How Educational Redlining Works in Ohio
In an extraordinary indictment of the test-and-punish regime imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind and renewed last December in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, Bill Mathis and Tina Trujillo of the National Education Policy Center decry the kind of rating and ranking of schools that was reproduced on September 15 in its 2016 version here in Ohio: “The greatest conceptual and most damaging mistake of test-based accountability systems has been the pretense that poorly supported schools could systemically overcome the effects of concentrated poverty and racial segregation by rigorous instruction and testing. This system has inadequately supported teachers and students, has imposed astronomically high goals, and has inflicted punishment on those for whom it has demanded impossible achievements.” “This diverse nation and our common good require all students to be well educated. Yet, we have embarked on economic and educational paths that systematically privilege only a small percentage of the population. In education, we invest less on children of color and poor families. At the same time, we support a testing regime that measures wealth rather than providing a rich kaleidoscope of experience and knowledge to all. And we do not hold ourselves responsible for the basic denial of equal opportunities.”
Yesterday, Rich Exner, the data analyst for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, examined the newest Ohio school district report cards that award letter grades to school districts based on their students’ test scores: “The Ohio school report cards released earlier this month were nearly perfect in following an established trend—higher income districts on average scored better than those with lower household incomes. This was the case for five of the six overall categories in which the Ohio Department of Education issued grades…. The incomes were typically higher for the districts getting As, and the incomes were typically the lowest for those getting Fs. Incomes for Bs, Cs and Ds correspondingly declined.”
How the state came up with each of its graded categories is not entirely clear, but for five of How Educational Redlining Works in Ohio | janresseger:
