The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has long advocated for high quality academic content standards nationally- and in our home state of Ohio. The Buckeye State committed itself to adopting more rigorous academic content standards in 2010: Ohio is one of 45 states and the District of Columbia that has adopted the Common Core standards in math and English language arts, and will implement them by the start of the 2014-15 school year.

With the 2014-15 Common-Core transition looming, we wondered: How are Ohio’s educators preparing themselves for this big change? Who is doing this work and what can other schools and districts learn from the early adopters? What are lessons, hopes, and fears facing those on the frontlines who have to lead Ohio’s embrace of significantly more rigorous academic standards?

To answer these questions and more, we enlisted Ellen Belcher—former editorial page editor of the Dayton Daily News—to interview educators from select school districts, county educational service center, and charter schools. Their stories are the basis of this report. Belcher’s findings are largely encouraging and educators are not shying away from embracing the rigor of the Common Core.

Will the digital-learning movement repeat the mistakes of the charter-school movement? How much more successful might today's charter universe look if yesterday's proponents had focused on the policies and practices needed to ensure its quality, freedom, and resources over the long term? What mistakes might have been avoided? Damaging scandals forestalled? Missed opportunities seized?

Can we be smarter about taking high-quality online and blended schools to scale—and to educational success? Yes, says this volume, as it addresses such thorny policy issues as quality control, staffing, funding, and governance for the digital sector. In these pages, the authors show how current arrangements need to change—often radically—if instructional technology is to realize its potential.

Table of Contents

Introduction, by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Daniela Fairchild

Chapter One: "Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction," by Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel

Chapter Two: "Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning: Three (Imperfect) Solutions," by Frederick M. Hess

Chapter Three: "The Costs of Online Learning," Tamara Butler Battaglino, Matt Haldeman, and Eleanor Laurans

Chapter Four: "School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era," by Paul T. Hill

Chapter Five: "Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning," by John E. Chubb

About the Authors

While the economy may be turning around, local school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. The "new normal" of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope? This policy brief provides a useful tool for navigating the financial challenges of the current school-funding climate, complete with clear dos and don'ts for anyone involved in or concerned with local education budgets. Author Michael J. Petrilli argues that quick fixes won't solve the problem, nor will slashing teacher salaries. Instead, creative, thoughtful, and fundamental changes are needed to address our budget crisis without hurting children. To learn more, download to the brief, and be sure to explore related Fordham publications, including "Stretching the School Dollar: A Brief for State Policymakers" and Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best, and Chris Tessone's Stretching the School Dollar blog.

3 ways districts can stretch the school dollar

• Aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce


• Pay for productivity


• Integrate technology thoughtfully

5 mistakes districts must avoid

• Shrink the workforce by laying off the newest teachers


• Narrow the curriculum


• Furlough workers


• Shortchange choice options


• Pass the buck to families

Rigorous standards and aligned assessments are vital tools for boosting education outcomes but they have little traction without strong accountability systems that attach consequences to performance. In this pilot study, Eileen Reed, Janie Scull, Gerilyn Slicker, and Amber Winkler lay out the essential features of such accountability systems, intended to add oomph to new common standards and aligned assessments. “Defining Strong State Accountability Systems” identifies six essential elements of effective systems:

• Adoption of demanding, clear, and specific standards in all core content areas, and rigorous assessment of those standards;


• Reporting of accessible and actionable data to all stakeholders, including summative outcome data and other formative data to drive continuous improvement;


• Annual determinations and designations for each school and district that meaningfully differentiate their performance;


• A system of rewards and consequences to drive improvement at the school and district levels;


• A system of rewards and consequences to drive improvement at the individual student level; and


• A system of rewards and consequences to drive improvement at the individual teacher and administrator level.
  
  

What distinguishes the report from previous work on this subject is that it insists that individuals—both students and adults—must be held accountable along with institutions. These elements were developed from in-depth analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of seven states’ accountability systems and provide a framework for Fordham’s future analyses of state accountability systems during the early years of Common Core's implementation. Download the study to learn more.

A teacher’s effectiveness has a tremendous impact on a child’s learning and academic trajectory. Yet knowing that, and being able to create teacher evaluation systems that successfully measure and document teacher effectiveness, are two very different things. In fact, for as long as anyone can remember, a public school teacher’s effectiveness and performance in Ohio classrooms-as in the rest of America- haven’t been measured much at all. These critical factors have had little impact on decisions about whether she is retained by her district or laid off, how she is compensated or assigned to a district’s school, or how her professional development is crafted. This report, authored by Superintendent Mike Miles, takes a detailed look at the Harrison (CO) School District 2's Pay-for-Performance Plan. The Harrison Plan confronted the dual challenges of defining an effective teacher then identifying all the things that demonstrate her effectiveness. This how-to guide is meant to serve as a tool and model for Ohio’s school districts.

American science performance is lagging as the economy becomes increasingly high tech, but  our current science standards are doing little to solve the problem. Reviewers evaluated science standards for every state for this report and their findings were deeply troubling: The majority of states earned Ds or Fs for their standards in this crucial subject, with only six jurisdictions receiving As. Explore all the state report cards and see how your state performed.

* The Florida profile and references to Florida's grade and score were updated on February 16, 2012.

Is it time for Ohio to take bolder steps toward turning around its most troubled schools and districts? If so, what might the alternatives look like? Options for rebooting these troubled schools have come in the form of mayoral control, state takeovers, market competition through charter schools and other choice programs, as well as millions of federal dollars spent on “school turnaround”, yet it seems that it might be time to try something new in Ohio. In looking for alternatives to simply doing more of the same, Ohio policymakers are looking to the experiences of other states. Among the boldest and most interesting of these is Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD), which is accomplishing both significant gains in student achievement and consequential impacts on district-level standards. In this recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute author Nelson Smith asks if and how the RSD concept might be a model for Ohio.  

After more than ten years under NCLB, that law’s legacy continues to be fiercely contested. This analysis of NAEP scores—focusing on Texas and on the entire nation—by former NCES commissioner Mark Schneider finds that solid gains in math achievement coincided with the advent of "consequential accountability," first in the trailblazing Lone Star State and a few other pioneer states, then across the land with the implementation of NCLB. But Schneider warns that the recent plateau in Texas math scores may foreshadow a coming stagnation in the country’s performance. Has the testing-and-accountability movement as we know it run out of steam? How else might we rekindle our nation’s education progress?

Download the analysis to find out, and be sure to watch the replay of Fordham's January 5 discussion of the paper and consequential accountability in general, "Has the Accountability Movement Run Its Course?"

The twenty years since Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law have seen a great expansion in school choice, with charters operating in all but ten states and enrolling nearly two million students nationwide. Yet while parents now enjoy more schooling options for their children, a disappointing number of charter schools fail to provide excellent educations. As an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio, we struggle daily with birthing and growing high-quality charter schools—which is why we find promising and underutilized approaches like charter incubation so appealing.

In this policy brief, Public Impact’s Joe Ableidinger and Julie Kowal examine the merits of the incubation model, outline specific strategies for supporting it, and profile organizations around the U.S. putting it into practice. The authors explain that through the strategic recruitment, selection, and training of talented leaders—and support of them as they launch or expand new charter schools—incubators offer charter school advocates an important tool in guaranteeing quality school choice.

School reforms abound today, yet even the boldest and most imaginative among them have produced—at best—marginal gains in student achievement. What America needs in the twenty-first century is a far more profound version of education reform. Instead of shoveling yet more policies, programs, and practices into our current system, we must deepen our understanding of the obstacles to reform that are posed by existing structures, governance arrangements, and power relationships. Yet few education reformers—or public officials—have been willing to delve into this touchy territory.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress have teamed up to tackle these tough issues and ask how our mostly nineteenth-century system of K-12 governance might be modernized and made more receptive to the innumerable changes that have occurred—and need to occur—in the education realm. We have commissioned fifteen first-rate analysts to probe the structural impediments to school reform and to offer provocative alternatives.