Ohio's Reading and Math Test Results Excluded from Racial Categories

[LiberalHeart]

In Ohio, almost 40,000 students, or about 4% of all test scores, aren't counted under the law's racial categories, an Associated Press computer analysis found. Almost all are minority students, with most being black or Hispanic.

More:
http://wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=4779214

[LiberalVoice]

1. What do they mean test scores arent being counted?

"aren't counted under the law's racial categories"

This has to be one of the worst articles I have ever read. What is a racial category? And what does it mean to not be counted? Do they mean graded? Stupid article doesn't explain what they are talking about. Or maybe i'm just an idiot.

[salin]

2. I think it means that they only reported the school's overall

test scores, and not reporting on the subgroups required by the NCLB law. Under the law each subgroup has to meet annual progress (% passing the test) - and if one subgroup (done on gender, racial categories and for special education) does not meet the target, then the school is failing.

A few years ago there was concern if the subgroup was so small, statistically, for example 5 students in a subgroup, that one student's test score could disproportionately make a school be ranked as failing (that is 1 student score out of 500 wouldn't change the pass % much, but 1 student in 20 in a group can change the pass rate by 5%). Some schools believed that there was a rule that if a subgroup was 60 or fewer students (or maybe it was 40) due to the statistical anomolties, that the subgroup wouldn't be broken out for analysis. I also believe the Dept of Ed said no, all subgroups must be disaggregated in the reporting to the state.

Am guessing (haven't yet read the article) that some schools were using this "technique" to hide scores of students from racial groups that traditionally do not test as well as white students (myriad of reasons, cultural bias of tests included). Thus if the school has 1,000 students and the overall pass rate is 69% they meet their target (guessing on the target pass rate) - but if they pulled out the 60 students in a subgroup, and found that in that group only 42% the school would have failed to meet AYP (Annual Yearly Progress.)

Just explaining on the surface what I am familiar with, and guessing happened. Will go read the article and come back if there is more clarification that I can figure out from the article.

After reading the item - it is what I described above. Interesting - in this state the DOE was told by the USDOE that there were no more allowances for reporting subgroups due to sample size.