Report Card Reform – The State Board of Education continues to deliberate on how the new district/building reports cards will look this year and in the future. This week, the Performance and Impact Committee tackled the Achievement Component – again with no resolution on cut scores. The main stumbling block is how to determine cut scores using pre-pandemic data knowing that the next year or two or three are not going be close to district performance from 2018-2019. While the graduation, early literacy, and gap closing components were also on the agenda for discussion, the committee was unable to discuss those components. The committee will meet for two days on January 25th and January 26th to discuss and make decisions on all components. The state board must present its work to the House and Senate in February, and vote out the final rule by March 31, 2022.
The gifted performance indicator workgroup has met several times and has made great progress in revamping the indicator to better reflect state gifted policy goals. In addition, the indicator should be fairer to smaller, rural districts who do not have the numbers of students in subgroups to be able to identify large numbers of gifted students.
The work group will meet again on January 18th. The group needs to resolve several issues including final points for the identification and service element, cut scores and rubric for met/not status on the overall indicator, phase-in scenarios for a three-year implementation, and weight/placement in the Gap Closing measure of the report card. The final product will then be sent to the full Gifted Advisory Council for input.
Gifted Funding Update – ODE has now updated the district foundation funding payment portals which include details on gifted funding. You can access the reports at: https://reports.education.ohio.gov/finance/foundation-payment-report.
In addition, ODE has put a technical document on how districts can use gifted funds. You can find this document here.
Please note that ODE is still working on the PD element as they have discovered an error in the calculation that will ultimately decrease payments, hopefully not by much. Also, the gifted enrollment figures are off so payments will increase when that is fixed. Both issues should be resolved by the second January payment. Overall, gifted funding is scheduled to be $73,512,310.94 for this fiscal year which is $677,246.78 less than FY20. This is not entirely surprising as the new formula applies state share which the old formula did not. Part of the new funding formula depends on gifted ADM (students), which again, the old formula did not. Because of this, state funding will shift dramatically from wealthier districts to those less wealthy (due to state share).
Finally, as part of the budget bill, ODE is tasked with convening a gifted funding accountability committee together. ODE is seeking gifted educators from rural, suburban, and urban districts. The meetings will begin in March or April, and they are public, which means they will be held in-person in Columbus. If you are interested in being part of this committee, please email [email protected].