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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > March > 02
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Editorial: State hasn’t learned how to judge progress
Ohio has been a pioneer in recognizing school districts whose students make progress, even if they may not pass state-mandated tests. But its system for judging how much progress is being made is being seriously questioned.
In the early years of the modern movement toward standardized tests as a way of judging schools, low-scoring school districts complained that the state did not reward them for big gains. Schools were measured only against other schools, not on student progress.
That’s changed. This will be the third year Ohio gives extra credit to districts for making this kind of progress and penalizes those that fail to make “expected” progress on state tests.
But trends in the state’s data look implausible; questions about odd patterns aren’t being answered.
That may be because the statistical model on which Ohio based its system to calculate academic growth is the secret property of the company that designed it.
The anomalies have to be explained. The data problems could mean that there are serious flaws in the testing system.
And scores that don’t add up could mislead parents about the quality of their schools, confuse educators about how well they’re doing in the classroom and lead lawmakers astray.
In an essay entitled, “Is Ohio’s value-added system broken?” Cleveland State professor Douglas Clay points to a strange “yo-yo” effect in the statewide data over the past two years.
(The essay was touted on Gadfly, a blog operated by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and can be found at tinyurl.com/ybbmwtb.)
Mr. Clay points first to fifth-grade reading scores in 2007-08. Statewide that year, a phenomenal 83 percent of schools failed to meet “expected growth” in reading. Just 2 percent were above expectations, and the rest had average improvement.
Looking at the same group of kids the next year in sixth grade, Mr. Clay expected to see a similar pattern.
Instead, the 2008-09 sixth-grade class saw its performance completely flip: 98 percent of schools rated above expectations in reading, and not a single school statewide was below expectations.
That is such an extraordinary reversal that Mr. Clay describes it as all but statistically impossible.
Mr. Clay found similar, if not quite so pronounced, “yo-yo” patterns for other groups of kids in other grades. He also saw the pattern in math scores.
Colleen Grady, a former Ohio school board member, has similar concerns that the growth measure may not be providing accurate data. (Ms. Grady blogs here, along with Susan Haverkos, a state school board member from West Chester who represents part of the Dayton area.)
She says she had concerns about the methodology years ago, when the state board was crafting the program.
An Ohio Department of Education spokesman says a review of the improvement measure is upcoming, and that revisions may follow, but that the state has confidence in the model, noting that the U.S. Department of Education is pushing other states to try it.
Unsatisfactory. The state must address the concerns Mr. Clay has raised and explain the extent of the data problem he cites. Doing anything less erodes confidence in the rating system.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ohio government, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
Martin Gottlieb: Trammell story is about changing American times
The Rev. Raleigh Trammell’s story is about a lot more than alleged misbehavior on the money front. It’s a chapter in American history.
It’s about what happened to the American civil rights movement after its most basic goals were met and after remaining racial issues proved more resistant to political action. It’s about race in America.
Generations of Americans now alive have no memory of the glory days of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its main founder, Martin Luther King Jr.
They don’t know firsthand of his fights, of a time when black Americans could be kept out of stores, restaurants, public bathrooms and swimming pools — not to mention polling places —because of race.
Some people try to remind them every year on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
That is a good thing, lest young people see the civil rights movement through the fights of the 1980s and beyond.
In those years, a time when racism was a real but fading force in American society, some people saw it even where it wasn’t, at every turn, or almost.
This was inevitable. The nation was going through a transition. “How powerful is American racism?” had a different (and complex) answer every decade.
People who had grown up in a world defined by racism were destined to be skeptical about just how much change was actually taking place behind closed doors and in people’s hearts.
Enter “the race card,” the use of dubious charges of racism to get attention or apply pressure. Playing it was often just a cheap hustle associated with the likes of New York’s Rev. Al Sharpton. But more and more people also saw the old-line civil rights organizations as too likely to play it.
Trammell certainly played it at the local level, even into this century. When his old ally Ricky Boyd got rushed into retirement by the Montgomery County public health agency, Trammell hammered away at “blatant racism.”
Others who rushed to Boyd’s defense shied away from the racism charge. After all, two board members who voted against Boyd were black.
Also in the last decade, Trammell was leading an effort to “nationalize” a crusade about alleged discrimination at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. But public interest was minimal.
There came a time — 2006 — when the SCLC held a national convention in Dayton and almost nobody came. An SCLC letter to potential vendors predicted 10,000 attendees. But a discussion with Sharpton and Martin Luther King III drew 100. The largest events had settings for 500 and 600 people.
Ultimately, Trammell was just boring. Same old, same old, same old. He and the old-line civil rights organizations were struggling for followers and members. Many sophisticated, young and middle-aged blacks were looking elsewhere for political leadership. But alternatives, too, had trouble finding a role and a following.
The decline of the civil rights groups was an opportunity for some. It created a vacuum. A person could easily get access to the revered “SCLC” label, complete with a sizable soapbox.
When Trammell became chairman of the national SCLC, that didn’t seem an indication that he had been underestimated locally. It was the most striking evidence yet that the old-line civil rights groups were in a deep rut.
Now his story could serve as the final chapter in a book about Martin Luther King Jr.’s once-great organization and its role in American life. Even if that organization survives, the Trammell chapter could symbolize much about what it has come to.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Columns, Locals in national affairs, Martin Gottlieb
Ellen Belcher: ‘Creative class’ guru takes a beating
Here’s a pretty brutal critique of Richard Florida, the “creative class” guru who has been to Dayton and whose thinking fostered the DaytonCREATE initiative.
The piece in The American Prospect, from back in January, points out that Florida is essentially reversing course and suggesting that the Daytons of the world are unlikely candidates for an economic comeback.
Here’s a taste:
“Florida, 52, now head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, is a relentlessly genial fellow who tries to disarm skeptics by accepting their points in good cheer, as if to suggest there is really no difference of opinion at all.
“But in a telephone interview, he disputes that ill will could exist in cities that paid handsomely for his insights, only to find themselves declared beyond repair a few years later.
” ‘I’ve never tried to sugarcoat the message to any of them,’ he says. ‘I’ve given them the facts … about what they were up against. I never tried to give them false hope. I encouraged them to work on their assets, but I tried to be honest and objective in helping them engage their problems. I hope they don’t feel let down.’ “
Florida has a new book — The Great Reset — coming out in April. He telegraphed its thesis in The Atlantic a year ago.
“We need to be clear that ultimately,”, Florida wrote in “How the Crash Will Reshape America,” “we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. … Different eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. … We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography.”
Dayton is mentioned toward the end of Alec Macgillis’ piece in The American Prospect:
“Across the country, the battle to attract the creative class carries on. In Dayton, Ohio, billboards and T-shirts carry a new Richard Florida inspired logo: ‘Dayton patented. Originals wanted.’ The city is building bikeways, passed an anti-discrimination ordinance in 2007 to increase its score on Florida’s ‘tolerance index,’ and has given a local group called DaytonCREATE the use of a vacant bank, now called ‘c{space,’ ‘where they hang out and do a lot of their creativeness,’ Mayor Rhine McLin says.”
Does anyone want to defend Florida — or add to the criticism of his work? Any thoughts on his contributions to Dayton or his theories?
Permalink | Comments (41) | Post your comment | Categories: Blog entry only, Dayton Creative Class Initiative, Ellen Belcher
