OK School Performance & Deceptive Data: Parents & School Board Members Untrained to Assess Student Outcomes
State's Primary Measure of Student Success is Not What Many Assume
If someone told you your child’s school district had a 95.7% Academic Achievement rating, how would you feel? If you then learned that only 46.6% of students at the same district scored as proficient or better on state testing, would that change your view of the district’s performance?
Within the Oklahoma School Report Cards system (oklaschools.com), the state’s public portal for school data, Academic Achievement is featured prominently at the top of each school and district page of performance “indicators”.
State assessment scores, now renamed “Performance Level Snapshots”, are well below, minus the elaborate, colored charts and graphics the other indicators of student success or failure enjoy. Further information about state testing scores in English, math and science are buried as Assessment Performance in a different, less prominent area of the portal labeled “About Our District” just under information about teachers, financials and civil rights data collection.
This deemphasis of student scores first occurred in 2019, as the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) introduced revamped public-facing data concerning the performance of public schools, districts and the state as a whole. At that time, existing measures showed academic results for the state’s school children to have taken a significant turn for the worse during then State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister’s tenure. The new measures appear to have been, in part, a reset that prevented comparisons to earlier data.
After a contentious fight among stakeholders and a three-year halt in issuing controversial letter grades to schools, the OSDE added new benchmarks to its system. The new measures emphasized Academic Achievement and Student Growth. Despite scores on state assessments, the historically primary benchmark for student and school performance, taking a backseat at that time, the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA) has continued to lobby for the complete removal of all letter grades for Oklahoma schools.
Five years later, with Academic Achievement well established as the front-facing and new gold standard within the state’s public data system, many parents and local school board members are working under the assumption that their districts and school sites are performing far better than student testing would suggest.
Assessment Performance vs. Academic Achievement: Federal Government Influence, Identity Politics & Lowering the Bar to Include Those Not Proficient
As a measure of student learning, student performance on state testing has remained a comparable data point over time. It is simply the percentage of students scoring “at or above proficiency on their state tests”. Within four grading levels for such tests (below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced), Assessment Performance for a school or district includes only the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced.
Current Assessment Performance scores for Oklahoma’s approximately 1,805 school sites range from 0% to 72% (yes, at some Oklahoma schools, 0% of students are proficient). The state’s average Assessment Performance score, after dipping to a low of 24.5% (2022-21), now stands at 27.4% (2022-23). This average suggests more than 500,000 of Oklahoma’s approximately 700,000 public school children are below proficiency in the combined core subject areas of English, math and science.
The graph below depicts the distribution of Assessment Performance scores around the average for all Oklahoma public school sites.
The Academic Achievement indicator is considerably more complicated involving an equally weighted combination of Improvement Toward Expectations (ITE) and Performance Level Snapshots (PLS) resulting in a graph that looks considerably less alarming than the same depiction of Assessment Performance.
Academic Achievement is represented as a percentage of total points (maximum 45) earned by school sites and districts. Scores across the state range from 1% to 100%.
Half (50%) of the Academic Achievement point calculation involves state assessment scores, now renamed Performance Level Snapshots (PLS). However, unlike Assessment Performance, Academic Achievement includes students scoring basic on testing along with those considered proficient (proficient and advanced scorers). Basic is below proficiency, providing a considerably lower bar. During the 2022-2023 school year, 35% of students across the state scored as basic in a combined scoring of English, math and science state tests.
The other half (50%) of the Academic Achievement calculation involves the infusion of identity politics into measures of success for students with some encouragement from the federal government. To measure Improvement Toward Expectations (ITE), priority student groups divide learners into ethnic and other subgroups, applying lower achievement targets below proficiency for some and giving points toward the Academic Achievement calculation in consideration of those lowered targets.
These priority groups are aligned with required data reporting dictated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and include “students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, English learners (EL), Black/African American students, Hispanic students, Native American/American Indian students, Asian/Pacific Islander students, students who identify two or more races and White students”.
According to the OSDE at the time the measure was introduced, “This innovative grouping method is unique to Oklahoma and can unmask previously hidden trends in student performance, particularly for historically underserved student populations.” A closer look at the formula suggests more masking than unmasking.
In reviewing the targets applied for elementary school students within ethnically identified priority groups for 2018-19 (earliest data available), only black students had targets below the 300 point level which indicates proficiency. Lowering expectations for students of color sounds a lot like racism. It also makes the system less accountable for assuring black children in public school classrooms reach proficiency by awarding schools points for students falling below that bar.
Given the Academic Achievement measure was designed to determine if students are “ready for the next grade, course, or level”, unless there’s a different world awaiting black students than their non-black peers, creating lower targets is illogical and insulting to the inherent potential of those children. Along with black students, lower target levels were similarly applied to all non-ethnic subgroups (students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, English learners).
Academic Achievement Indicator Masks Effects of Illegal Immigration on Oklahoma Schools
Further complicating the Academic Achievement formula is the exclusion of students new to the country until their third year in U.S. schools whether categorized as English learners or within some ethnic group. According to the OSDE’s School Report Card Overview:
“Students who have been enrolled in U.S. schools fewer than 12 months are considered recently arrived English learners. In their first year in Oklahoma public schools, these students are required to participate in state assessments in ELA and math (and science, if entering in grade 5 or 8). However, their performance is not included in the Academic Achievement indicator. In the second year, their scores will be included in the accountability system as part of the Academic Growth indicator using the first year’s scores as a baseline. Finally, in the third year, their scores will also be used for the Academic Achievement indicator.”
The Academic Achievement indicator effectively weeds out the impact of illegal immigration on student outcomes during those years providing a lack of transparency and accountability for the considerable amount of public funding flowing to those services.
Variance Between Measures Dependent Upon District Quality
The difference between Academic Achievement and Assessment Performance appears to vary based on the academic quality of the district. Many of the state’s lowest performing districts, such as Western Heights, Millwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Shawnee, see less variance between indicators. In some cases, proficiency (Assessment Performance) is slightly higher than Academic Achievement (examples from 2022-23 data):
Western Heights PS: Academic Achievement = 2.0%; Assessment Performance = 8.7%
Millwood PS: Academic Achievement = 4.7%; Assessment Performance = 8.4%
Tulsa PS: Academic Achievement = 7.0%; Assessment Performance = 12.7%
Oklahoma City PS: Academic Achievement = 7.7%; Assessment Performance = 12.0%
Shawnee PS: Academic Achievement = 18.5%; Assessment Performance = 16.7%
For nearly all other districts, Academic Achievement outshines Assessment Performance, sometimes by nearly 50 percentage points (examples from 2022-23 data):
Harmony PS: Academic Achievement = 95.7%; Assessment Performance = 46.6%
Deer Creek PS: Academic Achievement = 85.0%; Assessment Performance = 49.1%
Edmond PS: Academic Achievement = 71.2%; Assessment Performance = 43.2%
Mustang PS: Academic Achievement = 65.8%; Assessment Performance = 36.7%
Owasso PS = Academic Achievement 65.0%; Assessment Performance = 39.3%
Do School Board Members Know How Their Districts are Performing? OSSBA Training in School Performance Data Non-Existent
Those with the most control over school policy, budgeting and staffing receive no training concerning measures of student, school and district academic performance. The Oklahoma State School Board Association (OSSBA), longtime provider of required training for all elected, public school board members, provides no training or data to its members related to academic performance.
After recently reviewing available data (oklaschools.com) with a local school board member in one of the state’s most sizable districts, the member expressed being surprised about the lower than expected number of proficient students in that member’s district.
According to the current board member, “The talking points used to describe student achievement can be misleading.”
The board member confirmed school performance was never brought up in any required or elective training sessions through the OSSBA. Elected school board members have long been required to complete OSSBA courses in ethics, open meetings/records, and finance and can choose elective sessions in everything from discipline policy to conducting performance reviews on superintendents. A review of all available OSSBA professional development offerings shows none covering student and school performance or the large amount of online data available from the OSDE.
In January of 2024, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters announced plans to discontinue the OSDE’s partnership with three education lobbying groups including the OSSBA, the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration, and the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center.
According to Walters in comments to the media at that time, “We look at groups that have continued to take money from schools, take money from taxpayers and say that they are going to improve student outcomes. And we see them weaponize against parents, we see them target parents, we see them fight against parent rights.”
In February, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to remove OSSBA as an automatically approved group for providing local board member training, opening the field for other organizations to apply to provide such professional development offerings.
Review All Performance Data for Your Child’s School: Visit oklaschools.com
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