There is a wealth of data on the Ohio Department of Education’s web-site

This table divides the children in each school district in Montgomery County into two groups — those who are deemed economically disadvantaged, and those deemed not economically disadvantaged — and then shows scores for each group.

The scores shown are the Reading, Math, Writing, Social Studies and Science Scores made on the 10th grade Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). The attendance rate and graduation rate is shown and the number of students in each group, and % of total of each group.

The grade given to Kettering City Schools — Continuous Improvement — announced yesterday by Ohio’s Department of Education, for the 2008-2009 school year, is a big disappointment for Kettering. Kettering’s new Report Card gives the details. (See PDF of Kettering’s Report Card.)

As the chart below shows, Kettering had great test scores for the 2008-2009 school year — it met 29 out of 30 indicators (see page 1 of the Report Card) and scored 100.2 Performance Index (see page 3). And, it’s overall composite for “Value Added” Rating was met. (See page 3) Kettering’s scores overall qualified the district for the highest school rating — “Excellent With Distinction.”

But, Kettering was marked down because it failed to show “Adequate Yearly Progress” in Reading Proficiency with two identified groups: Students with Disabilities and Students with Limited English Proficiency. (page 3) The rules concerning AYP are pretty drastic. If a district misses AYP for three consecutive years, it is penalized so that its highest overall score possible is the fourth rank — Continuous Improvement — regardless of how high its other scores might be.

Here are six tables, each a PDF file, showing all of the individual schools in Montgomery County, sorted according to grade ranking:

1. Excellent With Distinction
2. Excellent
3. Effective
4. Continuous Improvement
5. Academic Watch
6. Academic Emergency

This chart shows all of the schools districts in Montgomery County. Trotwood and Kettering both received the fourth rank — Continuous Improvement — but where Kettering score 29 out of 30 indicators, Trotwood scored 11. And, where Kettering scored 100.2 on its Performance Index, Trotwood scored 81.1. It hardly seems fair that districts with such a big difference in scores should be equally rated. But I guess those are the rules. The AYP penalty is severe.

I telephoned Kettering’s Interim Superintendent, Jim Schoenlein, yesterday, and had a good conversation. I telephoned because I wondered if it was possible that The Report Card was in error. It’s hard to understand how a district could have such high scores and still receive a fourth rank grade, and how each individual school in a district could receive a higher ranking than the district’s overall composite rank. The AYP penalty is not spelled out in the Report Card. Dr. Schoenlein said he is writing an article for the Kettering Oakwood Times, explaining the district’s grade, and that he also intends on posting the letter on the district’s web-site. (Addition: See Dr. Schoenlein’s letter here.)

Here is a listing of all of the school buildings in Kettering. Every school in the district was rated either “effective” or “excellent,” each school in the district had a higher score than the composite score given to the district as a whole. The AYP penalty that reduces the evaluation score of a district from the first tier to the fourth tier seems unreasonably severe, and brings into question the validity of the whole system. We need to think through what, as a community, we define as excellence in education. I want to revisit this article — A Great Question: How Can We Tell If a School Is Excellent? — that I wrote a couple of years ago.

In an interesting article in The Washington Post, “5 Myths About Health Care Around the World,” the author, T.R. Reid, says he has traveled the world studying how other developed democracies provide health care. Reid writes, “Instead of dismissing these models as ‘socialist,’ we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems.”

Reid writes, “The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people’s medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.”

These are the five myths Reid identifies:

1. It’s all socialized medicine out there. Not so. Many wealthy countries — including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland — provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines. Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation’s 200 private health insurance plans — a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn’t like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country. In France and Japan, patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as “in-network” lists of doctors or “pre-authorization” for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment — and insurance has to pay.
3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies. Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise — private-sector, for-profit health insurance — is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.  U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France’s health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada’s universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation. False. Any American who’s had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)
5. Health insurance has to be cruel. Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a “preexisting condition” — precisely the people most likely to need the insurers’ service. … Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can’t cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. “Our customers love it,” the group’s chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.