Of all the things that public schools in the Commonwealth need, what wouldn’t be on this list?
A. increased state funding to address the 95% of PA districts which are considered underfunded by nationally normed averages, according to a recent state study ;
B. focusing on a statewide school capital plan so districts aren’t left to their own devices to come up with the millions to repair or build new schools;
C. a teacher recruitment initiative to build incentives and retain quality public school teachers;
D. more tests
Well, thanks to the State Board of Education, more tests is indeed at the top of the agenda.
On January 17th, the State Board of Education unanimously passed the first draft of what they call"Chapter 4 Regulations for Graduation Competency Exams" (GCAs) -- AKA state graduation exams. According to initial drafts of the regulations, every single high school student in the Commonwealth must take ten new exams and pass at least six in order to receive a high school diploma. Alternatively they can graduate by gaining a “proficient” score on their 11th grade PSSA exams, but every student still has to take all 10 GCAs in addition to national, state, and of course school and course testing.
Oh yeah, and there's no money attached.
According to the state’s press release, Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak lauded the tests as a way to ensure that high school diplomas are “more meaningful.”
The proposal gives students a menu of ways to show they have the necessary skills in English, math, science and social studies to succeed in college and careers. These options include:
• Passing the new Graduation Competency Assessments.
• Passing the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment.
• Passing an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test.
• Passing a local assessment that independent evaluators certify is equivalent to Graduation Competency Assessments.
That’s the state’s argument, but what does the data show? After all, it’s not like statewide exams are new.
A recent op-ed by Monty Neill of FairTest, who has studied the impact of high stakes testing nationwide, has documented an alarming link between graduation tests and increased drop out rates. In 2007, Texas used its state exams to deny diplomas to more than 40,000 students. Boston’s drop out rates increased by more than a third, from 7.7% to 9.9% in 2006. When I spoke with State Secretary Zahorchak, he however said that the State Board studied dozens of other states which he said balanced out FairTest's frightening record.
Is this what Pennsylvania schools need? Let's be clear that these tests come with no assessment of the funds needed to make sure our students pass the tests. How much time and money will we spend on lobbying and reviewing these testing contracts (10 exams per student is a hefty deal) rather than the real things that matter in our schools?
Whatever happened to a state guaranteeing an actual funding formula? Or a state that recognized that rapidly growing school districts can barely keep up when funding numbers are frozen at 1992 enrollments? Or a state that thought it was illogical, inequitable, and insane to get “meaningful diplomas” by pitting students from a $20,000/student districts like Lower Merion vs. an $11,000/student district like Philadelphia?
Or more importantly when did meaningful diplomas get measured by tests rather than by access to quality teachers, a full range of courses, a review of adequate and substantial facilities, and substantial tutoring and mentoring programs for struggling students. How many of our high schools even have functioning and competitive science labs? A recent profile of one of the District’s top magnet schools, Masterman, had the staff complaining that even Masterman doesn’t! So if they don’t then what do our Germantowns, Kings and Furness High Schools look like?
It’s not too late to weigh in. You can still press home the issue with the state board, the governor, and the mayor. In a city where more than 30,000 students have dropped out in the last 5-6 years (according to School District numbers), the only people who gain from mandatory graduation exams are testing companies – not children.
For more information:
• Read background on the exams by the Education Law Center.
• Read the State Board’s materials on the GCAs.
• Read Parents United’s statement about the GCA exams.
• Read more about high stakes testing and its impact on student achievement at FairTest.
Mansei, do you know any numbers
on the cost of this policy? By that, of course, I mean the direct cost of purchasing and administering the tests - not the indirect costs: demoralizing students and teachers, taking capital and human resources away from furthering goals that are actually educationally meaningful, etc.
New Mandate is a Good Thing!
The mandate passed by the PA Board of Education is a good thing. When you find out that high school students are graduating without such basic skills as math and reading, you must do something drastic about this. While we may not want to believe that testing is necessary, it is. Without formative and summative assessments of students' progress, how does one know if there are gaps in their knowlegdge or cognitive deficits which they face? I do not at all condone testing as a means to label and discriminate, but as far as information gathering is concerned, it's neccessary.
Case in point: We may not agree with Mr. Bush on NCLB, but the truth of the matter is it created the most significant gains in math achievement that we've ever seen among students of color. Similarly, we have seen progrss in poor urban communities that we have not seen in decades, across the board. These are all good things.
Having said that, we still need to ensure that the requisite funding is provided to support such a rigorous mandate.
My blog:http://drchuckspeaks.blogspot.com/
My 1210 bio:http://thebigtalker1210.com/pages/1447226.php
D.E. II: Cost of testing
The Terra Nova tests are no longer in use by the District, but you can glean a sense of the cost by looking at the past contract for McGraw Hill who administered the annual tests for years. According to the 2006 contract , McGraw Hill was paid $2.5 million (this was the same amount for 2005 as well) to do at least three tests – reading, language arts, and math – for grades 1-10. The Notebook says that the Terra nova also tested for science although my fifth grade daughter has no recollection of a science Terra Nova last year ( not that that’s scientific information).
An interesting article from Stateline shows the dramatic cost increase of testing nationwide.
If these are standardized tests, norm referenced tests
then the point is that they don't give ,"formative and summative assessments of students' progress."
If they are criterion-referenced assessments - which could be used in a diagnostic manner to help structure curriculum to focus on individual students' strengths and weaknesses or to give formative or summative assessments of curricula more generally, they might serve some function. But norm referenced tests don't provide any useful assessments, and only serve as a very crude assessment tool at the expense of making curricula and instructional methodologies more rigid and less adaptive to individual student needs.
But even if they were criterion-referenced tests, we don't need more test results to know the major factors that need to be addressed to improve public education in Philly's schools. And a lack of money being spent on testing sure ain't one of them.
Really?
I understand the difference between norm and criterion referenced assessment; however, let me emphatically disagree with your assertion that you cannot glean anything usueful from a norm referenced test. That's just not true. Any piece of information which provide a snapshot of student performance can be useful for pedagogical-curriculum development purposes -- period.
Moreover, we assess crime data, so why not assess students' performance? What's more important?
Also, to say that we shouldn't test because it costs money is just ludacris. What I find even more alarming are the number of folks who have children in the suburban school districts, who demand tests for their children as early as kindergarten. However, once you start talking about testing for students in poor urban schools, nobody wants testing. There's an inherent bias in that, in my opinion. If we care about how well students are doing in suburban school districts, you should want to know how students are doing in the poorer, more urban districts. The problem is, many do not want to be reminded of how much we suck at providing a free and appropriate public education to those students as well.
My blog:http://drchuckspeaks.blogspot.com/
My 1210 bio:http://thebigtalker1210.com/pages/1447226.php
High stakes mandates punish -- not inform
We have information out the wazoo on why kids drop out and what it takes to keep them. Ever read Project U-Turn’s report on Philadelphia dropouts?
For the record, "we" definitely do not agree with Mr. Bush on NCLB nor on NCLB's impact on achievement for children of color. The School District has been real clear about the struggles our youth face in public schools. In 2002 the School Reform Commission wrote out lofty goals in their "Declaration of Education" and tried to align those goals with NCLB. So how did they do?
Here's the District's own assessment:
Graduation rates:
Target: 85%
06-07 actual: <60%
% of third graders reading on grade level
Target: 85%
06-07 actual: 48.2%
% of students performing at or above proficient level in core subjects:
Math target: 80%
Math 06-07 actual: 44.9%
Science target: 80%
Science 06-07 actual: 25.5%
We need people to get off that rah-rah NCLB bandwagon and see what's really happening to our children in public schools.
I'm not an anti-testing fanatic either, but I absolutely don't believe in high stakes tests --like linking graduation to a battery of them. And I don't think states need to be spending millions of dollars and put stress on young children in schools just to say that they're making life "meaningful" for kids. In terms of meaningful, how about every single legislator who votes for those tests takes all 10 and agrees to serve only if they pass six of them themselves?
The main problem w/tests
The main problem with tests is that they measure, by and large, how well you can do on a test. More troublesome, especially for schools, is that placing importance on a test- especially when you know both when the test will be administered + the likely content of that test- is that real teaching tends to be replaced by teaching to the test.
More troublesome than that is that placing such emphasis on test scores of the basics- the 3 Rs, as the old saw has it- tends to push out other valuable school programs. Hence, art, music, + even some sports go away, in favor of more test preparation.
And, in the end, do the higher test scores really mean that kids are better prepared? That's debatable. Education is more, far more, than that which can be easily measurable by a multiple choice test.
Standard full disclosure: As I have frequent said, I'm a product of a family of teachers. One of them said that the reason that Philly students did so much better the second year that they were given the State Assessment tests is that the first time they were a complete surprise; the second time, they were prepped in advance.
-Z