by Brian
I am opposed to high stakes tests as a graduation requirement. The current law in our state requires students to pass 5 of them, beginning this year. I am certain that at least 50% of the students who take those tests this spring will not pass at least one of them. People in favor of high stakes tests often refer to the New York Regents exams, pointing out that those tests have been in place for a long time and that students there are managing to pass them. I admit I have been curious about that argument. How do they get their students to pass, when it is so difficult here? Well, apparently they cheat.
Sharon Otterman reports in the New York Times that the city's Department of Education will begin an audit of 60 schools to look at how they awarded course credits, graded Regents exams and tallied graduation figures. I didn't know this before, but the Regents exams are actually scored by teachers in the schools where the students attend classes, and they are not barred from scoring the tests of their own students.
An analysis by The New York Times found that on the English and history Regents exams in the past two years, students in the city’s public high schools were roughly five times as likely to score 65, the passing grade, or slightly above it than to score just below it. On the algebra exam, 8,451 students got grades of exactly 65 (the cut line for a diploma), while only 7,145 students combined ended up with a score of 61, 62, 63 or 64. Evidently extra points can be given if a student has shown the work, even if the answer is wrong.
"David M. Steiner, the state education commissioner, acknowledged in an interview in January that the state had known for years of the spikes in scoring patterns."
So it looks like the Regents phenomenon in New York is just another example of what can go wrong when testing becomes the end-all of education: people will cheat.
But these teachers are not cheating for personal gain. They are not inflating their students' scores to get a better evaluation. They are not trying to avoid not making Adequate Yearly Progress. These teachers are finding a way to help their students graduate from high school in spite of a system that would cause many of them to fail.
I wish I could do the same for my students.
Mark, I think that’s a fantastic idea. If we want subject tests, we can use the SAT IIs (formerly the Achievement Tests). The only ‘problem’ is that the SAT/ACT tests are designed to stretch different parts of the anticipated score distribution. And, of course, there’s no ‘passing’ score set by the College Board.
If we’re truly intent on “tightening our belts” (fiscally), you’d think it would occur to some state government that buying custom-tailored exams is a luxury we can’t afford. Especially when there are off-the-rack tests available.
btw: source for my $84mil number: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014276421_apwaxgreducationdollars1stldwritethru.html
I read recently that eliminating all HSPE graduation requirements would save the state $84 million.
I wonder how much could be saved by eliminating the whole testing system altogether?
Let’s think about this: do the TESTS actually improve student learning? No. Is the data even really used to improve student learning? I’d argue no as well, since by the time the results come in, that cohort of students has moved on and their classroom contexts have changed.
What does improve student learning? In the most basic sense: Having teachers in the classroom. I wonder how many teachers’ jobs could be preserved if the entire testing system in the state of Washington were suspended for a few years?
I apparently don’t know the right places to look, because I cannot seem to find online exactly how much our state testing system (creating, norming, administering, grading and reporting) actually costs. Anyone know?
While I’m totally in favor of meaningful testing, I too am against the big graduation test, and I have been since Bush was in Texas.
I remember years ago that few of the Black or Hispanic students passed the big Texas graduation test. This resulted, of course, in a generation of Texan Black and Hispanic grown-ups without a high school diploma. This will cause problems down the road.
The courts determined the tests fair and unbiased, http://web1.nusd.k12.az.us/schools/nhs/gthomson.class/articles/tx.grad.test.ok.html
But if you’ve got 85% of your white kids graduating and 65% of your kids of color graduating, you can either forge ahead with your plan or change it. Texas chose to forge ahead. I hope they’re expanding social services for all those citizens who will fall below the poverty line.
I got into some speculative conversation with a math teacher recently… why not just require all kids to take the SATs or ACTs, and offer subsidies (to help cover test fees) for students on free/reduced lunches? If the assessment works for colleges, why not? (I haven’t actually pursued an answer to that.)
That isn’t a policy proposal… just thinking “aloud.”
Thanks, Brian. You just made a horrible week even worse.