OSD Special Report, PAGE One Magazine, Aug. 2016

SPECIAL REPORT: Opportunity School District

Flawed Foundation:

OSD Relies on Standardized Tests, Outdated CCRPI and Ignores Poverty Factors

By Dr. Allene Magill, PAGE Executive Director

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n Nov. 8, voters will decide whether the Georgia Constitution should be amended to allow Gov. Nathan Deal to create the Opportunity School District (OSD).

This proposed state takeover of struggling, high-poverty schools uses scores from the College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI) to justify the power grab. The CCRPI derives its scores primarily from student performance on standardized tests. If you’ve kept abreast of the issue, you know that standardized testing in Georgia has earned low marks for reliability. We also know that low test scores are, more than anything, a direct reflection of poverty in a community.

The Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) waived the use of this spring’s Georgia Milestones Assessment System for student promotion or retention in third, fifth and eighth grades. Districts were also given the flexibility to

retest students who performed poorly on the tests. Most districts reported they would not take the time to retest. Furthermore, due to the problems with the 2015-16 test administration, scores will not be used to produce a Teacher Effectiveness Measure or Leader Effectiveness Measure score for educator evaluations under the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System or Leader Keys Effectiveness System until at least the 2019-20 school year. This begs the question: If the scores are not reliable enough to determine student promotion and retention decisions or educator evaluations, how can they be reliable enough to wrest control of schools from a community and locally elected school board?

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If the CCRPI scores are not reliable enough to determine student promotions or educator evaluations, how are they reliable enough to wrest control from locally elected school boards?

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August/September 2016

SPECIAL REPORT: Opportunity School District

Educational Leaders Warn of Consequences of Opportunity School District PAGE Executive Director Dr. Allene Magill is not the only state education leader speaking out about the proposed constitutional amendment to take over local schools — Opportunity School District (OSD). Here’s how others are framing this important issue: “At first glance, Georgia’s proposed Opportunity School District sounds like a great idea. Nevertheless, it could open the door to the privatization of public schools, which will drain scarce funds into hands of for-profit shareholders.”

— Ernie Lee, 2016 Georgia Teacher of the Year and a Teacher at Windsor Forest High School in SavannahChatham County

“It is the absolute power and authority the OSD superintendent is given. Local boards of education have absolutely no say. The local community has no say. School board members are elected by the citizens… .

They are close to the districts, they know the educators, they know the environment they are teaching children in. … No one will be able to move the needle unless they engage the local community.”

— Valarie Wilson, Executive Director, Georgia School Boards Association (Georgia Trend, December 2015)

“Many of us here in [DeKalb County Schools] believe that standardized tests may not fairly take into account, or accurately measure, the extreme complexity of education and learning in a district like ours, with 135 schools and 102,000 students from 180 nations and with 144 languages. … We’re counting on classroom relationships — and investing heavily in them — to turn around academic metrics. No outside agency, governmental or otherwise, can provide the care, nurturing and emotional support needed to inspire our students to higher achievements. Only student relationships with superb teachers and principals can do that.”

— DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Dr. R. Stephen Green (CrossRoadsNews, March 25)

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As evidence mounts, decisions based on standardized test scores are coming under increased scrutiny and a groundswell of parents and students from all walks of life have opted-out of the testing. They cite the negative effects of high-stakes testing on students, their instruction and the educators who teach them. The outcry during the 2016 legislative session came from students, parents, the Georgia Parent Teacher Association, educators and every major education organization in Georgia.

Georgia’s legislators heard the concerns loud and clear. In a rare showing of bipartisan cooperation, the General Assembly unanimously passed Senate Bill 364, which significantly reduced the use of standardized tests in educator evaluations and dropped the requirement of using Student Learning Objectives for teachers of non-tested grades and content. Another bill that specifically offered testing opt-out provisions was vetoed by the governor.

The call to further diminish the impact of standardized testing will fuel even stronger reaction and advocacy in the 2017 session.

The College and Career Readiness Performance Index was written as a waiver to offer relief from the overly burdensome and unrealistic expectations of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Congress agreed in December 2015 to replace NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act. It provides extensive relief to the most onerous requirements for testing and educator evaluation tied to testing. CCRPI is based on the old federal law, and Georgia will either adjust to meet the Every Student Succeeds Act or new state guidelines will be written specifically for it.

Georgians are being asked to amend the Constitution to allow the state to take over local schools based on an outdated achievement matrix and unreliable test data.

State Could Redirect Local Funds

Even if you believe that standardized tests are reliable indicators of performance and that the CCRPI is the best measure of effectiveness, one still has to question why the state needs yet another method to control local schools. The GaDOE already possesses the power to force change

OSD-eligible schools as a group showed greater student growth from 2012-2014 than their “high achieving” counterparts and greater growth than many other schools in Georgia. on underperforming schools, so if the state already has a lever to effect change in these schools from a constitutionally empowered agency (GaDOE), why does another branch of government seek to override the DOE? And why would a governor want to wrest control from local boards of education and communities? It’s a motivation as old as humankind: power, control and money. The governor’s office through the OSD superintendent will have the power to take over schools, facilities and resources and will have the ability to redirect those resources to for-profit corporations to operate the schools as charters without all of the overhead and capital costs that the local board must fund. A superintendent appointed by the governor and managing up to 100 schools from an office in Atlanta cannot be expected to do any better in turning these schools around than the experienced educators who are on site and working with teams from the district and

The state Department of Education already has the power to force change upon underperforming schools, so why does the governor seek to override that? The answer is money. The governor’s OSD office will have the power to redirect local funds to change the schools into for-profit charters run by corporations.

August/September 2016

Low test scores are

school to analyze the issues and a direct reflection of determine strategic interventions.

That’s especially true if nothpoverty in a community. ing is done to address community issues that leave children and families without the resources to make education a priority. And, contrary that many label as low achieving reflect to the narrative from OSD proponents, the economic and resource challenges of a close examination of the CCRPI data their communities. Furthermore, there from 2012 to 2014 shows that the OSDis ample evidence that educators in these eligible schools as a group showed greater schools are helping students make signifistudent growth during that three-year cant progress, although they still have far period than their “high achieving” counto go. Rather than punish the educators terparts and greater growth than many doing the hard work in difficult-to-teach of the other schools within the state. circumstances, our state should do all it OSD-eligible schools are almost entirely can to boost these communities. comprised of poor, minority students: The idea of an Opportunity School More than 90 percent participate in the District only makes sense when viewed Free and Reduced Lunch Program and 95 from the “opportunities” it provides those percent are either black or Hispanic. In who will benefit from wresting power contrast, the high-achieving schools have and resources from local communities. fewer than a third of students on Free It certainly makes no sense for children, and Reduced Lunch and about 25 percent communities, educators or local boards of of students are black or Hispanic. As I education. n say to audiences across our state, schools Vote “no” on OSD in November.

Wording of the School Takeover Referendum Is ‘Misleading’

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any who oppose the Opportunity School District referendum, which will appear on Georgia ballots Nov. 8, contend that the wording is crafted to persuade voters without knowledge of the consequences to vote “yes.” The ballot will read as follows: Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?

“Basically, the state will take over the operations at the county’s expense, but the referendum doesn’t say that,” says Richmond County School Board Member Jack Padgett, who was quoted in Metro Spirit. “The wording is totally incorrect as to what it actually does.”

Don McKee, columnist of the Marietta Daily Journal, states that “the language of the proposal on the ballot is blatantly and deliberately misleading, obviously calculated to ensure approval by the voters.”

Unless extensive voter education efforts succeed, the ballot language may confuse voters in the following ways: • Voters with good intentions to August/September 2016

improve educational outcomes for students in struggling schools may respond favorably toward the stated goal to “improve student performance.”

• The words “intervene in chronically” play to parental fear: a child’s peril inside a sickened environment.

• The trend of blaming educators has led to negative impressions of the entire public education system. Thus the words “failing public schools” will affirm perceptions held by some voters.

• The word “Constitution” is interpreted as a symbol of protection and liberty.

During the 2016 legislative session, there were several failed attempts to modify the ballot question, including the following language proposed by Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta): Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow an appointee of the governor to take over local school operation, buildings and control of all federal, state and local funding if a school has low scores on standardized tests or for any other reason a future legislature may n allow?

“It’s going to be a battle between local control and state control. … While we frame this as perhaps an opportunity to get some districts on track, many of those districts already are working as hard as they can and as smart as they can. It is yet to be seen whether this is going to be a saving grace.”

— Steve Dollinger, President, Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (Georgia Trend magazine, December 2015)

‘Effective school reform is done in collaboration with communities, parents, students, educators and administrators.’

“The OSD superintendent/governor would have extraordinary authority to close schools; fire and replace teachers and principals; reassign students; waive state rules and policies; issue orders to the elected school boards; transfer schools to the State Charter Schools Commission; and on and on. All this could be done with essentially no input from local parents or other community members. So much for local control over education.”

— Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow, American Principles Project (The Augusta Chronicle, June 19)

“To take away democratic principles is monumental and allows Georgia communities to be stripped of their identities as having primary responsibility of educating their children. ... In a time where collaboration is the key to systemic change, simply changing governance as the key to reform has a greater result of creating divisions — not unity. … If you vote this in, what you’ve said is that you’re giving the responsibility to educate your children to someone else.”

— Clarke County School District Superintendent Philip Lanoue, 2016 National Superintendent of the Year (Athens Banner-Herald, Feb. 21)

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SPECIAL REPORT: Opportunity School District ‘No one should feel as if they are not at risk. … If the local BOE is not in charge, the entire community has lost its voice.’

“No one should feel as if they are not at risk. … If the local BOE is not in charge, the entire community has lost its voice. The feelings of the [Parent Teacher Organization] won’t matter. We know our children better than anyone.”

— Elaina Beeman, Rome City Schools Board of Education (Rome News-Tribune, June 19)

“[The College and Career Ready Performance Index] was not designed for this purpose. … [This] is a direct attack on locally controlled schools. …

Local control of schools is about as American as apple pie.”

— John Knox, UGA Professor and Athens-Clarke County Board of Education Member (The Red & Black, June 21)

“The architects of the OSD are targeting low-income communities using arbitrary achievement levels to declare their schools and the students in them as failing.”

— Kent McGuire, President and CEO, Southern Education Foundation (Annenberg Institute for School Reform)

“Effective school reform is done in collaboration with communities, parents, students, educators and administrators. Top-down strategies have repeatedly not proven successful in sustaining high-quality public education. It is the teachers, school leaders, students and parents who must carry out and push forward any improvement strategies; they must be engaged for the reforms to succeed.”

— Warren Simmons, Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and a Southern Education Foundation Board Member 12 PAGE ONE

“It’s a glorified way to get the taxpayer’s money.”

— Joyce Morley, DeKalb County Schools Board Member (The Atlanta JournalConstitution, April 15)

“The state department has people who are dedicated to helping schools now. … I’m concerned about basing the need for help, for takeover, on a single score, especially when the criteria keeps changing. … You need local people in control who know the issues that are contributing to lower achievement,” he said. “It could be anything from lack of resources in the home, language barriers, teacher turnover, an ineffective principal. A local BOE would know that. All of these are issues that someone in Atlanta can’t know.”

— John Jackson, Superintendent of Floyd County Schools (Rome NewsTribune, June 19)

“We always talk about the problems with state control and federal control.

Well, they are taking local control away from us — the citizens. … If the governor has a cure for the problems in education, why doesn’t he give it to us and let us do it ourselves? What magical potion does he have that we don’t have? … It will get to the point that these teachers will feel like they have to move and try to go to a betterperforming school because they may lose their jobs.”

— Marion Barnes, Richmond County School Board Vice President (Metro Spirit, July 6)

‘The so-called state Opportunity School District ... deserves overwhelming defeat by the voters of Georgia.’

“How can the state operate any differently than the county does with a superintendent sitting in Atlanta with no direct contact with the schools themselves? … I’ve seen some incredible principals go in who have everything going for them as far as changing the attitude of the students, and they totally strike out. … It is easy to blame the parents, but [when they have] to work two or three jobs, they just don’t have the time to give the children the attention they need.”

— Jack Padgett, Richmond County School Board Member (Metro Spirit, July 6)

“We have kids… who move four times in a year because of challenges they face at home. These teachers will work with them and get them to a certain point and, all of a sudden, they move again and start over in another school with a new teacher. … And so many of these schools that could qualify under OSD are in the poorest neighborhoods. You can’t expect these students to learn and achieve if they are hungry or if they are worried about having a place to stay that night.”

— Helen Minchew, Richmond County School Board President (Metro Spirit, July 6)

‘It is the absolute power and authority the OSD superintendent is given. Local boards of education have absolutely no say.

The local community has no say.’

“Good intentions notwithstanding, the proposed state constitutional amendment to create the so-called state Opportunity School District represents an unwarranted, dangerous power grab that deserves overwhelming defeat by the voters of Georgia.”

— Don McKee, Columnist (Marietta Daily Journal, July 7)

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