OEA Encouraged by Improved Student Outcomes for 2023-2024, but Notes More Work is Needed to Make State Report Cards a Useful Tool for Parents
“The dedication of Ohio’s educators to support our state’s students is evident in the progress shown during the past year,” OEA President Scott DiMauro said. “The growth in math and reading scores among English Learners and Economically Disadvantaged students—two groups that were hardest hit by learning disruptions during the pandemic—and improved reading scores for elementary students are a testament to the hard work of Ohio educators.”
DiMauro also noted the improvement in student attendance, with chronic absenteeism rates declining from 26.8% to 25.6%, saying, “Students need to be present to learn, and the positive trend in attendance is directly related to the increases we are seeing in academic outcomes, including overall graduation rates. It is crucial that Ohio continues to properly fund wraparound services and promote academic programs that address the needs of the whole child.”
At the same time, the OEA says significant work is needed to make the state report cards a useful tool for parents, including changes to improve accountability standards for Ohio’s charter schools and the private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers.
“Parents cannot make apples-to-apples comparisons between their local public schools and the private schools taking public taxpayer-funded vouchers because private schools are still not held to the same accountability and transparency standards as public schools in our state,” DiMauro said.
“Public tax dollars belong in the public schools that serve nearly 90 percent of the students in our state. If the state is going to continue to take critical resources from our public schools to fund private school tuition for the mostly wealthy families who have overwhelmingly taken the near universal vouchers since that became available to them, we must make sure Ohio’s taxpayers are getting a good return on their investment for what they’re spending on private schools,” DiMauro said. “With our state’s current report card system, it is impossible to say, and that is by design.”
The General Assembly has failed to require the accountability and transparency standards for private schools that would enable Ohioans to make any true comparisons. While the State Report Cards released this week for public schools continue to rely heavily on data from high-stakes standardized tests public school students are required to take every year, private schools continue to be able to pick and choose assessments for their students, often not even on the same subjects for which their public school peers are tested. Private schools should be included in the State Report Cards, but the data about private school performance—limited as it may be—is released separately, much later in the year.
“Ohio is constitutionally required to maintain a ‘thorough and efficient system of common schools’ but Ohio lawmakers have intentionally created two very different systems of evaluating and sharing
information about the quality of our state’s private and public schools,” DiMauro said. “Ohio parents, students, and taxpayers deserve better.”
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.
OEA members offer solutions to state’s growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis
[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.”
OEA celebrates advocacy wins in new state report card system
[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.
OEA Welcomes Today’s Actions by State lawmakers
“Our members remain committed to doing all that they can to educate the students they serve,” said OEA President Scott DiMauro, “but it seems impossible to imagine how tests could be conducted in the current environment where schools are closed and the state continues to face the challenges posed by an unprecedented public health crisis. Today’s vote by state lawmakers was the logical step to take.”
While OEA would have preferred a long-term solution to fix the problem of a potentially explosive expansion in the number of EdChoice vouchers, freezing EdChoice eligibility affords more time to address the issue fully.
Additionally, OEA appreciates the extension of absentee voting for the primary election until April 28. The proposed delay until June 2 would not have allowed sufficient time for levy election results to be known before school districts need to make budget and staffing decisions.
The Ohio Education Association represents 122,000 teachers, faculty members and support professionals in Ohio’s public schools, colleges and universities.
OEA supports House Plan for EdChoice Vouchers
There has been overwhelming support from Ohio educators who back Senate Bill 89 as passed by the Ohio House that addresses the EdChoice Voucher Program. Over 9 days, the Senate heard more than 50 hours of public testimony concerning the private school vouchers. OEA members came out in force to testify, write letters, and call legislators and the Governor to support the House passed bill.
OEA President Scott DiMauro said, “We applaud the leadership shown by the House on this issue. They’ve recognized the need to invest in the 90% of Ohio’s students who attend public schools while still offering meaningful choice. In OEA’s view, the language in SB 89 as passed by the House represents the best path forward. SB 89 moves away from the blame game of a failing school model; maintains support for current voucher recipients through grandfathering; orients the program towards one that puts Ohio’s neediest families first in line; and moves toward direct state funding of vouchers to preserve funding that supports Ohio’s public school children.”
Ohio educators reject the Senate plan (HB 9) that would continue to have hundreds of schools deemed “failing” and eligible for EdChoice vouchers based on a flawed report card system. SB 89 which would eliminate most new EdChoice vouchers and shift the program to one based on family income and paid for directly by the state.
The Ohio Education Association is optimistic that the voices of Ohio’s educators have been heard and that a resolution to the still looming voucher crisis is forthcoming.
The Ohio Education Association represents 122,000 teachers, faculty members and support professionals in Ohio’s public schools, colleges and universities.
Why Ohio’s Report Card System Is Failing to Make the Grade
By Julie Holderbaum, Minerva EA/OEA
Ohio’s taxpayers want our schools to produce flourishing young adults who will contribute in meaningful and healthy ways to our society, and they spend a lot of money to ensure that this happens. It makes sense, therefore, that schools are required to undergo a yearly check-up and share the results with our communities.
However, the current report card system is doing more to harm schools than to support them.
Any teacher or parent can tell you that a letter grade does not represent the entire child. A student can be quite intelligent, but if that child doesn’t turn in assignments on time, his grade will reflect not only his academic ability but his lack of responsibility. And that’s just classroom work; we all know that a child is more than classroom work. For example, a colleague of mine recently told me he saw my daughter comforting a friend in the hallway who was “freaking out” about a test her friend felt unprepared for. Jamie told me the story later of how she got her friend to take deep breaths and even laugh before going back to class. Frankly, I am prouder of that than any of the A’s on her report card.
Just as a student’s report card grades cannot show every aspect of awesome that lives in him, a school district report card cannot show all the beautiful and amazing moments that happen in our schools.
For example, the students in my small town’s elementary school have raised $95,000 for St. Jude’s over the last 12 years. Our middle school’s student council visits the local nursing homes and helps with the local food pantry once a month. Our high school seniors, twice per year, go into our community to rake leaves and plant flowers for the elderly, paint pavilions at the park, and more.
None of this shows up on our school district’s report card.
If I were choosing a new school district for my daughter, I would want to know what kind of opportunities are provided to teach children how to be good humans, not just good students.
I would want to know what kind of relationship the schools have with the community.
I would want to know not only what academic opportunities exist, but also what extra-curricular options are available.
I would want to know not only what academic support is provided for kids, but also what emotional support is in place to help children who live with poverty and trauma.
Our current report card system makes none of that information available to parents or community members. It is impossible to get a full picture of what wonderful things are happening in our schools.
Not only that, but the current system has damaged schools by basing many of the letter grades on testing, which has led to the loss of creative and playful activities in our classrooms and an increased and unhealthy focus on standardized tests. Tests are an easy factor to include on the report cards because they are a concrete measure, seemingly, of how a school is doing. What goes unmeasured is the stress the tests place on teachers and on students.
The current system even ties our hands when we try to do what is best for students regarding testing.
My high school recently considered giving the ELA II test to our 9th graders, in order to give struggling students more opportunities to pass the test and to give those who pass during their freshman year fewer tests to take as 10th graders. However, once we realized that those students who passed their freshman year could potentially count as zeroes on our performance index their sophomore year, we decided not to go forward. We could not risk a possible F in the performance index area of the report card.
Under the current system, any school building earning a D or an F in a report card indicator becomes eligible for EdChoice vouchers. Essentially, taxpayer money is pulled from a local public school and given in the form of a voucher to any private school a student wishes to attend instead. Thanks to the report card system, nearly ⅔ of Ohio’s school districts would be eligible for the vouchers in the 2020-21 school year. Consequently, the legislature was recently in crisis mode trying to address the problem before the February 1st deadline to apply for vouchers. Instead of solving the problem, however, they extended the deadline and bought themselves some time. This entire debacle could have been avoided if Ohio used an informative and fair evaluation system for its schools instead of a punitive one.
Furthermore, due to “failing” grades, three school districts in Ohio have now been taken over by the state. Many other districts are in danger of falling prey to HB 70, which allows local decisions by the school board to be over-ridden by an appointed (and well-paid) CEO. This is yet another harmful and unfair repercussion of the report card system.
Fortunately, widespread bipartisan support to change the way schools show accountability to their communities is gaining momentum in the Ohio legislature, perhaps because of the plethora of problems the report cards have caused.
No reporting system will truly show all of the greatness happening in our schools, such as the money our students raise for cancer patients or the small moments of kindness in a hallway. However, OEA has crafted a plan that would include a myriad of indicators beyond test scores and graduation rates. “Report cards” and A-F grades would be gone. Instead, a fuller picture of what is happening in our schools would be available in School Profiles. Mandated information such as test scores and graduation rates would still be included, but so would information about early childhood education, AP/Honors courses offered, whole-child classes available (art, music, world languages, health/wellness), ratio of guidance counselors to students, average class size, and more.
Ohio’s schools are more than a letter grade on a report card. We are not afraid of accountability. We are eager to show what we are accomplishing in spite of the many challenges we face. We only ask for a chance to show a more complete picture of what happens in our schools every day.
— Julie Holderbaum is an English Instructor and an Academic Challenge Advisor at Minerva High School, Minerva, Ohio.
OEA applauds House vote to fix voucher problem
“The Ohio House took an important step to transform the voucher program in a way that moves away from the blame game and toward meeting the needs of ALL students,” said OEA President Scott DiMauro. “I’m hopeful that the broad, bi-partisan support in the House is indicative of a new course in education policy -one that addresses the needs of the 90% of Ohio students who attend our public schools.”
OEA very much welcomes the strong bi-partisan recognition that the grading system Ohio uses to determined performance-based vouchers doesn’t accurately reflect how well a school is educating its students, and that the state report cards and the over-reliance on standardized tests to measure student achievement need to be fixed.
OEA also strongly supports the amendment added to the bill that would end Academic Distress Commissions that are part of the failed state takeover law and restore local control to Lorain, Youngstown and East Cleveland.
OEA urges the Senate to pass SB 89 immediately to give families and educators in both public and voucher schools ample time to plan for 2020-2021.
The Ohio Education Association represents 122,000 teachers, faculty members and support professionals in Ohio’s public schools, colleges and universities.
OEA calls for sweeping changes to state report cards
Instead of a cookie-cutter approach to state report cards, OEA envisions a system that uses a performance dashboard and a student opportunity profile that have proven successful in other states, such as Oregon and Massachusetts, in informing educators, parents, elected officials and policy makers of how districts and schools are faring.
In a recent survey of more than 1,400 OEA members, 96% indicated they do not believe the current state report card system fairly assesses Ohio schools, and 89.4% support the elimination of A-F grades.
“Now is the time to end the destructive practice of rating schools and districts on misleading and punitive A-F letter grades that shame public educators for the poverty of their students,” said OEA President Scott DiMauro. “Studies consistently show that there is a direct correlation between ratings and wealth, and for too long, low ratings have been used as cover for diverting taxpayer resources to unaccountable charter and private schools and as an excuse to punish communities and educators by depriving them of local control and collective bargaining rights through state takeover schemes.”
OEA’s recommended reforms include information on the demographic and financial make-up of schools and districts, and a performance dashboard on how well students are learning that includes three-year trends and comparisons to district and statewide averages. A proposed student opportunity profile would provide detailed information on what students have been offered to enhance their success.
“Current report cards in Ohio are overly complicated, depriving parents, policymakers, and communities of understandable information that demonstrates how schools are really doing in providing opportunities for learning to students,” said DiMauro. “A new system is needed to ensure transparency, accountability, and fairness with the aim of identifying areas in need of improvement and empowering local stakeholders to make decisions that direct resources where they are most needed.”
* To read the details of what was approved by the OEA Representative Assembly, click here.
Shaping a Vision for Accurate, Meaningful State Report Cards
Dear OEA Member,
Ohio’s current system of using flawed report cards to measure the performance of school districts and school buildings needs to be revamped. Legislation is being discussed in Ohio legislature.
OEA is calling for an end to the use of arbitrary letter grades and questionable methodologies that are biased against low-income districts.
Our goal is to make report cards easier to understand so that they are more useful for parents and the community.
Here’s where we need to hear from you. As an educator, what do you think should be included in measuring student success? What do you think would be useful for the public to know about Ohio’s schools? Input from you will help greatly in shaping a vision for a more accurate and meaningful report card for Ohio’s schools.
You can review your school district’s current report card through the Ohio Department of Education’s website: https://reportcard.education.ohio.gov.
Thank you!