Education News for 01-09-2012

Statewide Education News

• Reviews mixed 10 years after sweeping education reform (Enquirer)

Former Hamilton High School Principal Tracey Miller remembers it like it was yesterday. It was a few days into the new year in 2002, right before students returned from Christmas break. Miller was one of a few people working when the phone rang. He expected it to be a telemarketer. Instead, he found a U.S. Secret Service agent on the other end of the line. “He said ‘I want to talk to you about President Bush visiting your school,’” said Miller. “I thought it was a joke.” Read More…

• Open enrollment allows students to cross school district boundaries -- in some cases (Plain Dealer)

In half of Northeast Ohio's school districts, the doors of the local public school are firmly shut to keep out any child who doesn't live in the district. Some of them offer rewards to tipsters who expose families illegally using the schools without being subject to district taxes. A demand for tuition payments -- or even prosecution -- can follow. That's what happened to Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron, whose arrest for sending her two daughters to Copley-Fairlawn schools captured the attention of school choice advocates across the country last year. But in the other half of the region's districts, the schoolhouse doors swing wide open to children who live outside the boundary lines -- and officials happily take the money that transfers along with them. Read More…

• Open enrollment hurts some schools in funding (Middletown Journal)

BUTLER COUNTY — Ohio’s open enrollment policy allows students to take advantage of academic programs not offered at their home schools, but it’s also costly for districts. Seven of Butler County’s 10 public school districts accept open enrollment students. Only Fairfield, Lakota and Ross schools do not. “A district may have a certain academic program that a student wants to go to,” Ohio Department of Education spokesman Patrick Gallaway said. “There are cases where one district adopted a pay-to-play policy on sports so some students went to an adjacent district where they didn’t have to pay.” Read More…

• Rules in place for districts' 'calamity days' (Daily Record)

WOOSTER - "Snow day," a popular term based on the most typical reason school is called off, will no doubt soon be a well-used phrase once again. This year as every other, rules and regulations are in place to handle what the state formally calls a "calamity day," available for more than just adverse weather. "Snow days are typically what they would be used for, but there could be other issues a district could face," said Patrick Gallaway, associate director of communications for the Ohio Department of Education. They don't just apply to severe weather conditions, he said. Read More…

Local Issues

• Most local charter schools focus on a niche (Dispatch)

There are charter schools that serve immigrant students. Children with autism. Students interested in art or science or martial arts. Although Columbus started slowly as a home to charter schools, experts say the metropolitan area now is a 'mecca' that hosts one of the most-diverse ranges of charters in Ohio. Central Ohio has 81 charters. Only 21 are traditional; the rest range from schools that serve dropouts to ones that focus on using new technology. Read More…

• Homeless Kids (Marietta Times)

The number of homeless children in the U.S. increased by 38 percent from 2007 to 2010, with Ohio's population of homeless children jumping by nearly 13,000 during that time, according to a recently-released report. During the 2010-2011 school year, there were a reported 63 homeless children in the Marietta City school district, a number that is on the rise. The National Center on Family Homelessness report "America's Youngest Outcasts 2010," released in December, says more than 1.6 million children, or one in 45, are homeless annually in America. This equates to more than 30,000 children each week and more than 4,400 each day. Read More…

• School income tax collections up in the county (Newark Advocate)

NEWARK - Licking County schools are on pace to collect more in income taxes this fiscal year. Although the county's five districts with income taxes saw drops from 2008 to 2009, collections are on pace to rise significantly for some. Newark collections fell from a high of $8.4 million in 2008 to $7.2 million in fiscal year 2011. Midway through the current fiscal year, the district is on pace to collect $8.2 million. Read More…

• Bullied Teen Speaks Out (ONN)

HAMILTON - Courtney Lyn Bacher never thought that she would be physically attacked or verbally assaulted by a bully at her high school. "I was by myself, when I had four guys come up and yell at me calling me names. I couldn't escape. I felt like I wasn't worth anything," Bacher said. The bullying began in eighth grade but it escalated during Bacher's high school years. Bacher posted a video sharing with friends and strangers how the abuse affected her, reported ONN's Lot Tan. Read More…

Editorial

• Pilot programs for evaluating Ohio teachers, if done well, could yield great benefits (Plain Dealer)

In contrast with the fireworks and ultimate failure of public employee reforms drawn up in Statehouse backrooms, Ohio education officials are tackling another politically sensitive issue -- teacher evaluations -- with restraint and transparency, in consultation with school districts and teachers. Read More…

• The right choice under their noses (Times Reporter)

Three Tuscarawas County school superintendents were hired last summer, all from outside their school districts. Sometimes, school boards have to cast a net outside the district to get just the right person for the job. But in an ideal situation, a replacement can be groomed from within. And that’s exactly what happened when the Garaway Board of Education last month agreed to replace retiring Superintendent Darryl Jones with someone who worked in the same building, High School Principal Teresa Alberts, the only candidate considered. Read More…

Money Matters

In a topical follow up to our article on Ohio's lack of a school funding formula, The Shanker Institute adds this weight of evidence to the funding debate. We'd like to draw specific attention to the areas we have bolded.

Our new report, written by Rutgers professor Bruce Baker and entitled “Revisiting the Age-Old Question: Does Money Matter in Education?” reviews this body of evidence.

Contrary to the canned rhetoric flying around public discourse on education finance, high-quality research like that discussed in Baker’s review does not lend itself to broad, sweeping conclusions. Some things work and others don’t, and so the strength and consistency of the money/results relationship varies by how it’s spent, the students on whom it spent, and other factors. Sometimes effects are small, and sometimes they’re larger.

Nevertheless, on the whole, Baker’s review shows that there is a consistently positive effect of higher spending on achievement. Moreover, interventions that cost money, such as higher teacher salaries, have a proven track record of getting results, while state-level policies to increase the adequacy and equitability of school finance have also been shown to improve the level and distribution of student performance.

Finally, and most relevant to the current budget context, the common argument that we can reduce education funding without any harm to (and, some argue, actual improvement of) achievement outcomes has no basis in empirical evidence.

Without question, there is plenty of room for improvement in how we finance our public education system, and much to learn about how spending affects short- and long-term outcomes. But the fact that some people are not only arguing that money makes no difference, but also that reducing funding will cause no harm (and might even help), can only be described as a fantasy, dressed up with misleading graphs, unproven “off the shelf” cost-cutting measures and gigantic misinterpretations of the impressive body of evidence on this topic.

More funding will not solve all our problems, but, as Baker puts it, “sufficient financial resources are a necessary underlying condition for providing quality education.”

In other words, money matters.

NCLB’s 10th Anniversary No Cause For Celebration

Via NEA, to mark today being the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law by former President George W. Bush 10 years ago this Sunday. NCLB changed the focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from emphasizing equal access and closing achievement gaps in education, to focusing on high stakes testing, labeling, and sanctions.

NEA believes the 10th anniversary of NCLB is no cause for celebration and that drastic changes should be made before students and educators are forced to mark yet another anniversary living with this flawed law.

“I meet with thousands of educators as I travel around the country, and the concern I hear most often is the overwhelming burden NCLB presents in classrooms and schools,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “From high-stakes testing to narrowing of the curriculum, this law has missed the mark. Instead of creating a generation of critical thinkers, we are graduating a generation of test takers. Let’s get back to the core purpose of public education and let’s re-balance the federal role: ensuring every student has access to a great education that prepares them for lifelong learning and success in the 21st century.”

School progress cannot accurately be measured by a snapshot of test scores from one test, given on one day in the school year. These high-stakes tests are leaving behind too many students. As members of Congress prepare to consider reauthorization this year, NEA is urging them to get it right this time by listening to those affected most by the law—students, teachers and parents.

NEA’s priorities for ESEA reauthorization are:

• Promote innovation, high expectations, and encourage development of 21st century skills in public schools.
• End the obsession with high-stakes, poor-quality tests, by developing high-quality assessment systems that provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned.
• Provide great educators and school leaders for every student.
• Promote public education as a shared responsibility of parents, students, educators, and policymakers.
• Provide increased funding to all states and school districts to meet the growing demand for educating U.S. students to be globally-competitive.

“The time and funds spent on complying with NCLB red tape should be used to promote teacher collaboration, identifying and addressing students’ individual needs and restoring great programs that have been slashed from school offerings because of a focus on math and reading and dwindling funds,” said Van Roekel. “Our students and educators have been calling out to Congress for years now to invest in classroom priorities that build the foundation for student learning.”

New Gates Study on teacher evaluations

A new Gates study released today finds effective teacher evaluations require high standards, with multiple measures.

ABOUT THIS REPORT: This report is intended for policymakers and practitioners wanting to understand the implications of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project’s interim analysis of classroom observations. Those wanting to explore all the technical aspects of the study and analysis also should read the companion research report, available at www.metproject.org.

Together, these two documents on classroom observations represent the second pair of publications from the MET project. In December 2010, the project released its initial analysis of measures of student perceptions and student achievement in Learning about Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Two more reports are planned for mid-2012: one on the implications of assigning weights to different measures; another using random assignment to study the extent to which student assignment may affect teacher effectiveness results. ABOUT THE MET PROJECT: The MET project is a research partnership of academics, teachers, and education organizations committed to investigating better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. Funding is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The report provides for 3 takeaways.

High-quality classroom observations will require clear standards, certified raters, and multiple observations per teacher. Clear standards and high-quality training and certification of observers are fundamental to increasing inter-rater reliability. However, when measuring consistent aspects of a teacher’s practice, reliability will require more than inter- rater agreement on a single lesson. Because teaching practice varies from lesson to lesson, multiple observations will be necessary when high-stakes decisions are to be made. But how will school systems know when they have implemented a fair system? Ultimately, the most direct way is to periodically audit a representative sample of official observations, by having impartial observers perform additional observations. In our companion research report, we describe one approach to doing this.

Combining the three approaches (classroom observations, student feedback, and value-added student achievement gains) capitalizes on their strengths and offsets their weaknesses. For example, value-added is the best single predictor of a teacher’s student achievement gains in the future. But value-added is often not as reliable as some other measures and it does not point a teacher to specific areas needing improvement. Classroom observations provide a wealth of information that could support teachers in improving their practice. But, by themselves, these measures are not highly reliable, and they are only modestly related to student achievement gains. Student feedback promises greater reliability because it includes many more perspectives based on many more hours in the classroom, but not surprisingly, it is not as predictive of a teacher’s achievement gains with other students as value-added. Each shines in its own way, either in terms of predictive power, reliability, or diagnostic usefulness.

Combining new approaches to measuring effective teaching—while not perfect—significantly outperforms traditional measures. Providing better evidence should lead to better decisions. No measure is perfect. But if every personnel decision carries consequences—for teachers and students—then school systems should learn which measures are better aligned to the outcomes they value. Combining classroom observations with student feedback and student achievement gains on state tests did a better job than master’s degrees and years of experience in predicting which teachers would have large gains with another group of students. But the combined measure also predicted larger differences on a range of other outcomes, including more cognitively challenging assessments and student- reported effort and positive emotional attachment. We should refine these tools and continue to develop better ways to provide feedback to teachers. In the meantime, it makes sense to compare measures based on the criteria of predictive power, reliability, and diagnostic usefulness.

MET Gathering Feedback Practioner Brief

A bridge too far

If you're a school administrator, wondering what your next budget is going to look like, waiting for the release of a new school funding formula, our advice is "don't hold your breath".

Ohio had a school funding formula. Strangley, it still has a website dedicated to it

After 20 years of controversy over its school funding system, Ohio now has a new method for providing funding to its public schools. Enacted as part of the 2010-2011 state budget, the Ohio Evidence-Based Model is designed to fund strategies that have the best chance to help students learn.

While economic realities require that the new approach be phased in over 10 years, the principles underlying the evidence-based model are now in place.

What's more, the new funding model is tied to education reforms designed to build a 21st-century system of education for Ohio.

Unlike the current Attorney General, Mike DeWine, who is winning plaudits for continuing and building upon much of the work of the previous administration, the Governor decided that everything the previous administration had done must go. Whether it worked or not. The Evidenced based model, which brought together hundreds of stakeholders and took years to develop was immediately scrapped. Replaced with a make-it-up-as-we-go-along "bridging formula". It is increasingly likely that a continuing "bridging formula" is on the horizon

But nearly a year later, Kasich, like governors before him, has found that overhauling the way Ohio funds education is not simple math.

The Republican administration concluded a series of public meetings on the issue in September but has yet to release a draft proposal promised for October. And now the governor’s office appears certain to miss a self-imposed deadline of January for unveiling its method of paying for Ohio schools.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said the administration is working on its plan, and he doesn’t know when it will be ready.

We asked the Governor's education Czar, Bob Sommers, if he could provide some timetable guidance.

@RDSommers can you give us some guide as to when we might see a funding formula? Is it close, not close? Thanks!
@jointhefutureOH wish I could, but the issues are complex. We continue to study the possibilities. Ideas welcome

We suggested they look at successful models elsewhere in the country, but apparently they don't think there are any. We'd also suggest that they were a little trigger happy in shooting down the Evidence Based Model, and perhaps they could perform some CPR and bring it back with their own modifications.

Either way, the administration has clearly learned that this is no simple task with obvious answers.

Their difficulties will certainly have been further complicated by severe funding cuts as a result of HB153 raiding school budgets, and alienating most school districts and communities with bills like SB5 and HB136. It's hard to collaborate with hundreds of stakeholders when the previous 12 months have been spent attacking them and their mission.

If the administration have learned this lesson we should expect to see more outreach and consultation, and eventually arrive at a funding formula that works for most. Otherwise the administration is going to find itself having traveled a bridge too far.

Final note. We'd like to thank Bob Sommers for engaging in our questions with honest and forthright answers. While we sometimes disagree on fundamental policies, being able to have open and honest policy dialogue is our number one goal, his efforts in this repect advance that.

Stop Tying Pay to Performance

The evidence is overwhelming: It doesn’t work.

That's the headline from a Harvard Business Review article. If the HBR can conclude that pay for performance doesn't work for big business executives, it's not a giant leap to understand it won't work for the teaching profession where there is no profit motive, but instead relies on collaboration and teamwork.

Time frame: next week | Degree of difficulty: operationally easy, psychologically hard | Barrier: greed, economic theory

We’ve talked about this since the financial meltdown. Now it’s time to do it: Unlink pay from performance. The evidence keeps growing that pay for performance is ineffective. It also may induce executives to take company-killing risks. There are other ways to motivate employees that yield better results at lower cost.

It may take a while before actual evidence and research finally convinces corporate education reformers they have it wrong, but month after month the moiuntain of evidence grows.