Bill to limit testing gets Ohio educators’ backing

The new tests associated with Common Core have Ohio schools experiencing “unprecedented chaos” and loss of instructional time, Licking Valley Heights Superintendent David Hile told lawmakers yesterday.

While the state is requiring that districts give tests that are ultimately not used to guide instruction, partially because results take too long to come back, Licking Valley and many other districts, Hile said, are spending money on other tests. They include the Measures of Academic Progress to monitor progress, tests for the third-grade reading guarantee, and tests to identify gifted students.

“We use the state test data for none of these purposes,” he said.

Hile testified in support of House Bill 74, a wide-ranging bill designed to reduce testing in Ohio and alter a system in which the Common Core-aligned PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) tests are given for language and math in grades three through eight and as a replacement for the Ohio Graduation Test starting with this year’s ninth-graders.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, seeks to give districts more control over testing options and teacher evaluations, limit end-of-course exams, and require the state to identify tests that can be used for multiple purposes.

Paul Imhoff, superintendent of Upper Arlington schools, testified along with Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown to push for elimination of a measure on student growth, known as value-added data, as half of a teacher’s evaluation. Instead, a principal should rate a teacher’s effectiveness in using value-added data to improve instruction, they argued.

(Read more at the Dispatch)

Teachers tell Ohio legislators that state tests take too long

Teachers urged an Ohio Senate committee yesterday to scale back new standardized tests, arguing that the longer exams take too much time away from instruction and are causing anxiety for students.

Teachers “are beyond frustrated with the increasing amount of time spent on testing and the way it has crowded out time needed to teach and engage students,” said Becky Higgins, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

“The current fixation with testing is sucking the oxygen and joy out of our education system."

Several classroom teachers told legislators that new standardized tests aligned with more-rigorous Common Core standards are of little help because the results aren’t available for months, long after school lets out for summer.

They also continue to oppose the use of test results to help evaluate teachers and grade schools on state-issued report cards.

“The purpose of tests should be to drive instruction, to meet the needs of children, not rate teachers and schools,” said Dan Greenberg, a high-school English teacher in Sylvania.

(Read more at the Dispatch)

Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds

Socioeconomic inequality among U.S. students skews international comparisons of test scores, finds a new report released today by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute. When differences in countries' social class compositions are adequately taken into account, the performance of U.S. students in relation to students in other countries improves markedly.

An accurate comparison of nations' test scores must include a look at the social class characteristics of the students who take the test in each country, says Stanford education Professor Martin Carnoy. The report, What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?, also details how errors in selecting sample populations of test-takers and arbitrary choices regarding test content contribute to results that appear to show U.S. students lagging.

In conducting the research, report co-authors Martin Carnoy, a professor of education at Stanford, and Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, examined adolescent reading and mathematics results from four test series over the last decade, sorting scores by social class for the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and two forms of the domestic National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Based on their analysis, the co-authors found that average U.S. scores in reading and math on the PISA are low partly because a disproportionately greater share of U.S. students comes from disadvantaged social class groups, whose performance is relatively low in every country.

As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations: U.S. rankings would rise to sixth from 14th in reading and to 13th from 25th in math. The gap between U.S. students and those from the highest-achieving countries would be cut in half in reading and by at least a third in math.

"You can't compare nations' test scores without looking at the social class characteristics of students who take the test in different countries," said Carnoy. "Nations with more lower social class students will have lower overall scores, because these students don't perform as well academically, even in good schools. Policymakers should understand how our lower and higher social class students perform in comparison to similar students in other countries before recommending sweeping school reforms."

The report also found:

There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.

Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.

But the highest social class students in United States do worse than their peers in other nations, and this gap widened from 2000 to 2009 on the PISA.

U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.

(Read more at Stanford)

State promises no funding cuts for Common Core opt-outs

Parents opting out of Common Core-based testing got some good news this week:

One: It won’t mean a cut in state funding.

And two: It won’t impact grades, promotion or school-choice vouchers.

Technically, state law prohibits the Ohio Department of Education from paying for students who didn’t take a state test the previous school year, according to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Richard Ross.

However, the law also allows him to issue a waiver, permitting funding for those students, Ross wrote in an email he sent Tuesday to Ohio school officials.

“Under that authority, the department has, in the past, automatically funded these students for many years,” Ross wrote. “We plan on continuing the same practice this year. This means that we will continue to fund each student in your district, regardless of their participation.”

Schools could still see restrictions placed on federal funds, although that would only happen if fewer than 95 percent of students take the test at any one school or district – or, fewer than 95 percent of any subgroup, such as students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Common Core is a set of nationwide standards that detail what students should know in English and math at the end of each year. Students across Ohio started in February taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers tests. The PARCC tests are centered around Common Core, and, in an effort to push back against the new standards, some parents are withdrawing their children from taking the exams.

There is no statewide data on opt-outs, but numbers seem to vary greatly district to district.

At Cincinnati Public Schools, for example, only 24 students opted out, said Public Affairs Director Janet Walsh.

At Lakota Local Schools, the second largest district in the region, 194 students opted out.

At Mason City Schools, however – smaller than CPS and Lakota – 350 students opted out. That’s about 4.5 percent of the Mason students scheduled for the test, said Tracey Carson, public information officer.

Re-enforcing Ross’ announcement, the Ohio Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill that would offer “safe harbor” to students who opt out this year – meaning it won’t impact grades or promotion. House Bill 7 is largely symbolic, but supporters say it provides another level of comfort for parents who don’t their children taking the new tests.

The bill will go back to the Ohio House then on to Gov. John Kasich for approval.

(Read more at cincinnati.com).

Should Ohio cut testing time or keep PARCC? New panel will review state's key testing issues

State Sen. Peggy Lehner wants to hear from educators about how much testing Ohio has and whether the new PARCC tests are what Ohio needs.

Lehner, who heads the Senate Education Committee, and Ohio Senate President Keith Faber just announced creation of the Senate Advisory Committee on Testing -- a panel of state school board members, teachers and superintendents.

Lehner said it is clear that Ohio will have to make a lot of decisions about testing, as opposition to increased test hours grows and as Ohio shifts to new tests based on the Common Core and other new state education standards.

On the table: testing time and the future of the new Common Core tests through the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) that Ohio students have just started taking.

(Read more at Cleveland.com).

Ohio won't penalize districts for kids who opt out of state tests

The state won't penalize school districts if large numbers of students skip this year's state test, state Superintendent Richard Ross announced today.

An ever-growing number of parents are pulling their kids out of new state tests this year, as the state dramatically increases testing time and changes test providers. This year Ohio is seeing its first state tests using the new multi-state Common Core learning standards.

An exact number of students is not yet available, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

Ross' announcement comes as states across the country sort out how to handle schools where students and parents refuse to take the test. Just last week, Chris Minnich, the head of the national council of state superintendents urged parents to participate.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)