by Brian
On Monday I’m going to Olympia as a math teacher and a member of the Washington Education Association to try to educate the Senate Education Committee about End of Course math exams. Again. I went to Olympia last year too, and urged them to support a bill delaying the use of the End of Course math exams as a graduation requirement. That bill died in committee, and we started this school year knowing that our students would have to take the tests, but not knowing what the tests would be like because the tests hadn’t been written. They still haven’t.
There are many things wrong with high stakes EOC tests, but the most unfair thing is that the tests were not ready when the students were. 60,000 students in the class of 2013 will be required to pass a test for a class that they took one to three years earlier. If they are in Geometry this year they will take the Geometry EOC, then have to take the Algebra test next year. If they are an advanced student in Algebra 2 or above they will have to take one test this year, and another next year.
The state can’t seem to decide what to even call the tests. In September we were told that students who had already taken Algebra or Geometry would have to take tests called “Comprehensive 1 and 2” to meet the graduation requirement. Next we heard they would have to take “Retake 1 or 2”. Someone must have realized that it was pretty silly to call a test a Retake when it had never been taken in the first place. So now we’re told the tests will be called “Makeup 1 and 2”. The Makeup tests will be essentially identical to the End of Course exams.
OSPI is continually updating information regarding the EOCs, because they are making them up on the fly. Last week they released a newly edited list of definitions, postulates, and theorems that students are expected to know for the Geometry test. There are 57 of them. (Sample: The lines containing the perpendicular bisectors of a triangle are concurrent at the circumcenter. Their common point is equidistant from the three vertices of the triangle.) We have about 40 sophomores in our high school taking Algebra 2 this year. Almost all of them took Geometry last year (before the EOC was available), and have not used any of those postulates or theorems since last June. Still, the state law says they have to take the Geometry test. It is obviously our responsibility to provide a review of Geometry for those students, but when is that supposed to happen? Algebra 2 is a class that students take when they are ready, and most of the students are juniors and seniors. I can’t stop teaching the Algebra 2 curriculum in the middle of May in order to use class time to review for a Geometry test that most of my students will not have to take. So the students will have to review on their own, or we will have to provide them with an opportunity to review before or after regular school hours. That is hardly a fair reward for our best math students.
So Superintendent Randy Dorn has asked the Senate to consider a new bill, 5227, which would require students in the classes of 2013 and 2014 to pass only one EOC in math to be able to graduate. (There is a separate bill dealing with the same issues for science.) I will support it, because it would help some, but there are a lot of other issues that I don’t have time to address today that make me want to go further.
Here’s another idea: given the current crisis in the state budget, let’s suspend all the high stakes graduation requirements. I haven’t heard of any data that supports the premise that the graduates of the classes from 2008 to 2010 were any better for having to pass the reading and writing WASL or HSPE than those of 2007 and before. We can still administer the tests as a system check, which after all, was their original purpose back before the craziness started.
Suspending the requirement to pass tests in reading, writing, math, and science for graduation would save $46 million in the next biennium, according to OSPI. The K-4 enhancement cuts that will reduce funding for about 1,500 educator positions are worth $50 million.
If we can’t do everything, let’s go with what will help kids the most.
…and I thought my battle with cancer was difficult. These rulings have put kids and math teachers in an untenable position. I cannot imagine any member of the legislature being willing to be measured on their efficacy at learning or working at their jobs under those conditions. Just today I heard of a new teacher early in the school year being pressed, as a part of his professional growth plan, to make a prediction of how many students would pass an EOC exam without having seen the exam. It was suggested by his evaluator that he write 70%. Give ’em Hell Harry.