State's retirement systems need more than a mere nip and tuck

Mike Lafferty , Terry Ryan / September 16, 2009

Two years ago the Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued a report critical of the financial sustainability of the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) and the adverse effects the system’s benefits policy has on recruiting young teachers.

The June 2007 report noted the system’s unfunded liability was $19.4 billion, which then represented a debt of over $4,300 per Ohio household.“At current contribution rates, STRS actuaries estimate that it will take 47.2 years to amortize the unfunded liability, a funding period that exceeds the 30-year requirement established in state law (see here),” the report noted.  This was at a time when the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at almost 14,000. Today it stands at about 9,500.

When our report came out, STRS officials angrily denied problems and essentially labeled Fordham and the report’s authors – the well-respected economists Robert Costrell and Mike Podgursky – scaremongers.

But what a difference a couple of years make. Last week, STRS Executive Director Michael Nehf stood in front of lawmakers and state officials and admitted that without a massive infusion of taxpayers’ dollars and trimming and adjusting of benefits, the fund eventually would be bankrupt.

"If no changes are made we will eventually be unable to pay benefits," Nehf told the Ohio Retirement Study Council. The timeline for amortizing the unfunded liability is now set at infinity (see here).

As far as Ohio education is concerned, the STRS plan affects more than just teachers, school districts and taxpayers. The very

» Continued

State's retirement systems need more than a mere nip and tuck

Judges and schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 16, 2009

Primary-secondary education is obviously not the only realm of increased litigation in American life and intense court involvement in social policy. It's most definitely not the only field in which the fruits of such litigation have sometimes turned out to be mushy if not rotten. Nor is it the only sphere where policy disputes and reform initiatives--and resistance to these--have been fought out in courtrooms as well as in legislative corridors and voting booths. In the three decades since Donald Horowitz penned The Courts and Social Policy, many forests have fallen to produce the paper on which were inscribed hundreds of thousands of court decisions in countless areas of domestic affairs. (Consider, just as a beginning, disability law, family law, welfare, health, immigration, housing and, of course, law enforcement.)

Yet the impact of all this has been sorely neglected, particularly in K-12 education. Scads of people have scrutinized the executive and legislative branches of government, both state and federal, in relation to schools and education policy. Yet few analysts have tackled the judicial branch. As a result, not a lot is known about its role in and effects on our schools, our teachers, and our children.

One can easily recount several famous decisions, particularly by the U.S. Supreme Court, that seemed to advance important education reforms (such as Brown and Zelman) and can point to others (especially state court rulings on school finance) that tended to push in the opposite direction, particularly

» Continued

Judges and schools

New studies can inform teacher mentoring and staffing practices

September 16, 2009

Two recently released studies have the potential to influence policy related to teacher mentoring programs and school staffing. These studies are especially poignant for Ohio as it moves to restructure its new teacher induction programs (see here).

A study by Mathematica Policy Research (see here) found that highly structured mentoring programs for new teachers yield marginal results. These programs are known as comprehensive teacher inductions and are common in districts across the country. Such programs rely on carefully selected mentors with an intensive curriculum. They are commonly designed to support new teachers and reduce teacher turnover. In contrast, less formal mentoring programs, referred to as traditional induction programs, are usually site-based and involve a new teacher being paired up with a veteran teacher within their content area or grade level in their building.

The Mathematica study involved 1,009 teachers in 418 elementary schools in 17 medium and large urban school districts in 13 states. It examined a treatment group of teachers exposed to the more intensive and comprehensive teacher induction, and an equivalent control group exposed to a less structured mentoring process. Researchers used surveys and school data to measure teachers’ backgrounds; receipt of induction services and alternative support services; attitudes and outcomes related to classroom practices, student achievement, and teacher retention. The researchers found that the treatment and control groups showed no discernable difference over a two year period in student achievement and teacher retention.

Conversely, a study to be

» Continued

New studies can inform teacher mentoring and staffing practices

Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up

Mike Lafferty / September 16, 2009

Louise S. Mead and Anton Mates
National Center for Science Education
August, 2009

Nationally, state science standards regarding the teaching of evolution in our schools have improved a little since 2000 when the Fordham Foundation last surveyed the landscape. According to this latest survey from the National Center for Science Education (see here), 40 states and territories do an adequate job, up from 31. The survey shows that science standards tend to cover evolution more extensively than they did a decade ago, and that the average quality of the treatment has increased.

Ironically, however, creationist language is also becoming more common in state standards. And, there are still outliers such as Texas, Louisiana and nine other states that were marked unsatisfactory with an “F.” Texas is cited as a particularly troubling example. Amendments to the Texas Educational Knowledge and Skills document now require the presentation of creationist claims about the complexity of the cell, the completeness of the fossil record, and the age of the universe. Ohio and other states – notably Kansas – went this route a few years ago and, fortunately, veered back towards the tenets of science.

Ohio grades a “B” in this new report. The state’s science standards are now being reviewed again and it appears evolution will be treated in an educationally valid and scientific manner. Kansas gets an “A” this time around. On the other hand, Oklahoma’s standards don’t even mention the word evolution. Some states wiggle. Missouri’s standards

» Continued

Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up

A new kind of victim-blaming

Jamie Davies O'Leary / September 16, 2009

One frequently hears arguments that redirect blame from failing schools (and their teachers and principals) to ubiquitous social monsters that are bigger and hairier (poverty, broken families, crime) but also impossible to hold accountable.  I get this. There are undeniable correlations between student achievement and socioeconomic status. When I taught in Camden, New Jersey (then the second poorest city in the US) I could empathize when my colleagues said—in so many words—that a student’s failure simply wasn’t their fault. Having been schooled in Teach For America’s no excuses curriculum, this abdication of blame was foreign to me. But seeing up close the level of poverty that ravaged our school’s neighborhood, and the kinds of unspeakable problems that come with that, I couldn’t help but make peace (if not always agreeing) with the tendency for educators in persistently failing schools to point to the outside social forces that make their work so difficult. (Read the rest here.)

» Continued

A new kind of victim-blaming

On the decline of stately schools

Emmy L. Partin / September 16, 2009

Over at the Education Next blog, Martha Derthick laments the decline of “stately” schools. Derthick specifically highlights the turn-of-the-twentieth-century school buildings in Ohio’s Queen City (which are also featured in 2001’s An Expression of the Community: Cincinnati Public Schools’ Legacy of Art and Architecture). The decline of stately schools has been hastened here in Ohio, where over the past decade the state has poured billions of dollars into renovating and replacing our public schools with the new, modernist buildings Derthick describes. A visit to any of Ohio’s newly built schools will confirm that we’ve moved away from buildings of beauty to buildings of function. I’m certainly in favor of preserving the historic buildings whenever possible, but I see the upside to modernization as well. I attended elementary and high school in the Buckeye State in early 20th century buildings much like those she talks about, both of which have since been replaced with new facilities. But alongside the aesthetic transformations have also come much-needed improvements for modern-day learning. (Read the rest here.)

» Continued

On the decline of stately schools

World-Class Academic Standards for Ohio conference October 5

September 16, 2009

National education experts and top state leaders will come together October 5 in Columbus for a one-day conference about academic content standards.  Panelists and speakers will share promising practices from across the country and around the world, talk about the current ‘common standards’ effort, and discuss what Ohio can do to achieve “world-class” standards.  See the full agenda here. For more information, contact Emmy Partin at 614-223-1580 or epartin@edexcellence.net.

» Continued

World-Class Academic Standards for Ohio conference October 5