Late last week, the Ohio Department of Education produced letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) for each of nine measures included in its new accountability system. This new system complies with the demands from the legislature and represents a complete retooling of the previous accountability system (which featured ranking labels such as “Excellent” and “Continuous Improvement”). School district scores were revealed to individual school districts 24 hours before being released to the community. This did not leave school districts with a great deal of lead time to absorb and analyze the new results. Olmsted Falls School District has spent the last several days reviewing our new data and will continue to delve deeper into these latest results. As a district, we feel very positive about our overall performance on these new metrics. There are definitely items of celebration, and there are also areas to improve.
OLMSTED FALLS CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT – RESULTS ANALYSIS BY MEASURE
By Dr. Jim Lloyd, Superintendent
On August 28, 2013, the Ohio Department of Education released the district rankings/report cards that are reflective of the new accountability system. Many of the previous ideas from the old system are embedded in the new one; however, it does lack an overall rating at this time. There are nine accountability indicators in the new system that are given grades based on a traditional grading system—90% to 100% is an A; 80% to 89% is a B; 70% to 79% is a C and so on.
The first indicator is Standards Met. There are 24 data points to meet within this indicator that are largely based on our student performances on tests (e.g. 3rd grade reading and math, 4th grade reading and math, etc.). We met all 24 indicators and received a score of “A” in this area. This indicator represents a measurement of how Olmsted Falls students achieve on achievement tests.
The second indicator is the Performance Index. This is an aggregate achievement measure that accounts for how high of a score the students received on the tests they took and awards points based on it in the following manner: Advanced-120; Accelerated-110; Proficient-100; Basic-80; Limited-60. Our score of 106.5 essentially indicates our students are higher than Proficient, but lower than Accelerated. We received a “B” on this indicator, but our percentage was 88.8% so we were close.
The third indicator is Value-Added. While this is based on the achievement tests, it is considered a growth measure. It is also an aggregate measure and looks at how much academic growth the students gained based on where they started in grades 4 through 8 in reading and math. This is the measure that many high performing districts complain about; however, I am not one of those people. Our students pass the tests and they do it at pretty high levels, and we know this based on our Performance Index. The metric used to generate a district’s performance in the value-added area is based on a gain score. If students made what the state considers an acceptable level of growth, the gain would be 0. A gain score above 0 is considered “more than expected growth” and a score below 0 is considered “less than expected growth.” We received an “A” on this indicator, but there is room for improvement and we will be conducting some data mining with one another to identify these opportunities.
Indicators 4, 5 and 6 are also value-added/growth measures that target the gains (or lack thereof) of special groups—gifted students, students with disabilities and those students who have had a history of being in the lower 20% of growth. The overall grade combines the growth scores of each population in reading and math. For gifted students we got a “C”, for the lowest 20% we got a “C” and for students with disabilities we got a “C.” A “C” is considered expected growth and related to the 0 gain example I provided above. Our lowest 20% and students with disabilities gained “more than expected.” We will need to conduct further analysis to determine exactly why. Some of the higher achieving districts complained about their scores for these three groups. For instance, Westlake got 3 “Ds.” The complaint is how can a district earn an overall score of “A” yet get Cs or Ds for the other groups. If you consider the number of students from each of these groups (GT, IEP and lowest 20%), it represents a smaller number of students compared to the entire population of 4th through 8th grades. This is why a district can do well overall on value added and poor in the other areas of it.
Indicator 7 is called Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO) and it serves as the replacement for AYP that was part of No Child Left Behind. It represents an aggregate achievement (math and reading) and graduation score for all of the targeted subgroups (e.g. Econ Disadvantaged, Latino, African American, IEP, etc.). It is a rather complex math problem, and difficult to explain in writing. In summary, our score here was a “B” which essentially says that we are doing fairly well with our subgroups.
Indicators 8 and 9 are based on the 4-year and 5-year graduation rates of students. The 4-year rate applies to the Class of 2012 who graduated within four years and the 5-year applies to the Class of 2011 who graduated within 5 years. Previously, the graduation rate was based on a 5-year calculation. A 4-year represents something that the ODE would say is “more rigorous.” We received an “A” in both categories. 269/281 Class of 2012 students graduated and 291/306 Class of 2011 students graduated.
Overall, I am pleased with our ratings. Again, there are areas to celebrate and areas to improve in. Listed below is a web link to the Cleveland.com site that features a summary of our district’s results and a link to the search page to review other Ohio districts:
http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2013/08/2013_ohio_school_report_cards.html?appSession=57963905910141