EAST CLEVELAND -- The state's Academic Distress Commission will take over East Cleveland City Schools following the district's 'F' grade in the recent state report card.
The district was notified of the takeover Thursday, according to a statement issued by Superintendent Myrna Loy Corley.
Corley also indicted that state AIR tests are flawed and unfair to districts, noting that the district received an 'A' grade in the "Value Added" measure on the 2014-15 report card.
"That same year there was a statewide outcry over the results of student testing and the potential impact of test results on students," Corley explained. "The General Assembly took emergency action and expanded ‘Safe Harbor’ to protect against the PARCC test results and later defunded the PARCC test.”
Corley continued, "The AIR tests were then implemented without time to transition. For the 15-16 school year, again there was a state wide outcry over test results, but most school districts were exempted by ‘Safe Harbor’ from these results. This repeated for the 16-17 school year. Inexplicably, however, districts like ECCSD are being held accountable for the flawed test results even though the District improved in 15 indicators and 5 out of 6 schools in the District received overall passing grades.”
Locally, Lorain City Schools are under ADC control. Lorain again received an 'F' grade on the latest state report card.
"If the tests are flawed, the ADC takeover is flawed. If the current system is not fair and not sufficiently meaningful, how can it result in loss of local control? Fourteen other districts from predominately urban areas received ‘F’s’ today. his should be extremely concerning to any person seeing these results," Corley's statement added.
