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State Representative Jim Buchy
PARCC: Opt-Outs
and State Report Cards
A year ago when the Ohio Department of Education decided to proceed
with the new PARCC test, despite its questionable results, they raised
eyebrows. As part of the Common Core roll-out, PARCC faced
considerable concern from parents, teachers and the like. All
signs pointed to potential PARCC failure, but the Ohio Department of
Education elected to proceed and have since spent considerable time
responding to the consequences of that decision.
The latest issue has arisen because the State Report Cards failed to
acknowledge the failure of the PARCC test to accurately measure local
student growth. As a result changes have been made but the best
recommendation this year is to ignore the state report card and look
for better, more accurate results next year.
The legislature recognized the looming concerns of the PARCC test and
acted swiftly to provide safe harbor to teachers, schools and students
so that they would not be harmed by the results of the untested,
unproven, and eventually failed PARCC test. It only makes sense
that when discrepancies appeared in the state report card students,
teachers and schools would be held harmless from those results and
spared public embarrassment associated with scores that do not
accurately reflect student performance.
Many parents had their children take the test, yet an unprecedented
number of parents had their children “opt-out.” Although I would
have preferred the students take the test, it is the responsibility of
state leaders to recognize the impact of these opt-outs and
respond. We do not anticipate this large scale problem in the
future because state legislators voted to stop the PARCC test.
When the school report cards for last year were released, the high
number of opt-outs had a considerable impact. Because of the way
the scores are calculated, all opt-outs appeared as zeroes, while they
should not have been factored into the scores at all. We have
some of the best schools in the state, but the impact of opt-outs
caused our schools to appear in the bottom tier when compared to other
schools.
Thanks to the efforts of local administrators, the Department of
Education recognized the damaging impacts of these false report cards
and decided to release new ratings that no longer consider
opt-outs. While these new scores provide a better snapshot of the
actual results, they still do not effectively show how our students
progressed over the school year.
My recommendation to parents, students, teachers, and administrators is
simple; if you want to review the local state report card, make sure
you are looking at the adjusted score. You can view the adjusted
scores at a website I have created
tinyurl.com/adjustedreportcards However, it must be noted that
these local report card scores are still not entirely accurate because
of the failed PARCC exams. The best thing we can do this year is
ignore the state report card because it is not accurate.
In western Ohio we have the best schools in the state. What we
have been doing has been proven effective, so we should keep moving
forward with what works. Our students, teachers, and
administrators are top notch and set the standard for the rest of the
state to strive for.
Please give me your opinion on this topic and others in the news this
month by completing an online survey attinyurl.com/buchymarch2016
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