No more Ohio Graduation Test?

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

If you told Big Wal­nut High School stu­dents that soon there would be no more Ohio Grad­u­a­tion Test, a.k.a. OGT, you might expect a loud and bois­ter­ous “YAY”. But that “YAY” moment might be short-lived when you tell them what’s com­ing down the pike to replace the OGT — a nation­ally stan­dard­ized col­lege readi­ness test and 10 end-of-course/year exams in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, Math­e­mat­ics, Sci­ence and Social Stud­ies will replace the Ohio Grad­u­a­tion Test.

Accord­ing to a Novem­ber 20 press release, the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion (ODE) are devel­op­ing require­ments to seek bids for a nation­ally stan­dard­ized assess­ment to mea­sure stu­dent prepa­ra­tion for post-secondary edu­ca­tion and the workforce.

The new national assess­ment will be required of all high school sopho­mores begin­ning with the 2014–15 school year, with no cost to school districts.

The press release also notes that begin­ning with the 2014–15 school year, the OGT will be replaced by a series of end-of-course/year exams in core high school sub­jects, includ­ing Eng­lish I, II and III; Alge­bra I; Geom­e­try; Alge­bra II; Biol­ogy; Phys­i­cal Sci­ence; Amer­i­can His­tory; and Amer­i­can Government.

Stu­dent per­for­mance on these required tests is expected to be part of the student’s course grade – pos­si­bly 20 per­cent — and a fac­tor in Ohio’s revised account­abil­ity sys­tem. A tran­si­tion plan is being final­ized for full imple­men­ta­tion of the new require­ments for Ohio’s stu­dents and schools.

Big Wal­nut is in the third year of a four-year tran­si­tion to new Math and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Stan­dards com­mon between the states but com­ing down from the national level – a.k.a. Com­mon Core Stan­dards; while Sci­ence and Social Stud­ies are tran­si­tion­ing into what are called Revised Ohio Aca­d­e­mic Con­tent Standards.

As the dis­trict tran­si­tions to the new stan­dards, tech­nol­ogy is also being upgraded. The dis­trict wants stu­dents to become more pro­fi­cient with the tech­nolo­gies they will need for online assess­ments that will soon be in place, and as their edu­ca­tion con­tin­ues at the col­lege level and in the workforce.

Fast for­ward to a Decem­ber con­ver­sa­tion with Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Achieve­ment Angie Pol­lock, who said, as with any­thing in edu­ca­tion today, things seem to change almost daily.

Asked if Big Wal­nut is com­pletely ready for the change from OGT’s to end of course exams and national achieve­ment assess­ments, Pol­lock said not quite.

“But we’re in a lot bet­ter shape than many school dis­tricts,” Pol­lock added. “Our plan is to be ready by 2014–15. We’re going to tackle it hard this year and next year.”

Pol­lock said one pos­i­tive ele­ment of the new assess­ments would be online test­ing in the fall months, mak­ing it eas­ier for teach­ers and staff to track stu­dent progress before school is out for the year.

“In the long run we know it’s best prac­tice to have checks along the way to see how stu­dents are doing,” Pol­lock said. “The only test we have now in the fall is for third-grade read­ing. I like begin­ning of the year online test­ing with fast results, plus another check along the way before stu­dents take the high-stakes test.”

Also new in 2014–15 will be fourth and sixth grade Social Stud­ies assess­ments, Pol­lock said, Math­e­mat­ics assess­ments in grades three through eight, and state devel­oped Sci­ence assess­ments in grades five and eight.

“Cur­rently, there is no Social Stud­ies test until high school,” Pol­lock said. “It’s a change from the cur­rent fifth and eighth grade Social Stud­ies test that’s sus­pended. There will also be Eng­lish tests in grades three through eight and the first three years of high school.”

One of the down­sides to the change in Eng­lish assess­ments, Pol­lock said, is because of the move to online test­ing there will not be a sep­a­rate writ­ing test, just what’s being labeled as a Com­pre­hen­sive Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Test.

Pol­lock said the new Com­mon Core Stan­dards for Eng­lish call for a shift from fic­tion to non­fic­tion, not just in Eng­lish classes but across the curriculum.

“Stu­dents will be get­ting 30 per­cent fic­tion and 70 per­cent non­fic­tion across their day,” Pol­lock said. “This is a big shift from what we’ve had before. We still want to expose stu­dents to great lit­er­a­ture, but we want to also expose them to the real world.”

Pol­lock said the four-year tran­si­tion to Com­mon Core Stan­dards has been a big part of the dis­trict being ready for assess­ment changes.

“We’ve spent a great deal of time prepar­ing for this dur­ing our waiver days and teacher col­lab­o­ra­tion time,” Pol­lock said. “First we dove into the new stan­dards, and now teach­ers are work­ing out how to insert these new stan­dards into the class­room. We would like to see the high school ready to go at the end of this year.

“We’re at a major place in edu­ca­tional reform; a huge push to reform edu­ca­tion,” Pol­lock con­tin­ued. “The prob­lem is they’re try­ing to change every­thing all at once — new eval­u­a­tion sys­tems, insert­ing tech­nol­ogy into the class­room, mov­ing to online test­ing — and that’s for every­body, just not for our school dis­trict. They’re imple­ment­ing all these changes and teach­ers in Ohio are over­whelmed, but we’re in a good position.”

Pol­lock said the state is also talk­ing about chang­ing the state report card format.

“I believe they’re mak­ing all these changes out of order,” Pol­lock said. “I would like to see the new stan­dards in 2014–15 with new assess­ments, then have them look at the state report card, then look at the eval­u­a­tion sys­tem. The way these changes are com­ing at us, it’s really frus­trat­ing for our staff. We’re try­ing to keep focused on our stu­dents so they’re learn­ing, but some­times it’s hard to do when all these changes come at you.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 9 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.