State Education News

IN OUR SCHOOLS: Ohio finally releases report cards (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Ohio’s Department of Education on Wednesday released the rest of its school and district report card data for the 2011-12 school year, six months late…Read more…

Ohio schools' report cards shifting to new format (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

The Solon school district won't be sweating over whether it's rated Excellent or Excellent with Distinction on state report cards anymore.…Read more…

Yost slams how schools report data (Columbus Dispatch)

State Auditor Dave Yost, whose office investigated data-scrubbing among school districts throughout the state, called on the Ohio Department of Education yesterday to fix the “just-trust-me” system.…Read more…

School report cards finally released (Findlay Courier)

After a nearly seven-month delay because of a statewide investigation into attendance tampering, the 2011-12 school report cards were finally released Wednesday.…Read more…

Official state report cards released (Lima News)

The State Department of Education released the final 2011-12 report cards Wednesday.…Read more…

Final-Not-Quite-Final Ohio School Report Cards Released (State Impact Ohio)

Ohioans finally get to see their schools’ ratings in the nice, clean PDF format they’re used to, instead of the confusing and incomplete spreadsheets the Department of Education released in the fall.…Read more…

Ohio Department of Education releases finalized school report cards (Toledo Blade)

The Ohio Department of Education released finalized school report cards today, after a months-long delay prompted by a statewide investigation into allegations of data manipulation by school districts.…Read more…

Justices’ questions leave fired science teacher hopeful (Columbus Dispatch)

Attorneys for Mount Vernon schools fidgeted in their seats and dropped their heads yesterday as they listened to Ohio Supreme Court justices discuss the case of fired teacher John Freshwater.…Read more…

Local Education News

Local districts fair well on state report cards (Akron Beacon Journal)

The Ohio Department of Education has found that Akron-area school districts performed higher than state performance averages.…Read more…

Report cards for Ohio schools unchanged from preliminary results, but Cleveland among districts still (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Your school district's rating on final report cards issued Wednesday hasn't changed since the state released preliminary ratings in the fall.…Read more…

Hilliard schools top new state ranking (Columbus Dispatch)

For years, Hilliard students consistently have accomplished more than a year’s worth of learning during the school year. …Read more…

Linden students collect 750 books for hospital (Hamilton Journal-News)

Linden Elementary’s Friday morning book club — The Morning Glories - set out to do something special for the school's participation in the 26 Days of Kindness initiative.…Read more…

Ohio releases final school report cards (New Philadelphia Times-Reporter)

Sixteen school buildings in the Tuscarawas Valley earned the ranking of Excellent With Distinction in the latest Ohio school report card data released Wednesday.…Read more…

No surprises as school report cards are finally released (Newark Advocate)

About six months later than usual, the Ohio Department of Education released final school report card data on Wednesday.…Read more…

Final school report card results released (Springfield News-Sun)

Local school districts maintained their preliminary report card ratings Wednesday when the state released final results for the 2011-12 school year.…Read more…

Youngstown schools stay lowest ranked in Valley (Youngstown Vindicator)

Final school report cards released Wednesday by the Ohio Department of Education look a lot like those issued last October.…Read more…

ScholArts charter school to close today (Columbus Dispatch)

A charter school in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood is giving up its legal fight to stay open and will hold its final day of classes today.…Read more…

Sequester could cut local Head Start (Marion Star)

As Friday’s sequester deadline looms, 47 children in Marion, Morrow, Crawford and Richland counties remain caught in the cross hairs.…Read more…

Clark to hire school deputies (Springfield News-Sun)

Clark County commissioners plan to spend more than $96,000 this year and $118,000 next year to hire deputies to boost school security, but concerns have been raised whether the county can afford the program.…Read more…

Schools Scramble To Submit School Safety Plans To State After 10TV Probe (WBNS)

Three central Ohio schools left to submit their safety plans to the state filed them within the past week after being probed by 10TV’s Jerry Revish.…Read more…

CrimeTracker 10 Analyzes School Safety 1 year After Chardon HS Shooting (WBNS)

Last year’s tragedy at Chardon High School was a painful reminder of how vulnerable places of learning can be.…Read more…

Chardon Healing Fund helps victims' families after school shooting (WEWS)

The people of Chardon have opened their hearts to help victims’ families of the Chardon High School shooting. They've also opened their wallets and the generosity has been felt from coast-to-coast.…Read more…

Chardon school shooting victims' families suing T.J. Lane, his family (Willoughby News Herald)

Families of the three students who died in the Chardon High School shootings filed a wrongful death suit Wednesday against the gunman, his parents and his legal guardians.…Read more…

Via

Highlights

Each teacher, in principle, possesses one true value-added score each year, but we never see that "true" score. Instead, we see a single estimate within a range of plausible scores.
The range of plausible value-added scores -; the confidence interval -; can overlap considerably for many teachers. Consequently, for many teachers we cannot readily distinguish between them with respect to their true value-added scores.
Two conditions would enable us to achieve value-added estimates with high reliability: first, if teachers' value-added measurements were more precise, and second, if teachers’ true value-added scores varied more dramatically than they do.
Two kinds of errors of interpretation are possible when classifying teachers based on value-added: a) “false identifications” of teachers who are actually above a certain percentile but who are mistakenly classified as below it; and b) “false non-identifications” of teachers who are actually below a certain percentile but who are classified as above it. Falsely identifying teachers as being below a threshold poses risk to teachers, but failing to identify teachers who are truly ineffective poses risks to students.
Districts can conduct a procedure to identify how uncertainty about true value-added scores contributes to potential errors of classification. First, specify the group of teachers you wish to identify. Then, specify the fraction of false identifications you are willing to tolerate. Finally, specify the likely correlation between value-added score this year and next year. In most real-world settings, the degree of uncertainty will lead to considerable rates of misclassification of teachers.

Introduction

A teacher's value-added score is intended to convey how much that teacher has contributed to student learning in a particular subject in a particular year. Different school districts define and compute value-added scores in different ways. But all of them share the idea that teachers who are particularly successful will help their students make large learning gains, that these gains can be measured by students' performance on achievement tests, and that the value-added score isolates the teacher's contribution to these gains.

A variety of people may see value-added estimates, and each group may use them for different purposes. Teachers themselves may want to compare their scores with those of others and use them to improve their work. Administrators may use them to make decisions about teaching assignments, professional development, pay, or promotion. Parents, if they see the scores, may use them to request particular teachers for their children. And, finally, researchers may use the estimates for studies on improving instruction.

Using value-added scores in any of these ways can be controversial. Some people doubt the validity of the achievement tests on which the scores are based, some question the emphasis on test scores to begin with, and others challenge the very idea that student learning gains reflect how well teachers do their jobs.

In order to sensibly interpret value-added scores, it is important to do two things: understand the sources of uncertainty and quantify its extent.

Our purpose is not to settle these controversies, but, rather, to answer a more limited, but essential, question: How might educators reasonably interpret value-added scores? Social science has yet to come up with a perfect measure of teacher effectiveness, so anyone who makes decisions on the basis of value-added estimates will be doing so in the midst of uncertainty. Making choices in the face of doubt is hardly unusual – we routinely contend with projected weather forecasts, financial predictions, medical diagnoses, and election polls. But as in these other areas, in order to sensibly interpret value-added scores, it is important to do two things: understand the sources of uncertainty and quantify its extent. Our aim is to identify possible errors of interpretation, to consider how likely these errors are to arise, and to help educators assess how consequential they are for different decisions.

We'll begin by asking how value-added scores are defined and computed. Next, we'll consider two sources of error: statistical bias and statistical imprecision.

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