Article

Politics and Education Don't Mix

Governors and presidents are no better suited to run schools than they are to run construction sites, and it's time our education system reflected that fact.

A central flaw of corporate paradigms, as is often noted in popular culture, is the mind-numbing and dehumanizing effect of bureaucracy. Sometimes we are horrified and sometimes we laugh, but arguments for or against the free market may be misguided if we fail to address bureaucracy's corrosive role in the business model.

Current claims about private, public, or charter schools in the education reform movement, which has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century, may also be masking a much more important call to confront and even dismantle the bureaucracy that currently cripples universal public education in the U.S. "Successful teaching and good school cultures don't have a formula," argued legal reformer Philip K. Howard earlier in this series, "but they have a necessary condition: teachers and principals must feel free to act on their best instincts....This is why we must bulldoze school bureaucracy."

Bureaucracy, however, remains an abstraction and serves as little more than a convenient and popular target for ridicule -- unless we unpack what actions within bureaucracy are the sources for many of the persistent failures we associate erroneously with public education as an institution. Bureaucracy fails, in part, because it honors leadership as a primary quality over expertise, commits to ideological solutions without identifying and clarifying problems first, and repeats the same reforms over and over while expecting different results: our standards/testing model is more than a century old.

Public education is by necessity an extension of our political system, resulting in schools being reduced to vehicles for implementing political mandates. For example, during the past thirty years, education has become federalized through dynamics both indirect ("A Nation at Risk" spurring state-based accountability systems) and direct (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top).

As government policy and practice, bureaucracy is unavoidable, of course. But the central flaw in the need for structure and hierarchy is that politics prefers leadership characteristics above expertise. No politician can possibly have the expertise and experience needed in all the many areas a leader must address (notably in roles such as governor and president). But during the "accountability era" in education of the past three decades, the direct role of governors and presidents as related to education has increased dramatically--often with education as a central plank in their campaigns.

One distinct flaw in that development has been a trickle-down effect reaching from presidents and governors to state superintendents of education and school board chairs and members: people who have no or very little experience or expertise as educators or scholars attain leadership positions responsible for forming and implementing education policy.

The faces and voices currently leading the education reform movement in the U.S. are appointees and self-proclaimed reformers who, while often well-meaning, lack significant expertise or experience in education: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, billionaire Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee (whose entrance to education includes the alternative route of Teach for America and only a few years in the classroom), and Sal Khan, for example.

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College Readiness

Much of the reasons given for policy changes to down grade schools has been as a consequence of a push to make students more "college ready" when they graduate. This, it is argued, means we have to have higher standards.

State leaders say it’s time to face the truth: Graduating from high school in Ohio doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for college or a career.

That won’t do anymore, Gov. John Kasich and education officials say. So they’re overhauling the guidelines of what students should know, writing more challenging tests to assess what they’ve learned, forcing schools to revamp curriculum and grading schools on a tougher scale.

“The current system is letting kids down,” state Superintendent Stan Heffner said. Instead of focusing on getting students ready for college, it asks them to meet a minimum standard, a low bar, he said. “Let’s make sure they have a diploma worth owning.”

The entire Dispatch article is worth reading to get an idea of the scope of the changes expected to happen over the next year or two. Also worth reading is this new report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, titled "College Readiness: A Guide to the Field".

In recent years, the education spotlight in the United States has shifted from focusing on high school graduation to postsecondary success. Acknowledging that to thrive in today’s economy requires more than just a high school diploma, policy-makers and practitioners at the local, state, and federal level, along with their community partners, have turned their attention to equipping students with the skills and knowledge needed to enroll and succeed – without remediation – in a postsecondary program that leads to a degree (Conley 2007, 2011; Gates Foundation 2009). This shift in attention has been accompanied by a wealth of policies and initiatives aimed at preparing students to enter and succeed in college, including federal competitive grants programs, schoolwide reform initiatives, community-based education support structures, and many more. Over the past few years, the emergent field of college readiness has blossomed into an expansive effort involving multiple actors and spanning multiple sectors.

Considering the rapid emergence and growth of the field, as well as the numerous players involved, keeping abreast of relevant policies and initiatives is both a challenge and a necessity. A scan of the college readiness field can highlight successful strategies for increasing readiness, as well as gaps in research, policy, and practice, and can point to important roles for community, business, and phil- anthropic partners to play in developing a coordinated approach to college readiness.

Researchers at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR) have under- taken to develop a brief guide to this burgeoning field, as part of the College Readiness Indicator System (CRIS) initiative

Here's the report. It is quite brief and worth the time to read it, if college readiness is a subject area you are interested or involved with.

College Readiness: A Guide to the Field

The Toxic Trifecta in Current Legislative Models for Teacher Evaluation

A relatively consistent legislative framework for teacher evaluation has evolved across states in the past few years. Many of the legal concerns that arise do so because of inflexible, arbitrary and often ill-conceived yet standard components of this legislative template. There exist three basic features of the standard model, each of which is problematic on its own regard, and those problems become multiplied when used in combination.

First, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation requires that objective measures of student achievement growth necessarily be considered in a weighting system of parallel components. Student achievement growth measures are assigned, for example, a 40 or 50% weight alongside observation and other evaluation measures. Placing the measures alongside one another in a weighting scheme assumes all measures in the scheme to be of equal validity and reliability but of varied importance (utility) – varied weight. Each measure must be included, and must be assigned the prescribed weight – with no opportunity to question the validity of any measure. [1]Such a system also assumes that the various measures included in the system are each scaled such that they can vary to similar degrees. That is, that the observational evaluations will be scaled to produce similar variation to the student growth measures, and that the variance in both measures is equally valid – not compromised by random error or bias. In fact, however, it remains highly likely that some components of the teacher evaluation model will vary far more than others if by no other reasons than that some measures contain more random noise than others or that some of the variation is attributable to factors beyond the teachers’ control. Regardless of the assigned weights and regardless of the cause of the variation (true or false measure) the measure that varies more will carry more weight in the final classification of the teacher as effective or not. In a system that places differential weight, but assumes equal validity across measures, even if the student achievement growth component is only a minority share of the weight, it may easily become the primary tipping point in most high stakes personnel decisions.

Second, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation requires that teachers be placed into effectiveness categories by assigning arbitrary numerical cutoffs to the aggregated weighted evaluation components. That is, a teacher in the 25%ile or lower when combining all evaluation components might be assigned a rating of “ineffective,” whereas the teacher at the 26%ile might be labeled effective. Further, the teacher’s placement into these groupings may largely if not entirely hinge on their rating in the student achievement growth component of their evaluation. Teachers on either side of the arbitrary cutoff are undoubtedly statistically no different from one another. In many cases as with the recently released teacher effectiveness estimates on New York City teachers, the error ranges for the teacher percentile ranks have been on the order of 35%ile points (on average, up to 50% with one year of data). Assuming that there is any real difference between the teacher at the 25%ile and 26%ile (as their point estimate) is a huge unwarranted stretch. Placing an arbitrary, rigid, cut-off score into such noisy measures makes distinctions that simply cannot be justified especially when making high stakes employment decisions.

Third, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation places exact timelines on the conditions for removal of tenure. Typical legislation dictates that teacher tenure either can or must be revoked and the teacher dismissed after 2 consecutive years of being rated ineffective (where tenure can only be achieved after 3 consecutive years of being rate effective).[2]As such, whether a teacher rightly or wrongly falls just below or just above the arbitrary cut-offs that define performance categories may have relatively inflexible consequences.

The Forced Choice between “Bad” Measures and “Wrong” Ones

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OSBA SB316 testimony and policy position

The Ohio School Boards Association, Buckeye Association of School Administrators, Ohio Association of School Business Officials submitted the following testimony on its position regarding the SB316 - the education MBR bill.

Good morning, Chair Lehner, Vice Chair Manning, and Ranking Member Sawyer, I am Damon Asbury, Director of Legislative Services for the Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA). I am joined today by Thomas Ash, Director of Governmental Relations for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA) and Barbara Shaner, Associate Executive Director of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials (OASBO). They will each be presenting portions of the testimony.

Thank you for allowing us to speak to the provisions in Senate Bill (SB) 316. While we are interested parties in this legislation, there are numerous items that we support, and others that we believe deserve some additional consideration. We begin with a discussion of the proposed school district report card changes.

School District Report Cards
SB 316 would make substantial changes to Ohio’s current report card system. We support the use of letter grades (A through F) to substitute for the current designations for two reasons. First, they are more transparent. Second, letter grades are currently used by the media to identify a school or district’s grade.

Having said that, we urge you to amend SB 316 to delay the implementation of the proposed new system and to give the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) rule making authority to determine the details of this new system. The legislation provides for the new report card system to be implemented for the reporting for the current school year, which means they would appear on the August 2012 report card. This would effectively “change the rules in the middle of the game.”

Extending the implementation at least one year would allow school districts to prepare for the change and to educate parents and the community about the transition to letter grades. Also, we believe there is still much to consider when putting such a plan in place. Describing the details in law would not allow for the kind of flexibility necessary to make the new system work. We support flexibility even after the new system is implemented in order to see the best results from the change.

We know we must accept increased accountability in exchange for more flexibility at the federal level, and we understand how the new report card system fits with the increased rigor already planned. However, district and school report cards themselves are not increased accountability. They are improved transparency. The increased accountability begins in two years with the implementation of new content standards and more challenging assessment instruments.

While we understand that Ohio’s plan must also comply with the requirements necessary for approval of Ohio’s waiver request under the “No Child Left Behind” law, we believe that implementation of the new report cards should correspond with the timeline for increased accountability. We believe that this will not jeopardize the waiver application with the U.S. Department of Education.

The other change in the way Ohio would evaluate school districts as proposed in SB 316 would establish four elements: performance indicators; performance index; attainment of “adequate yearly progress;” and value-added student growth. A letter grade for each would appear on the school and district report card as well as an overall grade using these four grades averaged together for a composite score.

While we do support the letter grades, we feel it appropriate to point out that, as proposed, each of the four components of the composite report card grade would be valued equally in the overall grade. Meeting each of Ohio’s performance indicators would count no more than adequate yearly progress.

A delay in the implementation of the new report card system would allow more study and analysis of the best way to present the information to parents and the community. Perhaps it would make more sense not to calculate a composite letter grade but show the letter grade for each of the components on the report card. Certainly, that would increase transparency over the current practice. Moreover, it would allow district residents to decide which factor or factors they consider to be of greatest importance. Again, implementation through administrative rule makes sense as the new system evolves.

On a somewhat related matter, with the budget’s emphasis on workforce development, we support the SB 316 proposal that a district report card be developed for joint vocational school districts. It should be tailored to the unique mission of these schools by focusing on both academics and successful completion of training. Because of the limited number of such districts in Ohio (only fifty), we also support SB 316’s removal of joint vocational school districts from any type of ranking system.

Third Grade Reading Guarantee
We support the concept underlying the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. Reading is fundamental to the future academic success of every child. Virtually every content area requires the ability to read with fluency and comprehension. The earlier children become literate the better able they will be to succeed in other content areas.

The proposed language in SB 316 recognizes that simply providing a guarantee is not sufficient in and of itself. Instead, it recognizes that children in the preceding grades, K-2, must be provided with appropriate instruction, be assessed with appropriate measures to gauge their progress, and offered intervention and remediation whenever assessment shows that they are not keeping pace with their learning. Retention is not the desired outcome. The focus on intervention with struggling learners will help achieve the desired goal of successful readers by the end of third grade.

The proposal calls for intense remediation services during the summer months for those students who are reading below grade level at the end of second grade. We support appropriate remediation, but believe there must be flexibility to address the needs of each child in a way that is best. The bill is too prescriptive and discretion should be left to local education providers. We urge you to remove these specifics from the bill.

While we support the concept of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, retention alone can lead to other academic difficulties as well, including a greater likelihood of dropping out of school in the future. Therefore, we believe that approaches other than retention deserve additional study.

We would be remiss if we did not question where the funds would come from to support the additional assessment, intervention and remediation required. Re-prioritizing current spending can only go so far. Simply put, successfully addressing this challenge and goal will require additional funds and reading strategies.

Finally, we also believe that the call for additional investment in pre-school and early childhood education goes hand in hand with the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. The best research would indicate that early Childhood investments gain the best return. Consideration should be given to increased and well-placed investment in early childhood programs as a way to alleviate the need for third grade reading intervention.

In summary, however, we support the concept of the enhanced Third Grade Reading Guarantee with the understanding that assessment and intervention are necessary components that will require that additional resources be available.

I will now turn the testimony over to Tom Ash to continue the discussion.

Teacher Evaluations and Re-testing
We support the provisions of SB 316 that would allow school district leaders to accept from teachers rated as “accomplished” a project demonstrating the teacher’s continued growth and practice, in lieu of a second formal observation as required in House Bill(HB) 153, the biennial budget bill.

However, we are generally concerned with overall elements of the performance-based evaluation of teachers now required. They involve what we are calling the three C’s for schools: control, cost, and capacity.

We are concerned about allowing districts to hire third party evaluators who are not regular employees of the district. While the department of education has designed a training program that strives for consistency among all evaluators, there is also the internal consistency within the school district itself. An outside evaluator would not necessarily report to any administrator within the district but rather to his or her supervisor in an outside agency. Care must be taken before deciding on a process for third party evaluations.

We also must advocate for a system that does not dramatically increase costs. It is not just the training costs. Two observations for most teachers each year could lead to the unintended consequence of hiring additional administrators in order to accomplish this.

Instead, we would suggest that the deadline for the non-renewal of teacher contracts be extended from April 30 to June 1. This would allow an additional month to complete the required observations. We ask that you amend the bill to reflect this change.

We would also note that SB 316 clarifies that the evaluation for assistant principals, like that for principals, will be based on principles comparable to the teacher evaluation policy. While we believe that the recently developed Ohio Principal Evaluation System (OPES) follows best practices and will produce a significantly more data-driven rating, OPES is not based on observation but rather on results. If the goal here is to make the principal evaluation “observation based”, it should be noted that observation is not part of the current training model, and districts will not be able to implement such a system by the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year.

We would recommend instead that the evaluation for principals be based on the Ohio Principal Evaluation System or similar best practices model.

We support the changes in the required retesting of teachers contained in SB 316. The current requirement is for the retesting of all core subject teachers in buildings ranked in the lowest 10% of all schools, as measured by the performance index. The requirement has nothing to do with that teacher’s actual performance or the results achieved with their students. This could actually discourage highly effective teachers from transferring to low performing schools.

For that reason, we support the retesting of teachers in the core subjects if they have been rated as ineffective for two of the three most recent school years as the bill suggests.

School Facilities
We also support the three proposals made on behalf of the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC). Presently, participation in the Exceptional Needs Program is capped at the 75th percentile or lower on the equity list (which is an indication of local property wealth). We support removing this cap to allow all districts to participate. After all, even wealthy districts can have facilities that do not contribute adequately to student learning. In addition, the actual state support would still be based on the computed state share. Wealthier districts would still receive a smaller share of the total cost than those districts with less property wealth.

We support using a portion of the funds currently reserved for districts that have been unable to raise their local share to fund those districts that have passed their local contribution, secured their required one-half mill maintenance levy, and are now awaiting their turn on the equity list.

We would not recommend allocating a majority of the reserved funds for this purpose. However, using a portion of these funds would allow the district to complete the total facility plan, allow for more employment in the construction industry, and accelerate the availability of 21st century learning facilities for those children. Besides, construction costs will only rise. It is not unthinkable that the final total costs could exceed the original estimates if there is a significant delay between the original local approval and the final awarding of the state dollars to complete the district’s facility plan.

We also support the reduction in the minimum value of a segmented project from 4% to 2%. The net effect would be to reduce the bond issue and the necessary millage to retire the debt.

It might also be appropriate to reduce the required one-half mill for maintenance to reflect the fact that a segmented project is not the entire facilities plan. Presently, for a segmented project, the entire one-half mill (or its equivalent) for maintenance must be passed and then collected for a period of 23 years. It would seem fairer to require the equivalent one-half mill on a prorated basis determined by dividing the value of the segmented project by the total cost of the complete facilities plan. This provision is not currently contained in SB 316 and we ask that you include it in the final version of the bill.

I will now pass the testimony along to Barbara Shaner.

Expenditure Standards
Another provision in HB 153 was the establishment of an Expenditure Ranking process. School districts are to be ranked among their peers related to their classroom and non-classroom expenditures. To complete the Expenditure Rankings, ODE and the State Board of Education were directed to establish standards by which the rankings would be determined. This process was put on a fast track with implementation of the new standards and the Expenditure Rankings beginning with the current school year -- once again “changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

While we support the development of uniform expenditure standards in order for districts to make comparisons with other districts and to gauge their own effectiveness, we do not support the implementation of standards and rankings after-the-fact. School districts should be given the opportunity to review the standards, align their accounting practices with the standards, and understand the reporting process before the new standards become effective.

SB 316 provides for the delay of the implementation of the new standards for one year. However, it is our understanding that the bill does not delay the requirement for the Expenditure Rankings themselves. The bill would also direct ODE and the State Board to utilize existing federal reporting standards for purposes of setting Ohio’s new standards.

ODE has worked with our organizations to develop expenditure standards that would align Ohio with the U.S. reporting standards. We do not believe it is necessary to delay their adoption for a full year. In fact, it makes sense for school districts to understand the new standards prior to the beginning of the next fiscal year (July 1, 2012).

Having said that, SB 316 should be amended to delay the implementation of the school district Expenditure Rankings for at least one year. School districts should have the benefit of the new reporting standards for a full year before a comparison ranking “list” is reported by ODE and made public.

In addition, it should be noted that our organizations do not support the “ranking” of districts. Ranking is a much different concept than “rating.” An appropriate rating system, which we believe SB 316 addresses, allows for transparency and for the public to see how districts are performing. A ranking system pits districts against districts with no meaningful result. There will likely be many districts within close proximity to one another on the ranking list yet the numbering system requires that there will always be a number 1, and a number 75 and a number 400.

This number will provide little value to the communities where these schools are located. Additionally, there will always be a bottom 5% or 10%. If the goal is to improve the efficiency of all school districts, the bottom 5% today could show great improvement but never get out of the bottom 5%. The ranking system is punitive and unnecessary.

We urge you to remove the ranking system from law and retain the uniform expenditure reporting standards as contained in SB 316.

Academic Rankings
As we understand another provision in the proposed legislation, the current exclusion of dropout recovery community schools from the “ranking” of community school sponsors would be eliminated. As a result, the academic performance index scores of dropout recovery community schools would be included in the calculation of the sponsor “rankings.”

We would also note that current law continues to exclude the performance of dropout recovery community schools only until January 1, 2013 or, sooner if standards were established by the General Assembly.

Our organizations have the same concerns about the academic “ranking” of schools. However, if rankings are going to continue for traditional public school districts and community schools, dropout recovery schools should also be subject to the rankings.

BMI Repeal and Line-item Veto
In HB 153, the General Assembly chose to repeal an unfunded mandate that required school districts to conduct Body Mass Index (BMI) screenings. Governor Kasich then attempted to line-item veto the legislature’s repeal, but instead vetoed language that required ODE to track the BMI program. SB 316 contains language acknowledging Governor Kasich’s veto and would officially reinstate language the General Assembly tried to repeal in HB 153.

While districts could still request a waiver, the waiver process alone is time consuming and unnecessary. We believe requiring school districts to conduct BMI screenings is an unfunded mandate and that the legislature’s decision to repeal the requirement should stand. Attached to this testimony is a recent article from the Columbus Dispatch regarding the BMI screenings and feedback from parents.

This concludes our testimony on SB 316. We are happy to address your questions

No laughing matter

Hearings on the education MBR, in the Ohio House and Senate, took place yesterday. The hope for some relief from the draconian budget cuts enacted last year faded, according to a report from Gongwer

Much of the MBR debate centered on a failed Democratic amendment to provide $400 million for schools and additional funds for local governments, as the minority party continued the argument that the bill does nothing to address communities hit hard by the Kasich Administration's decision to slash local government funds to help balance the state's coffers.

Rep. Ron Amstutz (R-Wooster), chair of the House Finance & Appropriations Committee and the sponsor of the bill "by request," kicked off the debate by stating that the measure is in keeping with the restrained spending in the biennium budget passed last spring (HB 153).

"Clearly, we are steady as she goes, which is a good thing," he said. "Because we are on track, we are able to deal with a bill here today that doesn't make further difficult decisions."

It's a strange world we live in where thousands of teachers, support professionals, cops and firefighters are losing their jobs, weakening communities is considered "a good thing", but the Governor's reaction was even more shocking, Mr. Kasich bursts out laughing when asked about the push for more spending and what he thinks is an appropriate level for the Budget Stabilization Fund. He also suggested that any attempt to add significant appropriations to the measure would be vetoed.

It's no laughing matter. The rhetoric is about improving educational achievement, the means appears to be by slashing budgets. Headlines from just this week include

We're in a funding crisis. The legislature needs to step up and fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.

In other news, the proposed A-F grading system came in for a lot of questions

Mr. Cohen said feedback to ODE on the proposal so far has focused on four topics:

  • The value-added component should carry more weight than others in the final grade.
  • The scale of grades for the student progress component is unfair given a grade of "C" is assigned for districts that have "met" value-added expectations for two consecutive years.
  • The threshold for "A" grades should be lowered and traditional rounding rules should be applied.
  • Pluses and minuses should be applied to the grades.

Sen. Sawyer said that because many districts will go to the ballot seeking a levy this fall, the new scores, which are expected to be lower than previous ones, could be difficult for the districts to deal with as they ask voters to support their work to improve student performance.

Mr. Cohen said the current scores, which show a large portion of districts as "excellent" or better, will lose their meaning for the public. The simulation of what schools' grades would look like under the new scoring was merely that, and it is unclear how the public will react to the actual grades.

Sen. Joe Schiavoni (D-Canfield) asked if there is a score for things such as extracurricular activities offered and the like, which some people would attribute to whether a school system is a good one.

Mr. Cohen said ODE has considered looking at other measures, such as remediation rates; but the report card largely reflects assessment-based metrics.

Sen. Lehner asked if a report card could be developed for charter school authorizers in the same way school districts have report cards based on the performance of students in all the district's school buildings. Mr. Cohen said that would be possible.

If we had to guess, we expect that the technicals of the grade will see some minor modifications, and the implementation date will be pushed back a year to coincide with the introduction of common core.

A different kind of investment

Education is often referred to as an investment in our future, and undoubtedly it is, as we prepare our young people to enter the workforce with creativity, energy and entrepreneurship. However, modest investment increases in public education also have an immediate, and direct, beneficial effect upon those making the investments.

A recent study by the Brooking's Institute revealed

An analysis of national and metropolitan data on public school populations and state standardized test scores for 84,077 schools in 2010 and 2011 reveals that:
[...]
Across the 100 largest metropolitan areas, housing costs an average of 2.4 times as much, or nearly $11,000 more per year, near a high-scoring public school than near a low scoring public school. This housing cost gap reflects that home values are $205,000 higher on average in the neighborhoods of high-scoring versus low-scoring schools. Near high-scoring schools, typical homes have 1.5 additional rooms and the share of housing units that are rented is roughly 30 percentage points lower than in neighborhoods near low-scoring schools.

This is clear evidence that investing a few hundred dollars per year to increase your local schools performance will have a dramatic effect on your home values - typically $11,000 per year, according to this study. The reason is no secret of course, people with school age children want to live in areas that have excellent schools, and are prepared to pay a premium for it. These results have been found to be true over and over. The St Louis Fed found

Traditional empirical models of the capitalization of education quality on house prices have established that the quality of primary school education is positively correlated with house prices. Recent capitalization studies have used various approaches to address concerns about omitted variable bias induced by failing to account for the correlation between school quality and unobserved neighborhood characteristics. Most of these variations on the traditional hedonic approach (including the boundary discontinuity regression) have assumed that the house price premium is constant because in all these models the contribution from school quality on house prices is constrained to be linear.

In this paper, we propose an alternative formulation that allows for nonlinear effects of school quality. We show that this formulation is preferred by the data over a baseline linear boundary fixed effects model and that the rate at which the house price premium rises increases over the range of school quality. In other words, the standard linear specification for test scores overestimates the premium at low levels of school quality and underestimates the premium at high levels of school quality.

In the St. Louis metropolitan area, houses associated with a school ranked at 1 SD below the mean are essentially priced on physical characteristics only. In contrast, houses associated with higher-quality schools command a much higher price premium.

Interestingly, and in contrast to many studies in the literature, the price premium remains substantially large, especially for houses associated with above-average schools. This is true even in our most conservative estimates, which complement the boundary discontinuity approach by explicitly controlling for neighborhood demographics. These estimates also reveal that the racial composition of neighborhoods is capitalized directly into house prices.

This then makes the move to downgrade Ohio's schools based on some new, arbitrary standard all the more baffling. Not only will this move potentially produce lower school ratings, it may also destroy tens of millions of dollars worth of housing value at a time when house prices are already under extreme stress and the economy struggling to improve.

Consider this then, when they vote one levies. A few hundred bucks could add thousands of dollars to the value of you home. One can only imagine the added wealth that could be created if the state lived up to its constitutional responsibilities and invested properly in public education too.