Excuses, excuses
After Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students in math this year, state officials at a jubilant news conference called the results a "cause for celebration." Eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above the proficiency level.But when the federal government made public the findings of its own tests last month, the results were startlingly different: only 21 percent of Tennessee's eighth graders were considered proficient in math.
Such discrepancies have intensified the national debate over testing and accountability, with some educators saying that numerous states have created easy exams to avoid the sanctions that President Bush's centerpiece education law, No Child Left Behind, imposes on consistently low-scoring schools.
A comparison of state test results against the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test mandated by the No Child Left Behind law, shows that wide discrepancies between the state and federal findings were commonplace.
What's most interesting about this article, however, is not the finding which most of us who follow this subject already knew, but rather the myriad attempts by states to explain away the gulfs.
The National Assessment uses three performance levels to classify student results: advanced, which denotes superior performance; proficient, which indicates that students have "demonstrated competency" and basic, which indicates students have attained only "partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills." Many students also score below basic, which the National Assessment's governing board does not classify as an achievement level.
On Oct. 19, the day the federal results were released, Ms. Spellings urged reporters to compare the percentage of students performing at the proficiency level on state tests with the percentage of students performing at the basic level on the federal test.
Many state officials said they also preferred that comparison, which greatly softens the discrepancies. In Tennessee, for instance, the 66-point gap between the federal and state results in eighth-grade math shrinks to just 26 points if the state results are compared with the federal measure of basic skills.
"NAEP's basic is comparable to our proficient," said Kim Karesh, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education. "Now whether Tennessee's test is stringent enough is something that we're reviewing constantly. Nobody here would say we have a perfect test."
So, in other words, the Secretary of Education and the state of Tennessee are admitting that proficiency on most state tests means at best partial mastery of the skills, yet...
Ms. Spellings has declined to criticize states whose tests appear to overstate the percentage of their students who are proficient..."We're not going to sit up in Washington and look at all those moving parts."
No, because that would make accountability actually matter. The problem with standards and accountability is that they can't function when the standards are bogus and no one holds states accountable for it. For instance, when states start making things up:
Officials in many other states whose scores differed sharply from those of the National Assessment cried foul over the very idea of comparing the results.
"The comparison to NAEP is not fair," said Mitch Edwards, a spokesman for the Department of Education in Alabama, where 83 percent of fourth-grade students scored at or above proficient on the state's reading test while only 22 percent demonstrated proficiency on the federal reading test. "Making comparisons to the NAEP becomes very difficult without giving the impression that some states are not measuring up to others or to the nation."
In Georgia, 83 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient on state reading tests, compared with just 24 percent on the federal test. "Kids know the federal test doesn't really count," said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the State Department of Education. "So it's not a fair comparison; it's not apples to apples."
Of course, NAEP is a sample-size assessment that is statistically designed to be a valid comparison. Moreover, while the question of motivation is a legitimate concern for high school results, the National Center of Educational Statistics, which administers the NAEP, has found little reason to believe it plays a significant role in middle school, much less in elementary school. It comes down to states -- understandably given the politics, though still unacceptable -- making excuses to avoid admitting their failure. Yet they must confront the problem in order to conquer it, and that might mean external pressure. Accountability cannot function without honesty, and the states are not being honest.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, November 27, 2005 at 9:04 PM.
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