Bring charters in from the cold

Terry Ryan / January 27, 2010

Can Ohio finally bring itself to see charter schools as an asset, and not a liability? It is in the interest of the state, its education system, and its children to do so. This became obvious in the state’s recent application for federal Race to the Top (RttT) grant dollars where success for the application means funds not only for traditional district-operated public schools but also for public charter schools.

We all wish the state well in this important competition – more than $400 million could be involved – and its application certainly has strengths. But we should also acknowledge that Ohio did not put its best foot forward when it came to sharing the story of the state’s charter school efforts.  

Ohio’s application dutifully states that its charter program meets the basic requirements sought by RttT reviewers. As evidence, it notes that charters are allowed to operate in the state; that there are a lot of them (296 brick-and-mortar and 27 cybercharters); that they educate many children (90,000 students); that the state funds them fairly (though they don’t receive local tax dollars); that their performance is mixed; and that there are “no caps” to their expansion.

Some in the charter community dispute parts of this analysis. For example, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools recently reported that Ohio is one of 13 states with caps on charter-school growth.

But in reading the state’s RttT application what really jumps out is that—in its

» Continued

Bring charters in from the cold

EdWeek report shows Ohio does well when kids are out of the equation

Mike Lafferty / January 27, 2010

Congratulations, Ohio. The state’s continued slow climb up the Education Week achievement ladder continues and shows that improvements put in place over the last decade are creating a strong educational infrastructure. See here, for the report (subscription needed).

But that’s all. Unfortunately, what Ohio’s fifth-place, B-minus finish (Maryland was first at B-plus) really shows is that adults in the state are better off than most students. The Buckeye State received good marks for our accountability program and we were okay on equity in financing, for example, but when it comes to actual student learning we aren’t doing so hot. It’s like getting all excited about how grand a brand new school building looks and forgetting that the important thing is what’s going on inside.

Still, perception is important. The Quality Counts survey is considered a big deal and gets lots of press coverage. State Superintendent Deborah Delisle gushed her relief when the annual results were issued earlier this month. “This report confirms what the members of Ohio’s educational community have known for several years – Ohio has a strong system that is viewed as a national leader,” she said. Delisle went on to praise administrators, teachers, policy makers, and students.

Unfortunately, students didn’t have much to do with it. Academic performance is actually a drag on our state’s ranking.

And that’s the rub for taxpayers. They are no doubt pleased that the state’s education system seems to be getting better but

» Continued

EdWeek report shows Ohio does well when kids are out of the equation

School Funding Advisory Council questions the effectiveness of evidence-based funding model

Jamie Davies O'Leary / January 27, 2010

The Ohio School Funding Advisory Council had its second meeting last week. Some observers have questioned the makeup of the 28-member panel, a group charged with crafting education spending recommendations by December 2010 but that is stacked with folks who may have a “vested interest” in seeing larger education budgets come to fruition. 

Despite this, several council members voiced concerns about the fiscal realities facing Ohio in the biennium, as well as the efficacy of the “evidence-based model” (EBM) in other states. With the first of the EBM’s mandates ready to be unleashed on school districts in July 2010, that’s certainly a fair question.

Deborah Delisle, state superintendent of public instruction, pointed out that analyzing the EBM elsewhere won’t give us the answers we’re looking for, because in other EBM states, “there has not been fidelity to the [evidence-based] program.” This may be true, but it begs an obvious question: if school districts elsewhere haven’t been faithful to the mandates enshrined in EBM (reduced teacher-student ratios; all-day kindergarten; mandatory staffing of counselors and “school wellness coordinators,” etc.), what does Ohio plan to do differently to enforce spending requirements that districts are already unhappy with? (Recall the push-back against the all-day kindergarten requirement, the first of Ohio’s EBM mandates to be phased in.)

Understanding the “evidence” behind this massive -- and expensive -- undertaking is important. Rep. Steve Dyer encouraged council members to have faith in the “scientific evidence” of the model

» Continued

School Funding Advisory Council questions the effectiveness of evidence-based funding model

Proposal would allow online coursework to make up for snow days

January 27, 2010

School districts and STEM schools should be able to assign online work to students to make up for calamity days, according to legislation introduced earlier this month in the Ohio House of Representatives. 

Under House Bill 407, school boards at Ohio district schools and STEM schools could voluntarily propose a plan to the Ohio Department of Education, detailing how they wish to assign such work (the legislation does not include charter schools because they do not have calamity days). The legislation has received some bipartisan support from sponsors Rep. James J. Zehringer (R-Fort Recovery) and Rep. Mark Okey (D-Carrollton), as well as 2 Democratic and 8 Republican cosponsors.

Some of Ohio’s current efforts to provide alternative, online sources of education have worked well and others haven’t. Plans submitted under this legislation would likely be no exception. Yet the potential for online education clearly exists. Ohio has launched a pilot distance-learning program statewide, and 25 percent of Ohio’s charter school students attend e-schools.

Still, it is unclear how much preparation schools will be expected to undertake if they apply.

Will they need daily, online lesson plans prepared for every course by the August 1 proposal deadline? Would it be enough for teachers to simply send their students an e-mail message asking them to read certain pages from a book? Is the online work supposed to replace the material missed during the calamity day, or does it provide a pathway for teachers to bump their schedule

» Continued

Proposal would allow online coursework to make up for snow days

Head Start Impact Study Final Report

Jamie Davies O'Leary / January 27, 2010

US Department of HHS
January 2010

This study uses random assignment to answer a specific research question – what is the causal impact of one year of Head Start (2002-2003) on key child outcomes? Drawn from a nationally representative sample of 5,000 children, the analysis examines outcomes for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds receiving one year of the program. It measures results at various intervals (during preschool, kindergarten, and through the end of first grade) in the domains of cognitive development, social-emotional development, health status, and parenting practices.

Researchers found that a year of programming had several positive impacts on school readiness measures one year later, but by the end of first grade, most of these impacts disappeared. A few impacts remained intact: for the 4-year-old cohort - small impacts on vocabulary scores, receipt of dental care, and increase in health insurance coverage; for the 3-year-old cohort – impacts on oral comprehension, closer relationships with parents, less authoritarian parenting styles. The rest of the 420 page report points overwhelmingly to an unfortunate trend: early learning impacts often fade out after a few years.

Despite its gold-star methodology, readers may be left with pragmatic questions about how to improve Head Start programming, whether sustained improvements to child-parent relationships and health outcomes fulfill the goals of the program, and whether (and how) to allocate scarce funds to early learning if it doesn’t significantly improve children’s academic readiness.

In Ohio, policymakers may wonder about the efficacy of not just

» Continued

Head Start Impact Study Final Report

School Principals and School Performance

January 27, 2010

CALDER at the Urban Institute
Damon Clark, Paco Martorell, & Jonah Rockoff
December 2009 

This working paper from CALDER (Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research) uses data from New York City to examine the relationship between principal characteristics and school performance, particularly whether past principal experience has an impact on the performance of the schools in which they are placed.

The authors find that schools with experienced principals have stronger school-wide performance than those without such experience, especially related to math outcomes and student absences. For schools with inexperienced principals, the only ones whose schools improved performance were those who had previously served as assistant principal in that same school. It seems intuitive that previous experience as a principal or assistant principal would contribute to better school performance, but less obvious is the finding that principals’ graduation from highly selective universities and prior (pre-principal) work experience have little correlation with student outcomes.

The paper also makes a credible case that retaining principals over a longer period of time will aid school performance. By reducing the number of times a school switches principals, the less time (and money) a school will spend getting new principals adjusted to their new careers.

More generally, the paper suggests that “characteristics that can be directly observed on a resume … are probably less important than characteristics that cannot, such as leadership skills and determination.” This finding is all the more interesting in light of a recent

» Continued

School Principals and School Performance

Deloitte 2009 Education Survey Overview: Redefining High School as a Launch Pad

January 27, 2010

Deloitte LLP
November 2009 

This national report assessed, from the perspectives of students, teachers, and parents, the purpose of high school. To some of us, the answer appears manifest: to prepare students for post-secondary education and successful careers. However, the results from this survey portray a culture that believes otherwise.

The Deloitte 2009 Education Survey Overview highlights the blinding case of myopia that has pervaded our school system and its potential impact on low-income high school students. For example, when teachers in the study were asked to define their primary mission as a teacher, 38 percent responded to “help students master the subject you teach”; a scant 9 percent replied “prepare students for success in college.” On the contrary, when students and parents were surveyed, both overwhelmingly identified the most important purpose of high school as “getting prepared for college.”

For low-income students, a college education is becoming one of the only ways to escape the cycle of insolvency all too familiar to their relatives, friends, and family. It is essential for teachers to help these students believe that a demographic characteristic will not predict their fate.

The report also noted the difference between a student’s desire to go college and their ability to actually complete college level work; 70 percent of students said they “definitely” wanted to attend college, but less than a quarter actually felt “very prepared” These sentiments were echoed by their parents, as 89 percent thought it to be “very

» Continued

Deloitte 2009 Education Survey Overview: Redefining High School as a Launch Pad

Can Race to the Top decisions really be politics-free?

Terry Ryan / January 27, 2010

Ohio has joined 39 other states and the District of Columbia in submitting its Race to the Top grant application to the Feds…. Whether or not Ohio’s plan is bold enough, and competes well against other states, is now awaiting the determination of reviewers at the U.S. Department of Education. But in Ohio, many policy wonks and journalists believe that politics will surely intrude in the USDOE’s decision making. This despite that fact that Secretary Duncan and the department have repeatedly insisted that politics will play no role in determining which states receive RttT grants. Read the rest of this post here.

» Continued

Can Race to the Top decisions really be politics-free?

Reevaluating the meaning of teacher commitment

Jamie Davies O'Leary / January 27, 2010

Yesterday Terry responded on Flypaper to remarks made by the president of the Dayton Education Association (DEA) as to why the union turned down up to $5 million in federal Race to the Top money. (This, while the district faces a $5 million budget shortfall! Do the math.) There is something specific about the DEA president’s remarks worth addressing further. Read more here.

» Continued

Reevaluating the meaning of teacher commitment

KIPP culture, Arne Duncan, school lunches, and more

January 27, 2010

• What do Gap Inc., FedEx Corp, Southwest Airlines Co., and high performing charter schools have in common? To find out, read how the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) – the largest charter school brand in the United States with one middle school in Columbus – has used the business-culture strategies from successful corporations to transform underperforming schools into models of effective reform. And who said all corporations are evil?
• Sec. of Education Arne Duncan just finished his first year in office. Read about what he achieved and his plans for the second year to find out if it will be a slam dunk (think circa 1993 broken backboard Shaq) or a big reform airball. 
• Doris the irascible lunch lady used to offer us the daily choice between the Salisbury Steak Frisbees or the extra Sloppy Joes. Now, one real-life teacher is revisiting the memories of elementary school lunches in 2010 – and blogging about it.  But Revolution Foods, Inc. is also taking on school lunches, and this New York Times article shows how the company is bent on battling child obesity with whole, local, and nutritious foods.
• New research suggests young females are learning more than math from their female teachers. Read about how a teacher’s attitude can impact female students’ perceptions of their math abilities.

» Continued

KIPP culture, Arne Duncan, school lunches, and more