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Columbus
Dispatch...
Don’t wait
Accurate school ratings should be enacted sooner rather than later
Monday April 23, 2012
Protests from school officials and teachers who want a reprieve from
tougher grading standards are predictable, but that doesn’t make them
valid.
The Ohio School Boards Association, teachers’ unions and others are
asking for a delay in applying new performance standards proposed by
Gov. John Kasich for school grade cards to be issued this summer. The
new system, which places more emphasis on whether poor, minority,
special-education and other categories of students are catching up to
mainstream students in test-passing rates, is likely to lower the
overall grade for most districts and charter schools.
A recent simulation by the Ohio Department of Education found that the
new standards would have turned the A grades earned by 12 Franklin
Council districts last year into Bs — or, in the case of one district,
a C. Statewide, the existing standards gave A or B grades to 92 percent
of traditional school districts, but under the new standards, that
would have been 66 percent.
Schools understandably dread the unhappy reaction from their
communities, but that’s no reason not to go forward as Kasich has
proposed with a more honest assessment of how well schools are doing
enabling all children to learn.
Schools should focus on understanding and explaining the rating changes
— and where they fell short — to their communities, and focus on fixing
the problems.
Ohio schools and their communities should get used to lower (and more
realistic) grades in any event. The shock this summer will come from
the new emphasis on eliminating performance gaps. Two years after that,
under Kasich’s plan, the tests themselves will get harder, and passing
rates for all types of students might drop.
That, too, is a necessary step toward a realistic appraisal of how Ohio
students stack up to their peers in other states and countries. For
years, education reformers have decried the fact that the percentage of
Ohio students dubbed proficient in any subject or grade level typically
is far higher than the percentage who meet the mark on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, considered a valid yardstick across
states.
Even though half of Ohio’s eighth-graders are deemed proficient in math
based on state tests, only 3 percent meet the mark on the national test.
This weakness also shows up when Ohio students arrive at college
unprepared for the work. In 2009, 44 percent of Ohio school districts
were rated excellent or better on their state report cards, yet 40
percent of the high-school graduates who went to state public
universities needed remedial math or English courses.
Giving students an easy test and declaring them proficient does them
little good when they get into college or the real world and find they
really don’t measure up.
The same is true for declaring schools excellent, even when they’re
failing to help needy groups make any progress.
Kasich is trying to inject some honesty into how we gauge school
effectiveness. It should be welcomed.
Read this and other articles at the Columbus Dispatch
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