The Education Gadfly Weekly

In December 2014, Ohio Governor John Kasich promised wholesale charter school reform in the new year. “We are going to fix the lack of regulation on charter schools,” Kasich remarked. Now, thanks to the fearless leadership of the governor and members of the legislature, Ohio has revamped its charter law. Most impressively, the charter legislation that overwhelmingly passed last week drew bipartisan support and praise from editorial boards across the state.

It’s been a long road to comprehensive charter reform in Ohio. When the Buckeye State enacted its charter law in 1997, it became a national pioneer in charter quantity. Disappointingly, it has not been a leader on quality. To be sure, there are examples of phenomenal charter schools. Yet too many have struggled, and a surprising number of Ohio charters have failed altogether. The predictable result is that on average, Ohio charter school students have fallen behind academically. A 2014 study by CREDO found Buckeye charter students losing forty-three days of learning in math and fourteen days of learning in reading relative to their district peers.

As regular Gadfly readers know, we at Fordham have consistently voiced concerns about our home state’s ailing charter sector. In our view, many of these woes can be traced to the state’s rickety charter law—one that has long been riddled with special exemptions and loopholes that needlessly protect bad actors within the charter system. In 2006, we partnered with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and suggested ways to improve Ohio charter law. A few of our recommendations were adopted, but many remained unheeded.

After the high-profile flameouts of several start-up schools in fall 2013, we became convinced that the timing was ripe for another full-court press for reform. To set the table, we asked Andy Smarick and his colleagues at Bellwether Education Partners to conduct a deep-dive analysis of Ohio charter policy. The resulting report, released in December 2014, specified thirty-four statutory changes that, if enacted, could right the ship. The recommendations focused on purging misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, while also creating policies and structures that promote educational quality (stronger authorizing and greater funding first among them).

Following up on Governor Kasich’s announcement that charter reform would be a major focus of his administration, Ohio lawmakers kicked off the 2015 session by unveiling a high-priority charter reform bill (House Bill 2, or HB 2). In the ensuing nine months, virtually every detail of Ohio charter law was laid on the table and publicly discussed. Despite some wrangling over the details, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle embraced a strong package of reforms in the bill that ultimately passed last week. These reforms—twenty-eight of them taken from the Bellwether report, by our count—insist upon good governance and are fundamentally geared toward promoting good practices among those who oversee and operate charter schools. Importantly, these reforms don’t interfere with the school-level autonomies that allow charters to operate differently than district-run schools.

Briefly, here are four of the bill’s key features (see here for a detailed list of provisions).

First, the legislation strengthens the hand of the state to crack down on poorly performing authorizers, the gatekeepers of overall sector quality. The bill adds teeth to Ohio’s authorizer-evaluation system by granting the state greater power to quickly close an authorizer that is neglecting its oversight role or allowing too many bad schools to remain open.

Second, the legislation addresses incentives that have weakened accountability at the authorizer level. For example, Ohio authorizers have long had financial incentives to be soft on underperforming schools, even when imposing tough sanctions is the right thing to do. The reforms in HB 2 mitigate these incentives. For example, authorizers must now disclose how they’re spending the fees generated from their schools; as a result, they’ll be less inclined to use authorizing as a way to subsidize other activities. Additionally, most authorizers will face strict prohibitions on selling services to their schools—transactions that can obviously compromise accountability. By limiting the financial motivations for authorizing, we expect authorizers to refocus on what matters most: Holding schools accountable for results.

Third, the bill empowers charter school boards to take charge of a school rather than serve as pawns of a domineering management company. Boards, for example, must now retain independent legal counsel when entering into contracts, and they’ll generally be required to hire independent fiscal officers. Previous law had also allowed management companies to appeal termination to their authorizers and, if successful, fire their board members. The new legislation eliminates this provision, giving boards leverage to terminate a management company without fear of retaliation.

Fourth, charter law will now expect management companies to operate in the light of day. While some companies are stellar outfits, others have failed to deliver for their schools; under the new law, Ohioans will know more about which ones are truly working toward the best interests of the schools they manage. The bill increases transparency by requiring a state report on each management company’s performance, a detailed accounting of their financial expenditures, and disclosures around any lease agreement they might have with their schools.

With legislative reform in the rearview mirror, the critical work of implementing these provisions begins in earnest. One facet of policy implementation deserves special mention: Many of the reforms hinge on the authorizer evaluations tasked to the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). Can the state agency safeguard the fidelity, rigor, and consistency of the evaluation process, especially in the face of political pressure either to weaken it or make it overly harsh? Can ODE maintain transparency around the evaluation procedures and results, which is essential to determining whether state authorities are evaluating authorizers diligently and fairly? Can the Herculean task of evaluating all authorizers—Ohio has seventy or so of them—be done in a timely fashion? Much depends on the answers to these questions.

Of course, the state alone doesn’t bear the responsibility of faithful implementation. Leaders at the authorizer, board, and school levels will need to follow and implement the new law as well. Will governing boards, for example, use their newfound leadership authority for the good of their schools? Will they enter into sensible contracts with management companies? Can they leverage objective information to make sound decisions about the financial and academic health of their schools?

In addition to the work on the implementation front, further reform still awaits. While some fiscal reforms helping charters did pass earlier this year, the state’s funding system still needs work to ensure that charter school students aren’t shortchanged. (The latest numbers show Ohio charters getting pennies on the dollar.) The Buckeye State also recently won a federal grant that should significantly improve the odds of success for start-up charters. That grant must be rigorously implemented and well-administered by state officials.

Perhaps most important in the days ahead is the critical need to repair the charter sector’s reputation—inside of Ohio and nationally. It’ll take the relentless work of policymakers and advocates of high-quality charters to keep the momentum going.

With the passage of landmark charter reform, Ohio lawmakers have steered the state’s charter sector in the right direction. They’ve created the conditions for a thriving charter sector that has the potential to compete with the very best in the nation. They have laid out a vision for how the sector ought to function from the state level down to the school board. Policymakers have made it very clear that bad actors in the charter sector will neither be tolerated nor welcomed. While the work is far from finished, we can now boldly proclaim that Ohio is on the road to redemption.

aceshot/iStock/Thinkstock

It’s been a busy year for the Ohio charter sector. The long-awaited passage of House Bill 2 is finally a reality, and Ohio charters are back on the road to national respectability. Despite this good news, the state is still dealing with the hangover caused by its reputation as the wild, wild west of charter schools. People are still talking about the recent omission of e-school grades on sponsor evaluations, and there have been calls for a review of the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) and its staff. So when the U.S. Department of Education announced the recipients of new grants through the Charter Schools Program (CSP), some folks (in Ohio and elsewhere) were shocked to find that Ohio was not only a winner but also the recipient of the largest grant—over $71 million.

While debates rage over whether or not Ohio deserved the grant, the real question should be how the Buckeye State can best use the windfall. CSP funding is intended to enable states to “run state-level grant competitions” to support new and expanded public charter schools.[1] The department has also asked grantees “to focus on establishing rigorous performance expectations for all public charter schools.” With the intense scrutiny on the allocation of these funds, Ohio has been presented with a rare opportunity to fix its maligned charter school reputation. To restore public faith in charters and spend CSP funds wisely, there are a few essentials that Ohio needs to get right.

First, require a demanding and thorough application process for access to CSP funds

The most important aspect of getting CSP allocation right is creating a rigorous application process for new schools seeking portions of the grant. Entities seeking funding should be required to show a strong business plan and marketing analysis; demonstrate community need, support, and outreach plans; have a strong, experienced board; outline their academic and curricular model as well as their plans to serve a diverse student body; and most importantly, show evidence of past success in raising student achievement. The teams that complete this rigorous process and receive CSP funds will be deserving and will benefit directly, but those that complete the process and don’t receive funds will also be better as a result of their efforts.

Second, expand high-performing Ohio charter schools

In Ohio, there are charter networks like Breakthrough and United Schools Network (USN) with a history of success. Ohio-made schools that have proven they can give Ohio kids a high-quality education should be encouraged to apply and given help to work through the rigorous application process. While this prodding could come from the state, it would be an even better role for the philanthropic community. They could ensure that these schools have the support and resources necessary to develop a winning grant application that would enable them to replicate their success. Unfortunately, even with their replication, there will still be thousands of students across the state who aren't in high-quality seats.

Third, recruit high-performing networks from out of state

Expanding Ohio’s existing stellar performers won’t be enough. In last year’s report The Road to Redemption, Andy Smarick and his Bellwether colleagues pointed out that that policymakers should “consider creating additional financial incentives” to persuade outstanding charter networks to replicate in Ohio. With CSP funds secured, Ohio is on the path to making the Buckeye State a more “hospitable” replication environment for charter networks that are achieving remarkable results in other parts of the nation. The well-documented weaknesses in Ohio’s charter law around sponsoring and governance also hurt recruitment efforts. Passage of House Bill 2 should give a boost to charter schools that initially looked past Ohio because of the lack of emphasis on quality. Recruiting these networks would add additional credibility to Ohio’s charter sector and would immediately increase the number of available high-quality seats. (For an in-depth look at some of the networks that Ohio should consider recruiting, check out this piece.)

Fourth, use competition to force low-performing charter schools to close

Ohio students will benefit from newly opened, high-quality charter schools, but they will also benefit from the increased market pressure these schools will put on charter (and district) schools that aren't measuring up. Some of these low performers will close, and that’s a good thing—research shows that closing low-performing Ohio schools improves outcomes for students. If policymakers commit to following the research, the question becomes whether the schools that close will be the lowest performers.

On that front, there is a burgeoning opportunity—and with it, a reason for optimism. Ohio has seen a growing number of city-based education advocacy groups over the past few years. These organizations include the Cleveland Transformation Alliance (CTA), the Cincinnati School Accelerator, FutureReady Columbus, and Learn to Earn Dayton. The mission and strategy of each organization varies by city. There are some similarities, however, as most have recognized the need to create more high-quality seats and reduce the number of students in low-quality seats. These groups also have significant support from business leaders, which means they understand the advantages of a competitive market. Providing parents with high-quality school information, ensuring that the best schools have sufficient access to facilities and capital funds, and helping schools secure consistent and dependable transportation are all benefits that these groups can offer to high-performing charters—benefits that will also put pressure on the lowest performers to close their doors.  

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The past few weeks have been a historic time for Ohio charters, and the sector now has an opportunity—one that may never come again—to change its reputation for the better. While not all the events leading up to this opportunity were positive, how we choose to move forward with the CSP grant will define Ohio’s future charter reputation. Ensuring that the grant application process is rigorous, expanding Ohio’s high-performing charters, recruiting strong networks from out of state, and applying market pressure on our lowest-performing schools are all necessary steps for ensuring that Ohio rehabilitates its reputation. Most importantly, though, these are the steps that will transform the sector into one that offers thousands more Ohio kids a phenomenal education. And that’s definitely worth all the hard work.

The relationship between teacher experience and quality has been widely studied, as has the relationship between teacher experience and salary. The relationship between experience and total compensation—which includes both salary and retirement benefits—is often overlooked. In a new report, researchers from the Manhattan Institute have thrown open the curtains by calculating the total compensation for teachers with master’s degrees and varying years of experience in the country’s ten largest public school systems. They explain that, although most research demonstrates that quality differences between teachers based upon experience tend to plateau after 5–7 years, most public school teachers still earn salaries according to fixed schedules that are based entirely on years of experience and advanced degrees. Retirement benefits are distributed in a similar way. Approximately 89 percent of public school teachers earn retirement benefits under final-average-salary-defined benefit (FAS-DB) pension plans, meaning that teachers earn a lifetime annuity available only after they reach their respective plans’ threshold. These thresholds, like a salary schedule, are based on a combination of age and years of service. As a result, FAS-DB plans often backload retirement benefits.

The scale of backloading varies across plans. In New York City, for example, a teacher earns an average of only $1,031 in retirement compensation during each of his first fifteen years; in each of the ensuing years, she earns an average of $16,908. In Philadelphia, teachers vest after ten years, which is the same year they reach the “maximum rung” on the salary ladder; however, they earn no positive retirement compensation until year seventeen, and their retirement benefits aren’t maximized until they reach thirty-five years of service. The authors point out that this causes significant problems for the large majority of public school teachers who leave teaching before they reach the sufficient years of service mark (not to mention teachers who are mobile throughout their careers). They also note that backloaded plans harm teachers who remain in the classroom after their specified retirement age. For these teachers, retirement compensation actually turns negative during the later years of their careers, making it financially wise for them to leave public schools. Overall, the report finds that backloaded pension plans “substantially increase the total compensation premium paid to highly experienced teachers who remain in the same school district their entire careers.”

Fortunately, there seems to be a solution: The report outlines an alternative model called a “cash-balance” (CB) pension plan, which allows teachers to more smoothly accrue pension benefits throughout their careers. The CB plan better aligns teacher compensation with teacher quality by “raising compensation for teachers in their early years—a time when teachers improve most dramatically.” The CB plan doesn’t link retirement plans to measurable teacher performance; it simply reallocates teachers’ retirement compensation more smoothly from the beginning to the end of their careers. Furthermore, the researchers found that for the ten school districts they studied, changing from a backloaded plan to a smooth accrual plan would be of equal cost to taxpayers and would reduce the teacher experience premium without reducing a teacher’s total expected career compensation. Sounds like a win for everybody.

SOURCE: Josh B. McGee and Marcus A Winters, “Rewarding Experienced Teachers: How Much Do Schools Really Pay?” Manhattan Institute (October 2015).  

Monumental reform of Ohio’s charter school law, which began in earnest back in December 2014, culminated on October 7 with the passage of House Bill 2.

Throughout that process, journalists, editors, and bloggers across the nation reported and opined. Here is a selection of recent media coverage:

• The Cleveland Plain Dealer gave a brief history of the legislation and a list of issues needing to be resolved when the bill was taken up for final work on September 30.
• The next step for HB 2 was a conference committee to resolve those issues. The Columbus Dispatch covered the committee process in an October 6 piece, as did the Associated Press, claiming that fears of important provisions being “watered down” in committee were unfounded.
• The bill’s final passage on October 7 was widely covered, including important pieces in the Dayton Daily News and in public media outlets.
• Opinion pieces were uniformly in favor of the new legislation—much as they had been throughout its gestation—as evidenced by editorials in the Canton Repository and the Columbus Dispatch.

Remember that you can keep up with these stories and more through a subscription to Gadfly Bites, our thrice-weekly roundup of important education news and opinion in Ohio.

Ohio’s recent win of federal Charter School Program (CSP) funds has garnered much backlash. Former Governor Ted Strickland went so far as to send a letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan requesting that he reconsider giving Ohio the grant. All five Democrats in Ohio’s congressional delegation sent their own letter to Duncan asking questions about the conditions of the grant and whether it will be used to help charter oversight.  

Two facts are overlooked by critics in the midst of the naysaying: 1) the overall track record of CSP grant recipients in our state is solid (as we’ll see below), and 2) by infusing much-needed resources into Ohio’s charter sector, the program enables the best schools to replicate, could draw in top-notch charter school models from other states, and might even crowd out the state’s worst schools—both of the district and charter variety.

The calls to delay or rescind the money are absurd. Most of those speaking out publicly have clear political agendas. Ohio certainly needs to restore public confidence in its charter sector, and the legislature’s bipartisan passage of comprehensive charter school reform is a good start. A strong grant program focused on identifying and replicating successful charter schools would aid in that process.

But don’t take it from me. Let’s consider the track records of past CSP winners from Ohio. Charter schools that have received CSP grants from the Ohio Department of Education closed at significantly lower rates than Ohio’s charter school movement as a whole. They also generally outperform the Ohio charter sector.

From FY07 to FY13, 155 charter schools in Ohio won CSP awards (a few schools won twice).[i]  Of those, thirty-six have since closed (for a closure rate of 23 percent), and eight of those closures were of district-run charter schools. (Eager to cash in on federal grants, districts sponsored charter schools that were arguably run more like district offshoots than truly independent start-ups.) The Ohio sector’s overall closure rate is 43 percent. (For a more detailed look at charter closure rates across the movement’s history, see my article from last week.)

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Source: Lists of CSP grant recipients available via the Ohio Department of Education, Ohio’s closed community school directory, and the latest annual community school report’s enrollment spreadsheets.

Based on the data in Graph 1, it seems that the Ohio Department of Education has doled out past CSP grants rather successfully. In reviewing applications and deciding which schools were worth funding, the department took a chance on schools that stayed open at significantly higher rates than Ohio’s overall charter sector. This isn’t to say that a school’s success should be defined by its ability to keep its doors open. (Fordham supports the closure of poorly performing charter schools, which leads to better achievement for students.) But in a climate where many charter school failures are the result of under-enrollment and/or financial mismanagement, it’s important to note that earlier rounds of CSP dollars flowed to schools that—from an organizational and financial perspective—knew how to run themselves effectively.

Still, avoiding closure is a low bar by itself. It’s far more important to consider the current performance of those CSP-winning schools that remain open. Nearly one-half of CSP winners earned an A, B, or C on the state’s most recent (2013–14) Performance Index metric, compared to just one-quarter of non-CSP winners (Graph 2).

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Nearly everyone agrees that high-quality pre-kindergarten is a worthy investment. Calls to expand it at public expense are born from a handful of well-known (and very costly) intensive models that appeared to deliver long-term positive effects for poor children: improved school readiness, increased graduation rates, and even the mitigation of risk factors like teen pregnancy and incarceration. These oft-cited outcomes are compelling. So is the urge to level the playing field for children who arrive at school with a thirty million word gap. But an actionable definition of “high quality” remains elusive, and studies of large, scaled up pre-K programs have shown mixed results.

The latest study from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute adds valuable evidence to the discussion of whether, when, and how pre-kindergarten is a worthy investment. In 2009, in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Education, the institute launched a rigorous study of the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program (TN-VPK). This is a full-day program targeted toward exceptionally at-risk four-year-olds; researchers tracked two cohorts of children (those applying in 2009–10 and 2010–11) through the end of their third-grade years (2013–14 and 2014–15 respectively). Oversubscribed programs enabled a random design whereby children enrolled in TN-VPK were the treatment group and those waitlisted (and ultimately not admitted) became the control group. The study is one of a few randomized control trials of a large-scale pre-K program (most comparable studies employ less rigorous research designs) and the first ever of a state-funded, targeted program.

Findings reported last month come from a subset of the overall study’s sample (specifically the 1,076 children whose parents agreed to annual data collection: 773 participants in TN-VPK and 303 non-participants). Although this leaves something to be desired from a randomization perspective, the authors report that “the consented children…were generally representative of those in the full randomized sample.” Researchers sought to answer three questions. First, would TN-VPK prepare children for kindergarten (in both academic and non-cognitive ways)? Second, would certain subgroups benefit more than others? And third, would effects on achievement and behavior last beyond kindergarten?

To gauge the program’s immediate impact, children were assessed on several academic indicators (via achievement tests) and non-cognitive behaviors (via teacher ratings), both before and after they took part in the program. At the end of the pre-K year, researchers found that TN-VPK had a significant positive effect on children on all six achievement subtests, with especially large effects in the two literacy measures. The effect size for the composite achievement score was .32—a figure that, according to researchers, is “larger than average” for the pre-K programs studied in the last three decades. In terms of differential effects, the program had the greatest impact on children who were English language learners and/or whose mothers had attained less than a high school degree.

But don’t uncork the champagne. To see if the program’s effects persisted, the children were also assessed and received teacher ratings at the end of each school year (through third grade). Not only did the positive effects of TN-VPK wear off by the end of kindergarten, but they had turned negative by the end of second grade—that is, TN-VPK children scored lower than non-participants on all achievement measures (with most of those comparisons being statistically significant). This reversal occurred even earlier on behavioral effects: By the end of first grade, TN-VPK participants were rated by teachers as having worse work skills and being less prepared for school. Comparable studies of many pre-K programs have discovered a gradual “fadeout” of positive effects once children enter the K–12 system. But the long-term negative impacts discovered by Vanderbilt’s researchers were quite unexpected, and they prompted the authors to urge caution on those who interpret their findings.

So what do we make of this? It’s important to note that children in the control group didn’t receive no treatment—just treatment that wasn’t TN-VPK. Twenty-seven percent of the control group attended Head Start or a private childcare center; the rest received care at home (the quality and details of which are impossible to track). Their alternative early learning experiences may not have prepared them as well for kindergarten as TN-VPK, but that ended up not mattering by the start of first grade. One way of looking at it is that Head Start, private preschools, home providers, and families are setting children up for K–3 success at least as well as (and possibly better than) the state-funded program, which costs $90 million annually.

It’s also important to realize that the “fadeout” of pre-K observed in this study and many others can’t be blamed entirely on the pre-K program itself. It’s possible that pre-K participants entering kindergarten ahead of their peers are neglected somewhat by teachers, who focus instead on youngsters in the most dire academic need—an understandable but still damaging method of triage. Schools must ensure that teachers capitalize on and sustain student gains made prior to their entry, and meet the needs of kids who are kindergarten-ready.

Finally, the study calls into question what constitutes “high quality” in the pre-K realm. Responses and reactions (sometimes overreactions) to the report were swift, motivating two of the study’s authors to pen a follow-up article. “The virtual ink on our recently released report was barely dry before pre-K advocates were vigorously building a firebreak around these results,” they wrote, “contending that they are not representative of the effects of state pre-K programs generally and stem entirely from the unusually poor quality of the Tennessee program.” Defending Tennessee, they note that TN-VPK is no different from programs being ramped up in other states. It aligns with nine of the ten benchmarks provided by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). TN-VPK participating districts had all the right inputs: teachers with licenses in early childhood and education, classrooms with an adult-student ratio of 1:10, maximum class sizes of twenty, and state board-approved curriculum. This assertion makes the report’s findings even grimmer and adds new urgency for how we reach the most at-risk early learners. If Tennessee’s statewide pre-K program aligns to the best consensus we have on what matters in pre-K, and it is comparable to rapidly expanding programs around the country, we need to rethink the benchmarks for quality. Moreover, for a program to be of truly high quality for at-risk children, it must go beyond a one-year effort at age four.

SOURCE: Mark W. Lipsey, Dale C. Farran, Kerry G. Hofer, A Randomized Control Trial of a Statewide Voluntary Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Skills and Behaviors through Third Grade (Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University, September 2015).