Quality must trump quantity when it comes to new charter schools

Terry Ryan , Kathryn Mullen Upton, Esq. / September 15, 2010

With more than 300 charter schools serving nearly 100,000 children, Ohio is known for its significant school choice market. Two of its cities (Dayton and Youngstown) are in the top ten cities nationally in terms of charter-school market share. This week the Columbus Dispatch reported that 40 new charters are opening this year, twice the average number that opened their doors at the outset of previous school years.

In other words, it's another year of rapid charter expansion in Ohio. You might think we'd be applauding. Alas, no. Ohio has had a big problem from day one with the balance between quantity and quality when it comes to charter schools. First it grew too many too fast ??? and too many of those turned out to be weak performers. Then it clumsily cracked down on quantity growth without doing much on the quality front ??? not even cracking down on authorizers so that THEY would do something about quality.??Then the state began to make exceptions to its clumsy caps. Then the legislature enacted a ???death penalty??? for persistently bad charter schools ??? schools that stayed that way at least partly because of irresponsible authorizing.

We chronicled most of this in our recent book Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the frontlines. We showed how irresponsible growth and inattention to quality have fueled much political animus directed toward Ohio's charters ??? the good and the bad alike.

Because

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Quality must trump quantity when it comes to new charter schools

Youngstown needs to think outside the box

Jamie Davies O'Leary / September 15, 2010

Among Ohioans, Youngstown is known as much for its appallingly low academic achievement as it is for being part of the blighted “Steel Valley” that’s lost so many jobs in recent decades. Kudos to the city’s civic leaders for trying hard to find ways for its revitalization, but the city’s public schools needs more than good intentions and nostalgia, especially as it’s the only district in the Buckeye State rated F by the state.

Youngstown City Schools’ achievement data makes the district the most blighted house on the street as 2009-10 performance results place it well below any of Ohio’s other Big 8 cities. A mere six percent of charter and district students in the city attend a school rated Excellent or Effective (A or B), while 12 times as many (72 percent) attend a school rated D or F. Youngstown’s woeful academic performance led the state to take it over via its “Academic Distress Commission,” a group charged with creating a $3.2 million recovery plan to guide the district’s overhaul.

The district is in the midst of a new superintendent search. The Youngstown Vindicator reported last month that it was “encouraging” to see so many candidates with doctoral degrees in education applying for the position. This credential, of course, doesn’t necessarily equate with the leadership skills necessary to pull the state’s most dysfunctional schools out of its academic funk. Further, the paper reported that it was

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Youngstown needs to think outside the box

Fordham is lots of things, but hypocrite is not one of them

Jamie Davies O'Leary / September 15, 2010

Dayton Daily News ran two articles yesterday illustrating a frustrating dichotomy when it comes to charter school quality in Ohio, one lifting up the happy fact that eight of the top ten public schools in Dayton are charters and the other exploring Ohio's ?death penalty? for poorly performing charters (a law that shuttered five this year and threatens another 19 next year).

The articles also illustrate Fordham's unique role in the Buckeye State ? juxtaposing the fact that we are simultaneously advocates of choice (and were among the first to point out gladly that Cleveland and Dayton had significant numbers of high-performing charters, via our annual analysis of Ohio's achievement results) but also strict believers in quality.

We are no ideologues when it comes to choice for choice's sake ? we want good charters to thrive and the bad ones to be closed. Even if it's one of our own.

Dayton Daily highlights one such Fordham-sponsored school in Dayton that is eligible for closure next year, if it remains in Academic Emergency, noting that:

Ironically, the school's sponsor, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, pushed hard for the language in the law to shut down failing charter schools based on poor performance.?

Terry is quoted in the article ? and in usual fashion minces no words:

Now the language has come around to impact a school we authorize?? We think it's good language and we support it.

After analyzing academic performance in

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Fordham is lots of things, but hypocrite is not one of them

Bright spots in urban education: 16 high-performing schools

September 15, 2010

Each year, we analyze the academic performance of schools in Ohio’s Big 8 cities.  We examine things like the number of kids in schools rated A, B, C, D, or F by the Ohio Department of Education, the number who attend schools that meet (or fail to) value-added gains, academic performance over time, etc.

And while we lamented recently that achievement is stagnant in Ohio’s Big 8, there are at least a handful of schools in those cities that are both high-achieving and high-performing and worthy of recognition.

Table 1. High-performing urban schools

Source: Ohio’s interactive Local Report Card.
Note: These schools are listed in alphabetical order, not by ranking.

Kudos to these schools for serving their students well, and for reminding us that quality urban schools do exist and are making a difference in the lives of thousands of children and their families.

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Bright spots in urban education: 16 high-performing schools

Also running in place - Ohio's e-school performance

Emmy L. Partin / September 15, 2010

We’ve written about the stagnant academic achievement in reading and math of Ohio’s urban schools, both district and charter.  Proficiency rates in the state’s major cities haven’t improved in the past five years, despite heaps of money and effort aimed at improvements. It seems the same is true among Ohio’s e-schools (the state has 27 virtual schools that serve about 29,000 students).

Figures 1 and 2 show the proficiency rates in math and reading for Ohio’s e-schools over the last three years, compared to the statewide proficiency rate for all Ohio students. 

Figure 1: Average math proficiency among large & small e-schools, compared to state (2007-09)

Source: Ohio's interactive Local Report Card

Figure 2: Average reading proficiency among large & small e-schools, compared to state (2007-09)

Source: Ohio's interactive Local Report Card

Among large e-schools – those that serve more than 500 students and are operated, with a couple exceptions, by big-name, online learning companies – proficiency rates have moved up just a percentage point or two over the past three years. Among small e-schools – which serve as few as 26 students each and are, for the most part, operated by local school districts – proficiency rates shot up between 2008-09 to 2009-10. But it appears that the leap in performance simply makes up for a significant drop in achievement the previous year.

The e-school data raise two policy issues for the state. 

First,

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Also running in place - Ohio's e-school performance

Arcadia and Vanlue discuss school district merger

Mike Lafferty / September 15, 2010

In November, voters in two tiny Hancock County communities will go to the polls and decide if they want to investigate the possibility of merging their equally small school districts.

Voters in Arcadia and Vanlue, about 100 miles northwest of Columbus, face the decision of whether they want to gather the facts and weigh the pros and cons of a merger. The Arcadia schools serve roughly 575 students, nearly 100 of which are students who reside outside the district but are schooled in Arcadia under open enrollment, according to district officials. Vanlue school district serves about 230 students.

“This issue [of merger] has been going on for 40 years. The last vote was in the eighties and we missed talking about it by 10 votes from the Vanlue side,” said Mike Recker, Arcadia’s co-chair on the proposed study commission. Recker expects significant savings by reducing duplicated services such as transportation and administrative expenses. Arcadia, for example, employs two principals and one superintendent. But exactly how much might be saved won’t be known until the commission completes its work – assuming voters give the go-ahead for its completion. Even then, voters still must formally approve a merger in another vote.

Reducing the cost of education, especially now, with nearly every school district facing budget pressures, is giving school-district mergers fresh impetus. Administrative costs in particular are driving the conversations.

Districts are trying to balance budgets by cutting non-instructional costs and asking taxpayers for more money

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Arcadia and Vanlue discuss school district merger

Performance -Based Compensation: Design and Implementation at Six Teacher Incentive Fund Sites

September 15, 2010

Jonathan Eckert
August 2010

In 2006 the federal government enacted the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), a program intended to support efforts to create performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools. Thirty-three TIF grants are currently being used in a variety of different ways across the country, including the Teacher Advancement Program in Cincinnati and Columbus Schools, though the Ohio sites are not evaluated in this report.  Instead, this report analyzes performance-pay programs in North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas.  Through the use of interviews, focus groups, data analysis, and site visits, researchers were able to put in to words the importance of performance based pay and the key elements behind it. While the designs of these programs all differ, common themes exist.  This report spells out six themes that are necessary for any successful pay-for-performance program.  The most interesting are:

• To be most effective, a pay-for-performance program must be a collaborative approach between teachers and principals.  Professional development and vigorous evaluations are essential to this goal. 
• The selection of strong leaders is fundamental.  Choosing strong principals that can work closely with teachers to help them improve is absolutely necessary if a pay for performance program is going to work. 
• Financial incentives must be directly tied to the core of an organization’s purpose.  In the case of education, financial bonuses must be tied to teacher improvement and student growth.

The above themes as well as some others in

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Performance -Based Compensation: Design and Implementation at Six Teacher Incentive Fund Sites

Rabble Rousers Revisited: A guide for launching state-based education reform advocacy organizations

September 15, 2010

Pie Network
September 2010 

This report from the Policy Innovators in Education Network (PIE) is a field guide for anyone wishing to develop an effective state advocacy organization to move education reform forward on his/her home terrain. The second of its kind (the original Rabble Rousers came out in 2006), it includes case studies that highlight advocates in various states (Kentucky’s Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, Washington’s Partnership for Learning, Advance Illinois, and the Texas Institute for Education Reforms, to name a few.) The report lays out the “nuts and bolts” of creating an effective advocacy organization (hint: it says that talent, not funding, is the most important ingredient at the outset) and even provides a “top ten” list of recommendations for advocates seeking to do something similar to what PIE Network organizations are currently doing on the ground in their states. 

Check it out here.

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Rabble Rousers Revisited: A guide for launching state-based education reform advocacy organizations

If you're still debating on whether "I love mom" tattoo is a good idea...

September 15, 2010

• Apparently if you’re a college professor with a tattoo there’s a good chance that you’ll be loved by your students.  According to a recent psychological study – as featured on the NYTimes’ Freakonomics blog, students believe that professors with tattoos are better educators and motivators and are preferred over their non-inked peers. 
• Several schools districts around the country are strapped for cash and trying to think of any way possible to save money.  A school district in Massachusetts is contemplating charging for bus service for students who live within a two-mile radius of the school.   If this ideas flies, parents could have to pay up to $500 to get their children to school. 
• Recent SAT scores for the class of 2010 remain unchanged from last year.  Students averaged 1,509 out of the possible 2,400 points, the same score as last year’ test takers.  Nearly 1.6 million students took the test, a record number. In Ohio, black students scored 96 points lower in reading and 114 points in math compared with their white counterparts, a disheartening fact. 
• A recent article by Education Week points out that schools are missing out on important attendance tracking information that could make a difference in a child’s education.  Did you know that one in ten kindergartners misses at least a month of school every year?  Check out more interesting facts about student attendance here. 
• Last week the U.S. Department of Education

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  If you're still debating on whether "I love mom" tattoo is a good idea...

New book and upcoming Ohio event on Stretching the School Dollar

September 15, 2010

Last week, Harvard Education Press released Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best. The book is the culmination of a joint Fordham-AEI project, a volume co-edited by Rick Hess and Eric Osberg. Its main attractions are the ten chapters penned by a varied set of authors, each of whom brings a unique perspective to the question of how schools can be successful in tough economic times.

James Guthrie and Arthur Peng set the stage, arguing quite simply that “A 100-year era of perpetual per-pupil fiscal growth will soon slow or stop. The causes of this situation are far more fundamental than the current recession. Schools should start buckling their seat belts now.” Rick has made a similar argument, that over the coming years schools will face increasing fiscal pressures—pressures that are unlikely to diminish the expectations the public, parents, and politicians have for academic results.

So what can be done? Several authors focus on the ways schools and districts can operate more efficiently today. Michael Casserly of the Great City Schools shows how large school districts have shared information to fine tune their operations and save millions, and Marguerite Roza explains how careful analysis can uncover enormous waste. Stacey Childress highlights three districts that have taken a strategic approach to their budgets, aligning spending with their core priorities, and a team from the Boston Consulting

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New book and upcoming Ohio event on Stretching the School Dollar