Preliminary Fiscal Year 15 Ohio Test Score Analysis

In November 2015, ODE released preliminary FY 15 Ohio student test results. These preliminary results can be found on the ODE website at: http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Testing-Results/Results-for-Ohios-State-Tests.

Please note that the final results should be available in February 2016 when the FY 15 Local Report Card results are scheduled for release by ODE.

Fiscal Year 15 tests were administered in four subject areas (English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies) at a variety of grade levels in the Spring of 2015. The English Language Arts and Math tests were designed by the national organization Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) of which Ohio was member until July 1, 2015. The Science and Social Studies tests were Ohio-specific tests developed by Ohio educators in conjunction with the American Institutes for Research (AIR). AIR will also be working with Ohio educators to develop Ohio-specific tests in Mathematics and English Language Arts for use in FY 16 and beyond now that Ohio no longer belongs to PARCC.

OEPI aggregated the FY 15 preliminary test results in each of the four subject areas by grade level for every school district and then merged the district-by-district test results data on the English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies tests with data on the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each district. The percentage of economically disadvantaged students is that reported on the Final FY 15 ODE School Finance Payment Report for each school district.

Ohio’s testing system reports the percentage of students in each district at five different levels of performance. In descending order, the five performance categories are as follows:

• Advanced
• Accelerated
• Proficient
• Basic
• Limited

The OEPI analysis focused on three different measures of proficiency for each of the four subject areas:

1. The percentage of students in each district that tested at a level “Proficient & Above” (i.e. % Advanced + % Accelerated + % Proficient)
2. The percentage of students in each district that tested at the Advanced level
3. The percentage of students in each district that tested at the Limited level

For each of the above three proficiency measures the OEPI analysis broke the districts down into performance quintiles ranging from highest performing to lowest performing in each subject area. An equal number of districts were placed in each of the five quintiles. OEPI then computed the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each quintile for each of the three performance categories.

For example, Table 1 summarizes the English Language Arts results by quintile comparing the percentage of students performing at the “Proficient & Above” level with the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each performance quintile.

Table 1: Percentage of Students Proficient & Above on FY 15 PARCC English Lang. Arts Tests (Grades 4-9) with % Economically Disadvantaged Students, by Quintile

Table 1 shows that on the English Language Arts test, the highest performing quintile of school districts had 88.3% of students scoring at a level “Proficient or Above” and these same districts had an average percentage of economically disadvantaged students of 17.9%. In contrast, the lowest performing quintile of districts had only 51.2% of students scoring at a level of “Proficient or Above,” and these districts had an average percentage of economically disadvantaged students of 75.7%.

Table 2 summarizes the English Language Arts results by quintile comparing the percentage of students performing at the “Advanced” level with the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each performance quintile. Table 2 also shows that the districts whose students perform the best have the lowest percentage of economically disadvantaged students while the districts with the lowest percentage of students at the Advanced level have the highest economically disadvantaged percentage.

Table 2: Percentage of Students Scoring “Advanced” on FY 15 PARCC English Lang. Arts Tests (Grades 4-9) with % Econ. Disadvantaged Students, by Quintile

Finally, Table 3 summarizes the English Language Arts results by quintile comparing the percentage of students performing at the “Limited” level with the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each performance quintile. Once again, Table 3 shows that the highest performing districts have the lowest percentage of economically disadvantaged students, and the lowest performing districts have the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students. Note that in Table 3, the highest performing districts are those with the smallest percentage of students performing at the Limited level, and the lowest performing districts are those with the highest percentage of students performing at the Limited level.

Table 3: Percentage of Students Scoring “Limited” on FY 15 PARCC English Lang. Arts Tests (Grades 4-9) with % Economically Disadvantaged Students, by Quintile

Similar results to those summarized in Tables 1-3 above were found at all performance levels in all four subjects. The FY 15 preliminary test analysis shows that results in all four subject areas are very highly negatively correlated with the percentage of economically disadvantaged students. This means that the districts that perform the best on the tests have the lowest percentage of economically disadvantaged students and the districts that have the lowest performance have the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students. These findings are highly disturbing as they show the continued existence of a pronounced “achievement gap” across Ohio’s school districts and students.