On Charter Schools, Auditor Yost Makes Promising Noises

in

During his swearing in, Auditor Yost had this to say

Charter schools will remain a major focus in Auditor Dave Yost's second term, the Republican announced Monday.

Mr. Yost, who was sworn in during a morning Statehouse ceremony, told reporters that while he plans to also prioritize public records, board accountability and data integrity, charter schools will be "front and center" during the first year of his new term.

"We audit every charter school now, if the legislature chooses to give us additional tools or greater responsibility we'll do that - we'll be part of that discussion too," he said. "I think there's some things that need to be addressed. There's multiple ways of doing it and that debate will unfold and I'll be part of it over the next few months."

The auditor launched an investigation into 19 charters managed by Concept Schools last year. (See Gongwer Ohio Report, October 14, 2014)

In addition to charter schools, Mr. Yost said he intends to focus on board accountability, saying he's "very concerned about the uneven quality of the unpaid boards that we charge with supervising various public functions."

"I'm not sure the lines of responsibility are sufficiently clear or that boards are being given the tools they need to succeed," he said. "And that goes from a small charter school board acting in a public behalf all the way up to large institutions spending millions of dollars."

That's good to hear. However, we are still waiting for his report on Horizon schools. He seemed much swifter, and public, with his investigation of data tampering at Columbus City Schools than he has been with this important investigation. A quick look at recent campaign finance reports show that Yost has been a significant beneficiary of contribtiuons from the charter sector, taking in almost $50,000 from David Brennan (White Hat) and William Lager (ECOT) alone. Only time will tell whether that was a sound investment by the for profit charter folks.

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...