The Education Gadfly Weekly

When news broke the other day that LeBron James was starting a school in his home town of Akron, some commentators assumed it was going to be a charter. That’s an understandable mistake, as celebrities and stars of all stripes have gotten in chartering in recent years, from Andre Agassi to P. Diddy to Pitbull and beyond. And why not, given that in most places, the charter model comes with huge advantages for philanthropists wanting to make a difference, among them the freedom from district red tape and teacher union contracts.

LeBron chose to create his school in partnership with the traditional public school district, as a non-charter—likely due to his long-standing relationship with Akron City Schools. There’s no way to know whether he considered the charter route. But if he had, he’d have discovered a challenging charter school terrain suffering from the double whammy of recovering from a long-held poor reputation and inhospitable policies for education entrepreneurs.

First of all, kudos to LeBron, whose efforts to help struggling youth and his partnerships in Akron are nothing new. You can read more about the school plans here, but the gist is that the program will start off by identifying third graders who are already behind academically. Given what we know about third-grade reading proficiency predicting future academic and life chances, this is a sensible start for the program—which will grow downward to grades one and two and then up to grade eight by 2022. The school will focus on STEM and offer “hands-on, problem-based learning” while engaging families. Six out of ten of third-grade students in Akron fail to reach proficiency in reading, so there’s a clear need for the program.

LeBron’s vision for the I Promise School sounds similar to those of successful charter school founders. And the school will presumably serve a similar student population—those who are behind academically and disproportionately low-income. While the school won’t have the autonomy that most charter schools have, it also won’t be forced to navigate Ohio’s increasingly challenged charter landscape.

Charter schools, on average, receive one-third less funding than traditional public schools and cannot access local tax revenues (except for a few instances in Cleveland). They also lack facilities resources. A study released in January showed that Ohio charters are forced to dip into operations funding to pay for facilities; on average, about $800 per pupil of their already meager foundation funding goes toward building costs. Federal start-up dollars that used to provide a vital infusion of start-up capital are now so hard to attain that King James himself would probably find it easier to take down the Golden State Warriors again—no small task—than to access those dollars. Last week, the state announced eligibility criteria for the new round of federal Charter School Program grants. It’s early still, but from what I can tell, even Ohio’s very best charter networks may struggle to qualify to earn a CSP grant to replicate. For brand new schools, it may be easier to access the money, but you can count on one hand the number of sponsors that are eligible to authorize new schools this coming fall.

Ohio’s overall charter school reboot was a necessary development, and Fordham played an active role in advocating for many of HB 2’s reforms. But we should be gravely concerned if the overall charter climate—in terms of both regulation and resource availability—becomes so burdensome that education entrepreneurs have a hard time starting new charter schools. While Ohio’s charter landscape is shaking off its reputation as the Wild, Wild West, there still must be space—and support—for good charters to replicate and innovative new models to take hold.

Best wishes to LeBron in his endeavor, and to his overall partnership in Akron where historical performance data show there is tremendous need. I’m agnostic to school type: if innovation can spring up within traditional public school districts and deliver results for at-risk kids, then more power to them. At the same time, we must remain vigilant against over-regulation and wary of any climate wherein starting up a new charter school is about as likely as making a half-court buzzer beater. 

In politics as of late, there’s been a lot of talk about “going nuclear” in order to accomplish a goal. Ohio now has its own version of scorched earth policy in the form of House Bill 176, a wide-ranging education proposal that, if enacted, would do away with standards and accountability as we know it.

Many of its provisions—namely ditching Ohio’s Learning Standards for Massachusetts’ pre-2010 standards and ditching Ohio’s assessments for Iowa’s pre-2010 assessments—appeared in House Bill 212 back in 2015. That legislation did not move through the General Assembly, but one of its key proponents is at it again. Unfortunately, the new version is an even bigger nightmare than its predecessor.

In a separate piece, I’ll take a deeper look at why using Massachusetts standards and Iowa assessments are two steps in the wrong direction. But for now, let’s take a look at a few of the other changes HB 176 is trying to make and why they’re not in Ohio’s best interest.

Eliminating graduation requirements

Ohio has been abuzz with talk about graduation requirements and how to ensure that students are being held to high—but not ridiculously high—expectations. HB 176 has a solution, and that solution is to pull an Oprah and just give everyone a diploma. According to the revised bill language in section 3313.61, diplomas will be granted to anybody who “has successfully completed the curriculum in any high school or the individualized education program developed for that person by any high school.”  

For most folks, this seems reasonable—if a student has passed her classes, she’s earned a diploma. But grade inflation and a general lack of academic rigor makes “passing classes” a pretty low bar. That’s why Ohio instituted graduation assessments to begin with. The specific assessments may have changed over the years, but their purpose—to ensure that kids have actually mastered the basic reading and math skills their transcripts claim they have—remains the same. If HB 176 becomes law, the state will be moving away from decades of requiring students to demonstrate their content mastery in multiple ways. What will happen to these students when they get to a college campus or out in the real world and realize that they have a diploma but not the academic skills needed to be successful? Who will hire them or pay for their remedial classes?

Getting the state out of educator evaluations

Within the bill, the state requirement that each district have evaluation procedures for assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and other administrators has been completely removed. Teacher evaluations, however, would still exist—but only through policies adopted by local school districts.

Putting aside the fact that it’s unfair to evaluate teachers but not principals and administrators, the biggest problem with this change is that Ohio’s Educator Standards Board—which is largely made up of Ohio teachers—just released six recommendations for revising the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System. These proposed changes aren’t just a step in the right direction, they’ve also already been approved by the State Board and supported by lawmakers. Obviously Ohio’s evaluation system has significant problems. But fixing these problems based on solid recommendations from those who are most impacted by the system is a far better solution than doing away with the system completely.

Extending safe harbor

HB 176 would extend safe harbor through the 2019-20 school year. Safe harbor was originally put in place to protect students, teachers, and schools from sanctions brought about by the state accountability system during Ohio’s transition to new and more rigorous state assessments. Presumably, this new safe harbor extension is to give teachers and students time to adjust to yet another set of standards and assessments. But it also means that the state will end up having been in safe harbor for almost a decade.

Ditching district supports

Under HB 176, districts that choose to implement the bill’s proposed Massachusetts pre-2010 standards would be stuck with limited academic support. This is because the bill eliminates the requirement in current law for the state board to create a model curriculum. A model curriculum is based on the state’s academic standards and is designed to give schools an exemplar for how to design curricula aligned to state standards and assessments. Ohio law already leaves it up to districts as to whether to “to utilize all or any part” of the model curriculum, so doing away with it altogether can’t possibly be related to local control or flexibility. It’s just another casualty of the bill’s demolition of high expectations.

Then again, the lack of support from ODE probably doesn’t matter, since the bill’s proposed state assessments are from Iowa (pre-2010, of course) and aren’t aligned to any up-to-date standards or curriculum that Ohio schools could feasibly use. Without aligned standards, lawmakers are setting schools up to spend all their time teaching to a low-level test—and last I checked, that’s not what anyone wants.

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Believe it or not, these aren’t even all of HB 176’s troublesome provisions—the bill contains plenty more repeal actions and additions that are questionable and even downright irresponsible. When examined in its entirety, it’s clear that this bill has one underlying objective: To completely dismantle every aspect of accountability not required by federal law. It doesn’t seem to matter that accountability works or that these changes would ignore years of work to raise standards. HB 176 would transform Ohio into a state where academic expectations don’t officially exist and where we’re not quite sure what—if anything—students have learned before we deem them ready for the world. Our graduates, armed with substandard academic preparation and a given, rather than earned, diploma would suffer the consequences. 

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Thrice weekly, we publish a news and commentary blog. In it, we take a quick look at education news and opinion pieces from media outlets around the state, dig into the content, add our own analysis and commentary, and offer readers a sense of what these stories mean.

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NOTE: The Education Committee of the Ohio Senate last week heard testimony on SB 85, a proposal that would expand Ohio’s private school voucher program. Fordham’s Chad Aldis was a witness at this hearing and these are his written remarks. You can watch archive video of the hearing here, courtesy of the Ohio Channel. Chad’s testimony begins at the 10:16 mark; questions from committee members and Chad’s answers begin at the 19:17 mark.

Thank you, Chair Lehner, Vice Chair Huffman, Ranking Member Sykes, and Senate Education Committee members for giving me the opportunity today to provide testimony in support of Senate Bill 85.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C.

We've long believed that every parent should have access to a good school that meets his or her child’s educational needs. School choice in its many forms, including open enrollment, magnet schools, charter schools, homeschooling, and private school choice, is important when a zoned school—for whatever reason—isn’t a good fit.

While supportive of school choice, we’ve been a critical friend at times. Our advocacy work to improve Ohio’s charter sector is a good example of that. We’ve also funded research to study the effectiveness of charter schools, vouchers, and—coming soon—open enrollment. We aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions even when we are supportive of a program or policy. At the end of the day, we care most about what works for Ohio students.

With this background in mind, I’m pleased to say that Fordham strongly supports Senate Bill 85. It makes a number of changes that should significantly improve Ohio’s private school choice efforts.

Move to income-based eligibility

Senate Bill 85 would transition away from a system where student eligibility is based upon the school rating of a student’s assigned public school (often referred to a failing schools model) and toward a system based on a student’s family income. This is a positive shift and one that is long overdue. Reams of data tell us that low-income students, regardless of their assigned school building, continue to face the biggest education challenges. Moreover, they are also the students most constrained when their assigned school isn’t a good fit, and they aren’t making academic progress. Students of means are better able to move to another school zone, pay private school tuition, or afford transportation to open enroll in a nearby district.

Ohio’s use of public school performance to determine voucher eligibility is actually something of an outlier nationally. The American Federation for Children’s annual yearbook categorizes twenty choice programs as means tested and only eight as failing schools.[1] Participation numbers around the country paint an even clearer picture. There are more than 230,000 students enrolled in a means-tested program and less than 50,000 in a failing schools model. Noteworthy, more than 40 percent of the students nationwide using a failing schools model scholarship are enrolled in Ohio’s EdChoice program.

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Simplification

Moving to an income-based program and consolidating the EdChoice, EdChoice income-based, and Cleveland scholarships into a single Opportunity Scholarship would greatly simplify the current structure. Before moving to Ohio nine years ago, I was the scholarship (voucher) director at the Florida Department of Education. From experience, I can say that having multiple scholarship programs each with their own eligibility qualifications, enrollment windows, operational guidelines, and private school participation requirements presents significant administrative challenges. Ohio’s five separate programs likely makes providing effective oversight and technical assistance more difficult than it needs to be.

A program based upon particular academic parameters is also inherently more complex and even subject to gaming. Take the current situation: Ohio has 260 schools whose students are currently deemed eligible for EdChoice. If you looked at the academic requirements alone and ignored the safe harbor provisions in place, more than 800 schools would be on the list. That’s just the most recent example. A brief look at the student eligibility section for EdChoice (3310.03 ORC) shows that it’s anything but clear. The code contains a list of exception after exception as it attempts to navigate the district-driven student assignment process (students are only eligible if assigned to a low-performing school) and the various iterations of the state report card.

Being complicated for bureaucrats is one thing, but it’s especially problematic for parents. Senate Bill 85’s move to income-based eligibility is more intuitive, and parents will quickly be able to determine if they are eligible. It also allows greater stability for families as a student can move and retain his or her scholarship as long as income guidelines are still met. Right now, an EdChoice recipient risks losing the scholarship if he or she moves.

This legislation also makes getting the scholarship easier. The bill expands the application window and permits students to apply directly to the Ohio Department of Education for a certificate of voucher eligibility that they can then take to participating private schools. This will make it easier for parents to shop around and find the best fit for their children. Speaking of shopping around, the requirement for the state to begin calculating value added data for the voucher program will also be beneficial to parents. Right now, only proficiency data are available, which isn’t helpful if students enter a school already behind grade level. Growth data help show whether student learning expectations are being met or exceeded and will be incredibly valuable.

Funding

Ohio’s current system of funding private school choice programs is complex and utilizes a variety of mechanisms that vary by program. Senate Bill 85 creates a uniform funding mechanism that directly funds scholarships. This is a huge improvement, especially for the original EdChoice Scholarship. In EdChoice, a district reports voucher recipients as attending its schools, draws down additional state dollars, and then redirects state dollars to private schools. The funding structure creates an antagonistic relationship between school districts and private schools and often will misrepresent a school district’s need by changing its student count. Directly funding scholarship recipients has the long-term potential of not only being fairer but also reducing tensions between public and private schools.

Senate Bill 85 also creates a much talked about education savings account. This provision is far more limited than that seen in other states. Rather than placing a student’s entire per pupil allotment into a spending account, it involves only those dollars remaining at the end of the school year. This more conservative approach will greatly reduce the risk of misuse. More importantly, it could create some competition between private schools to keep tuition costs low as another mechanism to attract students rather than raising tuition to maximize taxpayer support. Given the nature of the other changes in SB 85, this change—while a good idea overall—is far less likely to have a major long-term impact.

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Finally, I’d like to address the research on the EdChoice Scholarship program released last July by Professor David Figlio of Northwestern University.[2] Fordham is extremely proud to have funded this independent research which is the most rigorous review of the EdChoice Scholarship to date. The report’s findings were mixed giving both voucher supporters and voucher critics something to point to in policy arguments. Students using a voucher to attend a private school tended to perform worse on state assessments than similar students not using a voucher. However, public schools facing competition as a result of vouchers tended to perform better.

It’s difficult, even as the funder of this study, to draw any strong conclusions from it. This was important work, but the rigorous empirical techniques employed by Dr. Figlio meant that we were largely studying schools and students near the EdChoice eligibility cutoff. In other words, this looked at student and school outcomes among the highest performing EdChoice eligible schools (those schools very close to the “C”, “D” dividing line). That means that we don’t have a good indication of the competitive or participant effects associated with the lowest performing EdChoice eligible schools.

Fortunately, there has been significant research done nationwide on the issue.[3] In fact, fourteen of eighteen random assignment (gold standard) studies looking at the participant effects of students in private school choice programs have found some or all students benefit, two find neither benefit nor harm to student outcomes, and two find negative student outcomes. The research is even stronger in regards to competitive effects. Competitive effects studies examine what happens to student outcomes in public schools when facing voucher competition. In thirty-one of thirty-three studies (using a variety of empirical methods), public school student outcomes improved. One study found no impact on student outcomes and another found a decline.

While the national evidence that vouchers have a positive impact is extraordinarily strong, we should continue to study how well Ohio’s program is performing. We therefore support the provision in SB 85 calling for the calculation of value added data which will be helpful to both parents and policy makers in the years ahead. There might also be merit, as some states have done, to provide in law for a regular empirical study of competitive effects, participant effects, and post-secondary student outcomes.

In conclusion, Senate Bill 85 makes a number of important changes that will strengthen the state’s private school choices. If this legislation were to be adopted, Ohio would have a simpler, easier to use system that serves students most in need and is funded in a fairer, more straightforward manner. For these reasons, we stand in support of Senate Bill 85.

About 95 percent of public school districts pay teachers according to years of experience and degrees earned—a traditional “step and lane” salary schedule. The other 5 percent have captured a great deal of attention, “spurring rapid growth in the number of research studies” and prompting this meta-analysis of the merit pay literature. Researchers at Vanderbilt pulled data from a few dozen merit pay studies to determine the answers to two primary questions: Do performance-pay programs have an impact on student test scores? And to what extent does program design matter—e.g., individual incentives versus group incentives?

The studies chosen for the meta-analysis went through a rigorous selection process. Analysts reviewed almost 20,000 records via social science databases like ERIC or NBER, ultimately choosing forty-four studies on teacher merit pay in the U.S. and internationally. Almost half were from peer-reviewed publications; all of them met standards for sound research design. Twenty-five percent were randomized control trials; the remainder were quasi-experimental designs. The studies came from a twenty-seven-year period (1989–2016), with most of them occurring after 2005 and with an average treatment effect of four years—in other words, the individual performance pay program under study was on average four years old.

The studies measured the impact of performance pay in the form of gifts, one-time bonuses, and permanent salary increases ranging from $26 to $20,000 in U.S. dollars, with the oddly specific former amount coming from a study in a developing country. Researchers ran a number of additional tests and employed research strategies to ensure their sampling of studies was not biased. For example, they included only the most recent data in studies by the same author(s) to avoid overweighting of data that appeared in multiple similar studies.

The results are good news for merit pay proponents. The average effect of teacher participation in a merit pay program was associated with a .05 standard deviation increase in student test scores—the equivalent of about four-and-a-half weeks of additional learning. Removing the international studies, the estimated effect was still significant at .04 (three weeks of learning). When treated separately, the results for math were higher (.07 standard deviation) than for English language arts (.04), though both were still positive and significant. The researchers don’t hypothesize why merit pay programs in the U.S. had a smaller effect size. One plausible explanation could be that the motivational forces at work under merit pay programs are stronger in countries where teacher pay is lower and where bonuses could represent a much higher percentage of overall pay.

The researchers also found that program design mattered. Teacher pay programs with group incentives (for example, rewards for teams of teachers, or those given at the school level) produced effects that were about twice the size of the average effect in the meta-analysis. Those with on-the-job training components—a requirement for the federal Teacher Incentive Fund—did see learning gains, but ones that weren’t any different from the average effect of all studies in the meta-analysis. In other words, schools might skip teacher training and just invest their marginal dollars in higher pay.

The report authors briefly discuss the theoretical basis for merit pay, noting that it can have a positive impact on student outcomes not just by changing teacher behavior and/or motivation but also because it affects who joins or stays in the profession. Six of the studies included in the meta-analysis found that performance pay had positive effects on teacher recruitment and retention. But this particular analysis can’t really answer the most burning questions it raises, like whether the overall positive effects on student test scores came from reducing teacher turnover, increased teacher effort, or some combination of those (or other) factors. Nor can it help us grapple with basic questions regarding how states should evaluate teachers or define their effectiveness. Finally, the meta-analysis is somewhat lacking in rigor given that the majority of the included studies are quasi-experimental rather than “gold star” randomized research designs. The latter such studies on teacher merit pay have in several instances found no or fleeting effects.

Even so, it’s a worthwhile read and could be especially useful to districts that are backing away from teacher performance pay even as the data shows that it could be good for kids.

SOURCE: Lam D. Pham, Tuan D. Nguyen, and Matthew G. Springer, “Teacher Merit Pay and Student Test Scores: A Meta-Analysis,” Vanderbilt University (April 2017).