The Education Gadfly Weekly

Lori Drummer and Don Soifer
Lexington Institute
June, 2010 

Latino children are twice as likely as white children to score “below basic” in reading on both the fourth and eighth grade NAEP tests; this figure has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade. Latino students also drop out at high rates and are less likely to go on to earn college degrees. In Libertad de la Educacion, Drummer and Soifer lament these data and argue for school choice strategies to close the achievement gap between Latino students and their white peers: specifically, online education, school vouchers, and special education scholarships.

Online learning – which allows for a more individualized study plan for each student, as well as access to qualified faculty regardless of geographic location – is especially beneficial for poor and rural Latinos who may lack access to highly effective instructors or robust curricular offerings.

Vouchers to send low-income students to private schools can help improve Latino performance, as well. If the experience of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (the nation’s oldest tax-payer-supported voucher program serving over 20,000 children) is any indication, Latinos are well served. According to the University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project, MPCP students outpaced their counterparts in almost all indicators by eighth grade – and 15 percent of the students served are Latino. Latino students using MPCP vouchers scored higher than their peers in all content areas. Expanding Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship (which recently reached its 14,000 cap) could serve Latino students well, especially as the Ohio Department of Education is now collecting data on the academic performance of EdChoice students which can be broken down by racial group.

Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program applies only to the parents of children with autism (other states, like Florida, allows the scholarship to serve children with all disabilities). Overall, minority students – including Latinos – have higher rates of learning disabilities. Expanding Ohio’s special education scholarships would open opportunities for Latino students to receive the type of education they need.

Latino students in Ohio underperformed their white peers at every grade level and in every content area on 2009 state tests. If the Buckeye State is serious about lifting the performance of Latinos, the school choice recommendations laid out in this report are a good starting point. Read it here.

Saba Bireda
Center for American Progress
June 2010 

Momentum is building to reform teacher dismissal policies. Federal and state policymakers alike are calling for changes to K-12 education’s highly complex and costly dismissal procedures, especially as school districts face looming budget cuts.

In Devil in the Details, author Saba Bireda takes an in-depth look at all fifty states’ dismissal policies, and provides several recommendations for improvement. Dismissal procedures were originally established to protect teachers from unfair management decisions. However, due to the lack of sound policies informing the selection, evaluation, and development of teachers, the dismissal hearing is often the first time that performance issues are seriously discussed.

The report describes numerous problems that make the dismissal process cumbersome and difficult to manage. Among the most astonishing is that the same hearing procedures are used for all teachers regardless of the reason for dismissal. This means that teachers being accused of incompetence in the classroom go through identical dismissal procedures as though that have violated criminal laws. After a thorough description of the problems surrounding current teacher dismissal policies, the report lays out five recommendations for improvement. Among these is one especially critical for Ohio: the need to spell out what defines “ineffective” classroom performance. In particular, the report suggests multiple measures, including student achievement on standardized tests, to inform how we measure classroom effectiveness.

This report is important. Currently, tenured teachers are protected from dismissal except in rare cases. Worse, teacher evaluation systems do not attempt to define “effectiveness” or “ineffectiveness,” or tie tenure and dismissal to classroom performance. As Ohio moves forward with its new four-tier teacher licensure system (and its Race to the Top plan, should it win), the state should spell out what constitutes effective teaching. This will not only help to reduce the ambiguity, time, and cost involved in dismissal processes, but will align the teacher evaluation system with how teachers are retained, developed, and dismissed.

Read the report here.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently lifted up Baltimore City Schools as a possible model for Cleveland. In fact, Cleveland Metropolitan Schools CEO Eugene Sanders’ district transformation plan sounds remarkably similar to Baltimore’s 2008 Great Kids Great Schools Initiative, which aimed to lift student achievement, raise graduation rates, and overhaul the district via a portfolio-management style of schools.

But Cleveland has a long way to go to achieve either the reforms implemented by Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso (who earned no mention in the Plain Dealer article despite being the primary driver of reform) or the resulting achievement gains – among students in grades 3-8, the percent scoring proficient or advanced in reading on state tests has gone up twenty percentage points over the past four years (52.8 to 72.4 percent), while math proficiency levels have risen 22 points (41.5 to 63.5 percent).

Simply put, Baltimore has four policies in place that Cleveland does not.

Robust choice. Baltimore has a robust school choice climate, with an open enrollment process for middle and high school students, and transfers within the district allowed for elementary students. There are 30 charter schools, 15 “transformation” schools (which combine middle and high school around a particular theme) and 10 innovation schools. Cleveland should consider a similar open-enrollment program so as to expand intra-district choice. Further, Sanders will need to have a zero-tolerance attitude toward scenarios such as the CTU’s attempt to unionize charters.

Weighted-student funding. One of the boldest changes that Alonso has enacted is weighted-student funding, making Baltimore one of 15 major school districts utilizing WSF. Under WSF, funding amounts are determined by “weights” assigned to students based on their individual education needs (e.g., poor or limited-English proficient children get extra dollars), and funds flow directly to the school where children enroll, rather than pooling at the district level. Cleveland’s intention to expand school choice and adopt a portfolio style of school management will hinge on having a modern, flexible funding system, not an antiquated method that funds traditional schools at a greater level than schools of choice.

Building-based decision making. WSF calls for decision making authority to be devolved down to the building level. Funds flow directly to the schools where children enroll, and principals have the freedom to determine how most of those dollars are spent. In Baltimore, Alonso trimmed the size of the central district office (by $165 million), cutting non-essential positions and directing 80 percent of Baltimore’s operating funds directly to schools. If Sanders hopes to spur innovation and expects principals to achieve dramatic results, he should offer them freedom over their budgets, personnel, and curriculum. Sanders has already defended his move to force Cleveland teachers to reapply for their own positions (rather than upholding seniority-based transfers) but is being sued by the Cleveland Teachers Union. How this shakes out will be indicative of the likelihood that Sanders’ vision for the district can be realized.

Emphasis on teacher contract reforms. Seniority-based layoffs are already threatening Cleveland’s innovation schools. For the transformation plan to succeed, Sanders must fight for changes to the union contract that will protect quality teachers over seniority rules. In Baltimore, Alonso has indicated his support for reforms suggested by the National Council on Teacher Quality, including changes to teacher pay, teacher dismissal, and the school calendar. Baltimore Schools and their union are currently in the midst of negotiations, but Alonso has instituted “mutual consent” hiring (which allows principals to have a say in who they hire for their school). The district is also supportive of using student performance data to inform teacher evaluations. This is evidence that the district realizes the need to reform teacher contracts in parallel with other structural changes. This is an important lesson for Cleveland, whose district has the second-most restrictive teacher contract in the nation (according to a 2008 Fordham study) and which threatens to seriously inhibit Sanders’ plan.

Sanders’ vision for CMSD is based on good things happening elsewhere – a “portfolio of choices,” transformation of the lowest performing schools, and innovative partnerships (including collaboration with charters). This vision, however, will be difficult to translate into meaningful changes to what happens in classrooms unless leadership and the union are able to agree to some bold policy changes.

Should Ohio win the $400 million it is seeking in Race to the Top, it’s important to know who will be affected. Specifically, what type of student will the much-talked-about funding touch? The state education department has touted that nearly 62 percent of the state’s public school kids will be impacted, including high numbers of African-American, Hispanic, limited English proficient, and economically disadvantaged students.

But what about participation of students according to how well their schools perform academically?

We’ve broken down the data to look at RttT participation among district and charter schools according to four performance-related measures. Regardless of which performance metric is used, a theme emerges: among students in the state’s lowest performing schools (defined in any one of the four ways) a significant number won’t benefit from RttT dollars, assuming Ohio wins them. Conversely, among the students in schools doing seemingly well, many will get the funds.

(If Ohio wins Race to the Top, the Ohio Department of Education will receive funding to do work at the state level that has the potential to impact all Buckeye State schools, including those that did not sign on to Race to the Top.  However, it’s unclear to what extent a district or charter school that couldn’t muster the local support to sign up for RttT in the first place, and which will not receive dollars to do RttT work at the local level, would participate in any reforms.)

RttT participation by buildings’ state academic rating

Of the students in RttT-participating charter schools, only 37 percent of those that will get funding attend the lowest performing schools in the state (those rated D or F by the state in 2008-09). Among district students, the number is starker: just 12 percent of district students in RttT – participating schools attend one that is currently rated D or F.

Chart 1

 Chart 2

It is important to note that this distribution of students in RttT schools by performance rating is roughly proportional to the overall distribution of students by school rating. Still, for a program whose primary emphasis includes turning around the lowest performing schools, this data show that – in Ohio at least – Race to the Top funds won’t flow in any targeted or strategic fashion to actually reach the schools serving the lowest performing students.

Table 1 shows the percentage of kids (charter and district) within each performance category that are signed on for RttT – and what percentage is not. Among all Ohio students in schools rated Academic Emergency (F), 17 percent of them are in schools not participating in Race to the Top. Among students in the next-to-worst category, Academic Watch, 15 percent of them won’t receive funding.

Table 1

RttT participation by state “Performance Index” score

Ohio’s A-F grading system is far from perfect and suffers from widespread grade inflation, with an overwhelming number of schools rated A or B. A school’s “Performance Index” score reflects a more accurate measure of schools’ true academic achievement, since it is a weighted average of student performance in all tested subjects or grades.

Table 2 shows that of Buckeye State students in the lowest performing district and charter schools (those that score below 80 and therefore fall below proficiency), 16 percent won’t get funds. Even worse, when the numbers are broken down to look only at the state’s charter students, almost one-third of kids in Ohio’s worst-achieving charter schools won’t get RttT funds.

Conversely, among students in the best performing schools (100 or above), over half will get Race to the Top funds.

Table 2

RttT participation by AYP

Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is an accountability metric that is the hallmark of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. AYP uses achievement results to measure growth over time – and schools that are otherwise high-performing can fail to make AYP with particular subgroups of students and therefore fail to make overall AYP.

Table 3 shows that 31 percent of all Ohio students in schools (district and charter) that did not meet AYP will not receive RttT funds. When the data are analyzed to look at district and charter schools separately (not shown in the table), 32 percent of students in district schools will not receive RttT funds. Charter students fare better – just 18 percent of students in charter schools that missed AYP will not receive RttT funds. While a majority of students in schools that did not meet AYP will be receiving RttT funds, one-third of all students equates to over 230,000 youngsters.

Table 3

RttT participation by graduation rate

The final table illuminates what high school students will be impacted by funds. As Table 4 illustrates, over half (55 percent) of Ohio students in district and charter high schools with a graduation rate of 90 percent or higher (the goal set by the state) will receive RttT funds. Meanwhile, among those schools with a graduation rate below 90 percent, almost a third won’t receive RttT funding.

Table 4

Overall, among all high school students in district and charter schools signed up for RttT, over two-thirds are in a high-graduation rate school (90 percent or above).

Chart 3

It is not surprising that many of Ohio’s disticts and charter schools – regardless of their academic performance– signed up for Race to the Top. As chronicled in the piece above, the state’s schools are facing serious fiscal pain. But Race to the Top was billed as a program that would help the country’s neediest students by getting better leaders into their buildings and better teachers into their classrooms.

According to this analysis, as many as a third of students in the most troubled schools won’t get funding. This is unfortunate because it’s precisely those students in districts or charters with low graduation rates, poor academic ratings, and failure to make AYP that stand to benefit most from RttT’s reforms and resources.

If Ohio follows through with its application promises and requires districts to include student performance data in teacher evaluations, redistribute teachers and principals to the neediest schools, or implement a number of other RttT-related provisions – it isn’t the kids in decently performing schools that need those reforms. This seems like a Race to the Top for many of the kids who are already close to the peak, while those in the valley can only watch and wait.

A PDF version of this analysis is available here.

Lori Drummer and Don Soifer
Lexington Institute
June, 2010 

Latino children are twice as likely as white children to score “below basic” in reading on both the fourth and eighth grade NAEP tests; this figure has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade. Latino students also drop out at high rates and are less likely to go on to earn college degrees. In Libertad de la Educacion, Drummer and Soifer lament these data and argue for school choice strategies to close the achievement gap between Latino students and their white peers: specifically, online education, school vouchers, and special education scholarships.

Online learning – which allows for a more individualized study plan for each student, as well as access to qualified faculty regardless of geographic location – is especially beneficial for poor and rural Latinos who may lack access to highly effective instructors or robust curricular offerings.

Vouchers to send low-income students to private schools can help improve Latino performance, as well. If the experience of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (the nation’s oldest tax-payer-supported voucher program serving over 20,000 children) is any indication, Latinos are well served. According to the University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project, MPCP students outpaced their counterparts in almost all indicators by eighth grade – and 15 percent of the students served are Latino. Latino students using MPCP vouchers scored higher than their peers in all content areas. Expanding Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship (which recently reached its 14,000 cap) could serve Latino students well, especially as the Ohio Department of Education is now collecting data on the academic performance of EdChoice students which can be broken down by racial group.

Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program applies only to the parents of children with autism (other states, like Florida, allows the scholarship to serve children with all disabilities). Overall, minority students – including Latinos – have higher rates of learning disabilities. Expanding Ohio’s special education scholarships would open opportunities for Latino students to receive the type of education they need.

Latino students in Ohio underperformed their white peers at every grade level and in every content area on 2009 state tests. If the Buckeye State is serious about lifting the performance of Latinos, the school choice recommendations laid out in this report are a good starting point. Read it here.

Saba Bireda
Center for American Progress
June 2010 

Momentum is building to reform teacher dismissal policies. Federal and state policymakers alike are calling for changes to K-12 education’s highly complex and costly dismissal procedures, especially as school districts face looming budget cuts.

In Devil in the Details, author Saba Bireda takes an in-depth look at all fifty states’ dismissal policies, and provides several recommendations for improvement. Dismissal procedures were originally established to protect teachers from unfair management decisions. However, due to the lack of sound policies informing the selection, evaluation, and development of teachers, the dismissal hearing is often the first time that performance issues are seriously discussed.

The report describes numerous problems that make the dismissal process cumbersome and difficult to manage. Among the most astonishing is that the same hearing procedures are used for all teachers regardless of the reason for dismissal. This means that teachers being accused of incompetence in the classroom go through identical dismissal procedures as though that have violated criminal laws. After a thorough description of the problems surrounding current teacher dismissal policies, the report lays out five recommendations for improvement. Among these is one especially critical for Ohio: the need to spell out what defines “ineffective” classroom performance. In particular, the report suggests multiple measures, including student achievement on standardized tests, to inform how we measure classroom effectiveness.

This report is important. Currently, tenured teachers are protected from dismissal except in rare cases. Worse, teacher evaluation systems do not attempt to define “effectiveness” or “ineffectiveness,” or tie tenure and dismissal to classroom performance. As Ohio moves forward with its new four-tier teacher licensure system (and its Race to the Top plan, should it win), the state should spell out what constitutes effective teaching. This will not only help to reduce the ambiguity, time, and cost involved in dismissal processes, but will align the teacher evaluation system with how teachers are retained, developed, and dismissed.

Read the report here.