Is Ohio ready for computer testing?

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a report on how Ohio schools are not going to be ready for the new online PARCC tests that are scheduled to be deployed next year.

Ohio public schools appear to be far short of having enough computers to have all their students take new state-mandated tests within a four-week period beginning in the 2014-15 school year.

“With all the reductions in education funds over the last several years and the downturn in the economy, districts have struggled to be able to bring their (computer technology) up to the level that would be needed for this,” said Barbara Shaner, associate executive director of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

Districts could seek state permission to deliver the new tests on paper if they can’t round up enough computers, tablets and gadgets to go around, Jim Wright, director of curriculum and assessment for the Ohio Department of Education, said. A student taking a paper test could be at a disadvantage, though. While the paper tests won’t have substantially different questions, a student taking the test online will have the benefit of audio and visual prompts as well as online tasks that show their work on computer, said Chad Colby, a spokesman for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

The state really does need to step up and help districts fund this costly mandate that has been foisted upon them. Added to this, the computer industry is going through significant changes as more and more people move away from the traditional desktops and laptops in favor of the simpler more portable tablets. School districts could find themselves having to make costly investments again in the near future if they pick the wrong technologies.

The article makes note of the possibility of paper based test takers being at a possible disadvantage over those taking the computer based tests. There has been a significant amount of research over the years on this, and the results seem to indicate the opposite effect - that computer based test takers score lower than paper based tests.

The comparability of test scores based on online versus paper testing has been studied for more than 20 years. Reviews of the comparability literature research were reported by Mazzeo and Harvey (1988), who reported mixed results, and Drasgow (1993), who concluded that there were essentially no differences in examinee scores by mode-of-administration for power tests. Paek (2005) provided a summary of more recent comparability research and concluded that, in general, computer and paper versions of traditional multiple-choice tests are comparable across grades and academic subjects. However, when tests are timed, differential speededness can lead to mode effects. For example, a recent study by Ito and Sykes (2004) reported significantly lower performance on timed web-based norm-referenced tests at grades 4-12 compared with paper versions. These differences seemed to occur because students needed more time on the web-based test than they did on the paper test. Pommerich (2004) reported evidence of mode differences due to differential speededness in tests given at grades 11 and 12, but in her study online performance on questions near the end of several tests was higher than paper performance on these same items. She hypothesized that students who are rushed for time might actually benefit from testing online because the computer makes it easier to respond and move quickly from item to item.

A number of studies have suggested that no mode differences can be expected when individual test items can be presented within a single screen (Poggio, Glassnapp, Yang, & Poggio, 2005; Hetter, Segall & Bloxom, 1997; Bergstrom, 1992; Spray, Ackerman, Reckase, & Carlson, 1989). However, when items are associated with text that requires scrolling, such as is typically the case with reading tests, studies have indicated lower performance for students testing online (O’Malley, 2005; Pommerich, 2004; Bridgeman, Lennon, & Jackenthal, 2003; Choi & Tinkler, 2002; Bergstrom, 1992)

Education News for 03-18-2013

State Education News

• Fund manager bonuses questioned (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Fund managers at Ohio’s state teacher pension system took in nearly $4 million in bonuses last year – with many of the bonuses alone more than the governor’s salary…Read more...

• New superintendents getting smaller salaries (Columbus Dispatch)

So far, all of the new superintendents in Franklin County will start their jobs at a lower salary than their predecessors…Read more...

• Acting state superintendent takes New Albany job (Columbus Dispatch)

Days after being passed over for Ohio schools chief, Michael Sawyers, who has been acting superintendent for seven months, announced yesterday he is leaving the Department of Education for a job in New Albany-Plain schools…Read more...

• When is it bullying? (Mansfield News Journal)

Bullying has drawn increased attention, as some of the nation’s deadliest school shootings have been linked to it…Read more...

• School board president reported neighboring district (Middletown Journal)

Kelly Kohls, president of the Springboro school board, was the first person to ask whether aletter critical of the governor that was posted on the Franklin schools web site and sent to families violated Ohio law…Read more...

• Pecko defends district action on ‘scrubbing’ (Toledo Blade)

Toledo Public Schools Superintendent Jerome Pecko defended how his district handled truancy reports and other data in a written response sent to the Ohio Department of Education over a state investigation involving TPS reporting practices…Read more...

• Area school districts prepare for state tests taken online (Youngstown Vindicator)

Tenth-graders across the state spent much of last week huddled over test booklets, pencils in hand, but in 2014-15 they’ll sit in front of computers instead…Read more...

Local Education News

• Canton City Schools expands focus on early learning (Canton Repository)

When Alicia Paulette first heard about City Schools’ “A Brighter Tomorrow” plan last month, she was excited…Read more...

• Jackson school district moves Jesus portrait (Columbus Dispatch)

A Jesus portrait that has embroiled a southeastern Ohio school district in a federal lawsuit has been moved from the middle school to a high school at the preference of a Christian- based student club that the district views as the picture’s owner…Read more...

• Panel asks: Columbus school board due for change? (Columbus Dispatch)

A mayoral takeover is not the only option for those who want to overhaul Columbus City Schools. Maybe not even a realistic one…Read more...

• Xenia school board censures member (Dayton Daily News)

A Xenia Community Board of Education member said a resolution censuring him that was recently passed by his fellow board members was “wrongful, unfair, and grossly illegal."…Read more...

• Conotton Valley Local considers layoffs amid funding woes (New Philadelphia Times-Reporter)

A month after voting to close one of its elementary schools, the Conotton Valley Board of Education will consider a proposal Monday to lay off or reduce the hours of more than a dozen employees…Read more...

• Demand for at-risk group's services higher than ever (Newark Advocate)

Skylar Tharp has felt the sting of words such as “weird” and “freak."Read more...

• District plans to improve security (Springfield News-Sun)

Mechanicsburg school board members are considering a plan to improve security in the district by installing new cameras and requiring visitors to buzz in at additional entrances to school facilities…Read more...

• Toledo Public Schools system boosts communication (Toledo Blade)

When bad weather hit in years past and Toledo Public Schools canceled or delayed classes, parents and kids had to wait for media reports to cycle through Toledo to learn if there was school that day…Read more...

Editorial

• Charter diversion (Akron Beacon Journal)

Ohio’s charter school program has made remarkable strides as an alternative to the traditional public school system. But from the beginning, the mechanism for funding the rapidly expanding system was — and remains — contentious…Read more...

• Lake Local faces tough decisions (Canton Repository)

The Lake Local Board of Education is facing what every other school district has in the last few years: More cuts to its budget — to the tune of $1.5 million in the upcoming school year — and an attempt to raise more money…Read more...

• New leader, big issues (Columbus Dispatch)

Taking the helm of the Ohio Department of Education now presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities, and The Dispatch extends best wishes to Richard Ross in the top job…Read more...

• School system restructuring deserves state financial help (Youngstown Vindicator)

For the second time in two years, the troubled Youngstown City School District is undergoing a major transformation in an effort to not only stop the exodus of students…Read more...

• ODE's rating system muddies perception (Zanesville Times-Recorder)

The problem with labels is they rarely tell the whole story. In the case of the Ohio Department of Education’s newest label, the story of school performance has become completely muddled…Read more...

Education News for 03-13-2013

State Education News

• Kasich adviser selected as new Ohio schools chief (Education Week)

Ohio's state school board picked Republican Gov. John Kasich's top education adviser Tuesday as the new superintendent of public instruction. Richard Ross was selected over acting Superintendent Michael Sawyers by a 10-6 vote…Read more...

• Ohio to get $20.2M to help low-performing schools (Canton Repository)

The U.S. education secretary says Ohio will receive $20.2 million to continue its efforts to help persistently lowest-performing schools raise their students’ achievement.…Read more...

• Gov. John Kasich's school funding formula would increase charter school aid by 4.5 percent (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Charter schools would receive about $35 million more from the state -- a 4.5 percent increase -- under Gov. John Kasich's proposed school funding formula than they have over the last two years…Read more...

• Rural school districts call on state to share wealth (Columbus Dispatch)

Superintendents and treasurers from low-income, rural school districts across the state gathered at the Statehouse yesterday to push for significant changes to a funding formula they say punishes their students.…Read more...

• State reinstates license of ex-Columbus teacher (Columbus Dispatch)

After a court battle, the State Board of Education yesterday reinstated the teaching license of a former Columbus teacher whom board members previously had banned from teaching for using poor judgment with an out-of-control child.…Read more...

• Students, teachers cope (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

City schools Superintendent Michael Notar said that when he heard about the Sunday morning crash in which several of his students were killed, his initial thought was to close school on Monday - longer if needed.…Read more...

Local Education News

• Loveland 'won' with Marschhausen tenure (Cincinnati Enquirer)

The Loveland School District is beginning its process of replacing John Marschhausen, but instead of hard feelings, the hope is more of the same. It might have only lasted three years, but Marschhausen’s tenure built the foundation…Read more...

• 4 Fairfield schools to tighten security (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Visitors will no longer be able to enter four Fairfield schools without being buzzed in. It is the latest local school district to beef up security in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings…Read more...

• Candidate out of race for Columbus school board; no primary (Columbus Dispatch)

Paperwork filed by a college intern for the county Republican Party led elections officials to boot a Democratic candidate from the Columbus school-board race yesterday, ending the need for a primary vote.…Read more...

• Grove changing school administrative structure (Lima News)

Facing cuts in state funding and a long list of new state mandates, Columbus Grove schools will change its administrative structure to try to address both.…Read more...

• TV’s Murphy joins school funding pleas in Columbus (New Philadelphia Times Reporter)

Local superintendents joined school representatives from the Appalachian region to speak against Gov. John Kasich’s two-year budget Tuesday at the Ohio Statehouse.…Read more...

• School subcontractor denies claims (The Findlay Courier)

The president of a subcontracting company on Tuesday disputed claims that it has refused to pay painters who worked on the new Glenwood Middle School.…Read more...

• Rossford IDs school chief pick (Toledo Blade)

The Rossford Board of Education will vote next week on its next superintendent, but the board appears to have already made its decision. Daniel Creps, principal of Perrysburg’s Woodland Elementary…Read more...

• Willoughby-Eastlake teacher resigns after prostitution sting (Willoughby News Herald)

The Willoughby-Eastlake School Board accepted the resignation of social studies teacher Ryan Tyna at its most recent board meeting. Tyna was placed on administrative leave Feb. 25 after police arrested him in a prostitution sting involving 11 others.…Read more...

• Willoughby-Eastlake School Board OKs bond issue, other projects (Willoughby News Herald)

The Willoughby-Eastlake School Board covered a lot of ground at its most recent meeting, including approving a $130 million bond issue. The board will now take the issue to the Lake County Auditor's Office for certification…Read more...

• Youngstown school board approves Hathorn's restructuring plan (Youngstown Vindicator)

City school board members gave their blessing to a restructuring plan that will close three buildings and reconfigure and re-purpose others. The board voted 5-1 Tuesday to approve Superintendent Connie Hathorn’s plan…Read more...

10 reasons why VAM is harmful to students

[...]No one is asking how value-added assessments may affect the very students that this evaluation system is intended to help. By my count, there are at least ten separate ways in which value-added assessment either does not accurately measure the needs of a student or is actually harmful to a child’s education. Until these flaws are addressed, value-added assessment will be nothing more than a toy for politicians and headline writers, not a serious tool for improving learning.

1. The premise of value-added assessment is that standardized tests are an accurate and decisive measure of student learning. In fact, standardized testing is neither definitive nor especially reliable. City and state exams are snapshots, not in-depth diagnostic tools.

2. Value-added assessments will ultimately require all students to take standardized exams, whether or not such examinations are developmentally appropriate. Kindergarteners and first graders will be subjected to the same pressures of high-stakes testing as older children.

3. Value-added assessments will dramatically increase the number of standardized tests for each student. Children will need to take exams in subjects such art, music and physical education in order to evaluate the teachers of these subjects.

4. The most successful students will get less enrichment work and more test prep. It is actually more difficult to improve the scores of gifted students since they have already done so well on standardized exams.

5. Teachers will need to avoid necessary remediation in order to attain short-term gains in test scores. Most standardized English tests require students to demonstrate high-order thinking skills, yet a growing body of academic research indicates that many children—especially those growing up in poverty—require huge boosts of vocabulary to function well in school. Teachers may be forced to forego a vocabulary-rich curriculum that would have the most long-term benefits for their children. Instead, they will have to focus on the skills that might help students gain an extra point or two on this year’s tests.

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Why are Ohio's charter schools so poor?

In a previous post we took a look at the difference in performance between Ohio's traditional public schools and their charter school counterparts, and discovered a wide and growing gap. Why does this gap exist?

One of the clear reasons is in the quality of the workforce. Ohio's traditional public schools have invested a lot of time and money developing an experienced, highly qualified teacher workforce, an investment that Ohio's charter schools have resisted or failed to developing.

Steve Dyer at Innovation Ohio took a look at the latest teacher data made available by ODE and discovered that the typical (i.e. the mode) charter school teacher has 0 years of experience, while their traditional school counterpart had 14 years of experience. We took a look at this too, and came to the same conclusion.

Our analysis also showed that the average level of experience of a charter school teacher is only 4.9 years, while in traditional schools that figure is over 14 years.

Dyer also discovered, what he called "two equally stunning statistics"

1) The average Traditional Public School building has about 2/3 of its teachers with a masters degree. The average Charter School building has about 1/3 of its teachers with a masters degree.
[...]
2) About 1 out of 3 Charter Schools in Ohio have at least some core courses taught by someone with a temporary teaching certificate. Of the more than 3,200 Traditional Public School buildings in the report card data, not a single one has core courses taught by teachers with temporary certificates.

Furthermore, over 10% of Ohio's charter schools have class sizes greater than 25 students per teacher, 20 of them more than 30 students per teacher!

The major innovation attempted by Ohio's charter school community has not been to find ways to deliver higher quality education, but instead to find ways to minimize teacher costs in order to maximize profits. This is made very clear when once looks at this experience and qualification differences, education outcome quality differences and the subsequent difference in average salaries where the charter school average is $33,993 and traditional schools $57,303.

Real consequences of ‘school choice’

For years, policy initiatives stemming from right-wing belief tanks have been wrapped in the rhetoric of positive outcomes that are, in fact, the complete opposite of what the measures are really intended to do.

A bill called Clear Skies that called for more pollution. Another called Healthy Forests offered incentives for cutting down valuable trees. No Child Left Behind, perhaps the crowning glory of duplicity, worsened the education of disadvantaged children it was purported to magically improve.

But without a doubt the most enduring of these wolf-wrapped-in-sheep’s-clothing ideas is the promise of “school choice” that’s been promoted to parents since the presidencies of Nixon and Reagan.

Sold as a way to “empower” parents to improve the education attainment of their children, school choice initiatives take on many forms, including vouchers, “scholarships,” and tax credits. But the most radical form of school choice is the so-called “parent trigger.”

The parent trigger has been relentlessly marketed to parents and policy makers as an “empowerment” that enables parents to conduct a petition campaign in their community to fire their school’s staff and change its governance. This has all the rhetoric of democratic activism – a majority of the parents deciding “what’s best” for the education of their children. But what are the results?

So far, the trigger has only been carried out to its fullest extent in one school: Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, California. A new video “Parent Triggers: Another Reform Misfires,” (see below) released by the Education Opportunity Network, recently looked at the results of the parent trigger in Adelanto and found that rather then uniting parents in doing what’s best for children, the parent trigger brought deception, division and disruption to the community.

Thus, parent trigger bills join the ranks of other school choice schemes that are proliferating across the country. And rather than giving parents more control of the trajectory of their children, these policies are leaving more parents overwhelmed and powerless.

So what should parents expect when the parent trigger or any other school choice scheme comes to town?

In New Orleans – perhaps America’s choiciest school district, where 70 percent of students attend charter schools – most of the schools remain the lowest performing in one of the lowest performing states, and parent activists have come to the conclusion that choice means “a choice to apply” while still remaining “trapped” in the same lousy schools.

A recent article in The Washington Post told the story of how the District of Columbia’s complex school choice landscape has led some parents to hire an educational consultant to navigate the public school system — and this is being seen by some as the wave of the future in districts around the country. More than 40 percent of the District’s 80,000 students attend charter schools. Even when parents do choose traditional public schools for their children, “more than half do not attend their assigned neighborhood school.”

“It’s just totally overwhelming,” one parent was quoted as saying in the Post story.

And the results? D.C. schools have among the lowest high school graduation rates in the country and the largest achievement gap of any urban school district.

According to this New York Times story, parents in New York City face a similar, if not more daunting, “school choice maze” that leaves thousands of children “shut out” of any real choice at all. Parents trying to navigate the complex system end up “feeling inadequate, frustrated and angry.”

Not to worry, school choice advocates reassure us. We’re told, as in this article at greatschools.org, to rejoice in the fact that while “it used to be that when it was time to find a school for the kids, most Americans looked no further than the neighborhood school.” Now we have a wonderful “open” system where our precious little darlings get to “compete” against the precious little darlings of our friends and neighbors.

Just make sure you’re one of the “smart parents” who knows how to “work the system.”

How could choice possibly lead to fewer options for parents?

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