn the Commercial Activities Tax levied against them. And second, should the Ohio Supreme Court force a voter referendum on the use of slot machines at race tracks, the state could suddenly be faced with $1 billion in cuts to the budget. Both cases will be heard in the high court this week.
Bill Wright, the business manager for the Sugarcreek Local School District in suburban Dayton, said the passage of a local levy last year means his district doesn't have to wring its hands over what may eventually roll out of Columbus. In fact, any across-the-board cuts in state funding would hurt districts that rely more heavily on the state than Sugarcreek. Sugarcreek receives about 35 percent of its operating budget from the state.
"Overall, we are not helped much by state money. They (the state) consider us a rich district," Wright said. "We're not rich because we don't have a large carryover. We've had to cut $3 million out of a $21 million budget over the past year. We've done that by not replacing people who are retiring, cutting out professional meetings, cutting some bus routes."
Still, Wright and other district treasurers are trying to figure out, for example, how many employees they'll have on their payrolls since the state mandates more jobs such as teachers to meet new student-teacher ratios in grade K-3.
Of top concern is whether the new funding formula will wind up costing districts more money, either because of an eventual decrease in state funds or because local taxpayers will be asked to pick up new costs. The Canal Winchester Local School District, in Fairfield County, southeast of Columbus, will receive more state money for teacher salaries but other mandates will force a net loss of about $135,000 (see here), school board members learned last week, according to This Week Community Newspapers.
Some districts need new state-mandated positions called family and community liaisons. The Canal Winchester district will have to hire 11 employees for the positions at a salary of $38,633 each. But the district's superintendent told school board members she was flummoxed.
"I have no idea what they would do," Kimberley Miller-Smith said (see here).
That prompted this response from board Vice President Chuck Miller: "You mean we'll be spending $400,000 for a category of employee that we don't even know about?"
Akron and other under-achieving districts will have to hire for a position called a linkage coordinator, a person whose job is to help close the achievement gap between black and white and rich and poor kids, James said. The state will provide $38,633 for each position -- at least for the first year the jobs are required. That may not be enough.
In fact, given the responsibility of the position, it doesn't seem like nearly enough money, especially in hiring for tough, low-performing inner-city districts. If a district can't attract a qualified person to the job, the local school board will have to pay the difference, he said. To limit the financial damage, James said, the Akron schools might transfer an existing counselor to the job saving the need to hire an additional person.
"We're going to have to sit down with the teachers union and figure out how bargaining agreements are impacted," he said. Overall, however, James doesn't see the new state requirements adding many, if any, new positions. Akron and other big city Ohio districts have been losing students and shrinking for years.
Districts rated Excellent or Excellent with Distinction, the two highest state ratings, can opt out of the new mandates when they kick in for the next school year. The worst districts in the state -- those in Academic Emergency and Academic Watch -- will have to meet all the mandates. Districts in the middle rated Effective or Continuous Improvement will most likely have to meet a great many of the requirements, Asbury said, but perhaps not all since State Superintendent Deborah DeLisle has said she wants to provide as much flexibility as possible.
Some districts, such as Akron, already offer all-day kindergarten, but they'll have to meet other requirements such as lower student-to-teacher ratios in grades K-3. No one knows exactly how all these mandates will be implemented and district superintendents are literally learning more every day.
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Time to re-think report card ratings
Judging schools based on student academic performance is more art than science. This fact was never depicted more clearly than in the recent release of state report card data that gave the Kettering City Schools a rating of Continuous Improvement (a C) even though it met 29 of 30 academic indicators (see here).
The state expects Kettering to get at least 75 percent of its students to proficiency or above on 28 academic tests, while also having an appropriate attendance and graduation rate. Kettering met all these goals but for one (achievement in eighth-grade social studies). Further, Kettering saw its overall student achievement results increase from 2007-08 when the district was rated Effective (a B).
Not surprisingly, the state's rating of the Kettering City Schools has flummoxed and angered local officials. The district's C rating is hard to explain when one considers Kettering's state rating is identical to far lower performing districts like Elyria City Schools (it met 11 of 30 indicators), or Cincinnati Public Schools, Columbus City Schools, and Akron Public Schools (all met only 6 of 30 indicators).
So, what's going on here? Kettering took a hit because it failed to meet federally mandated Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals with two sub-groups of students -- students with disabilities and limited-English-proficient students. What this means in practice is that Kettering schools failed to deliver students with disabilities (which make up about 15 percent of all district students) and students with limited English (which make up about 1.5 percent of all district students) to proficiency targets in reading. In fact, the district failed to meet these targets for three consecutive years. The district did, however, meet AYP goals with seven other subgroups.
The district failed with a minority of students, but overall it delivered solid academic results for the vast majority of its students and in the vast majority of subjects tested by the state. With this in mind, it is hard to say the district's state rating of C is proportionate to its actual student achievement levels. In short, fair-minded people would have to say the district was given an unfair rating.
What should be done about this? Many will be tempted to argue that the rating for Kettering is evidence of a broken accountability system that needs to be thoroughly overhauled or even snuffed out. But that would be a mistake. My organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, has been analyzing the academic performance of schools in Dayton and in other Ohio cities for six years. We've witnessed the evolution of the state's assessment system and have even evaluated it along the way.
In fact, earlier this year we issued a report entitled The Accountability Illusion that reported "schools with greater diversity and size face greater challenges in making AYP" (see here). Kettering City Schools was punished for not achieving with some of its most diverse students. The fact that the system makes it obvious that Kettering needs to do better by its special needs students and students with limited English abilities is a good thing, and the state shouldn't do away with metrics that enable this evaluation. This transparency and accountability is important for ensuring all students receive the best education possible.
However, the fact that Kettering received a state rating identical to school districts with far inferior academic achievement across the board is a genuine problem. The rating confuses parents, students, teachers, and business and community leaders and it could put the district at risk of losing students and trust among voters and supporters.
Ohio needs to improve how it rates its schools and school districts. The "Continuous Improvement" rating is far too all-encompassing and as such is largely meaningless. The state has put together a solid system of assessments and it now needs a school and district rating system that does it justice. Giving districts with significantly different levels of student achievement the same ratings seriously threatens the credibility of the entire system. It is time to right the accountability ship before it sinks in the rocky shoals of faulty ratings.
by Terry Ryan
A version of this editorial appeared in the Dayton Daily News, see here.
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Innovative Ohio schools struggle to make ends meet
While funding for most public schools will be flat -- and schools will be lucky with that -- for innovative schools at both ends of the state's pre-K-12 education ladder, the budget is nothing short of doomsday. For example, the state's Early Learning Initiative program provided major support for preschools and its demise has resulted in the abrupt closure of some of them throughout the state.
"We didn't foresee this happening. We thought there would be cuts but we didn't see the program going away completely," said Nancy Gazzerro, who had to close two preschools in two Dayton-area charter schools as part of the private Mini-University system (see here). In March, one of her schools was the first preschool in Montgomery County to receive the state's highest rating for preschools. "To turn around and have to close the doors was heart-breaking," she said. Gazzerro has reopened the schools but is only running one class in each school. She needs private funding to continue.
On the other end of the spectrum, the state's nine early college academy high schools are facing possible closure at the end of the school year. These schools offer an intense program to prepare at-risk, low-income, inner-city students for college. They lost a $12-million state subsidy.
In addition to Dayton, early college academies operate in Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Columbus, Elyria, Lorain, Toledo, and Youngstown. The state, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have invested more than $40 million in these schools over the last few years.
"This is a reform movement that has been touted across the state. It's disconcerting. Other states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Utah, and Texas are embracing the [early college] concept," said Judy Hennessey, principal of the Dayton Early College Academy. These states are embracing this as a workforce development conduit for underrepresented kids to college."
DECA's $750,000-a-year state subsidy amounts to about a quarter of the school's budget and, without it, the school will eventually fail, said Thomas J. Lasley, education dean at the University of Dayton. Lasley serves on the DECA board.
At DECA, where about 96 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches, achievement stacks up well. "The kids are walking out with not just high-school degrees but with substantial college coursework under their belts," he said, pointing out the irony of the state hurting schools that are successfully preparing students for higher education at the same time state officials are calling for a 230,000-student increase at Ohio colleges and universities.
"Overall, 80 percent of Ohio's early college students are leaving high school with a semester's worth of college credit," Lasley said. "That's the tipping point for success in completing a degree."
CommentFollowing last week's release of local report card data by the state education department, the Fordham Institute conducted our sixth annual analysis of school performance in Ohio's major urban cities (see here). In addition to city-by-city analyses of charter and district performance in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo, we partnered with the North Carolina-based education and management consulting firm Public Impact to produce an in-depth report, Urban School Performance Report: An Analysis of Ohio Big Eight Charter and District School performance with a special analysis of Cyber Schools, 2008-09 (see here). Our analyses were featured in articles in Catalyst-Ohio (see here), the Cleveland Plain Dealer (see here), the Columbus Dispatch (see here), the Dayton Daily News (see here), the Cincinnati Enquirer (see here), Gongwer News Service Ohio (see here, subscription required), and The Hannah Report (see here, subscription required).
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"School of One" pilot program uses technology to differentiate instruction
For all the alarming statistics illustrating that public education in America is in trouble (see Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr.'s discussion here on flat SAT scores, stagnant or falling NAEP scores, and bad news from the ACT), there are probably equal numbers of education reform solutions floating around the education policy stratosphere. But you would be hard-pressed to find many that simultaneously address two of the most formidable barriers to scalable reform: human capital challenges and the pressing budget deficits facing nearly all state and local governments.
The education reform community has become obsessed with the human capital variable (an article here by Ed Week calls the Gates Foundation's emphasis on teacher effectiveness the search for education's "magic pill"), yet our ability to improve it (or anything else in education, for that matter) has been seriously hampered by the current economic woes. Even the giant chunk of stimulus money recently handed to states is plugging holes in their budgets rather than launching or ramping up education reforms.
One innovative pilot promises to enhance teacher effectiveness, capitalize on the power of data to inform instruction, infuse schools with much-needed technological innovation, and improve student performance. All this, and it is estimated to cost about the same as what we spend to operate traditional schools.
Called School of One, it launched this summer out of New York City's Department of Education. Its mission is to "provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction" (see School of One's website here). Students engage in many types of instruction and learning: large group, small group, one-on-one tutoring, virtual tutors, and online educational games.
School of One leverages technology to accomplish its lofty mission, combining a wealth of data from students' personalized profiles (including academic diagnostic data as well as information on students' learning modalities and interests), and from a digital lesson bank containing over 1,000 lessons from professional educators. All of this goes into a learning algorithm, which then generates a unique daily schedule for each student based upon his/her specific academic needs and learning modalities. In short, each student has their own Individual Education Plan (IEP).
Now before your brain flags the word "algorithm" as either too math-y, confusing, or gimmicky to keep listening, be assured that the technology behind School of One is both straightforward and intuitive. Each student receives a "playlist" that lists the skills they need to focus on, and student schedules are displayed on a computer screen resembling an airport's flight monitor. Anyone who can work an i-pod or make it through an airport could function well in this classroom.
Perhaps most important to point out is that the intention of the technology is to complement the talents of the teachers, not supplant them. School of One allows teachers to provide all students with differentiated instruction.
Joel Rose, creator of the School of One and Chief Executive for Human Capital at the NYC Department of Education, has an interesting perspective on human capital challenges facing public education. Citing statistics that among NYC's eighth-grade teachers, only 13 percent can get 80 percent of their class to reach proficiency in math, and only six percent can do so in reading, Rose points out that teachers have to be almost "superheroes" in order to reach the needs of all students.
And these statistics--grim as they might be--are a snapshot of a city with a very competitive teaching pool (NYC has over six applicants for every teaching position the district fills). Among the three million teachers in America, how many superheroes can we reasonably expect? In other words, if human capital is the be-all and end-all variable, then American schools -- and urban schools in particular -- have to find new ways to maximize our teaching talent.
Hearing Rose speak and recalling my own teaching days (Rose is a fellow TFA alum), I can't think of a single educator who wouldn't appreciate the convenience of 1,000 sample lesson plans and built-in daily assessments. Even his teacher-as-superhero analogy isn't far off. If I'm honest, I realize that a significant reason I burned out during my stint in the classroom was because I took on the simultaneous roles of the teacher, the lesson bank, the technology, and the algorithm. It isn't impossible to reach all students' unique learning needs this way. But it certainly isn't easy.
Ohio's spending on primary and secondary education is forecast at $8.2 billion in FY2010 and $8.1 billion in FY2011. Even though the percentage of the state's budget spent on education will increase in both years, this represents a six percent decrease from 2009 spending. Stated simply -- we're going to have to do more with less.
The premise of School of One -- using technology as a tool to help teachers differentiate instruction -- is one that we think many Ohio educators and politicians could get excited about. As Ohio works to improve student achievement during tight fiscal times, we think School of One is worth paying close attention to and learning from. The program's potential to enhance teacher effectiveness, improve student assessments and data collection, and garner political momentum--all while not breaking the bank--introduce powerful reform possibilities, not just for the Big Apple, but for states and districts across the nation looking for ways to give students the education they deserve and need.
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Absence of TFA has larger implications, by Jamie Davies O'Leary
An editorial in the Dayton Daily News argued that Ohio should bring Teach For America (TFA) into the state. The piece rightly outlines the steps necessary to create an Ohio TFA presence--for example, changes to teacher certification rules, funding for TFA training, and buy-in from unions. Not to gloss over the importance of such regulatory changes (TFA's entry here is impossible otherwise), but it is the question of "why TFA?"--rather than "how TFA?"--that I find most compelling and deserving of elaboration. Read the full blog post here and a related op-ed from the Dayton Daily News here.
Smart anti-choice strategies emerging, by Emmy L. Partin
School-choice foes in the Buckeye State are getting smarter about the strategies they employ to undermine the choice movement. Since the birth of charters here in 1998 and vouchers in 2005, opponents--namely Democrats, teacher unions, and the education establishment--have fought a "districts = good, choice = bad" fight. But with Democrats, including the President, across the country embracing choice and some of the state's top districts employing charter schools themselves, that fight can only take local choice opponents so far. Rather than accepting school choice as an important component to improving public education, they've now focused their efforts on driving a wedge in the choice movement itself. Read more here.
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Last week was the first official week of classes at Columbus Collegiate Academy, a charter school authorized by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. CCA students notched gains on reading and math proficiency exams last year and everyone's ready for another excellent, energizing academic year. Watch a back-to-school video featuring CCA here.
Terry Ryan, Fordham's vice president for Ohio programs and policy, talks about the recently released performance data for Ohio's urban district and charter schools. Watch here.
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Center on Reinventing Public Education
Robin J. Lake & Paul T. Hill
August 2009
No-strings management in public education is so 2007. Just a month after announcing the Race to the Top competition, Sec. Duncan outlined stipulations for winning $3.5 billion worth of Title I school improvement aid (see here), to be allocated to school districts -- you guessed it -- on a competitive basis. This report from Center on Reinventing Public Education could not be timed more perfectly. To make it in the new era of accountability, school districts have to do what many good businesses and governments have done for awhile -- manage for performance. Implicit in the "portfolio strategy" adopted by districts such as New York, New Orleans, and Chicago is that leaders must view all decisions -- rewards or sanctions, school closures, etc. -- through the lens of performance. Portfolio districts do not concede to political pressures; they remain neutral about who runs a school (see our recommended reading here on Los Angele's decision to open up 250 schools to outside school operators); and they encourage innovation. The report offers no pretenses as to how difficult performance management is, particularly for smaller cities lacking educational entrepreneurs, and for centralized district offices lacking the capacity for this type of management. But Duncan isn't kidding when he tells districts to close or transform their lowest-performing schools through dramatic turnaround strategies. Any district serious about winning Title I school improvement funds should study this report carefully. Get it here.
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The Fordham Institute is pleased to welcome Eric Ulas as a Policy and Research Associate working in our Columbus office. A Cleveland native and graduate of Bowling Green State University, Eric previously taught middle- and high-school visual arts and photography in Clark County, Nevada, and in Ohio. In Nevada, he was appointed to a group that advised the revision of the Silver State's curriculum standards and while working in the Reynoldsburg City Schools, he helped develop the curriculum design and implementation of that district's new STEM high school.
School Choice Ohio is blogging
Our friends at School Choice Ohio have joined the education blogosphere. Visit http://scohio.org/wordpress/ for the latest news and updates about choice in the Buckeye State.
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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.