In what way are these tests "more difficult for minority and economically disadvantaged students to accurately reflect their true level of mastery"? Please explain.

Kirsten, I couldn't agree with you more. Come on people when are we going to get our heads out of the clouds and see things for what they are. We are not spending our money wisely and letting the teachers actually teach our kids. Let the kids be more hands on, go on field trips, technology isn't always the answer. Half the time the technology doesn't even work at the schools anyway.

We are not superior to other cities or districts, we are not as "enlightened" as people think we are. We have crime, people - KIDS- are getting shot in our streets and yet we are complaining that the tests aren't fair or accurately representing our schools. WAKE UP! Life isn't fair so let's realize that now and do what needs to be done.

I do not have kids in CH-UH system. In the past I voted for school levies. Over time I stopped because I came to the conclusion that no matter how much money was spent per student academic performance was going downhill as opposed to improving. In short spending tax dollars on schools without getting an improvement in performance is a waste of money. The problem is not with the socailly or financially disadvantaged students there are those kinds of kids in Solon , Mayfield, and Shaker Heights. All those school systems spend less per student and have better results than CH-UH. Find what those systems are doing right and don't ask for tax increases until after the schools have improved . More money is not the issue.. Throwing more money into the CH-UH system at this time is madness.

As an involved parent who’s very involved in our schools, I’m very upset the State is using this ranking index. It’s not an objective or accurate measurement.
One need to keep in mind this is an INDEX (not a measurement), its calculated based many weighted factors. The scores are totally determined by the state officials who are determining what factors to include and how heavily those factors are weighed against each another. Many of these weights are arbitrary.
For example, wonder why so many Northern Ohio schools are statistically on the bottom of the list? Our cost of living, operating costs, energy and labor costs are much higher than schools in Middle and Southern Ohio. Thus as a whole, Southern Ohio schools will score higher on the index.
This index implies those districts higher on the list perform better. This is not the case if part of this score is impacted based on where the district is physically located.

And another issue that makes this INDEX an unfair measurement for our community. Our student body is widely diverse. We have top performing students graduating from Heights and going to top of the line select universities. And, 60% of our kids coming into our schools are at or below poverty levels. Many of these kids don’t even know their ABCs when they enter Kindergarten. But the facts show our district can get these kids up to proficiently levels within 3 years. Our district has the expensive obligation to deal with all of these kids, top performers, kids in the middle and kids with challenges. We statically have a higher percentage of these latter kids than most other districts. We even run the Belfair School which from a statistical perspective and the way the State test scores are calculated, really hurt our rankings.
So when these factors are combined in this Index, our CH-UH rankings are going to be low. One has to ask hypothetically, if Rocky River (a top ranked school) had, for example, the Belfair School within its borders – it would have ranked significantly lower. Is this fair? Is this really a measurement of ‘Performance’? Not really. In fact the INDEX is terribly misleading and really hurts our community.
My kids and their peers are getting a great education in the Heights Schools compared to their friends in other Private and Public schools. I love the diversity in our district and so proud we have schools like Belfair in our borders.

Our State Legislator came up with this ‘Performance Index’. It’s upsetting that our Legislators feel it was more important to spend time on this than fix the way we fund Public Schools. This is really huge problem far more important than some arbitrary inaccurate index.

This is what happens when the school district and the Heights administration has spent the last 30-40 years looking the other way when illegals from East Cleveland and Cleveland crossed our border to attend Heights schools. Why did it look the other way ? Simple: So the district could qualify for more federal grant money. The result: More and more parents sending their kids to private schools ... more illegals coming ...lower and lower test schools. Bottom line: You sow precisely what you reap.

Jim Posch, maybe we could understand better if a $ analysis was put together that pulled out some costs like the Bellefaire school, and the parochial student busing.

Then, it might be easier to grasp that the extra tax $ really *do* provide valuable extra services. Or services that other systems aren't as heavily exposed to.

Maybe some headcounts on these would help, as well. I'd love to see a meaningful chart that shows a similar 'cost per student' as those other districts, rather than the gross $ comparison we see in the article.

Thanks!

I guess your right Mr. Posch..I should have expanded my definition of "neighborhood" to North Coventry nect to East Cleveland. Your issue as well as other school apologists is that rather than focusing and addressing the negatives you would rather engage in happy talk and gush about diversity and other such nonsense rather than face the reality that the broader community has rejected this palaver (yes palaver) and has moved on while the Heights schools continue their death spiral.

once again, these people have come to me for a levy increase;

once again, i emphatically voted against it;

once again, i see that this is one of the highest cost districts not only in the state, but the nation, as well;

once again, i see it is down just above East Cleveland, and by all rights deserves every bit as much to be on academic watch;

now once again, somebody please tell me why we keep throwing good money at these unproductive, clearly incompetent school board members and administrators?

this is PRECISELY why people are leaving ohio faster than roaches do a kitchen floor when the lights are turned on...

Mr. Posch, this will be my last post as well. Maybe you can use your "constructive" time in encouraging the School Board and Superintendent to focus a little more on on improving student test scores rather than congratulating themselves on a job well done. A bottom 5% ranking in the Achievement tests in the whole state is pathetic. Rather than meaningless happy talk and diversity seminars, a little accountability might be in order. Your ilk has not done the community any favor by living in denial. And one more thing, every member of the community has a vested interest in better schools, including me, because the way it stands now, no one in their right mind would move to this city as a direct result of the state of the schools.

A high percentage of students in high performing districts are motivited by and supported by a network of family and friends that increase student performance. Unfortunately, there is a relatively low percentage of students in low performing districts with similar support. These academic rating programs do give a district an understanding (though imperfect) of student performance within the district, and they can be properly used for that purpose (and are, I believe). In this vain they can be used to rank student performance from district to district, despite Jim's problems in their methodology. The valid criticism is they cannot be used appropriately to rank the educational opportunity a district provides its students, and this is what Mel and others seem to believe they are good for.

Rocky River has a very high percentage of well-supported students and the district does a good job with those students, and the district ranks well, as it should. CHUH has a low percentage of well-supported students, it does at least as well with those students as Rocky River does with similar students. But CHUH has a high percentage of poorly supported students that struggle no matter how well the district works with them, so the its ranking falls; judging success with these students takes years within the district, and CHUH does have the stats to support that the district does very well over time, even with these difficult students. Unfortunately, the transient population of these students makes it very hard to show consistent improvement over time. This isn't being an apologist for the district, it's the reality of the circumstances. I fear that because these testing regimes are often used for attaining political rather than educational goals, the Jims and Mels of the world will never get together to work toward improving our schools.

Mine was the first post of the day, then I shut the computer off. What a mistake! I didn't mean to open up a can of worms. My desire to have the superintendent's comment explained was a sincere request for an informed explanation. I did not mean it to come across as a negative, sarcastic jab at our schools. Regardless of what the test scores say, we have been very pleased with the Heights Schools and our children are thriving in them. Because of this not having any relevance to the index scores, we will continue support them on their path from "continuous improvement" toward "excellence with distinction."

All these rankings do is tell you how many white middle class kids you have in your district. I reject them completely. But then I reject 99% of what American education tires to accomplish so I guess that's no surprise.

And Rocky River is full of drug addicts. I dated a guy from that district and he shot up cocaine. Such a lovely place.

All we need to do is change the standards. Like the one blogger said, stop penalizing northern schools for having higher utility costs than those in southern ohio (Really she actually said that). I propose we add to that by giving bonus points to CHUH district for the number of tardy days per student multiplied by the coefficient of the numbers of kids involved in flash mobs divided by the number of kids breaking curfew.
If this doesn't help us rise in the standings, then just subtract 300 places from our current dismal rating. We need to do something!

It's interesting. The parents with kids in the schools don't seem real upset. I'm not sure what the connection to the schools is for the complainers.

The kids at Heights are not all going to go to Harvard. If you're looking for that, move to Solon, or Ricky River, or Beachwood.

Those schools don't have a Bellefaire, or hot meals for poor kids, or a Hebrew Academy to bus kids to.

The Heights schools succeed in teaching the kids that are actually enrolled. They come away better prepared than they arrived.

Do I wish the tax was lower? Of course. I wish all my taxes were lower. But uninformed criticisms of the school aren't warranted.

Orange School District has Beechbrook and Gund School and it doesn't seem to hurt their ratings much at all. Shaker is in the mid 300 on the list, is it too much to ask to get within the top 400?? Some folks seem think it's ok to accept poor performance. Not every district in the top 100 is Solon or Beachwood, many parents are failing their children in many districts throughout the state. Check CH-UH and Euclid 30 years ago, they were excellent performing systems and now they are some of the worst in all of Ohio.

Now you're talking. Lets figure out what services the various districts offer, and to how many students, and at what costs. And just what *is* a reasonable ranking on this new scale? I want results and accountability, same as anyone else. That requires data, and in-context comparisons. Maybe the various districts can provide some of this.

But what I *really* want to know is what is my school district doing about this "Pizza is a vegetable" fiction?

I made my comment early on and it has interested me to see where it has netted out. I am a parent of children in the district. I support their schools as much as I can. I also voted against the levy. What I don't get here is why do we need to make as many distinctions as we do. How I am reading this is that we are spending a great deal of money with not a lot of ROI. They need to look at how they are spending the money and re-evaluate what is truly in the best interest of our kids. Teachers = Valued asset. Smart boards not so much. These kids need to learn the basics and if each year our teachers are being told to teach math a different way so the kids will pass the TESTS, how are our kids supposed to truly learn anything. Be consistent, let the teachers teach, only then will our scores go up.

But comparing one district to another when in reality it isn't an apples to apples comparison and throwing district household income in there as a reason for us failing is just another shield to throw up to say "woe is us" instead of getting in there and fixing the problems.

Stop whining, parents work with your kids on their homework, see what they are doing, you are as much of the problem as the district and the state are. If we don't take interest in what and how they are learning how are the kids going to ever learn to be interested themselves.

I'm a Heights resident and planning to send my daughter to kindergarten at Fairfax next fall. My husband teaches at Hawken where we would qualify for some discount in the tuition, but we want our daughter to go to our local school which is just a block away. We love it here in Cleveland Heights and plan to be very involved in her public school education. Are we foolish to send her to Fairfax? Some friends seem to think so. Some say we should at least apply for her to go to Roxboro which is ranked so much higher. I want to somehow make it work right here in our own neighborhood. What can be done to improve our community's school system? There must be a way.

We thought about Hawken as I was in the CHUH system through 6th grade and then was able to go to Hawken for through middle and high school. It just didn't work out for us. Both our children attend(ed) Fairfax and we love it. The teachers and current principal are great. My greatest concern is with the district. It is the fact that they just don't get it these days. They think they are still the community district of the past and they aren't. And on top of it they then try to force Infinite Campus, Smart Boards or any other tech idea to say that we are cutting edge but it isn't helping the kids that get lost through the cracks. Our district is diverse and not in the best ways. You have the Haves and the have nots and every possible socio-economic status in between. What happens is that you have people who think that their views reflect the district as a whole and just don't get that they aren't the majority and won't accept any other point of view. They are uber involved to a point of being a disruption to those trying to do the best for the schools and the district as a whole. Then on top of it the district hires consultants that know nothing of our schools or our community to make suggestions on what we should be doing. I am ranting a little here but the district has potential, it is just that it is not being tapped properly.