The point of this article is to illuminate how poorly designed Ohio’s accountability system is by using a very personal example.

The legislators from Ohio continue to tinker with the educational accountability system and in 2023 those of us that are forced to operate under this compliance driven model will be subjected to a new and improved reporting style that looks much like a “Yelp Review.” They will tell you that superintendents and other educators were involved in the creation of this “new” system, however the reality is the success of the project was doomed from the beginning because 1) innovation was shackled, 2) the right people weren’t at the table and more importantly, 3) the right questions weren’t being asked. Rather than being disruptive and starting over by  reimagining and transforming, the group simply put a new shade of lipstick on the same old pig, and when you do that you’re left with what you started with (my apologies to all pigs).

Based on the tone of this writing you’d probably expect my district to be one that did poorly under this revised system, however that is generally not the case. Olmsted Falls Schools received a 4.5 out of 5 star review from Ohio. Receiving a favorable rating is advantageous for me because it provides us with a reasonable amount of cover to criticize the model for what it is–at best a complete waste of taxpayer resources, and at worst, a lie telling, spirit crushing machine. Generally we have done well under Ohio’s accountability model. A model  that many believe is riddled with institutionalized racism and classism. In general the deck is stacked in favor of a district like mine so I’m going to load up and let go over the next several weeks because I think people need to know how badly it’s flawed.

Our school district is unique. We are relatively small (about 3,600 kids) and have 5 school buildings. Our schools are arranged in the following manner: OF Early Childhood Center has grades PreK-K; Falls Lenox Primary has grades 1-3; OF Intermediate School has grades 4-5; OF Middle School has grades 6-8 and OF High School has grades 9-12. We like how our grade levels are arranged. It allows our teachers to really focus instructionally on the developmental levels of the students specific to the school, and each building has a great sense of community.

Each of our 5 buildings will be subjected to Ohio’s Compliance-Based Accountability Model and each will have a school report card. I could devote a dissertation as to why Ohio’s accountability model lacks truth, precision and the robustness that it should have in order to provide communities with a real understanding of what is going on in their schools, but I will not. I’m going to devote this space to demonstrate why one size does not fit all AND the harm that Ohio’s model causes my colleagues that work within my school district and the families that continue to move into the Olmsted Communities.

What’s in Ohio’s Rating System?

Ohio’s reporting system provides an Overall Rating that is composed of 6 Components: Achievement; Progress; Gap Closing; Graduate Rate; Early Literacy; and College, Career, Workforce & Military Readiness. Four out of six use student standardized test scores in the component. Some of the components are grade level specific (e.g. Graduation Rate is specific to a high school not an elementary school and Early Literacy is specific to elementary not high school). Below is a screen shot from Ohio’s reporting system that shows how many stars the district will receive and from which components. Remember that this rating is “rear-view.” It is based on data obtained from last school year. 

Most primary schools in our state are arranged with more than 1 grade level. Generally they contain grades K-2, K-3, K-4 or K-5. The Olmsted Falls Early Childhood Center (ECC) has 1 grade level (kindergarten) and a wonderful preschool program that serves students from ages 3-5 with special needs and peer models. While Ohio’s preschool programs have a compliance-based accountability system, that system is separate from the K-12 system. Due to the unique grade level configuration at the ECC (it contains 100 preschool students and approximately 215 kindergarteners), it will be rated and judged inaccurately and unfairly because the system has many missing components.

The ECC is a school that has only preschool and kindergarten students so it does not have a State math or reading test which eliminates Ohio’s report card components of achievement, growth, and early literacy. When you think about that it is pretty absurd to imagine a state system that’s supposed to report on school quality being incapable of accounting for and reporting on the achievement, growth and literacy of its youngest learners when research would suggest that the earliest years are the most critical years when it comes to student development, but I digress. Shown below is what Ohio will tell our community. They’ll say that our Early Childhood Center is not good. It will receive a rating of 1 out of 5 stars. Not only is this inaccurate and damaging as it relates to the quality of this particular school, it’s a damn lie which makes it even worse.

The rating for this school will be based on only 2 factors–whether the school serves 5 year old’s identified as gifted (which doing so is just plain dumb and this is coming from a former school psych who has evaluated quite a few kids) and what Ohio calls, “chronic absenteeism.” Chronic absenteeism happens when kids miss too much school regardless if those absences are excused or unexcused. So…if you have a young child who has an underdeveloped immune system, is prone to ear infections, colds, COVID, whatever, and the child misses “too much school,” the state takes it out on your school district. Imagine doing this post COVID-19 when we’ve told families to keep sick kids at home so they’re not coughing all over each other.

The picture below shows how the school chronic absenteeism indicator is generated. I’ll be honest. I have a doctorate, am a former psychometrician and have been involved with school accountability for a long time. I can certainly follow along, but the picture below is “Educational NC-17.” If our school building received a 1 star as a result of this indicator I think it would follow that Ohio should get a “0” as a state. Does it surprise you that the absenteeism rate has increased post-COVID? 

The point of this article isn’t that school attendance doesn’t matter or gifted education isn’t important because both are. The issue is releasing a state endorsed school quality measure that is so poorly designed that it cannot account for the quality of a school. The repercussions of a system that uses gifted service delivery and who kept their kid home the most in order to publicly pronounce the quality of a school is a system designed by lazy people who do not understand the complexity of determining school quality. Ohio kids and parents deserve honesty, precision and so much more. Be better!

I’ll end with this…in Olmsted Falls City Schools we’ve been engaged in creating a more innovative and transformative approach to communicating what we’re focusing on and how we’re doing. We’ve engaged our families and students and asked them what their hopes and dreams are. Our new system for accounting for what we’re doing will be based on those hopes and dreams. We will be launching this new approach in November and will communicate to our primary stakeholders more specifically about what we’re trying to do in a language that is easily understood and free of the educational jargon that educators love and parents do not.

Parents with preschoolers and kindergarteners at the ECC have hopes and dreams for their kids that include early literacy development, the ability to think mathematically, begin communicating through print and all kinds of other things. We will account for those things, show that evidence to our community and celebrate our youngest learners. Everything that Ohio’s accountability model cannot do, we will do. In the meantime, I hope that those that created, endorsed and voted for this new yelp model stub their toe tonight because your model has done harm to students, families and staff. Listed below is the kind of trust building, truth telling machine we are looking to create in order to tell a more complete story.

##