Education Research

Extra! Extra! More good news about Florida schools

Ron Matus March 5, 2020

Ron Matus

When it comes to Florida’s public education system, good news does not travel fast.

The latest examples: Two encouraging reports that got zero traction in mainstream media circles.

The first is a rigorous study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that as America’s largest private school choice program grew, so did positive impacts on Florida’s public schools.

The second is the latest College Board report on Advanced Placement. Florida again ranks No. 3 in the percentage of graduating seniors who’ve passed college-caliber AP exams, even though it has a higher percentage of low-income students of any Top 10 state but one.

To date, neither report has received any coverage from any of the scores of mainstream media outlets in Florida, including the dozens that report state education news. (The choice report did get a thorough write up in Education Week.) Nor, as far as I can tell, has either report gotten even a perfunctory attaboy from the mainstream organizations that represent Florida parents, teachers and school boards.

This is not a surprise (see here, here and here) but it’s still a shame. Florida public schools haven’t reached the promised land. But they’ve come a long ways since the 1990s – when barely half of Florida students graduated from high school – and shouldn’t be denied accolades from those who claim to be their biggest supporters. One sad reason why is because acknowledging their progress would mean conceding that the expansion of education choice has not hurt Florida’s public education system – and probably helped it.

The new NBER paper shows exactly that.

As the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship expanded – it now serves more than 100,000 low-income students – students in Florida public schools most impacted by the competition saw higher test scores, fewer absences and fewer suspensions. In other words, Florida public schools didn’t get decimated when more parents got more power to choose. They got better. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

How dissonant to hear, in the report’s wake, nothing but crickets. Especially now. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship has never faced more media scrutiny.

Ditto for Florida’s other private school choice options. Last year, the state’s leading newspaper editorialized that creation of the state’s newest K-12 voucher, the Family Empowerment Scholarship, was “the death sentence for Florida’s public schools.” A sham “analysis” that followed warned of dire financial consequences for districts – and managed to spawn at least 10 news stories statewide.

This year’s coverage of a proposed expansion for the new scholarship (also administered in part by Step Up) is hardly more grounded. This week, it spurred a five-alarm op-ed from a school board member whose district has the state’s biggest black-white achievement gap. “Vouchers hurt all,” read the headline. “Time is running out,” the board member wrote, “to save traditional public schools from the steady march to privatization by the Florida Legislature.”

The shrug at Florida’s Advanced Placement success is even more curious. I’m a broken record about this (see here, see here, see … 😊), so I won’t belabor the point. And I’ll continue to agree with thoughtful critiques. But the outcomes here are yet another sign that Florida public schools continue to get better at serving the low-income students who are now a solid majority.

Of the 53,543 graduates in the Florida Class of 2019 who passed an AP exam, 40.3 percent got an exam fee reduction available to low-income students. Of the Top 10 states, only California had a higher rate, at 42.2 percent. The two states ahead of Florida, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had fee reduction rates of 18.6 percent and 14.9 percent, respectively.

Given that it’s low-income parents who are most apt to seek school choice options, shouldn’t traditional public school supporters be the first to shout these results from the rooftops? Maybe if media coverage didn’t suggest the sky was falling, they’d venture up there – and see the big picture of a public education system that really is getting better.

March 5, 2020 0 comment

Charter Schools Education Choice Education Research Featured Public School Choice School Choice

Nonpartisan group releases study on Florida charter school trends

redefinED staff February 12, 2020

redefinED staff

A study released last week by the Leroy Collins Institute delivered mixed news about Florida’s charter schools.

On the positive side, the report concludes that charters are as racially diverse as traditional public schools. But, the researchers caution, there is room for improvement in accountability and transparency, and innovation isn’t adequately measured or shared.

Titled “Florida Charter Schools: Not as Good, Or as Bad, as Advertised,” the report draws primarily on Florida data and research but also reviews nationally conducted research. Some notable findings:

· Florida’s charter schools are not less racially diverse than traditional public schools, but they are less economically diverse.

· Despite a common misperception, charter schools do not adversely affect the racial and economic segregation of nearby traditional schools.

· While charter schools were created in part to spur innovation, the schools have not been held accountable for it, there are no metrics to measure it, and there is no infrastructure to share innovative ideas with other schools.

The report notes that while the number of charter schools in Florida has remained fairly stable in recent years, the number of students attending those schools has continued to grow. Approximately 10 percent of Florida students were enrolled in charter schools in 2016 compared with the national average of 6 percent.

More recent data reported in Step Up For Students’ Education Landscape document shows charter schools continue to be Florida’s most popular school choice option, with more than 300,000 students in attendance for the 2018-19 school year, a 6.1 percent increase from the previous year.

Included in the report is the finding, illustrated by the table below, that charter schools have significantly fewer economically disadvantaged students than traditional schools measured by free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, and that this gap has widened over the past 17 years. The table also compares charter and traditional schools by the percentage of economically segregated schools with at least 90 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals. The gap is smaller here, although still statistically significant, the researchers say.

Also included in the institute’s report are recommendations for increased accountability, racial and economic diversity and innovation. Among them is the suggestion that the state revisit the purpose of charter schools, analyze how state policy has evolved, and review how the charter school sector has changed since charter schools were created.

The report additionally suggests the state reaffirm its original commitment to racial diversity in charter schools, adding a goal to diversity of students with varying economic backgrounds, and take a more proactive role in identifying innovative schools and sharing successful practices with both charters and traditional public schools.

Established in 1988, the LeRoy Collins Institute is a nonpartisan, statewide policy organization located at Florida State University.

February 12, 2020 0 comment

Analysis Demographic Research Education Research Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice

94 percent of FTC students earned high school diplomas in 2018-19

Patrick R. Gibbons November 22, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

Graduation rates for students in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program declined slightly in 2018-19 according to a new report from Step Up For Students.

Of the 2,648 high school seniors using the scholarship, 94.1 percent earned a high school diploma in 2018-19. That’s down from 95.1 percent in the previous year and from 94.6 percent in 2016-17, the first year with reported graduation rates for the scholarship program.

Selected student level characteristics among 12th-graders, number of graduates, graduation rate (2018-19) SOURCE: Step Up For Students

Step Up For Students in 2018-19 provided scholarships to 99,735 students who attended one of 1,802 participating private schools. The scholarship program is restricted to students living in households earning less than 260 percent of the poverty level, or about $66,000 for a family of four. The average student participating in the program in 2018-19 lived in a household earning just $25,755. Of those students, 68 percent were black or Hispanic; 54 percent lived in a single-parent household.

Step Up (which hosts this blog) manages five scholarship programs, including the nation’s largest privately funded scholarship program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

According to the report, religious schools saw higher graduation rates than non-religious schools, with Episcopalian, Islamic/Muslim and Seventh Day Adventist schools achieving 100 percent graduation rates.

Nine in 10 students (93.8 percent) who qualify for the federal free and reduced-price meal program graduated, while 97.3 percent of students at the highest threshold of eligibility graduated.

Females were more likely to graduate than males, but only by a 1.4-point margin.

Black and Hispanic students graduated at a rate of 92.2 percent and 94.2 percent, respectively, both slightly below the 95.7 percent for white students.

The graduation rate for scholarship students cannot be compared to Florida’s public school graduation rate. The Florida Department of Education uses a four-year cohort method that tracks students starting in their freshman year. Florida’s public school graduation rate from 2017-18 (latest available) stands at 86.1 percent, a massive improvement since 2003-04.

November 22, 2019 0 comment

Achievement Gap Demographic Research Education and Public Policy Education Research Testing and Accountability

2019 NAEP prediction: Teacher strike effects will be felt

Matthew Ladner October 24, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Editor’s note: Federal officials will release results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, on Oct. 30. The congressionally mandated project administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, also known as “the nation’s report card,” provides group-level data on student achievement in reading and mathematics for grades 4 and 8. EducationNext asked four national education policy experts, including redefinED executive editor Matt Ladner, to predict this year’s findings. Ladner’s take is offered here.

You can read predictions from Matthew M. Chingos, Sandy Kress, Susanna Loeb, Paul E. Peterson, Michael J. Petrilli and Morgan Polikoff in the full report, available here.

Greeks of antiquity consulted the oracle of Apollo for predictions about the future. The rituals involved the use of drugs and inhalation of mind-altering vapors among other things, like sacrificing a goat. Apparently in combination, these rituals inspired the oracle with the ability to make cryptic predictions with multiple possible interpretations – a handy skill when you don’t actually know much about the future.

The request to make predictions about the new NAEP data puts me in a dilemma similar to that of the oracle. NAEP results act like an oblong ball that bounces in unpredictable ways, and moreover, we have limited understanding of the policy factors influencing trends and even less understanding of the non-policy factors. Some of the things we think we know are probably mistaken, and we don’t agree on what we think is known.

Accordingly, I’ve decided to employ a modernized Delphic method. I’ll spare the goat, and I’m not much for inhaling vapors, but having consumed massive amounts of my drug of choice, caffeine, I will dare a few predictions.

Prediction 1: America continues to play in its academic food.

The 2009 to 2017 period proved broadly disappointing nationally. The country saw no progress in fourth-grade math or reading during this period, nor in eighth-grade math. The national average for eighth-grade reading improved by 3 points. In short, meh to sub-meh improvement.

Few states escaped the stagnation gravity well. Arizona and Mississippi students, though, did demonstrate statistically significant gains on all six NAEP exams given after 2009 (fourth-grade and eighth-grade math and reading 2009 to 2017, and fourth-grade and eighth-grade science 2009 to 2015).

Staring deeply into the prophetic clouds in my coffee, I’ll predict that the average state fails to reach a net +2 for the full 2009 to 2019 period. I hope to be wrong on this prediction.

Prediction 2: The 2018 strikes will leave a mark in the data.

Labor actions closed schools in 2018 in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angeles, Colorado and North Carolina. These strikes varied in length and breadth. Of course, we’ll never know what the 2019 NAEP scores would have been if these strikes had not occurred. Apollo’s caffeinated whispers, however, lead me to believe that kids learn more when they are in school than when they aren’t, and that many schools adhere to “make-up time” rules in a half-hearted fashion if at all. It won’t be possible to establish causality, and we would expect to find a mixed bag of results in these jurisdictions regardless, but a curious pattern of bubbles in my London Fog leads me to believe that a fairly consistent (negative) pattern may emerge. Again, I hope I am wrong on this one.

Prediction 3: Achievement gap milestone breached in the 2019 NAEP.

No state’s black student population has ever matched or exceeded the score for any state’s white population on any NAEP exam. The racial achievement gap has been deep enough that even the highest statewide average for black students has never matched that of the lowest performing statewide average for Anglo students. But it’s been getting close in recent years.

NAEP eighth-grade math scores for Arizona black students and West Virginia white students, 2000-17

Arizona has had the highest performing African American student population, and their NAEP scores have improved strongly over time. The 2-point gaps seen in both 2009 and 2017 were very close. Scores for both West Virginia Anglos and Arizona black students may take a hit in 2019 (both states experienced strike-related school closures), but this may not prevent the lines from crossing.

Apollo sends word: 2019 will be the year where the highest performing black statewide group will bank a statewide average NAEP score higher than the lowest performing Anglo statewide average. Which is not at all to say that this is high enough, but it is an important milestone we have yet to cross. I hope I am right on this one!

October 24, 2019 0 comment

Charter Schools Demographic Research Education Research News School Choice

Fordham Institute report: Rising tide of charters lifting all boats

Patrick R. Gibbons October 21, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

Forget about the charter vs. district school debate. The more important question is whether student achievement improves overall. Does a rising tide of charter school enrollment lift the overall achievement boat? The Fordham Institute released a report to address exactly that.

As charter school enrollment increases as a percentage of the total students within a district (called “market share” by the report’s authors), the achievement gains of all students, within both charter and district, improve. According to the report, urban areas with high concentrations of black and Hispanic enrollment in charter schools saw significant math and reading achievement gains for black and Hispanic students overall.

Note: Figures show the predicted changes in the average ELA and math achievement of grades 3-8 black students in charter and traditional public schools as district-by-grade-level charter market share increases among black students. Estimates were generated using a cubic spline with knots at the 5th, 35th and 95th percentiles (see red dots) and controlling for student demographics, district-by-grade-level unit and year fixed-effects, and district-specific quadratic time-trends. Sample includes all urban units with a 0 to 50 percent black charter market share and average black enrollment >2,500 between 2009 and 2015.

Note: Figures show the predicted changes in the average ELA and math achievement of grades 3-8 Hispanic students in charter and traditional public schools as district-by-grade-level charter market share increases among Hispanic students. Estimates were generated using a cubic spline with knots at the 5th, 35th and 95th percentiles (see red dots) and controlling for student demographics, district-by-grade-level unit and year fixed-effects, and district-specific quadratic time-trends. Sample includes all urban units with a 0 to 35 percent Hispanic charter market share and average Hispanic enrollment >2,500 between 2009 and 2015.

Hispanic students benefit in suburban and rural areas, while black students see achievement gains in rural areas, but not suburban ones. White students see no gains regardless of the location of the charter school or district.

“Increasing the percentage of black and Hispanic students who enroll in charters — especially in the largest urban districts, which educate millions of minority students per year — would significantly reduce the longstanding racial achievement gaps that are ostensibly of concern to policymakers,” the authors wrote.

These are striking results, especially given the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s call for a moratorium on charter schools. National teacher unions, which represent a mostly white teaching corps and also oppose charter schools, have been longstanding financial supporters of the civil rights group.

Fordham’s study is not without its limitations. The dataset covers seven years, the research is not randomized, and the results may be due to the fact that charter schools are disproportionately established within low-performing urban districts to begin with.

Still, author David Griffith notes that his report “is consistent with prior research that suggests black and Hispanic students learn more in charter schools, and that competition from charter schools has a positive, or at worst neutral, effect on traditional public schools.”

October 21, 2019 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Equity Education Research Education Spending Florida Tax Credit Scholarship School Choice

If you love somebody, set them free – with equity

Matthew Ladner October 21, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Per-pupil expenditures in Florida’s 10 largest school districts, 2017-18. SOURCE: Education Reform Now

If you love somebody
If you love someone
If you love somebody
If you love someone set them free
(Free, free, set them free)

A new report by Charles Barone and Nicholas Munyan-Penney for Ed Reform Now, a nonprofit particularly focused on the content of student learning in public schools, has found that Florida’s system of K-12 funding broadly delivers a greater level of total subsidy to the schools of low-income students.

From the report:

In the vast majority of the largest districts in Florida, high-poverty schools have a distinct advantage over low-poverty schools, ranging from a 9.7 percent advantage ($9,000 to $8,200) in Duval County to an incredible 70.6 percent advantage ($13,900 to $8,100) in Palm Beach County …

When considering race/ethnicity, in all 10 of Florida’s largest districts, schools with the highest concentrations of nonwhite students have a significant advantage over schools with lower concentrations of nonwhite students.

Statewide, high-poverty schools receive $9,000 per student, which is greater than the statewide average of $8,200 per pupil for low-poverty schools. This is worth noting as a significant achievement. Heavy reliance upon local property taxes creates large funding inequities favoring high-wealth districts absent state equalization efforts. In the worst cases, wealthy areas both spend far more per pupil and enjoy lower tax rates than poor districts. An $800 per-pupil advantage for high poverty districts took no small amount of effort to create.

Florida does, however, have a large group of high-poverty students receiving considerably less than either high-poverty or even low poverty schools – the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. This year, 101,862 scholarship students have an average household income of $27,188, or about 13 percent above the poverty level. Sixty eight percent are black or Hispanic and 57 percent are in single-parent households.

In 2019-20, scholarship recipients will not receive either the average of $8,200 received by low-poverty districts nor the $9,000 statewide average for students in high-poverty districts. For 2019-20, scholarships will average between $6,775 and $7,250.

Hopefully, Florida policymakers will not only equalize funding but also liberalize allowable uses. Families should have the option to spend their funds on school tuition, but also on tutors, therapists and enrichment. Families should not only have the power to choose, they should also have the opportunity to maximize the value of their funds given the particular needs and aspirations of the student. Equity and efficiency need not be at odds, but instead could proceed hand-in-hand toward a brighter future.

October 21, 2019 1 comment

Charter Schools Demographic Research Education Research School Choice

Should we feel optimistic or pessimistic about American K-12 education’s future?

Matthew Ladner October 14, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Only about one in 10 of those surveyed believe America’s K-12 education will be a model of excellence by 2040, according to a new poll from Real Clear Opinion Research.

A recent poll conducted by Real Clear Opinion Research shows that Americans don’t hold the country’s public education system in high regard. The poll drew responses from 2,014 registered voters on their views and expectations of K-12 education between Sept. 20-24.

This Real Clear Opinion infographic below summarizes many of the results.

Respondents were asked to rate the importance of 15 goals from reading and writing proficiency to engagement in civil discourse. Blue dots indicate how many rated the importance as either a 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale. Red dots indicate how the respondents think the overall public education system is highly performing on this measure. Green dots measure the perceived performance of local schools.

More than 75 percent of respondents think it is very important for the public education system to prepare students to be good citizens, but fewer than 30 percent think the national public education system is doing a good job producing good citizens (red dot) and only about 33 percent think their local system has a strong performance in producing strong citizens (green dot).

Respondents consistently rank the importance of the various goals as high but rank the performance of the public education system as low. Moreover, respondents don’t seem very optimistic about the public education system’s prospects for improvement. When asked to look 20 years ahead, most respondents expect a public education system that is average, below average or “poor and unable to adapt to shifting priorities.” Independent voters were considerably more pessimistic than either Democrats or Republicans:

Americans thus seem to see their public education system as falling short in a variety of ways and aren’t especially optimistic about future improvement. Republicans exhibited the greatest amount of optimism, with 24 percent forecasting that the American public school system would be a “model of excellence around the world” in 20 years. Only 13 percent of Democrats and 3 percent of Independents were similarly optimistic. You, as a regular RedefinED reader are more aware of looming challenges lying ahead in the next two decades than most.

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of public education? Mixed results across states seems like the most likely outcome and “a model of excellence around the world” is not as far off as it may sound.

Massachusetts, the highest scoring state on NAEP, compares well to Asian and European systems on international exams. Stanford scholar Sean F. Reardon’s new data source, for instance, equates state scores to NAEP. When I ran the numbers for my home state of Arizona, I found far more variation within my state than between states. I also, however, found several Arizona districts (and the charter schools operating within their boundaries) that compare favorably to the average performance in Massachusetts:

Some of this data is a decade old, which is good news, because Arizona’s statewide NAEP scores improved after this period. Many of the Arizona district/charter combos are relatively demographically advantaged compared to Arizona as a whole, but few are demographically advantaged compared to affluent states like Massachusetts or Vermont and receive substantially less funding per pupil.

The real problem here lies at the bottom left of the chart. Those district/charter combos didn’t just perform worse than the lowest-performing state; they were substantially below the lowest-performing state.

In short, I’m more optimistic about my green dot than my red dot. The 2019 NAEP data for reading and mathematics for states and select urban districts will be released Oct. 30. Let’s see what happens next.

October 14, 2019 2 comments

Education Research Testing and Accountability

Reminder: One measurement is not sufficient to judge entire K-12 system

Patrick R. Gibbons October 10, 2019

Patrick R. Gibbons

Readers of Sean Reardon’s study on student learning gains between third and eighth grade should heed the advice from Douglas Adams’ classic sci-fi comedy novel “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: DON’T PANIC.

Matt Ladner recently provided an excellent reason not to flip out: Florida’s long-term gains (such as high school and college graduation) are at or above the national average.

So like those thumbing a ride through the cosmos, find your towel, feel the warm, comforting embrace of its fibers, and remain calm, because here are three more reasons why you shouldn’t overreact because of one set of statistics.

Reardon’s study compares the learning gains across diverse state tests for students in grades 3 through 8 during the 2009 through 2016 school years. The Nation’s Report Card allows us to do something similar with the fourth- through eighth-grade learning gains. To create a cohort, we look at students in fourth grade in 2011 and measure the difference with the eighth-grade scores four years later in 2015, and so on.

Just like Reardon’s data, we see Florida’s students learn less per year between fourth and eighth grades than the national average across the board, with the exception of the earliest years.

Difference in NAEP Reading test scores between eight-graders and fourth-graders from four years prior

Difference in NAEP Math test scores between eighth-graders and fourth-graders from four years prior

Remember where you put your towel? Good. Here are the reasons why this measurement isn’t a singular statistic to judge all of Florida’s K-12 education system.

First, Florida’s overall results are still above average, and that’s saying something given the state’s majority-minority and below-average income demographics. Here’s a graph from the actual Stanford dataset showing average test scores by school district:

It shows Florida to be performing about average to above average. Adjusting for demographics, Florida’s results appear even better. This is why the Urban Institute ranks Florida first through eighth depending on the NAEP test, and Education Week’s “Quality Counts” report ranks Florida fourth.

Today, Florida’s fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP scores, especially for low-income and minority students, remain at or above the national average.

Florida’s fourth-grade results are far ahead of the national average. Florida’s push at early intervention — which include pre-K vouchers, scholarships for low-income students, third-grade retention and increased funding for K-12 education, especially in earlier grades — may have helped drive Florida’s fourth-grade achievement boom.

The reason Florida’s eighth-graders are near, or above, the national average despite slower growth since fourth-grade is precisely because they were so far ahead in fourth-grade already.

Second, despite Florida’s repeated lower-than-average annual learning gains in those specific grades, Florida’s students have seen more growth on NAEP reading and math than the national average. The following tables look at Florida’s data from the first time NAEP was given until now.

So how can Florida’s overall achievement and achievement growth be better across the board than the national average if the Stanford study shows third- through eighth-graders learning less per year?

It’s likely because the Stanford data covers only 2009-2016, a period of time AFTER Florida’s largest burst of achievement gains and DURING a time which included achievement stagnation. It’s hardly fair to condemn an entire system for seven years of data when 29 years of data show results are way up.

Finally, Florida’s largest fourth- through eighth-grade cohort gains occurred in the 1990s when achievement was at its lowest point.

Florida students averaged 55 points of growth in the 1998-2002 NAEP Reading Cohort, higher than the national average. Florida’s 2009-17 cohorts averaged just 39 points of growth, but remain more than a grade level ahead of where they were in 2002.

In math, the 1992-96 cohort gained 50 points of growth, but Florida averaged just 37 points between 2009-2017.

Nostalgic for the ’90s and want to roll back time? Well, Florida’s eighth-grade math students today score a grade and a half higher today than they did in 1996.

Florida does an excellent job getting to students to learn the basics. The fact that students then coast from fourth to eighth grade, but still achieve better long-term outcomes, is nothing to panic about.

October 10, 2019 0 comment