Posted on 08/08/2004 8:45:48 AM PDT by TaxRelief
RALEIGH – North Carolina political and education leaders held a news conference Thursday to release state test scores and accountability outcomes for the 2003-04 school year. This has become an annual event in Raleigh, usually in August or early September, as the official ABCs of Public Education results are released for each public-school district in the state (some of which typically let preliminary results trickle out if they look particularly good).
In the past, my staff and I have paid a great deal of attention to this announcement. Starting just a couple of years after the program started in the mid-1990s, we began issuing our own statewide report card that used the ABC data and other state statistics to compute letter grades for each district linked to reasonable expectations about what a "successful" school would look like.
But this year, I’ve had a hard time working up any interest in the data release. It’s not that I don’t think educational accountability is a critical issue – there are few of equivalent importance in North Carolina politics – but I simply put little credibility in the state’s end-of-grade and end-of- course tests.
The basic problem is that every year we’re told how far our students have jumped, but the judges won’t let us see the measuring tape. We have no idea whether last year’s foot is the same length as this year’s foot. Indeed, what we do know about the process of devising and scoring North Carolina’s tests suggests that consistent measurement over time is probably impossible. Unlike many other states, which use independent nationally referenced tests, North Carolina generates its own tests and estimates the proper "cut score" – the percentage of questions a student must answer to be considered "at grade level." Given that many of these cut scores are well below 50 percent, and sometimes approach one-third of the questions correctly answered, students well-coached in test-taking techniques have a good chance of passing based only on half-educated guesswork.
The argument for North Carolina-only tests is that they more closely track our state’s chosen curriculum, its "standard course of study." But how different is our state’s chosen content from that of the rest of the nation? Should it even be substantially different, given the interrelated nature of our economy and society? More importantly, this possible advantage does not outweigh the disadvantages of 1) lack of comparability to other jurisdictions, 2) lack of confidence in the test’s independence and reliability, and 3) lack of access to the test questions (other states release old tests for public review, but North Carolina says it wants to save money by reusing the old tests and therefore hides them from view).
Apparently the 2003-04 results showed a slight increase in students scoring at grade-level, a decline in public schools meeting or exceeding expected growth, and an increase in schools meeting the No Child Left Behind Act’s federal growth standard. But this is all fruit from a poison tree. Also, it demonstrates that scoring changes matter more than academic performance (the gains on the federal measures were largely due to a statistical adjustment to allow more student groups to fall within a margin of error).
I’m not alone in my disaffection. These announcements clearly do not get the media and public attention it used to, and for good reason. As political candidates talk about education this fall, I’d like to see them discuss the possibility of adopting independent, reliable, and meaningful national tests. Armed with the results, we could rejuvenate a debate over education reform in North Carolina that has become confused and convoluted.
Reality would be too painful, so they pat themselves on the back each time the kids achieve downwardly mobile benchmarks.
If they really want to know the truth, haul out a test from 1960 or so and make the kids take it without any special preparation. Comparing the 2004 scores with the 1960 scores would create some very interesting questions for the NEA to answer.
The biggest problem I have with these tests, however, involves the manner in which results by school are reported. Flawed though the raw scores may be, raw scores are still more important than some interpretations of them.
The lead story always seems to be "these schools met or did not meet expectations," or these schools did or did not show improvement." The raw scores are deemphasized. So, for instance, if School X goes from 50% of its students performing at or above grade level to 60% of its students doing so, that's somehow "better" than a school scoring 85% two consecutive years.
Real life doesn't work that way, of course. In real life, you advance in your career by doing your job better than others, not by beating some modest expectations, or showing improvement from a low starting point. Unless, of course, you're a teacher. Hmmm, maybe I see the problem.
My children are already 4 weeks into their year round school, grades 1 and 4 and this curriculum is terrible. What I'm doing now is trying to organize parents to go to the media, PTA etc. with the facts. I'm doubtful it will do much good. I found out that they've already purchased 5 years of this program at an exorbitant price.
Next job is to find out how to make enough $$ to put them into private school I guess.
MKM
"These announcements clearly do not get the media and public attention it used to, and for good reason."
One of the reasons is that it is easier to squeeze moneyt from the taxpayers by mumbling the various "education" and "for the children" spells without having to show much of anything in the realm of progress or accountability. I think this is a well thought out ploy. The majority of people only hear the headline touting improvements, not the fact that they changed the criteria making improvements easier to have.
That Math Trailblazers program is going to be a boon for Sylvan's and Huntington's after-school tutoring programs.
Children's brains experience their most rapid growth, in areas determined by their environment, up to the age of eight. Unfortunately, too many parents will not realize the problem until their kids are past this critical point. Although I am firmly opposed to Nintendo and Gameboy, it may be that they will be the only opportunity kids will get for developing their spacial skills, systemic rigor and pattern recognition abilities.
The fact is that unless parents keep up a relentless demand for the basics--Reading, Writing and Arithmetic--the administrators will be content believing that their job is character development, recruitment/creation of liberals, and sexuality training.
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