Which Side Are You On?

Ohio releases completely invalid state report cards this week which label my fellow teachers and myself, as well as our students, as failures. I, for one, am not buying it. The Ohio Department of Education has, once again, proven itself completely incapable of making decisions for the betterment of Ohio's students. Like the Hansen charter scandal and the rollout of the PARCC assessments before this, the continued insistence on punitive measures tied to standardized tests is the longest standing measure of their ineptitude.

Which side are you on?  

 

Ohio School Report Cards and the Graduation Rate

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?

View Graduation Rate Component Details

"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.

Unsettling Scores and Three Responses.

This week my sophomores received their state scores in the mail, so we had a conversation to clarify the graduation requirements and their progress. The wide eyed, at times sick, looks on their faces were sobering. With so many variables in test results, there is not a simple formula for when or who should retake what test. I found the whole experience disheartening. The system requires a thoughtful analysis of the situation on a student by student basis. Or, to put it another way, the system needs to go.

In my last post I recounted my opposition to excessive standardized testing and the high stakes associated with it, especially as it relates to the graduation requirement. More importantly, I was hoping to encourage people to contact legislators in the interest of influencing change. 

I'm not sure everyone realizes how important this simple act can be. Perhaps you've written before and gotten no response. Maybe you got a response and they didn't take your advice. It can be frustrating. However, I believe that public engagement of elected officials is terribly important. This correspondence can become an important piece of the public record in support (or opposition) to an idea. 

I received some promising responses to my last emails to the House and Senate Education Committees. I'd like to share these with you, and once again encourage you to contact your legislators. I'll include the contact information for the aforementioned committees at the end of this post. Read the responses, and consider a quick note to a legislator. Shake things up.

The most compelling encouragement to write comes from this reply from Rep Teresa Fedor. She is a former teacher and advocate for students and teachers.

Matt,

Thank you for contacting me. I will forward your insightful perspective with my collection of teacher emails and letters as a portion of my input for the Department of Education on the new guidelines of ESSA. Please encourage your colleagues to write me about their thoughts and recommendations. Legislators are not the experts and it's time for the teaching profession to step up and be heard.

Again, thank you Matt!

Rep Teresa Fedor

In the next reply, Bowling Green Republican Senator Randy Gardner shares his history in education and support. The fact that he "largely" agrees is cool with me. I've grown accustomed to the fact that legislators, and anyone else for that matter, will not agree entirely with my ideas. Perhaps we'll simply take some steps in one another's direction.

Matt:

Thank you for your very thoughtful email.  I was a teacher, my father a superintendent, my brother a teacher, my other brother a middle school principal and my sister a middle school counselor.  I appreciate your concerns and ideas and largely agree.

--Senator Randy Gardner
 2nd Ohio District

In the last reply I'll share here, Euclid Democrat Rep Kent Smith agrees with, and expands upon my ideas with some important points of his own. Emails like this give me hope that we may be able to move away from No Child Left Behind's era of test and punish.

Thank you, Mr. Jablonski, for writing to share your comments. 

Yes, Ohio has gone from 5th to 23rd in the Education Week's Quality Counts 2016 Report.  No other state in the top 5 in 2010 has fallen further than 12th.  No other state in the nation remains as dedicated to funding for-profit charter schools as Ohio.

ESSA gives us an opportunity to reset education policy regarding school districts that are struggling with high need students.  It is clear that punitive methods do not work.  I hope other members of the House Education Committee are willing to examine new ways to grow Ohio's future workforce based on evidence and research and not a desire to punish teachers.

Thank you for your work.

Best wishes,

Kent Smith

8^th House District

On behalf of my students and those who will follow, I hope you'll consider providing your perspective on these matters. Here's the contact info.

Bootstraps and Remediation.

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with this blog knows, I find the tying of high stakes decisions to standardized assessments to be at best unnecessary, and at worst an abomination. I am especially concerned about these tests as they relate to my students' graduation. For close to 2 years now I've been voicing my concern about these things quite publicly to whoever might listen (a big thank you to the district in which I work for their understanding). 

My attempts at influencing positive change in this regard has stopped short of shouting at people on the street, but often involves direct communication with legislators. Those who disagree with me often believe that despite the terribly low percentages of students earning proficient or above on the new assessments, lower than 40% on Geometry statewide, all these kids need to do is pull themselves up by their bootstraps, enroll in school provided remediation, work harder, and retake the test. While this might work in some cases, it doesn't in all, and really is completely beside the point.

First, the Horatio Alger bootstraps myth is based on the premise that a hearty American individualist, with little to no assistance from others, just a bit of hard work, can single handedly pull themselves up from rags to riches. It is a myth. No one achieves anything without assistance from someone, parent, sibling, neighbor, coach, teacher, friend. Even Donald Trump started with a "small loan."

Second, to make this bootstraps bullshit even more problematic, the scenario is always coupled with remediation. By definition, remediation involves receiving assistance, tutoring basically, in order to prepare for the test. This is not rugged individualism. It is test prep, plain and simple. If the purpose of the assessments is to promote career and college readiness, and remediation is teaching kids how to pass a test, then how are we increasing career and college readiness?

Which brings me to Number Three, we are not increasing career and college readiness with standardized assessments. You do that through programs, academic and otherwise, that encourage students to pursue their interests, enrich their experiences, develop their skills, and provide support where necessary.

So this is my message to legislators. Below you'll find the letter that I sent to the Ohio House and Senate Education Committees this weekend in the interest of facilitating positive change. Give it a look, and then go write them yourself. Tell them your story, and what you think about the assessment system as it relates to graduation, the 3rd grade guarantee, or otherwise.

Representative So and So and Members of the Education Committee,

I trust that your work on the campaign trail for yourselves or your colleagues has been fruitful. As you've been traveling through your districts, we in the business of educating Ohio's children have returned early to school in the interest of buying ourselves more time to find success in a system driven inordinately by standardized assessments. In my work as a History teacher at Elyria High School, this system comes with the highest of stakes, a student's graduation, and while official overall reports from the ODE on test performance are still a few weeks away, I would like to once again raise my concern regarding the likelihood of a sharp decline in graduation rates as a result of our new assessment system.

When I raise this concern, the typical oppositional response that I get usually has to do with the value of a high school diploma. In other words, if we don't arbitrarily increase the difficulty in graduating, then we are doing our children a disservice. What we must realize, however, is that 12 years of the Ohio Graduation Test has not increased the value of a diploma, nor has it increased the quality of education. The reality is that the achievement gap has not narrowed, and over the last half dozen years Ohio's national ranking in education has gone from 5 to 23.

When the scores arrive, and we see that 30 or 40 percent of Ohio's high school students are not on pace to graduate, it will not have anything to do with a sharp decline in the efforts or ability of students, nor the quality of their teachers and schools. This situation will have been created entirely by a system of assessment created by Ohio's legislators and mishandled by the ODE, a system that has undergone perpetual change since its rollout, and is failing Ohio's students. These kids, on the whole, will have done what we've asked, excelled based upon their gifts, and perhaps overcome through struggle according to their shortcomings. Despite this they will face the dim economic prospect of going forward without a high school diploma. Their likelihood of obtaining vocational training, an associates or other degree, or a living-wage job will diminish significantly. They will be far more likely to remain dependent upon their families, or to need public assistance.

The reality is that the state of Ohio goes far beyond the federal minimums for assessment. According to the ESSA, our high stakes companion to testing at the high school level is entirely unnecessary. I believe it is high time that we moved away from assessment as a graduation requirement, and time to channel our resources into programs that will facilitate student success, and career and college readiness. Perhaps the programs involve wraparound social services to support our most vulnerable, or an increase in vocational opportunities at the secondary level. We might recognize the link between the arts and academic performance, and decide on an increase in art and music education at the primary level. Whatever we move toward, it is important that we move away from this systemic focus on punitive assessment.

As it stands, I will prepare my students for academic and workplace life after high school, as well as prepare them for success on the American History assessment. These are two very different things. For your part, I hope you will consider a legitimate safe harbor to assure graduation for our current students regardless of test performance, until we can change the assessment system through ESSA. On behalf of the hard working students that I encounter on a daily basis at Elyria High School, myself, my colleagues, and my community, thank you for your time and consideration.

Matthew T. Jablonski

My first Automated Response was from Rep Brenner. Thanks Andy.

Thank you for your email. I appreciate your engagement in the process and value your opinion.

 

I want to make sure that your email is handled appropriately. Because we receive hundreds of emails daily, if your matter is time sensitive, please call my office at 614.644.6711 and speak with my Legislative Aide, Daniel Talik. Otherwise, we will respond to your email as soon as possible.

 

Again, thank you for taking the time to correspond with my office.

 

Best Regards,

Andrew O. Brenner

State Representative (R-67)

Ohio House of Representatives

The Day the State Super Came to Town and I Wasn't Invited.

Alright, I'm 10 days into the new school year and I feel like I can safely say that I've been assigned to teach an incredibly pleasant and thoughtful group of sophomores. I can also say with some confidence that a great deal of my time has been spent, not on effective ways to reach students, but on excessive pre-tests, the teacher evaluation system, analysis of standardized test questions, the planning of remediation for standardized tests, and other such nonsense that has little to do with what's in the best interest of educating children.

Fortunately, Ohio's Superintendent of Instruction Paolo DeMaria visited the city where I live to participate in a workforce development summit yesterday, and was able to provide an explanation for my focus on standardization and assessment.

According to Elyria's Chronicle-Telegram he explained...

As we continue to watch the economy change, as we continue to watch our global competitors competing against us job for job and dollar for dollar, as we watch other states compete against us job for job and dollar for dollar, a decision was made to raise those standards. We need to raise them higher so more and more students are graduating from high school ready to succeed. We saw too many examples of students getting high school diplomas with hopes of enrolling in a place like Lorain County Community College and you know what — their academic skills just weren’t quite there.

He is right. We have watched our economy change as his colleague, Governor John Kasich drastically cut funding to municipalities eliminating thousands of jobs statewide. Kasich also cut funding to public schools which necessitated cuts of teachers and valuable programs which prepared students for the workplace. My school had a functioning television studio which drove student interest and increased their motivation. It was eliminated, along with some sports, art, instrumental music, and libraries.

DeMaria would be well served to look into some history at the ODE and perhaps some educational philosophy. First of all, students who participate in the arts, sports, and extracurricular programs have a greater likelihood of success. Eliminating them would seem to be counterproductive. Second, what we have implemented in the state of Ohio has little to do with a "decision to raise those standards," as noble as that sounds. What the state legislature and the ODE have implemented is an increasingly excessive and convoluted assessment system that first employed PARCC, now AIR, test questions from Nevada, Utah and elsewhere that they're using as a high stakes measure of students, teachers, and public schools, all while they obstruct similar measures at the charters they claim are effective.

With all due respect, Mr. DeMaria, we have used high stakes assessments for more than a decade and not closed the achievement gap. Furthermore, under the current administration and leadership in the ODE, Ohio has dropped in its national education ranking from 5th to 23rd. These policies are not working.

In another passage the Superintendent uses the introduction of the 3 point line in basketball as an analogy for our increase in standards in order to make students college and career ready...

That created an incentive for the system to recalibrate, coaches started coaching more players to say, ‘We value more this particular skill.’ It’s a great analogy for what’s happening in our economy, where people are saying, ‘We value these particular skills.’

The system stepped up, and you began to see many, many more opportunities and skills are developed to meet that challenge. That’s what’s happening in K-12 now. We’re not quite at it. We’re still used to making those 2-point shots, taking shots from the foul line. But more and more, we are up to helping our students become those 3-point shooters.

My first thought was, 3rd graders can't shoot three pointers, and the 3rd grade guarantee is unfair. Get rid of it.

Oddly, I see this analogy as an argument against the standardization he is celebrating. I'm not a basketball coach, but I'm willing to bet that they don't coach every player to shoot threes. It seems far more likely that, like a good teacher, coaches look at a player's specific skill set, interest, and potential and encourage them to develop certain parts of their game.

Our overuse of standardized testing does just the opposite, it forces us into very specific content area boxes, with a certain language and little room to move. When students score poorly and need to retake assessments for graduation, we provide remediation. More often than not this remediation is not developing academic skills, but test taking skills. That's a different matter entirely, but everybody has to shoot the damn three pointer in order to graduate.

Actual academic and workplace skills are typically soft skills that are difficult to assess using a standardized measure. None of this is nearly as simple as that. Creativity, teamwork, motivation, resilience, skepticism, problem solving are often the skills best developed by the programs we are eliminating, not standardization.

At the article's conclusion, DeMaria finished with a comment on the coming school report cards...

Anytime you make changes that reflect higher expectations, it sort of sets a recalibration of the overall measures. I think it also reflects that we know we have to continue to make changes to the system. There are a lot of tools in the toolbox to gauge the value of an education, the value of a school district in the community. This is just one piece of it. I think it does shed some light on where things are in terms of the main academic categories and the way different student populations are being treated.

While I don't think continual changes are a great idea, as evidenced by the state's mess of an assessment system, I do agree with a piece of this statement. There are a lot of tools to gauge the value of an education. So why do we continue to place so much weight on a score on a standardized test?

Predictions.

That's T-bone. Now, this may sound like I've lost my mind, but I think he knows that I go back to school next week. I know what you're thinking, "Did you tell him?" 

No, I did not. I'd been waiting for the right moment to break the news, but as I said, I think he knows. T-bone has been trying to make the most of our last few days of summer, spending more time inside, sitting on my lap with his eyes lidded like the Buddha, spending more time sitting on my lap before he invariably becomes agitated and claws the hell out of my arm (distinctly not Buddha-like). He has also more frequently insisted that we sit together on the backyard grass for long conversations before he invariably becomes agitated and, well, you know.

Whether T-bone is as intelligent (or sociopathic) as I suspect or I've simply spent too much time with my cat this summer matters little. School starts next week and I'm getting excited. In the absurdity of my excitement, I thought I'd make some bold (and some not so bold) predictions...

#1) Scores on this year's report card for nearly all schools will be far poorer than prior years because of a second year of new assessments. The ODE will admit as much, and discuss the time and effort that are being put forth to improve student achievement (read scores), as well as the importance of accountability. The ODE will release new information on the assessments which will be impossible to find on their website.

#2) Furthermore, the ODE will persist with the propaganda that standardized tests are necessary to assure that our children are college and career ready (without any mention of the limitations in the use of standardized tests for this purpose), and schools unable to meet arbitrarily set achievement levels should be taken over by the state and/or opened to private corporate management firms, what they will call public charter schools.

#3) Predictably, those schools and districts with the lowest scores will be those who serve our society's most vulnerable populations as the assessments prove once again that they are best at measuring economic standing.

#4) In response to implicit and explicit threats from the ODE, school districts will purchase more hardware, software, and educational materials, while students get more "screen time" in school in the interest of improved scores. Everyone will swear that this is NOT "test prep," but rather a means to assure that your child is able to compete in a global economy. We all know it's test prep.

#5) New State Superintendent of Schools Paolo DeMaria will continue to insist that he welcomes the feedback of all stakeholders in education, from parents to principals, from teachers to students. As emails and the responses to surveys pile up, no results from the feedback will be made public, nor is any response evident from the Superintendent himself aside from his ongoing support of charter schools.

#6) ECOT will continue to ignore its detractors who point to its 30 something percent graduation rate by arguing that it has the largest graduating class. Their ability to ignore facts, fail to grasp simple statistics, and completely miss the point for the sake of profit will make even those who accept the largest campaign donations from William Lager begin to flinch a bit. But not Dave Yost, our brilliant state auditor who already rewarded ECOT's excellent record-keeping. He'll continue to deflect the blame as he keeps one eye on the governor's office.

#7) Based upon the alarming percentage of high school students, likely 30 - 50% in some districts, who are not on pace to gain their 18 points to graduate, a larger collective outcry of students, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders will be heard demanding a remedy to this untenable situation. The overarching goal will become completely disconnecting high school graduation from standardized test scores. In response, the ODE will once again explain the completely inadequate 3 paths to graduation.

#8) Meanwhile, in districts around the state, teachers like myself will do our best to set all of the above bullshit aside, in order to have some fun, keep it weird, and teach some kids. And when they respond well and find success we'll champion their accomplishments. And when they have some difficulty, or everything seems overwhelming, we'll try to find some pragmatic solutions. After all, we didn't get into this business for profit or power, or in the interest of furthering a political agenda.

Hey, T-bone, I'm going back to school next week.

Problems in the Paradoxes.

“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”                                                                                                                                                                     - John Steinbeck Cannery Row

It's been awhile since I've written anything education related, having been focused on some creative things, as well as rereading both Cannery Row and The Outsiders, checking in on my garden, and hiding in my basement for the duration of the RNC.

I have made time to endlessly harass my Department Chair and our Associate Principal tasked with state testing to see the American History scores of my students. It's been nearly a month since the state required itself to submit them to districts, and I've yet to hear anything. I know that the scores will be lower overall when compared to the Ohio Graduation Test. The new assessments are an entirely different monster. I can only assume that my colleagues are withholding my scores for the sake of my sanity. I would like to take a moment to first assure them that I can handle the information, and second say, let me see the scores already.

They may just think I'm a raving lunatic, or have no idea why I'm so concerned. They're busy people with many other matters to attend to, I'm sure. The truth is, I take all of this very personally, as many teachers do. Just like it was my responsibility to assure that my students passed the Social Studies OGT, it is now my responsibility to assure that my students score a 3 on the American History test (2.57 being the average necessary per test to reach 18 points to graduate). If I'm pragmatic, then I need them to score 4's and 5's to compensate for the Math scores that have been abysmal according to reports.

Perhaps my mentality is wrong. After all, our standardized testing system in Ohio is excessive in its high stakes, has little validity because of its constant state of flux, and like all standardized tests measures little more than relative poverty. No matter how great a teacher I become, it is improbable that my influence can overcome the harsh reality of economics.

Because of this and a multitude of other social, psychological, physical, environmental and academic issues, there is no realistic way that I can assure that my 140 or so students will score a 4 or 5. I mean no offense to my very intelligent, hard working, and charismatic students, but standardized testing systems are designed to fail a certain percentage of students. The cut off for proficiency is set after the tests are graded. Last month the state school board decided to change the cut score for Geometry so that 52% scored proficient or above. The flip side to that, of course, is that 48% of kids failed to earn adequate points to stay on a path to graduation. 

So, why am I so concerned about scores on an American History assessment that is a part of a testing system in which I am in wholehearted disagreement? Because these are my students and their concerns are my concerns. They are dealing with high school, a time in one's life that is difficult and confusing enough without a systematic attempt to prevent your graduation. All I'm trying to do, as their teacher, is to make life a little bit easier, and effectively instill some content knowledge, skills, and critical thought.

Now if you did watch the RNC this week, my comments run contrary to the prevailing conservative opinion of public schools and their teachers as expressed by Donald Trump, Jr., "Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students. You know why other countries do better on K through 12? They let parents choose where to send their own children to school."

I'm going to ignore the comment about parents in other countries taking widespread advantage of school choice. They don't. I'm more concerned about the persistent myth that American students (and in turn their schools and teachers) perform poorly in comparison to other countries. When you take into consideration the relative size of the United States, and the number of economically disadvantaged students that we educate, our scores are comparable, if not better. Mr. Trump's entire premise is simply not based in reality. According to the Economic Policy Institute...

"If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries."

If this is true, then maybe I'm not like a clerk at a Leningrad Gold Circle circa 1982. Maybe Donald Trump Jr. has never set foot in a public school, and has had everything handed to him his entire life including his current title of "businessman", so has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Maybe the public schools really are successful. Maybe the standardized testing system is completely and utterly unnecessary.

Maybe I shouldn't care so much about these scores. Except that I do.

The problem is in the paradox. I have to concern myself with scores on assessments in a testing system that favors rich over poor, that assures failure, and that I unequivocally despise. 

I have to concern myself because my students' graduation depends on it. I am their teacher and I've chosen that position to teach history and look out for their interests. Even in a system designed to make us look like failures, while our detractors use rhetoric, misinformation and fear to turn public opinion against us, it is what teachers do.