This document is a virtual petition of sorts and the number of supporters increases daily.

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1 This document is a virtual petition of sorts and the number of supporters increases daily. An Open Letter to Ohio Legislators, State of Ohio School Board Members and the Ohio Department of Education Leadership: Many stakeholders throughout the State of Ohio are partnering with our teachers, students, school boards, parent leaders, fellow educators and others to express our concern and displeasure regarding the current reality that we face in our urban, rural and suburban public school districts. While our districts are as diverse as our state, we are united in our message to you. We have a very clear and common goal more thoughtful and collaborative decision making from those that we have elected to represent us. We have joined to create a coalition with the hopes of persuading you to not only listen to us, but hear and involve us. The current conditions of student assessment and accountability coupled with the opportunity that the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act provided the catalyst for this communication to you. We respectfully ask that you listen very carefully and then concentrate on hearing what we have to say. Local Stakeholders Need a Greater Voice and Are Your Allies At some point in time Ohio s Department of Education and its Legislative and Executive branches of government became one in the same with regards to Ohio s Educational System. We are concerned that there is a lack of checks and balances between the Governor, the Ohio Legislature, the State Board of Education and the Ohio Department of Education. Our current decision making and law creation system has the governor and legislature simultaneously running Ohio s schools with a Department of Education that is beholden to both entities and often appears caught in the middle. As a result, all three units agree with one another and there is very little opportunity for input, constructive criticism and debate. Ohio desperately needs a new state superintendent who is a credible leader capable of balancing the perspective of all the groups that are advocating for high quality public education. On Creating Thoughtful Legislation Over the past two years there has been legislation written that has required rewrites, amendments and media releases in order to clarify the legislation or explain the unintended consequences it has created. Examples include the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee, College Credit Plus, and so on. We believe that if there was more meaningful collaboration with those of us in the field the number of unintended consequences would be greatly reduced and Ohio would have a more efficient legislation writing process. On the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) As public school advocates we see the potential relief from over accountability and the re establishment of local control that is contained in the ESSA. There are a few points that we wanted to make on this act:

2 Hiring a charter school advocate and former legislator from the Ohio House of Representatives to be the Department's Senior Policy Advisor is concerning to school superintendents. We ask the Ohio Legislature and the Ohio School Board Members to see local stakeholders as allies with similar interests. In order to fully realize this potentially powerful relationship it will be important for you to listen, hear and involve us. Comments on the timeline to implement There is No Need to Rush Full ESSA implementation must occur in and while we recognize Ohio will need to create a transition plan; the next State Superintendent should be responsible for creating our state s transition plan, not a former lobbyist and legislator. In order to ensure a smooth transition, a person that has worked within a public school district needs to be at the helm creating and directing the implementation of Ohio s model of the ESSA. Those currently writing educational policy in our state seem to be doing it behind a closed door and believe that gathering input from stakeholder groups occurs by ing a survey to the field and never sharing the results with those that completed the survey. We in the field need more meaningful input into the implementation of a Federal law that will have a significant impact at the local level. Failure to do so will result in more inefficient legislation being created. We want Ohio to revise its self imposed ESSA timeline and extend it so that a coalition of stakeholders can have more meaningful input. Teachers are our greatest resource and rushing initiatives has, unfortunately, become a tradition in education. Teachers look to local leadership for guidance in implementing new initiatives and when we cannot explain to them why and how, it becomes problematic. Educators can help with the development of educationally and developmentally sound timelines for implementation. Please involve us. Testing School Districts Administer Tests Too Please recognize that any testing decision that is made and the time it will take to administer those assessments (which takes away instruction) will be in addition to each district s current and local student assessment program. As educators we have a responsibility to gather student learning data as learning is occurring to make instructional adjustments. We also evaluate learning mastery at the end of a unit of instruction. Ohio s state accountability system is in addition to what already exists at the local level. If a law is made to limit testing time it should be done with the state assessments and not impede on our ability to gather real time information to make local instructional decisions for students. Exercise Local Control While we recognize the ESSA requires high quality student assessments in math, reading/language arts and science there is room for SEA control. Ohio has referred to itself as a local control state and our hope is that Ohio s decision makers will listen and hear those of us in the field stop the state driven over testing of children. Overemphasis on testing results in curriculum shrinkage and test prep. It takes away from a teacher s ability to be innovative and creative in the classroom. Children in Ohio deserve

3 classrooms that are engaging, require critical thinking, and allow them to explore their interests. Instructional time with teachers should serve to prepare students to be more collaborative, more communicative and more creative not better test takers. Being the best test takers in the world shouldn t be our goal. Being innovative has been our Nation s strength. We recommend that Ohio engage in the minimum amount of testing required under the newly created ESSA because we cannot fulfill our desire at the local level to create instructional environments that foster communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking when the accountability system fails to see the value in these skills. Users of the Assessment Results Don t Trust the System The testing environments and conditions in many school districts last year dealt a significant blow to the credibility of Ohio s assessment system. The assessment system in Ohio does not provide results back to educators in time to impact instruction. It reports on learning and does not provide meaningful feedback to the district office, the building principal or the classroom teacher. In addition, the format that the assessment results are delivered to school districts does not allow teachers and building level administrators to easily analyze the data. As the new assessment system is constructed, please consider one that will allow educators to use the data more efficiently and effectively. We spend far too many local resources purchasing software and hiring consultants to try and understand assessment data for tests that we didn t design. Fix the Test Format Delivery Issues There is considerable distrust from many in the field regarding the impact that the test format had on the results (e.g. online, paper/pencil and mixed). Recent information that was reported at the National level demonstrated a significant difference between those that took the test in a traditional format versus those that took the test electronically. A grassroots effort that was organized by Mike Molnar, Executive Director of Educational Services for the Amherst Exempted Village School District, has shown a very disturbing trend between those districts that administered the assessments in a paper/pencil format versus online. The test format issue will need to be addressed quickly and the state should consider a moratorium on issuing accountability ratings for districts until it has been proven that the format that is used to take the test does not unfairly impact the accuracy of achievement performances. In addition, the state should revoke any accountability ratings connected to the Value Added metric until a full inquiry has been conducted. While many will look to blame PARCC, it would be presumptuous to assume that the fluctuations in Ohio s student progress measure (known as Value Added) noticed across the state were due to students not knowing how to use technology for testing. There were core test delivery issues and a significant difference between the complexity of the items on online assessments versus paper/pencil tests. In addition, simply connecting to the test platform was a significant challenge for many districts. Our state assessment system must be stable before using it to grade the performances of the school districts. The very large swing in report card grades serves as an indication that something isn t right. Stop the political spin doctoring with statements such as Ohio has raised the bar; Students need to learn technology to be better test takers; and so on. Own the problem and fix it.

4 In closing we believe that there is a common ground. We recognize that as educational leaders there must be an accountability system in place in order to measure and demonstrate that the resources which are being invested into the educational systems throughout Ohio are indeed making an impact. The conflicting statements issued by the leaders from our state confuse the voters in our community. For instance, State Representative Fedor and State School Board Member Wagner indicated, every grade on these report cards is tainted by unverified, arbitrary, poorly designed and implemented tests that have been thrown out by the Ohio Legislature. At the same time the interim state superintendent says, Ohio annual report cards show how our schools are doing and where they can improve. In addition he writes, If you are a parent, the school report card will give you a reliable read though not the only read of how well your child is being served. A reliable read? Reliability in assessment is obtained when there is consistency in the system and the current system does not portray one of consistency. John Q. Taxpayer isn t sure who to believe and given the lack of public trust in government he is left to fill in the blanks on his own. Ohio should and can do better than that. Thank you for your time and consideration. Respectfully supported and on behalf of many, Dr. Jim Lloyd, Superintendent for the Olmsted Falls City School District Mr. Michael Sheppard, Superintendent for the Berea City School District Mr. Bob Scott, Superintendent for the Avon Lake City School District Dr. Michael Zalar, Superintendent for the North Olmsted City School District Mr. Jeff Patterson, Superintendent for the Lakewood City School District Mr. Geoff Palmer, Superintendent for the Westlake City School District Mr. Scott Goggin, Superintendent for the Midview Local School District Mr. Steve Sayers, Superintendent for the Amherst Exempted Village School District Mr. Michael Laub, Superintendent for the Avon Local School District Dr. Keith Kelly, Superintendent for the Mayfield City School District Mr. Greg Gurka, Superintendent for the North Royalton City School District Mr. Bob Hunt, Superintendent for the Chagrin Falls Exempted Village School District Mr. Todd Yohey, Superintendent for the Oak Hills School District Mr. David Hile, Superintendent for the Licking Valley Local School District Mr. Steve Anway, Superintendent for the Old Fort Local School District Mr. Todd Osborn, Superintendent for the Liberty Union Thurston Local School District Dr. Andrea Townsend, Superintendent for the New Bremen Local School District Dr. Thomas Tucker, Superintendent for the Princeton City School District Mr. Ron Sexton, Superintendent for the Wilmington City School District Dr. Robert Ferrell, Superintendent for the Milford Exempted Village School District

5 School Boards Mr. Joe Bertrand, President of the Board of Education for the Olmsted Falls City Schools Mrs. Lindsay Sooy, President of the Board of Education for the Old Fort Local School District Mrs. Jacqueline Arendt, President of the Board of Education for the North Royalton School District Organizations Mrs. Becky Higgins, President of the Ohio Education Association Mrs. Kelly Walker, President of the Olmsted Falls City School District PTA