8/26/08

Cincinnati Enquirer

Ben Fischer

Ohio education officials told a story Monday of ever-increasing student achievement reflected in this year’s local report cards, but two major technical changes made it easier for schools and districts to improve their ratings.

For the first time, local schools could see their rating - “academic watch” or “effective,” for instance - improve because of new “value-added” scoring that measures individual students’ progress over time.

Also beginning this year, Ohio schools and districts can get credit for making “adequate yearly progress,” improvement goals required by the No Child Left Behind Act, even if they didn’t actually reach the targets.

• http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/%3ca%20href=” target=”_new”>Data Center: Test results by school

That’s because Ohio received federal permission to use statistical analysis to predict whether students will pass standardized tests in the next two years. If they are on track to pass the test eventually, they’re given credit for making progress even if they failed.

Terry Ryan, vice president of the Fordham Foundation, a Dayton-based conservative education think tank, said the new measurements will even out over time, and any district that gets an “artificial bump” this year will fall back soon if it doesn’t maintain the progress.

“This year, it’s easier to get a higher score than it was last year, because there’s another metric that enables you to be successful,” he said. “But you’ve at least got to be moving in the right direction.”

The implications of both changes in method are dramatic: 160 districts statewide - or more than a quarter of them - boosted their rating one category by making more than one year’s worth of progress in the value-added scoring in consecutive years.

Seventy-four districts, including Lakota and Wyoming, used the value-added scores to boost their already-excellent ratings, into a newly created “excellent with distinction” category.

Most schools and districts didn’t meet the requirements to boost their ratings. But there’s no corresponding downside for failing to make a year’s worth of progress until next year.

The statistical projections also had huge ramifications.

While the targets to make adequate yearly progress increased, schools and districts were dramatically more likely to reach them this year. For example, more than 80 percent of urban school districts reached the goals this year, but only about half did it without the benefit of predictions.

The federal improvement goals are a crucial bar for schools - a rating in the upper tiers of excellent and effective depend heavily on reaching them, and schools that repeatedly fall short risk severe sanctions, including removing the entire staff. Some otherwise elite districts are hurt when they don’t meet the federal goals.

For those districts and schools that do meet the goals because of projections, such as Cincinnati Public, there’s no downside in the future if the projections prove to be incorrect.