State backs off tougher reading standard
After consideration, state school board OKs more modest increase.
The Ohio school board Tuesday made only a modest increase in the reading score students need to advance to fourth grade.
After considering a much tougher third-grade reading standard for Ohio students Tuesday, the state school board backed off and made only a modest increase in the score students need to advance to fourth grade.
The board’s achievement and graduation committee had recommended raising the English Language Arts score required for 2018-19 third-graders to advance to fourth grade from 672 to 682. The full board rejected that resolution by a 9-7 vote, then voted 16-0 to approve a cut score of 677, matching what the Ohio Department of Education had recommended.
Ohio law requires the thirdgrade reading cut score to increase by some amount each year so that it eventually matches the “proficiency” score of 700. That process has been ongoing for six years.
State board member Kara Morgan of Dublin led the push for the higher cut score. She said that even at 682, the state would be far from the proficiency score, and she believes it is time for the state to “push forward on the pace” to reach that standard.
Morgan said the state has had six years to adjust to the third-grade reading guarantee and has offered significant grant resources to help schools improve. She called the promotion score the lever that the state has to push school systems to provide stronger interventions to struggling students, and argued that students and schools would rise to the challenge of a higher standard.
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Matt Jablonski, a northern Ohio teacher, quickly responded to Morgan on Twitter, arguing that the interventions are just a test prep “meat grinder.”
“Standardized tests don’t promote achievement, they promote test prep and more testing, a narrowing of curriculum, demoralization of students and a negative perspective regarding school,” Jablonski wrote. “No data suggests that a generation of standardized tests has improved anything.”
Elizabeth Hess, an early literacy specialist for ODE, pointed to Florida data specifically about using an early literacy test cut score and mandatory interventions like Ohio’s system required. She said follow-up study has shown that students who received those interventions, years later, performed better academically than students who tested slightly better in those early years but did not receive interventions.
State board member Nick Owens, who represents Greene and Clark counties, voted in favor of the tougher 682 score. Pat Bruns, who represents Warren County, and Charlotte McGuire, who represents most of the rest of the Greater Dayton area, voted against it. Bruns said schools should get a year to prepare if a bigger change is coming.
State data from the spring 2017 test show that about 4,500 third-graders scored at least 677 on the test but not 682. Some of those students likely still would have been promoted to fourth grade via one of the approved alternate assessments.
Other school news
Report card: A work group of state board members and education advocates recommended multiple changes to the state school report card based on months of meetings.
Proposals include eliminating all A-F letter grades and replacing them with language like meets or exceeds standards. They recommend eliminating K-3 Literacy and “indicators met” as graded measures, and they called for further study on the “value-added” system that the state uses to measure growth. The work group plans to meet again after the state report card is released is September.
State test scores: Ohio students improved proficiency rates on 18 of 21 major state tests this spring, according to preliminary results published by the Ohio Department of Education.
The largest increases were on high school endof-course exams in biology (up 9.6 percent) and American government (up 8.8 percent). The only decreases in proficiency rates were on third-grade math (down 3.0 percent), third-grade English (down 2.1 percent) and high school English 1 (down 1.5 percent). ODE officials emphasized that the data is still preliminary and has limits.