The Education Gadfly Weekly

Part of the “Refocus Wisconsin” project commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, this issue paper is a smack in the face to the standard education regime far beyond the Badger State. After depicting the discouraging state of Wisconsin education, AEI’s Rick Hess and Olivia Meeks point to seven areas in need of improvement: teacher quality, curriculum, accountability implementation, excellence recognition, discipline and safety, charter school expansion, and interventions in low-performing schools. They then offer three feather-ruffling suggestions meant to address the structural barriers that impede dramatic leaps in K-12 productivity.  First, the “Gold Star Teachers” initiative would allow high-performing teachers to voluntarily take on additional students in exchange for greater compensation. This would give more students access to great teaching while reducing personnel costs. The second recommendation would create a bonded system of performance guarantees for charter operators. (Operators that failed to meet agreed-upon performance goals would owe considerable money back to districts.)  This would reduce district risk and encourage collaboration with outside operators. Finally, the authors propose “education spending accounts” that would allocate a chunk of per-pupil funds directly to parents to spend at their discretion—on tutoring, language classes, or other electives. The rationale: By introducing choice into the system, such accounts would stimulate healthy price competition and reduce the burden on districts to meet children’s varying educational needs. Though each comes with its own implementation challenges, all three suggestions are concrete enough to be feasible and amount to a fresh breeze through current, stale solutions.

Frederick Hess and Olivia Meeks, “Sounding the Alarm: A Wakeup Call with Directions” (Hartland, WI: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, 2010).

Bruce Baker, David Sciarra, Danielle Farrie
September 2010

This recent report from Rutgers University and the Education Law Center in New Jersey takes a look at states’ school funding systems and evaluates how adequately they serve the needs of all children, regardless of income or zip code, arguing that “sufficient” and “fairly distributed” funding is a prerequisite for high-quality education. The report looks at previous studies that attempted to analyze state school funding systems, and outlines areas where such methodologies fall short. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) rating of school funding systems failed to consider the differences in education costs across states, and studies by both Education Week and Education Trust left out regional differences in revenue that exists in small rural areas versus large urban districts. This report’s methodology builds on these shortcomings, and defines fair funding as:

A state finance system that ensures equal educational opportunity by providing a sufficient level of funding distributed within the state to account for additional needs generated by student poverty.

The authors measure the funding “fairness” of each state according to four measurements:

• Funding level: The overall level of state and local funding provided to school districts.
• Funding Distribution: The distribution of funding across local districts. This measure also tells whether states are providing more or less funding to high-poverty districts.
• Effort: A state’s spending on education compared to its state per-capita GDP.
• Coverage: The proportion of school-age children attending public schools compared to those attending private schools.

The report evaluated states by two methods. For measures that states have direct control over such as funding distribution and effort they were given a letter grade (A-F). For funding level and coverage the states are ranked against one another rather than graded because factors outside of their control such as state policy impact these measurements.

When it comes to the Buckeye State, the ratings are mixed. Ohio is considered a progressively funded state, meaning that poor districts get more money than wealthy districts. Ohio spent $11,821 on students in schools with high poverty, compared to just $9,054 on students in schools with no poverty. Ohio also has a higher than average per pupil funding amount. Ohio’s average per pupil revenue is $10,933, while the national average is $10,469. Check out how Ohio and various other states rank in terms of school funding here.

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently published an article about the poor performance of students at Ohio’s foreign language immersion schools. While poor test performance is unfortunately common in urban districts, as Fordham’s 2009-10 report card analysis shows, the article also touched on an important issue that gets a lot less attention: the status of foreign language instruction in Ohio.

From a national perspective, Ohio seems to be doing okay. Thirty-five percent of our students in grades 7-12 were enrolled in a foreign language class in 2000, compared to 34 percent nationally. More recent figures show that on average, Ohio’s districts required 1.6 years of foreign language courses for high school graduation in the 2007-08 school year. The national average was 1.4 years.

But these comparisons are incomplete. A better way to measure foreign language preparation in Ohio’s schools might be to look abroad, since our graduates are increasingly competing with young people around the globe.

In many other countries, nearly all students begin learning at least one, sometimes two, foreign languages in elementary school. Foreign language is often a required subject every year through high school graduation. In Ohio, only 20 percent of students in grades 6-8 and a mere three percent of our K-5 students were enrolled in foreign language classes in 2007, according to a recent state report. Most of Ohio’s students have little or no exposure to a language other than English until high school, by which time their ability acquire new languages is significantly reduced.

Of course, many contend that because English is currently the language of international commerce, learning a foreign language isn’t a necessity for our students. And the idea of making more language options available to our youngest learners is appealing, they would say, but Ohio’s looming budget deficit makes implementing it all but impossible.

Certainly, it’s unreasonable to look for increases in spending on foreign language instruction in the next year or two, but unless we begin to see the inadequacy of our current system, language classes will continue to be viewed as peripheral, non-essential “electives,” a perception that is putting our students at a greater and greater disadvantage with every passing year.

Consider for a moment the job market we face today. American businesses are expanding rapidly overseas, even as foreign companies expand on American soil (in 2006, foreign companies employed almost 200,000 Ohioans), producing an unprecedented need for people proficient in foreign languages and cultures. At the national level, the federal government is currently doing all it can to recruit foreign language speakers. The continuing shortage of language experts has already become a security risk that will grow in magnitude if qualified candidates continue to be unavailable.

In response to this rapidly growing demand for foreign language proficiency, Ohio has offered a mediocre response at best. The Ohio Department of Education recently began a two-year revision of Ohio’s foreign language standards, but preliminary reports on the proceedings indicate that more focus is being placed on re-categorizing wording than on raising language class requirements and providing more language study opportunities to students. Some districts in Ohio now offer foreign language immersion schools.

But as the Enquirer pointed out in its article, such schools tend to fall behind in non-language subjects. Further, stories like this one about a French immersion school in Columbus call into question how concerned these schools are about teaching even the target language they are built around. (The school hired four teachers with no French skills--much to the consternation of parents--because of the contract requirement that the first teachers laid off in a district be the first ones re-hired, regardless of the hiring school’s language requirements.)

In order for Ohio’s students to be prepared for competition in the global job market, such shenanigans must come to an immediate halt. They should be replaced with requirements that students begin learning languages earlier than grade 9 and that students take more than 1.5 years of language courses before graduating from high school. In the current budget crunch, expanding funding immediately for such programs may be unrealistic, but possibilities abound for the use of distance-learning technologies and programs like Rosetta Stone, as long as they incorporate substantial interaction with native speakers. The bottom line: If foreign language instruction in Ohio continues to receive only the scraps of district budgets and is held merely to the current paltry standards, our students will never acquire the proficiency they need to succeed in the modern world.

The gravity of Ohio’s $6-8 billion dollar budget hole and its unavoidable impact on K-12 education is about to hit home. Ohio’s budget cliff has prompted much worry but also optimism as it forces the state to grapple with tough spending tradeoffs. With serious budget decisions looming over us, it’s a good time to recognize that money has real limits if not coupled with tangible policy changes and driven by bold leadership.

There have been remarkable investments in (and hype over) public education reform over the past year– landmark federal grant programs, statewide legislative changes, some gutsy edu-films, and the usual celebrity bandwagon-jumping. We have a president and secretary of education who are liberal Democrats yet support the expansion of great charter schools, teacher evaluations based in part on student growth data, and other initiatives that Democrats typically feel tenuous about, and have tied real dollars to these ideas. Initiatives like Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (and i3, Teacher Incentive Fund, Promise Neighborhoods, etc. if you consider dollars to non-profit entities as well) are channeling federal dollars in a competitive fashion.

But, while these programs’ intentions are laudable, an analysis of how these “reform” dollars stack up against spending-as-usual is sobering.

Last spring, Andy Smarick examined the breakdown of federal stimulus dollars and pointed out in Education Next that the majority of these education allocations supported the status quo (not surprising in light of the piece by Terry and Jeff above). While Race to the Top garnered a lot of excitement and buzz, his analysis put into perspective just how inconsequential RttT dollars are, and probably will be, over the long haul.

A look at Ohio shows the same thing. Despite the state’s promises to enact some exciting reforms, the dollars we’ll spend on them shrink dramatically next to the other pots of federal money.

Take several Ohio urban school districts as examples. As charts one through four below show approximate funding allocations for “reform” activities in some of Ohio’s urban districts-- School Improvement Grants and Race to the Top, two sizeable programs directing money to schools and districts competitively and with strings attached. This is contrasted with “status quo” dollars – State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, the usual Title I and IDEA funds, and the recently passed federal jobs money to stave off teacher layoffs (“Ed Jobs”). (There are other notable “reform” pots of money such as the Teacher Incentive Fund, charter school grants, or i3- but those aren’t funneled exclusively to districts or schools. On the other end [status quo] there are other programs like funding for English Language Learners, but these are small in comparison and are not included the breakdown.)

Source: Ohio Department of Education

Note: These figures represent one year of funding and are meant to show how relative amounts compare to one another in a given year. SIG, a three-year program, was divided by three; RttT divided by four; EdJobs divided by two; IDEA, Title I, SFSF all represent one year of funding and are listed according to the most recent year’s worth of data on the Ohio Department of Education’s website.

Despite best efforts by some districts to institute bold reforms, you can see that reform dollars (at least those flowing from the federal government) are dwarfed by status quo dollars, with as much as 11 times more being spent on traditional programs and propping up current spending rather than on school turnarounds or Race to the Top-related reforms. In other words, even those K-12 initiatives considered most promising are dollar-store programs compared to typical funding streams.

This isn’t to say that increasing funds for such reforms would even be enough to make a dent in achievement gaps. Beyond this sobering portrait of federal money is the reality that the degree to which any reform attempts will lead to meaningful, lasting change depends on bold leadership from the state level and tangible changes to policy. Even though Ohio has won a combined $532 million from Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants, the state has done little to ensure that districts and schools move beyond business as usual. (See this article describing Ohio’s weak turnaround strategy, for example.)

In contrast, several other states have passed laws overhauling teacher evaluations, removing lifelong teacher tenure, or lifting charter school caps. Ohio has not.

Money – whether a tiny bit of or a whole lot if it – ultimately matters less than the manner in which we choose to spend it. Because of Ohio’s imminent budget problems, money weighs heavily on our collective conscience. This is ultimately a positive thing if it forces the state to rethink and reorder education spending. But dollars alone won’t do it. Figuring out how to adjust, cut, bolster, or merely shuffle education funding to various programs is worth a fraction of the effort that will be required to translate good ideas into state policy, move legislation, undo antiquated policies and regulations inhibiting reforms, and develop the political will necessary to pursue a reform path that will actually impact student achievement.

With No Child Left Behind’s 2014 deadline for all students to reach proficiency looming on the horizon, and federal action to revamp the act seems unlikely anytime soon, state accountability systems, including Ohio’s, are ratcheting up expectations for public schools. NCLB requires states to raise the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress, the percent of students who must be proficient in math and reading at each grade level) bar annually until 2014, when 100 percent of students are expected to be proficient in math and reading according to the state’s tests. As a result, it is increasingly more difficult for schools to attain AYP, and more and more otherwise high-performing schools are missing AYP goals and facing state sanctions.

After missing AYP for two consecutive years, a school is placed in “School Improvement Status.” Some chronically low-performing Ohio schools have languished in this needs-improvement zone for a decade now. But the face of schools requiring such rehab is changing.

Of the state’s public schools in School Improvement Status Year One (meaning those that have missed AYP for two consecutive school years), 66 percent are rated Effective, Excellent, or Excellent w/ Distinction by the state – the state’s highest rating categories. Twelve percent had a Performance Index Score of 100 or better, which is the state’s overarching achievement goal for all schools. Further, ten of these schools met both the Performance Index goal and met or exceeded the state’s value-added expectations, meaning their students are high-achieving and making annual academic progress, no small feat.

Nonetheless, these schools have been tagged as needing improvement. Under NCLB, they must send letters to parents notifying them of the school’s status (and offering the student an opportunity to enroll in a non-school-improvement-status building). And pursuant to Ohio's accountability system, they must develop improvement plans and dedicate significant time and resources to additional professional development and other initiatives called for in the Ohio Improvement Process.

So why are so many otherwise well-performing schools failing to make AYP? For one, there is a serious disconnect between Ohio’s rating system for schools and its accountability system. Take, for example, the varying goals schools are asked to meet.

The state aims for schools to get 75 percent of tested students to proficiency on each of the state’s tests, and that goal doesn’t change or increase with time. In contrast, by last school year Ohio’s AYP bar had risen as high as 80.6 percent proficient in sixth-grade reading and will continue to climb toward 100 percent across grades and subjects. The AYP goals for reading this school year have surpassed 75 percent and by next school year the AYP math goals will all top 75 percent, too. This means that come next year’s round of local school report cards, for the first time ever, a school will be able to meet every academic achievement indicator set for it by the state but still miss the AYP mark and face related state-imposed sanctions.

Significant state and local personnel and resources are tied up in these school-improvement efforts because of Ohio’s accountability, many of which have little to no track record of success. It’s a laudable, if lofty and perhaps impossible, goal to get all students to 100 percent proficiency. But in tough, and worsening, economic times, is it the smartest use of precious state and local resources to have inarguably good schools jumping through myriad regulatory hoops under the cloudy guise of accountability?

Bruce Baker, David Sciarra, Danielle Farrie
September 2010

This recent report from Rutgers University and the Education Law Center in New Jersey takes a look at states’ school funding systems and evaluates how adequately they serve the needs of all children, regardless of income or zip code, arguing that “sufficient” and “fairly distributed” funding is a prerequisite for high-quality education. The report looks at previous studies that attempted to analyze state school funding systems, and outlines areas where such methodologies fall short. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) rating of school funding systems failed to consider the differences in education costs across states, and studies by both Education Week and Education Trust left out regional differences in revenue that exists in small rural areas versus large urban districts. This report’s methodology builds on these shortcomings, and defines fair funding as:

A state finance system that ensures equal educational opportunity by providing a sufficient level of funding distributed within the state to account for additional needs generated by student poverty.

The authors measure the funding “fairness” of each state according to four measurements:

• Funding level: The overall level of state and local funding provided to school districts.
• Funding Distribution: The distribution of funding across local districts. This measure also tells whether states are providing more or less funding to high-poverty districts.
• Effort: A state’s spending on education compared to its state per-capita GDP.
• Coverage: The proportion of school-age children attending public schools compared to those attending private schools.

The report evaluated states by two methods. For measures that states have direct control over such as funding distribution and effort they were given a letter grade (A-F). For funding level and coverage the states are ranked against one another rather than graded because factors outside of their control such as state policy impact these measurements.

When it comes to the Buckeye State, the ratings are mixed. Ohio is considered a progressively funded state, meaning that poor districts get more money than wealthy districts. Ohio spent $11,821 on students in schools with high poverty, compared to just $9,054 on students in schools with no poverty. Ohio also has a higher than average per pupil funding amount. Ohio’s average per pupil revenue is $10,933, while the national average is $10,469. Check out how Ohio and various other states rank in terms of school funding here.

Part of the “Refocus Wisconsin” project commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, this issue paper is a smack in the face to the standard education regime far beyond the Badger State. After depicting the discouraging state of Wisconsin education, AEI’s Rick Hess and Olivia Meeks point to seven areas in need of improvement: teacher quality, curriculum, accountability implementation, excellence recognition, discipline and safety, charter school expansion, and interventions in low-performing schools. They then offer three feather-ruffling suggestions meant to address the structural barriers that impede dramatic leaps in K-12 productivity.  First, the “Gold Star Teachers” initiative would allow high-performing teachers to voluntarily take on additional students in exchange for greater compensation. This would give more students access to great teaching while reducing personnel costs. The second recommendation would create a bonded system of performance guarantees for charter operators. (Operators that failed to meet agreed-upon performance goals would owe considerable money back to districts.)  This would reduce district risk and encourage collaboration with outside operators. Finally, the authors propose “education spending accounts” that would allocate a chunk of per-pupil funds directly to parents to spend at their discretion—on tutoring, language classes, or other electives. The rationale: By introducing choice into the system, such accounts would stimulate healthy price competition and reduce the burden on districts to meet children’s varying educational needs. Though each comes with its own implementation challenges, all three suggestions are concrete enough to be feasible and amount to a fresh breeze through current, stale solutions.

Frederick Hess and Olivia Meeks, “Sounding the Alarm: A Wakeup Call with Directions” (Hartland, WI: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, 2010).