For those taxpayers that are wondering if their ever-escalating school property taxes are really benefiting the community, this article may shed some light on the deceptions being played on you.
Brian Massie, over-taxed citizen
We have been researching Lake County’s Riverside School District 2022’s report cards, and became quickly aware that the Ohio Department of Education keeps “moving the goal posts” so that taxpayers are not really sure of what they are being told about their public school’s performance.
*****
Here is what was told to us by current and former members of the State of Ohio School Board:
“In the “old days,” before ODE started changing the test developers and tests, it used to publish/provide a spreadsheet with the threshold requirements (“cut scores”) for the different levels on each of the state tests. For example, if the 3rd Grade Math test had 100 questions, a student needed X number in order to be considered to be proficient.
I have absolutely no idea how it is currently calculated and most importantly, whether it is comparable from one year to the next. Is the threshold number the same for 2022 as it was for 2019, or is it lower to make district performance look better? Furthermore, are the question difficulties the same from one year to the next? There are so many ways to manipulate the “definition” of “Proficiency” that it is (intentionally?) virtually impossible to know for sure.
That would be an interesting question for someone at ODE. The only problem is, I tried calling last week with a different question (“Why are EPP numbers provided in the district 2022 Report Cards, but the data are unavailable for download?”) and after pushing some buttons on the phone to, in theory, direct me to the right department, it just kicked me off into dial tone. Twice.
So … fewer than 50% of Ohio’s students grades 3-12 are “Proficient” in Math, so we’re going to focus on gender issues.
I just shake my head.”
*****
The following is an example of “moving the goalposts” at the Riverside School District. The first schedule shows the old proficiency scores by school building.
The following is the new measurement of “proficiency” scores for Riverside for the school year 2022.
Here is the website for Ohio School Report Cards:
https://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/
The following is Ohio’s interim Superintendent of Public Education, Dr. Stephanie K. Siddens’, narrative on how “Ohio School Report Cards Show Achievement Results Moving in the Right Direction”.
Take a look at the proficiency scores on page 2 for “All Students”.
Reading – 64.6%, 57.0%, 59.5% for 2019, 2021, 2022 [no scores for 2020 because of Covid plandemic.
Mathematics – 61.0%, 48.2%, 50.5% for 2019, 2021, 2022
Technically, the reading and math scores did go up in 2022, but they still indicate the half the students are functionally illiterate.
We were curious to see how the Covid plandemic impacted the proficiency scores for the Riverside School District.
Here are schedules we created showing the results by school building for each grade from the school year 2014 – 2022 taken from the Ohio Department of Education website:
[use the arrow icon to change the page orientation]
We then grouped the scores by subject matter and by grade: (reading, math, etc)
Here are the proficiency scores sorted by elementary, middle and high school, and the last schedule is all grades and all subjects:
So what did we learn from this exercise?
The Covid plandemic did negatively impact the proficiency scores:
| Subject | Overall 2014 – 2022 | Before Covid | After Covid | Diff |
| Reading | 72.3% | 73.6% | 68.2% | -5.4% |
| Math | 70.4% | 74.0% | 59.7% | -14.3% |
| Science | 74.3% | 74.9% | 72.4% | -2.5% |
| Gov’t & History | 75.1% | 75.4% | 74.2% | -1.2% |
| All Grades & Subjects | 71.4% | 73.4% | 65.7% | -7.6% |
| Elementary Schools | 78.1% | 79.7% | 73.5% | -6.2% |
| Middle Schools | 67.5% | 71.0% | 57.3% | -13.7% |
| High School | 69.1% | 70.1% | 66.6% | -3,5% |
The Parkside School seems to be the top performing school in the district.
The LaMuth Middle School scores are flaming disaster.
We have barely average readers throughout the district.
Except in third and fourth grade, math is like a foreign language. The scores would indicate that many high school students do not know the difference between a circle and a triangle, and could not solve a quadratic equation.
And now the school district wants to focus on social, emotional learning which will take away time from the academics.
It is no wonder that there is a growing surge of home schooling.
Why is this happening? Why the lies, deceptions and betrayals? Listen to a very courageous Linda O’Brien of Mentor address the Mentor School Board. We agree 100% with Ms. O’Brien, and the betrayal starts at the Federal Department of Education.
*****
Advertisements
*****
Categories: Education, Riverside S.D., Uncategorized