State may drop the religious requirement from Gov. Kasich's student mentoring grants

in

The state may stop requiring schools to partner with religious groups to receive any money from Gov. John Kasich's new $10 million fund to promote student mentoring programs.

State Superintendent Richard Ross told the state school board Tuesday that he could drop the requirement that a church or other faith-based organization partner with schools if lawyers determine it could open the state up to a strong legal challenge.

Ross said he hopes to make a decision about the requirement "soon."

Any non-religious group would have only have until Feb. 20 to apply for the grants, if Ross changes the rule. The application period, which started in December, is already half over.

The requirement - one not spelled out in the state law that creates the new "community connectors" program - has been called unconstitutional by individuals and organizations concerned that it would promote religion with state tax money and through schools.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Ohio ed chair open to Common Core debate

in

The Ohio House's new education chairman believes his chamber will again debate Common Core repeal, and unlike his predecessor will not try to use his influence to curtail it.

Rep. Bill Hayes, R-Pataskala, on Monday was announced as the new education committee chair, a position the former school board member said was his ultimate goal when he first ran for the Legislature.

"I'm quite excited," he said.

He said he expects to once again debate whether Ohio should repeal the Common Core learning standards. Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta, has pledged to introduce another repeal bill after his last effort stalled in the lame duck session.

That bill was placed in the House rules committee because previous education chairman Gerry Stebelton, R-Lancaster, was such an ardent proponent of Common Core. Stebelton could not seek re-election last year because of term limits.

Hayes said he would not use his personal feelings to dictate how the issue was handled, but admitted to being a supporter of local control for school districts. Common Core opponents have long argued the standards take away some control from local school boards.

(Read more that the Bucyrus Telegraph)

STUDY: Teachers Find No Value in the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System

in

A new study published in the education policy analysis archives titled "Houston, We Have a Problem: Teachers Find No Value in the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS®)" looks at the use of Value-add in the real world. Their findings are not shocking, but continue to be troubling as we enter a high-stakes phase of deployment.

Today, SAS EVAAS® is the most widely used VAM in the country, and North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee use the model state-wide (Collins & Amrein-Beardsley, 2014). Despite widespread popularity of the SAS EVAAS®, however, no research has been done from the perspective of teachers to examine how their practices are impacted by this methodology that professedly identifies effective and ineffective teachers. Even more disconcerting is that districts and states are tying consequences to the data generated from the SAS EVAAS®, entrusting the sophisticated methodologies to produce accurate, consistent, and reliable data, when it remains unknown how the model actually works in practice.

As you can see, the findings here are directly relevant to educators in Ohio. The report looked at a number of factors, including reliability, which once again proves to be anything but

Reliability
As discussed in related literature (Baker et al., 2010; Corcoran, 2010; EPI, 2010; Otterman, 2010; Schochet & Chiang, 2010) and preliminary studies in SSD (Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012), it was evident that inconsistent SAS EVAAS® scores year-to-year were an issue of concern. According to teachers who participated in this study, reliability as measured by consistent SAS EVAAS® scores year-to-year was ironically, an inconsistent reality. About half of the responding teachers reported consistent data whereas the other half did not, just like one would expect with the flip of a coin (see also Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012).

Reliability Implications
Unless school districts could prevent teacher mobility and ensure equal, random student assignment, it appears that EVAAS is unable to produce reliable results, at least greater than 50% of the time.

A random number generator isn't an appropriate tool for measuring anything, let alone educator effectiveness that might lead to high-stakes career decisions.

Furthermore, the study found that teachers are discovering that despite claims to the contrary, the SAS formula for calculating Value-add is highly dependent upon the student population

teachers repeatedly identified specific groups of students (e.g., gifted, ELL, transition, special education) that typically demonstrated little to no SAS EVAAS® growth. Other teachers described various teaching scenarios such as teaching back-to-back grade levels or switching grade levels which negatively impacted their SAS EVAAS® scores. Such reports contradict Dr. Sanders’ claim that a teacher in one environment is equally as effective in another (LeClaire, 2011).

In conclusion, the study finds

The results from this study provide very important information of which not only SSD administrators should be aware, but also any other administrators from districts or states currently using or planning to use a VAM for teacher accountability. Although high-stakes use certainly exacerbates such findings, it is important to consider and understand that unintended consequences will accompany the intended consequences of implementing SAS EVAAS®, or likely any other VAM. Reminiscent of Campbell’s law, the overreliance on value-added assessment data (assumed to have great significance) to make high-stakes decisions risks contamination of the entire educational process, for students, teachers and administrators (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). Accordingly, these findings also strongly validate researchers’ recommendations to not use value-added data for high-stakes consequences (Eckert & Dabrowski, 2010; EPI, 2010; Harris, 2011). While the SAS EVAAS® model’s vulnerability as expressed by the SSD EVAAS®-eligible teachers is certainly compounded by the district’s high-stakes use, the model’s reliability and validity issues combined with teachers’ feedback that the SAS EVAAS® reports do not provide sufficient information to allow for instructional modification or reflection, would make it seem inappropriate at this point to use value-added data for anything.

the full study can be read below.

Houston, We Have a Problem: Teachers Find No Value in the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAA...

Top 7 tips for Improving Public Schools

in
  • Discourage teacher turnover by downplaying the importance of having money and respect
  • Maybe get some underprepared, overconfident recent college graduates in there to figure things out
  • Federal law that prevents Dylan from raising his hand and wasting everybody’s time with the wrong answer
  • Tattoo grades on foreheads to shame low performers
  • Toss Northrop Grumman another $4.5 billion and see what kind of curriculum it pumps out
  • Whatever you do, don’t change anything about a property-tax-based funding system in which rich schools get richer while poor schools get poorer. That’s working just fine.
  • Cut losses and reallocate funding to nation’s prison system

You might be fooled into thinkinng these are the latest ideas from Students First, alas no.

How Local Tax Revenues Subsidize Ohio Charter Schools

in

Many homeowners who vote for school levies are getting shortchanged. Instead of the additional money going to their neighborhood schools, more and more of it is being used to subsidize state-mandated funding of charter schools – many of them with poor academic records, according to a new study by the Ohio Charter School Accountability Project.

Ohio has a formula that spells out how much state funding each student in each district should receive. Some of the money is from the state and some from local taxes.

But a rarely-discussed flaw in the formula results in traditional schools often receiving far fewer state dollars per pupil than charter schools for the same students. This forces districts to make up the lost state money by either raising their local taxes or cutting programs and services.

At KnowYourCharter.com, we have posted for the first time on one website how much state funding per pupil each school district should receive under the state’s formula. However, that’s not what the district ends up getting because charter schools (and other school choice options) deduct significant state dollars from Ohio’s public school districts. When you compare how much state funding per pupil each charter school receives with what school districts receive, it becomes abundantly clear that school districts often receive far fewer state dollars per pupil than the state pays to charter schools for the same students. This system then forces districts to make up the lost state revenue through local revenues or program cuts.

How School Funding Works

Every year, school districts in Ohio receive money from the state based on the number of students attending local schools and the amount of money the district can raise through local property taxes. Last year, the average amount of money sent by the state to local school districts was $4,149 per student.

While they are called public schools under Ohio law, charter schools are funded differently than traditional public schools. Rather than having a separate line item in the state budget, charter schools are funded with money that would have otherwise gone to a student’s home district. Under state law, the amount of state money that was deducted from a home district for charter schools last school year was $5,745[1] per student.[2] That amount is a state mandate.

However, data at KnowYourCharter.com shows that in the vast majority of cases that money is far more than what a school district would receive. Last year, 511 of 613 school districts in Ohio received less per pupil under the state’s formula than the minimum $5,745 per pupil received by charter schools.

(Read more at www.knowyourcharter.com)