"Educational malpractice" taking place in Ohio's longest-suffering schools

Terry Ryan , Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 13, 2010

Last week the Columbus Dispatch featured a story about the worst-performing middle school in Ohio, Champion Middle School located on Columbus’s near east side. Its achievement results on 2009-10 state tests are appalling: 11 percent of seventh graders passed the state math test; less than one in three seventh graders reached proficiency in reading; just 10 percent of eight graders were proficient in science. The school’s disciplinary statistics – there were 2,300 instances of “discipline” last year alone – are more reminiscent of a prison than a middle school.

And its dysfunction is chronic. Only 23 percent of sixth graders at Champion a decade ago (2000-01) were proficient in reading; last year that figure was just above 26 percent. Math scores among sixth graders have actually fallen – from 33 percent in 2000-01 to just 23 percent last year. Such low achievement spanning over a decade prompts us to wonder: At what point does this kind of unremitting failure represent educational malpractice?

The school attempted a turnaround five years ago – it brought in a new principal, mostly new staff, and built a brand-new facility. The overhaul failed, not unlike the experience of nearly all Ohio school turnaround attempts. Terry chronicled this in a piece for the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s Hope, Fears, & Reality: A balanced look at American charter schools in 2009:

Many of the efforts to restructure troubled [Ohio] schools under NCLB have been half-hearted

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"Educational malpractice" taking place in Ohio's longest-suffering schools

Bold district reforms are a call for all, even Ohioans!

Terry Ryan / October 13, 2010

In a bold???and dare I say inspiring???op-ed to appear in Sunday's Washington Post, 16 school district leaders share a manifesto on ???how to fix our schools.??? The 16 leaders are responsible for educating nearly 2.5 million children and represent a cross-section of America's schools???big name superintendents like Klein, Rhee and Vallas are joined by colleagues like Jean-Claude Brizard from Rochester, Eugene White from Indianapolis and LaVonne Sheffield from Rockford, Illinois.

Unfortunately, no Ohio district leaders signed on, but one would hope the ideas shared in the Post op-ed resonate with reform-minded leaders in cities like Cincinnati and Cleveland, and can even flower in places like Dayton, Youngstown and Canton.

These district reformers acknowledge that too many kids are stuck in failing schools and hit home the point that teacher effectiveness is the most critical factor in improving education. They outline several ideas to address low performance:

• Unshackle district leaders and do away with ???archaic rules involving seniority and academic credentials???;
• Do away with the ???glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher???;
• Fairly measure and reward teacher performance;
• Reward teachers who work in the toughest schools or teach more in-demand subjects like math and science;
• Integrate technology into the classroom so that it can transform instruction; and
• Make

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  Bold district reforms are a call for all, even Ohioans!

Voucher student performance: In search of the best analysis

October 13, 2010

For five years, the EdChoice Scholarship Program has enabled students to escape low-performing schools (those rated D or F for two out of the last three years) in Ohio for, presumably, greener pastures in private schools.  Fourteen-thousand students, the maximum allowed by state law, in low-performing schools are using this publically funded voucher to attend private schools of their choice. 

Until recently, performance data on EdChoice students have not been available. But this year, thanks to new requirements in state law, the Ohio Department of Education released data comparing how voucher students perform on state achievement tests with their district counterparts.  The Columbus Dispatch featured this newly available data and concluded, “On the whole, Ohio students who used tax-funded vouchers to attend private schools last school year did no better on state tests than public-school students.”

The reporter reached this conclusion by comparing voucher student performance to the performance of students in their home districts. While this comparison is a reasonable starting point to understanding how well voucher students are doing, the comparison is far from fair. It is problematic to compare voucher students to the average scores of the entire home districts (which include schools of various quality levels, most of which are not low-performing enough to qualify for vouchers).  Voucher-eligible students come from the worst-performing schools and comparing them to an entire district, including high-performing schools, is misleading.  Using this comparison method voucher students will almost certainly always fall

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Voucher student performance: In search of the best analysis

Opportunities abound with online learning

Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 13, 2010

This week Fordham's newest board member Caprice Young is spending some time in Ohio and her visit could not be timed more perfectly. Caprice is President and CEO of City Prep Academies, a blended learning service provider, former CEO of KC Distance Learning (a leading provider of virtual courses), and also former President and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association as well as President of the Los Angeles Unified School Board.

In other words, when it comes to figuring out how to foster new K-12 learning models on Ohio soil, there's literally not a better person out there to learn from than Caprice.

Yesterday's news headlines read almost as though Ohio reporters knew she was on her way. Dayton Daily News ran a piece about the exorbitant costs of college dropouts in Ohio ($300 million) and while the article didn't theorize much on the causes of these dropouts, the fact that many students leave high school unprepared and in need of serious remediation seems like one reasonable hypothesis (30 percent of students drop out of four-year programs after one year).

Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch article, ?Enrollment rises at online charter schools,? pointed out that despite a moratorium on new charter e-schools (installed five years ago) enrollment in online programs has risen by 46 percent, with 29,000 students now served by such programs.

There you have it: at least two reasons Ohio must rethink

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Opportunities abound with online learning

High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do

Emmy L. Partin , Amanda Olberg / October 13, 2010

Citizenship, patriotism and political engagement are cornerstones of our republic. Yet not much has been known about the proclivities and practices of those with substantial responsibility for cultivating these values and habits—namely, the nation’s social studies teachers. This new AEI study sought to correct that by asking over 1,000 high school social studies teachers (from public, private and Catholic schools) what they are trying to teach their students. Some findings are reassuring. For example, over 80 percent of high school social studies teachers think their students should “respect and appreciate their country but know its shortcomings.” (That’s basically what the general public wants schools to teach.) But other findings raise red flags. Only 36 percent of teachers say it is “absolutely essential” to teach students key facts (like state capitals) and dates (like December 7, 1941). More alarming: only 24 percent reported being “very confident” that their students emerged knowing the protections provided by the Bill of Rights.

Gary J. Schmitt, Frederick M. Hess, Steve Farkas, Ann M. Duffett, Cheryl Miller, and Jenna Schuette, “High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do,” (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, September 2010).

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High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do

Next Generation Charter Schools: Meeting the Needs of Latinos and English Language Learners

October 13, 2010

Melissa Lazarín and Feliza Ortiz-Licon
Center for American Progress
September 2010

Charter schools that make it their mission to reach the most underserved students must not forget the needs of Latino students and English Language Learners (ELLs). This is topic of the Center for American Progress’s latest report.

Next Generation Charter Schools first outlines the need to serve this student sub-group. Latino students represent one in every five public school students nationally, which equates to around ten million Latino students (with this number projected to grow by 160 percent by the year 2050).  Furthermore, 28 percent of Latino students currently attend chronically underperforming schools, compared to just nine percent of white students. 

Next, it outlines state policies that affect Latinos and ELLs. For example, while most states have lottery procedures for oversubscribed charters, just a few have proactive recruitment and enrollment policies to attract more Latino students. It also points out unfairness in some charters’ access to Title III funding (federal dollars for ELLs and immigrant students) if the number of such students is too low to meet the funding threshold.

The remainder of the report highlights four high-performing charter schools serving large percentages of Latinos/ELLs and exceeding achievement goals among this traditionally hard-to-serve subgroup: El Sol Science and Arts Academy (Santa Ana, California), YES Prep Gulfton (Houston, Texas), the Raul Yzaguirre School for Success (Houston), and International Charter School (Pawtucket, Rhode Island). Drawing on their success, the report identifies several best practices, such

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Next Generation Charter Schools: Meeting the Needs of Latinos and English Language Learners

The Rural Solution

Nick Joch / October 13, 2010

Doris Terry Williams
The Center for American Progress
September 2010

With all the attention given to urban schools in discussions about education reform, it’s nice to see rural schools get their own headline. In Center for American Progress’s new study, The Rural Solution, researcher Doris Terry Williams describes the rural school landscape:  such districts often spend significantly less per pupil than other districts, many are poor, and students may lack access to social services because of great distances.

After examining existing literature and data on rural schools, Williams visited some of the school districts serving America’s 10 million rural students and conducted interviews there to find out firsthand what was working and what wasn’t. She focused particularly on three schools, one each in Vermont, Maine, and Kentucky, that have adopted a community school model, making everything from Algebra classes to dentist appointments available in one central location.

Although she acknowledges that one size does not fit all, Williams uses her observations of the three schools to identify common challenges policy makers should consider when trying to improve rural schools.  The most interesting of these include:  

• The pool of potential teachers in rural districts is often quite small, which makes it difficult to recruit excellent teachers and replace ineffective ones. 
• The federal model for school turnaround is often not applicable in rural areas, where financial resources and opportunities for relocation are often scarce.
• The Full Service Community Schools Program is currently underfunded, and

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  The Rural Solution

Bumping HR: Giving Principals More Say Over Staffing

Theda Sampson / October 13, 2010

National Council on Teacher Quality                                                                                      
September 2010

This insightful policy brief examines the amount of control the average principal wields over hiring and HR decisions in the very schools for which they are ultimately accountable. It looks at state laws, regulations, and district policies in 101 large school districts (containing 20 percent of public school students in the US) and names several factors standing in the way of principal autonomy over teacher hiring decisions:

• Centralized hiring and assignment. Districts make most hiring decisions and determine where teachers will be deployed. (This begs the obvious question of how principals can be held fully responsible for student achievement when they don’t select their own teachers.)
• Teacher evaluations. The inability of teacher evaluations to distinguish effectiveness (in part, with student growth data) makes them feckless as part of the hiring/firing process.
• Teacher seniority and teacher placement. Principals do not have significant decision making ability when it comes to who is transferred into their building. As decisions are often based on seniority, principals may have to take a teacher with more years of experience over another who might be a better fit. In fact, only six districts in the study allow performance to be a deciding hiring factor.
• State dismissal laws. Limiting the reasons for dismissal to incompetence, immorality, or neglect of duty does not allow principals to fire ineffective teachers and ultimately make the best decisions for their schools.

NCTQ offers three basic solutions:  allow a

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Bumping HR: Giving Principals More Say Over Staffing

Teachers: "New contract higher priority than Race to the Top"

Emmy L. Partin / October 13, 2010

The teachers union in a suburban Columbus district has pulled out of Race to the Top, putting the district at risk of forfeiting almost a million dollars ($960,000) in RTTT grant funding and many of the reforms that would come with it. Despite the fact that the union signed a Memorandum of Understanding last spring when Ohio applied for Race to the Top, it still must approve the district’s individual RTTT plan by October 22 in order for the district to stay in the grant mix and for funding to flow…

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Teachers: "New contract higher priority than Race to the Top"

Don't exploit tragedy to make your policy point

Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 13, 2010

When I first heard the news about a Los Angeles elementary teacher killing himself, I cringed. First and foremost I was saddened. Suicide is a serious topic that I hesitate to even bring up for fear of speaking out of context and because blog readers have no way of knowing how deeply I care about mental health issues broadly.

I understand the anger expressed by Rigoberto Ruelas' families, friends, and colleagues at the LA Times for publishing results showing that he was ineffective, as this was a source of stress in his life when he made the decision to end it. I even understand their blaming the Times. They are traumatized and looking for answers. Frankly, any form of lashing out, blaming, expressing anger, etc. is completely appropriate and normal. For them, that is.

I think it's utterly inappropriate for Ed Week blogger Walt Gardner (or any other reporters, for that matter) to draw a direct line from the Times' analysis to this suicide, calling the ?humiliation? that Ruelas faced (?reminiscent of the use of pillories in colonial America?) a cause of his suicide. He writes:

The exact motive for Ruelas's suicide is not clear. There may have been factors involved other than the publication of his effectiveness. But what is undeniable is that the Times's decision was a contributing factor.

He names other possible factors but doesn't bother investigating them. I won't argue that the Times' decision to name

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Don't exploit tragedy to make your policy point

Re-Evaluating Evaluations and Other Miscellany

Nick Joch / October 13, 2010

• Students who complain their teacher doesn’t know what he’s talking about may have a point, according to a new study by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Science teachers across the country are teaching subjects in which their knowledge is limited at best, the study claims, and many states are doing little to stop it. Also worth a look is the NCTQ’s new Teacher Quality Checklist.
• Rising college tuition got you down? School Choice Ohio (SCO) is here to help. SCO recently ran a special series of blog posts on Advanced Placement (AP), Early College High Schools, Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO), and College Tech Prep, all options that help students earn college credits, or even an associate’s degree, while still in high school. And parents will breathe a big sigh of relief: enrolling their kids in these programs won’t cost them a dime in extra fees. More information is available on SCO’s blog and in their latest Jumpstart brochure.
• School choice at all costs: Worth it? Not according to a new National Affairs article by Frederick M. Hess. Proponents of school choice, Hess says, have made fools of themselves—and the reforms they support—by insisting that choice, regardless of whether or not the choices available are actually good ones, is the cure-all our ailing schools have long been waiting for. It’s time for the choice movement to re-think, re-group, and re-focus, he says.
• “They don’t mean anything.”

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Talking charter schools and more on NPR

October 13, 2010

In case you missed it, Fordham's Ohio VP Terry Ryan appeared today on WOSU's All Sides with Ann Fisher. From charter school accountability (he says we should close poor-performing schools and asserts that test scores do matter when judging a school's performance) to school funding (he refutes the idea that more money will solve public schools' woes), Terry and Ann discuss the major policy issues facing the Buckeye State's charter school program.?? Watch the show here or stream audio here (Terry joins in around the 40-minute mark).

???Emmy Partin

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Talking charter schools and more on NPR