Assessment

Survey: Ohio Students Got A Grades on Paper Exams, F Grades Online

By Daarel Burnette II — March 11, 2016 1 min read
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Add Ohio to your growing list of states griping about online exams.

A school district employee told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week that, according to his research, students who got A’s on paper exams in 2014-15 school year received F grades on last year’s exam.

The online exam also had five times fewer A grades for students, according to the researcher, Michael Molnar, the director of educational services for the Amherst school district in Lorain County.

Superintendents, teachers unions and legislators have been questioning the results of the exam since they were released in February. The number of districts that received an A on the exam fell from 37 to six, with C now being the most common result on the exam.

In Ohio, where test scores determine some teachers’ pay, the ratings of charter schools, and more, legislators are already looking at Molnar’s study and determining whether to craft new legislation, according to the Plain Dealer.

Ohio legislators fired the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers from administering the state test last summer after parents complained that the test took up too much time and was too aligned to Common Core State Standards.

“By comparing online testing districts to paper testing districts, the Ohio Department of Education is not providing accurate and fair information to the public,” Molnar told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Clearly, the 2015 value added grades released by the Ohio Department of Education are unreliable and invalid.”

Across the country, state education departments are running into some major problems with their foray into online testing, and legislators are responding, as I wrote about in the March 9 edition of Education Week.

According to Fair Test, an advocacy organization that tracks online testing problems and “works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing,” more than half of states have experienced problems with the transition from pencil-and-paper to online exam results.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.