The Education Gadfly Weekly

An Overton Window is a metaphor for what is politically feasible at any given moment. It’s named for the late Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who theorized that political ideas at any given moment fall along a line from unthinkable and radical to popular and policy. Ideas that were once politically radioactive can become feasible, desirable, and enacted as the window moves between poles, expands, or contracts. But the window is not static. The nineteenth century temperance movement begat Prohibition, which failed; banning alcohol is no longer politically feasible. Some form of legalized marijuana use is the law in more than half of U.S. states. A generation ago, that was well outside the moving Overton Window.

Education policy ideas run the gamut from maximum government control and oversight, to a free and unfettered education marketplace. Compulsory education exclusively in government-run schools (with private schools and homeschooling banned) would represent one currently unthinkable end of the spectrum; closing all those schools and privatizing education would be the other equally unthinkable end. Formerly radical ideas like charter schools, national standards, and abolishing teacher tenure would be in between these two poles and, depending on which way the political winds are blowing, drift into and out of the “Overton Window.”

The election of Donald Trump, his selection of Betsy DeVos, and the GOP’s domination of statehouses, herald a sudden and dramatic shift in what is politically possible on school choice. If Hillary Clinton won the election and named Randi Weingarten education secretary we would have read a hundred pieces by now on “the death of education reform.” If you’re inclined toward school choice and parental prerogative, not “what the system thinks is best for kids,” as DeVos put it in her opening statement, the view through the Overton window is sunny and seventy-five degrees. So why do so many reformers see only cold and rain?

Last week, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (MCPSA) issued a bizarre open letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren “expressing concerns” over DeVos’s support “for school vouchers and her critical role in creating a charter system in her home state of Michigan that has been widely criticized (mostly unfairly) for lax oversight and poor academic performance.” Recall that on the same day that Trump won the White House, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative to authorize a major expansion of charter schools. Among those leading the opposition to raising the charter cap: Senator Warren, to whom Massachusetts charters now turn for protection from the woman would be, by a considerable margin, the most pro-choice and pro-charter Ed Secretary ever.

Equally curious is the anti-DeVos campaign of the formerly pro-reform Center for American Progress, which frets that Trump’s choice sends “a troubling signal about his plans to privatize education from cradle to career.” Last week, CAP’s official Twitter account unleashed a torrent of abuse at DeVos, some of it personal, and joined with both major teacher unions in opposing her nomination, as did Democrats for Education Reform, which previously called for no Democrat to accept an appointment to serve as Secretary of Education under Trump.

Other reform advocates fret that Trump’s support damages the school choice “brand.” Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington worries about “feed[ing] a narrative that choice is about privatization and conservative values.” Writing in Education Post, Peter Cunningham expressed reservations about DeVos’s devotion to accountability, a point emphasized by the Massachusetts charter school group. “Today, in a school system that is increasingly Black, Brown, poor and non-English speaking, and where more than 1 in 7 students has some kind of disability, the need for accountability has never been greater, while the conditions for retreat have never been more likely,” Cunningham wrote.

Politics notwithstanding, there are well-intended reasons to want accountability guardrails to remain strong and in place. The desire to shut down the worst schools, for example, sounds like a benign, common sense argument—no one wants to protect bad schools—but it elides the effects of muscular, test-driven accountability on the habits and practices of all schools—a key component of anti-reform sentiment where it exists and grows. There’s also intriguing evidence to suggest that, when given the opportunity, parents are much quicker to force low-performing schools out of business than regulators.

My own best guess is that test-driven accountability—using tests to shame and close low-performing schools especially—is drifting toward the edge of the Overton window and at risk of broadly falling out of political favor in some states and localities, if it hasn’t already. There is a two-fold danger for reformers: digging in our heels on punitive accountability measures could be alienating to parents who are demanding change and growing impatient with standard ed reform solutions; and windows don’t stay open forever. If you favor increased opportunity for more families now, this seems a propitious moment to advance that agenda. There is more to accountability that test scores. Economist Tyler Cowen reminds us not to forget “the single most overwhelming (yet neglected) empirical fact about vouchers: they improve parent satisfaction.” And happy parents—particularly politically active middle class parents—can keep the Overton window open for a very long time, regardless of who is in the White House.

When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window. The test-driven accountability door may be closing. But the Overton Window is now wide open, at least in the two-thirds of states where the Republican party control is uncontested, for charters, education savings accounts, tax credits, vouchers, and the full range of parent-empowering options for education and school finance. Perhaps we should take full advantage of it. It won’t stay open forever. 

Editor’s note: On Wednesday, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Hoover Institution hosted a timely event, “A New Federal Push on Private School Choice? Three Options to Consider.” This week we are running guest posts by the event’s panelists, offering their advice for the new Administration and Congress. Below is an article by Andy Smarick, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. These posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Many education reformers are excited by President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to create a large-scale federal school choice program. However, others worry that Uncle Sam’s inevitably clumsy meddling in what has been a successful state-led movement would warp the policies, complicate the politics, and undermine the popularity of school choice. Yet there’s a way—based largely on the lessons of the highly successful federal Charter Schools Program (CSP)—for the Trump administration to boost school choice while empowering families and educators and respects state K–12 authority.

Over the past fifteen years, the most prominent (and polarizing) K–12 reforms have tended to be centralizing, standardizing initiatives led by the federal or state governments, such as federally prescribed school classifications and interventions, new statewide content standards and assessments, and state-determined models for educator evaluation. But at the same time, states have been rapidly, though quietly, creating and expanding private school choice programs that differentiate school options and decentralize authority to parents and nonprofits. In fact, growth has been remarkable: today there are about fifty state-level private school choice programs—including scholarships, tax credits, and education savings accounts (ESAs)—expanding schooling options for about 500,000 students. The pace of expansion shows little sign of slowing.

Is there anything the federal government could or should do to help these programs succeed?

The hot-take answer is no. We are in the throes of a pronounced backlash to centralizing efforts, evidenced by testing opt-outs, the continuing resentment toward Common Core, and the recent replacement of No Child Left Behind by the decentralizing Every Student Succeeds Act. So why complicate the policy and politics of private school choice by engaging Uncle Sam, especially since these programs have expanded in recent years without any federal entanglement? Moreover, some school choice antagonists are especially opposed to private school choice; they would vigorously fight any supportive federal efforts.

However, the federal government’s extensive experience supporting charter schools militates against both sets of concerns. Two decades ago, chartering was in a position similar to private school choice today. Several states had passed laws to develop new schools that would be choice based. These laws often said little about what kinds of schools should be created, where they should locate, or how many there should be. Charter programs simply created the conditions for school development and parental choice. Private school choice programs do the same. They do not mandate the creation of certain types of programs, nor do they direct families’ choices.

Politically, private school choice is far less revolutionary today than chartering was twenty years ago. At that point, charter schools were only a few years old and existed in only a handful of states. They summarily ended America’s century-long practice of having one government body per geographic area operating public schools. K–12 private school choice programs, on the other hand, have now been operational for a quarter century, and they exist in thirty states. Chartering already diversified the range of school operators allowed to participate in a state’s system of K–12 education; choice programs merely expand that range to include faith-based and private bodies—a decision approved by the US Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris in 2002.

Three lessons from the charter school movement

Three lessons from the charter school movement suggest a federal role could be quite helpful, if that role is clear and limited.

Chartering. The first lesson is that Washington did get involved in chartering. The federal public CSP started in 1994. It was appropriated $333 million in fiscal year 2016; it has awarded about $3 billion to state educational agencies (SEAs) since 1995. However, the federal government has mostly respected and followed the states’ greenfield approach. That is, the federal government has mostly not layered its policy priorities onto chartering. It has not tried to compel states to fundamentally change their charter laws, dictate the creation of certain types of schools, or prohibit certain models. Instead, through the CSP, a relatively small grant competition, it has helped aspiring founders plan and then open schools of their own choosing.

Startup Funding. The second lesson is that the federal government has primarily focused its funding on the startup of new charter schools (with smaller amounts of federal funding having been made available for charter facilities and national activities). Most CSP dollars are allocated to states through a competitive grant process, and states then subgrant funds to school founders, also on a competitive basis.[i] These subgrants last only a few years, helping planning teams get through the authorization process and early operations—expensive activities for which state funds are typically unavailable.

Since its inception, the CSP’s influence has been profound. It has provided startup funds to more than 4,200 schools; more than 60 percent of all charter schools that have opened were supported by a CSP SEA grant. But Washington has functioned simply as an early-stage investor in a state-led process. Washington does not decide what types of charters it likes best and does not provide ongoing streams of revenue. It helps states help social entrepreneurs get off the ground. Without that support, hundreds if not thousands of today’s charter schools would have never started. But after the startup phase, Uncle Sam backs off, allowing each school’s future to be determined by its educators, authorizer, and state policy environment.

Challenges. The third lesson is that the federal government (and just about everyone else) underestimated the challenges of charter school authorizing. It is difficult to hold accountable vastly different, modestly regulated schools of choice. As a result, in the early days of chartering, too many troubled schools started, and too many stayed open for too long. Not only were thousands of students badly served, but this state-level policy innovation suffered politically. The federal investments in chartering did little to support the development and refinement of charter schooling’s new approach to accountability.

A promising approach to federal support

These three lessons outline a promising approach to federal support for private school choice. Namely:

1. Washington should respect that these state laws seek to expand and diversify options and that they defer to the decisions of social entrepreneurs and families. The federal government should not try to fundamentally change these laws, accomplish particular federal policy priorities through these programs, or attempt to privilege or disadvantage certain types of schools.
2. A federal investment should primarily comprise short-term grants to help the startup and early operations of a diverse array of promising programs.
3. A portion of these federal funds should support state efforts to design and implement various accountability strategies for schools participating in these programs.

That is why the Trump administration should propose in its first budget submission a new initiative called the Diversity and Choice Incentive Demonstration program. It would aim to create a diversity of high-quality, high-demand, highly accountable programs under state school choice programs.

The program would have two competitive priorities: spurring the development of diverse, high-quality, high-demand options and catalyzing the development of innovative approaches to school and operator accountability under school choice programs. Applicants could craft proposals responding to one or both of the priorities.

Its annual appropriation would start at a modest $250 million, with $10 million reserved for federal administration and national activities. Approximately $240 million would be granted annually. Eligible applicants would include SEAs, other state-level entities responsible for or related to the state-choice programs, local educational agencies, nonprofit organizations, or a consortium of these. Faith-based organizations would be eligible, consistent with federal regulations protecting their right to participate in federal grant programs “on the same basis as any other private organization.” Applicants would need to be located in states with a qualifying state school choice program.

Ideally, the US Department of Education would award ten grants annually, preferably to applicants in ten different states. Although the average award would be approximately $24 million over three years, the department could make larger or smaller grants to reflect the size of the state, scope of the project, and other relevant considerations. Those crafting the federal application and proposal-scoring rubric should recognize that these state-level programs are primarily designed to facilitate choice. Accordingly, evaluators should give preference to applications that elevate parental demand and atypical options outside the traditional public school and public charter school system. That is, successful proposals should reflect the educational preferences and choices of families in various communities rather than experts’ preferences.

Grant-receiving proposals under the first competitive priority might include an existing network of private schools (including a faith-based organization, such as a diocese) aiming to start new campuses, a human-capital provider training leaders to start new schools, or a new nonprofit seeking to create tutoring services purchasable with ESAs. Grant-receiving proposals under the second competitive priority might include an SEA aiming to develop an inspectorate approach to assessing program performance, a consortium of providers collaborating to develop a set of shared performance measures, or a nonprofit aiming to create a system for publicizing information on provider performance. The thread connecting these (and other successful) proposals is the development of diverse, high-quality, highly accountable, choice-based programs.

Over the past two decades, the CSP has played an invaluable role in the growth of chartering. It breathed life into state-level legislation that created new programs and expanded parental choice. If Washington can learn the CSP’s lessons—meaning, keep Uncle Sam’s ambitions modest, focus on increasing supply, and add an accountability element—the federal government could play a similarly constructive role as states embrace private school choice.

Editor’s note: Previous versions of this piece were published by Bellwether Education Partners in “16 for 2016: 16 Education Policy Ideas for the Next President,” and by the American Enterprise Institute.

Andy Smarick is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on education and related domestic and social policy issues. Concurrently, he serves as president of the Maryland State Board of Education and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. All opinions expressed herein are his and his alone.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

On the college football field, Ohio and Michigan are bitter rivals. But in the charter school world they share something in common: Both states’ charter sectors have been saddled with the unflattering label of the “wild west.” Recently, this characterization—generally meant to describe a state without proper accountability policies—has been used in critiques of Michigan native and charter supporter, Betsy DeVos, president-elect Trump’s appointee for secretary of education.

What’s clear is that this label and accompanying narrative are hard to shed, even though both states have significantly strengthened their charter laws. On these Gadfly pages, Daniel Quisenberry has described how Michigan is improving its charter sector. In a Fordham report released today, we show how Ohio’s era of stagecoaches and saloons is starting to give way to a more modernized charter sector.

In On the Right Track, we examine the early implementation of recently enacted charter reforms in our home state of Ohio. Bottom line: The Buckeye State’s reforms are being implemented with rigor and fidelity, bringing promising changes to one of the nation’s oldest, largest, and most notorious charter sectors.

In autumn 2015, Governor John Kasich and Ohio legislators passed a landmark, bipartisan charter reform bill (House Bill 2). This legislation sought to strengthen accountability and transparency, align incentives to ensure quality schools, and rid the sector of conflicts of interest and loopholes that had threatened public trust. House Bill 2 was legislation that we at Fordham strongly supported and were pleased to see enacted into state law.

Among its myriad provisions, the legislation:

• Ratchets up state oversight over its numerous charter authorizers (more than sixty as of last year). Among the key accountability tools is Ohio’s sharpened authorizer evaluation system that now includes revocation for a poor rating.
• Eliminates “authorizer hopping.” While Ohio’s plethora of authorizer options allowed schools to find one that fits their needs, it also allowed low-performing schools to escape accountability by switching authorizers. Ohio’s charter reforms now prohibit this, with few exceptions.
• Empowers charter governing boards to exercise independent control over their schools—and puts safeguards in place to reduce the likelihood they are being controlled by a management company.

But as studies and vast amounts of experience have taught us, whether these legislative reforms bear fruit or wither on the vine hinges largely on implementation. Now that a year has passed since Governor Kasich signed the legislation, we thought it was time to take a first close look. How are these reforms being implemented—with vigor and care, or with neglect? Are there any early indications that the reforms are improving sector performance? Alternatively, are any unintended consequences becoming clear?

To analyze these questions, we looked at several key data points, including trends in Ohio’s charter school closures and startups. We also reviewed each House Bill 2 provision, searching for evidence of implementation or enforcement by state authorities. Three key findings emerge:

• Ohio’s charter sector is becoming more quality focused. In 2016, twenty-one charters closed across the state, among the highest numbers of school closings on record in Ohio. The schools had received low ratings on state report cards, suggesting that Ohio’s tougher accountability policies are—as they should—decreasing the likelihood that underperforming schools will just go on forever. Additionally, a very small number of new charter schools opened in fall 2015 and 2016—just eight new startups in both years—the lowest numbers of new school openings in Ohio’s charter history. This indicates that authorizers are vetting new schools more diligently as the pressure rises to open schools that promise quality. However, this also raises the troubling possibility that reforms are impeding charter growth, perhaps even deterring potentially excellent schools from entering the sector.
• Ohio’s rigorous authorizer evaluation system has teeth. In October 2016, the Ohio Department of Education released its first round of high-stakes authorizer ratings under a revamped evaluation system. (Initial evaluation legislation passed in 2012, but that iteration had not been thoroughly implemented.) Twenty-one out of sixty-five total authorizers received an overall Poor rating—the lowest possible—while another thirty-nine were rated Ineffective, the second lowest rating. Authorizers rated Poor had their rights revoked, pending appeal, while Ineffective authorizers are now subject to a quality improvement plan overseen by the state and are prohibited from opening new schools. Poor rated authorizers represent only a small portion of the overall sector—responsible for just 8 percent of Buckeye charter schools; Ineffective entities authorize the majority of charters (62 percent).
• State authorities are implementing forty-nine out of fifty of the House Bill 2 provisions in a verifiable way. Many of the legislative provisions require state agencies—e.g., the Ohio Department of Education or State Auditor—to enforce or verify adherence to the new charter law. To their credit, these executive agencies are taking their responsibilities seriously and carrying out the new charter law.

The hard work of implementation is, of course, far from done in Ohio. Policy makers still need to make some important adjustments to its authorizer evaluation system, and they must find a way to balance the tighter accountability environment with the need to grow new schools that give families and students the quality options they deserve. Ohio’s charter sector, for instance, would greatly benefit from more generous startup investment dollars—not to mention more equitable operational and facilities funding—to help quality schools replicate or launch promising startups from scratch. Lastly, empirical research will be required to help us grasp whether Ohio’s sector performance, post-reform, improves compared to prior studies that uncovered disappointing results.

In the end, we offer some good news: The implementation of major charter reform in Ohio is off to a strong start. Yes, we know that bad reputations are hard to shake. But before making broad generalizations, come and take a closer look at the changes—for the better—happening right here in America’s heartland.

On this week's podcast, special guest Andy Smarick, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Mike Petrilli and Alyssa Schwenk to discuss Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing and what the feds might do to promote school choice. During the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the effects of New Orleans school reforms on school expenditures.

Amber’s Research Minute

Christian Buerger and Douglas N. Harris, “Does school reform = spending reform? The effect of the New Orleans school reforms on the use and level of school expenditures,” Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, Tulane University (January 2017)

This new study examines the impact of math textbooks on student achievement in California; it was authored by Cory Koedel and Morgan Polikoff, two alumni of Fordham’s and AEI’s Emerging Education Policy Scholars program.

They identified 240 unique textbooks across roughly 7,800 schools serving K–8 as of 2012–13, and selected a final sample of 1,878 schools that utilized one of four particularly popular books used in California from 2008–13 (with most entering use in the fall of 2008 or 2009). The books are enVisionMATH California, California Math, California Mathematics: Concepts, Skills, and Problem Solving, and California HSP Math. They merge curriculum adoption data with various school and district characteristics, census data (such as median household income), and achievement data (school average test scores on state math tests). Koedel and Polikoff selected the books for study because, among other criteria, they were adopted in enough schools serving K–8 to enable the requisite statistical power to evaluate them.

Most of the results are based on third-grade achievement with some evidence on grades four and five. The authors use multiple analytic techniques that match schools based on pre-adoption characteristics (size, student demographics, and prior achievement) and track achievement up to four years.

The key finding is that, compared to the other three textbooks, California Math (published by Houghton Mifflin) has a positive impact evident in the first year after adoption that persists through year four of adoption. The effect is in the range of .05 to .08 standard deviations, depending on the year and the analytic model.

This study contributes to a small but increasingly persuasive body of research suggesting that choice of curriculum matters. These type of studies are, however, hard to do because most states don’t collect data on curricular materials, and if they do, they are spotty and/or not coded consistently. It therefore takes a long time to clean the data if one is lucky enough to have them. Case in point: California Math is no longer sold in California—or apparently anywhere else. The same can be said for two of the other three texts.

This is not the first study to kvetch about the scarcity of data on curricular materials. But it stings harder when the analysts describe the effects as “on par with what one could expect from a hypothetical policy that substantially increases the quality of the teaching workforce” at “extremely low cost,” since choosing one textbook over another is a “straightforward policy option for raising student achievement.” Eesh.

SOURCE: Cory Koedel and Morgan Polikoff, “Big bang for just a few bucks: The impact of math textbooks in California,” The Brookings Institution (January 2017).

More than sixty years after Brown v. Board, traditional district schools are still more often than not havens of homogeneity. Static land use guidelines, assignment zones, feeder patterns, and transportation monopolies reinforce boundaries that functionally segregate schools and give rise to the adage that ZIP code means destiny for K–12 students. Asserting that student diversity is an object of increasing parental demand, at least among a certain subset of parents of school-age kids, the National Charter School Resource Center has issued a toolkit for charter school leaders looking to leverage their schools’ unique attributes and flexibilities to build diverse student communities not found in nearby district schools. The report cites a number of studies showing academic benefits of desegregated schools, especially for low-income and minority students. School quality is a strong selling point for any type of school, but this toolkit sets aside that discussion to focus on deliberately building a multi-cultural student body for its own sake. Bear that in mind as we go forward.

Building diversity is not easy, even in a flexibly run and technically borderless charter school. The toolkit provides “context about research and the legal and regulatory guidance” in four main areas required to be addressed: defining, measuring, and sharing school diversity goals; planning school features to attract diverse families; designing recruitment and enrollment processes; and creating and maintaining a supportive school culture.

Goal-setting and recruitment are thorny from the start, the report warns; using racial or cultural characteristics to even set an enrollment target is riddled with concerns about quotas and discrimination. In states where charter location is less regulated, the calculus may be how to attract families of color to a school in a predominantly white neighborhood. In states where charter location is limited to low-performing school districts, the problem is reversed. Either way, the toolkit provides valuable guidance for negotiating these potential pitfalls. Also addressed—although not solved by any means—are the severe constraints charters in many states face in terms of facilities and transportation. The mechanics and legalities of diversification can easily overwhelm the best of plans before the desired diverse student body even gets in the door.

My colleagues here at Fordham have written extensively about the challenges of teaching kids who are at vastly different levels of achievement, which is more likely in a diverse school. The new toolkit has a section on school staffing, training, and professional development, but the resources highlighted there are more about cultural awareness and discipline practices than actually teaching the students being recruited. I highly recommend Mike Petrilli’s 2012 book The Diverse Schools Dilemma for more on the latter.

The tips and guidance in this toolkit are helpful and may give charter school leaders insight into areas where well-intentioned plans to build a diverse student body could unexpectedly flounder. But with no discussion of how to make diverse charter schools work for all of their students, we’re left with the most important questions left unanswered.

SOURCE: “Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: A Toolkit for Charter School Leaders,” National Charter School Resource Center (January, 2017).