The Education Gadfly Weekly

Ohio has been a hotbed of education reform in recent years, but two policy areas remain mostly virgin territory: teacher preparation and licensure. I tackled the former previously; now let’s examine three significant problems with Ohio’s approach to the latter.

1. Lack of content tests for early childhood licenses

According to NCTQ’s 2014 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, Ohio is one of only four states in the nation that doesn’t require all elementary teachers to pass a content test prior to licensure (see here for the Ohio details). A list of required assessments shows that early childhood (PK–3) teachers are only required to pass the Assessment of Professional Knowledge: Early Childhood (which tests pedagogical knowledge) and Early Childhood Education assessments. The second of these tests is intended to assess a candidate’s content mastery, but closer inspection reveals that the only core content with its own, separate part of the test is language and literacy development. Math, social studies, and science content are smaller parts of “Domain III” which itself only accounts for 36 percent of the test. This 36 percent is divided among music, drama, creative movement, dance, visual arts, health, safety, and physical activity in addition to science, math, and social studies. No one is going to argue that language and literacy aren’t important enough to have their own section, but aren’t science, math, and social studies important enough to be separate too?

To put it bluntly, Ohio has no way of knowing if the teachers it places before its youngest students are actually proficient in many of the subjects they teach. Sure, content in the younger grades is less complex than it is at the secondary level, but does that really mean Ohioans don’t want teachers who have demonstrated content mastery? Ohio should require early childhood teacher candidates to take a rigorous test that assesses knowledge of all core academic content. This assessment doesn’t have to be four separate tests: It could be one test made up of four separately graded sections (like the ACT). In Indiana, for example, elementary and early childhood teacher candidates are required to take a content test in each of the four core areas—and earn a passing score on each subtest.

2. Secondary social studies and science licenses

In past years, Ohio teacher candidates have taken Praxis II exams to determine whether they are qualified to receive a teaching license. However, beginning in September 2013, the Ohio Assessments for Educators (OAE) began to replace most Praxis II exams. The new assessments are designed to serve the same purposes as the old: to measure professional, pedagogical, and subject-specific knowledge and skills.

A close look at the required assessments for each license and the content covered on those assessments reveals that a couple of secondary licenses fail to effectively assess teachers’ content mastery. In secondary classrooms, core classes have several different disciplines. For example, in science, students can take physical science, biology, chemistry, or physics courses. Likewise, in social studies, a student can take European history, American history, world history, American government, comparative government, or geography courses.  These disciplines are vastly different, and they require vastly different sets of content knowledge in order to be taught effectively. Why, then, does Ohio permit integrated licenses that don't differentiate between disciplines? Tests for specific disciplines are offered, but candidates aren’t required to take a specific discipline test unless they’re applying for a specific discipline’s license.

In other words, if a candidate applies for an integrated science or integrated social studies license, then they take an integrated test—a test that covers a broad swath of content from multiple disciplines instead of one discipline in depth. Based on the OAE integrated social studies exam, a teacher who earns a passing grade has effectively mastered the content of historiography, world history, U.S. history, geography, culture, government, and economics well enough to teach it—after nothing more than a 150-question multiple-choice test. Undoubtedly there are some teachers who have mastered all of that content; but an integrated test won’t differentiate between those who have and those who haven’t.

To be fair, there are issues with discipline-specific licenses that must be considered prior to policy changes. For example, does requiring science and social studies teachers to be licensed in specific content areas limit a school’s ability to find or assign teachers? Should integrated licenses for math and English teachers also be eliminated, potentially opening up the possibility for dozens of unneeded specialty licenses? (Just imagine licenses for journalism, creative writing, yearbook, British literature, American literature, poetry, drama, and so on.) Assessing high school teachers’ content mastery is vitally important—but that assessment must not go overboard.

3. Special education licenses

The 2014 State Teacher Policy Yearbook also points to another area where Ohio must raise the bar: special education licensure. Right now, Ohio law permits one license to be valid for teaching special education children ranging from kindergarten through twelfth grade. There is no specialization for particular grades, meaning that teacher candidates aren’t formally licensed to address the vastly different needs of elementary, middle, and secondary students. Moreover, there is no specialization for particular subjects. In fact, special education teacher candidates aren't required to pass a content test of any kind, meaning there is no guarantee that the teachers who aid some of Ohio’s most struggling students have mastered the content themselves.

The best way to fix this is to eliminate the K–12 special education license and require different licenses for elementary and secondary special education teachers. Furthermore, both elementary and secondary special education teacher candidates (like early childhood candidates) should also be required to demonstrate their content knowledge in the discipline they plan to teach.

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While licensure exams may seem trivial in the face of larger teacher preparation and accountability issues, the fact remains that they are vital gateways to ensuring that only the best candidates are permitted to stand in front of Buckeye children. If Ohio hopes to improve scores and the overall quality landscape, then rigorous teacher licensure policies are a good place to start.  

A torrent of complaints has been levelled against testing in recent months. Some of the criticism is associated with the PARCC exams, Ohio’s new English and math assessments for grades 3–8 and high school. The grumbling over testing isn’t a brand new phenomenon. In fact, it’s worth noting that in 2004, Ohioans were grousing about the OGTs! In the face of the latest iteration of the testing backlash, we should remember why standardized tests are essential. The key reasons, as I see them, are objectivity, comparability, and accountability.

Reason 1: Objectivity

At their core, standardized exams are designed to be objective measures. They assess students based on a similar set of questions, are given under nearly identical testing conditions, and are graded by a machine or blind reviewer. They are intended to provide an accurate, unfiltered measure of what a student knows.

Now, some have argued that teachers’ grades are sufficient. But the reality is that teacher grading practices can be wildly uneven across schools—and even within them. For instance, one math teacher might be an extraordinarily lenient grader, while another might be brutally hard: Getting an A means something very different. Teacher grading can be subjective in other ways, including favoritism towards certain students, and it can find its basis in non-achievement factors like classroom behavior, participation, or attendance.

But when students take a standardized exam, a much clearer view of academic mastery emerges. So while standardized exams are not intended to (and should not) replace the teacher grade book, they do provide an objective, “summative” assessment of student achievement. Standardized assessments of achievement can be used for comparison and accountability purposes, both of which are discussed in turn.

Reason 2: Comparability

The very objectivity of standardized exams yields comparability of student achievement, a desirable feature for parents and practitioners alike. Most parents, for example, would like to know whether their child is meeting state benchmarks, or how she compares to statewide peers. Statewide standardized exams give parents this important information. Meanwhile, school-shopping parents have every right to inspect and compare the standardized test results from a range of schools, including charters, district schools, and STEM schools, before selecting a school for their child.

School practitioners also use statewide test results to benchmark their students’ achievement across school and district lines. For instance, the principal of East Elementary could compare the achievement of her students against those attending West Elementary, the district average, the county average, and the statewide average. How do her students stack up? Only a statewide standardized test could tell.

Interestingly, proposals have been floated to allow schools to select their own assessment—a pick-your-own-assessment policy. This is a flawed idea and should be rejected. It would undermine the comparability principle of statewide testing.

First, to be clear, standardized exams are not the all the same. Consider an obvious example: Ohio’s old state tests and the PARCC exams are both standardized exams, yet they are as different as night and day. Meantime, a pick-your-own-assessment policy would open a Pandora’s box of confusion over how to interpret the results. Imagine that Columbus City Schools selects NWEA as its testing vendor and reports an 80 percent proficiency rate. Now let’s say Worthington City Schools (suburban Columbus) selects PARCC and reports a 50 percent proficiency rate. Should we infer that Columbus students are actually achieving at higher levels than Worthington? Or is the test just different? Based solely on these test data, we’d have no clue.

State assessment policy should not amount to a Choose Your Own Adventure for districts and schools. Instead, Ohio legislators must continue to implement a single, coherent system of standardized exams that provides comparable results.

Reason 3: Accountability

Like it or not, standardized exam data remain the best way to hold schools accountable for their academic performance. To its great credit, Ohio is implementing a cutting-edge school accountability system. The accountability metrics include robust measures often referred to as “student growth” or “value-added” measures, along with conventional proficiency results and college-admissions results. All of these outcome measures are based on standardized test results.

The information from these accountability measures enables policymakers to identify the schools that need intervention, up to closure. For example, the charter school automatic closure law uses state exam results—both school-level value added and proficiency—to determine which schools must close. In addition, districts can go into state oversight via the Academic Distress Commission if they are low-performing along test-based outcomes. Another use of standardized testing data is coming in the area of deregulation. One priority bill being considered in the Senate (SB 3) would give “high-performing” districts certain flexibilities and freedoms from state mandates. How are these high performers identified? Answer: Through state accountability measures, based on standardized test scores. 

Outside of standardized test results, no objective method exists for policymakers to identify either poor-performing schools needing intervention or high-performing schools deserving rewards. Consider the alternative: Who would want policymakers to intervene in a school based on their “gut feeling” or reward a school based on anecdotes? Statewide standardized exams are essential for upholding a fair and objective accountability system.

In a utopian world, one could wish away standardized tests. All schools would be great, and every student would be meeting their potential. But we live in reality. There are good schools and rotten ones; there are high-flying students and pupils who struggle mightily. We need hard, objective information on school and student performance, and the best available evidence comes from standardized tests. Policymakers need to be careful not to undermine the integrity of the state’s standardized tests. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures has put together a nice primer on accountability for private school choice programs. Twenty-three states, one Colorado school district, and the District of Columbia presently have such programs, including “traditional” tuition vouchers, education savings accounts, scholarship tax credits, and personal tax credits or deductions. Accountability requirements for schools participating in such programs vary. Most states require: 1) a measure of school quality (whether via student assessment data or outside accreditation), 2) determination of financial strength and sustainability, and 3) meeting minimum seat-time requirements. Once private schools are permitted to accept voucher students and public dollars begins to flow, the gamut of accountability measures—and the consequences of failing to meet them—broadens. Programs can differ by testing requirements for students (same-state assessments as their public school peers or tests of their own choosing), how and to whom test results are reported, whether outside accreditation can substitute for testing, and the level and timing of sanctions related to low performance. NCSL’s report provides an overview of the varying ways these accountability measures function in Louisiana, Indiana, and Wisconsin. While Ohio is not spotlighted, it could have been. Ohio law has some meaningful accountability built into its private school choice programs. For example, in the EdChoice and Cleveland Scholarships, the state requires private schools taking voucher students to have completed the state’s rigorous chartering process and requires voucher students to take the state assessment. Those test results are reported at a school level, but private schools do not face consequences for low performance. As we concluded in our private school choice policy toolkit last year, “private schools must maintain their autonomy and the qualities that make them worth choosing,” but a “sound balance” is needed between that autonomy and the need for taxpayers to know that their education dollars are being spent on “bona fide educational achievement.” NCSL’s report provides helpful context for state legislatures trying to thread that needle while working to initiate private school choice programs or to improve existing programs.

SOURCE: Josh Cunningham, “Accountability in Private School Choice Programs,” National Conference of State Legislatures (February 18, 2015).

Discussion of charter schools is everywhere in the Ohio news. Everyone has an angle, including a few unexpected ones:

• The Ohio Federation of Teachers is actively trying to unionize a number of charters around the state. They are having some success, like at Franklinton Preparatory Academy in Columbus. But don’t misunderstand the effort. “Although we believe that all teachers should have the right to organize,” clarifies OFT President Melissa Cropper in the Akron Beacon-Journal, “we don’t feel right organizing teachers in a school we are trying to shut down.”
• The Ohio Newspaper Association is using charter schools as a springboard to push its open-records “sunshine disinfectant” agenda anew.
• Journalists in Columbus and Toledo are questioning the appropriate amount for a charter school to spend on advertising. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), a statewide online charter, spends somewhere around 2 percent of its budget (over $2 million) on advertising to recruit students.
• State Auditor Dave Yost seems to find the in-depth charter school debate a useful one for focusing attention on the challenges of public/private hybrid entities—a particular bane for auditors, to be sure—of which charters are just one example.
• In Akron City Schools, the loss of students (and money) to online charter schools has hit so hard that they have decided to start up a new e-school program of their own, effective immediately. Its stated intention: bringing into the district elementary students who are enrolled in charters or homeschooled and retaining high school students at risk of dropping out.

Boarding schools are often associated with the rich and the privileged; as such, they are seen as an out-of-reach option for low-income families searching for high-quality education. But in a world of ever-increasing school choice, must boarding schools remain out-of-reach? Do tuition-free boarding schools that serve primarily academically struggling, low-income children exist?

The answer is yes, they do—but they’re extremely rare. A 2003 study from the University of Chicago interviewed policy experts, educators, child welfare and youth development professionals, and parents of children who attend boarding schools designed for students with social and economic disadvantages. The study concludes that “urban or community boarding schools represent a promising idea that deserves serious consideration.” Yet the authors are careful to point out that many people harbor concerns “about the meaning of out-of-home settings used primarily by low-income or minority children.” They cite America’s troubling legacy of using boarding schools for shameful reasons can lead to understandable suspicions about residential education models for low-income, high-need youth.

However, there are examples of places where the residential education model is already in place and working—and where families are thrilled with the results. In 2009, New York Times Magazine looked at the nation's first college-prep, tuition-free boarding school: the SEED school of Washington DC (also examined in the University of Chicago report). Run by the SEED Foundation, SEED DC is one three high-performing, college-preparatory public boarding schools that serve students from traditionally underserved communities. According to the foundation, approximately 98 percent of SEED students are minorities, 75 percent are Title I eligible, 91 percent have no family member who has attended college, and 12 percent are special-education students. SEED’s three campuses are located in Washington DC (a public charter), Miami (also a charter), and Maryland (a statewide public school). If there are more applications than openings, admission is determined by annual lotteries held in the spring. To apply, students must be rising sixth graders. The DC campus only requires that the student be a resident of DC, but both the Maryland and Miami schools require that students meet at least one “risk factor,” which could include (but is not limited to) being in foster care, having an immediate family member in prison, or having a record of suspensions, referrals, or chronic truancy. In terms of cost, donations cover the start-up operating costs, but public funds are used to cover operating costs after opening and vary depending on location. Needless to say, these schools are not inexpensive.

As for their achievement, SEED's results are impressive. In addition to academics, SEED boasts extraordinary student support services, mentoring, and college-transition services as well as plenty of activities, extracurriculars, and athletics. The schools also offer—with the aid of scholarships—plenty of “external opportunities” intended to enrich students outside the classroom, including service trips abroad, the experiment in international living (a program where high school students live abroad for a summer),  the City Kids Wilderness Project, and a whole host of other programs. 

In its plans for future schools, SEED’s website lists Ohio as a potential site. The story behind this is complex. SEED originally planned to open a school in Cincinnati in partnership with the Cincinnati Public Schools and with primary funding from the Farmer Family Foundation. The move was made possible by 2011 changes in law, which allowed for SEED and similar schools to open. The school's contract with ODE even permitted the department to close the school if it didn't meet its academic goals. The school planned to open in fall 2013, but in October 2012, the opening was delayed until fall 2014 due to issues with construction. By August of 2013, however, StateImpact reported that plans to open the school were dead. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the halt was due to the loss of funding from the Farmer Family Foundation, which decided to pull out due to “concern about the uncertainty around the biennial budget process.” In other words, even though the Ohio legislature had committed to help pay for SEED Cincinnati at the time, there was no guarantee that future legislators would do the same. The financial risk involved in relying upon appropriations instead of a regular funding stream was just too great. Despite this setback, the Farmer Family Foundation has said they remain dedicated to identifying ways to ensure quality education for at-risk youth.

So does the demise of Cincinnati’s SEED school mean the end of the residential model for at-risk students in Ohio? Not quite. The Plain Dealer reported in November 2014 that a company tied to the nonprofit Campus District Inc. is looking to lease and eventually buy Cuyahoga County’s old juvenile justice center and remodel it into a residential school geared toward struggling students. The executive director at Campus District not only confirmed that the group wants to open a residential school, but also that they’ve talked to leaders in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District about it—with the SEED schools offering a potential model. The Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools explicitly references a residential boarding school where “students would live and learn five or seven days per week with adult supervisors/teachers also living on campus.” With movement on the facilities front, it’s beginning to look like Cleveland could be the future location of a residential boarding school.

Only time will tell if boarding schools for at-risk students will become part of Ohio’s portfolio of schools. While the SEED school in Cincinnati didn’t pan out, the advent of a residential model in Cleveland—perhaps even based on the SEED model—seems promising. Issues around annual funding still exist, but if these issued are resolved, a residential model would be a welcome addition to Ohio’s school choice scene.

Since its birth in 1990, Teach For America (TFA) has been one of the most scrutinized education reform programs on record. Not without reason: TFA takes a bold, innovative approach to teacher selection and preparation. Instead of having aspiring teachers slog through the conventional education school coursework before setting foot in a classroom, TFA recruits young people from selective universities, provides a five-week training program, and places them in high-need schools, including in Northeast and Southwest Ohio. The research evidence on TFA teachers’ impact has been mainly positive—particularly in math in the higher grades. But somewhat less known is the impact of TFA in the earlier grades. This study analyzes TFA teachers’ effectiveness in grades PK–5, employing “gold standard,” random-assignment methodology. Researchers randomly assigned 2,153 students to 156 teachers—sixty-six TFA and ninety comparison teachers—in thirty-six high-poverty schools, most of which were located in the urban South. The study compares students’ reading and math outcomes from the 2012–13 school year along the Woodcock-Johnson III achievement test for grades PK–2 and state tests for grades 3–5. The main finding: Across grades PK–5, no differences in average math and reading outcomes were detected between students taught by a TFA versus non-TFA instructor. In other words, elementary TFA teachers were just as effective as their traditionally trained counterparts, who had an average of about fourteen years of classroom experience. But when the researchers broke down the research results, they discovered that PK–2 TFA instructors had a positive impact on reading—at a magnitude of roughly 1.3 additional months of learning. Therein lies the good news. The study reported no other significant outcomes, either positive or negative, for any other “subgroup” subject and grade-span combination. The upshot: As Sara Mead of Bellwether notes, some concerns have been raised about early elementary TFA. The hard evidence from this report should put those worries to rest.

Source: Melissa A. Clark, et al., Impacts of the Teach For America Investing in Innovation Scale-Up (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica, March 2015).