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The Ohio Education Gadfly |
A Bi-weekly Bulletin of
News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute Volume 4 , Number 29. December 1, 2010 |
| In This
Edition New From Fordham: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation just released its annual sponsorship accountability report, which summarizes our work as an authorizer of schools over the year, examines our schools' performance (longitudinally and against their peers locally and statewide), and more. Also in this edition: why value-added is necessary to retain good teachers in the face of layoffs, surprising (but good) news of a charter school returning money to the state, and reviews shedding light on whether competition improves public schools, how to create succession plans for charter school leadership, and more.
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Renewal and Optimism: Five Years as an Ohio Charter Authorizer Value-added can help schools keep the best teachers
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Does Competition Improve Public Schools? You’re Leaving? Sustainability and Succession in Charter Schools International Benchmarking: State Education Performance Standards Measuring Teacher and Leader Performance: Cross-Sector Lessons for Excellent Evaluations |
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Video profiles of Fordham-authorized schools Closed charter school returns $423,421 to state’s coffers
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Other Ohio districts should take a cue from Cleveland More Race to the Top drop-outs |
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Renewal and Optimism: Five Years as an Ohio Charter Authorizer The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has been authorizing (aka sponsoring) charter schools in Ohio since 2005, and we’ve learned a ton these past five years. Sharing these lessons is important – one of the reasons we devote time, energy, and money on our annual sponsorship report. Through it, we hope to help readers understand the complexities of charter schools and better appreciate the hard work of teachers, school leaders, and board members who are serving not only in the schools we sponsor but in schools around the state and nation to make a difference in the lives of children who desperately need it. We also believe public education benefits significantly from transparency and accountability. For those reasons, we annually share a detailed accounting of our sponsorship activities as well as report on the overall performance of the charter schools we authorize. Charter contract renewals
In each contract we shared expected achievement targets for each school over the term of their five-year agreements; all of which expired on June 30, 2010. The key academic requirements for contract renewal included that a school must:
We look at other academic growth factors in making our renewal decisions, and take into consideration school performance in comparison to the schools children would attend if they were not in a Fordham-sponsored charter school. Table I: Fordham-sponsored School Results over Time by State Rating Table II shows how the four sponsored schools did in terms of meeting AYP goals and value-added targets over the five-year term of their contracts. Table II: Fordham-sponsored Schools’ AYP and Value-Added Results over Time The performance data show that all four original Fordham-sponsored schools struggled to comply fully with the basic achievement goals set for them in their contracts. As such, in autumn 2009 members of the Ohio Policy and Sponsorship Committee of Fordham’s board of trustees met individually with the board leadership of each school to discuss their weak academic performance and to learn how each school planned to improve their performance in the coming school year. After these conversations the committee members agreed to one-year renewals for each of the four schools. It was clear to committee members that each school was operating in a hostile and uncertain political and fiscal environment. Despite these challenges and academic shortcomings, their results were equal to or even better than the local district schools with which they competed. And, all four schools had actually showed more than a year’s worth of academic growth on the state’s value-added indicators in reading and math for 2009. Even so, issuing one-year contract renewals presented us with a dilemma that was summed up in a note to the full Fordham board by Ohio Policy and Sponsorship Committee Chair David Driscoll:
After much internal debate and deliberation the Fordham board issued all four schools one-year renewal agreements for the 2010-11 school year with the understanding that if they didn’t meet the basic academic goals of being rated at least Continuous Improvement, making AYP, and showing gains on the state’s value-added metric the schools would likely face non-renewal in 2011. We are happy to report that three of the schools – Dayton View Academy, the Phoenix Community Learning Center, and the Springfield Academy of Excellence – showed positive gains in 2009-10. Further, these schools seem well-positioned to make further gains and improvements in 2010-11 and beyond. We expect to issue these three schools two-year contracts in early 2011 that will extend our relationship with each through the 2012-13 school year. One school, the Dayton Liberty Campus, failed to make any academic gains in 2009-10, and in fact has struggled to deliver academically for four consecutive years. Our challenge, and that of the school’s governing authority, for the 2010-11 school year is dealing fairly and effectively with this school’s future. Moreover, the school was recently placed on the state’s potential academic “death penalty” list, and could well face automatic closure under state law at the end of the 2010-11 school year if it is again rated Academic Emergency and fails to make growth on the state’s value-added metrics in reading and math. Next year’s Fordham sponsorship report is sure to have a lot to say about the lessons learned from dealing with this school and its challenges. Columbus Collegiate Academy and KIPP: Journey Academy No doubt these two schools still struggled with new school issues in year two of their operations. Specifically, to varying degrees they struggled with enrollment issues and tight funding. Moreover, they had to navigate politically fraught relationships with the Columbus City School district around things like busing, and had to build and sustain talented teams of teachers and administrators. Despite these challenges, however, the academic results were solid for KIPP, and downright remarkable for the Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA). After just two years, the Columbus Collegiate Academy is the top-performing middle school in Columbus and the second-highest performing urban charter middle school in Ohio’s “Big 8” cities. In its second year the school received a state academic rating of Effective (a B). Further, among schools that serve a high number of disadvantaged students (75 percent or more eligible for free or reduced-price lunch), CCA ranks in the top 10 performing of all such schools statewide and is the top performing high-poverty middle school in Ohio. Last school year, 73 percent of CCA’s sixth graders and 93 percent of its seventh graders were proficient in reading; in math, 80 percent of sixth graders and a full 100 percent of seventh graders attained proficiency. This outstanding performance was recognized by New Leaders for New Schools via the 2010 silver EPIC award (Effective Practice Incentive Community). This award identifies principals, assistant principals, and instructional staff who drive significant student achievement gains, and also grants financial bonuses and enables other EPIC-participating schools to learn from winning schools’ successes through a robust professional development community. CCA was one of only 22 charter schools in the nation, and the only one in Ohio, to win this prestigious award. Further, the school’s founder and director, Andrew Boy, received the Columbus Business First’s prestigious “40 under 40” award. The award recognizes outstanding Columbus-area leaders under the age of 40 who have demonstrated strong leadership and professional success and are making a positive contribution to the community. KIPP: Journey Academy made significant academic gains from 2008-09 to 2009-10, and received a state academic rating of Continuous Improvement (a C). While 79 percent of the school’s students were economically disadvantaged, it met AYP in both reading and math and exceeded value-added expectations in both reading and math. More importantly, the school is solidifying the academic team it needs to continue its improvement in 2010-11 and beyond. New school for 2010-11 Second generation authorizing in Ohio Ohio has about 80 charter school sponsors and many of them lack the resources and expertise to do their jobs well. Others lack the motivation because they must make ends meet by selling services such as financial management and special education services to their schools. In those situations, authorizers may put more value on continuing to sell those services than on making certain children in the schools are actually learning. Charter school supporters and experts have argued for multiple charter school authorizers since the first charters opened in the early 1990s. The Center for Education Reform, for example, writes that “charter schools grow and flourish in environments that provide multiple ways for groups to obtain charters to open.” There is, however, such a thing as too much of a good thing. When it comes to authorizing in Ohio there are simply more sponsors than the state needs or can effectively support, especially if school quality is the primary goal. Quality sponsorship costs money to deliver. For example, authorizers need the resources to pay the legal bills associated with closing a school, which can become costly fast. Under Ohio law, charter sponsors can charge schools sponsorship fees of up to three percent of their per-pupil funding. It is not a stretch to say that for most authorizers in Ohio (52 of the state’s authorizers sponsor two or fewer schools) quality sponsorship costs more than the school fees they generate. To improve quality across the state’s sponsorship landscape through economy of scale and shared expertise, ESCCO and Fordham are working together to launch a new statewide charter school authorizer that:
At the start of the 2010-11 school year Fordham and ESCCO collectively sponsored 15 schools serving about 3,400 students. As of October 2010, five school districts and two additional county educational service centers were seriously interested in committing to a next-generation authorizer model. Taken together these nine authorizers represent 7.5 percent of Ohio’s authorizers and slightly more than 5 percent of all students in Ohio charters. Despite the obvious need and the goodwill of our various partners, there is considerable work to be done before Fordham would commit itself and its schools to a new authorizing entity. But, if all the pieces can be brought together for a successful effort—and we are doing all we can to help—we’d begin work to integrate our current authorizing operation into a new unified authorizer during the 2011-12 school year. See the entire Fordham Sponsorship Accountability report for 2009-10 here.
Value-added can help schools keep the best teachers Taxpayers invest a lot in their teachers, and good ones are worth every penny. Nothing affects student performance more than great teachers. Conversely, weak teachers can do irreparable damage to children and their learning. This alone should prompt Ohio to glean as much information as possible about teacher effectiveness.
Since 2007, Ohio has collected value-added data in both reading and mathematics that can be used to help determine teacher performance. These data already are used to measure school and district performance, and play a key role in determining whether persistently low-performing charter schools should face automatic closure. Further, the well-regarded Battelle for Kids has been doing excellent work to help educators use value-added data as a diagnostic tool for improving instruction. So, the data and its power to inform decision-making are not foreign to educators or policy makers in Ohio. This op-ed previously appeared in the Columbus Dispatch. Video profiles of Fordham-authorized schools
Closed charter school returns $423,421 to state’s coffers Over the years there has been much written about spectacular charter school blow-ups that have costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rarely, if ever, do we see headlines that read “Closed charter school returns $423,421 to state’s coffers.” But that’s exactly what happened yesterday when the treasurer for the East End Community School in Dayton hand delivered a check to the Ohio Department of Education. Fordham served as the school’s authorizer from 2005 to 2008, when it closed at the end of the school year. East End had facility problems since its inception in 2002. When the church in which it rented space terminated that arrangement, the school had nowhere satisfactory to conduct class. In its final year of operation the school was one of Dayton’s highest performing schools with its students’ reading proficiency scores fully 15 points above those of district students. In 2008 the school was rated Continuous Improvement (C) and met AYP. Despite its achievement and an enrollment of 210 students the school couldn’t function without a decent facility. And so, in May 2008, the school’s governing board reached an agreement with the Dayton Public School district whereby East End would cease operating as an independent charter and its pupils would be encouraged to enroll in the district’s newly built Ruskin Elementary School. Many teachers and staff from East End subsequently took positions in the new school. This arrangement allowed the district to fill an otherwise underutilized new building with students while enabling East End’s pupils to move into a suitable facility. Further, community leaders in East Dayton – some of whom were on the board of East End – wanted to support one school rather than two competing schools. It was sad to see East End close and for our partnership to end, but we understood and agreed with the logic of the school’s governing authority. As a good authorizer should, we helped them in the closure and provided various forms of technical assistance along the way. More than two years later it is a remarkable testament to the school’s governing board members, its leadership, and its treasurer that after closing out all costs and expenses, including two state-required audits, the school was able to return nearly half a million dollars to the State of Ohio. The school not only delivered academic results for its students during its six-year run, but it actually did this while building up a cash surplus. This is a remarkable story of how thoughtful community leaders can serve children and their neighborhood well through charter schools, while also providing a bargain to taxpayers. Does Competition Improve Public Schools? This study by Northwestern University economists—published in Education Next—teases out findings to a “notoriously difficult” question: do public schools improve when they face the threat of losing students to nearby private schools (in this case, precipitated by tax credit scholarships)? This theoretical “competitive effect” is a main tenet of the school choice movement, but it’s difficult to substantiate that the education market actually works this way. Figlio and Hart’s study bolsters this school choice principle, as it finds that the availability of tax credit scholarships in Florida led to improvements in the average performance of “at-risk” public schools (those that would lose eligible students). Figlio and Hart examined Florida state test results (FCAT scores) from 1999 to 2007 as well as student demographic variables, and geo-coded data for public and private schools so as to measure the distance, density, and concentration of private school options within a five-mile radius of Florida’s public schools. (They also measured private school diversity, naming ten different types on a religious-secular spectrum.) Next, they measured the effect of “scholarship-induced private school competition” on nearby public schools by comparing student performance before and after the scholarship program was enacted. Meanwhile, they controlled for demographic variables like race and poverty, as well as state-given grades to schools, thus isolating the effects of private school competition and disentangling it from, say, schools’ behavior to avoid accountability sanctions. The four measures of competition in the study – distance, density, concentration, and diversity – enabled a comparison between schools with varying levels and diversity of private school options. Remarkably, all four measures were positively correlated with student performance in reading and math. Public schools with more, and more varied, private school options nearby experienced small but consistently positive achievement gains in both subjects after the scholarship program was launched in 2001. Further, the performance gains were lasting, and most pronounced in elementary and middle schools (more likely to lose students than high schools) and in schools wherein losing low-income students to tax credit-receiving competitors would put Title I funding at risk. The study has limits, namely that the school choice market has evolved much since 2001, and Florida-specific findings may not be generalize-able to other states. But the report’s findings have important implications for Florida, for states looking to recreate tax scholarship programs, and for the choice movement itself. Read it here.
You’re Leaving? Sustainability and Succession in Charter Schools Kudos to CRPE for its new report (from its National Charter School Research Project) shedding much needed light on an issue critical to the long-term sustainability of charter schools, yet rarely addressed: succession planning. As an authorizer of charter schools, Fordham has seen firsthand how acutely a change in leadership can affect the success or failure of a charter school. Succession planning isn’t at the forefront of many board agendas, yet it’s just as crucial to a charter school’s viability as other issues that typically garner lots of attention (e.g., academics, fundraising, facilities, and budgets). This report finds a 20 percent turnover rate over two years among the 24 schools it studied. Despite significant turnover, 14 of the 24 schools studied had no succession plan at all. Of the 10 schools that purported to have a plan in place, only five were considered substantive. More important than the numbers, though, are the questions that charter school governing boards and school leaders should consider in order to strengthen their organizations. For example, do boards with strong school founders recognize organizational weaknesses/skills the founder doesn’t have? Are the school leader and board - and management company, for that matter - clear on whose responsibility the succession plan is? (It’s the governing board’s responsibility.) Does the school have the bench strength and training capabilities to produce a new leader from within, or does the leader need to come from outside? And, does the new leader need to perform the exact functions as the former leader, or has the school organization changed such that new duties associated with the change in leadership are merited? The report points out that succession plans need not be complex, and that strong plans:
Finally, the report recommends that authorizers make school succession planning part of the charter school application and renewal process. This report is a must read for charter school practitioners -- boards, school leaders, management companies, and authorizers alike.
International Benchmarking: State Education Performance Standards Analyses comparing US students’ achievement with that of their global peers are widespread (and discouraging), but little has been said about how US educational standards compare to standards in other nations. This new AIR study does just that. To make the comparison, Phillips begins with the metric the National Center for Education Statistics uses to evaluate state assessments (assumed to be representative of state standards) in relation to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). He then uses this NAEP-based evaluation as a bridge to measure state assessments against the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (two studies assumed to be representative of international standards). Phillips determines that across the grade levels studied (grades four and eight), less than four percent of states have standards on par with or higher than the TIMSS and PIRLS standards in mathematics and reading, respectively. Ohioans may be interested to learn that on an A-F scale in which a “B” represents meeting or exceeding international standards, the report gives Ohio’s standards a C for fourth grade mathematics and reading, and a C- for eighth grade mathematics. (The study does not measure grade eight reading.) These “grades” put Ohio slightly below the national average in all subjects and grade levels studied. The study also posits that low testing standards have caused Ohio, among other states, to report artificially high proficiency numbers. For example, although the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) reported that 81.7 percent of Ohio’s grade four students were proficient in reading in 2007, Phillips estimates that only 50 percent would have been proficient by an international standard. (Earlier this year, Fordham reported a similar discrepancy between Ohio students’ scores on the Ohio Achievement Test scores and their scores on the NAEP.) Considering that Ohio has recognized the inadequacy of its own current standards and has recently adopted the Common Core standards in English language arts and math, the study is more helpful in evaluating where Ohio has been rather than where we are going. Still, it provides a useful comparison to other nations, one that might be worth replicating in the future. Read the full study here.
Measuring Teacher and Leader Performance: Cross-Sector Lessons for Excellent Evaluations There is undoubtedly no other sector in which talent and performance are more important than in education. Teachers have a tremendous impact on student learning and improving teacher effectiveness is one of the most important levers in improving student achievement. Thus, it is imperative that schools leaders have an adequate and efficient way to gauge teacher effectiveness. This recent report from Public Impactprovides thoughtful insight in this area by comparing performance measurement across sectors, including non-profit organizations and private companies. Through research of numerous organizations and companies, the report compiles six components necessary for meaningful performance evaluations.
In addition to the above steps, Public Impact offers other recommendations to improve performance measurements. The report suggests that schools measure performance frequently, measure both the “what” and “how” of performance, and use the evaluations to not only improve teacher quality, but also to decide who teaches and how long they are able to teach. Education leaders must create effective performance mechanisms and use the evaluations as the basis for teacher and principal retention, dismissal, and development in order to provide quality education to all students. This report provides useful information toward that end. Read it here.
Flypaper's Finest Other Ohio districts should take a cue from Cleveland We’ve been no fans of the Columbus City School District’s treatment of charter schools within its boundaries. The district’s icy and hostile relationship with charters is far too often the norm when it comes to charter-district “cooperation” in Ohio (though people on both sides of the issue are admirably trying to change that fact). But while Columbus and other districts continue to take a hostile stand against charter schools, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is leading the way in partnering with high-performing charters, making good on promises made as part of the district’s academic transformation plan. Read the rest of this post here.
More Race to the Top drop-outs Upon hearing that the Ohio Department of Education rejected the majority of districts’ and charter schools’ Race to the Top proposals, we pondered whether this would instigate a dropping-out effect among LEAs who signed on originally but maybe were wary of the work it required. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that at least 28 LEAs have withdrawn (making the drop-out rate thus far about five percent, not considering the 47 percent of districts and 34 percent of charters that didn’t sign up in the first place). What’s the primary reason for LEA withdrawal from RTTT? Districts can’t afford to spend more carrying out the proposal’s requirements than they’d receive in RTTT to do the work. Read the full post here.
Of dropout factories and budget scissors
Are Education Schools Amenable to Reform? Many reformers and funders have written off schools of education as beyond repair, and much of the current energy for teacher preparation is centered on non-traditional programs like Teach For America. But are schools of education more ready for reform than the conventional wisdom supposes? Join the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for a lively and provocative debate about that question. Institute President Chester Finn will moderate, and the discussion will be informed, in part, by Fordham’s recent study, Cracks in the Ivory Tower? The Views of Education Professors Circa 2010, as well as by the recently-announced effort, led by Jim Cibulka's NCATE, to overhaul the teacher evaluation system. For those of you who are not DC-based, the event will be webcast live. Learn more here. |
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| The Ohio Education Gadfly is published bi-weekly (ordinarily on Wednesdays, with occasional breaks, and in special editions) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Have something to say? Email the editor at [email protected]. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email [email protected] with "unsubscribe gadfly" in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward the Gadfly to others, and from our website you can even email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may email [email protected] with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message. To read archived issues, go to our website and click on the Ohio Education Gadfly link. Aching for still more education news and analysis? Check out the original Education Gadfly.
Nationally and in Ohio, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, along with its sister organization the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, strives to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding high-quality education options for parents and families. As a charter-school sponsor in Ohio, the Foundation joins with schools to affirm a relentless commitment to high expectations for all children, accountability for academic results, and transparency and organizational integrity, while freeing the schools to operate with minimal red tape. The Foundation and Institute are neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.
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