School Choice

Last week was National School Choice Week, a celebration that tends to make strange bedfellows of education policy advocates. The broad appeal of the movement – parents should be able to choose a high-quality school for their children – belies the volatile political reality. However, two recent reports add empirical evidence to the frequently emotional and personal discussions surrounding school choice.

The cleverly-titled School Choice Regulations: Red Tape or Red Herring?, from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, examines the assertion that state-imposed regulations and accountability measures discourage private schools from participating in voucher or tax-credit programs. The report surveyed 241 private schools in five voucher-participating cities: Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. 

Surprisingly, the authors found that regulations don’t act as a strong deterrent for participation. Only 3 percent of non-participating schools listed program regulations as the primary reason for not opting in.

A descriptive analysis of 13 voucher programs and tax credit scholarship programs found a similarly mild effect on participation. Moving from the lowest to highest regulation burden represented only a 9 percent decrease in participation from private schools.

Instead of restrictions and accountability measures, the most-cited reason for not participating was the availability of voucher-eligible families. It seems that these schools believe the area they serve wouldn’t provide enough qualified voucher students to make participation worthwhile. In fact, more than a third of non-voucher schools reported that they would be more likely to participate if the program extended eligibility to all families in the form of a universal voucher.

While voucher regulations had a small deterrent effect, it’s interesting to note that Catholic schools – which make up more than a third of private education options – had high participation even in the most heavily regulated environments. The study’s authors believe that combatting declining enrollments, as well as a foundational mission to serve the poor, drives this participation.

School Choice Week also brought a new report from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) examining changes in charter school achievement levels over time. Weighing in at two volumes and about 200 pages, Charter School Growth and Replication is a detailed study of the impact of network expansion and the range of performance quality within charter schools.

One of its most notable findings is that charter schools with a rocky first year aren’t likely to improve their achievement results over time. A charter school in the lowest quintile of performance its first year has a 66 percent probability of staying in the lowest two quintiles of schools in math and a 70 percent probability of staying in the lowest two quintiles in reading.

The trajectory of the lowest performing schools becomes more entrenched over time – once a school spends two years in the lowest quintile, the probability of staying in the two lowest quintiles ranges from 82 percent to 91 percent in math and 89 percent to 96 percent in reading.

The study further examines the impact of schools that operate as part of a Charter Management Organization (CMO). They find that CMO schools, on average, tend to post the same achievement results as non-CMO schools, but produce better results for disadvantaged subgroups – students of color and those in poverty – than traditional public or non-CMO schools. 

Another striking finding is the broad range of academic quality of CMO networks. In math, 37 percent of networks produce average achievement results stronger than a traditional public school, while 50 percent posted weaker results. In reading, where the spread of effect sizes is even more pronounced, 43 percent of networks fare better than traditional schools and 37 percent fare worse.

While the two reports occupy different spheres of school choice policy – one focused on the provision of education through the private market, the other on the effectiveness of publicly-authorized charter schools – they both convey a similar theme. Regulations imposed on schools matter, but not always in the ways we’d expect.

Fordham’s report delivers a significant blow to the argument that heavy regulations act as a strong deterrent for participation in voucher programs. For private schools considering voucher participation, it seems that the market  of qualified students, as well as internal factors such as admissions criteria and school culture, may play more of a role than previously thought.     

The CREDO study should act as a wake-up call for charter school authorizers. The study suggests that the length of charter authorization periods should be reconsidered: if a school performs poorly in its first few years, it is not likely to improve before its charter is up for renewal.  

Given the noted difficulties in closing poor-performing charter schools, this report may push authorizers to scrutinize new charter school applications even more closely. In a recent op-ed, the New York Times cited the CREDO study as evidence to push for the closing of poor performing schools and limit the authorization of new charters to the “most credible” candidates. Unfortunately, the study shows that credibility is difficult to measure. Operating under the umbrella of a CMO is not necessarily an indicator of quality. Further, the CREDO study finds that characteristics that might seem to indicate success - network maturity, size, and proximity to other network schools – do not provide significant information about future performance.

One bright spot is the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF), a non-profit that invests in charter school operators. CREDO found that students in schools selected by CSGF tend to outpace peers in both traditional public schools and other non-CSGF CMOs. The ability of CSGF to “pick winners” from the charter school pool suggests that a high level of due diligence and oversight from authorizers can have impact on school quality.

Everyone from U.S. News to David Letterman knows that a surefire way to get attention is to produce a ranking. Few – including my colleagues – can resist their clear-cut simplicity (or the opportunity to be judgmental). Add a controversial figure like former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee to the mix, and it’s no surprise that StudentsFirst’s State Policy Report Card has received so much attention.

Love or hate Rhee, these rankings matter – at least to policymakers, the media, and wonks. Two-thirds of states couldn’t muster a ‘C’ on their report card, which examined twenty-four policies across three categories: elevating teaching, empowering parents, and improving school governance and spending. Only two states, Florida and Louisiana, scraped by with a ‘B-’ average. Now, state policymakers are using the rankings to tout their (relative) success, while others are vowing to use the Report Card as a roadmap for education reform in their states.

Many, including the American Federation of Teachers, have criticized StudentsFirst for excluding student achievement from the grades (yes, you read that correctly: the AFT wants to use student test scores) and focusing only on policy. While the omission is worth noting, it shouldn’t diminish the credibility of the StudentsFirst grades outright. Policy choices matter. They create incentives, signal what’s important, and enable or prevent certain actions at the local level. And it’s appropriate for an organization centered around a policy agenda, like StudentsFirst, to produce rankings focused on whether states have enacted those policies. That said, the only thing I learned from this report card was which states had adopted Michelle Rhee’s favored education reforms.

Those policies, and the theory of action accompanying them, are where I have issues with StudentsFirst. Often, they rewarded states for arbitrary, highly specific choices, without the rationale to support such specificity. For example, StudentsFirst calls for 50 percent of teacher and principal evaluations to be based on value-added data, despite inconclusive research. Why insist on 50 percent for an ‘A’ grade, particularly when the MET project found that "there is a range of reasonable weights" for reliable, composite measures of teacher quality?

Similarly, StudentsFirst rewarded states with A-F school grades to help parents better understand school quality. But if states used alternative ways of labeling schools, like a five-star system, they could not earn higher than a ‘D’ on that policy from StudentsFirst. What is included in school accountability systems is surely as important as how schools are labeled, and there is no reason to think a five-star system couldn’t be as successful as an A-F one.

More troubling, StudentsFirst frequently rewarded states with high marks for enacting the most severe version of reform – even if the policies are new, untested ideas like parent trigger laws. This may not be the wisest choice for state policymakers, as divisive reform agendas are often bogged down in criticism: too extreme, too dogmatic, hastily conceived, and poorly communicated. See: Tom Luna in Idaho, Tony Bennett in Indiana, and yes, even Michelle Rhee in DCPS.

Take the case with parent information about teachers’ effectiveness: to earn an ‘A’ for this policy, StudentsFirst requires parental consent to place students with teachers labeled ineffective. But with something so controversial, it may make more sense to start first with parental notification. This would be a huge policy shift for many states, but warrants only a ‘C’ grade. Further, before you have parental notification about ineffective teaching, states probably want to pilot and refine their teacher evaluation systems so that they are accurate and fair – building buy-in from educators. But without parental notification on the books now, StudentsFirst deems states as failing. Why penalize policymakers for making thoughtful, logical choices about the sequencing and implementation of reform? 

Change doesn’t come easy, and it often requires patience and compromise – rather than bulldozing. Policy choices are critical, but building trust and respect among stakeholders can make or break whether those policies take root. In the case of DCPS, many of Rhee’s reforms have been sustained, albeit under the radar by her successor, Kaya Henderson. It’s unclear whether Indiana and Idaho will see similar results. In any case, it would be nice if StudentsFirst could also reward states for taking less severe – but perhaps more inclusive – action to elevate teaching, empower parents, and improve school governance.

Education reform is divisive enough without encouraging all-out aggression. This may not be the Michelle Rhee-way, but it can be an equally effective way to enact and sustain the kinds of reforms Rhee would like to see.

Connecticut budget cuts stall plan to hire additional college faculty

Judge deals a setback to Louisiana’s voucher program

Wyoming governor's budget plan cuts $11.4M from UW

Iowa regents freeze tuition for in-state undergrads

Connecticut budget cuts stall plan to hire additional college faculty
Connecticut’s largest college system, the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, has suspended its plan to hire 47 new faculty members because its budget was cut last week when Governor Dan Malloy included $14.4 million in higher education cuts to the system as part of his attempt to close a state budget shortfall. The cuts come after a reorganization last year in which the colleges saved $5.5 million by merging administrative duties between the community college and state university networks, an initiative pitched by a Malloy as a way to pump new money into academic programs. However, due to the budget shortfall, the money can no longer go towards funding new faculty, but instead towards closing the budget shortfall. The University of Connecticut, which operates under a separate governing board, will also be cut by $10.3 million, but previously planned faculty hiring that was paid for by a tuition increase last year will not be affected by the emergency budget cuts. More here…

Judge deals a setback to Louisiana’s voucher program
A Louisiana judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for Louisiana to appropriate state money to private schools through a voucher program from a fund that clearly is meant to provide funding for public schools. The ruling does not rule the voucher program unconstitutional, per se. However, should the State Supreme Court uphold the ruling, that would force the legislature to appropriate funding for the private school voucher program separately from the funding for public schools, which is a formula designed to calculate state and local funding for public school districts. Appropriations are far more politically fraught than formula funds, so such a decision would significantly complicate one of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s signature initiatives. More here…

Wyoming governor's budget plan cuts $11.4M from UW
State funding to the University of Wyoming would be cut by $11.4 million next year under Governor Matt Mead’s fiscal year 2014 budget recommendations. The 6 percent cut below fiscal year 2013 levels is less than the 8 percent cuts recommended for most other state agencies; university officials had been bracing for the larger, 8 percent cuts. The Governor also recommended introducing a recurring $2.4 million merit pay system for university employees, as well as $70 million for a new engineering building. The president of the University of Wyoming said he was grateful for the Governor’s recommendations. After being warned that large cuts may be forthcoming, the university had maintained empty faculty positions and worked to reduce other expenses, so the 6 percent cut was less than anticipated by administrative staff at the college. More here…

Iowa regents freeze tuition for in-state undergrads
The Iowa Board of Regents voted unanimously this week to freeze tuition for undergraduate resident students in the 2013-2014 school year for the first time in 30 years. The freeze is contingent on the state legislature awarding a 2.6 percent increase to the universities’ public funding over 2013 fiscal year levels. The tuition freeze is possible due to record enrollment rates at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, as well as low inflation rates, according to the Board of Regents. Seventy-two percent of Iowa students graduate with some debt, and the average amount of debt upon graduation is $28,753 – the sixth highest amount of debt per borrower in the country, according to the Project on Student Debt. If the tuition freeze is implemented next year, tuition would remain at $6,648 at ISU and $6,678 at the University of Iowa. Out-of-state students, who already pay more than twice what in-state students pay at the college, will see tuition increase by at least $400 and possibly more than $1,000. More here…

Conventional wisdom may say that the federal government should make way for states in education reform, but a week ago, voters didn’t seem to agree. In Idaho, voters rejected merit pay for teachers, limits on unions’ collective bargaining powers, and an expensive contract to provide one-to-one mobile computing devices to students and teachers. South Dakotans voted down similar measures to eliminate tenure and adopt merit pay. And in perhaps the biggest upset, Glenda Ritz, a teacher, defeated Indiana’s incumbent Superintendent for Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, an education reform superstar. Ritz received strong support from unions and Tea Party conservatives alike, who opposed Bennett’s initiatives to adopt the Common Core standards and assessments, develop an A-F school grading system, evaluate teachers based in part on standardized tests, takeover failing schools, and implement school vouchers. The only education initiatives that fared well were charter school­s, with both Georgia and Washington approving ballot initiatives.

If last week’s elections tell us anything about the fate of education policy over the next four years, it’s that parents – and the public as a whole – have little faith in education policy. And who can blame them? Which specific policies, from the federal government or from states, have improved their child’s experience in the classroom over the last decade?

Sure, there are better data than ever before about schools, teachers, and students. But it’s not always shared with parents in a compelling, personalized way. Yes, states adopted more rigorous standards for all students, not just those expected to succeed. But the general public is, in most cases, completely unaware of the standards and why they matter. And they’re definitely turned off by the idea that, even if students learn the same standards, there are different expectations for their performance based on race. Finally, new technologies have emerged that can engage students in learning experiences in remarkable ways. But they are overshadowed by standardized tests of little value that appear to take time away from real learning.

More so than public opinion toward unions or Common Core, last week’s election results appear to demonstrate the extent of public frustration with testing and “teaching to the test” in particular. In the No Child Left Behind era, teachers and school leaders have often felt battered, rather than empowered, by reform, and their views have seeped into the general public. From the Atlanta cheating scandal to Pineapple-Gate, testing is viewed – at best – as a necessary evil with enough influence already over the education system. Parents and educators (and voters) don’t necessarily take issue with merit pay or evaluations in their own right, but rather with the fact that these judgments will be based on test scores.

Education policy tends to involve rules, requirements, sanctions, and other left-brained tools and structures. However, these tend to conflict with the critical thinking, analytical, innovative right-brained skills and attitudes widely perceived as critical for success in the hyper-connected, 21st century world. Based on the last decade, government bureaucracies and structures – no matter how well-intentioned – often appear ill-fit to create educational settings where this kind of learning occurs.

So some parents have turned to charter schools, hoping that schools outside the authority of districts and states could break the hold of testing and create more productive, engaging school environments. But while growing numbers embrace the idea of charters, the same cannot be said for other mainstream education reform ideas like school takeovers or closures, teacher evaluations, and changes in HR policies like merit pay or tenure reform, based primarily on student test scores. For most parents, returning autonomy and authority to educators is a far more appealing proposition than increasing the significance of standardized test scores. While over 70 percent of the public has trust and confidence in America’s teachers, the opposite is true for government – and it showed in last week’s polls.

As for education policy wonks, this election should serve as a warning. Advocates and policymakers must do a better job of making the case for standards, tests, data, and accountability policies enacted by states and the federal government. One way to do this is by improving them – creating more sophisticated assessments, using and valuing achievement data beyond test scores, and improving how parents and the public access information about school quality. But maybe it’s also time to ditch the rule book and add some right-brained thinking to education reform.

There was a lot of education-related activity in the states this election season, from a ballot initiative in San Antonio that will raise the sales tax to help pay for pre-K, to the race for Indiana superintendent, where controversial incumbent Tony Bennett lost to challenger Glenda Ritz, who reportedly got more votes in the race than Governor Pence did.

We put together this interactive map to help readers peruse some state-by-state results of key races that will affect early education in the states in coming years. Scroll over states to find out more about who ran, who won and where there could be big policy changes afoot.

State-by-State Results of Key Early Ed-Related Races and Ballot Initiatives

A special thanks to Megan Carolan of NIEER, who contributed research to this map.

Update: The Washington gubernatorial election was called for Inslee (D). Voters in Washington state also approved Initiative 1240 to allow charter schools.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), along with several co-sponsors, has introduced a new bill that would establish charter-school-like teacher and principal preparation programs, termed “Preparation Academies.” The proposed legislation aims to better prepare students for college and careers by increasing the number of effective teachers and principals who serve high-needs schools and hard-to-staff subjects like science and math.

Early education stakeholders should watch the bill closely because while it doesn’t delineate what grade levels would be included, it is safe to say that it would include academies that prepare K-3 teachers and elementary school principals.  What is unclear is whether the bill could also apply to the training of pre-k teachers.

Last week, Early Ed Watch attended an event at the American Enterprise Institute on the federal role in public education. Five panels – discussing 11 papers – explored the last 50 years of federal education policy. The point was to ask whether federal incentives, penalties and role-modeling – the “carrots, sticks and bully pulpit” of the event’s title – are doing any good in improving American education.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to increase the number of charter schools in the Big Apple has generated a lot of buzz since Bloomberg announced it last week. Charter schools are independent public schools that are publicly funded, publicly accountable, and free of charge to students, but operated by independent nonprofit boards, rather than school districts. In late September, Harvard researchers released a study showing that predominantly disadvantaged students who attend New York City’s public charter schools are making more progress towards closing the achievement gap with their suburban peers than a control group of NYC students who remained in NYC public schools.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a number of steps to expand the number of charter schools in New York City, including raising the state cap on the number of charter schools, raising additional funding for charter school facilities, and co-locating charter schools with public housing projects.

KIPP, a network of high-performing charter schools serving low-income, predominantly minority students, recently announced plans to dramatically expand the number of KIPP schools operating pre-k and elementary programs.

Paul Tough, whose blog on education is rapidly becoming one of our favorites, writes about some of the challenges facing New Haven's Amistad High School. Amistad is part of the Achievement First network of high-performing charter schools and opened two years ago to serve students coming out of Amistad Academy middle school.