State Education News

CPS responds on 'data scrubbing' (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Cincinnati Public Schools Superintendent Mary Ronan on Wednesday downplayed the possibility that the district could lose up to $40 million in state funding…Read more...

Kasich education advisers defend school-funding formula (Columbus Dispatch)

Gov. John Kasich’s top education advisers told legislators yesterday that they did not attempt to calculate the adequate cost of educating a child…Read more...

Budget proposal would fund creative education ideas (Columbus Dispatch)

Richard Ross didn’t mince words yesterday about the proposed $300 million “Straight-A” fund for schools, calling it the “single most-important element for change” in Gov. John Kasich’s school-funding formula…Read more...

Local Education News

Reynoldsburg, schools to share services of manager (Columbus Dispatch)

Reynoldsburg and the city school district will share the services of a human-resources manager…Read more...

District to buy 30 new buses for $2.6 million (Hamilton Journal-News)

Fairfield City Schools will spend more than $2 million during the next 10 years to purchase 30 new buses to replenish its aging fleet…Read more...

East Holmes makes changes in staff, drops German (New Philadelphia Times)

The East Holmes Board of Education has voted to realign academic and administrative staff for the 2013-2014 school year to deal with record enrollment at Hiland High and new graduation…Read more...

New internal assessments elicit cautious optimism for Toledo Public Schools (Toledo Blade)

As Toledo Public Schools found itself mired in public turmoil in recent months, with a search for a new superintendent, a state investigation that criticized attendance reporting practices, and the defeat of another levy…Read more...

Elyria City School District to cut 59.5 positions (WEWS)

By a unanimous vote the Elyria City School Board approved $3 million in cuts…Read more...

Superintendent oversees three districts (WKYC)

There is a push in Ohio for schools to share more resources and even people…Read more...

Costly lawsuits over school busing problems (WOIO)

For eight years now 19 Action News have brought you stories of busing woes in the Nordonia Hills schools…Read more...

Imagine you’re a parent of a seven-year-old who has just come home from school with her end-of-year report card. And the report card provides marks for only two subjects, and for children who are in grade-levels different from hers. Furthermore, there's nothing on the report card to indicate how well these children have been progressing throughout the year. There are no teacher comments, like "great participation in class" or "needs to turn in homework on time." And to top it off, the report gives a far harsher assessment of academic performance than reports you've gotten from other sources.

That's just the sort of "report card" that was handed to America yesterday in the form of the National Assessment of Education Progress. And while the NAEP is all well and good for what it is -- a biennial norm-referenced, diagnostic assessment of fourth and eighth graders in math and reading -- the results of the NAEP invariably get distorted into all kinds of completely unfounded "conclusions" about the state of America's public education system.

'Nation's Report Card" Is Not A Report Card

First off, let's be clear on what the NAEP results that we got yesterday actually entail. As Diane Ravitch explains, there are two different versions of NAEP: 1) the Main NAEP, which we got yesterday, given every other year in grades 4 and 8 to measure national and state achievement in reading and math based on guidelines that change from time to time; and 2) the Long-Term Trend NAEP given less frequently at ages 9, 13, and 17 to test reading and math on guidelines that have been tested since the early 1970s. (There are also occasional NAEPs given in other subjects.) So in other words, be very wary of anyone claiming to identify "long term trends" based on the Main NAEP. This week's release was not the "long term" assessment.

Second, let's keep in mind the NAEP's limits in measuring "achievement." NAEP reports results in terms of the percent of students attaining Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic levels. What's usually reported out by the media is the "proficient and above" figure. After all, don't we want all children to be "proficient?" But what does that really mean? Proficiency as defined by NAEP is actually quite high, in fact, much higher than what most states require and higher than what other nations such as Sweden and Singapore follow.

Third, despite its namesake, NAEP doesn't really show "progress." Because NAEP is a norm-referenced test, its purpose is for comparison -- to see how many children fall above or below a "cut score." Repeated applications of NAEP provide periodic points of comparison of the percentages of students falling above and below the cut score, but does tracking that variance really show "progress?" Statisticians and researchers worth their salt would say no.

Finally, let's remember that NAEP proficiency levels have defined the targets that all states are to aim for according toto the No Child Left Behind legislation. This policy that has now been mostly scrapped, or at least significantly changed, due to the proficiency goals that have been called "unrealistic."

Does this mean that NAEP is useless. Of course not. As a diagnostic tool it certainly has its place. But as the National Center on Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) has concluded, "NAEP is better than many state tests but is still far from the 'gold standard' its proponents claim for it."

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