No more letter grades? Changes to state report card could be introduced after holidays

Letter grades could be on their way out of the state report card. Several policy groups recommended to a state committee to move away from the overall A-F grades, in a report released Monday. The report did not include any overarching recommendations from the committee as required by the biennium budget. The committee started meeting last month, with input from state education policy groups and superintendents of Strongsville, Fort Frye and Middletown school districts. State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, criticized the report, calling it "a lump of coal" for Ohioians. "It just shows that their motive has been exposed, they're just not serious of doing this job of helping public schools succeed," she said. A longtime educator and ranking House minority member, Fedor was appointed to the committee in October. She has been vocal about the report card system, calling it unfair and flawed. "The report card is important because it is the instrument we use to see whether or not we're showing improvement, but it also is used as a blunt instrument to punish schools," she said. "And I know that our flawed report card is not doing justice to either the public or the professionals and it's used to bash public schools and now we have a voucher expansion and a financial crisis based on a flawed report card." State Rep. Don Jones, co-chair of the committee, said the report is just the beginning. Once legislation is introduced, parents and other stakeholders will be able to submit further testimony. The Freeport Republican said members didn't want to "cherry pick" recommendations from a single group for the final report. "We want to have an open dialogue among our colleagues in the House and the Senate both and say 'OK, what do you think works and what doesn't work here?' " he said. "I know there was some disappointment from some of the members, but we had basically five weeks to accomplish this task and it goes back to 'let's not rush this.' " He said his frustration with the state report card system as a teacher is why he's a state rep. Parents want to see something that is easy to understand, and teachers want something that doesn't rely solely on test scores, he said.. "Our teachers are doing a really good job, we have a lot of great teachers, but ... a lot of the good things that they do are not measured by the report card," he said. "I think that's the problem. They feel like no matter how hard they work, they're still not going to see our grades move up sometimes. And it's not in every district, and I hate to say it but ... you look at your report card and your grades are tied to poverty and socioeconomic status." Currently, Ohio's report card is used to trigger state takeovers of low-performing districts and expand voucher programs. Overall grades determine if a district falls under state control, while individual component scores can cause entire districts or individual buildings to be part of the latest voucher expansion. Letter grades were first introduced on the 2016 report card for individual components, expanding to give districts overall grades in 2018. The Buckeye Association of School Administrators suggested trading overall A-F grades with a three-tier system for each component ranked by "exceed," "met" or "not met." Similarly, the State Board of Education recommended numeric values instead of the letter grades. Of the eight groups involved in the study, only two recommended keeping the overall A-F grades: Ohio Excels and the Fordham Institute. Ohio Excels is a statewide business group which makes education policy suggestions. Fordham Institute is a conservative education think tank. Other suggestions included eliminating or refining the prepared for success measure to include military readiness or non-test-based achievements. State Rep. Gayle Manning, R-North Ridgeville, plans to bring the report back to her district and get local input before the House starts again in late-January. She said the value-added grade has always bothered her. It hurts higher-performing districts at times when their students have plateaued and don't show one-years worth of growth because their students are already ahead of their grade level. "They might be in fourth grade and they're reading at the fifth-grade level and so then when they take the test are they going to read at a sixth-grade level? Probably not," she said. "Their growth isn't what another child might be." Several groups touched on the value-added component in the report. The Buckeye Association of School Administrators urged legislators to only use one-year of data for value-added scores but provide two- and three- year trends. A similar recommendation came from the State Board of Education and Alliance for High Quality Education. Bills have been introduced to reform the state measure before, and Manning said she'd be happy to carry one again — but the final solution may be slow-going. "To me you would fix the report card after you talk to other people," she said. "How do we have to fix House Bill 70 and all those kinds of things. You're talking a good year to get all of this to work together, in my opinion." States are required to create measures for their districts under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Changes to the report card system would not take effect until 2021. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.