“Doing more for less” was a mantra for school reformers four or five years ago, when school funding across the country hit its nadir. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute frequently argued in favor of using the economic crisis to do things differently. (See here, here, and here.) Much pain has accompanied the recent tough times. But there are school districts and educators across the county that have managed to turn crisis into opportunity, many of whom I’ve met in my work (with Fordham until 2012, and more recently with Bluum and ROCI in Idaho).
Reynoldsburg, Ohio, offers a good example. The city is about ten miles east of Columbus and serves about seven thousand students. Its school district’s annual budget took a 10 percent hit from 2008 to 2011, while it simultaneously saw a 10 percent increase in economically disadvantaged students (who currently make up about half of all the district’s students). Reynoldsburg also eliminated about 20 percent of its staff between October 2008 and October 2009 (see here for details).
Fast forward to this month: The Wall Street Journal reports that Reynoldsburg is in the midst of an overhaul defined by “a personalized learning model combining computer-based and in-person instruction that the district says has held down costs, sustained above-average test scores and put students in greater control of their learning.” The district is not only doing more with less—it is doing better. The four-year graduation rate has climbed from 83 percent in 2010 to about 93 percent in 2013.
In southeast Georgia, the community of Dublin provides another illustration. Its schools sustained a double economic blow in recent decades. The textile industry that had long sustained the community was ravaged by NAFTA, and the district suffered when Georgia saw per-student spending decline by almost 15 percent from 2008 to 2014. Eight in ten students in Dublin City Schools are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.
In response, the Dublin district made painful cuts, but it also embraced a change to state law that allows a portfolio approach to school governance. Georgia’s charter system builds on twenty-five years of the American charter school experience. The Dublin effort is showing its worth academically, and it offers important insights for districts seeking to improve their schools by embracing the charter bargain of greater freedom and flexibility in return for results.
Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told me during a visit that “the charter system has given us the flexibility from rules that allow us to do more for kids.” Specifically, it “allows us to pilot new ideas.” He tells his building leaders “to break rules with integrity in order to deliver for kids.” The principal of Dublin’s Saxon Heights Elementary, John Strickland, argued that the district charter status allowed a “culture shift. It triggered a change in mindset. We don’t have to do things here because of the system. We do things because we think it works for the kids.”
But the charter district is not just about choice; it is also about accountability. It requires the district and its schools to work out their goals, how they define success, and how adults will be held accountable for delivering results. It provides transparency, as the goals and academic targets for the district and schools must be shared with the state. Most importantly, the district has seen declines in referrals for discipline issues, improvements in its academic performance, and gains in its high school graduation rate.
Beyond Textbooks (BT) in Arizona is a child of the economic crisis. When district funding was cut significantly in Vail, Arizona (the state saw per-student spending drop 17 percent from 2008 to 2014), Superintendent Calvin Baker and his team looked for ways to find “revenue sources for working through our financial crisis.” The district’s director of technology suggested creating an online system that included lesson plans and calendars for when certain concepts should be taught. It also featured a means for teachers to share materials online, breaking down barriers of time and place.
This was the genesis of BT, which in seven years has grown from a district-based solution into an online curriculum accessible through a wiki that allows over ten thousand teachers in more than one hundred districts and charters across three states (Arizona, Wyoming, and Idaho) to share their best lesson plans, ideas, and instructional resources. Participating school districts and charter schools have seen their spending on textbooks drop from an average of $55 per student to almost $0. For Vail, with an enrollment of twelve thousand students, this comes to an annual savings of around $650,000—and an additional $1.5 million that the district receives in fees from partner schools. These resources are plowed back into the work of the district and into BT.
Benson, Arizona Superintendent Micah Mortensen—Vail’s early partner in BT—told me, “There is no doubt in my mind that BT helps kids get to a higher level, and it helps close achievement gaps because it helps teachers work smarter.” Benson Primary School was the top-ranked elementary school in Arizona in 2014 and a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon School.
These are very different events in very different parts of the country, yet they share a few things in common:
- Economic pressures stimulate innovation. In all three cases, the changes were triggered by financial crisis. Leaders in these districts took a hit, took stock of where they were, and then worked with their communities to convert pain into an opportunity to better serve students by doing things very differently.
- Open enrollment supports innovators. All three districts utilize open-enrollment policies to allow neighboring students to enroll in their schools. They believe that their academic offerings are top-notch and make them as widely available as possible. They embrace choice and competition.
- The flexibility to do things differently is a precondition for action and success. Reynoldsburg embraced choice, charters, and blended learning, which empowered building-level leaders to customize education for every child. In Georgia, the change in the charter landscape allowed the Dublin district to structure its schools differently. Technological advances allowed the Vail school district in Arizona to create an online curriculum accessible to more than ten thousand teachers across three states.
- Student achievement and advancement is the Holy Grail. All three efforts define success as increased student achievement. Dublin’s superintendent summed it up thusly: “We do whatever it takes to generate productive students.”
- Leadership matters. None of the innovations described here would have existed were it not for the respective superintendents’ exceptional leadership. Reynoldsburg has had three consecutive reformers at the helm for over twenty years. Chuck Ledbetter in Georgia and Calvin Baker in Arizona are both seasoned educational veterans who simply get things done. These people are not only district leaders, but also highly respected community leaders. They run school systems, but they focus on the betterment of their respective communities and states. They are extraordinary problem solvers who motivate the people around them to take productive risks for the sake of the kids.
Doing more for less is no longer just a slogan—it’s become a way of life for innovative educators and districts across the country. And it’s paying dividends for children and schools.
