State board blocks release of report cards

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Ohio’s school board again blocked release of state report cards Tuesday amid an attendance-tampering investigation, but it cleared certain untainted data to be publicized.

The 19-member panel voted to release to the public spreadsheets of district- and building-level performance data for the 2011-12 school year that’s not subject to State Auditor Dave Yost’s probe.

The partial reports will omit the district attendance rate, performance index and an overall rating that’s often eagerly anticipated by district officials, families and policymakers — especially at levy time.

Modified data is expected to be ready around the end of the month, said Acting Superintendent Michael Sawyers.

In a 16-3 vote, the panel shot down a proposal by board member Robin Hovis to publish the full report cards but with a disclaimer that the data was under review. The reports would have featured a watermark on each page reminding readers that results were preliminary.

Opponents worried the disclaimer could appear to cast blame on innocent districts.

“I see this ‘Under Review by the Department of Education’ as a red flag,” said board member Dannie Greene, a past local school board member. “If I read this at the local level, I say: ‘Under review? What’d we do wrong?’”

Hovis said the disclaimer was neutrally worded and people would understand that it wasn’t implicating individual districts. Yost is investigating whether Ohio school districts tampered with attendance and enrollment data to boost performance rankings.

He launched the statewide probe after irregularities were discovered in Columbus, Toledo and suburban Cincinnati. It could take months for the investigation to be completed.

Sawyers developed a listing of preliminary results that officials believe will be unchanged by the investigation, and the alternative approach was approved unanimously. The partial reports will include standardized test rankings by grade level for reading, math, science and social studies, the district’s graduation rate, progress made from the previous year, and a measure of year-over-year student improvement.

A note at the bottom indicates the state Education Department could revise the figures at a later date.

Some of the included information, such as a district’s graduation rate, could ultimately be affected by whether students were improperly enrolled or withdrawn before or after taking standardized tests.