In this Policy Memo, Kevin Welner and William Mathis discuss the broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform.
nepc-policymemo-esea.pdf by National Education Policy Center
The Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) has been a mess since it was first appropriated by the Governor and his corporate education reform allies in the legislature. Intended to stack and rank teachers based primarily on student test scores, it has come under increasing fire. Not only has the system proven to be ineffective at measuring teacher quality, but its application has been scattershot, unfair and under constant change.
The real deal killer however has been the proliferation of testing that teacher accountability programs have created. What started as a few voices opposed to the avalanche of test requirements, has now become a widespread revolt. This revolt is causing law makers both in the state legislature and DC to take a fresh look at what they have wrought.
The first opportunity in Ohio to do so has come via the Governor's budget, where he builds upon ODE's test reduction report. Gone are SLO's and in their place is shared attribution
(c) Beginning with teacher evaluations for the 2015-2016 school year, if a teacher’s schedule is comprised of grade levels, courses, or subjects for which the value-added progress dimension prescribed by section 3302.021 of the Revised Code or an alternative student academic progress measure if adopted under division (C)(1)(e) of section 3302.03 of the Revised Code does not apply, nor is student progress determinable using the assessments required by division (B)(2) of this section, the teacher’s student academic growth factor shall be determined using a method of attributing student growth determined in accordance with guidance issued by the department of education.
The use of shared attribution is highly dubious. In Tennessee it is leading to lawsuits
Two accomplished teachers will file a lawsuit today in Nashville, Tennessee, to challenge the evaluation of most teachers in the state based on the standardized test scores of students in courses they did not teach. The teachers are joined by their representatives from the Tennessee Education Association and the Metropolitan Nashville and Anderson County Education Associations in the lawsuit, which is being prosecuted by the National Education Association and TEA. The lawsuit argues that these arbitrary, irrational and unfair policies violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.“Students in Tennessee are being shortchanged because of the state’s arbitrary and irrational evaluation system that provides no meaningful feedback on their instruction,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “This unfair broken system conditions the teacher’s employment on the basis of standardized test scores for courses they do not teach, including some from students they do not teach at all. The system is senseless and indefensible but, worst of all, it doesn’t help kids.”
More than half of Tennessee teachers are being evaluated in the same arbitrary and irrational manner. While most teachers do not teach courses that use standardized tests, a Tennessee statue still requires that all teachers be evaluated substantially on the basis of student growth estimates calculated from student test scores using the state’s value-added model.
In Ohio as Greg Mild at Plunderbund points out, even ODE questions its use
The Ohio Department of Education recommends careful consideration and collaboration regarding the use of shared attribution data for teachers of kindergarten through grade 12, as the intent of the new evaluation system is to capture the truest picture of an individual teacher’s impact on his or her student population.Ultimately, the use of a shared attribution measure, including the percentage of weight designated within guidelines set in law, is a district decision. Student growth measures should collectively represent each individual teacher’s impact on student learning for his or her particular student population. Therefore, choosing to use shared attribution at any level should not be taken lightly.
Stepping back from the dubious nature of using shared attribution, one really needs to ask what's the point of it all?
If a cohort of educators in a school district, say music teachers, are all going to receive up to 50% of their evaluation based on some global shared attribution number, then only their observations performed by the district are going to differentiate their performance anyway. Why even bother using shared attribution in the first place? Once again OTES, rather than measuring an educators performance will be measuring a school, or districts, demographics and making high stakes decisions based off of it.
It's time the legislature simply scrapped OTES and rubrics trying to tie student growth to individual teachers. Instead, the legislature should once again empower the Educators Standard Board to develop a simple, effective and fair evaluation system - Or - they could just leave the whole evaluation process under local control and stop meddling.
At last, it’s open season on Ohio’s worst charter schools. Even Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a strong supporter of charters, promised in December to get tough on the poor performers — and he’s not alone.
The charter-school reform proposal that Kasich presented as part of his state budget is a good start despite a few blind spots.
It ought to be more comprehensive, but it does make it harder for poorly performing charters to stay in business by focusing on sponsors and banning those that are rated poor by the Ohio Department of Education. Charter schools can’t operate without a sponsor.
The proposal to give the best charter schools — however that is defined — access to a new $25 million facilities fund sounds like a worthy idea as long as high-performing public schools have access to similar funds.
WEAK SPOTS
However, giving top charters the ability to ask voters for tax-levy money seems a step too far, especially since many charters in Ohio have for-profit operators with limited transparency and deficient oversight. Such a proposal also further jeopardizes the funding of public schools.
Kasich’s measure should also make it harder for unscrupulous operators to fudge attendance and their finances. House Bill 2, a recently proposed charter school reform bill, also falls short by not demanding that charter school finances be open to the public.
(See more at: Vindy.com)
Gov. John Kasich said recently, “We are going to fix the lack of regulation of charter schools.” That is a good idea for a lot of reasons, but I suspect it will not be easy to do for two reasons. One is that legislators get campaign contributions from charter schools. The other is that many legislators seem unaware of the problems with charter schools.
The most recent problem to surface is attendance. The state auditor’s office went to 30 charter schools to check attendance. State Auditor David Yost said the results said the results left him “speechless” and added that what they found was “quite a morass.”
They found all 95 pupils supposedly enrolled in one school were not there. At six other schools they found between 34 percent and 85 percent of the pupils missing. These schools were receiving funding for these missing pupils. Charter schools were supposed to provide opportunity for pupils to go to a better school than their local public school.
An analysis by the Ohio Education Association and Innovation Ohio a year ago shows that is not happening.
(Read more at Athens Messenger)
A number of central Ohio parents are considering opting their kids out of next week's new standardized testing for Ohio. The Ohio Department of Education says parents have every right to do so but warn there could be possible consequences.
There are some parents who CHOOSE to opt out their children from taking standardized tests, but one mom says she felt those tests were driving the education and felt home schooling was a better option.
Dorian Barnovsky's dining table serves as the classroom during the day for her two girls. The Worthington mom says she and her husband made the decision last year to home-school them after a year of state testing, she calls, developmentally inappropriate.
"It's not just the test, and the test taking, that is taking up a lot of hours of instruction time,” Barnovsky explains. “It is also the fact that now the instruction seems 100% geared toward the test."
Across town, Hilliard mom, Kristi Klise has similar concerns. "Each year when they take these tests they spend a lot of time in the classroom going over practice tests, reviewing practice tests and that is a lot of instructional time that is lost practicing for a test."
The parents aren't alone. A teacher in the Centerville School District wrote a letter to the Department of Education saying she encourages parents’ right to refuse to have their children take standardized tests.
(More at 10TV)
Now - state Auditor Dave Yost reached out to 10 Investigates to say he's found criminals working as school board members.
School Boards manage the finances and operations of the places parents send their children to every weekday. It is a position of trust. But at charter schools, those board members may also have one thing public school boards members don't have: a felony conviction.
Michael Davie was a board member of Cleveland's Lion of Judah Academy. State Auditor Dave Yost found out about Davie's past breaking into apartments, "There was one old lady that didn't have anything to give him and said, ‘I don't have anything to give you.’ He poured boiling hot water into her lap."
Davie spent 13 years in prison for attempted murder. Lion of Judah Academy shut down after its leader was found guilty of misspending public money.
The former Notten STEM School on Brentnell Avenue had Jerry Pierce on its school board. Auditor Yost flagged Pierce for his 1989 felony forgery conviction. Pierce is now the bishop for the Miracle Cathedral on 5th Avenue.
(More at 10TV)