Local school leaders want parents and communities to know that the 2015-2016 School Report Cards released on Thursday do not represent the progress being made by their districts.
“We, as responsible school leaders, welcome accountability and transparency and recognize that Ohio’s accountability system is in transition. However, it is difficult to utilize a report card that is a constantly changing document, made up of flawed components. This report card does not consistently measure how local school districts are actually performing.”
That is part of a statement issued by the Akron Area Association of Superintendents, which called this year’s reports cards “seriously flawed.”
As expected — because of harder tests and higher standards — the statewide grades were lower.
“We knew and expected test results to go down, but we also know that some of the metrics are flawed,” Barberton Superintendent Patricia Cleary said. “The information is just so confusing and misleading. The big question is how can so many schools in Ohio do so poorly and how does this reflect on our state, when it comes to education, nationally?’’
In Summit County, 10 of 17 districts fell from A’s to F’s or jumped from F’s to A’s this year in the value-added measure, which measures student growth. The four districts that saw increases are Cuyahoga Falls, Mogadore, Springfield and Woodridge. Those with the drops are Akron, Barberton, Copley-Fairlawn, Coventry, Manchester and Stow-Munroe Falls.
Statewide, 46 percent of school districts went from A to F or F to A.
On overall performance, a measure of how many students passed the tests, 559 of Ohio’s 609 school districts posted lower scores, most slipping by one grade. But nearly three times more D’s were handed out and seven schools — including Cleveland, East Cleveland, Dayton and Youngstown — received the first ever F’s. If these school districts continue to receive F’s, they may be at risk of a state takeover, as Youngstown underwent last year.
Inconsistent system
“When a system swings that much, you know something is significantly wrong with the measurements,” said Ellen McWilliams-Woods, Akron Public Schools assistant superintendent. “The state report card, which is based on an inconsistent system of accountability is not a formative tool and because it is inconsistent, we cannot compare the data from year to year. We’re comparing apples, oranges and bananas.”
To better assess student progress, many districts (including Akron, Barberton and Hudson) use results from nationally normed tests to measure whether students are learning and making progress.
Some districts, like Hudson, a regularly high-scoring district, include additional measures to characterize the overall educational value of their districts. The “quality profile” includes things like involvement in the fine arts, parent and community involvement, student leadership and fiscal stewardship.
Although Hudson and Barberton complete their quality profiles independently, several local districts (including Aurora, Brunswick, Copley-Fairlawn, Green, Medina, Nordonia Hills, Revere, Twinsburg and Wadsworth) use a tool sponsored by Columbus-based Alliance for High Quality Education.
“We’re proud of our students’ performance and our staff’s effort to prepare our students, but we believe there is a whole lot more that goes into education than one standardized test, taken on one day,” Hudson Superintendent Phillip Herman said. “We view the report card as a snapshot of indicators around a specific standardized test. We use a national test that measures student progress as a formative tool.”
Because this year’s report card grades are based on harder tests and higher standards, state and local school officials urged educators and parents to keep the results in perspective. The benchmarks that schools must reach is also scheduled to increase next year as well.
Confusing, conflicting
Part of that perspective, according to many local educators is that the state accountability system is in transition and includes increasing standards and a measurement system that is confusing and conflicting.
Chris Woolard, senior executive director for Accountability and Continuous Improvement for the Ohio Department of Education, conceded that the system is in transition, but said the state has a responsibility to release the information. He also agreed that the report card data needs to be viewed in perspective.
“I think you want to keep these numbers in context,” Woolard said. “It’s a system in transition.”
In 2013, the state used the Ohio Achievement Assessment, or OAA. In 2014, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, was used. Last year, it switched to the American Institute for Research, after students and parents complained to lawmakers about the days spent testing under PARCC.
Before the state began changing expectations and testing three years ago, the Ohio legislature passed a Safe Harbor law that largely abandons accountability throughout the transition. The state, for example, cannot close poor-performing charter schools until after next year. Students who fail state tests, with the exception of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, must be promoted.
And the tests, part of a new mandated teacher evaluation system, may not be used to guide employment decisions, including the “dismissal, retention, tenure or compensation” of educators, unless teachers and administrators establish a memorandum of understanding to do so.
Because the state’s accountability system is in transition, Mike Bayer, director of curriculum and instruction at the Stark Educational Service Center suggested it would have been better to put a moratorium on the reports cards, until a more consistent system is in place.
“The target is constantly changing. We’re dealing with three different tests in three years … and we’re seeing changes in calculations every year,” Bayer said. “All of these changes make it difficult, if not impossible, to use the data from the report cards to inform instruction and make comparisons from year to year.”
Report card results can be found on the Ohio Department of Education website (http://education.ohio.gov).
Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com. She can be followed at www.twitter.com/ColetteMJenkins. Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.