OEA calls for end of mandatory retention under Third Grade Reading Guarantee

[October 10, 2022] The Ohio Education Association (OEA) joined together Monday with state leaders, educators, and education policy experts to advocate for action in the General Assembly to end mandatory retention tied to third-grade standardized testing.

A full recording of Monday’s virtual event can be viewed and downloaded here.

“Mandatory retention under the so-called ‘Third Grade Reading Guarantee’ takes decisions about students’ futures out of the hands of parents, administrators, and teachers who know them best, allowing politicians in Columbus to determine their fates based on arbitrary cut-scores on high-stakes English language arts tests,” said OEA President Scott DiMauro, who moderated Monday’s event. “OEA commends the State Board of Education for its attention to this issue as it considers a resolution to call on the General Assembly to change this misguided law.”

“Grade retention distorts test data, disproportionately impacts and punishes vulnerable populations of students, and creates a distraction from reading reform’s ultimate goal of increased student reading proficiency,” noted Furman University Professor Dr. Paul Thomas in his recent white paper, “A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy.”

“It’s rare that policymakers stop and measure mandated education initiatives for their effectiveness, but that’s exactly what we have done for third grade retention. Through data provided by the Ohio Department of Education, we now know retention has failed as an initiative and has, in fact, hurt children more than helped,” said Dr. Christina Collins, Ohio State Board of Education member for District 7, who put forth the resolution that the State Board of Education is considering this week.

“In my experiences as a third-grade teacher, I have observed students put tremendous stress on themselves, become discouraged, think of themselves as losers, and develop behavioral problems because of this punitive, socially inappropriate, and educationally ineffective practice,” agreed Karen Carney, a teacher at Campbell Elementary & Middle School in Campbell, Ohio. “What a huge burden for a young child to carry—this truly broke my heart. As an educator, my primary job is to teach my students to be life-long learners, not test takers.”

“Ending mandatory retention has broad bipartisan support because it’s the right thing to do for kids,” said State Rep. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville), who sponsored House Bill 497, a measure to end mandatory retention under the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. “These decisions should be made by parents and educators, not dictated by a score on a test.”

House Bill 497 passed in the Ohio House in June. The Ohio Senate must take up the bill and pass it when lawmakers return to session later this fall.

[September 29, 2022] As Ohio continues to contend with an alarming decrease in staffing in its K-12 public schools, educators from around Ohio have come together to take on the problem and offer potential solutions. The Ohio Education Association (OEA) convened the cadre of diverse educators, as part of the National Education Association’s Educator Voice Academy (EVA) program, beginning in January, 2022. The EVA team’s full report, which includes numerous suggestions for Ohio’s elected leaders and OEA, is available here.

“Ohio’s growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis is one of the largest issues of our time,” OEA President Scott DiMauro pointed out. “When excellent educators are feeling that they have no choice but to leave the profession or young people are left feeling that teaching is not a sustainable career option – for a variety of reasons noted in the EVA’s report – Ohio students lose out on crucial opportunities and supports. Ohio’s students can no longer wait for meaningful solutions to this problem.”

Recommendations in the EVA report include:

• Immediately increase Ohio state minimum teacher’s salary to $40,000, and pending approval of a change in OEA Legislative Policy by the OEA Representative Assembly, increase the state minimum salary to $50,000.
• Fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan in the 2023-2025 state biennial budget and provide state support to local school districts with the resources to help fund necessary salary increases.
• Extend Public Service Loan Forgiveness deadlines and expand student loan forgiveness, grants, and scholarship programs to provide meaningful financial relief for those who commit to serving students in our public schools.
• Strengthen educators’ retirement security by supporting a fully funded State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio and repealing the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP).
• Remove financial barriers for completion of pre-service requirements for teacher licensure.
• Require the state to complete a comprehensive assessment of the alignment of Ohio’s teacher preparation programs with the realities of PK-12 schools.
• Seek feedback from educators on their working conditions and create systems for school leaders to act on that feedback to make necessary changes to policies, practices, and culture in schools.
• Create and maintain an accessible statewide database of education job openings to facilitate the matching of educators seeking employment with available positions and to provide a reliable source of information for the public to monitor trends in education employment in Ohio.

“It is important to note that the recommendations from the Educator Voice Academy are focused exclusively on issues related to the recruitment and retention of teachers; issues related to the recruitment and retention of education support professionals, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and paraprofessionals, among others, is an equally important topic deserving serious consideration as soon as possible,” DiMauro said. “Ohio’s policymakers and school leaders need to take immediate, significant action to ensure our students have all their needs met so they can learn, grow, and thrive in our classrooms. The time to act is now.”

[September 15, 2022] As families and education stakeholders around the state continue to examine the newly released state report card data, the Ohio Education Association (OEA) is celebrating the hard work of Ohio’s dedicated educators to support the state’s students as they continue to overcome the challenges of pandemic-era learning. Further, OEA expresses its sincere gratitude to the lawmakers who answered OEA’s calls for report card reform, resulting in the fairer assessments that were made public today.

“OEA has long fought against the overreliance on high stakes standardized tests in determining the value and success of Ohio’s public schools and students. The adoption of House Bill 82 in 2021 and other recently enacted laws that resulted in the significant changes in this year’s state report cards represent an incredibly important win in that regard,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “Gone are the misleading A-F grades, which gave an incomplete picture of a district’s performance at best. Gone are the draconian punishments for districts that failed to measure up to the cookie cutter standards of out-of-touch bureaucrats who clung to the report card letter grades to trigger state takeovers and wrest control from local parents and voters. Here to stay is a commitment to a more accurate and transparent assessment system for Ohio’s public schools.”

Among the trends highlighted by this accountability system, it is clear that Ohio’s traditional public schools continue to best serve the students in their communities. This year’s data demonstrates that the average achievement component score for the state’s traditional public school districts is 3.5 stars compared to the 1.7 star rating achieved, on average, by charter schools in the state on that same metric.

While more work is needed to further improve the state’s report card system, including major changes to improve accountability standards for Ohio’s charter schools and the private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers, OEA celebrates the move to a more informative star-rating system in this year’s report cards, complete with explanations about what the stars mean to provide the public with critical context. Further, OEA welcomes the inclusion of Student Opportunity Profiles in the 2022-2023 data that will be released next September. Those profiles will provide detailed information regarding what students have been offered to enhance their success. Academic and non-academic supports are essential for our students, especially as pandemic recovery continues.