LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

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Since 2004

Tag: standardized testing

  • ‘Blended learning’ bill passes committee

    ‘Blended learning’ bill passes committee

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    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN and Ohio Capital Journal

    A new bill specifying “blended learning” for the 2021-2022 school year has been approved by an Ohio Senate committee.

    Senate Bill 229 is yet another bill meant to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student success and education, and was favorably passed in Senate Primary & Secondary Education Committee on Tuesday.

    In the bill, school districts, including traditional public schools, STEM schools and community and charter schools, would have to have approval by the Ohio Department of Education to implement or discontinue a “blended learning model” by April 20, 2022. This is an extension of current law, which required the approval through July 1 of this year.

    The blended learning model requires a school district to provide internet access and devices to each student using the model, and monitor and assess student achievement and progress while also communicating with parents or guardians about the progress.

    A report must be submitted to the ODE by March 15 showing each school district’s total number of students in blended learning in 2021-22.

    The bill also resets a measure passed through the budget bill, House Bill 110, which discounted standardized testing because of the pandemic’s disruption to education. Under current law, e-schools are required to disenroll a student who fails to take a state assessment for two consecutive years.

    Under H.B. 110, that standardized testing rule was set aside and under the new bill, the exception would be extended through the 2022-2023 school year. This applies to any school who has an online school component.

    Sen. Theresa Fedor, D-Toledo, accused legislators of creating the standardized testing amendment for e-schools as “problematic double-standard e-school favoritism.”

    “If we’re going to provide flexibility and exemptions from standardized testing, it must be for all students no matter where they attend school,” Fedor said.

    She brought up the latest court ruling requiring the defunct Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) to pay back $60 million in state funding it received after an investigation showed student engagement amounted to about an hour a day.

    Fedor was the leader of a bill that attempted to change education laws in response to the pandemic, but her bill didn’t make it past the Ohio Senate.

    She also attempted to add a provision to the blended learning bill on Tuesday that would allow public bodies, including school boards, to meet virtually if they chose to, but that measure was quickly tabled by the committee.

    “I think people should be meeting in person,” state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, the committee’s chair said. “I think that is pretty much what we’ve had conversations internally about, so I think we should leave it as it is.”

    The amendment was tabled along party lines, but the bill itself was passed unanimously.

    The bill now moves on for House consideration.

  • State report cards bill will be improved; testing bill passed through committee

    State report cards bill will be improved; testing bill passed through committee

    (Photo by Getty Images)

    By Susan Tebben and Ohio Capital Journal

    The Ohio Senate passed a bill to modify standardized testing, allowing different pathways for current juniors and seniors to graduate amid a pandemic school year.

    The bill also reinstated an emergency clause to the bill that the House removed in their initial vote on the measure.

    “If we pass this without the emergency clause, this will happen after the school year is over,” said state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell.

    The emergency clause allows the bill to take effect immediately after the governor signs the bill, rather than 90-days after, as is typical for bills without an emergency clause.

    Juniors and seniors will be able to take or retake high school end-of-course exams if they were unable to take them, and those scores can be used as a final grade, in a change to the House bill, Brenner said.

    Graduation will also be possible for those who earn the Ohio Means Jobs readiness seal, along with the minimum curriculum requirements. To receive the seal on a high school diploma, students “must demonstrate certain professional skills required for success in the workplace,” according to the Ohio Means Jobs site explaining the seal.

    That amendment was introduced by state Sen. Theresa Fedor, D-Toledo, as a way to make work done during the pandemic beneficial to students.

    “This change will help students who have already had to work, and many were considered essential workers during our pandemic, and they have already developed professional relationships and additional demonstration of soft skills like professionalism and critical thinking,” Fedor said during Wednesday’s Senate session.

    The bill now heads back to the House, which will consider the changes made by the Senate.

    Two bills hoping to make changes to Ohio’s education system, one immediately and one seeking long-term change, faced legislative questioning on Tuesday.

    The Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee passed a bill that to alter the state’s standardized testing plan.

    Meanwhile, a bill introduced last week that would overhaul the state’s report card system was brought to the House Primary and Secondary Committee by its sponsors, with the acknowledgment that the bill would be subject to change.

    “We know this bill’s not perfect right, because it’s the beginning stages of a bill,” said cosponsor state Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport.

    One criticism was a reduction in the number of gifted students in a district that would trigger that district to report information on their gifted program. The districts would only need to report the information if there is at least 20 students considered gifted within that district.

    “A lot of districts are smaller and may not have that many, and yet that seems to be an important measure and information for the parents of students in that district,” said state Rep. Mary Lightbody, D-Westerville.

    Jones said bill sponsors plan to meet with the Ohio Association for Gifted Children tomorrow to work on that element of the bill.

    The bill’s measurement of students will be delayed for the same reason sponsors of a state testing bill are trying to modify standardized testing across the state, being conducted in the pandemic-shortened school year.

    “For some schools, we don’t want to start measuring them right away because, let’s face it, we’ve got a learning gap that we’re going to have to try to fill in the 21-22 school year,” Jones told the committee.

    As state report card discussions went on, Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee passed the bill that would change the state’s standardized testing plan, which typically informs state report cards.

    The bill, which extends the time allowed to take and report state and federally mandated standardized testing, was passed after it was amended to include the emergency clause the House did not approve as they passed the bill.

    One exception to the state testing extensions was for third-grade reading assessment. Sponsors of the bill said previously that the assessment couldn’t be moved because it determines progression to fourth grade.

    That bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote.

  • State testing bill passes committee without stopping exams this year

    State testing bill passes committee without stopping exams this year

    By Susan Tebben and Ohio Capital Journal

    An Ohio House committee passed a bill regarding state education testing on Wednesday, with the bill looking quite different than its original version. It now extends the period for testing and reporting of grades.

    The bill changed significantly because of a decision made last week by the U.S. Department of Education that will not allow blanket waivers of federal testing in schools.

    The federal agency said, however, that tests can be shorter and participation can be less than the usual 95% requirement, according to a letter from the agency. Schools can also request that test scores not be counted against them.

    Wednesday’s bill passed through the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee along party lines.

    Before the committee favorably passed the bill, several amendments were inserted into the bill to make up for the moot federal waiver measure.

    “These are all changes to help schools and students be held harmless as much as possible,” said cosponsor Kyle Koehler, R-Springfield.

    The bill doesn’t stop state testing, but extends the testing period, including for versions of English, math, science and social studies.

    The third-grade English/Language Arts testing period will not be extended from its deadline of April 23, according to Koehler.

    “The reason that is, is because those third-grade reports are used to promote kids to the fourth grade,” Koehler said.

    The deadline for reporting the third-grade ELA tests is extended from June 15 to June 28 as part of the bill, and reporting for report cards will be moved from Sep. 15 to Oct. 14.

    ELA tests for fourth grade through 12th grade will be extended one week, similar to tests in other subjects.

    Math tests will continue, and the bill’s cosponsor, state Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, said Ohio has a unique circumstance that forces them to continue math testing. Because Ohio allows integrated math studies that can’t be separated for testing purposes, those tests couldn’t be waived, he said.

    The only state test that has been eliminated is American History, which some legislators took issue with, partly because they felt if one test could be eliminated, others could be as well.

    “We can waive state testing; we chose one, American History, which right now in our climate is probably the most important one that is taught and tested in our buildings,” said state Rep. Lisa Sobecki, D-Toledo.

    Removed from the bill was a provision regarding the ACT and SAT because many schools have already administered those exams.

    The Ohio Department of Education was asked about virtual testing ahead of Wednesday’s committee meeting, according to chair Gayle Manning, R-North Ridgeville.

    “These discussions we’ve had with ODE, there’s no way of doing virtual testing,” Manning said.

    State Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, has expressed in the multiple committee hearings his disapproval of standardized testing as a whole, but said he’d be willing to compromise if the test administration could be expanded further, to include summer tests, for example.

    Miller was skeptical about the amount of parents who are placing stock in these state tests over individual evaluations in schools, negating a study of more than 700 parents done by non-profit education organization Ohio Excels, who testified at a previous committee meeting that eight out of 10 parents they surveyed wanted to use state testing as a benchmark for achievement.

    “I think you’ll find that not eight out of 10 parents care about the end score of these tests, and you’ll probably get a 30% to 40% participation rate on these exams,” Miller said.

    Koehler said he’s received push-back from both sides on the bill and keeping the testing, but said quick passage of the bill would move it along in the legislative process for more discussion in the Senate, and at least bring some relief, rather than leaving school districts to resolve the issues.

    “If I could come up with another 90 days to do that, that would be great, but unfortunately last (week), the federal government did something that caused an issue with that,” Koehler said.

    Several former teachers on the committee focused on the underlying flaws in state testing, which they said could have been further exposed if sponsors of the bill had done more to halt testing.

    “I don’t know that any of these tests are going to give us any information beyond what we already know,” said state Rep. Mary Lightbody, D-Westerville. “That we have a lot of problems in administering and in providing education for our students that adequately supports them.”

    Supporters of the bill said while it has its issues brought on by the federal complications, those that have had in-person instruction want to see their progress in the way they’re used to seeing it every year, especially when there is no punishment attached.

    “Let’s keep the kids in mind and put the differences aside about whether we’re going to do really well or we’re not going to do well,” said state Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport. “Because let’s face it, in any given year, students are going to succeed and students are going to fail.”

    The bill now moves on for a full House vote.

  • [SHORT SURVEY] Do Ohio parents believe that humans or computers should grade their children’s written essays on Standardized tests?

    [SHORT SURVEY] Do Ohio parents believe that humans or computers should grade their children’s written essays on Standardized tests?

    Loveland-area resident Alice Culbertson, graduate student in Education at Xavier University, is conducting a research study that asks the following question: “Do Ohio parents believe that humans or computers should grade their children’s written essays on standardized tests?” Below is some general information about the topic of human vs. computerized scoring, followed by a short survey for parents to share their opinions on this issue. 

    If you are an Ohio parent who has had at least one child take a standardized test in an Ohio school any time during grades 3-12, you are encouraged to complete a short survey to share your opinions on this issue.

    Every year, millions of school children in America take state-mandated standardized tests. To manage the cost of such large-scale testing, many of the questions follow a multiple-choice format because computers can score the answers quickly and cost-effectively. Some questions, however, require written essay responses that are graded by humans, a slower and more expensive process. In an effort to reduce the time and cost associated with human scoring, several testing firms are working with technology companies to produce automated essay scoring (AES) software that can score essays as well as humans can.

    One of the leading proponents of AES is Mark D. Shermis, Dean and Professor, School of Education, University of Houston–Clear Lake, who has conducted several studies in which computers were shown to score essays with comparable results to human scoring. Les Perelman, research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), former professor of writing and composition, and a vocal opponent of AES, has also conducted research in which computer scoring proved to be less accurate than human scoring. 

    Shermis, AES software developers, and testing companies claim that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the capability to grade essays correctly and consistently. Perelman and primary, secondary, and post-secondary educators maintain that computers are incapable of evaluating a number of important elements of writing such as logic, tone, organization, and creativity, and should therefore not be used to grade essays. 

    Pros of Computerized Scoring cited by Shermis and other Proponents of AES

    • Several studies have shown that computers gave virtually identical scores to those given by humans on the same set of essays.
    • Computerized scoring can save time and money spent on testing, and test results can be returned to families and schools more quickly.
    • Humans who score essays are temporary employees who only need a bachelor’s degree in any subject, and the ability to adhere to a rubric (a chart that shows them how to score the essays).

    Pros of Human Scoring cited by Perelman and other Opponents of AES

    • Several studies have shown that computers can be fooled into giving high scores to poorly written essays based solely on the length and key words contained within the essay.
    • Human scorers are able to evaluate important elements of writing that computers cannot, such as tone, logic, organization, and creativity.
    • Computers can only score simplistic essays with scores comparable to those given by humans, meaning that test questions would have to be “dumbed down” in order to be accurately scored by a computer. 

    There is virtually no research documenting how parents feel about the prospect of computers grading their children’s written essays.

    The question of whether computers should score essays is a growing area of contention among educators, software firms, and testing companies across the country. Largely absent in this debate, though, is a sector of the population that has a personal stake in standardized testing scoring: the parents of those students who take the tests, whose educational paths may be affected by the scoring outcomes. While research has shown that parents have had differences of opinion as to whether their children benefit from standardized tests in general, there is virtually no research documenting how parents feel about the prospect of computers grading their children’s written essays.

    If you are an Ohio parent who has had at least one child take a standardized test in an Ohio school any time during grades 3-12, you are encouraged to complete a short survey to share your opinions on this issue. Simply click the link below to access the survey. Please feel free to share this link with any other Ohio parents. Thank you!

    https://kwiksurveys.com/s/VJ8A5d3V#/0   

    All survey respondents will remain confidential, and the results of this survey are for classroom purposes only and will not be published. Results of the study will be available after January 2, 2018, and may be obtained by emailing a request for results to culbertsona@xavier.edu.