School over-testing getting real in Ohio

The New Ohio Tests replace the Ohio Achievement Assessments (OAA) and the Ohio Graduation Tests (OGT). The OAAs were created to comply with the No Child Left Behind provisions to test all third- through eighth-students each year in reading and math. The OGTs (reading, writing, math, science and social studies) were added as a high school graduation requirement.

Let’s take a look at two questions surrounding the creation and implementation of the next generation of assessments in Ohio. First, what vetting process was used to select PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career) and AIR (American Institute of Research) tests? Second, are these new assessments developmentally appropriate for the students soon to be subjected to a three-months high-stakes testing cycle?

The vetting process starts with a decision the ODE made in 2009 to become a Common Core state. Initially, Common Core was a state initiative to create more rigorous standards in English and Math. Forty-five states, including Ohio, signed up. The federal government then created the Race to the Top program, nationalizing key aspects of a movement that had strictly stated the federal government would not be involved.

Race to the Top was a competition among states for federal funding, with strings attached. States had to promise to implement school reforms favored by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to cash in. The federal government then awarded two testing companies $360 million to develop the Math and ELA assessments. Pearson/PARCC was one of those companies.

In 2011 and 2012, the Ohio Department of Education decided, with very little public input, that PARCC and AIR tests would take over our schools starting in 2014-15. These mostly online tests have two, three and four parts to them, were not systemically field tested, and are written, according to many research measurement experts, two reading grade levels above the grade of the students subjected to this monolithic mess called national standardized testing.

The scores of the spring assessments will not be available until next fall, after students have moved on to the next grade. Effective testing is suppose to yield immediate results and used diagnostically to help students. The New Ohio Tests accomplish neither.

(Read more at cincinnati.com)

Testing based on Common Core standards starts this week

Sixth-grader Kayla Hunter considers herself pretty tech savvy. She has a computer at home unlike about half her classmates at her elementary school. And it matches up well with the one she'll use this week to take a new test linked to the Common Core standards.

Still, the perky 11-year-old worries. During a recent practice exam at her school in Ohio, she couldn't even log on. "It wouldn't let me," she said. "It kept saying it wasn't right, and it just kept loading the whole time."

Her state on Tuesday will be the first to administer one of two tests in English language arts and math based on the Common Core standards developed by two separate groups of states. By the end of the school year, about 12 million children in 29 states and the District of Columbia will take them, using computers or electronic tablets.

The exams are expected to be more difficult than the traditional spring standardized state exams they replace. In some states, they'll require hours of additional testing time because students will have to do more than just fill in the bubble. The goal is to test students on critical thinking skills, requiring them to describe their reasoning and solve problems.

The tests have multimedia components, written essays and multi-step calculations needed to solve math problems that go beyond just using rote memory. Students in some states will take adaptive versions in which questions get harder or easier depending on their answers.

But there's been controversy.

The tests have been caught up in the debate playing out in state legislatures across the country about the federal role in education. Although more than 40 states have adopted Common Core, which spells out what reading and math skills students should master in each grade, several have decided not to offer the tests — known as the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. Some states are introducing other new state standardized tests this year.

The Common Core tests fulfill the requirement in the federal No Child Left Behind law for annual testing in reading and math in grades three to eight and again in high school. But as Congress seeks to rewrite the education law, there's debate over whether the tests should be required by Washington, and whether students are being tested too much. Parents in pockets of the country have joined a movement to "opt out" of these standardized tests.

Questions also have been raised about students' keyboarding skills and schools' computer capacities.

In the Appalachian foothills where Kayla attends Morgan South Elementary School, administrators and teachers worry that they don't have the bandwidth to provide reliable Internet connectivity on testing day. Both tests offer a paper option. PARCC officials anticipate that about a quarter of students will use the paper version; Smarter Balanced officials estimate roughly 10 to 20 percent will take it on paper.

Just eight days before the test, the Morgan Local School District in rural southeastern Ohio ordered 200 more Chromebooks, which worked best during the practice run.

The week before the test, Kayla and her classmates huddled in pairs sharing what devices were available at the school. "They'll be more comfortable with the technology, but it is a worry of mine that, as far as the content that's on it, there's still stuff I could be doing to prepare for the test," says their teacher, Carrie Young.

Eleven-year-old Colton Kidd says the screens on the Chromebooks are too small. Classmate Josie Jackson, 12, prefers pencil and paper. But Liam Montgomery likes computerized tests: "It's easier to get the answers down, because I don't have to flip back and forth."

In some places, school administrators and state leaders are only grudgingly moving forward.

(Read more at the Slate)

Administering PARCC takes over 1,000 pages of instructions

We received a few tips today that instruction books for PARCC testing are very lengthy. Very Length.

Here's just one of the instruction books, for Grades 6-8 Paper-Based testing

That's just one batch of tests, Heres the rest of the Test Administrator Manuals running a total of over 1,000 pages:
2015 Spring Grades 3-5 Paper-Based - 131 Pages
2015 Spring Grades 6-8 Paper-Based - 139 Pages
2015 Spring High School Paper-Based ELA - 113 Pages
2015 Spring High School Paper-Based Math - 117 Pages
2015 Spring Grades 3-5 Computer-Based - 143 pages
2015 Spring Grades 6-8 Computer-Based - Not available
2015 Spring High School Computer-Based ELA - 121 Pages
2015 Spring High School Computer-Based Math - 121 Pages

Test Coordinator Manual For Grades 3-8 and High School Computer-Based ELA/Math
Test Coordinator Manual For Grades 3-8 and High School Computer-Based ELA/Math - 141 Pages

If it requires over 1,000 pages of instructions to administer your tests, you're probably doing it wrong.

Time to Move Beyond Test-Focused Policies

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

Does OTES Serve a Purpose Anymore?

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.

Open season on charter schools

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)