Study: Ohio charter schools are worst in nation

The Center for Research on Education Issues (CREDO) has just published its 2013 report, "National Charter School Study". CREDO Researchers looked at test data from charter schools in 26 states plus DC. Ohio was one of the 26 states. This study follow up on their 2009 study which garnered a lot of attention for bringing to light the poor quality of the nations charter schools.

This new study finds, despite charter schools being able to screen for the best students, only marginal improvement over the past 4 years

25 percent of charters outperformed traditional public schools in reading while 29 percent of charters delivered stronger results in math. That marked an improvement over a similar 2009 study by the same research team.

But 56 percent of the charters produced no significant difference in reading and 19 percent had worse results than traditional public schools. In math, 40 percent produced no significant difference and 31 percent were significantly worse than regular public schools.

The marginal improvement comes not from improved quality of charter schools in general, but in the closure of more poor performing charter schools lifting the over all average performance.

In Ohio, the charter school experiment is failing miserably. According to the study, Ohio's charter schools got worse over the last 4 years, and now dwell at the bottom of the performance tables. Ohio students who attend charter schools are losing the equivalent of almost 3 weeks of instruction in reading, and an entire grading period in mathematics. That is astonishingly bad news for the 5% of Ohio's students who attend charter schools.

The following table was taken from table 14 (pg 52 of the study)

State	Reading Days	Math Days
Rhode Island	86	108
DC	72	101
Tennessee	86	72
Louisiana	50	65
New York	36	79
New Jersey	43	58
Massachusetts	36	65
New York City	0	94
Michigan	43	43
Indiana	36	14
Illinois	14	22
Missouri	14	22
California	22	-7
North Carolina	22	-7
Minnesota	14	-7
Georgia	14	-14
Colorado	7	-7
Florida	-7	0
New Mexico	0	-29
Arkansas	-22	-22
Utah	-7	-43
Arizona	-22	-29
Texas	-22	-29
Ohio	-14	-43
Oregon	-22	-50
Pennsylvania	-29	-50
Nevada	-108	-137

You can see from the following graphs of performance in 2009 vs 2013 that Ohio's charters are getting worse, and in math, much worse.

It is time to reassess Ohio's 15 year, billion dollar, charter experiment in light of these results and put an end to boosting charter schools at the expense of public schools. The experiement has not only failed, it is getting worse.

Common Core Implementation

We've outsourced this post on Common Core State Standards to guest contributor Christina Hank. Christina is a Curriculum Coordinator for Medina City Schools. You can read more of her work at turnonyourbrain.wordpress.com, and you should definitely follow her on Twitter at @ChristinaHank

There’s been a lot of confusion around what’s happening to curriculum in Ohio education. Let’s break it down into two pieces: standards and assessments.

STANDARDS

Standards are the platform for everything that is taught in a school district, we go above and beyond I the standards to address all the needs of children, such as social and emotional growth. By themselves, standards do not impact anything in our classrooms; they are documents that sit on shelves. It is in how we implement the standards and integrate their intent into our teaching practices that they have any role in teaching and learning.

So, what are the standards in Ohio?

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)—The CCSS are a set of standards in grades kindergarten through twelve in English language arts and mathematics. Many states have adopted this as a common set of standards.

Are included in…

Ohio’s New Learning Standards—Ohio’s New Learning Standards is the title given to all of Ohio’s standards in all contents (including the CCSS in English language arts and math).

ASSESSMENTS

Standards are not the same as their assessments, even though we are seeing “Common Core” used interchangeably with everything that is happening right now. Though the assessments of our new learning standards are rooted in the standards and attempting to assess the intent of these standards, the assessments are a separate piece of educational reform.

Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—PARCC is one of two national testing consortia develop assessments for the CCSS in English language arts and math. Ohio and 21 other states belong to this consortium, which means Ohio’s students will be taking the same test as students in all of those other states (unlike Ohio’s current assessments with are only taken by students in the state). In each subject (English language arts and math), the test is structured to have two optional tests in the fall (may not be finished by 2014-2015) and two tests in the spring. The first of these spring tests in each subject will be around March and will be a performance-based assessment. The second of these will be in May and will be an End of Year test.

Are included in…

Next Generation Assessments—This all-encompassing term includes both Ohio-developed tests in social studies and science as well as the PARCC tests in English language arts and math.

TIMELINE

As it is almost the start of the 2013-2014 school year (where is the summer going?!), we’re entering the final year of Ohio Achievement/Graduation Assessments and getting ready for our first year of Next Generation Assessments in 2014-2015.

	Assessments
English	2014-2015: MS: PARCC Tests for grades 3-8 (National) HS: PARCC End of Course exams (National)
Mathematics	2014-2015: MS: PARCC Tests for grades 3-8 (National) HS: PARCC EOC in Alg 1, Geo, Alg 2 OR Math 1, Math 2, Math 3 depending on student track (National)
Social Studies	2013-2014: MS: Continue with OAA in MS. HS ONLY: our self-created EOC Assessment in U.S. History and Government 2014-2015: MS: Grade 4 and 6, grade-level tests (not cumulative). New SS tests will be "Next Generation Assessments" reflective of PARCC tests HS: State created EOC in U.S. History and Government
Science	2014-2015: MS: Grade 5 and 8, grade-level tests (not cumulative). New science tests will be "Next Generation Assessments" reflective of PARCC tests HS: State created EOC in Biology and Physical Science

Battelle Blasts Papers decision

From our mailbag, Battelle for Kids condemns the Plain Dealer and NPR's decision to publish teacher's value-added scores, calling it "the poster child for name, blame, and shame and the antithesis of our approach to using value-added data"

To: All SOAR districts
From: Jim Mahoney and Bobby Moore
Date: June 17, 2013

Yesterday, a three-part series on value-added was launched by The Cleveland Plain Dealer and State Impact Ohio. It includes both articles and radio segments specific to value-added analysis as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Highlighted in the articles is a link to a database of teacher ratings, hosted by The Plain Dealer and the State Impact Ohio partnership.

Currently, Ohio laws governing the release of teacher records would apply to teacher value-added results. Thus, teacher level value-added information is subject to public records requests through ODE. Through The Plain Dealer and State Impact Ohio database, the general public can now access a teacher's overall composite rating derived from two years of his/her results in grades 4-8 math and reading. These data reflect information for less than 1/3 of the math and reading, grades 4-8 teachers in Ohio.

Battelle for Kids was not aware these ratings would be published in this way, at this time.

While Battelle for Kids does support the use of value-added information for school improvement and as one of several components of a multi-measures evaluation system, value-added should NOT be used in isolation to draw conclusions about a teacher's effectiveness.

Multiple data points over time from multiple perspectives are crucial because teaching and learning and the evaluation of teaching and learning are complex.

Therefore, we are NOT supportive of these ratings being publically available and discourage promoting the use of this public database.

Talking points and articles, to support your local conversations, are available on the Ohio Student Progress Portal.

http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BattelleForKids/f43a0e1b46/fb8aa9ca4e/313346eb88/sflang=en

Obviously, this is the poster child for name, blame, and shame and the antithesis of our approach to using value-added data.

Please call if you have any questions.

Thank you for all you do for Ohio's students!

-Jim and Bobby

Teachers and Policy Makers: Troubling Disconnect

Can the school reform movement accept constructive criticism? Gary Rubinstein hopes so. Mr. Rubinstein joined Teach for America in 1991, the program’s second year, and has now been teaching math for 15 years, five of them in some of the nation’s neediest public schools and 10 more at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He has a bachelor’s degree in math and a master’s in computer science, has written two books on classroom practice and at one point helped train new corps members for Teach for America. For years, he was a proponent of the program, albeit one with the occasional quibble.

Then, in 2010, Mr. Rubinstein underwent a sea change. As he grew suspicious of some of the data used to promote charter schools, be became critical of Teach for America and the broader reform movement. (The education scholar Diane Ravitch famously made a similar shift around this time.)

Mr. Rubinstein, who knows how to crunch numbers, noticed that, at many charter schools student test scores and graduation rates didn’t always add up to what the schools claimed. He was also alarmed by what he viewed as misguided reforms like an overreliance on crude standardized tests that measure students’ yearly academic “growth” and teacher performance. Mr. Rubinstein, who favors improving schools and evaluating teachers, says using standardized test scores might seem “like a good idea in theory.” But he also thinks the teacher ratings based on the scores are too imprecise and subject to random variation to be a reliable basis for high-stakes hiring and firing decisions.

[readon2 url="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/teachers-and-policy-makers-troubling-disconnect/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Correlation? What correlation?

Dublin teacher, Kevin Griffin, brings to our attention this graph, which he describes thusly

The chart plots the Value-Added scores of teachers who teach the same subject to two different grade levels in the same school year. (ex. Ms. Smith teaches 7th Math and 8th Math, and Mr. Richards 4th Grade Reading and 5th Grade Reading.) The X-axis represents the teachers VA score for one grade level and the Y-axis represents the VA score from the other grade level taught.

If the theory behind evaluating teachers based on value-added is valid then a “great” 7th grade math teacher should also be a “great” 8th grade math teacher (upper right corner) and a “bad” 7th grade math teacher should also be a “bad” 8th grade math teacher (lower left corner). There should, in theory, be a straight line (or at least close) showing a direct correlation between 7th grade VA scores and 8th grade VA scores since those students, despite being a grade apart, have the same teacher.

Here's the graph

Looks morel ike a random number generator to us. Would you like your career to hinge on a random number generator?

Education News for 01-29-2013

State Education News

• Ohio business leaders urge education reform (Canton Repository)

A group of major Ohio business leaders is urging Gov. John Kasich to push hard on educational changes…Read more...

• Bucknell inflated its SAT scores (Columbus Dispatch)

Bucknell University has disclosed that for several years it reported inflated SAT scores for incoming freshmen, making the private liberal-arts school in Pennsylvania…Read more...

• Ohio Governor John Kasich sets online 'town hall' on education (WEWS)

Ohio's governor is planning an online "town hall" session…Read more...

Local Education News

• County Commissioners OK part-time deputies for schools (Chillicothe Gazette)

Within two weeks, a pair of Ross County sheriff’s deputies will begin making their rounds of the county’s schools…Read more...

• Defeating the math monster (Cincinnati Enquirer)

The move to high school isn’t just for ninth-graders anymore. Next year, in an effort to bolster academics – especially math – Cincinnati Public Schools will expand all of its high schools to house grades 7-12 instead of the 9-12 model…Read more...

• Girl’s suicide spurs second-guessing (Columbus Dispatch)

Hailey Petee hated her glasses, the ones with lenses so thick that they distorted the look of her pretty blue-gray eyes…Read more...

• Centerville to make $2.6M in cuts (Dayton Daily News)

Centerville City Schools, which saw its November levy fail by less than a percentage point, approved on Monday night $2.6 million in cuts from its budget next school year…Read more...

• Delaware County Schools Considering Changes To Safety Policies (WBNS)

The Delaware City Schools Board of Education plans to join with city council Monday night to host an annual meeting. One of the topics will be school safety…Read more...

• Jurors in T.J. Lane Chardon shooting case to be sequestered (Willoughby News Herald)

Jurors selected in the Thomas Lane III aggravated murder trial will be sequestered during deliberations, Geauga County Common Pleas Judge David L. Fuhry ruled in an opinion made public Monday…Read more...

• Group calls board member’s comments racist (Youngstown Vindicator)

A community group is taking offense at what it calls “racist” comments made by a veteran city school board member and threatens sanctions if the school board doesn’t take corrective action…Read more...

Editorial

• Put the money on early education (Akron Beacon Journal)

I was watching a gymnastics competition on television, admiring the strength of those tight and incredibly lithe bodies when something caught my ear from the chatter of the commentators…Read more...

• Unfunded guarantee (Akron Beacon Journal)

On Thursday, John Kasich plans to unveil his proposal for revamping the way the state pays for public schools. He will be the fourth governor to take a stab at the problem since the Ohio Supreme Court found the funding formula…Read more...

• Ohio school board member's Facebook fiasco warrants an apology (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Gov. John Kasich ought not to fire Debe Terhar, president of the State Board of Education, despite her offensive Facebook posting quoting…Read more...

• A lesson on life (Toledo Blade)

Usually, teachers teach and students learn in a classroom. But kids can also teach adults a thing or two. Take Perrysburg Junior High School seventh-grader Michael Skotynsky…Read more...

• Liberty plan has already been charted (Warren Tribune Chronicle)

A local state audit that showed a $12,720 overpayment to former Liberty schools treasurer Tracey Obermiyer is peanuts…Read more...