State schools chief criticizes education bill
Ohio’s state superintendent picked apart a wide-ranging education bill, criticizing proposed changes to kindergarten assessments, teacher licensing, report cards and other issues.
“Too often in education, policy discussions end up being about the adults in the room, and we can easily forget about the needs of students,” Paolo DeMaria told the Senate Education Committee, which is hearing Senate Bill 216, legislation designed to reduce state education regulations.
“Reactive approaches rarely give us the results we are seeking. While I am totally supportive of reducing regulation, we have to approach this goal deliberatively.”
Those comments didn’t sit well with Sen. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, who drafted the bill with help from superintendents in his district.
“Describing this legislation as a reactive approach is not appropriate,” he said, adding that it addresses regulations and mandates built up over decades. “I’ve cautioned other folks who have come to talk to me to not suggest this bill is about what the adults want and not good for kids, as you suggested in your testimony.”
While some Ohio superintendents have spoken glowingly of the bill and the flexibility it would provide, DeMaria sees a host of negative consequences.
The bill would eliminate the license or minimum standards required for about 19,000 aides working in Ohio schools, allowing non-teachers to serve as substitute aides. “It is difficult to understand how allowing unlicensed individuals to serve in these roles is a positive change,” DeMaria said.
The bill would allow districts to approve which tests count as high-quality data for the evaluations. Different standards across the state, DeMaria said, “will only lead to confusion.”
The bill would set minimum group sizes needed for data to appear on state report cards at 30, while the state Board of Education is proposing to set it at 15. The smaller size, DeMaria said, ensures more groups of students are counted.
The bill would let schools to give tests in grades 3-5 on paper, instead of on computers. “Computer-based tests can be processed more quickly and are less expensive,” DeMaria said. “Ohio has adopted technology standards that reflect our expectation that students are learning how to use computers.”
The bill changes the definition of “excessively absent” students, a state designation approved by lawmakers less than a year ago. The change is likely to cause confusion, DeMaria said, and works against the intent of trying to address students who miss several days of class, regardless of the reason.
The bill would require families to pay half the cost of textbooks for the program that allows high school students to take college courses. “A founding principle of College Credit Plus was that Ohio’s families would not be asked to foot the bill,” DeMaria said.
The bill would establish two licenses, one for grades K-8 and one for grades 6-12, instead of the current licenses for grades pre-kindergarten through three, grades four through nine, and grades seven through 12.
DeMaria said a teacher should not be expected to be an expert in teaching math to such wide ranges of students. Others who testified Wednesday expressed similar concerns, including Kristin Bourdage, chair of the Education Department at Otterbein University, who said it would lead to a more generalist approach to teaching.
“For the past two decades, educators have been working toward the specialization of teaching,” she said.
DeMaria said he also thinks the bill goes too far in allowing superintendents to assign a teacher to other subjects or grades, regardless of licensing.
Huffman asked DeMaria if a local superintendent is in the best position to decide if a fourth-grade teacher is able to move down and teach third grade.
“Superintendents have a variety of different influences on the realities they face in terms of making operational decisions,” DeMaria said. “They may make decisions based on any number of factors, sometimes not always the ones that make the most sense in terms of a particular person’s expertise.”
“Rather than dispensing with the (kindergarten test), we should debate how to modify it.”
— Thomas Lasley, a former teacher and current CEO of Learn to Earn Dayton
The bill would eliminate the current Kindergarten Readiness Assessment requirement. Huffman said he has been told by a number of superintendents that other tests are superior. The intent of the bill is to let them decide.
But DeMaria and others disagreed that other tests are better, arguing the current test is the more comprehensive, going beyond just measuring literacy.
The bill “takes a hammer to a problem that requires a knife,” said Thomas Lasley, a former teacher and current CEO of Learn to Earn Dayton. “Rather than dispensing with the (kindergarten test), we should debate how to modify it.”