CRUEL HOAX
Page A2 Study: Standards too low.
Evidence from multiple national studies indicates that the highest-achieving students are losing ground. As a state-level policy issue, though, can Ohio afford to limit the potential of its gifted students? Ohio will never be competitive nationally or internationally if this trend is not reversed. An accountability system that ignores the gifted population contributes to the problem.
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Ohio schools only Excellent at meeting the minimum, state superintendent says
Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 6:00 PM Updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 6:33 AM By Patrick O’Donnell, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — We’re almost three times as excellent as we were five years ago!
More than half of Ohio’s 609 school districts were rated Excellent or better on the latest state report cards.
But hold off on the celebrations a bit, says the state’s new superintendent. While districts may be great at getting students to perform at minimum standards, he says, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing an excellent job at preparing students for work or college.
State Superintendent Stan Heffner has joined a chorus coming out of Columbus declaring that Ohio has set its testing and ratings bar too low for students and districts.
Students are being declared proficient in academic areas when they only have rudimentary skills, he said, and districts are being overly congratulated for helping them.
ADM. TO DO continue withoUT PICTURES
NOTE: TO DO report more OF THE FINDINGS
Glenn Welch, Montgomery, Ohio opinion appeared in THE ENQUIRER Dec. 12, 2012 under the newspaper’s title “Grading on curve’ unmasked school folly.
By my count there have been over 430 paragraphs printed in The Enquirer and local press about the UC/XU brawl. During the same period, there were no comments about the Nov. 18 story “Grading on Curve – The Illusion of Excellence in Ohio’s Schools.” Denise Smith Amos reported on this shocking K-12 study, which found the State of Ohio encouraging deceptive practices to achieve standards of excellence.
In a recent issue of The Ohio Education Gadfly, Chester E. Finn Jr. wrote about barriers to academic achievement. He said, “Our academic standards are too low just about everywhere. It’s not just that too little is being achieved; it’s that too little is expected. Even where a state’s standards look great on paper, its “cut scores” for passing the tests aligned with those standards are rarely ambitious, and NCLB (No Child Left Behind) hasn’t helped one bit on that front. Fordham and others have been documenting these problems forever.” He continued, “The central problem besetting K-12 education in the United States today is still — as for almost thirty years now — that far too few of our kids are learning nearly enough for their own or the nation’s good. And the gains we’ve made, though well worth making, have been meager (and largely confined to math), are trumped by gains in other countries, and evaporate by the end of high school.”
I suggest we raise our voice and become more knowledgeable about something that affects us all.
Mr. Welch told this Administrator THE ENQUIRER did not include one of study recommendation he noted – Eliminate “the labeling of all districts until a meaningful system can be developed.”
Recent issue: The Ohio Education Gadfly. A Bi-weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Volume 5, Number 22. December 14, 2011
Glenn Welch
Montgomery