Coming soon: Fordham probes the brain drain

Mike Lafferty / December 3, 2008

When 30 Ohio college students were interviewed in November at three of the state's top universities, they were asked to play what researcher Steve Farkas calls the "finish the sentence game."

Farkas, president of the New York-based FDR public opinion research company (see here), asked students to complete the phrase, "Ohio is...." The most common answer was "Ohio is...home." In short, young Ohio natives usually love their state but they are too often ready to leave as soon as they clutch their degrees. They're happy to have grown up here and just as happy to leave for adventures, jobs, or advanced degrees as soon as they're done with college. This isn't surprising. The problem for the state, however, is how to keep more of these bright, educated Ohioans right here.

Leaders from Gov. Ted Strickland on down are worried. So is the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The departure of so many capable, articulate citizens already hurts and will be devastating as Ohio attempts to restructure and reinvigorate the state's K-16 education system and, beyond that, to retool the economy. Farkas is helping to illuminate this issue for Fordham. The Institute has contracted with him to conduct an in-depth survey of 800 sophomores, juniors, and seniors currently attending Ohio's more prestigious colleges to learn just what they think about their state. The November focus groups of students-all with grade point averages of 3.5 and above-were designed to help construct questions for a

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Coming soon: Fordham probes the brain drain

Study says school finance system prevents education reform

Mike Lafferty / December 3, 2008

A six-year, $6-million study of the American school-finance system has determined what many education experts conclude every day-that the system is broken and must be reformed before any true long-term education fix can be fashioned.

The study, funded by the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation, comes just months before Gov. Ted Strickland unveils his school-funding reform plans and just as the Ohio State Board of Education considers a recommendation to add $1 billion to the $17 billion the state already spends on K-12 schooling (see above).

The report, Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools, recommends that spending concepts such as Weighted Student Funding are far better at targeting resources for the education of individual students. Facing the Future is the work of more than 40 economists, lawyers, financial specialists, and education policymakers. It includes more than 30 separate studies, including in-depth looks at Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington.

"Like an old computer that has become so laden with new applications that it can no longer do anything well, our school finance system is a product of many unrelated policies and administrative arrangements that, in combination, freeze everything up," said lead author Paul T. Hill, director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington. "We need a new model that is optimized to do one thing, that is, ensure that every child learns what she needs to become an involved citizen and full participant in a modern economy."

Hill and

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Study says school finance system prevents education reform

AG Rogers: Admit it, you just don't have a case

Mike Lafferty / December 3, 2008

There's a good chance-logically speaking-that Attorney General Nancy Rogers will not appeal the latest rejection of the state's claim that a poorly performing charter school violates the Ohio charitable trust law (see here).

First, the Nov. 24 decision by a Hamilton County Common Pleas judge rejecting Rogers' attempt to close the Harmony Community School is the third time in three months a court has turned down the AG's interpretation of the statute, so precedent is building. Second, the 30-day deadline for appealing the decision falls just before Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray becomes the new attorney general in January.

Rogers-and Cordray-may feel that, given the budget cuts now being made across the board in state government (see here), spending tens of thousands of additional dollars on a rejected legal theory may not be a prudent use of taxpayer money.

As Gadfly has argued from the start, it never was (see here). The Hamilton County case was one of a trio of lawsuits launched by former Attorney General Marc Dann, at the behest of the Ohio Education Association (see here). The OEA originated the novel and now twice-discredited legal claim that the schools are charitable trusts and that their dismal academic performance violated the law. In ruling against the AG, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Jody M. Luebbers echoed a September ruling in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court in favor of the New Choices charter school. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Rogers decided

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AG Rogers: Admit it, you just don't have a case

Grappling with weighted student funding in a billion-dollar ed. plan

Emmy L. Partin / December 3, 2008

The State Board of Education will vote next week on a new method of allocating and spending education dollars as well as a call to boost state K-12 spending by $1 billion.

The ideas are major recommendations of the board's school-funding subcommittee. Their report, An Integrated Approach to School Funding in Ohio, is the result of two years of hard work by board members and education department staff to develop recommendations for improving how Ohio finances public education.

Most notably, the report moves toward proposing a system of Weighted Student Funding (WSF). WSF enjoys bi-partisan support as a fair way to allocate education dollars (see Fordham's Fund the Child report here), and it gets a thumbs-up from educators who use it (see here). WSF rests on a handful of principles: school-funding must be transparent; funding must be based on students' educational needs; funding must be portable and follow a child to the building level and move with the child when he or she changes schools; and educators at the school level must be empowered to allocate resources as they see fit to meet individual student needs (see here).

The subcommittee's report calls for adopting weights for students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, limited English proficient students, and gifted students. And, it does the tough job of recommending what those weights should be, defining eligibility, and estimating the cost. The report also recommends that Ohio build a better system to track

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Grappling with weighted student funding in a billion-dollar ed. plan

Charter School Authorizers in SREB States: A Call for Accountability

Kathryn Mullen Upton, Esq. / December 3, 2008

Southern Regional Education Board
November 2008

The Southern Regional Education Board has identified key elements to gauge the success of charter schools (see here).

This 15-page report examines charter school student achievement, data systems and state-level policies and practices in the 16 SREB states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

While the charter-school grades are mixed, the most interesting part of the report identifies three elements needed to make a valid assessment of charter performance:

1. States need reliable data comparing charter school and traditional public school student achievement.
2. To obtain this data (which in turn forms the basis for state policy decisions), states must have statewide educational data systems that track individual students year to year and school to school.
3. The charter-school authorizer is critical.

Ohio needs to consider these points while moving forward with improvements to the state's charter program. Our state has developed and implemented quality state-wide student-achievement and data systems. But, we have not done a good job of overseeing authorizers (see here). The Columbus Dispatch observed recently in a Nov. 26 editorial that the "gaping" hole in Ohio law "that grandfathered dozens of sponsors [a.k.a. authorizers] already in the charter school field from any direct connection to the department [of education]." To drive home the point, the Dispatch stated that 56 of 74 Ohio sponsors do not have any type of accountability agreement with

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Charter School Authorizers in SREB States: A Call for Accountability