New report provides hints on how to improve a school district's staff

August 6, 2008

Far too often, educational policymakers have high demands and expectations for students but roll the dice on the skills and competence of instructors and school administrators. While we might like to believe that charter schools rarely, if ever, sin like this, the fact of the matter is that they falter the most, according to a new report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

The report, entitled Closing the Skill Gap: New Options for Charter School Leadership Development, surveyed principals and superintendents and recorded their observations and complaints, particularly that they were unprepared for a whole host of modern problems such as educating with wide variations in grade readiness, dealing with disgruntled parents-or with seemingly impenetrable bureaucracies-or adapting to increased testing and accountability in schools.

The solution, the authors argue, is to make a strategic change in recruitment and to really go after high-caliber people to become educators and administrators. Just as important are high-quality training and support. Underlying all this is communication. Top officials and trainers need to be aware of the needs of charter-school leaders and be willing to adapt and respond to those needs.

Ultimately, authors Christine Campbell and Brock J. Grubb allow readers a clear understanding of the processes in which educators become prepared to enter America's schools, but also serve up a sobering evaluation of just how much more work needs to be done to ensure success for all students. Read the full report here.

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New report provides hints on how to improve a school district's staff

about "innovation schools"

August 6, 2008

State Board of Education member Colleen Grady comments on Emmy L. Partin's recent piece concerning a board recommendation that school districts be allowed to create so-called innovation schools. Essentially, these would be copies of charter schools, which districts are already allowed to sponsor.

You rightly point out the reason why the recommendation regarding innovation schools is puzzling. During discussions in committee, it was pointed out more than once (by more than one board member) that the recommendation is redundant at best. In addition to sponsoring a community school, districts also have two other mechanisms open to them to spur innovation or release from regulation. Excellent and effective schools already have the ability to be excused from a number of rules and regulations should they request such release. There is also a waiver process in place for school districts who wish to implement "innovative programs."

Colleen Grady
State Board of Education

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about "innovation schools"

A conversation with the governor

Terry Ryan / August 6, 2008

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is in the midst of a 12-city "Conversation on Education" that he says will inform his long-awaited education plan, currently expected in early 2009. I attended his invitation-only event in Dayton and the governor came across as charming, caring, even grandfatherly. He was patient with everyone and showed a real sense of humor. His political talents are awesome; he clearly likes working a crowd and the Dayton crowd clearly liked him. No wonder his name has been tossed around as a serious vice-presidential candidate.

To date, however, it's impossible to determine what Strickland's specific plans for K-12 education will look like (and by the time he unveils them he'll be half-way through his gubernatorial term.) While in Dayton, he emphasized that he was not presenting any ideas of his own or of his administration. He insisted that he wanted to hear the ideas of others, and to share ideas that others had previously shared with him.

This obviously makes it hard to pin down what he believes or where he is headed-and indeed it's possible that he doesn't yet know. What's unfortunately clear, however, is that many of the ideas being shared with him are self-interested and/or ill-conceived, at least in terms of Ohio's real 21^st century education needs.

Most participants in the Dayton "conversation" were members or fellow travelers of the public-education "establishment"-and nearly every one of them wanted more of something, starting (and often ending) with more

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A conversation with the governor

Black males still far behind whites in high-school graduation

Mike Lafferty / August 6, 2008

Black males trail white males in high-school graduation by an average of 28 percent nationally and in Ohio by 30 percent, according to a new report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

Over the past 25 years, the social, educational, and economic outcomes for black males have been devastating, and the new report from the Schott Foundation, Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males (see here), reveals a national graduation rate of a shocking 47 percent. Frankly, it's bad enough that only 75 percent of white males graduate, but that less than half of black males receive diplomas is deeply troubling. In Ohio, it's 49 percent vs. 79 percent.

The report notes that, in 10 states and the District of Columbia, there is a graduation gap of at least 30 percent between black males and white males. Oddly, the state with one of the highest graduation rate for white males-Wisconsin, at 87 percent-has one of the lowest graduation rate for blacks, at 36 percent. The report also found graduation problems for blacks tended to be concentrated in a few large urban areas, where graduation rates are low for both races.

It's not a uniformly bleak picture, however. In some states black males actually graduate at higher rates than white males-Vermont, for example, where 88 percent of blacks graduate compared with 75 percent of whites, and Maine (85 percent vs. 75 percent). The report

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Black males still far behind whites in high-school graduation

Study says fairer accountability system means more tests

Emmy L. Partin / August 6, 2008

An Ohio State University sociology professor says the state's new value-added method for measuring student academic progress is an improvement to the accountability system but still doesn't go far enough.

Sociology professor Doug Downey told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Ohio's new approach is "substantially better" than the old method but he still doesn't think it goes far enough. He believes the accountability system would be better if, instead of one test, students are administered two tests (one in the autumn and one in the spring). Downey argues that one test does not measure how much students retain from the preceding year and a test should be administered in the autumn after students return to school to gauge that knowledge.

Further, in the current issue of Sociology of Education (see here) Downey and researcher Paul von Hippel argue that the common method many states use for evaluating schools, called the status model, is biased and unfairly labels schools that serve predominantly disadvantaged children as "failing."

The researchers believe the "status" model, which measures student achievement at a single point in time-as required by No Child Left Behind-fails in comparison to an "impact" model . An impact model attempts to measure how children build on what they have previously learned year to year. Impact models attempt to account for learning lost over the summer months but disadvantaged children are more likely to lose ground during that break (see here).

While Ohio's achievement tests

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Study says fairer accountability system means more tests

Districts already working to discredit pending state report cards

Emmy L. Partin / August 6, 2008

The state's new round of local report cards detailing last year's performance for Ohio public schools won't be made public until the last week of August, but district school officials are already scrambling to discredit the reports.

Representatives of the "Ohio Eight" urban districts met with the Ohio Department of Education last month to express concerns over the accuracy of last year's Ohio Achievement Tests (see here), and a Cincinnati Public Schools official expressed concerns over the validity of tests at particular grade levels and subjects (see here).

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, half of Cincinnati's fourth-graders passed the math test in the 2006-2007 school year, but, as fifth graders, just 35 percent passed. Elizabeth Holtzapple, the district's student achievement data expert, told the Enquirer, "we think the testing scores should not fluctuate as much from year to year."

Last fall's Fordham report The Proficiency Illusion supports Holtzapple's concerns. The report found that Ohio's math exam isn't well-calibrated across grade levels, meaning that it is tougher to pass at some grade levels than others. In fact, the report found that Ohio's math test peaks in difficulty at the fifth grade (see here).

Such imperfections in the state's assessments, however, should not become an excuse for scrapping the system entirely. But they should remind the State Board of Education and Ohio Department of Education of the importance of continually refining and improving the tests, including reviewing cut scores and ensuring calibration across

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Districts already working to discredit pending state report cards

The next president will matter to education in Ohio

Emmy L. Partin / August 6, 2008

What will be the impact of the next president on public education in Ohio? We'll know a lot more about their different plans a month from now after both parties have held their nominating conventions and unveiled their formal platforms. But details emerging in recent speeches (McCain's to the NAACP, here, and Obama's to the American Federation of Teachers, here) offer a glimpse at the candidates' positions on education and what they might mean for Ohio.

Both candidates call for rethinking the entry process for new teachers, an increasingly important issue in Ohio. In 2005, 36 percent of Ohio public school teachers were age 50 or older. Because of incentives in the state's teacher-pension system (see here), this means that more than one-third of the teaching force is likely to retire by 2015.

Sen. McCain calls for expanding alternative licensure pathways that allow mid-career professionals and those educated outside traditional colleges of education to teach. McCain also would offer financial incentives to get the top 25 percent of college graduates into teaching and to keep alums of programs like Teach for America and the New Teacher Project in the classroom. Sen. Obama favors the traditional route to the classroom but would bolster it with residency programs and intensive mentoring for new teachers in high-need schools and scholarships to people who make teaching a career.

Both senators want to pay teachers more. Obama promotes a career-ladder-type plan under which "districts will

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The next president will matter to education in Ohio

Measuring Up: What Education Testing Really Tells Us

Emmy L. Partin / August 6, 2008

Daniel Koretz
Harvard University Press
2008

Measuring Up is an excellent primer on the basics of academic testing. In a pleasant, jargon-lite manner, author and Harvard professor Daniel Koretz provides a brief history of American education testing along with real-world examples illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of it. He also provides lay-friendly definitions of buzzwords like criterion-referenced, measurement error, and validity.

Koretz doesn't pretend to be a fan of the educational testing brought on by the federal No Child Left Behind Act and works to discount much of the assessment-based accountability aspects of the law. But most of this book is an acknowledgement that education testing isn't a black-or-white issue, and Koretz does a good job of telling both sides of the story. Here are a few points are worth lifting for Gadfly readers, given the current testing debate in Ohio.

- On standardized testing, he cautions that the goals of education are diverse and that only some of these goals are amenable to standardized testing. But he equally acknowledges that standardized tests "avoid irrelevant factors that might distort comparisons between individuals" and are useful in shedding light on achievement gaps.

- On achievement as the sole measure of academic success, Koretz promotes the use of a growth or progress measure, in addition to an achievement measure. But the two must go hand-in-hand. Schools showing large gains but failing to meet the proficiency bar shouldn't be excused for lousy test scores just as schools

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Measuring Up: What Education Testing Really Tells Us