Can the school-choice genie be put back into the bottle?

Emmy L. Partin / May 26, 2010

Is school choice a genie you can put back into the bottle? The Dayton Public School District wants to try.

In addition to a large charter sector and strong private schools that can enroll children using the state’s EdChoice voucher (see below for the breakdown of publicly funded student enrollment in the city), Dayton has embraced intra-district choice by allowing families to send students to any school of their choosing within the district. 

Source: Ohio interactive Local Report Card; School Choice Ohio

Last week, the school board voted unanimously to support a proposal to require K-8 students to attend their neighborhood school, with the exception of a handful of magnet programs. The plan is intended to save transportation costs, and it surely would (the district spends about $13 million a year on transportation and is facing a $6.3 million budget deficit next year). But with these cost savings might come negative consequences. 

For example, currently a child in Dayton who moves during the school year can continue attending the same school, providing much-needed education continuity. Will the “neighborhood schools” policy require children to bounce from school to school as they migrate from home to home? And what of the impact on the racial and socio-economic composition of Dayton’s schools? Individual schools are sure to become less diverse as assignments are made based on proximity and not choice. The city has long-struggled with racial

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Can the school-choice genie be put back into the bottle?

Ohio ranks high in number of teachers with master's degrees

Jamie Davies O'Leary / May 26, 2010

Ohio’s growing teacher corps has driven up the cost of education, especially as teachers’ salaries and pensions are by far the largest expenditure in K-12 education.

Also incredibly costly is the fact that 62 percent of Ohio teachers have at least a master’s degree, which is 18 percentage points higher than the US average and higher than all of the Buckeye State’s neighbors. (Kentucky has a high percentage of teachers with “specialist” degrees, which accounts for the tall red bar in the chart below.)

With the exception of math and science, there is no correlation between a teacher having a master’s degree and improved student achievement, so the master’s degree bump in salary is an expensive item for districts with little return on investment for their cash-strapped budgets.

Source:  IES National Center for Education Statistics, data from 2007-08

In Ohio’s “Big 8” cities, the number of teachers with at least a master’s degree continues to grow. In Cincinnati, that number has grown by almost 13 percent in just five years; in Dayton, by a whopping 20 percent; all other cities except Akron (which remains the same at 68 percent) have also seen a rise in the number of master’s credentialed teachers.

In Dayton, the spike in the percentage of teachers with master’s degrees didn’t result from more teachers earning their degrees or credentialed teachers joining the district. Rather, the increase came from district layoffs in

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Ohio ranks high in number of teachers with master's degrees

Recent charter school stories clear signal for better accountability

Jamie Davies O'Leary / May 26, 2010

A recent flurry of news about Ohio charter schools makes a strong case for clearer lines of charter school accountability in the Buckeye State.

On May 17, the governing authorities of ten schools operated by White Hat Management sued the company and the Ohio Department of Education and asked the Franklin County Common Pleas Court to declare a provision of state charter school law unconstitutional. At issue is a 2006 change in law that made it possible for a school operator to override a school’s governing board’s decision to switch operators by appealing directly to the sponsor (aka authorizer). If the sponsor agrees with the operator, then the operator can fire the governing authority, appoint a new one, and retain control over the school. But even if the sponsor rules that the operator should be fired, in some cases the operator will retain the school’s assets, facilities, and even its employees, leaving the board empty-handed.

The Fordham Institute – and our sister organization, the Fordham Foundation, a charter-school sponsor – applauded many of the changes included in HB 79 in 2006 but has opposed this provision since it became law. As Fordham’s Terry Ryan explained to the Akron Beacon Journal, ''[This law] creates a situation where you're going to have lawsuits and you're going to have muddied accountability because it's not at all clear who's on the hook for performance. We would not sponsor a school that worked

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Recent charter school stories clear signal for better accountability

The State of Charter School Authorizing 2009: 2nd Annual Report on NACSA's Authorizer Survey

Kathryn Mullen Upton / May 26, 2010

Sean Conlan, Alex Medler, and Suzanne Weiss
National Association of Charter School Authorizers
May 2010 

NACSA’s second nationwide survey of authorizers (aka “sponsors” in Ohio) contains several policy insights (as reviewed by my colleague, Janie Scull), as well as interesting findings regarding “practitioner basics” for those of us that authorize schools (the Fordham Foundation sponsors six charter schools). The survey examines how authorizers approach key practices that are critical in the life of a charter school: application process, performance contracting, oversight and evaluation, and charter renewal.

NACSA identified 872 total authorizers across the nation, and found that 86 percent of those authorize five or fewer charter schools; 6 percent authorize six to nine schools; and 8 percent authorize ten or more schools. Authorizers in this last category oversee well over half (64 percent) of all the charter schools in the nation. One of the most interesting findings for those of us here in Ohio relates to services provided by authorizers. Specifically, among small authorizers (ten or fewer schools), 66 percent provide financial services; 89 percent provide training on improving instruction; 72 percent provide special education services; 74 percent provide data analysis; and 85 percent provide training on special education requirements.

Interesting stuff, considering we recently found that of Ohio’s approximately 67 active authorizers, two authorize one-third of all Ohio charter schools, and 52 authorize two or fewer schools. Ohio’s authorizers vary in their roles and the degrees to which they provide services

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The State of Charter School Authorizing 2009: 2nd Annual Report on NACSA's Authorizer Survey

Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters

Terry M. Moe / May 26, 2010

Annie E. Casey Foundation
May 2010 

Despite the title, this 2010 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation spends just six pages of the report making the case for why the end of third grade is an important threshold for child literacy. The report then outlines a broad range of factors that undermine youth literacy (such as birth weight, health issues, hunger, and poverty) and argues for a comprehensive and intensive federal effort to address all of these issues.

Given the Foundation’s admirable commitment to improving the overall welfare of disadvantaged children, its call for a coordinated strategy to improve children’s wellbeing on multiple fronts should come as no surprise. A whole range of problems plague children’s development and this report serves as a reminder of the cross-cutting nature of policy spheres (health, economics, poverty and hunger reduction, education, etc.).

However, the report doesn’t go far enough in focusing on the role that K-12 education can play in improving child welfare. As is the case in the rest of the country, student performance in Ohio isn’t where it needs to be, especially for poor youngsters. In 2009, 64 percent of Ohio public school students failed to meet NAEP’s standards for reading proficiency, and still managed to tie for 11th among all states on this test. While 58 percent of white students scored below proficient on NAEP’s fourth-grade reading tests, a “catastrophic” 87 percent of black students scored below proficient, as did 70

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Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters

The Cartel: edu-documentary with an important message for Ohio

May 26, 2010

Columbus was the latest city to host the award-winning documentary The Cartel, a film exposing the corruption within New Jersey’s K-12 education establishment. Bob Bowdon, former New Jersey reporter who witnessed one too many scandals in education in the Garden State, is the film’s producer and he spent last Friday evening at the Columbus Gateway Film Center answering audience questions.

Bowdon wants to know how “our public school system wastes and steals billions of dollars every year.” So do parents and kids in the movie. A good question, we think, to ask a state which spends more per pupil on education than any other in the nation. This isn’t hyperbole. The Cartel gets its name for a reason – in New Jersey (where I was a public school teacher before moving back to my home state of Ohio), there’s been an embarrassing amount of cheating on standardized tests, fraud, embezzlement by teachers and district officials. Bowdon pulls out egregious examples of central office administrators and superintendents who earn exorbitant salaries, and illustrates that spending per classroom in some districts is as high as $300,000 - $400,000 – yet the average teacher salary is just $55,000. Where is the rest of that money going?

The film also serves as a primer for school choice; Bowdon explains why funding should follow students to their school of choice and how this benefits all students and families. The film points

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The Cartel: edu-documentary with an important message for Ohio

States factor in teachers' performance

May 26, 2010

Last Saturday, the Columbus Dispatch ran an op-ed by Fordham Institute policy and research analyst Jamie Davies O’Leary about the growing trend of states incorporating teacher performance into evaluations. The op-ed, “States factor in teachers’ performance” was based on an article from our May 12 Gadfly.

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States factor in teachers' performance

Get a jumpstart on college

May 26, 2010

Ohio offers multiple options for high-school students to earn free college credit, but these pathways remain a mystery to most families and high schoolers. KidsOhio, School Choice Ohio, and the Columbus Urban League have teamed up to produce a simple, informative brochure to help students and their families understand their options for “jumpstarting” their college careers. Find it here.

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Get a jumpstart on college

Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists -- a must-read report

May 26, 2010

From Ball State University comes the latest report, Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists, which measures the extent to which states demonstrate funding fairness toward charter schools. As the title implies, most don’t: charters remain severely underfunded compared to their district counterparts despite the fact that they enroll increasing numbers of students. Funding disparities have not subsided since the 2005 (Fordham-published) report, Charter School Funding, Inequity’s Next Frontier identified a spending gap of $1,800 per pupil. Inequity Persists looks at 25 states and finds that Ohio charter students receive $2,231 less than district students, a gap that places Ohio as the 12^th most inequitable among the studied states.  It’s an important read for charter advocates and opponents alike, and should beg the question: how are we getting away with severely underfunding charters when most are serving minority and/or low-income students? Civil rights, anyone?

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Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists -- a must-read report