The Education Gadfly Weekly

Marc Schare is the Vice President of the Worthington City Schools Board of Education (in suburban Columbus), now serving his ninth year.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Marc Schare testified before the Ohio House of Representatives’ Rules and Reference Committee on August 26, 2014, opposing House Bill 597 which would repeal Ohio’s New Learning Standards. The following is from his written testimony before the committee.

We in Worthington are confused by this legislation. Perplexed really. Baffled might be the right word.

You see, the State told us back in 2009 that our “Excellent” rankings didn’t mean much anymore because Ohio’s academic content standards and cut scores were too low and that too many kids statewide were having to take high school all over again once they got to college. Fair enough, so Ohio responsibly adopted new academic content standards and recommended that we develop a curriculum based on those standards. For the next three years, teams of teachers representing over 20% of our total teaching staff met in small groups to re-write Worthington’s local curriculum. It was an enormous undertaking. The teams would methodically, standard by standard, define learning targets, compile lists of resources, determine best practices and associated professional development on a subject by subject, grade by grade basis. The result of this effort according to preliminary reports from ODE is that Worthington students using our new curriculum performed at their highest level in years.

While all this was going on, our Information Technology department was preparing to implement the PARCC assessments. This was also an enormous undertaking. Following guidance from the Ohio Department of Education and PARCC, our community passed a bond issue partially to secure technology funding. We increased the bandwidth in each of our buildings, bought PARCC compliant equipment, and created a plan for implementation. You can understand why, on the eve of the administration of these assessments, we are baffled that you want to repeal them and replace them with tests that assess  a set of standards that are no longer even being taught.

Which brings me to HB597. Under this proposal, all the work accomplished over the last 3 years-hundreds and hundreds of man hours, a curriculum which our administrators and teachers believe is right for kids and which our students are thriving, assessments which we’ve spent years getting ready for, professional development and a teacher evaluation rubric aligned with our curriculum, untold dollars spent just in Worthington, a parent base who by 70% to 15%[1] believe our new curriculum is academically challenging-- all of it just goes away for no discernable reason. You can understand why our Board, our Superintendent, our curriculum director, our entire administrative staff, our building principals and, of course, our teachers are quite concerned and absolutely baffled by this.

We could understand it if there was a groundswell of community opposition; however, in Worthington, there is not. As recently as last week, I surveyed our elementary school and middle school principals and the subject has rarely even come up. Last year, we had a hotly contested school board election and even though I personally knocked on many doors, Common Core came up perhaps a half dozen times, an experience shared by my fellow candidates. You can understand why we’re baffled.

We could understand this legislation if the standards represented a one-size-fits-all approach to education as alleged by repeal proponents. Indeed, this would seem to be the most serious criticism and would be alarming if true, but it’s not. In Worthington, teachers chose to focus on vocabulary acquisition as a consistent theme across content areas while designing our local curriculum but honestly, there were a dozen different ways to go. Our high school math curriculum, for example, is radically different than those in our neighboring districts of Dublin and Westerville. Don’t take my word for it – just check out the links above and you’ll see that Worthington teaches an integrated math curriculum while Dublin favors the traditional Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 path. Not only is Common Core not one-size-fits-all, it’s not even one-size-fits-all in my zip code. You can understand why we’re baffled by the criticism that Common Core is “one size fits all”.

We could understand this legislation if the standards were developmentally inappropriate or inflexible. However, our gifted students continue to receive appropriately differentiated services, our struggling learners continue to receive appropriately differentiated instruction and our parents, by 67% to 17%[2], agree that their child receives the academic support tailored to their child’s individual needs. You can understand why we’re baffled.

We could understand this legislation if we felt the heavy hand of the federal government in the standards. I’ve read that, somehow, we were incented to adopt the standards with Race to the Top money. Mr. Chairman, my district received $125,000 per year in Race to the Top money, or around 0.1% of my budget. Essentially, it was a rounding error. Frankly, that wasn’t enough to incent me to do much of anything. We embraced Common Core because it was the right thing to do for kids and we took the money because it was for things we were going to do anyway.

Let me be clear here. Personally, I believe the Federal Government should have no role in education policy. Currently, the United States Department of Education serves as a giant redistribution mechanism where Worthington taxpayers send money to Washington in hopes that some of it gets redistributed back to Worthington (unfortunately, with all kinds of strings attached). This model makes no sense to me, yet, I can comfortably support Common Core because the Federal government has nothing to do with it. If members of the Ohio General Assembly are concerned with Federal involvement in our schools, “No Child Left Behind,” “IDEA” and the First Lady’s school lunch initiative should be the target of your legislation, not Common Core.

We’ve heard the concern that student data privacy is at risk. However, Ohio law already prevents the dissemination of personally identifiable information and if necessary, those laws can be strengthened without destroying years of work.

We could understand this legislation if all the stuff you’ve heard about textbooks and ridiculous teaching methods and impossible to decipher homework and the inability to read the great works of literature was true, but it’s not true, at least not in Worthington. And since it’s not true in Worthington, it doesn’t have to be true anywhere. So much of what we’ve heard from Common Core opponents – things like  federal government intrusion, indoctrination, Bill Gates coercing districts to buy more Microsoft products, giant databases with student biometric information and on and on seems like more appropriate fodder for the new season of Doctor Who than a serious discussion of education policy.

Truth be told, I’m not so much pro-Common-Core as I am pro-stability. But even if we in Ohio collectively decide that Common Core has got to go, the plan as outlined in the legislation cannot be implemented in my district with fidelity and it would cause massive disruption to teaching and learning for years to come. We would need to create curriculum from old Massachusetts standards, try and find appropriate materials that align, redo all the professional development at great cost on an accelerated timeline only to redo the entire process two years after that.

The inevitable result of this mandate (and it is a mandate) is an academic purgatory for current students while the legislature continues its educational churn, year in and year out based on the political winds. A better solution would be to adjust the Common Core standards based on real-life experience. Let the current standards cycle play out and see if the standards really result in curriculum that is “college and career ready.” Then we can make adjustments as necessary in a controlled, non-panicky and non- political fashion in the next curriculum cycle. No entity can survive 180 degree swings in direction every few years, and public education is no different. I urge you to reject this legislation and I thank you for taking the time to listen to my comments.

Hearings on House Bill 597, the latest attempt to repeal Ohio’s New Learning Standards (which include the Common Core in math and English language arts), started August 18 and will continue this week. We’ve already discussed how similar HB 597 is to the Common Core. This should be a major issue for Common Core opponents—who should be mortified to find the fingerprints of Common Core all over their championed bill—but also for everyone else.  HB 597 doesn’t specifically demand much of Ohio’s to be developed standards, but what it does demand is already in the Common Core. That should leave most of us wondering why we’re even holding these hearings if what proponents want is already in place. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only problem with HB 597. Let’s take a look at some others.

The most troublesome aspect of the bill appears right at the beginning of the changes: It could all but end state oversight of public schools. The bill text reads: “no state funds shall be withheld from a school district or school for failure to adopt or use the state academic content standards or the state assessments.” Basically this means that even if the proponents of HB 597 get what they want, and Ohio goes through the grueling process of forcing teachers and students to abide by three sets of standards in four years, schools face no consequences if they choose to ignore those standards and their accompanying assessments. In other words, school districts don’t technically have to follow standards or give assessments at all. Ohio districts already have flexibility when it comes to following the state standards and still have that flexibility under Ohio’s New Learning Standards, but allowing districts to choose not to use state assessments would send the Buckeye state years backward to a time when accountability was nonexistent. The language is certainly odd, considering more than one proponent has boasted in testimony to “support accountability.” Do proponents believe that Ohio’s 40 percent college remediation rate will decrease if we stop monitoring kids’ progress and using it to identify needed supports and interventions?

Drafting new Ohio standards within the timeframe that HB 597 prescribes will be a problem, too. The bill states that “Not later than June 30, 2016 […] the state board of education shall adopt new statewide academic content standards for each of grades kindergarten through twelve in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies that are distinct and independent from the standards previously adopted by the state.”  At the hearings on August 18, the bill sponsors acknowledged that it was impossible for Ohio to draft new learning standards for the upcoming 2014-15 school year, or even for 2015-2016. Instead, Ohio will be subjected to another state’s standards (in direct opposition to the “Ohio-only” mantra we heard both last week and last November) until our “real” homegrown standards are completed. While sponsors seem to think two years is enough to draft entirely new standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and history for grades K-12, they are ignoring that drafters won’t actually get two years.

In order for this bill to become law, it must pass through the House, the Senate, and be signed by the Governor. Right now, the House vote isn’t even planned until November. Even if the bill passes the Senate and is signed by the Governor in November, that leaves drafters with only one and a half years (all of 2015 and half of 2016) to work with, not including the time it takes to actually get the standards adopted (remember, they have to be adopted, not written, by June 30). That also means that although teachers will have the entire 2016-17 school year to learn the new standards, they’ll be learning one set of standards while teaching with a completely different set. Common Core implementation has been happening for four years—and many teachers are still voicing concerns over needing more time to truly internalize them. How confusing will it be, then, when teachers are forced to learn and teach two separate sets of standards at one time?

The financial implications of HB 597 are also worrisome. Proponents are asking Ohio school districts to abandon millions of dollars of investment in the Common Core. They claim that Common Core is expensive, but they’re not asking for repeal in the name of saving districts money or being fiscally responsible. In fact, they’re planning to ask districts to fork out millions more for materials and professional development that align with two completely new-to-Ohio sets of standards, one of which hasn’t even been written yet. Since it hasn’t been written, that means even more money has to be spent. This brings forth another problem; these new Ohio standards would be just that—brand new, never tested, and unproven. The bill’s sponsor mentioned repeatedly how Ohio wanted proven standards. That explains why proponents want to move to Massachusetts standards in between Common Core and the new standards. It doesn’t explain why we’d go back to unproven standards, or why a bill sponsor would so blatantly cherry pick which unproven standards he supports and which ones he doesn’t.

One final note: HB 597 explains that if the state board of education wants to adopt or revise standards, “The standing committee having jurisdiction over education legislation in each house shall conduct at least one public hearing on the proposed standards or revisions.” This is interesting, since HB 597 itself completely circumvented the Education Committee by going to the Rules and Reference Committee (which one of the bill sponsors happens to chair). House Education Committee Chairman Rep. Gerald Stebelton (R) explained that “It’s obvious that this panel is stacked for delivery of a favorable vote.”  Rep. Tracy Maxwell Heard (D) noted on the opening day of hearings that Education Committee members would’ve liked to be a part of the hearings for HB 597. The bill says they can…once Common Core is repealed and new standards must be drawn up. For now, they’re unwillingly out of the loop.

On the first day of HB 597 hearings, Rep. Huffman opened by asking the representatives on the committee to consider the future of policymaking in Ohio. He argued that the Common Core represented a form of policymaking that is bad for Ohio—and implied that HB 597 would pave the way for making future education policy decisions in the Buckeye state. With all the aforementioned problems, it’s hard to understand how HB 597 is good policymaking—let alone good for the educators and students of Ohio. It’s also worth noting that while Republican bill sponsors may want to set standards via the legislature now, they might feel differently in the future if the Governor and the majority of the legislature are Democrats.  Regardless of who controls the Governor’s office, the House, and the Senate, setting academic standards through the legislature is bad precedent.  Add to that the circumvented (and rightly angered) Education Committee, and remarks from Senate President Faber  that, unlike the House,  the Senate will “always do everything through normal committee processes,” and we’ve got ourselves a roadmap for exactly what Rep. Huffman claims he wants to avoid: bad policymaking. 

Last issue, we told you the twisty story of VLT Academy – a charter school in the Cincinnati area that ended up closing for good before the 2014-15 school year. The saga included unprecedented efforts by the Ohio Department of Education to rein in poor authorization practices, a court challenge, a last-minute stay, and parents left scrambling for schools for their children just days before the school year began.

That chapter of the story ended with a new charter school – Hope4Change Academy—setting up a tent outside the locked doors of VLT, looking to sign up families for their school, even though their own sponsor contract was in question and it was entirely possible they wouldn’t open either.

Fast-forward. Ten days later.

The Ohio Department of Education referred the top two leaders of the Portage County Education Service Center for investigation, saying the agency attempted, as sponsor, to open Hope4Change despite being warned not to due to unsatisfactory vetting procedures. Officials of both entities have since traded barbs in the media, indicating yet another chapter to come.

The heart of the matter is that bad charter school authorization practices must end, or parents and students somewhere else—just like those in Cincinnati—will end up scrambling to find quality schools under pressure when their own are shuttered.

It’s nearly school report card time in Ohio. One thing to watch for when examining school performance is whether there are conflicting ratings. For the 2013-14 school year, schools will receive ratings along up to ten dimensions of performance, though no overall letter grade. For example, one might observe a school that receives an “F” on the state’s performance index but at the same time, also receives an “A” on the state’s value-added rating. Or vice-versa. How in the world can this happen?

Keep in mind that these two key ratings—a school’s performance index and value-added—are not the same. The performance index is an indicator of raw student achievement, weighted across a continuum of achievement levels. Value-added, on the other hand, is a statistical estimate of a school’s impact on student progress—expressed as learning gains—over time.[1] Although both measures are based on state test scores, they are different creatures: Achievement tells us more about how students perform; value-added provides evidence on how a school performs (i.e., the productivity of the school staff).

Hence, to understand the quality of a school, we really need both measures. Outside observers—parents, taxpayers, and others—should know whether a school’s students, on average, possess literacy and numeracy skills—that’s achievement. And they should know whether a school is contributing to learning over time—that’s progress.

Now back to the question of mixed ratings. How many schools in Ohio have conflicting results, particularly of the low-achievement but high-progress variety?[2] Moreover, how should we think about the overall quality of these schools?

To uncover high-progress but low-achievement schools, I rank all schools statewide by their numerical scores on value-added (progress) and performance index (achievement). I then look for schools ranked in the top 20 percent in value-added and the bottom 20 percent in performance index. In terms of A-F ratings, all schools in the top 20 percent in value-added were rated an “A”, while the bottom 20 percent schools in performance index received a “C” rating or lower.[3]

Table 1 lists forty-three high-progress, low-achieving schools in Ohio, as defined by the criteria above. The far-right column shows that virtually all of these schools were high poverty, which may explain, in part, the low achievement ratings of these schools. It’s widely understood that achievement is typically associated with the characteristics of a student’s family. Fifteen of these schools were charters. All of these schools are located in urban or inner-ring suburban areas. It also bears noting that these forty-three schools represent a fairly small fraction of very high-poverty schools in Ohio—just 13 percent of schools reporting 90 percent or more ED.

Table 1: High-progress, low-achievement schools in Ohio - 2012-13

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Source: Ohio Department of Education Note: Schools shaded in green are public charter schools. ED denotes the percentage of students flagged as “economically disadvantaged,” a widely-used proxy for students’ family backgrounds.

Were someone to consider only the achievement measure, they might have labelled these schools a “failure.” That would have been a mistake. These schools are helping their students make gains over time, even when facing challenging circumstances. (Starting with 2012-13 results, the value-added gains are the average over the three most recent school years, if available.) But at the same time, it is not justified to call these schools outright exemplars, or schools deserving of an overall “A” rating either. Student achievement still remains too low.

Think of it this way: We wouldn’t call a two-year college a “failure” just because it doesn’t produce the same number of Rhodes Scholars as Case Western or Ohio State. When we determine the effectiveness of a community college we’d consider how well it prepares a student for a career or a four-year university. Community colleges that prepare students for whatever comes next are getting their job done. And to some degree, that’s what these schools are doing: giving children, who generally come from less privileged backgrounds, a lift in life.

(On the other hand, there are public schools that could rightly be called “failing.” Last year, 133 schools in Ohio displayed both low achievement and low progress ratings—bottom 20 percent on both indicators. If school ratings remain low along both indicators for years on end, intervention or closure ought to happen.)

In conclusion, the point is this: Achievement ratings alone don’t tell the whole story of a school. We need a balanced look at school quality. As is evident from this analysis, there are schools that do well on progress but poorly on achievement. How do we view such “mixed” rated schools? They are productive schools and promising ones, too. But at the end of the day, their students still need much help to succeed in the long run.

Released on August 20, The Condition of College & Career Readiness examines the college readiness of the high school class of 2014 using ACT test scores and College Readiness Benchmarks. Approximately 1.85 million students, or 57 percent of all American graduates, took the ACT in 2014—an astounding 18 percent increase since 2010. Ohio students posted an average composite score of 22—relatively unchanged from previous years and one point above the national average. More interesting are the College Readiness Benchmarks, which indicate the chance of a student earning a B or higher in a college course in English composition, Algebra, biology, or social science. The overall report provides this data for the nation, but individual state level data is also available (Ohio’s data). It’s not a pretty picture. Of the 72 percent of Ohio’s 2014 graduating seniors who took the ACT, only one in three (32 percent) scored high enough to be deemed college ready in all four academic areas. Because not every student took the ACT, only around one in four (23 percent) of Ohio seniors can be considered college ready. If, as expected, PARCC sets its cut scores at the college and career ready threshold, Ohioans will to need to prepare themselves for the challenge that awaits as we work to make sure that more students have the skills they need to be successful on whichever path they choose after high school. Check out the report for a more detailed look at the persisting national achievement gap, top planned college majors, and the importance of a college preparatory curriculum.

Source: The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014 National (ACT, August 2014).