Monday, July 25, 2011
Ohio report cards to districts revise ’11 standards
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
A change in one factor of the state report card could be good news for some Mahoning Valley school districts.
Value added is the measure that tracks students’ academic progress from one year to the next.
“Changing the standard means that we have made the system more rigorous,” Scott Gallaway, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said in an email. “Fewer schools and districts will be indicated as having exceeded the growth standard, and also fewer schools and districts will be indicated as not having met the standard.”
Instead, more schools and districts will be in the category of meeting the standard, he said. “This is important for accountability since the only way ratings of schools and districts can be affected by value-added is if the school or district either exceeds or does not meet the standard,” Gallaway said.
For the last two report cards, failing to meet value added kept the Youngstown city school district at an academic emergency rating, the lowest rank on the state report card. The district is researching to determine how the change may affect it on the new report cards that will be released late next month.
Barbara Williams, director of teaching and learning at the Mahoning County Educational Service Center, said that part of the change deals with the standard error of measure, a statistical formula.
The change increases the standard for determining a year’s growth in a year’s time from one standard error of measure to two, said Suzette Jackson, an instructional consultant at MCESC.
The other change deals with how soon the growth will either positively or negatively affect a district’s report card designation.
Before the change, for example, a school or district that would have been declared excellent and exceeds growth expectations for at least two consecutive years shall be declared excellent with distinction.
The law has been changed, though, so that if a district or school exceeds growth expectations in the current year, it can receive the higher designation.
“That’s good for our districts,” Williams said. “In the past, you had to have two years of above expected growth to move up a category. Now you only need one.”
However, there’s a downside too.
A district that does not meet growth expectations for at least two consecutive years, can get a lower report card designation. It used to take three years of not meeting growth expectations to knock a district into a lower designation.
Williams said an exception is being made for this school year. Failing to meet growth expectations for two years on the upcoming report card won’t cause a district to fall to the lower designation.