BRUNSWICK – The superintendent of the Brunswick City Schools was one of 200 Ohio public school superintendents representing more than 70 counties that gathered in Columbus this week to address state-mandated education policies suspected of having a negative effect on graduation rates statewide.

The group’s goal as part of the Nov. 15 event, Mayell said, was to generate awareness among state legislators regarding the loss of local control in the Ohio Department of Education’s current high school graduation point system.

“The state’s policies are affecting our students and their ability to graduate,” Mayell said, noting there have been three different assessments in as many years and graduation is tied to these assessments.

“The state feels a single test result is a better measure to determine if a student should graduate than a whole year of classroom assessments. This is a loss of local control.”

According to Ohio Public School Advocacy Network, Brunswick is not alone in its assessment.

John Haswell, superintendent of Shadyside Local Schools in Belmont County, said as many as 40 percent of the students in his district who took the state-mandated end-of-year exams last year are in jeopardy of not graduating in 2018 and 2019.

“The emphasis given to these standardized tests will have a negative impact on children throughout Ohio in the near future,” Haswell said. “A score on a single exam has more weight than 180 days of classroom instruction.”

Mayell said that in the process of setting high standards is supported by all superintendents, the ODE also changing its assessment by changing the bar each year.

“Rating each district on this data is unfair,” Mayell said. “It needs to wait until we have some consistent data points to follow.”

Two years ago, Ohio’s public school superintendents kicked off a grassroots initiative to return local control to the public schools by providing their citizens with a stronger voice in shaping statewide education policy through the Ohio Public School Advocacy Network. One of the initial actions of this statewide grassroots network was to ask many of Ohio’s citizens how they view education reform and its impact upon their local schools.

“The best long-term solution is to let educators educate,” Mayell said. “Local control is to let each community decide how to best educate their students.”

From January 2014 through April 2016, four in‐depth public opinion surveys were conducted in 18 Ohio counties which have a combined population of more than 3 million people. The results of those surveys indicate that a majority of citizens believe their public schools are doing a good job of preparing children for their future and they want their boards of education to be in control of their local schools.

Those surveys also found school officials statewide believe the current graduation point system created by the Ohio Department of Education will arbitrarily lower the graduation rates of the Class of 2018 and any class after them.

Additionally, they agree, the continual expansion of Ohio’s educational assessment system has led to an over‐emphasis on standardized testing for students, which “negatively impacts the focus of classroom instruction.

Overall, the group’s core message was that school districts around the state want to roll up their “collective sleeves” and work with stakeholders, constituent groups and Ohio’s elected officials to fix a graduation and state reporting system that is currently in great need of repair.

“Our students and our citizens deserve a reporting system they can trust,” Mayell said.