- The Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission and its various committees have quietly continued their work through the election season and into the new year. The committee working on K-12 education met this week and heard yet more testimony on that old bugbear phrase “thorough and efficient”. On the upside, most everyone involved believes that they’ve heard more than enough testimony on the issue. On the downside, the committee chair is not sure a consensus has emerged among the members: elimination, replacement, redefinition, additional language. All are still on the table, but hopefully we’re a step closer to a vote. (Gongwer Ohio)
- As you may have heard, state superintendent Richard Ross released ODE’s report on the state of standardized testing in Ohio yesterday. In it we learn that the anecdotal stories of “test mania” that made headlines during legislative testimony last year are largely unsubstantiated by facts. However, there is a lot of good information in the report, as well as actionable recommendations from Ross about ways to cut testing and test-prep time…if that’s what the right folks decide to do. What will come of this report is yet to be seen – administrative rules, legislation, guidance to schools, more study. All are possible. It probably depends on who actually takes up the recommendations and decides to run – thoughtfully – with them. And to whom they run. Hopefully it won’t come down to whomever shouts the loudest. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- Mansfield City Schools was placed under fiscal emergency a little over a year ago. In that time, the state auditor and his staff have been digging through the district’s books and their report – with recommendations – was released this week. The full story is worth a read – it’s good and thorough journalism with some interesting tidbits about how comparisons between districts are made – but the bottom line is that the auditor identified $4.7 million in potential annual savings. Mostly by eliminating personnel, both teaching and non-teaching. (Mansfield News Journal)
RESEARCH BITES 1/16/15: Ohio Quality Counts – Overall Grade
This week, we looked at data (here and here) from Education Week’s Quality Counts report. In this post, I reconsider the overall letter grade that EdWeek awards states, which it derives by equally weighting its three main components of “quality” (chances for success, K-12 achievement, and school finance). But the components contain some measures that are more valid indicators of educational quality than others. So I revise the weighting scheme in this way: (1) eliminate the chances for success component—largely demographic statistics, which should not be understood as indicators of the present performance of a K-12 system; (2) reduce the weight of the school finance component to 10 percent, and grant credit only for state’s funding “equity,” not raw spending; (3) increase the weight of the K-12 achievement component to 90 percent, equally weighted across the component’s three sub-components (status, change, equity). As you can tell, this computation strongly emphasizes achievement outcomes. The chart below shows how the results shake out for several states under my computation (to do this, I used the nifty online tool), in comparison to EdWeek’s results. As you can see, some states (CA, TX, FL, IN) gain a few points when achievement comes into focus (Florida considerably so), while other states lose a few points (OH, PA, MI, IL, MA). Ohio’s overall grade doesn’t change very much under the two scenarios (75.8 versus 74.3). The point of this exercise is to show that weighting schemes can and do change how we view state’s educational quality. Meanwhile, in the years ahead, EdWeek would do better to place more emphasis on achievement outcomes.
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Source: Education Week Quality Counts Note: The chart displays EdWeek’s overall rating and the rating derived from the weighting system described above (“Research Bites”). The grading scale is 0 to 100.
