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IASA’s 5Essentials letter to State Superintendent Dr. Koch
Friday, August 2, 2013
Dear Dr. Koch,
I am writing on behalf of the Illinois Association of School Administrators (IASA) Board of Directors to request
that you consider delaying the public reporting of the 5Essentials Survey until next year and use this first
year’s results to formulate a statewide baseline, and also to give ISBE time to improve the survey itself in
order to make the results more relevant to school districts and to the public.
We are not calling for a repeal of the survey. We are simply asking for time to allow stakeholders and ISBE to
work together to make the survey a product that would yield more credible data, thereby making the
information more valid for school districts to consider going forward in an attempt to make improvements.
We appreciate your decision to re-score the survey using statewide data as a benchmark instead of trying to
compare all schools throughout the state to the Chicago Public Schools. In terms of demographics -- including
size and socio-economic status – one simply cannot compare CPS to all other schools in our very diverse
state. Our representatives on the advisory panel questioned from the start that approach by the statisticians
from the University of Chicago, and we are encouraged by ISBE’s decision on this issue.
While having a more reliable benchmark would be an important improvement, our Board and other
superintendents have identified some other issues from this first round of surveys that we think merit further
consideration. Those issues include:
The security of the survey.
We are aware of instances where the percentage of responses was greater
than 100 percent – even after corrections were made to the number of potential respondents. Unless the
survey is secure in terms of who was able to fill them out and how many times a particular person could fill
out the survey, the results are simply not credible. The approach that individual districts could invalidate its
results if it could prove some sort of fraud places the burden on the wrong party. Those who are
conducting the survey should have the responsibility to prove that their survey is secure because they are
the ones who know how the security for the survey was designed. School administrators are not trained to
be investigators and they have far too many other items on their plate this time of year to be investigating
security issues with this survey.
The scoring of results.
The conclusions do not appear to match up with the actual results. For example,
in many instances cited, a very high percentage of responses (above 85 percent and even 100 percent in
some cases) were “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” – both positive answers – but because not enough
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in Wisconsin. She said she considers education as one of the most important pursuits in this world, and
wants her work at IASA to reflect the importance and priority she places on constantly improving the
education agenda.
A story about ISBE’s new Value Table for Growth Metric, an attempt to provide school districts with a tool
to show growth rather than just the pass/fail data that gets reported regarding AYP.
IASA stands ready to assist you throughout the school year and to continue our advocacy for public
education in Illinois. Our Annual Conference is scheduled for October 9-11 in Springfield, so please mark
those dates on your calendar. We have an outstanding group of speakers lined up, and we plan to feature the
upcoming conference in the September issue of
Leadership Matters.
I again want to thank you for all that you do to offer top-notch educational opportunities for the children of
Illinois. It’s not easy work. It can be thankless work in terms of public perception and feedback, and often it’s
made even more difficult because of budget cuts and additional mandates. But your work is vitally important
to the future of your community, state and nation because that’s what your students represent – and those
students are the bottom-line reason we all chose this profession.
Dr. Clark’s ‘Back to School’ message ————————————————————
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