Report Cards are in ..

All I can think of to describe the system/ district as Ms. Andrew sees it, as I am a golfer, is "grinding" the round out. 

Vet, your answer to my question surprises me.  I had assumed that you deleted from the article the statement that 8 of 9 Middletown city schools received an A for overall Value Added because you are too stubborn to give credit for any success because it doesn't fit your narrative.  We all agree that F is a bad grade, but you can't bring yourself to agree that an A is a good grade.

Acclaro, I am not a golfer, so I cannot respond directly to your comment about "grinding it out."  However, to borrow your metaphor, if your average golf score for a round of 18 holes changed from 100 to 90, wouldn't you say your golf game had improved, even while admitting you weren't ready to go pro?

MS. ANDREW:

"Vet, your answer to my question surprises me. I had assumed that you deleted from the article the statement that 8 of 9 Middletown city schools received an A for overall Value Added because you are too stubborn to give credit for any success because it doesn't fit your narrative. We all agree that F is a bad grade, but you can't bring yourself to agree that an A is a good grade"

YOU ARE 100% CORRECT MS. ANDREW. I AM VERY STUBBORN. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. YOU CAN ADD ARGUMENTATIVE TO THAT TOO. THERE YOU ARE. I'M HUMAN AND HAVE FLAWS. MOST DO. NOW, IF WE CAN JUST GET PEOPLE IN AUTHORITY TO ADMIT THE SAME THING, WE COULD ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING.

YES, THE "A" IS A GOOD GRADE. USUALLY IS. BUT THE COLUMN THE A'S ARE IN, IE. VALUE ADDED, ONLY TELLS US WHAT THE KID LEARNED, OR DIDN'T LEARN DURING A DESIGNATED TIME FRAME. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN AS TO CONTRIBUTION TOWARD THE TESTING ASPECT OF EDUCATION? APPARENTLY NOTHING. LOOK AT THE RESULTS IN THE OTHER TWO COLUMNS. MUST BE LITTLE RETENTION OF WHAT WAS LEARNED IN "VALUE-ADDED" AT TEST TIME. IE....THE SUCCESS YOU HAD IN VALUE ADDED DID NOT MAKE THE TRANSITION, NOR HELP THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE.

MS. ANDREW:

"Put another way, in response to your comment, Indicators Met and Performance Index measure how effectively the students retained the knowledge learned to demonstrate recall on the tests, whereas Value Added asks, did the student retain (and recall for the test) more knowledge this year than last year?"

OK, "INDICATORS MET" AND "PERFORMANCE INDEX" HAVE VERY POOR RESULTS FOR THIS DISTRICT BY THE DATA WE SEE. "VALUE ADDED" HAS RESPECTABLE SCORES ACCORDING TO THE DATA. SO, THE STUDENTS WERE POOR AT RETAINING THE KNOWLEDGE LEARNED TO DEMOSTRATE RECALL AND DID BETTER THIS YEAR THAN LAST ON RECALLING TEST INFO? WHAT? CONFUSING TO SAY THE LEAST. THROW OUT THE VALUE ADDED AND JUST GIVE US THE TEST DATA RESULTS FROM YEAR TO YEAR. VALUE ADDED IS THERE AS A RESULT OF OVERANALYZING THE DATA. INDICATORS MET AND PERFORMANCE NUMBERS IS REALLY ALL WE NEED, ISN'T IT? AREN'T WE GRASPING AT STRAWS HERE LOOKING FOR ANY RAY OF SUNSHINE WE CAN FIND WITH THIS CURRENT METHOD OF EVALUATION?


WE BOTH HAVE NARRATIVES TO THE INFORMATION AT HAND. WE ARE BOTH LOOKING AT THE SAME DATA, BUT HAVE ARRIVED AT ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS. YOU ARE HOLDING THE "VALUE-ADDED" COLUMN ON THE CHART AS THE SOLE DETERMINING FACTOR ON SUCCESS AND I AM LOOKING AT ALL THOSE PESKY LITTLE C, D's AND F'S IN THE OTHER TWO COLUMNS. THAT BEING SAID, WHICH COLUMN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT?........THAT IS LEFT TO THE PURVEYOR OF THE DATA.

AND FINALLY....

"By the way, the answer to my question about Hamilton City Schools, which you ignored, is that 7 of 10 school buildings received an F for Value Added, meaning their students on average learned less than a year's worth in a year"

"THEIR STUDENTS ON AVERAGE LEARNED LESS THAN A YEAR'S WORTH IN A YEAR"

.....THAT SAYS IT ALL MS. ANDREW. NONSENSICAL PROGRAM USING SILLY TERMS AND CRITERIA. WHY THIS KIND OF REASONING TO EVALUATE KIDS? WHOEVER CREATED THIS JUMBLED MESS NEEDS TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL THEMSELVES FOR A LARGE DOSE OF SOME COMMON SENSE. AND JUST HOW WOULD ONE MAKE AN ADJUSTMENT IF THEY KNEW THE KIDS WERE LEARNING "LESS THAN A YEAR'S WORTH IN A YEAR"? HOW WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO SELF-EVALUATE TO HAVE TIME TO CORRECT?

Fair enough Ms. Andrew. To avoid a subject that has been beaten to pieces here, and to assume that we will agree to disagree on what is important, I will not offer any comments toward your reply.

I will finish by saying that I find the educational criteria for grading students nowadays to be a conglomeration of confused diatribe that can offer anything the interpreter of the data wants it to be. Selections of what is important are muddled at best and the designers didn't even attempt to make it user friendly. It was put together by a group of people (be it political or academic) who don't have a clue how to simplify systems and apparently feel that useless data in certain areas matters. This grading criteria just flat out overworks the data into fine little bits of numbers or letters.

ohiostorm, so you want to eliminate one educational option, Central Academy, in order to have more money for educational options.  Huh?  

OhioStorm wrote, "we are still failing in most aspects of providing an education for the children of the district."  I cannot agree with that interpretation of the state report card results.  I agree that for those children who did not score proficient or higher, many of them are capable of proficiency and I would agree that we have failed those children to some degree.  However, some of the students who scored below proficient are children who have severe learning impairments/mental retardation, and it is not realistic to expect that they will ever pass a grade level test, even though they are continuing to learn each year. I don't think we have failed those students.  And we certainly haven't failed the vast majority of students, who score proficient or higher on the state tests.  Just as an example, 69.5% of third graders passed the math test and 73.6% of third graders passed the reading test.  That is not "failing in most aspects."