Ohio School Report Cards...

Senate Bill 55: Overview

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     "Senate Bill 55 was passed by the Ohio General Assembly in August 1997. Its provisions claim to represent a package of school improvement and academic accountability initiatives that will serve the best interests of the children and citizens of Ohio. Combined with the fiscal accountability provisions of House Bill 412, Senate Bill 55 represents a neo-conservative, highly political approach to controlling schools and denying opportunity for achievement to all Ohio students. While the claims sound good to the uninformed and the political slogans grab media sound bites and headlines, the assessment measures of the Ohio School Report Card can be shown to be invalid across virtually all aspects." (Randy L. Hoover, April 6, 1999.)

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Highlights of Senate Bill 55

• Sets out minimum standards for school district performance
• Increases the rigor of Ohio's high school exit exams and graduation requirements
• Puts in place the "Fourth Grade Guarantee" and other academic remediation provisions
• Establishes statewide general requirements for retention of habitually truant students
• Seeks to create safer, more productive school environments

Minimum standards for school district performance

Senate Bill 55 puts in place a performance accountability rating system that uses a tiered approach to identifying schools based on their performance and focuses on improvement over time. Under the new law, the State Board of Education and State Department of Education are required to issue, for each school district, an annual report card and designate each district as "effective," "continuous improvement," "academic watch," or "academic emergency."

The law also sets out the following 18 criteria for determining each district's rating:

• 75 % of students passing the citizenship (1), mathematics (2), reading (3), and writing (4) portions of the Fourth-Grade Proficiency Tests.
• 75 % of students passing the citizenship (5), mathematics (6), reading (7), and writing (8) portions of the Ninth-Grade Proficiency Tests by the end of 9th grade.
• 85% of students passing the citizenship (9), mathematics (10), reading (11), and writing (12) portions of the Ninth-Grade Proficiency Tests by the end of 10th grade.
• 60% of students passing the citizenship (13), mathematics (14), reading (15), and writing (16) portions of the Twelfth-Grade Proficiency Tests.
• 93% minimum student attendance rate (17).
• 3% maximum dropout rate (18). ODE is seeking legislative action to make this standard a 90% graduation rate, which is reflected on the 1999 trial report card.

School districts are assigned a performance accountability rating based on the number of performance indicators they meet. According to Senate Bill 55, school districts will be rated according to the following criteria:

• "Effective": Achieves 17 or more of the indicators.
• "Continuous Improvement": Achieves 10 to 16 of the indicators.
• "Academic Watch": Achieves 6 to 9 of the indicators.
• "Academic Emergency": Achieves 5 or fewer of the indicators.

The law also calls for the future addition of nine other indicators to the performance accountability rating system, including student performance on the Ohio Sixth-Grade Proficiency Tests and the science proficiency test at all grades tested. This will bring the total number of indicators used to calculate district performance accountability ratings to 27. At that time, the number of indicators school districts need to achieve to earn each rating will be adjusted accordingly.

High school exit exams and graduation requirements

Senate Bill 55 phases out the Ohio Ninth-Grade Proficiency Tests in favor of a new set of tests designed to provide a more rigorous measure of students' high school achievement. These tests will be:

• Administered at least once each school year to all tenth-grade students.
• Administered at least twice each school year to all eleventh- and twelfth-grade students who have not yet attained a passing score on any of the tests.
• Beginning spring 2003. The existing Ohio Ninth-Grade Proficiency Tests will be phased out in the summer of 2004.
• Required to qualify for a high school diploma starting September 15, 2004.

In addition to establishing a new exit exam, Senate Bill 55 puts in place a more stringent set of academic requirements students must meet to earn a diploma. Those requirements include:

• Increasing the number of units required to earn a diploma from 18 to 21 for high school students graduating after September 15, 2001. This requirement expands the minimum hours of required instruction by 360 hours.
• Increasing the number of English language arts units required for graduation from three (360 hours) to four (480 hours).
• Increasing the number of mathematics units required for graduation from two (240 hours) to three (360 hours).
• Increasing the number of science units required for graduation from one (120 to 150 hours, depending on whether unit is a laboratory course) to two (240 to 300). The law also specifies that, as of September 2003, students are required to have three units of science (360 to 450 hours), including one unit each of biological sciences and physical sciences.
• Reducing the number of elective units that may count toward the required number for graduation from nine (1,080 hours) to eight (840 hours) through September 2003 and to 7 (720 hours) from then on.
• Choosing one unit (or two half units) of electives from among the areas of business/technology, foreign language and the fine arts.

Senate Bill 55 also gives students the option of earning credit toward graduation before entering the ninth grade, if the advanced work is both taught by a person licensed in Ohio to teach high school and designated by the district as meeting the high school curriculum requirements.

"Fourth Grade Guarantee"

Senate Bill 55 establishes what has become known as the "Fourth Grade Guarantee" to ensure students are reading at least at grade level before going on to the more demanding rigors of middle school and then high school.

The requirements of the "Fourth Grade Guarantee" include:

• Retaining any fourth-grade student who fails to pass the reading portion of the Ohio Fourth-Grade Proficiency Tests unless:

  1.	The child is a student with a disability whose Individualized Education Plan excuses him or her from taking the tests.
  2.	The student's principal and reading teacher agree that the student is academically prepared for the fifth grade.

• Assessing each student at the end of first, second and third grade to identify those reading below their grade level.
• Providing intervention services as needed during first, second and third grade, including intensive summer reading programs following third grade for students who need them.
• Administering the Ohio Fourth-Grade Reading Proficiency Test three times a year to fourth-graders, including once in the summer before fifth grade. Beginning with the 2001-02 school year, students who fail to pass the test by the second administration must be offered intensive summer remediation during the following summer.

Retention of truant students

Senate Bill 55 sets out a number of restrictions on the promotion from one grade to another of students who are chronically absent from school. These restrictions include prohibiting school districts from promoting a student to the next grade level if the student has been absent, without an excuse, for more than 10% of the school year and has failed two or more subjects.

School districts must promote such a student if his or her principal and the teachers of the failed subjects agree the student is academically prepared for the next grade level.

Safer school environments

Senate Bill 55 seeks to ensure all students are provided with a safe, inviting, and undisturbed place to study and learn. The law requires school districts to:

• Adopt, no later than July 1, 1998, a policy of "zero tolerance" for violent, disruptive, or otherwise inappropriate behavior.
• Establish strategies for dealing with inappropriate behavior, ranging from prevention to intervention.
• In all the Big 8 districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown), establish by July 1, 1999, at least one alternative school for students with severe discipline problems.

The law also requires districts with an enrollment of 5,000 or more students, and which have not been categorized as "effective," to designate at least one building to be operated by a site-based management council. The State Board of Education and the Ohio Department of Education are currently developing rules for site-based management.