The debate surrounding for-profit corporations in education is often highly polarized (especially in Ohio): For-profits are cast as either heroes or villains, but seldom anywhere in between.
The debate surrounding for-profit corporations in education is often highly polarized (especially in Ohio): For-profits are cast as either heroes or villains, but seldom anywhere in between. In the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) latest report, Michael B. Horn articulates a more nuanced role for for-profits in education.
Horn analyzes at an abstract level the differences between non-profits and for-profits in the areas of scale, focus, and “what opportunities appear attractive.” He posits that for-profits are able to scale their operations quickly and effectively because of a clear focus (turning a profit by providing a high-quality good or service to the corporation’s best customers), and that they are inherently driven to pursue opportunities that maximize profit. Although they are often slower to adapt to market conditions and have more difficulty maintaining a clear organizational focus than their for-profit cousins, non-profits are able to remain in markets where profit opportunities are smaller and fewer.
Horn claims that the for-profit model makes it suited for specific, but not all, ends in education. He focuses on online education and asserts that if proper regulations are put in place, for-profit corporations can be the most efficient vehicles for obtaining high-quality outcomes for students in certain situations. (Unfortunately, Horn does not discuss for-profit charter school operators, a hot issue in Ohio of late.) For-profits tend to innovate and expand in the direction that will appeal most to the consumer. This can work to the advantage of students if the government (the “consumer” for public education) implements regulations and incentives that encourage for-profits to pursue educational goals established in legislation. In the end, Horn recommends an expanded role for for-profit corporations in US education, but he cautions that for-profits should not be viewed as a “final solution.”
Provisions recently inserted into HB 153, Ohio’s budget bill, greatly expand opportunities for for-profit charter operators in Ohio. As written, the bill would allow a for-profit corporation to start a charter school with state funding, then operate with minimal regulation, much as a private school does. Fordham has raised sharp objections to this provision, and our own Terry Ryan recently testified before the Senate Finance Committee to advocate removing it. For-profit corporations can be useful tools in public education, but they must be held accountable for whether or not they achieve established educational goals.
Beyond Good and Evil: Understanding the Role of For-Profits
in Education through the Theories of Disruptive Innovation
Michael
B. Horn
American
Enterprise Institute
April
2011
If one ever doubted the need to improve science and math education in this country, performance on international tests should be motivation enough. On the 2009 PISA mathematics exam, 17 countries scored higher than the US and 12 scored higher than the US in science. This report by the Center for American Progress argues that if the US is going to be a leader in STEM it must dramatically improve the selection and training of elementary STEM teachers, especially in the areas of:
The situation in science is even more troubling. Science is often overlooked and scores are often not considered in education school admission requirements. Perhaps the most telling data comes from a 2000 “National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” The study randomly looked at 655 elementary science teachers in grades K-5 and concluded that only four percent of these teachers had undergraduate degrees in science.
The authors of this report offer up several policy suggestions to improve the selection and training of elementary math and science teachers, including recruiting higher achieving students and bolstering math and science content in schools of education. Furthermore, it is also important to find ways to attract individuals with STEM backgrounds into the field of teaching via alternative pathways. The competency of elementary science and math teachers is an area of need in our country’s STEM policy, and few would argue that our student’s performance in math and science today is sufficient enough to compete globally.
Slow off the Mark: Elementary School
Teachers and the Crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education
Center for American Progress
Diana Epstein and
Raegen Miller
May 2011
Four months ago, Michael Horn and Heather Staker released a white paper, “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning.” In it, they warned policymakers of the need to support blended learning—education that splits students’ time between the teacher-led classroom and the digital realm—lest it get stymied by current statutes around seat time, class sizes, life-long teacher contracts, etc. This follow-up paper profiles forty organizations engaged in blended learning of some sort, offering specifics to readers seeking a clearer picture of what blended learning actually looks like for the student and teacher. Along with this framing, the paper offers some smart, concrete policy recommendations to push for easier expansion of the blended-education approach. Some have been voiced in other reformer circles—things like relaxing “highly qualified teacher” mandates (to bring content experts into online classrooms) and completing the transition to the Common Core (to avoid tension between them and state standards). Others are out-of-the-box, but merit serious consideration. For example: those programs able to educate students for less money than the state allotment should be allowed to bank the extra funds in education savings accounts, from which students may pull to pay for tutoring, college tuition, and the like. As blended-learning policy and understanding begin to take shape, this paper—and the original in the series—do well to frame the issue.
The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning: Profiles of
emerging models
Innosight
Institute
Heather Staker
May 2011
The Ohio Senate will unveil its version of the state’s biennial operating budget early next month. As we – and others – have made clear in many venues, the members of that body have their work cut out for them when it comes to the charter-school provisions inserted by the Ohio House.
Governor Kasich’s original version of the budget sought to find a balance between expanding school choice and ensuring that schools of choice are held accountable for their students’ performance. For instance, it expanded the state’s EdChoice voucher program to provide immediate education options to more students who would otherwise attend failing public schools. It also imposed a “smart” cap on charter authorizers while removing other barriers to opening new schools. In marked contrast, the House version significantly diminishes charter school accountability and basically empowers school operators as the functional equivalent of private schools unburdened by state rules and accountability requirements.
But that’s just one small piece of a big story. Amid the clamor over the charter provisions, too little attention has been paid—or applause offered—for the many terrific features wrought by the governor and/or the House. In several key areas, the House built on the solid foundation laid out by Governor Kasich, upholding his dual goals of improving education in the Buckeye State while helping schools and districts adjust to doing more with less. Without raising taxes, the governor and House have proposed a balanced budget that would free schools to manage their resources at a time when those resources are diminished.
For example, HB 153:
The House also deserves plaudits for strengthening sections of the governor’s education budget, most notably the provisions dealing with teaching personnel. In the governor’s budget, these reforms were headed in the right direction, but language that would allow districts to regress and use antiquated measures (e.g., paper credentials and years of service) to retain and reward teachers still lurked within the new language.
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No one envies the work confronting Ohio’s lawmakers. They inherited an $8 billion budget shortfall and a host of tough decisions and painful trade-offs. | |
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The House dramatically improved those provisions. If the Senate keeps them intact, and it should, teacher evaluations in Ohio will be radically different in the coming years, as will several other personnel policies:
Besides such reforms of teacher policy, the House made other thoughtful improvements. Realizing that the “parent trigger” is an untested idea (done only in one school in California), lawmakers approached it cautiously, partnering with the Columbus City Schools in a pilot instead of going statewide. They increased the scholarship amount for the Cleveland voucher program to match that of the EdChoice program. This is important as the Cleveland program has long been sorely underfunded (even when compared with Ohio’s other school-choice programs). And in an attempt to stanch the brain drain, state representatives also created opportunities for Ohio high school graduates who leave the state but return within 10 years of graduation to receive in-state college tuition rates.
No one envies the work confronting Ohio’s lawmakers. They inherited an $8 billion budget shortfall and a host of tough decisions and painful trade-offs. That they are now tackling these massive fiscal challenges while also pushing needed education reforms is to their credit.
The last several weeks have seen much to-do about charter schools, due to the House’s ill-advised budget changes in that realm. We fervently hope that the Senate makes the needed repairs. But it is also important to note that the budget sent to the Senate by the House contains many important reforms that deserve to be highlighted, applauded, and retained.
“Our blog tough on OH e-schools; Innovation OH report=misleading hit job” – that’s how Bill Tucker, managing director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan education policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., contrasted his organization’s recent blog series about Ohio’s e-schools with an e-school report from Innovation Ohio, a new Ohio-based public policy organization. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
This contrast is important, especially because at face value both analyses seem to land on similar ground.
Ed Sector wrapped up its blog series by saying:
As online learning continues to grow and expand in ways that we may not even be able to envision, strong oversight to ensure both high quality learning experiences and accountability for public funds are essential.
Innovation Ohio says in its report:
…it is critical that legislators see to it that public money is spent wisely and not wasted on “alternatives” that deliver even worse results than the traditional schools they were designed to supersede. In the absence of strict accountability and oversight, e-schools can be a cruel hoax on the children, parents, and taxpayers who were counting on them.
The similarities end there.
From May 2 to 12, Education Sector lifted up data and information about Ohio’s e-schools on its blog, The Quick and the Ed, concluding with a few policy lessons. The Fordham Institute has long analyzed the performance of Ohio’s e-schools as a sector in our annual local report card analysis (see last year’s analysis here), but Ed Sector’s blog series broke new ground in how it disaggregated and presented e-school data. Tucker and his colleagues shared new and different analyses of e-school data, and created interactive charts that help readers better visualize the trends and information.
The Ed Sector team first profiled the Buckeye State’s e-school landscape by breaking schools down into three categories: statewide schools that accept students from across Ohio, regional schools that draw students from a limited number of districts, and local schools that serve only students from a host district. These distinctions are important and too often glossed over; few people realize the vast majority (20 of 27) of Ohio’s e-schools are not big, statewide operations, but rather are smaller district-run programs. Next, they examined whether the size of an e-school correlates with its performance. Ed Sector’s conclusion was no.
Ed Sector then looked at the demographics of e-school students and student mobility in Ohio’s online schools. While they concluded that there is no “average” e-school student in Ohio, the data did support a few conclusions. Ohio’s statewide e-schools serve special education and minority populations similar to the state average, but their students are (to varying degrees) more economically disadvantaged than their peers across the state. Demographics of students at local and regional e-schools tend to reflect the demographics of the communities the students come from (with some exceptions for special education at local e-schools).
As to mobility, Ed Sector found that 30 percent of Ohio e-school students were enrolled in their school for less than one year and just 11 percent were enrolled for more than three years. Statewide e-schools had more students enrolled for one year or longer than did their local and regional peers.
Ed Sector’s report concludes with five policy recommendations, applicable here and beyond the Buckeye State:
A few pages into Innovation Ohio’s report, I was pleasantly surprised by its fairness and factual accuracy. But ultimately the report, tellingly titled Ohio’s E-schools: Funding Failure; Coddling Contributors, relies on the organization’s go-to approach of conflating facts and misrepresenting information to support IO’s foregone conclusion that Ohio’s e-schools are “nothing short of a disaster” and that the state’s failure to reign them in stems from the political influence and contributions of a few e-school operators.
Ohio’s e-schools are certainly not a “disaster” (see Ed Sector’s blog series for evidence), but I won’t quibble with IO’s allegations about the political influence of e-school operators (after all, the Ohio House did make secretive changes to the budget that would sweeten the pot for these for-profit operators and others). What I take issue with is how IO, a supposedly nonpartisan organization, consistently presents data out of context and makes incorrect assumptions in order to deliver a partisan attack.
The mistruths in the report are plenty (a few are exposed in this short take from the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools), but the most egregious is this: that e-schools cost Ohio more than traditional schools. IO is correct that e-schools receive an average of $6,320 per pupil in funding from the state (via deductions from their students’ home school districts). The report goes on to say that this amount is 95 percent more than traditional schools receive from the state. This may be technically true, to a degree. One-hundred percent of e-school funding flows from state coffers; but a good chunk of district funding comes from local taxpayers and doesn’t pass through the state treasurer. Does that mean that local tax dollars shouldn’t and don’t figure into the equation when policymakers, the media, and the public are assessing education spending?
For example, last year Columbus City Schools spent $14,904 per pupil, according to the Ohio Department of Education. About 30 percent ($4,518) was picked up by the state; local tax dollars covered another 55 percent; the federal government paid for the rest. I am a property owner and taxpayer in Columbus, and when I see those numbers I don’t for a moment think my district is saving me any money over the $6,320 that the state flows to e-schools. Or take Orange City Schools, near Cleveland, which spent more per pupil than any Ohio district last year, $21,191 –more than three times what Ohio e-schools receive to educate a single student. The state of Ohio contributed almost 20 percent ($4,174) of that and local taxpayers picked up nearly 80 percent ($16,952). Any right-minded observer would deduce that taxpayers are spending less to educate e-school students than their peers in Orange City.
In the end, Ed Sector produced a thoughtful analysis of Ohio e-schools, putting accurate data in the appropriate context and drawing conclusions worth paying attention to, especially as the Ohio Senate grapples with many of the accountability issues Ed Sector confronts. Meanwhile, Innovation Ohio offered up another sloppy attack job of the current administration, timed purely for political reasons and full of half-truths, that doesn’t hold water under even the slightest scrutiny.
The debate surrounding for-profit corporations in education is often highly polarized (especially in Ohio): For-profits are cast as either heroes or villains, but seldom anywhere in between. In the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) latest report, Michael B. Horn articulates a more nuanced role for for-profits in education.
Horn analyzes at an abstract level the differences between non-profits and for-profits in the areas of scale, focus, and “what opportunities appear attractive.” He posits that for-profits are able to scale their operations quickly and effectively because of a clear focus (turning a profit by providing a high-quality good or service to the corporation’s best customers), and that they are inherently driven to pursue opportunities that maximize profit. Although they are often slower to adapt to market conditions and have more difficulty maintaining a clear organizational focus than their for-profit cousins, non-profits are able to remain in markets where profit opportunities are smaller and fewer.
Horn claims that the for-profit model makes it suited for specific, but not all, ends in education. He focuses on online education and asserts that if proper regulations are put in place, for-profit corporations can be the most efficient vehicles for obtaining high-quality outcomes for students in certain situations. (Unfortunately, Horn does not discuss for-profit charter school operators, a hot issue in Ohio of late.) For-profits tend to innovate and expand in the direction that will appeal most to the consumer. This can work to the advantage of students if the government (the “consumer” for public education) implements regulations and incentives that encourage for-profits to pursue educational goals established in legislation. In the end, Horn recommends an expanded role for for-profit corporations in US education, but he cautions that for-profits should not be viewed as a “final solution.”
Provisions recently inserted into HB 153, Ohio’s budget bill, greatly expand opportunities for for-profit charter operators in Ohio. As written, the bill would allow a for-profit corporation to start a charter school with state funding, then operate with minimal regulation, much as a private school does. Fordham has raised sharp objections to this provision, and our own Terry Ryan recently testified before the Senate Finance Committee to advocate removing it. For-profit corporations can be useful tools in public education, but they must be held accountable for whether or not they achieve established educational goals.
Beyond Good and Evil: Understanding the Role of For-Profits
in Education through the Theories of Disruptive Innovation
Michael
B. Horn
American
Enterprise Institute
April
2011
If one ever doubted the need to improve science and math education in this country, performance on international tests should be motivation enough. On the 2009 PISA mathematics exam, 17 countries scored higher than the US and 12 scored higher than the US in science. This report by the Center for American Progress argues that if the US is going to be a leader in STEM it must dramatically improve the selection and training of elementary STEM teachers, especially in the areas of:
The situation in science is even more troubling. Science is often overlooked and scores are often not considered in education school admission requirements. Perhaps the most telling data comes from a 2000 “National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” The study randomly looked at 655 elementary science teachers in grades K-5 and concluded that only four percent of these teachers had undergraduate degrees in science.
The authors of this report offer up several policy suggestions to improve the selection and training of elementary math and science teachers, including recruiting higher achieving students and bolstering math and science content in schools of education. Furthermore, it is also important to find ways to attract individuals with STEM backgrounds into the field of teaching via alternative pathways. The competency of elementary science and math teachers is an area of need in our country’s STEM policy, and few would argue that our student’s performance in math and science today is sufficient enough to compete globally.
Slow off the Mark: Elementary School
Teachers and the Crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education
Center for American Progress
Diana Epstein and
Raegen Miller
May 2011
Four months ago, Michael Horn and Heather Staker released a white paper, “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning.” In it, they warned policymakers of the need to support blended learning—education that splits students’ time between the teacher-led classroom and the digital realm—lest it get stymied by current statutes around seat time, class sizes, life-long teacher contracts, etc. This follow-up paper profiles forty organizations engaged in blended learning of some sort, offering specifics to readers seeking a clearer picture of what blended learning actually looks like for the student and teacher. Along with this framing, the paper offers some smart, concrete policy recommendations to push for easier expansion of the blended-education approach. Some have been voiced in other reformer circles—things like relaxing “highly qualified teacher” mandates (to bring content experts into online classrooms) and completing the transition to the Common Core (to avoid tension between them and state standards). Others are out-of-the-box, but merit serious consideration. For example: those programs able to educate students for less money than the state allotment should be allowed to bank the extra funds in education savings accounts, from which students may pull to pay for tutoring, college tuition, and the like. As blended-learning policy and understanding begin to take shape, this paper—and the original in the series—do well to frame the issue.
The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning: Profiles of
emerging models
Innosight
Institute
Heather Staker
May 2011
