While adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have spurred a hailstorm of activity across educator and policy circles alike, the general public remains clueless even as to what the standards are—never mind how they are being implemented or what the long-term implications of their adoption might be.
While adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have spurred a hailstorm of activity across educator and policy circles alike, the general public remains clueless even as to what the standards are—never mind how they are being implemented or what the long-term implications of their adoption might be. Through this national poll (given to 800 registered voters), the folks at Achieve find that a whopping 60 percent of Americans have never heard of the Common Core standards—and another 21 percent have heard “not much.” Further, among voters who have heard peep about the Common Core, impressions are mixed: Thirty-seven percent view them favorably while 34 percent hold an unfavorable opinion (the rest are undecided). Despite this mixed reaction to the CCSS specifically, Americans overwhelmingly approve of the idea of common academic standards for all states: sixty-six percent support vs. 31 percent opposed. (Even a majority of Republicans like the notion of common standards.) But with so few people in the know, it’s clear that Common Core remains fragile politically. The good news, however, is that public-school teachers (most of whom have heard “a lot” about the Common Core) like the idea of common standards: Sixty-five percent of them are in support. That’s a promising indication that these standards might actually have some staying power in the classroom—if the public doesn’t come to dislike them first.
“Strong Support, Low Awareness: Public
Perception of the Common Core State Standards”
Achieve, Inc.
October 2011
Strong teachers and leaders are undoubtedly critical to the success of any school system; research has repeatedly suggested that school leadership is second only behind classroom instruction in its impact on student learning. The autonomous nature of charter schools makes the need for strong school leadership even more crucial. Charter school advocates who are trying to increase the number of quality charter schools and replicate high-performing schools must consider not only how they are going to retain talented individuals, but also how to support a talent pipeline.
A recent report by Public Impact, with the help of Foundation Strategy Group (a social impact consulting firm), identifies six indicators that have the biggest impact on recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers and leaders. The report draws from two cities, New Orleans and Indianapolis, to demonstrate how these indicators are being used successfully in practice:
Both New Orleans and Indianapolis are utilizing a combination of the indicators mentioned above and have seen tremendous results. In 2011 Indianapolis charter school students were outperforming their peers in traditional schools. New Orleans charter schools continually outperform district-run schools, and over a dozen of their charter schools have demonstrated exemplary growth, the state’s highest rating.
Creating a teacher and leader pipeline is a difficult task and one that Ohio must think more seriously about developing. Ohio also faces challenges such as gaining political support, recruiting national talent providers to the state, and raising philanthropic support.
"Developing
Education Talent Pipelines for Charter Schools"
Public Impact
Daniela Doyle and
Lucy Steiner
2011
The State Board of Education has just eight weeks left to develop a model framework for teacher evaluations that will be used or adapted by over 1000 local education agencies (LEA) by July of 2013. (Ohio’s biennial budget – HB 153 – stipulated that the Board come up with a model by December 31 of this year.) Skeletal requirements are spelled out in state law. Evaluations must: include measures of student growth (50 percent); be based on multiple measures; rate teachers according to four tiers of effectiveness (accomplished, proficiency, developing, and ineffective); and inform other personnel decisions, particularly layoffs (strict seniority-based layoffs were struck from state law).
But what else will the model framework include, especially for that remaining - and some would argue more important - 50 percent of a teacher’s rating? To what degree will districts and charter schools need to enact a replica of the state’s forthcoming model, or something closely resembling it, instead of merely repackaging their current systems? And how will teacher evaluations impact other key personnel decisions, if at all? Despite the fact that legislation clearly spells out a handful of requirements surrounding Ohio’s new teacher evaluations, the answers to these questions aren’t as straightforward as one might think.
In Fordham’s analysis of Ohio’s education legislation from the first half of 2011 (primarily the biennial budget, HB 153), we observed that when it comes to teacher evaluations, “the budget leaves many decisions to local districts.” Depending on whom you ask – this can be a recipe for watering down evaluations or it could be a fact worth celebrating, in that it allows districts themselves to take ownership and drive meaningful reforms to teacher effectiveness.
Recent analyses from two well-respected national organizations put statewide teacher evaluations in national context. In State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies, the National Council on Teacher Quality summarized the state of teacher effectiveness policies nationwide, zooming in on 17 states and the District of Columbia (including Ohio) that require student growth to be a predominant factor for teacher ratings. (Note, NCTQ publishes a comprehensive annual yearbook on state teacher policies broadly that is also worth checking out.)
In State of the States, Ohio was among just a handful wherein teacher evaluation ratings aren’t directly tied to dismissal, certification, or tenure. That is, among the dozen and a half states under study, the vast majority have prescribed not only what shall comprise a rigorous teacher evaluation but also how it will factor into high-stakes decisions – whether rewards or sanctions.
Democrats for Education Reform’s Built to Succeed? Ranking New Statewide Teacher Evaluation Practices took it a step further and ranked states, attempting to measure “which of those [19 states plus DC] states’ laws are tough enough to withstand the challenges ahead and are most likely to succeed in increasing teacher quality.” DFER depicted Ohio as one of just a few states with “clear potential for weakening the evaluation process at the ground level,” ranking Ohio among the bottom third of states overall and bottom-most among states in the Midwest. When it comes to having real implications for poor ratings (dismissal, layoffs, placement, tenure, and compensation) Ohio earned only three points out of a possible 21. (In each strand, a state can earn zero to three points; there are a total of 20 strands in areas such as “strength of evaluation plan,” “employment implications,” etc.)
Fordham unapologetically supports accountability for educators, an end to LIFO (last in, first out) layoffs, and more performance-based decision making in schools generally. But it’s hard to escape the truth that no state – not even those heralded by DFER and NCTQ – has had teacher evaluations for long enough to be able to discern what impact it’s had on student achievement, and how or if it’s changed teachers’ behavior or ensured better teachers for the kids who need them the most. Lest this sound like backtracking on our beliefs around teacher effectiveness, let’s reiterate: Ohio must craft and implement more meaningful evaluations for teachers that differentiate for quality.
But perhaps designing that system and collecting data on teacher effectiveness (and sharing that data in a transparent, but low-stakes way) should be priority number one. Once the state has several years of data, a list of robust and meaningful assessments from which to draw that data (which the State Board of Education has been tasked with devising, but which doesn’t exist yet), and enough time so that educators can observe for themselves that the data make intuitive sense (namely that it accurately gauges their own abilities and those of their colleagues) – then the state can worry about tying meaningful rewards and sanctions to those evaluation ratings. Or possibly by that point, districts themselves will be motivated to do so on their own.
It’s understandable to want to improve teacher quality by pulling all levers at once. DC Public Schools and Harrison School District 2 have done phenomenal work in developing rigorous teacher evaluations that, while not perfect, are worlds better than previous systems and that educators on the whole seem to buy into. But we should keep in mind that these reforms happened on a local level; DCPS has 44,900 students and HSD 2 has just over 10,000 students, a splash in the bucket compared to Ohio’s 1.8 million students. Creating such a system for an entire state, let alone a state as large and diverse as Ohio, requires a lot more work (and a lot more cooperation and buy-in from schools and the people working in them).
The danger in launching fully ahead and tying all personnel decisions – layoffs, transfers, pay, certification, tenure, etc. – to evaluation systems before we’ve seen the accuracy of those evaluations systems is obvious: it threatens credibility and could foster hostility from districts and schools. Worse, by tying high-stakes rewards and consequences to an evaluation system that doesn’t exist yet, we risk creating dozens of incentives for principals to inflate scores instead of honestly evaluating teachers and providing them with meaningful feedback to improve.
This isn’t to say that high-stakes decisions shouldn’t eventually be directly connected to teachers’ ratings. But while Ohio ranks low according to DFER’s likelihood-of-watering-down scale, it also ranks low in terms of absolutely screwing up, unfairly dismissing teachers, or creating hostility. That may sound unnecessarily risk-averse, but caution in this realm may end up producing a better – and more importantly, more sustainable – outcome for Ohio’s teachers, schools, and students.
The 2011 NAEP results for reading and mathematics were released yesterday - see here for our DC colleague Mike Petrilli’s take on it. Nationally, fourth-grade reading scores remained the same from 2009, while eighth graders achieved a small increase in reading performance. Students from around the country continued the upward trend in math, with increases in both the fourth and eighth grade. Ohio’s state-specific results were more of the same, mostly stagnant performance compared to past years.
Chart 1 below shows that reading results for fourth and eighth graders in the Buckeye State haven’t budget for the last decade or so. In 2011, 27 percent of fourth-grade students scored at the proficient level or higher, unchanged from 2009. Only 7 percent of fourth graders scored at advanced proficiency, down from the 9 percent that did so in 2009. Breaking down the data by racial subgroups, only 13 percent of Black students were proficient on the fourth-grade assessment, and 1 percent scored at an advanced level.
CHART 1
The results from the eighth-grade reading assessment paint a very similar story. The percent of students proficient in eighth-grade reading has remained virtually unchanged since 2002, with only 33 percent of students scoring at or above the proficient level in 2011. The achievement gap between Black and White students, as well as White and Hispanic students has not narrowed since 2009.
It is disappointing to see a continuing weakness in reading, but Ohio’s math results are slightly more encouraging. Chart 2 below shows Ohio’s fourth- and eighth-grade math scores over time. While the percent of fourth-grade students proficient in math didn’t change from 2009 (38 percent), eighth graders eked out a small gain. In 2009, 28 percent of eighth graders scored at the proficient level, and in 2011 Ohio saw an increase of 3 percentage points, with 31 percent proficient of students now proficient in eighth-grade math. Ohio was one of only a handful of states to see an increase in eighth-grade math results.
CHART 2
Ohio currently has a basket full of publicly funded, private-school voucher programs, making it unique in America’s school choice landscape. Ohio has three separate programs for students in failing districts, students with autism, and students living in Cleveland. A voucher program for students with disabilities launches next year. Further, the EdChoice Scholarship program (which provides private school scholarships for students in failing public schools) was recently expanded to 30,000 scholarships statewide this school year and 60,000 next year.
A new choice bill is now being debated in the House that would vastly expand the number of students eligible to receive a voucher. HB 136 would create the Parental Choice and Taxpayer Scholarship (PACT) Program and give children who come from families with annual incomes of up to $62,000 a year a voucher worth up to $4,563. Furthermore, 25 percent of families in the state could be eligible for smaller vouchers awarded on a sliding scale for families with incomes up to $95,000. This expansive growth in school choice options via vouchers is contentious to say the least.
A myriad of opinions offering both support and opposition to the expansion of vouchers have been voiced over the past several months (see Terry’s recent op-ed here); however, one criticism in particular warrants a response. An October 12 Columbus Dispatch editorial, “Many Questions,” stated that “advocates should be able to show that students who go to private schools using vouchers do better than their peers who remain at the public schools they left. So far no one has collected such data.” While better data are certainly needed, what we have now is telling.
With the limited data available from the Ohio Department of Education (we can’t get at value-added growth or growth over time) we are able to compare the academic performance of students using an EdChoice voucher to those students who remain in voucher-eligible public school buildings, on a single-year, snap-shot basis.
The results for Ohio’s “Big 8” districts (from which the majority of voucher students hail) are encouraging for school-choice supporters. The chart below provides a one-year snapshot for the performance of EdChoice students in Columbus versus students in voucher-eligible district schools. Voucher students outperform their peers in every subject and grade except one, and in some cases do so by a significant margin. Particularly, voucher students’ performance in the eighth grade is strong. Eighth-grade voucher students outperform their district peers by 31.9 percentage points in reading and 18.3 percentage points in math. These results are an improvement to a similar analysis we performed last year in which voucher students in Columbus out-performed their district peers in eight tested grades and subjects.
Chart 1: Columbus EdChoice Students vs. Voucher
Eligible Students
Source: The Ohio Department of Education
The results are also positive in Fordham’s hometown of Dayton.
Chart 1: Dayton EdChoice Students vs. Voucher Eligible
Students
Source: The Ohio Department of Education
Last year, voucher students outperformed their district peers in seven of fourteen academic tests in Dayton. Perhaps most encouraging is the fact that they are outperforming their district peers in third grade reading by 22.4 percentage points (see Emmy’s piece above on the importance of early reading proficiency).
While voucher performance in Columbus and Dayton, is positive the same cannot be said for Canton. District students outperform voucher students in Canton in every subject and grade, and in the case of fourth-grade math they do so by 37 percentage points. These results are somewhat of an anomaly (voucher students in the remaining Big 8 districts perform fairly well comparatively), but it is still worth noting that while voucher students’ performance is strong in some urban cities, it is not necessarily the case for all.
The results are mixed, but overall a majority of students using vouchers are outperforming their peers who remain in traditional district schools. Reading proves to be an area of strength for students using vouchers in the Big 8 – in Cincinnati, for example, students using vouchers outperformed their district peers in reading in every grade. The Dispatch argued that if advocates of vouchers could show that voucher students are performing at higher levels than their district peers, such programs should continue.
While the data available for an analysis of this type are limited to one year snapshots, the data we do have has shown that in fact voucher students are performing well, and that in cities like Dayton and Youngstown, where traditional public school performance has languished years, vouchers appear to be a good option for the children using them. The lack of data available, however, is a yet another clear call for why Ohio needs a system of accountability for all publicly funded students that will not just show us raw achievement data for one year, but rather how schools, and students, are performing over time. Until such a system is created and put in place it is difficult to really tell what impact vouchers are having on student learning in the long run but what we can see now is that children using vouchers outperform those who stay in their district schools.
While adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have spurred a hailstorm of activity across educator and policy circles alike, the general public remains clueless even as to what the standards are—never mind how they are being implemented or what the long-term implications of their adoption might be. Through this national poll (given to 800 registered voters), the folks at Achieve find that a whopping 60 percent of Americans have never heard of the Common Core standards—and another 21 percent have heard “not much.” Further, among voters who have heard peep about the Common Core, impressions are mixed: Thirty-seven percent view them favorably while 34 percent hold an unfavorable opinion (the rest are undecided). Despite this mixed reaction to the CCSS specifically, Americans overwhelmingly approve of the idea of common academic standards for all states: sixty-six percent support vs. 31 percent opposed. (Even a majority of Republicans like the notion of common standards.) But with so few people in the know, it’s clear that Common Core remains fragile politically. The good news, however, is that public-school teachers (most of whom have heard “a lot” about the Common Core) like the idea of common standards: Sixty-five percent of them are in support. That’s a promising indication that these standards might actually have some staying power in the classroom—if the public doesn’t come to dislike them first.
“Strong Support, Low Awareness: Public
Perception of the Common Core State Standards”
Achieve, Inc.
October 2011
Strong teachers and leaders are undoubtedly critical to the success of any school system; research has repeatedly suggested that school leadership is second only behind classroom instruction in its impact on student learning. The autonomous nature of charter schools makes the need for strong school leadership even more crucial. Charter school advocates who are trying to increase the number of quality charter schools and replicate high-performing schools must consider not only how they are going to retain talented individuals, but also how to support a talent pipeline.
A recent report by Public Impact, with the help of Foundation Strategy Group (a social impact consulting firm), identifies six indicators that have the biggest impact on recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers and leaders. The report draws from two cities, New Orleans and Indianapolis, to demonstrate how these indicators are being used successfully in practice:
Both New Orleans and Indianapolis are utilizing a combination of the indicators mentioned above and have seen tremendous results. In 2011 Indianapolis charter school students were outperforming their peers in traditional schools. New Orleans charter schools continually outperform district-run schools, and over a dozen of their charter schools have demonstrated exemplary growth, the state’s highest rating.
Creating a teacher and leader pipeline is a difficult task and one that Ohio must think more seriously about developing. Ohio also faces challenges such as gaining political support, recruiting national talent providers to the state, and raising philanthropic support.
"Developing
Education Talent Pipelines for Charter Schools"
Public Impact
Daniela Doyle and
Lucy Steiner
2011
