The Talawanda School District has claimed the highest rating of Excellent with Distinction but will be downgraded under a new ranking system.
The Ohio Department of Education proposed a change in Ohio school standards in February. The aim of this adjustment is to give school districts a reprieve from some of the provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act. This waiver of certain requirements will enable targeted attention on low-performing schools and allow schools to have more flexible use of government funding and more control over tutoring programs.
According to Patrick Gallaway, Ohio Department of Education's Associate Director of Communications and Media, another new standard of particular importance is the establishment of a new rating system. The old system used terms such as Academic Emergency, Continuous Improvement or Excellent with Distinction, while the new grading scale will rank schools with letter grades.
Holli Morrish, spokeswoman for the Talawanda School District explained the change.
"Everybody knows what a letter grade means . . . regular people are familiar with those terms," Morrish said.
These new letter grades are meant to give citizens a reference on how schools are doing in clearer terms, according to Gallaway.
For the Talawanda School District this means receiving a B rating instead of an Excellent with Distinction.
Factors in the new rating system such as percent of indicators met, gap closing and performance indexing are more rigorous than in the former rating system, which is the reason for Talawanda's B.
"I think a lot of schools who were originally ranked at the top will now realize there are still improvements to be made," said Miami first year Natasha Segarra, who believes this new system will help motivate and revive schools that have been coasting.
"We are currently in the process of receiving answers back from the U.S. Department of Education . . . there've been challenges with the implementation, the biggest challenges made known to us were a bit unrealistic so we have developed a way to say to the Federal Government that we are still going to work towards accountability and moving students forward, but we need flexibility in meeting these goals," Gallaway said, in reference to the proposal for flexibility on the NCLB provisions.
According to Morrish, Ohio is one of many states determined to raise schooling standards.
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"The United States is not competing well with some of the other industrialized nations," Morrish said.
She cited this as a reason for the nationwide movement to improve education.
Segarra echoed this sentiment saying, "it makes sense that education is being reformed; there is huge competition with foreign countries on education standards."
In 2009 Obama started the Race to the Top initiative, which rewards states that have the highest education standards with extra government funding for school systems. According to Morrish, the Race to the Top initiative helped to prepare Talawanda schools for more rigorous goals, like the new proposal.
"We are using the framework inside of Race to the Top to basically prepare our staff, our students and our community for what's coming in the future: new standards and new assessments," Morrish said.
The new assessments will be tied with technology such as online tests and assignments and an eventual switch from computers to iPads or social media devices.
"There will definitely be [a] transition to a lot more technology through instruction," Gallaway said. "Many districts are already doing this, some first graders are already on iPads."
He said he envisions an "evolution of assessment," that will allow Ohio schools to adapt to the 21st century.
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