The Humphreys County School District became the 9th school district to adopt the CHART Abstinence-Plus policy.  The board adopted an abstinence-plus policy in the fall, using the sample policy provided for districts by MDE’s Office of Healthy Schools.  Last night (2/14), the board voted to rescind that policy, and replace it with the CHART policy.  

The major difference between these two policies is that the CHART policy provides greater detail about the implementation of abstinence-plus sex ed.  Districts must adopt the CHART policy in order to participate in this federally-funded initiative.

Humphreys County is one of our fifteen priority 1 counties, and one of six counties that meets all five of the sexual health indicators used to determine priority status.  By adopting CHART, the district will now be able to implement evidenced-based sex ed curricula at no cost to the district.

More districts are expected to adopt the policy soon.  We’ll keep you informed.

One of the most essential questions education research needs to answer is what makes some schools more effective than others, when controlling for student characteristics. Research tells us that inputs like money, class size (for most students), and even teacher credentials (like certification, years of experience) have no consistent relationship with achievement, and yet our ed policy is designed around these very things. So what's a policy wonk to do? 

A brand new, fascinating study (attached) from the Harvard duo Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer (yes, that Fryer from Freakonomics fame) claims to identify in-school practices of effective schools which explain 50% of the variance in student achievement results. (See also the online appendix with more details about the data set.) 

Let me try to explain the above sentence for the not-so-statistically-inclined ed wonks. If you still have questions about what the study means (especially after you read it), let me know. 

One definition of school "effectiveness" is results on standardized achievement tests: the better the test scores, the more effective. The difference in scores between high-performing and low-performing schools is called the variance by researchers. Dobbie and Fryer claim to have identified practices that together explain at least half of the difference in results between high-performing and low-performing schools, when the researchers control for student demographic variables like race, class, gender, and prior achievement. 

These five practices are

1. frequent teacher feedback, (pp. 7-8 from study, pp. 5-6 from online appendix)
2. data-driven instruction, (p. 8 from study, pp. 6-7 from online appendix)
3. high-dosage tutoring, (pp. 8-9 from study, pp. 9-10 from online appendix)
4. increased instructional time, (p. 9 from study, and pp. 8-9 from online appendix) and
5. a relentless focus on academic achievement (pp. 9-10 from study, and pp. 10-12 from online appendix).

*Page numbers indicate where to find information in the study about how they defined these things. 

The researchers also looked at whether each of these practices had an effect individually as opposed to only as part of this "index" of five practices. The first four of them did, which indicates that each of those four policies contributes something "real" and "distinct" to the index result as opposed to needing the combination to get any noticeable effect. The fact that #5 is left out could be that a "relentless focus on academic achievement" alone doesn't really matter if you don't also have "frequent teacher feedback," for example. 

A few other important findings of the study:

• Researchers check to see if their five practices are better at explaining achievement in their dataset v. "traditional inputs." They find that their five practices are much better at explaining results.
• Researchers also check three other "models" of schooling--"whole child" approach, teacher quality approach, and "No Excuses" approach--to see if these different approaches explain the results or if any results from the approaches can really be attributed to the existence of the five practices. They find that none of these models explain the variance like their five practices. The "whole child" approach appears to have a slight negative impact when examined alone and when combines with the five practices has no statistical impact at all. Both the teacher quality approach and the "No Excuses" approach have a positive impact but when combined with the five practices, the impact of these two models is significantly diminished (teacher quality) or disappears (No Excuses). This may indicate that the "No Excuses" school philosophy is not driving the success, rather the researchers' five practices that each of these schools also use is what is responsible for the result.

It is important to note that this is not an experimental study. In other words, these results should not be described as these five things CAUSING achievement to rise. Rather, these five things are observable in schools that do well and explain the results. But with any observational study, there's always the risk that there's something researchers did not account for that is actually causing the results that we see and those things are closely correlated to these five practices. Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie now have to go introduce these practices in schools as part of a randomized experiment to be able to say that they CAUSE achievement to rise. 

I hope you found this as interesting as I did. Mississippi First has been trying to do a study in Mississippi that has a very similar methodology of using site visits and interviews to detail actual in-school practices of effective schools in Mississippi as a way of better understanding what our ed policy for turning around low-performing schools should look like. Special shout-out to Erika Berry who helped us think about this study this summer and was kind enough to use her Vandy library access to get me a PDF copy of this study!

 FryerDobbie Study

Legislators moving forward on passing new charter legislation.

As was predicted shortly after the 2011 elections, passing a new charter school bill has been a top priority for the leadership in both chambers of the Legislature. The legislators are expected to pass a more robust charter bill, one that will allow for conversion and new start charter schools.  

Last week, Senate Education Chair Gray Tollison hosted a hearing on the issue.  As with most charter school hearings, the room was jam packed with strong supporters, passionate opponents, and several folks in the middle.  Speakers at the hearing included...

• Scott Shirey, Executive Director of KIPP Delta Public Schools; 
• Nancy Loome, Executive Director of The Parents Campaign;
• Bill Wilson, Mississippi Economic Center
• Forrest Thigpen, Mississippi Center for Public Policy
• Tom Burnham, State Superintendent of Education
• David Hansen, National Alliance of Charter School Authorizers
• Rachel Canter, Executive Director of Mississippi First

Due to the importance the legislature has placed on this issue, “dissenting voices” during the hearing consisted of organizations that wanted specific limits on our proposed charter sector.  MDE recommends placing a cap on the number of charters that can be granted initially.  Both the Parents Campaign and the Mississippi Economic Center voiced the recommendations found in Blueprint Mississippi, which calls for targeting under-performing schools.  

Rachel was the last to speak during the hearing, and she took the opportunity to stress the importance of creating charter legislation that establishes a rigorous authorization process along with strong accountability standards.  She also addressed the key points found in our 2010 charter school white paper, which recommends that our charter school bill should be...

• Targeted - charter schools should be used as a school reform tool, with preference given to failing districts and districts with failing schools;
• Rigorous - detailed application requirements should be in place, and authorization powers should be limited to entities with the capacity and expertise of properly manage charters;
• Comprehensive - provide the option of chartering both new starts and public conversion charter schools; and...
• Robust - charters should have real autonomy over budget, personnel, instructional time, and curriculum.  Charter schools should also receive state funding equal to that of traditional public schools.

MSF has remained activity involved this policymaking process, which we hope will be reflected in the legislation that will soon be introduced in both the Senate and the House.  We’ll keep you posted when the legislation is formally introduced.

Update on education bills introduced in the Senate

With committee assignments already in place, state senators have already started dropping bills.  Several education bills have been referred to the SenateEducation Committee.  Below are two bills that are related to MSF policy goals.

Funds for Early Learning
SB 2061, introduced by Sen. Kevin E. Butler, would provide funding for the Early Learning Collaborative Act of 2007.  This fund could be used to fundcollaborative pre-K programs, which are recommended in Leaving Last in Line, MSF’s policy brief on pre-K.  In addition to this bill, Sen. Butler alsointroduced SB 2070, which would establish compulsory school attendance for Kindergartners (similar bill introduced by Sen. Briggs Hopson). We areinterested in both these bills; however, they would need some tweaks to conform with our recommendations in Leaving Last in Line.

Pre-K for Under-performing Districts
SB2115, introduced by Sen. David Jordan, would require under-performing school districts in the Delta to establish pre-Kindergarten programs.  Sen.Hopson also introduced SB 2185, which would create a “phased-in” pre-K program.

District Leadership
Sen. Jordan introduced SB 2120, which would require two years of post-secondary education for local school board members.  Also introduced wasSB 2313, a bill introduced by Senate Ed Chair Gray Tollison that would require all district superintendents to be appointed by 1/1/2016.

This is very early in the process, so you can expect to see many more bills in the coming weeks.  We’ll keep you posted.