Friday, June 3, 2016

With friends like this...

So, it's the first day of summer. I should be in the yard playing soccer with the kids or sitting quietly with my cat, but here I am writing about education because the Ohio Board of Education won't leave us alone. More accurately, the actions of the Board and the ODE have become a menace to high school students. This week, their suggestions about cut scores on the End of Course tests seem to suggest that they believe it's O.K. if 50-70% of our high school students don't score high enough on the state assessments in order to maintain the per test average necessary to graduate (2.57, when a 3 is given for proficient).

Some early information was just publicized about student scores on the spring assessments that indicate alarmingly low proficiency rates in Math II and Geometry. In Geometry, based on the levels set by the state, they have indicated only 24% of students scoring proficient and above. As you may have read in prior posts, I thought their earlier projections were problematic. This is a nightmare. Their plan to "fix" the issue is to lower the cut score to include more students in the proficient or above categories. Their adjustment would still leave close to half of Ohio high school students with scores lower than they need to stay on pace for graduation. The Plain Dealer just posted a piece about the situation...(ignore the description in the article of the graduation requirements because they are oversimplified and partially incorrect).

Now, if you're as concerned as I am, and I hope that someone is, please write the school board members. Tell them why you're concerned. Explain how you or someone you know might be impacted. Describe your opposition to high stakes testing. Implore them to get rid of a testing requirement for graduation, or at least to adjust the cut scores more appropriately (they already set them arbitrarily, why not adjust them arbitrarily). I just finished emailing them all. I have included my remarks below if you'd like to get some ideas. I am also including the contact info for all of the board members. Please help.



Board Member

When the ODE released the projected scores for the spring assessments back in January, which the state school board agreed to, I found them problematic, if not alarming. As an American History teacher for 18 years at Elyria High School my focus was drawn to the statistics that said fewer than 60% of students statewide would score proficient or above on their Math and ELA assessments. A student needs an average of 2.57 points on each of their tests in high school in order to compile enough to graduate. The January projections indicated that more than 40% of students would NOT be acquiring adequate points toward graduation. I also recognized that this situation could be catastrophic for Elyria and other districts whose socio-economic issues have always exacerbated problems related to standardized testing. In other words, if the split was roughly 60/40 for students statewide, then what would it be for my school.

When I heard this week that fewer than 30% would be scoring proficient or above based on this spring's actual scores in Geometry, it made me sick. We are administering brand new assessments in Ohio, borrowing questions from other states, claiming to have proven validity on tests not yet a year old, and arbitrarily setting passing rates that will fail 70% of our students. Can you imagine if I taught a class where that percentage of students were guaranteed not to pass? Now imagine that your children are in that class. This is an injustice. Teachers and students have been given very little information on the tests, no data for improvement has been, or will be, forthcoming from the ODE, and yet a student's graduation is dependent upon these assessments. 

When this push for accountability began more than a decade ago, we were led to believe that high stakes testing would bring increased rigor and improvement to our schools. By all research, that experiment has failed. Your decision regarding these scores is not about rigor. Your decision has a lot more to do with whether or not you intend to prevent 70% of Ohio's high school students from graduating.

I would prefer that you eliminate the graduation requirement entirely, at least until the assessment mess that exists in Ohio can be remedied. At a minimum, please consider setting cut scores that give our students, my students, a fighting chance at compiling the necessary points for graduation.

If you would like any further insight into what I have suggested here, or there is any way that I can be of assistance, please let me know.

Yours in education,

Matthew T. Jablonski
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