The Education Gadfly Weekly

Since 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program has been busing students from Boston and Springfield, MA to quality schools in suburbs that volunteer to participate. Today, the program now links 3,300 students—most low-income and minority—with thirty-seven receiving districts. This white paper from Boston’s Pioneer Institute and the Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard assesses the effectiveness of METCO and offers recommendations to expand it. Overall, the authors find that METCO students consistently beat their peers in Boston and Springfield on state tests. Further, 93 percent of METCO students graduate on time (30 percentage points higher than the Boston or Springfield average) and 90 percent go on to post-secondary education. In light of these successes, Pioneer recommends increased state funding for the program (as well as district reimbursements and competitive grants for participation) and the expansion of METCO to other urban districts in the Bay State. Regrettably, the authors’ analyses of the program’s effectiveness can’t control for student motivation, parent income or education, or selection bias. It will be up to legislators on Beacon Hill to decide whether these promising—but less than “gold standard”—findings warrant an additional investment.

Susan Eaton and Gina Chirichigno, “METCO Merits More: The History and Status of METCO” (Boston, M.A.: The Pioneer Institute, 2011).

This new book is based on a premise neither novel nor eye-opening: “Learning comes from time on task, delivered at a level appropriate to the student.” Years of data (and common sense) say that, too. What makes this volume interesting is where its author, a professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, takes this insight. Guided by the North Star of increased productive instructional time, the book criticizes almost every aspect of the current public education system—from school assemblies to sports to testing. Each of these “worthless” pursuits detracts from the time that students spend learning the curriculum. Instead, Barker Bausell urges a number of provocative changes. Among them: All schools should adopt a “zero-tolerance” approach to pupil behavior (because any distraction pulls students off task). Teachers should be evaluated based on the amount of time they spend delivering curriculum-relevant instruction (divergences are also unwanted distractions). And testing should be tied directly to curricular objectives (the SATs, for example, don’t make his A-list). Ultimately, Bausell sees classrooms being replaced with learning labs, each student learning at a computer able to tailor a lesson to meet individual needs, much like a private tutor. Unfortunately, as the book builds upon its original premise, cracks in the idea’s foundation are exposed—many of which are left unaddressed. How to ensure, for example, that teachers are following sufficiently rigorous curricula or that rote memorization doesn’t supersede deeper knowledge. Still and all, the book pushes readers to question current reforms. And that’s not a bad thing to do from time to time.

This white paper (the second in a series on portfolio districts from the Center on Reinventing Public Education) hits the traditional school district hard, asserting that, due to resource constraints and political shackles, it will never be able to make the big gains necessary to ease the achievement gap and ramp up student success. This is where the “portfolio district”—and charter schools—come into play. Charters, the authors argue, have shown the effectiveness of extended days (KIPP), parent involvement and school culture (YES Prep), and intensive professional development (Mastery Public Schools). Districts would be smart to join forces with these proven operators. Frustratingly, however, the paper’s concluding points have little to do with either charters or the achievement gap. Instead, the authors provide what reads like a twelve-step program for districts looking to get on the portfolio-district wagon. Step one: Acknowledge the problem. Step two: Agree that we have to try new things. And on, and on, and on.

Ohio has echoed with controversy in recent weeks regarding House-passed changes to the state’s charter law that would decimate an already weak charter-school accountability system (see here, here, and here). We at Fordham have been outspoken and relentless in commenting on what’s wrong with the House amendments and have forcefully argued for stronger charter accountability and transparency.

That’s not a new argument or a new role for us. For more than a decade, we’ve pressed Buckeye policymakers on charter-school quality. That included co-authorship (with the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools [NACSA]) of Turning the Corner to Quality: Policy Guidelines for Strengthening Ohio’s Charter Schools. This 2006 report urged a “housecleaning” that would close down Ohio’s poorest performing schools. Partly in response, the General Assembly passed a law two months later that forced failing schools to improve or face automatic closure.

	We have no need or desire to sponsor schools in the future if a better option is available for schools and the children they serve.

Because we’ve been so vehement in criticizing the recent House language (currently in conference with the Senate, which stripped that language out of its version of Ohio’s biennial budget), some who disagree with us have questioned our motives. They’ve even charged Fordham with a “power grab” because we’ve pushed the legislature to allow for a new statewide authorizing entity that would merge the school portfolios of several existing sponsors, us included. Still others claim we are financially greedy and seek to expand our sponsorship efforts in order to boost our revenues. Such allegations are hokum and need to be refuted.

Our charter-school sponsorship philosophy

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has been sponsoring charter schools in Ohio since 2005.* Today there are six schools in our portfolio. (The all-time peak number was ten.) Two of these are in Columbus (KIPP: Journey Academy and Columbus Collegiate Academy), two are in Dayton (Dayton Liberty and Dayton View), one is in Cincinnati (Phoenix Community Learning Center), and one is in Springfield (Springfield Academy of Excellence). Collectively, these schools serve about 1,850 students, more than 85 percent of whom are economically disadvantaged. Next month, two more charters enter this fold: Sciotoville Elementary Academy and Sciotoville Community School, both located outside Portsmouth, in southern Ohio.

Fordham’s sponsorship efforts are aligned with NACSA’s Principles and Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing. We believe that quality sponsors provide their schools with maximum flexibility and space for innovation while holding them accountable for performance, fisical integrity and sound governance. If a school performs well, it should rarely see or hear from its sponsor beyond basic compliance issues (mandated—sometimes to excess—by state law) and required school site visits. If, however, the school struggles to deliver academic achievement, faces financial problems, or encounters other serious operational deficiencies, the sponsor has a solemn duty to push it hard to make needed changes. Under Ohio law, such pressure may include probation and closure—and threatening to take such actions if remedies are not forthcoming. Quality sponsors carry out these threats if a school fails (or refuses) to improve over time. Nothing is worse for children than to allow them to languish in a failed school. As a sponsor, Fordham has closed four schools since 2005; fortunately, these closures were done amicably and in partnership with the governing boards of each school involved.

Financing our sponsorship efforts

In contrast to many Ohio charter authorizers, we believe it is inappropriate, unethical, and sometimes immoral for sponsors to sell any supplemental services to the schools they authorize. Whether these services take the form of business management, instructional support, special education, professional development, or something else, such an arrangement creates an inherent conflict of interest, invites profiteering by sponsors and their agents, and pressures schools to obtain services from entities that wield enormous power over their very existence. It also creates strong economic incentives for sponsors to turn a blind eye to poor school performance.

Fordham doesn’t “make money” as a sponsor. To the contrary. We’re gradually losing our shirts. While Ohio allows authorizers to levy sponsorship fees of up to three percent of a school’s state funding, Fordham charges just two percent while investing north of $100,000 a year in its sponsorship operations. That’s money taken from our own endowment or raised from external funders. (See our annual report here.) Further, we reward performance, providing performance rebates based on a school’s academic rating and calibrated to its enrollment.

New statewide sponsor entity

We have no need or desire to sponsor schools in the future if a better option is available for schools and the children they serve. For months we’ve been exploring with six other sponsoring organizations that also subscribe to NACSA’s quality principles the joint creation of a new sponsor entity with the scale and resources necessary to advance the improvement of Ohio’s charter program. (Those organizations are: the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio, Montgomery County Educational Service Center, Dayton Public Schools, Reynoldsburg City Schools, Loveland City Schools, and the Columbus City Schools. Others are also considering joining this venture.)

This undertaking has been driven by the need for stronger quality in a time of tighter resources. We explained our reasoning to the State Board of Education in May 2010 in these words:

For most sponsors in Ohio, quality sponsorship costs more than school fees can generate. Consider the numbers for a moment—the state has sixty-seven active sponsors. Two of these—the Lucas County ESC and the Ohio Council of Community Schools (both based in Toledo)—collectively authorize one third of all Ohio charter schools. The state’s remaining sixty-five sponsors authorize on average three schools each. Fifty-two sponsors have two or fewer. Yet quality sponsorship costs money to deliver. For example, sponsors need the resources to meet the legal costs of closing a school, which can accrue quickly.

It is because of limited resources for sponsors and the need for scale and shared expertise that the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio (ESCCO) are proposing—with planning-grant support from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers—to launch a new statewide charter school sponsor. Both ESCCO and Fordham have developed the tools, resources, and expertise needed for quality authorizing, in Fordham’s case with help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are willing to cede these assets to a new entity that we believe can help consolidate and improve Ohio’s charter school sponsorship landscape.

Fordham remains firmly committed to advancing educational excellence in Ohio and nationally. We embrace this struggle openly. Charter schools are an important tool in the reform struggle, and for more than a decade we have put our money, time, and energy where our mouth is.

Not everything we’ve done in the Buckeye State (or elsewhere) has worked. (We’ve tried to be candid and forthcoming about the misfires, too.) Through it all, however, we’ve been motivated by the need to improve educational options for needy kids. We are honored to work with policymakers, others in the state’s charter sector, and with district educators who are committed to creating, leading, supporting, and sponsoring great charter schools that embrace high standards of excellence. As the General Assembly winds up its crucial work on the state’s biennial budget, we are proud to call these individuals allies and friends.

* Sponsors (aka authorizers) are the organizations responsible for helping birth charters, for holding them accountable over time for their performance, for providing technical assistance and guidance when appropriate, and—if necessary—for closing schools that no longer work for children.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different format) in the Ohio Education Gadfly and on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. To subscribe to the Ohio Education Gadfly, click here; to subscribe to Flypaper, click here.

You can’t fault Michigan for trying. And then trying some more. To heal the ailing Detroit Public Schools, leaders of the Wolverine State have created an emergency financial manager, have renegotiated the teacher contract, have shuttered failing schools, and have pledged to convert nearly half of its high schools to charters. Despite all this, DPS has remained at death’s door. But an ambitious and experimental new treatment, announced on Monday by Governor Rick Snyder (and backed by Arne Duncan) might well provide some relief. The new plan (which, if effective in the Motor City, will expand out to other failing schools and districts in the state) creates a “recovery school district” of sorts for Motown’s bottom 5 percent of schools. This new mini-district, called the Education Achievement System, will give its schools’ principals the authority to hand-pick their teachers and handle their own budgets, as well as increase total instruction time for students. The new district (along with all Detroit public schools) will be under the purview of DPS emergency manager Roy Roberts and a small appointed committee. Much like what’s in place for New Orleans’s RSD, EAS schools will be required to stay in the system for at least five years, at which point improved schools can choose to remain with EAS, return to DPS, or convert to an independent charter. Further, the initiative will expand the lauded Kalamazoo Promise program, a privately-funded scholarship that will foot the bill for two years of post-secondary education for all DPS graduates. Details about the initiative remain scarce—including how the district plans to recruit the talent needed to staff schools in the EAS. But it’s an encouraging sign that the Motor City may have some life left after all.

“Rick Snyder to announce sweeping DPS reforms Monday,” by David Jesse, Chastity Pratt Dawsey, and Chris Christoff, Detroit Free Press, June 19, 2011.

“New hope for state's hopeless schools,” The Detroit News, June 21, 2011.

“Plan aims to revitalize Detroit schools,” The Associated Press, June 20, 2011.

“Detroit Announces New Authority For Failing Schools,” by Joy Resmovits, The Huffington Post, June 20, 2011.

Since 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program has been busing students from Boston and Springfield, MA to quality schools in suburbs that volunteer to participate. Today, the program now links 3,300 students—most low-income and minority—with thirty-seven receiving districts. This white paper from Boston’s Pioneer Institute and the Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard assesses the effectiveness of METCO and offers recommendations to expand it. Overall, the authors find that METCO students consistently beat their peers in Boston and Springfield on state tests. Further, 93 percent of METCO students graduate on time (30 percentage points higher than the Boston or Springfield average) and 90 percent go on to post-secondary education. In light of these successes, Pioneer recommends increased state funding for the program (as well as district reimbursements and competitive grants for participation) and the expansion of METCO to other urban districts in the Bay State. Regrettably, the authors’ analyses of the program’s effectiveness can’t control for student motivation, parent income or education, or selection bias. It will be up to legislators on Beacon Hill to decide whether these promising—but less than “gold standard”—findings warrant an additional investment.

Susan Eaton and Gina Chirichigno, “METCO Merits More: The History and Status of METCO” (Boston, M.A.: The Pioneer Institute, 2011).

This new book is based on a premise neither novel nor eye-opening: “Learning comes from time on task, delivered at a level appropriate to the student.” Years of data (and common sense) say that, too. What makes this volume interesting is where its author, a professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, takes this insight. Guided by the North Star of increased productive instructional time, the book criticizes almost every aspect of the current public education system—from school assemblies to sports to testing. Each of these “worthless” pursuits detracts from the time that students spend learning the curriculum. Instead, Barker Bausell urges a number of provocative changes. Among them: All schools should adopt a “zero-tolerance” approach to pupil behavior (because any distraction pulls students off task). Teachers should be evaluated based on the amount of time they spend delivering curriculum-relevant instruction (divergences are also unwanted distractions). And testing should be tied directly to curricular objectives (the SATs, for example, don’t make his A-list). Ultimately, Bausell sees classrooms being replaced with learning labs, each student learning at a computer able to tailor a lesson to meet individual needs, much like a private tutor. Unfortunately, as the book builds upon its original premise, cracks in the idea’s foundation are exposed—many of which are left unaddressed. How to ensure, for example, that teachers are following sufficiently rigorous curricula or that rote memorization doesn’t supersede deeper knowledge. Still and all, the book pushes readers to question current reforms. And that’s not a bad thing to do from time to time.

This white paper (the second in a series on portfolio districts from the Center on Reinventing Public Education) hits the traditional school district hard, asserting that, due to resource constraints and political shackles, it will never be able to make the big gains necessary to ease the achievement gap and ramp up student success. This is where the “portfolio district”—and charter schools—come into play. Charters, the authors argue, have shown the effectiveness of extended days (KIPP), parent involvement and school culture (YES Prep), and intensive professional development (Mastery Public Schools). Districts would be smart to join forces with these proven operators. Frustratingly, however, the paper’s concluding points have little to do with either charters or the achievement gap. Instead, the authors provide what reads like a twelve-step program for districts looking to get on the portfolio-district wagon. Step one: Acknowledge the problem. Step two: Agree that we have to try new things. And on, and on, and on.