The Education Gadfly Weekly

Enticing our top college graduates to teach in America’s classrooms is a serious challenge, bordering on an epidemic in some of our poorer communities and neighborhoods. According to the 2010 McKinsey report “Attracting and Retaining Top Talent in US Teaching,” just under one in four of our entering teachers come from the top third of their college class. For high-poverty schools even fewer entering teachers (a mere 14 percent) are top third talent.

In the Buckeye State, the Ohio Board of Regents’ data corroborate McKinsey’s finding that neither the best nor brightest are entering Ohio’s classrooms as teachers. According to the Regents, the average composite ACT of an incoming teacher-prep candidate was 22.75, below the average ACT score of the overall incoming freshman class for relatively selective universities. The middle 50 percent of incoming freshman to the Ohio State University, for example, boasted composite ACT scores between 26 and 30.  

What deters the best and brightest from entering (and staying) in our classrooms is, of course, a complicated issue with many hypotheses: low pay, stressful working conditions, rigid  certification requirements, lack of prestige, and archaic remuneration systems that fail to reward high-performing teachers and backloads benefits are all plausible explanations.

Since 1989 Teach For America (TFA) has worked to improve this bleak human capital situation, and has brought the nation’s top college graduates into a small, but increasing slice of America’s highest need classrooms. In 2012-13, more than 10,000 young men and women are teaching in 36 states through TFA. These are graduates of the nation’s finest universities, including the Ohio State University with 55 alumni and Denison University with 18 participating in TFA this year.

This marks the first year TFA has been in Ohio. Fifty TFA members are teaching in the Cleveland region and 30 more work in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas. (Five work in Fordham sponsored schools and we proudly help fund their Dayton efforts.) Nearly all of these TFA members work in public charter schools, with only 1 TFA member serving in Cincinnati Public Schools this year.

This is starting to change as more traditional districts—recognizing the need for an infusion of talent—are starting to embrace TFA. Cincinnati Public Schools plans to hire additional TFA members in the coming years, and Dayton Public Schools (DPS) recently approved hiring eight TFA teachers to work in their schools in 2013-14. This personnel decision, recommended by Dayton Superintendent Lori Ward and approved by the Dayton Board of Education in February 2013, occurred as some 200 DPS teachers are expected to retire between now and the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Despite the stellar academic qualifications of TFA members, skeptics worry about whether these teachers will be effective in the classroom. In a recent Dayton Daily News story, Dave Romick of the Dayton Education Association was cool to the idea of TFA in Dayton, openly questioning whether TFA teachers will be effective, and whether TFA is a long-term solution to DPS’ staffing woes.

The research evidence on effectiveness suggests Mr. Romick shouldn’t worry, and in fact should work with the district to increase the number of TFA members. On average, TFA members impact student achievement just as well, and often significantly more than, teachers who have completed a traditional teacher-prep program—sometimes even veteran teachers. For the mounting evidence, consider studies conducted by the Urban Institute, Mathematica for math achievement in particular, the University of North Carolina, and the Tennessee State Board of Education, which have each found TFA members to outperform their traditional peers. The 2012 University of North Carolina study, for example, found that, compared to other new, traditionally-prepared teachers, TFA members have significantly stronger impacts on student achievement.

While the academic qualifications of TFA members are impressive and the evaluative research shows the strength of the TFA program, there remains justifiable concern about whether TFA members will stay or leave when their two-year teaching terms end. A 2011 Phi Delta Kappan survey found that 61 percent of TFAers continued as public school teachers and that 44 percent stay at their initial site placement immediately after year two. However, by year five, only 15 percent remain as a teacher at their initial site.

This finding should prompt Dayton’s district and community leaders to develop a strategic plan to retain and nurture the talents of TFA members—whether in a classroom capacity or in other leadership positions—for the long-haul. In other cities, TFA alumni have built on their classroom experiences and have launched some of the most innovative and effective educational organizations in the nation. For example, David Levin and Mike Feinberg, the co-founders of the successful KIPP charter schools, are TFA alum; as is Sarah Usdin, the founder of New Schools for New Orleans, a non-profit that invests in high-performing charters schools in the Bayou State. In Pittsburgh, TFA alum Sam Franklin (and graduate of Kenyon College) led the design of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ highly-rated magnet school, Pittsburgh Science & Technology Academy. Franklin now heads up the district’s Office of Teacher Effectiveness.

Dayton is one Ohio city that badly needs an infusion of smart, hard-working young people—in its public school system in particular. Eight TFA teachers in DPS is a modest investment in human capital; instructing 150 students or so, won’t lead the entire district to the land of milk and honey, next year or even the year after. But, why deny these 150 students the opportunity to learn under a talented, hard-working top college graduate? Why not try to keep these original eight in their schools for the long-term or find them leadership roles in Dayton’s education sector and beyond?

And, why not aim to increase the size of TFA incrementally over time—so long as it’s a program that proves itself worthy of the students of Dayton? Increasing the supply of intelligent, highly-motivated teachers in Ohio’s high-poverty areas is one piece of the education reform puzzle, and a large one at that. Teach For America helps greatly, and as such, deserves the full support of Dayton’s educator community.  

• There is much debate astir in Ohio and across the country about the Common Core and what it means for our children and their education. This recent piece from National Review Online was co-written by Fordham’s Kathleen Porter-Magee and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the logic and history surrounding the Common Core.
• Terry Ryan takes on the Ohio Department of Education’s manual for evaluating physical education teachers. The blog sparked debate in the pages of Ed Week (here and here) and the Washington Post, and was cited by none other than Bill Gates.
• Fordham’s Emmy Partin will be speaking Saturday, April 13 at 10:00AM at Berlin Presbyterian Church in suburban Columbus as a panelist in the Ohio School Boards Leadership Council debate on the Common Core. Other panelists will include State Board of Education member C. Todd Jones, State Representative Andrew O. Brenner, and others. Details about the event can be found here.
• In February, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Community Research Partners gathered with expert educational panelists in Cleveland to discuss student mobility in our schools. The discussion was taped and will air on public television next week. Tune in to your local PBS station or the Ohio Channel on one of the following dates/times: April 21 at 9AM and 5PM; April 22 at 1AM.
• Today, in front of the Statehouse, hundreds of students, parents, and educators rallied to make it clear to Ohio’s policymakers that school choice policies are worth continuing and expanding. School Choice Ohio organized the event, with schools from as far as Youngstown and Lima travelling to support school choice.

Ohio State Senator Keith Faber addressing a crowd of school choice advocates

The West Carrollton school district, just southwest of Dayton, is the latest Ohio school district to pass an open enrollment policy allowing students from any district in the state to enroll in one of their schools. West Carrollton Superintendent Rusty Clifford told the Dayton Daily News that, “Our purpose is to be the school district of choice in Ohio. We want to give any student in the state the opportunity to experience the same great education that students currently living in the West Carrollton district are experiencing.” West Carrollton serves about 3,800 students, 58 percent of whom are economically disadvantaged, and the district received an Effective (B) rating from the Ohio Department of Education in 2011-12.

Superintendent Clifford, Ohio’s 2013 superintendent of the year, acknowledged the decision to become an open enrollment district was driven by economics. “Our enrollment numbers right now are flat to slightly declining,” Clifford told the Dayton Daily News. District enrollment has declined about 13 percent since 1999 and Clifford argues, “In order to keep all of the great staff we have right now, we need to grow our student base. As we keep students, we can keep staff.” Each student that enrolls in West Carrollton from another district brings about $5,700 with him or her.

The Ohio Legislature approved an open enrollment policy in 1989, and under state law school boards are able to decide among three options:

• Accept only students who are residents of the district;
• Extend enrollment eligibility to students living in adjacent districts;
• Open enrollment eligibility to any student in Ohio.

According to the Ohio Department of Education, about 430 of the state’s 611 school districts now have open enrollment policies in place. Based on data from Fordham’s recent statewide study on student mobility, as of 2011 (last year for data) more than 61,000 students attended a public school outside of their home district. There are 29 districts in the state with 20 percent or more of their students as open enrollees, and 12 districts have more than 30 percent of their students enrolled in another school district. Since the fiscal crisis of 2008 more and more Ohio districts have embraced open enrollment policies.

Cincinnati Public Schools approved an open enrollment policy in January of this year and Superintendent Mary Ronan explained the logic in her comments to the Cincinnati Enquirer at the time thusly, “We push out of the district over 100 students per year because they’ve moved and can’t afford the tuition…It really is heartbreaking. We’ve seen the letters and take the phone calls.” Superintendents across the state largely support open-enrollment policies. A new survey on the attitudes of Ohio’s superintendents that the FDR Group has conducted for Fordham (to be released in May), found that 65 percent of the state’s superintendents think open enrollment is “a policy worth keeping or pursuing.”

For some school districts, open enrollment is a strategy key to their survival. Perry school district in Allen County, for example, garners 44.8 percent of its 882 students through open-enrollment. “At one time we had 900 regular students,” Perry Superintendent Omer Schroeder told the Lima News in November, “Our district has become smaller and smaller and it is no secret that open enrollment is our lifeblood.”

But, obviously, not all school districts benefit from open-enrollment. Some see net gains of students, while others lose out. It is also worth pointing out that some districts have significant numbers of students going both ways – into the district through open enrollment and out. Akron, for example, saw 1,698 students from its jurisdiction attend other district schools through open enrollment (5.9 percent of its total enrollment), but also saw 544 students come to its schools from other districts (2.3 percent of its total enrollment). New Boston in Scioto County is an even more dramatic example in terms of percentage of kids coming and going through open enrollment. The district saw 19.9 percent of its students (those living within its boundaries) attend other district schools through open enrollment, but it gained 43.5 percent of its total enrollment from other districts.

Despite the growth in open enrollment, and the apparent support for it among superintendents, there has been talk in recent years of curtailing or even doing away with open-enrollment policies. Last year State Senator Tom Sawyer, a Democrat from Akron, proposed Senate Bill 220. The bill called for the Ohio Department of Education to study the impact of open enrollment, and require lawmakers to either renew the policy or repeal it in 2015. Senator Sawyer’s bill hasn’t moved out of the Senate.

But more and more students are moving across district lines through their district open enrollment policies. This doesn’t look to be a trend that will end anytime soon if parents and students have a choice in the matter.

Ohio’s public schools and parents will soon see a revamped local report card, starting in August 2015. The new Report Cards will display A-F ratings for all public school district and building (traditional and charter). The grading system will have six components: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation rate, K-3 literacy, and prepared for success. The new rating system was enacted under House Bill 555, which was signed into law in December 2012.

The new grading system improves upon Ohio’s outgoing report card system in three substantial ways:

• Greater rigor: Under Ohio’s current grading system 387 out of 610 school districts received an Excellent (A) or higher rating in 2011-12. The new grading system, however, will increase the definition of an A rated district. In the Ohio Department of Education’s simulation of districts’ 2015 report cards, 30 districts received an A for performance index (part of the achievement component) and 25 districts received an A for annual measurable objectives (part of the gap closing component).[1]
• Increased transparency: Ohio’s new A-F rating system is more transparent and understandable for parents and the general public. Gone are the days when mediocre districts could hide behind Continuous Improvement (C), or the harmless “below” value-added rating. In are letter grades for each indicator, giving the public a clearer understanding of how well their district does in comparison to statewide performance benchmarks.
• More inclusive view of school and student performance: Ohio’s current rating system is largely based on two indicators: performance index, a weighted proficiency rate, and value-added index, a measure of student learning gains. The new report card, however, will hold schools accountable for—and make increasingly transparent—additional performance measures, such as graduation rates, advanced placement results, and learning growth for gifted and special education subgroups.

In a smart move by Ohio lawmakers, school districts won’t be held accountable to this new grading system either this school year (2012-13) or the next (2013-14). This pause gives school districts and charter schools time to adjust to the new accountability system, while allowing them to prepare for the Common Core standards in 2014-15. Ohio’s transition to a new and improved accountability system, matched with higher and clearer academic standards, are an improvement for Ohio’s schools and its students.

[1] ODE hasn’t simulated overall grades for schools.

Enticing our top college graduates to teach in America’s classrooms is a serious challenge, bordering on an epidemic in some of our poorer communities and neighborhoods. According to the 2010 McKinsey report “Attracting and Retaining Top Talent in US Teaching,” just under one in four of our entering teachers come from the top third of their college class. For high-poverty schools even fewer entering teachers (a mere 14 percent) are top third talent.

In the Buckeye State, the Ohio Board of Regents’ data corroborate McKinsey’s finding that neither the best nor brightest are entering Ohio’s classrooms as teachers. According to the Regents, the average composite ACT of an incoming teacher-prep candidate was 22.75, below the average ACT score of the overall incoming freshman class for relatively selective universities. The middle 50 percent of incoming freshman to the Ohio State University, for example, boasted composite ACT scores between 26 and 30.  

What deters the best and brightest from entering (and staying) in our classrooms is, of course, a complicated issue with many hypotheses: low pay, stressful working conditions, rigid  certification requirements, lack of prestige, and archaic remuneration systems that fail to reward high-performing teachers and backloads benefits are all plausible explanations.

Since 1989 Teach For America (TFA) has worked to improve this bleak human capital situation, and has brought the nation’s top college graduates into a small, but increasing slice of America’s highest need classrooms. In 2012-13, more than 10,000 young men and women are teaching in 36 states through TFA. These are graduates of the nation’s finest universities, including the Ohio State University with 55 alumni and Denison University with 18 participating in TFA this year.

This marks the first year TFA has been in Ohio. Fifty TFA members are teaching in the Cleveland region and 30 more work in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas. (Five work in Fordham sponsored schools and we proudly help fund their Dayton efforts.) Nearly all of these TFA members work in public charter schools, with only 1 TFA member serving in Cincinnati Public Schools this year.

This is starting to change as more traditional districts—recognizing the need for an infusion of talent—are starting to embrace TFA. Cincinnati Public Schools plans to hire additional TFA members in the coming years, and Dayton Public Schools (DPS) recently approved hiring eight TFA teachers to work in their schools in 2013-14. This personnel decision, recommended by Dayton Superintendent Lori Ward and approved by the Dayton Board of Education in February 2013, occurred as some 200 DPS teachers are expected to retire between now and the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Despite the stellar academic qualifications of TFA members, skeptics worry about whether these teachers will be effective in the classroom. In a recent Dayton Daily News story, Dave Romick of the Dayton Education Association was cool to the idea of TFA in Dayton, openly questioning whether TFA teachers will be effective, and whether TFA is a long-term solution to DPS’ staffing woes.

The research evidence on effectiveness suggests Mr. Romick shouldn’t worry, and in fact should work with the district to increase the number of TFA members. On average, TFA members impact student achievement just as well, and often significantly more than, teachers who have completed a traditional teacher-prep program—sometimes even veteran teachers. For the mounting evidence, consider studies conducted by the Urban Institute, Mathematica for math achievement in particular, the University of North Carolina, and the Tennessee State Board of Education, which have each found TFA members to outperform their traditional peers. The 2012 University of North Carolina study, for example, found that, compared to other new, traditionally-prepared teachers, TFA members have significantly stronger impacts on student achievement.

While the academic qualifications of TFA members are impressive and the evaluative research shows the strength of the TFA program, there remains justifiable concern about whether TFA members will stay or leave when their two-year teaching terms end. A 2011 Phi Delta Kappan survey found that 61 percent of TFAers continued as public school teachers and that 44 percent stay at their initial site placement immediately after year two. However, by year five, only 15 percent remain as a teacher at their initial site.

This finding should prompt Dayton’s district and community leaders to develop a strategic plan to retain and nurture the talents of TFA members—whether in a classroom capacity or in other leadership positions—for the long-haul. In other cities, TFA alumni have built on their classroom experiences and have launched some of the most innovative and effective educational organizations in the nation. For example, David Levin and Mike Feinberg, the co-founders of the successful KIPP charter schools, are TFA alum; as is Sarah Usdin, the founder of New Schools for New Orleans, a non-profit that invests in high-performing charters schools in the Bayou State. In Pittsburgh, TFA alum Sam Franklin (and graduate of Kenyon College) led the design of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ highly-rated magnet school, Pittsburgh Science & Technology Academy. Franklin now heads up the district’s Office of Teacher Effectiveness.

Dayton is one Ohio city that badly needs an infusion of smart, hard-working young people—in its public school system in particular. Eight TFA teachers in DPS is a modest investment in human capital; instructing 150 students or so, won’t lead the entire district to the land of milk and honey, next year or even the year after. But, why deny these 150 students the opportunity to learn under a talented, hard-working top college graduate? Why not try to keep these original eight in their schools for the long-term or find them leadership roles in Dayton’s education sector and beyond?

And, why not aim to increase the size of TFA incrementally over time—so long as it’s a program that proves itself worthy of the students of Dayton? Increasing the supply of intelligent, highly-motivated teachers in Ohio’s high-poverty areas is one piece of the education reform puzzle, and a large one at that. Teach For America helps greatly, and as such, deserves the full support of Dayton’s educator community.  

• There is much debate astir in Ohio and across the country about the Common Core and what it means for our children and their education. This recent piece from National Review Online was co-written by Fordham’s Kathleen Porter-Magee and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the logic and history surrounding the Common Core.
• Terry Ryan takes on the Ohio Department of Education’s manual for evaluating physical education teachers. The blog sparked debate in the pages of Ed Week (here and here) and the Washington Post, and was cited by none other than Bill Gates.
• Fordham’s Emmy Partin will be speaking Saturday, April 13 at 10:00AM at Berlin Presbyterian Church in suburban Columbus as a panelist in the Ohio School Boards Leadership Council debate on the Common Core. Other panelists will include State Board of Education member C. Todd Jones, State Representative Andrew O. Brenner, and others. Details about the event can be found here.
• In February, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Community Research Partners gathered with expert educational panelists in Cleveland to discuss student mobility in our schools. The discussion was taped and will air on public television next week. Tune in to your local PBS station or the Ohio Channel on one of the following dates/times: April 21 at 9AM and 5PM; April 22 at 1AM.
• Today, in front of the Statehouse, hundreds of students, parents, and educators rallied to make it clear to Ohio’s policymakers that school choice policies are worth continuing and expanding. School Choice Ohio organized the event, with schools from as far as Youngstown and Lima travelling to support school choice.

Ohio State Senator Keith Faber addressing a crowd of school choice advocates