What he said!

Skoolboy is doing the posting on Eduwonkette again, continuing the discussion of test-based accountability, and makes some points well worth noting. Especially this one:

Lots of commercial enterprises and non-profits owe their livelihood to public education, and are engaged in an ongoing project to shape our definitions of "real school."

Testing is big business in the U.S. Non-profits such as the Educational Testing Service and ACT have annual gross revenues approaching $900 million and $400 million, respectively. ETS's K-12 testing operation had gross revenues of $172 million in their 2006 IRS filings. On the for-profit side, Pearson Education had gross revenues worldwide of $4.6 billion in 2006, with $600 million in adjusted operating profit. Their annual report crowed of a "healthy outlook in school testing underpinned by 2005 contract wins with a lifetime value of $700m (including Texas, Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota)." McGraw-Hill Education had revenues of $2.7 billion in 2007, with operating profit of $400 million.

With this much money, and more, at stake, you can bet that there are ongoing projects to define tests and testing as the appropriate way of defining what counts as good education.

New NAEP Comparison Reports Published...Our Question: Why?

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has published two reports that will undoubtedly be used by policymakers (and pundits) to discern something about the quality of (a) state tests, (b) state standards, (c) public education in each state, or (d) all of the above.

Here are the links to the reports:

Comparison Between NAEP and State Mathematics Assessment Results: 2003

Comparison Between NAEP and State Reading Assessment Results: 2003

I went to a session on these comparisons at AERA, and I am glad to say that the first chapter of the report (I've only looked at the math report so far) goes through each of the caveats discussed at that session. A good portion of the first chapter is devoted to all the things this report cannot tell us.

I have to ask this: If so much time has to be spent telling the reader how NOT to use the report, why publish the report at all? It is as if the NAEP folks expected that the reports would not be read in their entirety, that the findings would be misused....

Here are just a few of the many, many caveats in that first chapter of the math report (in the report authors' own words):

• This report does not address questions about the content, format, or conduct of state assessments, as compared to NAEP. The only information presented in this report concerns the results of testing.
• The only inference that can be made with assurance is that the schools where students achieve high NAEP mathematics scores are teh same schools where students achieve high state assessment mathematics scores. (This is the only reliable finding, yet they printed a 2-volume set of books on the comparisons of math scores?)
  
• This report does not necessarily represent all students in each state. It is based only on NAEP and state assessment scores in schools that participated in NAEP. (Approximately 100 schools in each state participate.)
• NAEP results are for grades 4 and 8, and they are compared to state assessment results for the same grade, an adjacent grade, or a combination of grades. (!!!)
• This report does not address questions about NAEP and state assessment of individual variation of students' mathematics scores within demographic groups within schools.
• For most states, this report does not address comparisons of average test scores.
  
• The only comparisons in this report are between percentages of students meeting mathematices standards, as measured by NAEP and state assessments. (A footnote documents that even this standard of judgment isn't adhered to for all states.)
  
• Comparisons between percentages meeting different standards on two different tests (e.g., proficient as defined by NAEP and proficient as defined by the state assessment) are meaningless. (Okay, once you write that sentence, why don't you just stop writing the report?)
• Finally, this report is not an evaluation of state assessments.

The report also lists non-content factors that may depress correlations between NAEP percentages and state percentages include, but are not limited to:

• differences in grades tested (yes, that's right, these reports compare NAEP scores of 4th or 8th graders to state scores of students in grades 3, 5, 7, or 9);
• small numbers of students tested (by NAEP or the state assessment) in some small schools. Here the report authors toss a small bone in the direction of the huge problem of the unreliability of percentages;
• extremely high or extremely low standards, which would depress variability and thus correlations;
• differences between the NAEP and state tests in accommodations for students with disabilities and English language learners;
• differences in motivational contexts -- ya think???
• differences in the time of year of testing.
  

Expect to see these caveats completely ignored as these reports get a lot of press and policymaker attention.

Bridging Differences on international test score comparisons

Bridging Differences, a blog in which Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier write back and forth, is almost always interesting. The two most recent posts are on the topic of international test comparisons, ranking countries, and all that. Check 'em out here.

Here's a teaser, from Meier's most recent post:

One thing we can learn from international studies is that it may help if decisions are made closer to those who are affected by them. Not only are all the high-scoring countries much, much smaller than most of our 50 states, much less the US as a whole, but many do NOT have a national curriculum or national exams.

That’s what Linda Darling-Hammond reported to us last weekend at a meeting of the Forum for Education and Democracy! We were all startled, having bought the oft-repeated claim that international studies prove that national exams equal high scores. In some of the “high-scoring” nations, standards are set by districts, and in others by even smaller sub-units. And, none come close to doing as much mandating as we do.

The costs of state assessments

Stateline.org has an interesting story about cost of state assessments -- and some of the problems that have reared their ugly heads since the dramatic increase in testing (and concomitant increase in corporate profits) following the passage of NCLB in 2001. Here's an excerpt:

On the whole, however, state spending on testing has shot up since George W. Bush’s education plan became the law of the land. In early 2001, a year before No Child Left Behind was enacted, states collectively spent almost $423 million on standardized tests, according to a Stateline.org report. During the 2007- 08 school year, states will spend almost $1.1 billion on these tests, according to Eduventures Inc., an education industry research firm.

The costs have been driven up by the sheer volume of testing required by the law. In 2005-06, when states had to have math and reading tests in place for all the required grades for the first time, about 45 million tests were administered throughout the country, 11.4 million more than the previous year. This year, states are required to add a science test, which is expected to add another 11 million tests to the total.

...

Probably the biggest impact of the No Child Left Behind law has been on the kind of tests states are giving, which has changed dramatically. The law, which imposed so much federal intrusion into local classrooms, passed only with a compromise: States would be allowed to create the tests.

The result was states switched from standardized tests that compare how their students stack up against students across the country — the Stanford Achievement Test is a prominent example — to those based on each state’s specific standards. But this system allows the difficulty of the tests to vary widely from state to state, resulting in some states producing easier tests that measure lower-level skills.

We recommend the entire article, which is part of Stateline's annual State of the States report. The entire report can be accessed here.

NewTalk: Interesting Ongoing Discussion on Testing

There is a fascinating discussion taking place, Tuesday through today, on the role of student assessment in K-12 education. Click the title link (yeah, the title of this post), which will take you to this discussion at Newtalk.

Important: The discussion starts at the bottom of the webpage and goes up -- the most recent posts are at the top, just like a blog. But you'll want to start at the bottom if you want to follow the discussion.

Here is the list of people doing the discussing:

• Jean Johnson, Public Agenda, moderator

• Leo Casey, vice president, Academic High Schools, United Federation of Teachers

• Janet Corcoran, president, Common Good; former president, PENCIL

• Chester Finn, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation; senior fellow, Hoover Institute

• Ryan Hill, Executive Director, TEAM Schools, a Network of KIPP Schools, Newark, N.J.

• Diane Ravitch, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and professor, NYU

• Deb White, teacher, Cody, Wyoming, and founder, Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

EdWeek: Rethinking the Way We Hold Schools Accountable

Helen Ladd's article does a good job of summarizing the research on test-based accountability. We hope you will click the link and read the whole thing yourself. In case you aren't going to do that, we offer some snippets to whet your appetite:

• An important virtue of test-based accountability is that it appeals to three quite different views of what is wrong with American schools. Proponents of standards-based reform hail it as one component of a broader strategy to overcome the fragmented and incoherent nature of the K-12 education system. Others see it as a way to pressure inefficient teachers and school administrators into becoming more productive. Still others embrace it as a tool to address the huge disparities in educational outcomes across groups defined by race or by income.
• Enough time has now passed—and enough research been done—to draw some conclusions about the strengths and limitations of this reform strategy and to suggest a more balanced approach.
  
• We know that test-based accountability systems can be powerful tools for changing the behavior of educators. Studies have consistently shown, for example, that educators focus additional attention on the tested subjects, notably basic reading and math, and reduce attention on others. Depending on one’s values, this impact may be considered positive or negative.
• The bottom line is clear: Test-based accountability has not generated the significant gains in student achievement that proponents—however they perceived the problem to be solved—intended. Nor is the country on track to meet either the high proficiency standards required under the No Child Left Behind law or the equity goals suggested by its name.
• As a reform strategy, test-based accountability falls short in at least three ways.

1. First, it pays too little attention to the social factors that affect student achievement.
2. Second, the approach pays too little attention to the broader system within which individual schools operate.
3. Third, test-based accountability tends to be punitive and pays too little attention to promoting effective process and practice within schools.

• The second half of the article is Ladd's description of what a "more balanced system" would look like.

ASBJ: Dropouts Linked to Exit Exam

The January American School Board Journal included a small news item that warrants attention, so we're posting it here:

"Do high school exit exams provide an accurate measure of student performance? Or do they push students who are on the academic bubble to drop out before getting a diploma?

In California, the answer appears to be the latter, according to a report presented to the state Board of Education in November. The analysis found that 2006 graduation rates fell by 4 percent, and 10,000 more seniors dropped out than four years earlier."

Rothstein: NCLB Doomed

Richard Rothstein has an article in the latest American Prospect entitled "Leaving 'No Child Left Behind' Behind." Here are some excerpts, but we recommend that you read the entire article.

• NCLB is dead. It will not be reauthorized -- not this year, not ever. The coalition that promoted the 2001 bipartisan law has hopelessly splintered, although NCLB's advocates in the administration and the Congress continue to imagine (at least publicly) that tinkering can put it back together.
• NCLB was flawed from the start. The 2001–2002 stampede ignored well-established statistical and management theories predicting perverse consequences for test-based accountability.
• One such consequence is goal distortion, the subject of extensive warnings in the economics and management literature about measuring any institution's performance by quantitative indicators that reflect only some institutional goals. Management expert W. Edwards Deming urged businesses to "eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals" because they encourage short-, not long-term vision.
  
• NCLB relies on an annual test, but single tests can be misleading.
• Even with inordinate attention to math and reading, it is practically and conceptually ludicrous to expect all students to be proficient at challenging levels.
• The law strongly implies that "challenging" standards are those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), periodic federal tests of national student samples. But while NAEP tests are excellent, their proficiency cut-points have no credibility.
• Any single proficiency standard invites sabotaging the goal of teaching all children, because the only ones who matter are those with scores just below passing.
• For bubble kids, schools have substituted test prep for good instruction.
• Growth models have even larger error margins than single-year test results because they rely on two unreliable scores (last year's and this year's), not one.
• Although NCLB will not be reauthorized, the underlying Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), with funding for schools serving low-income children, will continue. NCLB will remain on the books, increasingly ignored. Virtually every school with minority, low-income, or immigrant children will be labeled a failure; the federal government will be hard-pressed to punish all. Eventually, under a new administration, ESEA will be renewed, perhaps including vague incantations that states establish their own accountability policies, once Washington abandons the field.

Value-Added Models: Not All They're Cracked Up To Be?

We're pretty much on hiatus this week because of the ice storm, so we recommend that you read this article over at Eduwonkette.

Benchmark Tests: Do They Predict Performance on State Assessments?

Many school districts are spending lots of money on commercially-produced "benchmark" assessments...but what are they getting? Are benchmark assessments really good predictors of performance on state tests?

A new study released by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Education Laboratory should cause administrators to start asking some hard questions. Benchmark testing is expensive, both in dollars paid to the testing companies and in classroom time that is taken away from teaching. To be worth their costs, benchmark tests should do a good job of predicting scores on state assessments.

Many administrators receive assurances that benchmark tests are keyed to state assessments when, in fact, no predictive validity studies have been conducted. The Mid-Atlantic study examined the availability and quality of predictive validity data and found that evidence was lacking of their predictive validity with respect to state tests.

If your district is buying a commercially-produced benchmark testing program, be aware that ethical standards require that test producers provide evidence of validity for the explicit purposes for which theassessment has been developed (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education, 1999). Ask for evidence before you spend the time and money.

Ed Policy Research Unit: High School Reform is Off Course

When I first got the press release for this report, I never imagined it would get any coverage by news organizations. It definitely goes against the conventional wisdom, which is one reason you ought to read it.

Click here to read the report from the Educational Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University.

Click here to read Education Week's report about the report. If you want to get a glimpse of what it says, here are the first couple of paragraphs:

In a new paper arguing that the ongoing national push to dramatically improve American high schools has gotten off course, two University of California education professors take aim at what they see as an overemphasis on states’ adoption of higher standards for graduation and more-rigorous tests.

“The push to enhance rigor and standards behind the high school diploma is seriously flawed,” write W. Norton Grubb, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jeannie Oakes, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the paper. “Any gains come at the expense of other goals for high school reform, including equity, curricular relevance, and student interest.”

The paper argues that discussions of “rigor” too often use a narrow definition that neglects higher-order-thinking skills, applications of learning in unfamiliar settings, and academic depth in favor of breadth.

And many proponents of higher standards and rigorous tests, the authors contend, have little to say about how their imposition will enhance student performance generally. The authors say many urban high schools simply lack the capacity to meet the standards.

One reason why state tests and NAEP tell different stories

Actually, there are a lot of reasons...number one, they don't test the same things in the same way.

Eduwonkette has a good article on one of the other reasons: state accountability programs, all by themselves, improve test scores on state tests. That can be a good thing and a bad thing, all at once. (Yes, you need higher order thinking skills to deal with NCLB.) If you don't understand why it's both good and bad, see Jim Horn's piece (the link is in the article just below).

Ed Policy Blog: What Is Left Behind

Jim Horn posted this over at the Education Policy Blog. Only part of the post is here; we highly recommend you head over and read the entire post.

What IS Left Behind?

We have reached a critical crossroads in our educational and national history.....

Let us take a moment to think about what has been left behind, what has been dumped, what has been pushed out the door because there is no longer space or time for it in the school day.

Now if your school still has some of these things, I say congratulations. At the same time, however, I say beware. Beware, because the unattainable goal of 100% proficiency that is the bedrock of NCLB makes it most likely that over the next seven years, your school will join the 30% of schools today where these crucial elements of school have already been left behind.

As American citizens deeply concerned about the health of our democratic republic, we are, of course, concerned and horrified that the social studies have been left behind. In Florida and other states, social studies teachers, afraid of losing their jobs, are lobbying for social studies to be tested, so that their work will survive.

The emphasis on math and reading tests has meant less geography, civics, and government, which leaves children ignorant of how public decisions are made or where their community fits into state, national, and global contexts—or even that there is a context beyond their street and TV screens. Children are left, in effect, stranded on lonely islands of ignorance, without the impetus or skills to have their voices heard in ways that make the world listen.

History, too, has been left behind, making it assured that this next generation will grow up more likely to be swayed by the mistakes and misdeeds of the past to which they remain clueless. What is a democratic republic and where did it come from? Sorry, that’s not on the test, either.

And economics? While children in wealthy communities, the ones without AYP worries yet, play stock market games and learn about hedge funds, the economic education of children in schools under the testing gun consists of collecting “Scholar Dollars” that they trade in for bags of Skittles, a pittance of pay for a meaningless labor whose significance remains a mystery to them.

.......

Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."

Think Tank Review Project: Lexington Institute's "Portfolios" Report Lacks Research

A lot of reports are being issued to influence the next version of NCLB. The Think Tank Review Project at Arizona State University is keeping an eye on them. Here's their latest press release:

TEMPE, Ariz and BOULDER, Colo. (Sept. 19, 2007)—A Lexington Institute report released earlier this month, and the institute’s subsequent press release of September 17, 2007, criticized the use of student portfolios to assess school performance. A new review of that report, however, finds it is ill-founded and of little value for research or policy development.

The Lexington report, called “Portfolios – A Backward Step in School Accountability,” is intended to influence the debate over the direction of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, offering a defense of the current test-based accountability system against the inclusion of “multiple measures.”

The report appears to have been written in anticipation of a “discussion draft” concerning NCLB changes, released by the leadership of the House Education Committee. The draft proposes allowing states to use “multiple indicators” – for example, graduation rates and percent of students taking advanced courses – to assess educational outcomes rather than depend so heavily upon standardized test scores.

The Lexington report was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by University of Vermont professor William Mathis. He concludes that the report more closely resembles a political polemic than a research report. It provides no new data, examines only two studies, and includes only results favorable to the report’s conclusions.

As Mathis notes, the House Committee’s summary lists a broad list of various alternative multiple indicators, but portfolio assessment is not on that list. Nonetheless, the Lexington report erroneously generalizes findings about portfolios to all non-test-based multiple indicators. The report also ignores a body of research with findings that present portfolios in a more favorable light.

In fact, Mathis’ review explains that the Lexington report’s focus on portfolios is particularly misguided because portfolios for statewide accountability purposes have received only scant attention since the turn of the millennium. Although Lexington’s press release emphasizes “dusting off” the use of portfolio assessments as a key part of NCLB accountability, the only group seriously discussing the subject appears to be Lexington itself. Given the absence of portfolio assessment from such agendas as well as from the House Committee’s list, it is troubling that the Lexington Institute report offers portfolios as the most notable of what it calls “multiple measures” and then uses that straw man to argue against adopting any instruments other than standardized tests.

In his review of the Lexington report, Mathis concludes that its “selective use of research suggests the author either intentionally slanted the evidence or was unacceptably cursory in his analysis.” The report’s failure to discuss contradictory research undermines its conclusions, and its attempt to “generalize all multiple measures from this questionable base completely discredits [the report].”

Alternative Bill to Amend NCLB: Feingold-Leahy Improving Student Testing Act

Press release from Sen. Feingold's office. If you want to skip the press release and go straight to the fact sheet on the bill, click here.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Improving Student Testing Act today to amend the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Feingold and Leahy’s legislation focuses on improving the quality of assessments used to measure student achievement in our nation’s schools. The legislation also encourages states to move away from high-stakes testing in reading and math as the primary measure of student achievement. Feingold and Leahy, who were among the ten Senators who opposed NCLB when it was passed in 2001, plan to push for changes during the reauthorization of NCLB.

“The federal government’s one-size-fits-all education policy under No Child Left Behind is the wrong approach,” said Feingold, who is seeking changes to the education law based on the feedback he has received from educators, administrators and others across Wisconsin. “Five years after the passage of NCLB, it is clear much work remains to be done to close the achievement gap that exists in our schools. Our legislation will ensure that the federal government leaves decisions that affect our children’s day-to-day classroom experiences up to the classroom educators, local districts, and the states.”

“Time and again I have heard from Vermonters that No Child Left Behind’s cookie cutter approach is not working for the students in our state,” said Leahy. “To raise the bar the right way for schools and students, states need the flexibility to design accountability measures that accurately reflect actual conditions and unique characteristics in real communities. A model that works for an urban school might be completely different than one that works for Vermont’s smaller, rural schools. We need to move away from a focus on penalties and failure, and toward a focus on the quality instruction that our children truly need to succeed.”

Feingold and Leahy’s Improving Student Testing Act of 2007 implements the following reforms to NCLB:

• Provides grants to help promote stronger assessments of student learning. This funding will help encourage states to move away from accountability systems based primarily on standardized test scores in order to better take into account the diverse academic needs of all students.
  


• Reforms the annual federal testing mandate to allow annual assessments at least once in grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12 for federal accountability purposes, instead of the current requirement for annual testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
  


• Provides flexibility for states to develop alternative accountability models such as growth models.
  


• Waives the 2014 deadline for 100% student proficiency if Congress doesn’t fully fund Title I formula grants, the largest source of NCLB funding.
  


• Provides grants to states and local districts to help them develop better accountability systems, including developing increased infrastructure to use growth models and multiple measures of assessment in state accountability systems as well as implement school improvement programs in local schools.
  


• Reforms the federal peer review process of state testing and accountability systems.
  


• Requires states to report graduation rates by NCLB’s student subgroups to provide more information about schools to parents and educators.
  


• Protects the privacy of students’ personal information within state education data systems.

Feingold and Leahy’s bill is supported by the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, the School Social Work Association of America, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance, the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, the Wisconsin Council of Administrators of Special Services, the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, the Milwaukee Teacher Education Association, the Wisconsin School Social Workers Association, and the Wisconsin National Board Network of Wisconsin National Board Certified Teachers.

You can view a fact sheet on Feingold and Leahy’s legislation at http://feingold.senate.gov/issues_nclbtestingfact.html.

High School Grades, Not Test Scores, Best Predictor of College Success

File this under Things that Make You Go "Hmmmm."

Two studies of 80,000 students in the University of California system found that high school grade point average (GPA) is "consistently the best predictor" of freshman grades in college and four-year college outcomes.

"High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. "

Key findings:

1) High school GPA is the best predictor of first-year GPG as well as four-year college outcomes -- including cumulative college grades and graduation -- for all academic disciplines and campuses.

2) The predictive strength of high school grades increases after the freshman year of college.

3) As an admissions criterion, high school GPA has less adverse impact than standardized tests on disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students.

CEP Report on Graduation Testing

The Center on Education Policy has released their annual report on graduation testing in the states. You can read the Executive Summary or the entire report here. The report presents information on the tests administered in the 26 states that have implemented this policy as well as information on state assistance to districts, and interventions and remediation at the local level.

A few of the key findings:

• All states with exit exam policies show gaps in passing rates between various groups of students.
• Although states report that they provide all of these forms of support, it is difficult to tell from a survey whether these forms of assistance are adequate. It is indisputable, however, that gaps persist despite all of these forms of support. There is urgent need to take a closer look at how these supports are used at the district and school level.
• Our case study research has revealed benefits, drawbacks, and perhaps unintended outcomes of exit exam interventions and remediation on passing rates as well as on curriculum and instruction. Benefits include reported increases in passing rates, student effort and motivation, and consistency in instruction and curriculum. Drawbacks include the significant resources districts report spending on exit exam interventions and remediation. Other concerns voiced by teachers, administrators, and students were lack of depth in the curriculum, a decrease in teaching higher-level thinking skills, and a decrease in flexibility in the core curriculum (often through the loss of electives).
• School districts in most states are using a variety of strategies to improve student pass rates on high school exit exams. Not enough is known about the way these efforts impact the educational experiences of students, particularly disadvantaged learners. More research is needed to determine the effect of high school exit exam policy on instruction, curriculum, and student achievement.
  

Two recommendations are presented in the Executive Summary:

• The effectiveness of state exit exam intervention and remediation strategies is largely unknown, and many states do not have the capacity to evaluate these strategies. States and school districts are putting a lot of time, effort, and resources toward increasing passing rates on these exams; states should also develop methods to evaluate and determine the effectiveness of the various strategies they use.
• More attention needs to be given to the impact that high school exit exams are having on curriculum and instruction. While intervention and remediation strategies are used by high schools to help students pass the exit exam, we know very little about the impact of these strategies on students’ educational experiences. Therefore, research aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of high school exit exam policy as a tool for shaping and improving instruction and student performance, especially for disadvantaged students, should be undertaken.

Tulsa World: Tulsa End of Instruction Scores Up

Most of the algebra test improvement is attributed to a more appropriate test level.

Tulsa Public Schools saw a dramatic increase in students' Algebra I scores on state-mandated tests, officials said Tuesday.

Secondary school students across Oklahoma take end-of-instruction exams in Algebra I, English II, Biology I and U.S. History, but only scores from the Algebra I and English II tests are used to gauge overall student achievement under state and federal school accountability systems.

Statewide results are not expected until later this month. Officials from other Tulsa-area districts said they were expecting their end-of-instruction test results this week.

The number of Tulsa students demonstrating proficiency in Algebra I more than doubled, from 24 percent in 2006 to 59 percent in 2007. The district's proficiency rate in English II also improved, from 61 percent to 65 percent.

Sharolyn Sorrels, the school improvement administrator for TPS, said she expects to see similar increases in Algebra I scores across Oklahoma, because the state Education Department realigned the exam "to be closer to what we teach eighth- and ninth-graders."

"I do think we've made improvements in instruction, as well, but the main reason the Algebra I scores went up is because they made the test to be more aligned," Sorrels said.

"The old test was horrific; most of it was at a college level. The whole state is breathing a sigh of relief that they better aligned that test with the (state) benchmarks and standards."

Six of the nine TPS high schools had Algebra I proficiency rates in the single digits in 2006.

Those same schools posted proficiency rates ranging from 25 percent to 50 percent on the 2007 Algebra I end-of-instruction exam.

The number of Tulsa students who demonstrated proficiency on the U.S. History exam decreased slightly since last year, from 64 percent to 61 percent.

On the Biology I exam, 39 percent of students were proficient for the second year in a row.

An Abutment Too Far...

SAT shower curtains. Available for math and English. As Susan O'Hanian asks, "What's next, DIBELS toilet paper?"

Tested!

Linda Perlstein's new book, Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, is next on my reading list. I ran across a review of the book in tomorrow's LA Times. (The wonders of the web never cease to amaze....)

The link is to the full review, but newspaper pages often disappear quickly, so I'm posting several paragraphs below. I will wait patiently for my copy to arrive....


The conceit of Perlstein's book is simple: to reveal up close the effects on one elementary school, and, by extension, all public schools, of the testing and accountability culture mandated by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's signature education initiative.

Statistical studies of this law abound, but an examination of its human effects is long overdue. "Tested" succeeds in filling this void on several levels, providing descriptions that, for many readers, will seem a stunning indictment of No Child Left Behind and the state and local policies it has engendered. The endless regimen of testing, drilling, report filing, student bribing and student berating that Perlstein describes could only have been conceived by politicians and ideologues who rarely set foot in actual public schools (and would never subject their own children to the Frankenstein classrooms their policies have created).

Perlstein chose Tyler Heights Elementary School in suburban Annapolis, Md., a campus of mostly poor and minority students surrounded by schools with far more affluent and academically prepared student bodies. But unlike troubled inner-city schools, suburban Tyler has considerable financial resources at its disposal with which to close the "achievement gap."

She begins with the announcement in May 2005 that, after years of poor scoring, Tyler Heights has dramatically improved its performance on the Maryland School Assessment, the annual testing mandated by No Child Left Behind. These questions set up the drama of the following school year depicted in "Tested": Was this a fluke, and Tyler a one-hit wonder? Or did the scripted lessons and ruthless teaching-to-the-test payoff, a worthy model for other schools? Or had the state lowered the bar so far on its tests that even failing students appeared to shine? Finally, there is the question that most haunts Tyler's principal and teachers throughout the book: Can we do it again?

In charting the answers to those questions, Perlstein depicts a school obsessed not so much with educating as with measuring education, and with doling out a kind of pallid simulation of knowledge. Stories, for example, are always analyzed for their structure, almost never for their actual content. Creative writing is discouraged in favor of repetitive paragraphs called "Brief Constructed Responses," or BCRs -- an acronym Tyler kids hear endlessly.

"They're learning to do the formula," one teacher laments midway through the school year, "and forgetting how to think."

The goal, Perlstein shows, is to limit teaching to ideas, skills and knowledge that can fit inside the confines of a multiple choice test. Teachers must follow a strictly paced and worded script that even mandates what classroom posters can be hung. Students are similarly regimented: Creativity and spontaneity only get in the way of data collection. And so the author treats us to the awful moment when bright kindergartners identifying long vowel sounds are told to stop -- because rigid lesson plans say they are supposed to know only short vowel sounds.

Perlstein shows the human effect of these priorities. Kids who once devoured chapter books write BCRs about hating reading (and themselves). Tempers flare, teachers accuse kids of not wanting to be smart. The principal constantly doles out prizes -- candy, ice cream, field trips, massage sessions -- to students just for showing up and doing what is required. The result of this bribery is predictable: A third-grader balking at a lesson about using the dictionary asks, "But what do we win?"

Perlstein contrasts Tyler with a nearby school that has a mostly white and affluent student population. Tyler gets more financial resources, but the other school has advantages Tyler lacks: parental involvement, stability at home and kids who've been read to since infancy. At the neighboring school, the annual tests cause far less consternation; science and social studies are still taught; teachers are given more leeway to construct lessons suited to individual classes (and to decorate their classrooms as they see fit); and reading is perceived as an enjoyable activity rather than the annoying precursor to a BCR.