Yesterday at a meeting of Ohio's School Funding Advisory Council ??? the group tasked with drafting state education spending recommendations by the end of the year -- council members got to hear from the man behind the ???magic??? of the evidence-based school funding model (EBM) that Ohio recently adopted. (Note: Wyoming, Arkansas, and North Dakota also have implemented EBM, and the model is ???pending??? in Washington and Wisconsin.) But the magic of EBM (as Ohio Rep. Steve Dyer once referred to it) is not very convincing. When the inventor of EBM himself can't answer queries about how much it will cost to fully implement, whether it will work, and why it hasn't worked elsewhere, there's reason to worry.
Lawrence Picus, a researcher from University of Southern California and co-creator (along with Allen Odden) of the EBM, presented ???10 steps??? that can ???double student performance,??? and outlined areas where the original version of EBM differs from what Ohio is implementing. The 10 steps Picus named are favorites of educators but their effectiveness is based on limited or even questionable evidence. Even worse, in Ohio these ???steps??? will be translated into costly mandates and implemented across all schools and all districts. [quote]
The steps are:
- Analyze state tests to understand performance challenges
- Set higher goals
- Adopt a new curriculum
- Commit to data-based decision making
- Invest in professional development
- Focus class time more efficiently
- Provide interventions to struggling learners
- Create professional learning communities
- Empower leaders to support instructional improvement
- Take advantage of external expertise
No one's arguing that setting high goals or being data-driven isn't smart (both are part of Race to the Top and are part of many schools' success). But anyone professing to know how to double student achievement through 10 simple steps deserves to be grilled. Members of Ohio's funding council asked Picus why NAEP tests scores have been stagnant in Wyoming and Arkansas if these are the states that have had EBM the longest. Picus said ???this is the best research we have??? and ???look, I don't claim to know that if you do this, in four years your problems will be solved.??? This, as the PowerPoint slide sports a bullet that reads: ???Bottom line??? double performance in 4-7 years.???
For Ohio, this debate matters greatly because the EBM requires costly mandates. As we shared in the Ohio Education Gadfly, the salary costs alone of hiring new teachers as a result of EBM's reduced K-3 class size mandates will be nearly $800 million every year! Tack on several more random, costly mandates prescribing student-teacher ratios for Limited English proficient students (1:100); ???family and community liaisons???; wellness coordinators; funding per pupil for gifted intervention specialists; ratios for building managers and secretaries, funding per pupil for ???extracurriculars,??? and many more guidelines that seem senseless to require of principals already facing budget pains. Also, can someone please explain how Picus (and the Ohio lawmakers who voted to adopt EBM) arrived at prescriptive mandates like these out of the 10 step program? How are they correlated?
And why do Wyoming's and Arkansas's test scores look so bleak? Consider the flatness of their NAEP reading scores alone, or the fact that Ohio's are even slightly better than those states (so why do we need the EBM?).
Picus had no explanation for this, despite saying early in the presentation that "the test [of the EBM] is whether or not children are learning." Lawmakers and school funding council members should remember that there are alternative reforms that Ohio should focus on instead, and that just because Ohio has officially adopted EBM doesn't mean we should ignore countervailing evidence that it isn't working elsewhere and that the state may very well not be able to afford it. To do so would be asinine. Would you buy a 10-step program ??? and undergo the incredible sacrifices of paying for it -- from a man whose other clients haven't even left rehab?
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
