Tag Archives: accountability

Accountability and voucher-accepting private schools

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Some people say that private schools that enroll a certain number/percentage of students who pay tuition using a state voucher should have a state report card just like public schools.

Those people are right. Parents are looking for information on the quality of their private school options, and private schools need to be accountable for the results of students funded by taxpayers. However, their report card solution is problematic for a number of reasons:

  1. The achievement of all students at a private school does nothing to account for their use of public funds. As taxpayers, our interest is in how students who are voucher recipients fare, compared to how they would have otherwise.
  2. Public school funding is estimated at around $12,000 per student and the maximum voucher amount is about a 60% discount at $5,000 on the high end. It is strange to imagine that a school that gets a portion of the funding would be subject to the same level of reporting.
  3. We know from national studies that the real impact of private school comes in higher graduation rates, which Ohio does not track for voucher recipients. That would be a welcome addition to the private school accountability rubric.
  4. Ohio already meets the national standards for voucher accountability:
    -All school voucher recipients take the same state assessment as their public school peers
    -The results of these tests are required to be posted online (separated by private school where it would not violate federal student privacy laws) for all the world to see

Whether there are some private schools that would want to buy in to the full accountability system in exchange for full funding is a conversation for another day.

For now, Ohioans can rest assured that private schools ARE accountable – not only to the state, but also to their parents because their families, tuition-paying or otherwise, are always free to vote with their feet if they see that their child is not succeeding.

Ohio voucher data doesn’t tell a story

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An article in today’s Forham Institute blog called “Voucher student data promising, Better data needed” goes to the heart of state accountability for scholarship recipients.

They rightly point out that comparisons of voucher recipients to all students in a district are irrelevant because voucher recipients only come from the lowest-rated schools. Comparisons should be apples-to-apples.

Author Bianca Speranza fine-tunes the data to compare the scores of voucher recipients with the scores of students from the lowest-rated schools and shows that the data is favorable to showing a positive impact of state scholarships. “Overall,” she writes, “a majority of students using vouchers are outperforming their peers who remain in traditional district schools.”

However, while this is as close as we can come to an apples-to-apples comparison with the available data, it is still lacking.

As Bianca points out: “The lack of data available, however, is a yet another clear call for why Ohio needs a system of accountability for all publicly funded students that will not just show us raw achievement data for one year, but rather how schools, and students, are performing over time.”

It’s true. We really can’t tell much from current voucher recipient data because it is just a snapshot. It doesn’t show any trajectory, any of the change over time. Are students improving? Are they coming in behind and catching up? Are they coming in ahead and falling behind? The data doesn’t tell us.

That’s why School Choice Ohio advocates for the value-added analysis of voucher recipients’ test scores. Ohio parents and policy makers need good longitudinal data that studies both snapshots (to see where students compare with their peers when they begin using the scholarship) and value-added data (to see where they go from there).

House Bill 136 includes a proposal to add value-added data analysis to voucher recipients scores and is yet another good reason for the bill to pass.

New Media as a Metaphor

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A popular Columbus food blog recently diverged from culinary guidance to thoughts on newspapers and bloggers – and the (sometimes sour) relationship between them.

As a journalism major from way back, I immediately connect this establishment/novice conversation with discussions about school choice. Could there be an overlap in the shifts from traditional news media and the shifts from traditional public schools?

“Establishment” Sense of Entitlement

As with mission-focused newspapers who embrace quality blogging, we sometimes hear from public school leaders who welcome school choice as an important way to help kids. Michelle Rhee in DC is an example, as is Joel Klein in New York City. The former principal of Clifton Elementary School in Cincinnati is another. He bravely embraced EdChoice in its first year by calling it an important option and asserting that his school could compete.

But, frustratingly, we also hear a lot of the same old tired lines about public district schools being the only way to ensure quality and accountability in education. How could that possibly be true, especially now with more and more evidence to the contrary? Well-designed (and that is not a given) school choice programs are opening doors to quality and accountability, too, and maybe more robustly than the establishment in some instances.

Decentralized sourcing

Bloggers are ubiquitous – some are innovative and helpful. Some publish tripe. But there is no question that blogs are helping to connect web users (busers?) to new information and perspectives. And blogs have pushed traditional media to respond to news consumers in new ways.

Diversity in quality is also a characteristic of successful non-traditional schools. A system that is open to innovation – with duplication for successful models and closure for failures (failure is inevitable!) – will see schools like this one in Cleveland open up to help kids.

Choice and accountability

Online, readers vote with their click. In education, parents vote with their enrollment. Both empower regular folks in powerful ways.

And while “we the people” don’t have a tremendous vested interest in making sure that the good bloggers get public support and the bad ones get closed, certainly kids deserve both the innovation of the new sector, the ability to choose their school, and careful public scrutiny.

- Sarah Pechan

Access to Educational Opportunities

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Accountability, standardized testing, measures, scores, education reform, “Race to the Top”…  ask a child what these mean and you’ll probably get the same blank stare and confused “What?” that my son gave me. 

Often in educational discourse, we talk incessantly about the student, around the student, and at the student.  We talk to the teachers, to the school boards, to the community, to the parent sometimes, but it is a rare moment when someone speaks directly to the children.

Amidst much fuel and fury, President Obama delivered what actually turned out to be a not so controversial back to school speech.  He spoke of the need for studying hard, setting goals, accepting personal responsibility, and getting “serious this year”.   Back to school themes that many students are familiar with and yet this time it was different.   It was personal.

As much as the conversation was about a child’s personal responsibility to obtain an education, it was far more.  It was a conversation that sought to nurture the soul of children.  It was a conversation of hope, self belief and the ever eternal quest of self-realization. 

He talked to them about finding and developing their talent and overcoming overwhelming obstacles. Unlike many previous presidents, he has firsthand knowledge of poverty, single parenting, lack of focus in school, working hard and grabbing at second and third chances to turn your life around.

Although he stated, “Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you, because here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future,” unfortunately for many students where they are right now will determine where they end up. Their futures have already been predetermined by virtue of living in areas where the schools are failing, are often in economically depressed areas and the access to opportunities are near nigh impossible.

These children are in desperate need of options now.  Although the president’s “Race to the Top” is headed in the right direction, by encouraging innovative schools, quality charter schools and the promotion of merit pay, it does not go far enough.  For these children all options must be made available and that means vouchers have to be a part of the solution.  To deny a child a scholarship that will help to nurture his abilities, is to deny that child his future.  For these children no stone should be unturned and no opportunity should be denied.

In order for President Obama to call upon students to “… set your own goals for your education — and do everything you can to meet them,”he must provide children every and all opportunities to do so. If we are to nurture and encourage children to find their dreams through education, they must first have access to all educational opportunities.  Only then can they become a great writer or the next inventor or the next politician.  Only then will they be able to fulfill their goals.

 

Tisha Brady

On Education Vouchers and Being Accountable

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On Wednesday, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute hosted a simulcast panel discussion on the future of charter schools and vouchers. The panel featured national experts including Ohio’s own Dr. Susan Zelman, namesake of the famous Zelman v Simmons-Harris US Supreme Court case based on the Cleveland Scholarship.

 

Much of the discussion landed on questions of accountability for schools outside the local public school district. Those same questions have routinely been raised in Ohio.

 

Accountability can take lots of forms, but the greatest attention is given to academic accountability (testing). Charter schools take all the same state tests as district schools and face closure if they don’t show student achievement. And private schools are both accountable to paying customers (parents who are free to leave the school if they feel it fails to educate their child) and required to administer state tests to students who receive vouchers.

 

Still, the question has been raised: When a school accepts state vouchers, how much information should the public have about student achievement?

 

At School Choice Ohio, we believe the student achievement of a student using a voucher matters and these students’ test scores should be among the information made public.

 

That’s why we supported landmark legislation in the latest budget that requires the Ohio Department of Education to report test scores of the students who use the EdChoice Scholarship and the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program.

 

These recent changes to Ohio law will put our state on the forefront of voucher accountability nationwide. Parents will have more information about how their children are doing and the public will have information about the investment they’re making in scholarship programs with tax dollars.

 

- Sarah Pechan

 

 

Parents Have New Tool to Ensure Accountability

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One of the underpinnings of the school choice movement has always been our belief in accountability.  Without a doubt, voucher programs have always had market accountability. If parents are unhappy with the education a private school is providing to their children then they simply leave. A private school failing to meet the educational needs of its students is destined to struggle or fail.

 

Many people, friend and foe alike, have also suggested additional accountability (or perhaps more accurately, transparency) for school choice programs. They want to know if students using the programs are performing better academically than their cohorts in public schools.

 

At SCO, we agree that the measurement of academic performance is important. To that end, we have repeatedly pushed to have longitudinal analysis conducted on voucher student test data. After all, all students using an EdChoice Scholarship in Ohio take the state assessment test. Despite high profile studies in Florida, Washington, DC, and Milwaukee, we have not been able to get a similar study done in Ohio. That is soon going to change.

 

The recently passed state budget included language that will increase public transparency of the scholarship programs and give parents additional information to help them make informed decisions about their children’s education. The new language will require the Ohio Department of Education to:

§         Compile and organize test scores of voucher students on a statewide, school district, and private school basis

§         Post voucher student performance to the website each year (without identifying individual students)

§         Notify all eligible parents how voucher students are performing on the state assessment

§         Provide data on their child’s performance annually to the parents of all voucher students and compare the performance to that of similar students who attend the public school that the child would have been assigned

 

In this case, a change of language in the budget is a good thing.  Given that parents are the primary consumer when making decisions about their children’s education, it is important that they know how their children are faring.

 

In addition, we welcome the chance to show policy makers and naysayers what we hear from so many parents….the program works.

 

– Chad Aldis