Schools

District Fighting State on Test Scores

Superintendent: Enforcement change of federal mandate could drop Beachwood's state rating

Beachwood City Schools could face lower state ratings because of a new policy that counts some standardized test scores earned by students with disabilities as failing, no matter their performance.

At issue is a change in the way the Ohio Board of Education enforces a federal law that, until the 2009-2010 school year,  did not affect Beachwood.

Students with severe learning disabilities are eligible to take an alternate test instead of the traditional state-mandated standardized tests. The U.S. Department of Education allows only 1 percent of “alternate” tests taken by students with severe learning disabilities to count toward that district’s annual report card.

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Until the 2009-2010 school year, the Ohio Department of Education granted exceptions to this cap to small school districts, including Beachwood.

Now, when the number of students with learning disabilities who take an alternative test exceeds the federal limit – last school year, the district had 16 students in this category and they are allowed 10 – the remaining six scores count as failing on the district’s report card.

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Beachwood Schools were downgraded last year from “Excellent with Distinction” to “Excellent.” School officials fear that dropping state ratings could sway voters to vote down levies to support the schools.

Test scores, along with factors such as school attendance and graduation rate, are used to rate all Ohio public schools annually.

“We tend to attract a large number of students with disabilities,” Superintendent Rich Markwardt said. “It’s the quality of services here and the resources in the district that draws those parents here. Consequently, it makes it harder for us to go back to the community and ask for support if our report scores are lower.”

But the Ohio Department of Education said that the rating for Beachwood Schools would have dropped even with no policy change.

“Even if the district had all the alternate assessment results included in their calculation without any reclassifications, still the district would have experienced a decline in the PI [performance index] from the prior year,” said Jeanine Molock, Director of Accountability with the state education department.

Markwardt, though, said he worries that the district’s scores could continue to fall in the future because of the policy change.

“I’m still extremely frustrated by what I see as the inherent unfairness of this,” said Markwardt. “Why devalue the scores of some our students but not others?”


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