Unraveling constant school spending growth in the Buckeye State

Terry Ryan / October 27, 2010

In today's Ohio Education Gadfly former Ohio lawmaker Jeff Jacobson and I share findings from our review of Ohio's school funding system. One of the most interesting, and indeed troubling, things we came to understand is that school funding in Ohio is in trouble because school spending is outstripping revenue growth at an accelerating rate. The gap is growing and the challenge will have to be addressed during the 2011-12 biennial budget process that kicks off in early spring next year.

To illustrate the problem, compare annual per-pupil revenue for K-12 education in Ohio over the past decade to the rate at which state revenue has changed over the same time. The black bars in chart 1, below, show real per-pupil K-12 revenue since 2000. The gray bars show what each year's K-12 revenue would have been had school spending increased (or decreased) according to the growth of the state's resources. The two aren't far apart in the early 2000s, when Ohio's economy was humming along and property values hadn't plummeted. But by 2010, the gap between the two tops $2,700 and is widening. Similar gaps plague many Ohio school districts as most have seen stagnant or declining property values in recent years.

But bringing school spending in line with the realities of state revenue isn't as easy as it sounds. We identify several well- entrenched obstacles hampering efforts at getting spending under control ??? specifically, personnel costs, which in

» Continued

Unraveling constant school spending growth in the Buckeye State

"Reform dollars" for education are dwarfed by status quo spending

Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 27, 2010

The gravity of Ohio’s $6-8 billion dollar budget hole and its unavoidable impact on K-12 education is about to hit home. Ohio’s budget cliff has prompted much worry but also optimism as it forces the state to grapple with tough spending tradeoffs. With serious budget decisions looming over us, it’s a good time to recognize that money has real limits if not coupled with tangible policy changes and driven by bold leadership.

There have been remarkable investments in (and hype over) public education reform over the past year– landmark federal grant programs, statewide legislative changes, some gutsy edu-films, and the usual celebrity bandwagon-jumping. We have a president and secretary of education who are liberal Democrats yet support the expansion of great charter schools, teacher evaluations based in part on student growth data, and other initiatives that Democrats typically feel tenuous about, and have tied real dollars to these ideas. Initiatives like Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (and i3, Teacher Incentive Fund, Promise Neighborhoods, etc. if you consider dollars to non-profit entities as well) are channeling federal dollars in a competitive fashion.

But, while these programs’ intentions are laudable, an analysis of how these “reform” dollars stack up against spending-as-usual is sobering.

Last spring, Andy Smarick examined the breakdown of federal stimulus dollars and pointed out in Education Next that the majority of these education allocations supported the status quo

» Continued

"Reform dollars" for education are dwarfed by status quo spending

High-flying schools starting to feel the pressure of NCLB, to what avail?

Emmy L. Partin / October 27, 2010

With No Child Left Behind’s 2014 deadline for all students to reach proficiency looming on the horizon, and federal action to revamp the act seems unlikely anytime soon, state accountability systems, including Ohio’s, are ratcheting up expectations for public schools. NCLB requires states to raise the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress, the percent of students who must be proficient in math and reading at each grade level) bar annually until 2014, when 100 percent of students are expected to be proficient in math and reading according to the state’s tests. As a result, it is increasingly more difficult for schools to attain AYP, and more and more otherwise high-performing schools are missing AYP goals and facing state sanctions.

After missing AYP for two consecutive years, a school is placed in “School Improvement Status.” Some chronically low-performing Ohio schools have languished in this needs-improvement zone for a decade now. But the face of schools requiring such rehab is changing.

Of the state’s public schools in School Improvement Status Year One (meaning those that have missed AYP for two consecutive school years), 66 percent are rated Effective, Excellent, or Excellent w/ Distinction by the state – the state’s highest rating categories. Twelve percent had a Performance Index Score of 100 or better, which is the state’s overarching achievement goal for all schools. Further, ten of these schools met both the Performance Index goal and met or exceeded the state’s value-added expectations, meaning their students

» Continued

High-flying schools starting to feel the pressure of NCLB, to what avail?

Ohio schools in need of foreign language 101

Nick Joch / October 27, 2010

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently published an article about the poor performance of students at Ohio’s foreign language immersion schools. While poor test performance is unfortunately common in urban districts, as Fordham’s 2009-10 report card analysis shows, the article also touched on an important issue that gets a lot less attention: the status of foreign language instruction in Ohio.

From a national perspective, Ohio seems to be doing okay. Thirty-five percent of our students in grades 7-12 were enrolled in a foreign language class in 2000, compared to 34 percent nationally. More recent figures show that on average, Ohio’s districts required 1.6 years of foreign language courses for high school graduation in the 2007-08 school year. The national average was 1.4 years.

But these comparisons are incomplete. A better way to measure foreign language preparation in Ohio’s schools might be to look abroad, since our graduates are increasingly competing with young people around the globe.

In many other countries, nearly all students begin learning at least one, sometimes two, foreign languages in elementary school. Foreign language is often a required subject every year through high school graduation. In Ohio, only 20 percent of students in grades 6-8 and a mere three percent of our K-5 students were enrolled in foreign language classes in 2007, according to a recent state report. Most of Ohio’s students have little or no exposure to a language other than English until high school, by

» Continued

Ohio schools in need of foreign language 101

Sounding the alarm: a wakeup call with directions

Nick Joch / October 27, 2010

Part of the “Refocus Wisconsin” project commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, this issue paper is a smack in the face to the standard education regime far beyond the Badger State. After depicting the discouraging state of Wisconsin education, AEI’s Rick Hess and Olivia Meeks point to seven areas in need of improvement: teacher quality, curriculum, accountability implementation, excellence recognition, discipline and safety, charter school expansion, and interventions in low-performing schools. They then offer three feather-ruffling suggestions meant to address the structural barriers that impede dramatic leaps in K-12 productivity.  First, the “Gold Star Teachers” initiative would allow high-performing teachers to voluntarily take on additional students in exchange for greater compensation. This would give more students access to great teaching while reducing personnel costs. The second recommendation would create a bonded system of performance guarantees for charter operators. (Operators that failed to meet agreed-upon performance goals would owe considerable money back to districts.)  This would reduce district risk and encourage collaboration with outside operators. Finally, the authors propose “education spending accounts” that would allocate a chunk of per-pupil funds directly to parents to spend at their discretion—on tutoring, language classes, or other electives. The rationale: By introducing choice into the system, such accounts would stimulate healthy price competition and reduce the burden on districts to meet children’s varying educational needs. Though each comes with its own implementation challenges, all three suggestions are concrete enough to be feasible and amount

» Continued

Sounding the alarm: a wakeup call with directions

Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

October 27, 2010

Bruce Baker, David Sciarra, Danielle Farrie
September 2010

This recent report from Rutgers University and the Education Law Center in New Jersey takes a look at states’ school funding systems and evaluates how adequately they serve the needs of all children, regardless of income or zip code, arguing that “sufficient” and “fairly distributed” funding is a prerequisite for high-quality education. The report looks at previous studies that attempted to analyze state school funding systems, and outlines areas where such methodologies fall short. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) rating of school funding systems failed to consider the differences in education costs across states, and studies by both Education Week and Education Trust left out regional differences in revenue that exists in small rural areas versus large urban districts. This report’s methodology builds on these shortcomings, and defines fair funding as:

A state finance system that ensures equal educational opportunity by providing a sufficient level of funding distributed within the state to account for additional needs generated by student poverty.

The authors measure the funding “fairness” of each state according to four measurements:

• Funding level: The overall level of state and local funding provided to school districts.
• Funding Distribution: The distribution of funding across local districts. This measure also tells whether states are providing more or less funding to high-poverty districts.
• Effort: A state’s spending on education compared to its state per-capita GDP.
• Coverage: The proportion of school-age children attending public schools

  » Continued

  ---

  Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

Columbus City Schools should be ashamed

Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 27, 2010

As an authorizer of two charter schools in Columbus, we've heard our fair share of stories about the district not being very cooperative with them (in the way of busing, facilities, etc.). Today's Columbus Dispatch ran an op-ed by the vice president of the Columbus Board of Education about the latest egregious example of the district undermining high-performing charter schools, one that involved Fordham-authorized ? Columbus Collegiate Academy ? the highest performing middle school in Columbus and the second best urban charter middle school in the entire state. If you care about educational opportunities for poor kids (94 percent of CCA's students), this will make your blood boil.

CCA, along with two other high-performing charters, pursued a lease for one of the district's vacant buildings. The district opted to lease the building to ?Groove U? ? a ?one-of-a-kind music industry school offering certificates in music business and/or music production? that Columbus board VP Stephanie Groce admits sounds ?interesting.? The problem is that Groove U submitted no evidence of past success when it comes to student achievement. Why did the district deny the lease to the charter schools?? Groce explains:

Three other proposals were submitted for the building, each from high-performing charter schools. They didn't have a chance. The administration explained to me that they do not want to lease that building to any school that might compete for students with Columbus schools. Think about that for a minute.

» Continued

Columbus City Schools should be ashamed

Being honest about how tough ed reform is

Jamie Davies O'Leary / October 27, 2010

I know I'm the last one to the party on this one but I just got around to seeing Waiting for Superman this weekend. Fordham staff have already weighed in with lots of great insight (see here, here, here, and here) but I have one comment about the film positing ?we know what works.?

I saw the movie on Saturday coming off of a multi-day conference in Nashville with leaders and key staffers of PIE Network organizations. For those of you who don't know, the PIE Network is a coalition of statewide education advocacy organizations that have made serious dents in improving education policy in their respective states. Colorado Succeeds was instrumental in helping craft and pass that state's landmark teacher reform bill, which overhauled teacher evaluations, tenure, forced hiring and placement, and seniority-based reductions in force ? in other words, precisely the types of policy changes that Waiting for Superman calls for implicitly.? ConnCAN, Advance Illinois, Tennessee SCORE, and several others have brokered equally critical policy and legislative changes. To hear from leaders of these organizations was energizing, inspiring, and humbling, to say the least.

Which brings me to my original point: Waiting for Superman's attempt to motivate audience members ? though commendable ? felt a bit misleading because it portrayed the pursuit of ?what works? as somewhat effortless.

Mike has criticized

» Continued

Being honest about how tough ed reform is

Move over Bill Nye, the Dean of Invention has arrived

Nick Joch / October 27, 2010

• How do you attract great principals to failing schools? One North Carolina district believes it has found the answer. As Newsweek reports, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s superintendent implemented a competition among his principals, the winners of which are “rewarded” with an opportunity to turn around a failing school. If they accept, the principals are granted freedom from certain district rules, the option to choose an eight-person transition team, a 10 percent raise, and the right to forcibly transfer up to five teachers out of the school into which they are moving. Every winning principal has accepted the offer, and many once-dismal schools are now showing exceptional progress.
• Scratching your head about how to get your students interested in STEM-related subjects? The answer may be as close as your television. Dean of Invention, a new Planet Green program that debuted last Friday, explores the latest technological innovations (everything from robotic prosthetics to using human waste as an energy source) in a fun, easy-to-understand format the show’s creators hope will reach a broad age range of audiences. Check out USA Today’s article on the show here.
• New Orleans has been the site of a striking school choice revolution, but doubts are arising as to whether or not the train of reform has left some would-be passengers behind. This Newsweek article wonders if the outstanding achievement of New Orleans’s charter schools has less to do with better educational methods and more to do with

  » Continued

  ---

  Move over Bill Nye, the Dean of Invention has arrived

New Fordham report weighs options for governance of Common Core standards

October 27, 2010

Now that Ohio and most other states have adopted Common Core’s English Language Arts and math standards, big-picture questions loom: who will be in charge of governing and “owning” these standards ten years down the road? Who will be in charge of implementation? In an effort to get some answers to the overarching question, “now what?” Fordham sought input from two-dozen education leaders and emerged with three possible scenarios for governing the standards implementation process. Read more about the report, Now What, Imperatives and Options for “Common Core” Implementation and Governance, here.

» Continued

New Fordham report weighs options for governance of Common Core standards