If Cincinnati Board of Education members harbor any doubts about the validity of graduation test scores at Robert A. Taft Information Technology High School, they’re not sharing them publicly.
Last month, CityBeat reported questions surrounding Taft’s ascent to “excellence,” as measured mostly by Ohio Graduation Test scores (“Miracle or Mirage,” issue of Feb. 21). The article explored the chasm between Taft’s Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) and ACT scores and revisited an independent erasure analysis showing that 88 percent of 1,707 erasures on the 2006 OGT resulted in correct answers.
Board member Eileen Cooper Reed told CityBeat she would raise the subject at the next board meeting, saying, “If we have nothing to hide, then we have nothing to fear.”
That next board meeting occurred March 12. Cooper Reed didn’t want to talk about Taft at all. “My primary concern that was raised by the article was taking a look broadly at how we’re teaching our children related to the OGT and the ACT, why discrepancies occurred in terms of the test scores and what that means in terms of our curriculum and how we deploy it,” she said.
The discussion remained on such topics, with no talk about the erasure analysis and no vote to have Superintendent Mary Ronan investigate the matter.
On Monday, the Ohio Department of Education said it now considers the erasure investigation to be closed. (James McNair)
