So, the 2016 Ohio School Report Card will be released this morning, and the results will be predictable. Having had students grind through a second year of new assessments, this year constructed by the American Institutes for Research, cobbled together by their reps, some Ohio teachers, and the Ohio Department of Education from questions written in a variety of other states, the scores here in Ohio are awful.
Prior to their release, Superintendent DeMaria has suggested that parents not overreact to the scores because they are simply a piece of the variety of evidence that schools have to prove their worth. He really doesn't get it. These scores are not just a transitional moment, as he suggests. In many cases, they are a high stakes measure of whether or not students graduate. Based on these scores, many will not. Many good, hard working, intelligent kids who are perfectly capable of holding a job or continuing their education will not graduate because the state has simply decided to set the passing levels to make it more difficult to gain a rating of proficient or above.
Based on the Superintendent's own logic, what about the variety of evidence that students have to prove their worth? Attendance, course grades, GPA, participation in music and the arts, athletics, service clubs, projects, tutoring, teacher references, and the like could all be components for graduation.
Unfortunately, graduation essentially falls to the assessments, assessments with little validity, whose only reliable measure is a correlation with relative poverty. I haven't seen the report cards yet, but we'll check the top 10 rated and bottom 10 rated schools or districts categorically and check the median incomes, property values, or poverty rates in those places and I suspect we'll find what we've always found.
But the problem grows. The state, in shifting its scores for more difficult proficiency, has just included a hell of a lot more people among those labeled basic or limited (read failing) whose likelihood of graduation has diminished. I know some of these people. I teach them and, as I've said many times, they are decent, intelligent, hard working kids, deserving of better. They are not failures, and I resent the implication. Oh, and they are not happy. And when their parents begin to understand the ramifications of these scores that Mr. DeMaria believes we should not overreact to, they won't be happy either.
If they're anything like me, they'll be damn mad, and demanding some answers. Maybe then we'll hear about some solutions.
The ODE released an explanation of why the graduation rate is an important component of the school report cards. It reads as follows...
Why?
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, students who graduated from high school in 2015 made $678 in median weekly earnings. Those without high school diplomas earned $493. We need to know how well our schools and districts are doing at getting their students to the finish line."
Why indeed.
So, the ODE arbitrarily changed the scores to prevent kids from graduating in order to assure poverty level earnings for all of these kids? I don't understand.
I'm afraid to see the scores. What percentage of students will they have earning $493 a week in a few years? 30%? 40%? 50%? Worse?
It'll depend on where you live.
Check the scores for yourself, then email the Superintendent, your legislators, and the state school board.
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