Ohio Board Member Mary Rose Oakar Joins Schools in State Ratings Fight

A longtime local voice in politics has joined Beachwood City Schools’ fight in Columbus to change a policy that the district argues unfairly affects their state ratings.

Beachwood City Schools argues that they 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.

Mary Rose Oakar, a Cleveland native who represents District 11 — most of Cuyahoga County — on the Ohio State Board of Education, met with administrators, board members and parents from the Beachwood city School district earlier this month.

Oakar is the ex-officio officer of the Ohio State Advisory Panel for Exceptional Children, a committee that advises the ODE on matters relating to students with disabilities.

She heard from the district about the federal cap on the number of alternate test scores that the district is allowed to count as passing in their state ratings.

Beachwood was one of the small districts across the state that received waivers until 2009 that allowed for all their scores to count. Now, extra alternate test scores count as a fail on the state ratings, even if they are passing scores.

“The state used to give waivers but they felt — because they didn’t have a great monitoring program, which is part of the problem — they felt that schools were taking advantage of this,” she said.

“The state of Ohio said a few years ago no more waivers, because some schools were putting these children in, taking this alternate test, who were really not cognitively disabled.”

Oakar said that the solution lies in the state giving waivers, like they did prior to 2009, and monitoring schools more closely so that no district allows students without disabilities to take the alternate test.

“The federal government allows one percent, but they do allow the state to give waivers,” Oakar added. “Do we change the federal law or do we do better monitoring?”

Oakar added that Bedford City Schools and a few other schools across the state are joining with Beachwood to fight the policy, and that Jeffery Mims, another state board member representing counties in southwest Ohio, including Dayton, is also on board.