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SB21 Decoded

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A number of readers have asked us to decode the Ohio House's version of SB21, which is likely to be passed into law.

In the area of teacher qualifications, after July 1, 2013, third grade students who have been retained or are on a reading improvement plan shall be assigned to a teacher who has at least one year of teaching experience and satisfies one of the following criteria:

a) K-12 reading endorsement on their teaching license
b) Master’s degree in reading or literacy
c) Rated “most effective” for reading instruction for the most recent two years based on student growth measures
d) Rated “above expected value added” in reading instruction as determined by criteria established by ODE for the most recent consecutive school years
e) Passed a rigorous test of principles of scientifically research-based reading instruction approved by the State Board of Education
f) Holds a teaching license for P-3 or 4-9 issued on or after July 1, 2017

The House version limited or did away with qualifications in the Senate version that allowed for evidence of completion of a program of scientifically research-based reading instruction programs approved by the department (limited to until July 1, 2016) or the teacher is an effective reading instructor as determined by criteria established by the department (eliminated).

The House version of the bill also expands who may offer services in the following ways:

  • A teacher with less than one year of experience provided they meet one of the qualifications and is assigned a teacher mentor who meets one of the qualifications
  • Through July 1, 2016, a teacher who has successfully completed training on reading instruction approved by the department
  • A teacher other than the classroom teacher to whom the student is assigned provided the teacher meets the qualifications, the teacher and the principal agree and the assignment is documented in the student’s reading improvement plan
  • A speech language pathologist may provide reading intervention and remediation services

Additionally, the House version of the bill allows school districts who cannot furnish the number of teachers to satisfy the qualifications to submit a staffing plan to the Ohio Department of Education. ODE may grant extensions of district staffing plans through the 2015-2016 school year.

Other provisions of the House passed version of SB 21 include:

  • Specifies that retention under the Third Grade Reading Guarantee is triggered by failure to attain at least the “equivalent level of achievement” as determined by ODE
  • Exempts English language learners enrolled in U.S. schools for less than three years
  • Exempts students with significant cognitive disabilities from diagnostic tests on a case-by-case basis as determined by ODE
  • Requires the State Board of Education to adopt competencies for reading credentials and training by January 31, 2014. Requires all new applicants seeking an educator license for grades P-3 or 4-9 to pass an examination aligned with these competencies. Requires reading endorsement programs to align to these new competencies not later than July 1, 2016
  • Requires school districts and community schools that receive a D or F on the K-3 literacy progress measure on the new school district report cards and less than 60% of students score at least proficient on the third grade English language arts assessment submit a reading achievement improvement plan.

Thanks to OEA's Government Services for their expertise in helping to decipher SB21.

3rd grade reading guarantee changes again

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The Ohio House finally moved SB21 out of committee. SB21 is the bill that tries to fix many of the problems raised by the initial third grade reading guarantee legislation. The Committee made a number of changes, but according to the bill's Sponsor, Sen. Peggy Lehner, she expects the Senate will agree with those changes.

According to a Gongwer report, the amendments made by the House include:

The omnibus amendment would add a requirement that all teachers providing reading guarantee services have at least one year of teaching experience unless they meet at least one of the bill's criteria to provide services and is mentored by a teacher with at least one year of experience, according to a Legislative Service Commission comparison document.

It also specifies teachers who qualify to provide services by virtue of a reading endorsement on their license must also have passed the State Board of Education-required assessment for the endorsement only "as applicable."

The latest version eliminates from the list of acceptable reading guarantee qualifications teachers determined by ODE as an "effective reading instructor" and teachers who completed a program from a list of scientifically researched-based reading instruction options.

The amended bill instead adds to the list of acceptable qualifications to include teachers:

  • Rated "most effective" for reading instruction for the last two years based on assessments of student growth measures developed by a vendor approved by the state board.
  • Rated "above expected value-added" for reading for the two most recent years per criteria established by ODE.
  • Holding an educator license for teaching grades PreK-3 or 4-9 issued on or after July 1, 2017. The omnibus amendment requires all new applicants for educator licenses for those grades pass an exam aligned with reading competencies established by the state board.

The state board is required to adopt those competencies Jan. 31, 2014 under the bill, and must cover all reading credentials and training that include an understanding of phonemic awareness, phonics, appropriate use of assessment, appropriate instruction materials, among others.

Starting July 2014, alternative credential and training that qualify a teacher to instruct students identified by the reading guarantee would be aligned with the reading competencies, according to LSC.

Those teachers who do not meet the listed qualifications nor have one year teaching experience would be permitted to provide reading guarantee services if he or she holds an alternative credential or has successfully completed training using research-based reading instruction approved by ODE.

The omnibus amendment also puts in place ramifications for schools that fail to perform on reading aspects of the state report card. Schools would be required to submit improvement plans to ODE if they receive a D or F on the K-3 literacy progress measure and less than 60% of their students who took the third-grade English language arts assessment attained at least a proficient score, according to LSC. Submission of improvement plans would start in 2016.

A school could cease submitting an improvement plan if it receives a grade of C or better on the K-3 literacy measure or at least 60% of students taking the third-grade ELA exam scored proficient or better.

Other changes made in the omnibus amendment include:

  • An exemption from the reading guarantee for those limited English proficient students who have been enrolled in U.S. schools for fewer than three years and who have had less than three years instruction in an English as a second language program. Current law exempts those with fewer than two years.
  • Allowing schools unable to meet personnel requirements to request a staffing plan beyond the 2013-14 school year. Those submitting plans must also report on progress the school has made in meeting requirements of the law.
  • Requiring ODE to study diagnostic assessments for reading and writing in grades K-3 that might be considered for approval by the state board.

The LSC analysis if the changes can be seen in the following document, with the House changes contained in the right hand column.

SB21 As Reported by the House Education Committee

ODE publishes propaganda

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prop·a·gan·da
/ˌpräpəˈgandə/
Noun
1. Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
2. The dissemination of such information as a political strategy.

That aptly describes the latest document published by the Ohio Department of Education, titled "Myths vs. Facts about the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System". The document lists 10 alleged myths about the teacher evaluation system being created. We thought we'd take a closer look at some of these alleged "myths".

1. Myth: The state is telling us what to do in local evaluations.

ODE, under a bulleted list discussing local board flexibility in creating evaluations, state "The percentages within the given range for student growth measures for the teachers in that district;" This is no longer true for teacher who have Value-add scores. These teachers (over 30% of Ohio's teaching corps) will have 50% of their evaluation based on student test scores. On this, local boards have zero flexibility, it's a state mandate. We judge aspects of this myth to actually be true

2. Myth: This is just a way to fire teachers.

ODE goes to great length to discuss how these evaluations will be great for teachers in identifying areas of improvement (though no money has been allocated for professional development). Utterly lacking is any discussion of the provision within HB153 prohibits giving preference based on seniority in determining the order of layoffs or in rehiring teachers when positions become available again, except when choosing between teachers with comparable evaluations. It is no secret that corporate education reformers such as Michelle Rhee desperately want to use evaluations for the basis of firing what they purportedly measure to be "ineffective" teachers. After all, this is exactly the process used in Washington DC where she came from. It's far too soon to call this a myth, it's more like a corporate educators goal.

3. Myth: One test in the spring will determine my fate.

It's nice that ODE stresses the importance of using multiple measures, but once again they fail to acknowledge that HB555 removed those multiple measures for 30% of Ohio's teachers. For those teachers their fate will be determined by tests. This myth is therefore true.

5. Myth: The state has not done enough work on this system – there are too many unanswered questions.

How can it be a myth when even this documents fails to state that "we're ready". SLO's have yet to be developed, Common Core is almost upon us but no one knows what the tests will be, the legislature keeps changing the rules of the game and no where near enough evaluator training has taken place to evaluate all of Ohio's teachers. Ohio isn't ready for this and that's a fact, not a myth.

6. Myth: “Value-Added” is a mysterious formula and is too volatile to be trusted.

This is perhaps one of the most egregious points of all. Study after study after study has demonstrated that Value add is volatile, unreliable and inappropriate for measuring teacher effectiveness. Their explanation conflates the use of value-add as a diagnostic tool and its use in evaluating teachers. Those are 2 very different use cases indeed.

As for it being mysterious, the formula used in Ohio is secret and proprietary - it doesn't get more mysterious than that! This claim by ODE is simply untrue and ridiculous, they ought to be embarrassed for publishing it. This myth is totally true and real and backed up by all the available scientific evidence.

7. Myth: The current process for evaluating teachers is fine just as it is.

Their explanation: "Last year, 99.7 percent of teachers around the country earned a “satisfactory” evaluation, yet many students didn’t make a year’s worth of progress in reading and are not reading at grade level." Right out of the corporate education reformers message book. Blame the teacher. Still think this isn't going to end up being about firing teachers? This myth is a straw-man, no one argues the current system is ideal, but the proposed OTES is dangerously constructed.

8. Myth: Most principals (or other evaluators) don’t have time to do this type of evaluation, so many will just report that teachers are proficient.

ODE states "Fact: Most principals are true professionals who want the teachers in their buildings to do well." But wait a minute, in Myth #7 these very same principals were handing out "satisfactory" grades like candy to 99.7% of teachers. Which is it? Are they professionals who can fairly evaluate teachers, or aren't they? We wrote about the massive administrative task faced by school administrators almost 2 years ago. Nothing has happened to alleviate those burdens, other than a $2 billion budget cut. This myth is 100% true.

9. Myth: This new evaluation system is like building the plane while we’re flying it.

ODE states: "Fact: Just as the Wright brothers built a plane, tried it by flying it, landed it, and then refined the plane they built, the new evaluation system was built, tried and revised. "

We'll just point out that 110 years have passed since the Wright Brothers first flew and the world has developed better design and project management tools since then.

10. Myth: It will be easy to implement the new teacher evaluation system.

Has anyone, anywhere said this? Or did the ODE brainstorming session run out of bad ideas at 9, and this is all they could come up with? Talk about ending with a straw-man, which frankly, given the rest of the document is probably the most appropriate ending.

ODE ought to withdraw this piece of propaganda from public view.

UPDATED: Auditors Interim Attendance Report Released

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The Auditor of State has released his interim report on the school attendance erasures issue.

The first observation from reading this 57 page document, is that very few schools have been completely investigated, and of those that have, little if any wrong doing has been found.

Instead what has been discovered are significant levels of bureaucratic oversights, in many cases excused by the complexity of the system designed by multiple layers of state and federal law.

The practices of Toledo are a good example

After news reports that Columbus CSD altered student attendance data, Toledo CSD publicly announced they too scrubbed attendance data. Toledo CSD officials indicated they understood these practices (i.e., removing students with a high number of absences) to be allowable. AOS met with representatives of Toledo at which time Toledo CSD explained its practice of removing students with five consecutive days of unexcused absences and a total of 20 unexcused absences throughout the school year. Toledo CSD has been using the “5/20” rule for withdrawing students since 2001. However, until 2005, Toledo CSD actively removed these students throughout the school year. In 2005, Toledo CSD lost several high‐level administrators to Cleveland MSD. Toledo CSD subsequently hired new administrators and in 2006 the local report card ratings fell since the “5/20” rule for withdrawing students was no longer in place. After realizing lower report card rankings, Toledo CSD administrators decided to reinstitute the “5/20” rule for withdrawing students in the following school year. However, instead of withdrawing students throughout the school year, Toledo CSD waited until after they received the first report from the Secure Data Center from ODE during the reporting period projecting the district’s report card rankings. Toledo CSD informed AOS that they removed all students that met the 5/20 criteria, regardless of assessment test score results for the affected students. However, AOS is still investigating these claims and will report its results later.

Cleveland's prevalent practices of removing truants also appears to fall into this category of bureaucratic non compliance, rather than "cheating"

Based on the information gathered to date, it appears evident that none or virtually none of the student files previously requested will include necessary supporting documentation related to the attendance event causing the student to be pushed to the State during the 2010‐2011 school year. Additionally, it appears Cleveland MSD potentially removed truant students under code 71 without full completion and documentation of truancy due process.

Again, the auditor has yet to fully complete an investigation of this district, noting "AOS is currently obtaining electronic data in an attempt to determine the impact of Cleveland MSD processes and procedures on accountability reporting and we will report results in a later report."

In Marion, another district the Auditor looked at, again no wrong doing was found

During the course of testing, AOS noted numerous instances of students being automatically transferred to the Marion Digital Academy during the 2010‐11 school year. As such, these students were included on the list of those students being pushed to the State and excluded from District report card results.
[...]
AOS identified 46 students transferring to Marion City Digital Academy during the 2010‐2011 school year with no parent or guardian initiation or approval included in Marion CSD’s student files.

Just more bureaucratic mis-steps. And more in Campbell City Schools

AOS tested Memorial High and Campbell Middle Schools at Campbell CSD (Mahoning County), identifying 11 (High School) and 29 (Middle School) students, respectively, that did not have supporting documentation available in the student files to support breaks in enrollment related to the following withdrawal reasons: Verified Medical, Truancy, Expulsion, and Homeschool.

And once again the Auditor notes, "AOS is continuing to investigate these retroactive withdrawals and will report further results later."

Forgive us for being unimpressed both with the how these interim findings are not matching up with a lot of the breathless allegations of "cheating" claimed by some in the media, and also by the sloth like progress being made by the Auditor of state.

It appears that the vast number of attendance erasures might in fact be legitimate, but simply not supported by documentation, as districts had poor policies and procedures in place to record and store the documentation. Furthermore, ODE, despite it's claims to the contrary have not been clear on what is required

The results of our statewide assessment indicate that there are a number of areas requiring centralized, improved ODE guidance and immediate clarification. ODE should use this report as a management tool to identify critical Accountability systems and weaknesses requiring enhancement to aid Ohio schools in Accountability determinations and reporting.

The Auditors list of recommendations is replete with calls for legislative changes, indicating that the current system is inadequate, and not the fault of districts

To strengthen and foster consistency in the reporting of approved homeschooling, ODE should consider requesting the General Assembly to amend the authorities and powers of ESC’s to approve homeschooling for all Ohio school districts, including city and exempt village districts.
[...]
The General Assembly should provide authority for ODE to collect personally identifiable information, such as student names, to enable ODE to work cooperatively with the Ohio Juvenile Court system and DYS tracking and reporting truant students.
[...]
The General Assembly should establish a single statewide student information system so that all data is uniform, uniformly reported, and accessible for data mining. Alternatively if such is not feasible the General Assembly should require ODE to approve the Student Information System used by each district in the state to ensure it meets requirements.
[...]
EMIS monitoring functions should be performed by an independent agency or commission appointed by the General Assembly.

Not mentioned anywhere in this report - how any of this has adversely affected student education. Neither does the Auditor indicate what the cost might be both to districts and to the state if full compliance and his recommendations were implemented.

UPDATED

Acting State Superintendent Sawyer just released the following statement

Good morning:

As anticipated from our communication yesterday, here is a link to the Auditor of State’s Interim Report on Student Attendance Data and the Accountability System released this morning. The report also is available here on our Quick Links page. We are pleased that the report shows that most districts visited to date by the auditor’s staff are compliant with legal and reporting requirements. However, as the report indicates, the investigation is ongoing and the Auditor’s Office will continue to review attendance data for all schools. Regardless of your participation to date in the ongoing investigation, I encourage you to read the interim report to reinforce the attendance policies, administrative guidelines and reporting requirements required by your school or district.

Next Monday during their regularly scheduled meeting, the State Board of Education will hear a report from the Auditor of State’s Office, which will result in discussion related to the impact of the interim report findings and the Local Report Cards. I will update you next week on the status of the Local Report Cards and access to the Secure Data Center.

Thank you,

Michael L. Sawyers
Acting Superintendent of Public Instruction

Final Interim ADM Report 10052012

Erasure scandal now a farce

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The controversy over school attendance erasures started out life with questionable reporting, layered with supposition and innuendo and is now descending into farce.

Unable to perform their own investigation after years of oversight failure, ODE passed the investigation over to the State Auditor. Now the State Auditor is having to fire his own investigative staff.

State Auditor Dave Yost warned Columbus schools leaders a month ago that contacting the district’s internal auditor as she investigates claims of data rigging could have serious consequences.

Yesterday, a member of Yost’s own staff resigned after he failed to take his boss’s advice. John Davis, who also volunteers as a member of the school district’s audit committee, urged the school district’s internal auditor, Carolyn Smith, to speak with an attorney for the school board who has been meeting with district officials to ask about data rigging.

This comes just days after William Zelei, Associate Superintendent of Accountability and Quality Schools at ODE, submitted his letter of resignation.

It seems more heads are rolling among the investigators than the investigated. The one person from a district that has been fired, the Superintendent of Lockland, is now filing a law suit

Former Lockland Schools Superintendent Donna Hubbard and her son, Adam Stewart, Wednesday sued to keep their jobs, alleging the school board last week violated Ohio’s Open Meetings laws.

The lawsuits are the latest salvo in a battle between Hubbard and Lockland, one of the smallest school districts in Ohio with about 700 students.

The school board Aug. 23 voted 3-to-1 to begin the termination process for Hubbard after a state investigation found she and Stewart, the district’s database coordinator, falsely listed 37 habitually truant students as withdrawn from the district.

This entire scandal has nothing to do with educating students, it has everything to do with corporate education reform policies that require increasing large amounts of data with which to slice and dice. Not one bit of any of this will have any impact on what is going on in thousands of classrooms across Ohio right now - but it sure makes good theater.