P.S…Stop with the damn rankings

As we moved into September we saw the Ohio Department of Education release its annual State Report Card that is its way of reporting school quality to constituent groups. As many know, I have been very critical of this system because it exclusively utilizes standardized test scores as a way to provide information to students, parents and others as to how well a school system is doing.

OFCS’s journey began 8 years ago through a strategic planning process that involved students, educators, parents and community members. We began with the recalibration of our district’s vision and landed on–We INSPIRE and EMPOWER all students to achieve their full potential and become meaningful contributors to a global society. With this vision in hand we began asking ourselves, how do we know when students are inspired and empowered? What does a school experience look like when the experiences students are provided with inspire and empower them? Olmsted Falls Schools has long provided a comprehensive Triple A experience for students through academics, arts and athletics. As we looked at the Ohio Report Card system that has remained virtually the same for over two decades, one that focuses exclusively on test scores, we saw the short-sightedness of that kind of accountability approach. Why is it short-sighted? Consider this, students spend about 420 minutes per day in school. That’s 2,100 minutes per week and about 75,000 minutes for a school year. That is a considerable amount of time. Why should a school quality rating rely on a piece of data that was gathered in 80 minutes on a particular day in the spring? Because those results help to predict the long-term outcomes for kids (they don’t)? Because that’s the way it’s always been? Because a group of people said that’s the best we could come up with? Again, this is the school accountability approach that has been in place for the past 20 years. It is an accountability system that does more harm than good. It forces teachers to teach to the test and shrink a student’s learning experience down to tested subjects. Olmsted Falls deserves better. Ohio deserves better. 

Did you know that Ohio’s $75 million accountability system uses an 80 minute sample to rate each school district on achievement, how much students have progressed from year to year (i.e. their growth), whether students are on track for literacy, and if districts are closing learning gaps for targeted groups of students?  A student’s 75,000 minutes of an annual schooling experience is contingent upon how that student performs on an 80 minute experience per subject tested (generally that’s math and reading). We believe there are better ways to account for school quality. Twenty-first century methods that pay homage to the student’s 75,000 minutes of time spent in classrooms coupled with the amount of effort teachers put forth each day with them. 

It seems that every decade a new group of stakeholders throughout the State of Ohio get together and they attempt to tinker with (also known as “reform”) the current system to make it more understandable for community stakeholders. The most recent group of reformers included local superintendents, elected officials, leaders from the various teachers’ associations, members of the department of education, outside watchdog groups like the Fordham Institute and Ohio Excel. The result–the same approach but rather than using letter grades, this time we were delivered a  system of stars. Are these types of annual assessments important? Sure, however they provide us with a small portion of evidence to account for learning and school quality. They come nowhere close to accounting for what people in positions of power want you to believe they do–regardless of whether they try to justify them with letter grades (A – F), a star system (1 – 5) or some other system of symbols.  

Over the past 12 months, we have been actively working on a better way to demonstrate school quality. Olmsted Falls Schools was the first district in Ohio to join a network of school districts throughout the country that are seeking to transform (not reform) how we account for the student experience. The approach takes into consideration the 75,000 minutes that students are in school annually and seeks to deliver a more comprehensive report to our primary stakeholders–parents and students. We frame the conversation with the internal stakeholders (educators, administrators and so on) with this question–From your perspective, what are 5 reasons we educate children? Externally we ask students, parents and community members–What are your hopes and dreams for students? When you ask these kinds of questions, our experience has been that you begin to discover the kinds of benefits that everyone wants for students. The challenge is that answers given aren’t easily measured during an 80 minute period from an instrument that has 25 multiple choice items, 2 short answers and 2 extended responses. It takes more effort and more time.    

The National network that we are part of seeks to tell the truth in a language that is more readily understood by those that we’re providing the benefit to – our students, families and community. It won’t require a Master’s Degree in Statistics nor will it include a 17-page manual to explain the process. As we build our system it will require us to more deeply engage our students and families. Through our hopes and dreams conversations we’re learning that we need to report on Student Learning, Student Readiness for the Future, Student Engagement, Student Well-Being, the Effectiveness of Adults, our Community Connections and how Effective of a System we have. You simply can’t gather the evidence needed to tell the story from a test during 80 minutes on a day in April. These things may be difficult to “measure” but it doesn’t make them immeasurable. Yes we are required to operate within the 20th Century model that has been developed, but our goal is to more truthfully and accurately account for the almost 1,000,000 minutes that our students are with us from Kindergarten through graduation. Our commitment is to put forth the time and effort to build something that is comprehensive–something that will create a greater degree of trust with our community.  

Our vision is to inspire and empower students to make a contribution to the world around them. Any time a new policy or law drops out of Columbus, Ohio or from the Feds I put my “inspire and empower lenses” on and I ask this–Will this help me inspire and empower kids? Is it neutral or will it act as a deterrent or barrier? You may not buy into the vision for OFCS, but I bet you care about kids, education and the economy. If you do, put your lenses on and ask if the policies and laws being proposed or implemented are going to make the hopes and dreams you have for kids come true or will it deter them. Think about it.

Jim Lloyd, Ed.D.