What of test integrity?

The Atalanta Constitution Journal has a detailed report on the integrity of tests now being used to make high stakes decisions. Their findings are torubling.

The stain of cheating spread unchecked across 44 Atlanta schools before the state finally stepped in and cleaned it up. But across the country, oversight remains so haphazard that most states cannot guarantee the integrity of their standardized tests, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.

Poor oversight means that cheating scandals in other states are inevitable. It also undermines a national education policy built on test scores, which the states and local districts use to fire teachers, close schools and direct millions of dollars in funding.

The AJC’s survey of the 50 state education departments found that many states do not use basic test security measures designed to stop cheating on tests. And most states make almost no attempt to screen test results for irregularities.

The whole article is well worth a read. We have long held that the increased stakes tied to test scores can only increase the incidence of cheating - it happens in every corporate system.

you can see the ACJ survey results here, which include Ohio.

Education News for 10-15-2012

State Education News

• Department of Education to release report card ratings, performance indexes and attendance rates (Dayton Daily News)

The Ohio Department of Education is expected to release the 2011-12 report card ratings, performance indexes and attendance rates for local schools and districts on Wednesday, according to Ohio Acting Superintendent Michael Sawyers....Read more...

• Former Monroe treasurer could lose license (Middletown Journal)

Former Monroe schools treasurer Kelley Thorpe could have her treasurer’s license revoked or suspended, pending a hearing before the State Board of Education, according to documents obtained by the Middletown Journal....Read more...

• Here’s Your Chance to Shape Ohio’s Seclusion and Restraint Policy (State Impact Ohio)

Seclusion rooms are enclosed spaces that are supposed to be used to calm or restrain children who become violent. Seclusion — and restraint, or physical force used to control a child — are often used for children with disabilities....Read more...

• Week Ahead: Report Card Data, State Board of Education Voters’ Guide and More (State Impact Ohio)

Wednesday: Ohio Department of Education to release the rest of the “preliminary” school report-card data, including school and district letter grades....Read more...

• TPS holds state’s 1st forum to boost parents’ interest (Toledo Blade)

Believing that an active parent group can do more to improve conditions at a school than any reform, Toledo officials said they hope a forum Saturday at Bowsher High School will help boost parents’ involvement in the district....Read more...

Local Education News

• Ross County schools posting bullying incidents on their websites (Chillicothe Gazette)

About a year after the Gazette first reported that five of Ross County's seven school districts had failed to comply with a 2007 state law requiring a summary of bullying incidents be posted on their websites, every district now is in full compliance....Read more...

• Cleveland school tax would have widely different costs in different neighborhoods (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland's proposed school tax would have very different costs in the district's diverse neighborhoods....Read more...

• Bluffton staff goes viral (Lima News)

In a bit of a twist, it is time for the adults to be hip -- sort of. A group of Bluffton teachers and administrators have gone viral with their own music video...Read more...

• Transportation duties to be shared (Lisbon Morning Journal)

LISBON - The school district intends to contract with the Columbiana County Educational Service Center to share transportation administration duties following the loss of Lisbon's bus supervisor....Read more...

• Elgin milestone (Marion Star)

MARION - Elgin Local Schools students, staff and supporters celebrated a milestone in the construction of a new K-12th grade building at a topping off ceremony Friday....Read more...

• Superintendent evaluation process varies (Middletown Journal)

While Race to the Top and other education reform movements are putting an emphasis on teacher and principal evaluations, there is no uniform method for evaluating superintendents....Read more...

• Avon Local Schools preliminary report card looks similar to last year (Sun Newpapers)

The Ohio Department of Education released preliminary School Report Card Data for the 2011-2012 school year late last month. The reports are not complete and the release of the official reports is running behind schedule, but the preliminary data shows...Read more...

• School board likely to mull results, plan of action (This Week News)

Parents in the Johnstown-Monroe school district whose children attend nonpublic schools should have time to make other transportation arrangements if their child's route takes more than 30 minutes to complete....Read more...

• Licking Heights anticipates highest grade on official state report card (This Week News)

Although official results haven't been released, Licking Heights Superintendent Philip Wagner said the district learned it likely will be graded "Excellent with Distinction" on the Ohio Department of Education's state report card....Read more...

• Superintendents Are Retiring With Large Pension Plans (WCMH)

In the last few months, five superintendents from some of the largest school districts in Central Ohio have decided to retire. They're taking hefty retirement packages and taxpayers are helping pay for them....Read more...

• Two Westlake elementary schools earn Blue Ribbon distinction (West Life)

Kim Conley, principal of Hilliard Elementary School, said teachers and staff at her school are never satisfied with the status quo....Read more...

• Youngstown students give up day off to learn lessons in teamwork (Youngstown Vindicator)

Youngstown Eighth grader Jarell Thompson wants to help other students who don’t fit in....Read more...

Editorial

• Toledo tax crapshoot: Natural seven or snake eyes? (Toledo Blade)

Lucky seven? We’ll find out soon. If you’ve looked at the fall ballot, you know that voters in the city and school district of...Read more...

• Get Ohio school data cleared up (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

A testy exchange between an Ohio Board of Education member and state Auditor Dave Yost last week helped make it clear serious problems exist in some of the state's largest school systems....Read more...

Where the polls stand - 22 days to go

With just over 3 weeks remaining until the November 6th election, Presidential polling has gotten a lot tighter, with the Presidents large lead having been eroded since the first debate.

Real Clear Politics now has the President ahead by just 10 Electoral College votes, with 146 up for grabs.

The NYT pollster has the President projected to win in the narrowest of fashions to date, too

Meanwhile, in Ohio, the race has tightened too, but remains a crucial firewall for the President

As you can see from the graph below, Mitt Romney has never led in Ohio

These polling leads in Ohio are confirmed by actual votes currently being cast early

A new poll shows President Obama with a commanding 59-31 percent lead among those who have already voted, with seven percent of those surveyed saying they have already cast their ballot.

A second poll, from PPP, showed similar results

The key finding on this poll may be how the early voters are breaking out. 19% of people say they've already cast their ballots and they report having voted for Obama by a 76-24 margin. Romney has a 51-45 advantage with those who haven't voted yet, but the numbers make it clear that he already has a lot of ground to make up in the final three weeks before the election.

The President is being projected to win Ohio by the NYT polling analyst, but by the smallest probability we have seen to date

After the evaluations binge, the hangover

You don't have to search far, or wide, to find articles, papers, and studies critical of corporate education reformers push for rigid test based teacher evaluations of the kind currently being deployed in Ohio. Our document archive is full of them. But it is unusual to read a paper published by a right wing think tank with a reputation for being anti-teacher, that raises many of the same points teachers themselves have been raising about the headlong rush to implement corporate education reform principles in the area of teacher evaluations.

But that's exactly what the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have just done wit ha paper titled "The Hangover: Thinking about the Unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge". The paper opens with a warning that the recent pushes might have been too much, too soon, and gone too far

Yet the recent evaluation binge is not without risks.

By nature, education policymaking tends to lurch from inattention to overreach. When a political moment appears, policymakers and advocates rush to take advantage as quickly as they can, knowing that opportunities for real change are fleeting. This is understandable, and arguably necessary, given the nature of America’s political system. But headlong rushes inevitably produce unintended consequences—something akin to a policy hangover as ideas move from conception to implementation.

Welcome to teacher evaluation’s morning after.

the Paper discusses a number of problematic area that will be familiar to JTF readers

Flexibility versus control: There is a temptation to prescribe and legislate details of evaluations to ensure rigor and prevent evaluations from being watered down in implementation. But overly prescriptive policies may also limit school autonomy and stifle innovation that could lead to the development of better evaluations.

Evaluation in an evolving system: Poorly designed evaluation requirements could pose an obstacle to blended learning and other innovative models in which it is difficult or impossible to attribute student learning gains in a particular subject to a particular teacher.

Purposes of evaluations: New evaluation systems have been sold as a way both to identify and dismiss underperforming teachers and to provide all teachers with useful feedback to help them improve their performance. But there are strong tensions between these purposes that create trade-offs in evaluation system design.

Evaluating teachers as professionals: Advocates argue that holding teachers responsible for their performance will bring teaching more in line with norms in other fields, but most professional fields rely on a combination of data and managerial judgment when making evaluation and personnel decisions, and subsequently hold managers accountable for those decisions, rather than trying to eliminate subjective judgments as some new teacher evaluation systems seek to do.

Take one look at this evaluation framework that has been inspired by the Ohio legislature and one can see how prescriptive Ohio's teacher evaluation has become.

Ohio has also fallen into many of the traps this paper highlights. The failure to consider team worked teaching, a lack of focus and funding for professional development, and a lack of resources for administrators to provide adequate feedback, to name just a handful.

AEI offer some useful recommendations, some of which might be too late to implement in Ohio

Recognizing these tensions and trade-offs, this paper offers several policy recommendations:

• Be clear about the problems new evaluation systems are intended to solve.
• Do not mistake processes and systems as substitutes for cultural change.
• Look at the entire education ecosystem, including broader labor-market impacts, pre- and in-service preparation, standards and assessments, charter schools, and growth of early childhood education and innovative school models.
• Focus on improvement, not just deselection.
• Encourage and respect innovation.
• Think carefully about waivers versus umbrellas.
• Do not expect legislation to do regulation’s job.
• Create innovation zones for pilots—and fund them.

One might find it gratifying to read reasoned words of caution regarding corporate education reforms from some of the very people responsible for pushing them in the first place, and we can only hope we see more of it. But, it is hard not to suspect that this is the slow dawning of realization that is being drawn from the very real evidence of on-going struggles and failures in corporate education reform policies now being seen across the state and the country.

The Hangover: Thinking about the Unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge

Education News for 10-12-2012

State Education News

• Superintendent evaluation process varies (Hamilton Journal-News)

While Race to the Top and other education reform movements are putting an emphasis on teacher and principal evaluations, there is no uniform method for evaluating superintendents…Read more...

• CTC programs take students from classroom to workforce (Portsmouth Daily Times)

The Scioto County Career Technical Center has changed faces since its old days as “VoTech,” with a significant growth…Read more...

Local Education News

• Former Cleveland schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett to take over top post in Chicago (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard stepped down Thursday after a little more than a year in the post, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel said…Read more...

• Levy failure would result in loss of up to 20 teachers (Lorain Morning Journal)

Failure of Amherst schools 4.9-mill levy, Issue 28, would mean up to 20 more teaching positions would be eliminated, Superintendent Steve Sayers said…Read more...

• Nonstudents enter LaBrae High, triggering a lockdown of school (Youngstown Vindicator)

LaBrae High School was on lockdown for 90 minutes Thursday morning after three young men walked into the school who were not students there and were noticed by a teacher…Read more...

Editorial

• Access denied (Akron Beacon Journal)

State agencies catch grief for layers of bureaucracy that waste time and money. Many times, the problem originates with the General Assembly. Ohio’s Statewide Student Identifier system…Read more...

The Educational Path of Our Nation

Education plays a fundamental role in American society. Here we take a look at school enrollment, costs and educational outcomes. How does school enrollment today compare with 1970, when the baby boom generation was in its prime years of school attendance (age 6 to 24) and made up 90 pecent of all student enrolled in schools? The American Community and other Census Bureau survey provide us with information to answer these other valuable questions. Education statistics are vital to communities in determining funding allocations and guiding program planning.

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]