Education News for 12-03-2012

State Education News

• Group calls for charter crackdown (Cincinnati Enquirer)

A national group of charter school sponsors is challenging states to crack down on failing charter schools…Read more...

• E-schools: Innovative niche or educational bust? (Cincinnati Enquirer)

The Hingsbergen family of Fairfield Township is an e-school family. Four of the five Hingsbergen children went to high school at Ohio Connections Academy, a statewide online charter school…Read more...

• Could state-law fixes help city’s schools? (Columbus Dispatch)

A 20- to 30-person commission on improving Columbus City Schools will be appointed by Mayor Michael B. Coleman…Read more...

• Five states to try more time in school (Columbus Dispatch)

Open your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public-school students is about to get quite a bit longer…Read more...

• Local scores lower than state, higher than U.S. (Dayton Daily News)

Students at Miami Valley school districts scored slightly below the state average but solidly above the national mark on both the ACT and SAT, according to data for 2012…Read more...

• Local superintendents weigh in on the replacing of Ohio Graduation Test (Willoughby News Herald)

High school students will be given more rigorous tests that are better aligned with their coursework beginning in 2014-15. The change is positive overall, but will require a bit of work to make the transition, according to local school officials…Read more...

• Longer Days at School? (WJW)

Some 10 school districts in five states will add up to 300 hours to their calendars starting next fall. The effort, according to the New York Times, is to help underperforming students catch up on standardized tests…Read more...

Local Education News

• 20 mph speed limit may apply even after school day (Columbus Dispatch)

The flashing signals that now warn drivers to slow down in school zones at the beginning and end of the school day would also blink during sports games…Read more...

• Loss of farm subsidy may have doomed levies (Dayton Daily News)

Increased taxes on farms and a call for money to build and maintain a new school were issues that apparently hampered this township’s 2.7-mills general funds levy that failed by 164 votes in the last election…Read more...

• Online learning gains students (Mansfield News Journal)

Once the Internet reached critical mass in our society in the late 1990s, it wasn’t long before one industry after another began to feel its powerful effects…Read more...

• State budget cuts run deep (Newark Advocate)

Street lights were turned off in Mansfield. Teachers were cut in Oak Harbor. The number of families assisted in Licking County was cut by 90 percent…Read more...

• Chinese students flock to area schools (Toledo Blade)

Ruihan Hu didn’t buy the Marina District or the Docks, but she’s as much the face of a growing tie between Toledo and China as are the businessmen who made those high- profile deals…Read more...

• Columbus Parent Files Lawsuit Against Schools Over 'Data Scrubbing' Investigation (WBNS)

A Columbus City Schools parent has filed lawsuit against the school district in connection with alleged data scrubbing. The parent, Marvin Perkins, is now hoping to make the lawsuit a class-action suit so other parents can join him in his fight…Read more...

• 9th Grade English Assignment Prompts Some Parents To Ask For Book Ban (WBNS)

An English assignment turned into controversy in one central Ohio school district. The book “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower” is billed as a coming-of-age novel…Read more...

• School mobility linked to test scores (Youngstown Vindicator)

Student mobility — students who move into and out of school districts for reasons other than promotion — is higher in urban districts such as Youngstown, linking to lower test scores, according to a recent study…Read more...

Editorial

• Grade acceleration (Akron Beacon Journal)

How much teaching and learning goes on in public schools is everybody’s business, and school rating…Read more...

HB555 Analysis

The Ohio House of Representatives approved HB 555. The House passed the bill without amendments in a party line vote, 58-27. The bill will now head to the Senate.

The Legislative Services Commision has analyzed the bill and produced the report below. While the devil is in the details, and there are some devils, here's a brief breakdown of the policies HB555 contains

• Replaces the current academic performance rating system for school districts, individual buildings of districts, community schools, STEM schools, and collegepreparatory boarding schools with a phased-in letter grade system under which districts and schools are assigned grades of "A," "B," "C," "D," or "F" based on 15 measures to reflect the performance profile of each district or school.
• Creates six component classifications in which each performance measure is categorized and a grade is assigned for each component to be calculated into assigning an overall grade to a school district or building.
• Requires the State Board of Education to develop an alternative academic performance rating system for community schools serving primarily students enrolled in dropout prevention and recovery programs.
• Establishes criteria for closing dropout prevention and recovery community schools based on their academic performance.
• Requires the Department of Education to review additional information included on report cards and submit to the Governor and the General Assembly recommendations for revisions.
• Establishes a new evaluation process for determining which community school sponsors may sponsor additional schools.
• Permits the Ohio Office of School Sponsorship to sponsor a community school if the school's sponsor has been prohibited from sponsoring additional schools.
• Delays implementation of the new sponsor evaluation system until the 2015-2016 school year.
• Renames the Ohio Accountability Task Force as the Ohio Accountability Advisory Committee and alters its membership and duties.
• Requires the State Board to submit to the General Assembly recommendations for a comprehensive statewide plan to intervene in and improve the performance of persistently poor performing schools and school districts.
• Reinstates the permanent requirement for five scoring ranges on the state achievement assessments.
• Requires a school district to provide immediate services and regular diagnostic assessments for a student found to have a reading deficiency pending development of the student's reading improvement and monitoring plan required under continuing law.
• Adds college-preparatory boarding schools to the provisions requiring the Department of Education to rank public schools by expenditures.
• Requires that a designated fiscal officer of a community school be licensed as a school treasurer by the State Board of Education prior to assuming the duties of fiscal officer.
• Requires the Department of Education to conduct two application periods each year for the Educational Choice Scholarship Program.
• Establishes measures the Superintendent of Public Instruction must consider before approving new Internet- or computer-based community schools.
• Restates that the requirements of the standards-based state framework for teacher evaluations and the standards and procedures for nonrenewal of a teacher's contract as a result of the evaluation prevail over any conflicting provisions of a collective bargaining agreement entered into on or after the effective date of the bill.
• Specifically permits educational service centers to partner in the development of STEM schools
• Permits an educational service center to sponsor a new start-up community school in any challenged district in the state, instead of just its service territory, so long as it receives approval to do so from the Department of Education.
• Qualifies for a War Orphans Scholarship, children of military veterans who participated in an operation for which the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal was awarded.
• Authorizes the administrators of the Ohio National Guard Scholarship Program and the Ohio War Orphans Scholarship Program to apply for and receive grants; to accept gifts, bequests, and contributions from public and private sources; and to deposit all such contributions into the respective National Guard Scholarship Reserve Fund (existing) or the Ohio War Orphans Scholarship Fund (created by the bill).

OFT is asking that the following fixes be made to HB 555

1. Eliminate graded items for the current school year. It’s not fair to change the rules in the middle of the game, or year. Delay any grades to 2014-2015.
2. Don’t grade items that are impacted by a lack of resources - participation in AP courses, dual enrollment participation rate, K-3 literacy rate, college admission testing scores, remediation.
3. Eliminate Accountability Board language
4. A composite score dilutes the value of the dashboard and should be eliminated.
5. Eliminate language that raises the standard and the cut score for achievement tests. This causes double jeopardy for school districts. Raising the cut score and standards from 75 to 80 percent will force more school districts to have lower scores making them and buildings subject to possible vouchers for low performance. Only the cut score should be raised.
6. Safe harbor: For three years the student portion of teacher evaluations should be reduced from 50 percent to 25 percent. For three years school districts currently earning a continuous improvement rating or higher should be exempt from sanctions.

HB 555 Analysis

How Do Value-Added Indicators Compare to Other Measures of Teacher Effectiveness?

Via

Highlights

• Value-added measures are positively related to almost all other commonly accepted measures of teacher performance such as principal evaluations and classroom observations.
• While policymakers should consider the validity and reliability of all their measures, we know more about value-added than others.
• The correlations appear fairly weak, but this is due primarily to lack of reliability in essentially all measures.
• The measures should yield different performance results because they are trying to measure different aspects of teaching, but they differ also because all have problems with validity and reliability.
• Using multiple measures can increase reliability; validity is also improved so long as the additional measures capture aspects of teaching we value.
• Once we have two or three performance measures, the costs of more measures for accountability may not be justified. But additional formative assessments of teachers may still be worthwhile to help these teachers improve.

Introduction

In the recent drive to revamp teacher evaluation and accountability, measures of a teacher’s value added have played the starring role. But the star of the show is not always the best actor, nor can the star succeed without a strong supporting cast. In assessing teacher performance, observations of classroom practice, portfolios of teachers’ work, student learning objectives, and surveys of students are all possible additions to the mix.

All these measures vary in what aspect of teacher performance they measure. While teaching is broadly intended to help students live fulfilling lives, we must be more specific about the elements of performance that contribute to that goal – differentiating contributions to academic skills, for instance, from those that develop social skills. Once we have established what aspect of teaching we intend to capture, the measures differ in how valid and reliable they are in capturing that aspect.

Although there are big holes in what we know about how evaluation measures stack up on these two criteria, we can draw some important conclusions from the evidence collected so far. In this brief, we will show how existing research can help district and state leaders who are thinking about using multiple measures of teacher performance to guide them in hiring, development, and retention.

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Do Different Value-Added Models Tell Us the Same Things?

Via

Highlights

• Statistical models that evaluate teachers based on growth in student achievement differ in how they account for student backgrounds, school, and classroom resources. They also differ by whether they compare teachers across a district (or state) or just within schools.
• Statistical models that do not account for student background factors produce estimates of teacher quality that are highly correlated with estimates from value-added models that do control for student backgrounds, as long as each includes a measure of prior student achievement.
• Even when correlations between models are high, different models will categorize many teachers differently.
• Teachers of advantaged students benefit from models that do not control for student background factors, while teachers of disadvantaged students benefit from models that do.
• The type of teacher comparisons, whether within or between schools, generally has a larger effect on teacher rankings than statistical adjustments for differences in student backgrounds across classrooms.

Introduction

There are good reasons for re-thinking teacher evaluation. As we know, evaluation systems in most school districts appear to be far from rigorous. A recent study showed that more than 99 percent of teachers in a number of districts were rated “satisfactory,” which does not comport with empirical evidence that teachers differ substantially from each other in terms of their effectiveness. Likewise, the ratings do not reflect the assessment of the teacher workforce by administrators, other teachers, or students.

Evaluation systems that fail to recognize the true differences that we know exist among teachers greatly hamper the ability of school leaders and policymakers to make informed decisions about such matters as which teachers to hire, what teachers to help, which teachers to promote, and which teachers to dismiss. Thus it is encouraging that policymakers are developing more rigorous evaluation systems, many of which are partly based on student test scores.

Yet while the idea of using student test scores for teacher evaluations may be conceptually appealing, there is no universally accepted methodology for translating student growth into a measure of teacher performance. In this brief, we review what is known about how measures that use student growth align with one another, and what that agreement or disagreement might mean for policy.

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Education News for 11-28-2012

State Education News

• Black grad rate lags in Ohio (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Ohio is the sixth worst state in the nation at graduating black students from high school on time, a new federal study says…Read more...

• Ohio’s grad rates show racial disparity (Columbus Dispatch)

Ohio has one of the nation’s lowest graduation rates for black students but one of the better rates for white students. The gap between black and white students’ success is so wide — white students’ rate is 26 percentage points higher…Read more...

• House tweaking schools legislation (Columbus Dispatch)

Majority Republicans in the House say legislation to ramp up the school accountability system and create new report cards for schools and districts could be voted on as early as Thursday…Read more...

• Ohio ties for 8th in U.S. for high school graduation rates (Dayton Daily News)

Twenty two states have better high school graduation rates than Ohio under a new, more uniform method of calculation, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education…Read more...

• Local HS Introduces Unique Texting Program (WJW)

A Lake County high school is now using a unique text messaging program which allows students to anonymously send tips about any potential dangers at their school…Read more...

Local Education News

• New Albany levy passes; district will build a school (Columbus Dispatch)

Voters approved a New Albany schools tax that will pay for a new school building, according to final, official results the Board of Elections certified yesterday…Read more...

• Vanlue, Kenton agree to share school treasurer (Findlay Courier)

Vanlue and Kenton school districts have agreed to share a treasurer, school administrators announced this week…Read more...

• Mansfield school district rethinking budget situation (Mansfield News Journal)

A gamble by the Mansfield City Schools Board of Education backfired at the polls this month, and the district will operate with $4 million less next year…Read more...

• No comments for proposed 'double dip' (Newark Advocate)

No one spoke up at a public hearing Tuesday concerning the proposed retirement and rehiring of the superintendent of the Career and Technology Education Centers of Licking County…Read more...

• Austintown teens learn work skills (Youngstown Vindicator)

Hartford Orchard has hosted many families and events throughout the season, but on Tuesday, those visiting the orchard were put to work…Read more...

Editorial

• Plenty of big questions facing Ohio's schools (Chillicothe Gazette)

When it comes to the state government in Columbus and big issues involving Ohio’s public schools, there are more big unknowns than knowns at the moment…Read more...

• Ohio ready to reform tests, data (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

At long last, Ohio seems on the brink of simple, common-sense school reforms. One would compare the performance of students to those in other states. Another would eliminate the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo…Read more...

How Stable are Value-Added Estimates

Via

Highlights:

• A teacher’s value-added score in one year is partially but not fully predictive of her performance in the next.
• Value-added is unstable because true teacher performance varies and because value-added measures are subject to error.
• Two years of data does a meaningfully better job at predicting value added than does just one. A teacher’s value added in one subject is only partially predictive of her value added in another, and a teacher’s value added for one group of students is only partially predictive of her valued added for others.
• The variation of a teacher’s value added across time, subject, and student population depends in part on the model with which it is measured and the source of the data that is used.
• Year-to-year instability suggests caution when using value-added measures to make decisions for which there are no mechanisms for re-evaluation and no other sources of information.

Introduction

Value-added models measure teacher performance by the test score gains of their students, adjusted for a variety factors such as the performance of students when they enter the class. The measures are based on desired student outcomes such as math and reading scores, but they have a number of potential drawbacks. One of them is the inconsistency in estimates for the same teacher when value added is measured in a different year, or for different subjects, or for different groups of students.

Some of the differences in value added from year to year result from true differences in a teacher’s performance. Differences can also arise from classroom peer effects; the students themselves contribute to the quality of classroom life, and this contribution changes from year to year. Other differences come from the tests on which the value-added measures are based; because test scores are not perfectly accurate measures of student knowledge, it follows that they are not perfectly accurate gauges of teacher performance.

In this brief, we describe how value-added measures for individual teachers vary across time, subject, and student populations. We discuss how additional research could help educators use these measures more effectively, and we pose new questions, the answers to which depend not on empirical investigation but on human judgment. Finally, we consider how the current body of knowledge, and the gaps in that knowledge, can guide decisions about how to use value-added measures in evaluations of teacher effectiveness.

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