"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Thirteen Ohio School Districts "Scrubbing" Low Scoring Students

From CantonRep.com:
Four more Ohio districts, including Canton City Schools, removed poor-performing students from their rolls, state Auditor David Yost said Monday in the final step of his investigation into a practice whereby schools attempted to improve performance ratings. 
More than 70 schools or districts also had attendance reporting errors, though these didn’t appear to be purposeful, Yost said. 
The four districts bring to nine the number that Yost has identified in his investigation of the data withdrawal practice known as “scrubbing.” 
The districts Yost identified Monday are Canton and Cincinnati city schools, Winton Woods city schools in Hamilton County and Northridge Local schools in Montgomery County. 
Yost’s top recommendation Monday was requiring the state to peg school funding on yearlong attendance figures to encourage attendance through the entire year. Now, attendance figures are based on a count in October. 
“Importantly, schools that break enrollment under such a system would suffer a loss of funding as a result,” Yost’s report said. 
Yost also said the state should require independent oversight of districts’ data reporting instead of the current honor system, and the state should also independently monitor transfers by at-risk students. 
Yost previously said Campbell, Cleveland, Columbus, Marion and Toledo city schools improperly removed students. . . . 
I have seen no better example than this of Campbell's Law:
"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

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