Laura H. Chapman, a frequent contributor to the blog, who has been a teacher, arts educator, curriculum designer, now retired, writes the following provocative contribution:
There is a well funded marketing campaign to sustain the Common Core and the associated tests.
One facet of the current campaign is designed to lower public expectations about the success of students on the SBAC and PARCC tests and to say, in effect, that cut scores on these tests will to set to approximate the operational definition of proficiency and the pass on NAEP tests, Only students who score at nearly the highest level on NAEP tests are dubbed proficient.
There is also a bit of distraction going on, because SBAC has already announced cut scores based on its field trials in 21 states. There is another little known fact: When PARCC and SBAC applied for federal funding, they promised to make their scores comparable.
PARCC will “coordinate with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium on… artificial intelligence scoring, setting achievement levels, and anchoring high school assessments in the knowledge and skills students need to be prepared for postsecondary education and careers.” Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. (2010, December 23). Proposal for supplemental race to the top assessment award. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/media/parccsupplementalproposal12-23achievefinal.pdf p. 3
Similarly, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) asserts: “SBAC and PARCC are strongly committed to ensuring comparability between their assessments…[including] collaborative standard setting that will facilitate valid comparisons of achievement levels (cut scores) in each consortium’s summative test…” SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium. (2011, January 6). Supplemental funding budget narrative submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. p. 31. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/media/sbac-supplemental-budget-narrative_final.pdf p. 31
Producers of the SBAC tests have their set “cut scores” to report on four levels of performance. Level 1 signals failure. Level 2 indicates “at risk of failure.” Level 3 implies “safe harbor, doing well.” Level 4 means “proficient.” For students in grade 11, only Level 4 indicates readiness for entry-level, credit-bearing courses in college.
Across the grades, in math and ELA, about 11% of students are estimated to score at 4, the highest level and the one that indicates, in the eleventh grade, readiness for entry-level, credit-bearing courses in college. So, that will be very bad news, and it will make news when all of the test scores are gathered in.
The SBAC cut scores in math are estimated to assign 67% of grade 11 students to Level 1 or Level 2, with most (40%) at Level 1. In many states, students who score at Level 1 will also place teachers and administrators at risk of being fired, perhaps with the whole school in line for closure. In addition, many schools will just assign students even more test prep in math, at the risk of harming students’ love for learning and affinities for inquiries that are not driven by tests.
The cut scores for English Language Arts are estimated to place about 59% of students at Level 1 and Level 2, with about 32% at Level 1. Students with these scores are certain to be in the same boat, receiving more test prep. In states like Ohio that guarantee “proficiency” in reading by grade three, 62% of students are likely to fall short, up to 82% if that rule and the meaning of proficiency corresponds to SBAC’s Level 4 definition of “proficiency.”
In any case, the cut score issue is not a trivial matter given the high stakes that federal and state officials have deliberately and foolishly attached to tests, tests that are not “objective” and cut scores that are not “objective” but judgments–and these detached from any concern for the consequences to individual students and all public schools.
Proponents of the Common Core and tests are worried about the political fall-out when the test scores are released in a form that allows stack ratings among all the states that sighed up for the Common Core and have advertised that they have tests aligned with the standards.
They should be worried. Gurus of spin at the American Enterprise Institute suggest how to spin that news. They suggest that the scores should be played down, that news should avoid crisis rhetoric about poor performance. They recommend framing the testing outcomes as just another step on a path “to continuous improvement” in student learning.
That soft “slow-and-steady-as-we-go message” provides cover for policy makers who want to delay high stakes decisions based on these test scores but still use them as a baseline for judging gains in performance for the following year. This delaying tactic may buy time to reset expectations for learning, but it will not stop the obsessive use of test scores and relentless test prep than now dominates life in many schools.
For advocates of the “one size fits all” standards and tests, the comparability in scores from SBAC and PARCC tests means this: Every state that signed up for this grand and nearly maniacal experiment in standardized education will be rated as winners or losers by these supposedly “objective tests.”
The governors and the state education officials who signed adoption papers for this grand experiment in standardized education may be out of office, but current officials will be questioned about the results. Handling the political fall-out will be tricky, especially with an election season heating up, budget problems in many states, and the dueling minds and messages of politicians (notably Republicans, but also Democrats) who support or condemn the Common Core and tests, and many others who have no mindful views other than spin provided to them.
All of the investors in pushing the Common Core–Achieve, the National Governor’s Association the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Gates foundation and buddies along with venture capitalists–want to keep PARCC and SBAC in place, including Common Core “aligned” tests other than those from PARCC and SBAC.
Why? Do not believe the spin about the global economy and needed skills for the 21st century workplace, and all of the other sales pitches.
Test scores with high stakes consequences are the weapon of choice for expanding market-based education. The more students, teachers, and schools fail, the faster the collapse of public education.
As Diane Ravitch and others have said over and over, the cut scores for NAEP “proficiency” are high. NCLB never defined proficiency, Race to the Top did but only in terms of college and career ready specifications, not cut scores or tests.
Achieve has manufactured a “proficiency gap” that looks impressive to a casual viewer, but it is hot air. The proficiency gap is a version of the achievement gap. The kids and the teachers are the problem. The standards and the tests are perfect.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Test scores with high stakes consequences are the weapon of choice for expanding market-based education. The more students, teachers, and schools fail, the faster the collapse of public education.”
Most important take away from the article!
Yup!
If I may modify the last sentence of the post:
“The standards and the tests are perfectLY AND COMPLETELY INVALID.”
(All in life is better now and I can go do some grocery shopping)
This current school “reform” obsession with dividing human beings into four “levels” (or call them groups) is weird.. -especially coming from a culture that professes to respect diversity and individualism. And, why FOUR “levels”? I mean, I have a problem with any of this, but why do so many of these things use FOUR? SBAC has four, New York State has been using four, the Marshall Rubric that has been used in our school district for the APPR teacher assessment debacle has four. One of my colleagues made a good case for having a fifth “level” back when the lunatic NYS teacher APPR assessment plan was first rolled out (or rolled over us, as it were.) But, a fifth level would be a threat to the”reformers”, I think.
For as it stands with these incessant FOUR-mulas, , I see that there are really TWO actual categories: 1. in trouble (“failing / “at risk of failing”) or 2. doing well (“safe” / “proficient”.) It’s a binary world….good versus bad, up versus down, on versus off. It’s exactly the sort of thinking that would make a computer-head like BIll Gates feel at home…..a Boolean universe of bit switches..off or on, off or on, off or on…… It also reminds me of the sort of reductionist thinking endorsed by politicians like George Bush Jr.. I remember Bush’s “logic” during his “War on Terrorism”: you’re either with us or against us. This sort of binary viewpoint leaves very little room for gray areas, for nuance, for compromise. Art, poetry and music are especially starved for oxygen in this sterile, Common Core world. And, critical thinking…..? How can that exist?
Let me end this post by recounting a wonderful moment I witnessed at a school board meeting 18 years ago. Some hapless principal (now long gone from our district) was charged with explaining New York State’s then new FOUR level system of categorizing elementary readers. The school board members tried to listen intently as the befuddled administrator went on and on trying to make sense of the jargon and bureaucratic babble that had just been excreted by the state education department in Albany. It was going on and on and on……and making less and less sense. But, you know, we gotta keep mouthing this stuff or at least passively giving in and being carried away by the crap-stream -that is if we want to stay safely in the middle class. And, finally, at long last, one school board member slowly raised his hand, and asked (as politely as he possibly could muster under the circumstances) essentially….. what the HELL are you talking about??? Exactly!
Laura Chapman’s analysis doesn’t reflect my experience at all. For instance,
What states are using these first test results to close schools and fire teachers?
She goes on:
If “more test prep” means more work on the complex, multipart, real world problems and analytical essays in these new assessments, students can only benefit.
But it’s still true. New standards and assessments will not prevent some school leaders from trying to game the system instead of providing rich learning opportunities to their students. Under NCLB, whole states did that, in fact, by setting low standards and inflating student test scores.
The solution is advocacy that demands better – not elimination of standards and accountability in order to assert that everything is fine.
Part of that advocacy includes opposition to undermining public education by linking these assessment results to high stakes for schools and teachers and students. It includes opposition to over-testing and support for using a variety of measures to provide feedback on how well students are doing. And it includes using fewer and better annual assessments in favor of more assessments integrated with every-day learning.
But then we get to the heart of Laura Chapman’s concern:
This is a concern I share. Privatization threatens the continued existence of public education as an American institution. But it doesn’t do any good to defend public education by saying that tests are wrong, PISA is wrong, it’s all about poverty, our schools are just fine. We’re still left with high college remediation rates and other indicators as “weapons” for privatizers.
There’s nothing “manufactured” about the fact that too many of students don’t graduate and when they do they are not ready for college or a demanding job. Privatizers win if their assault on public education prevents us from acknowledging that we need to recover from NLCB and do the real work needed to allow our schools to get back to preparing our students for life.
Bill Duncan writes:
“Laura Chapman’s analysis doesn’t reflect my experience at all. For instance,
‘In many states, students who score at Level 1 will also place teachers and administrators at risk of being fired, perhaps with the whole school in line for closure.”
What states are using these first test results to close schools and fire teachers?”
At the very beginning of his rebuttal he sets the tone for his entire response.He immediately sets up a straw man argument by misinterpreting Laura’s point.
She did not state that there was a state that was set to fire teachers and close schools based on, as he laid it out… ” using THESE FIRST TEST RESULTS to close schools and fire teachers.
I don’t have the patience to respond point by point to the rest of his dissembling. Perhaps someone else does.
bmarshall: when will the defenders of the status quo of massive rheephorm failure (I am deliberately understating the situation) just have the honesty to drop the endlessly recycled “great aspirational goal but the execution is awful” claptrap?
Don’t hold your breath waiting for even a small gust of honesty and critical self-examination.
And “execution” is the right word. When the rheephormistas repeatedly impose test-to-punish regimens that are disconnected from genuine learning and teaching, and so many suffer the toxic consequences, what becomes obvious is that those awful results are the intended end—
The rest is just branding and sales hype and avoiding responsibility.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Bill, I don’t know what “your experience” is, but
these are high stakes tests. The scores count for 50% of the teacher evaluation in some states. These scores will feed into the VAM ratings of teachers and schools. They can also have consequences for teachers of “untested subjects” if the district assigns the test results to them. I work in arts education. Arts teachers can be assigned the reading score for their school or the math score of their school.
If you have been tracking the news on education, including this blog, you would recognize that school closings in many states are based on test scores. The first round of scores from these tests will be treated in two ways. They will be treated as the baseline for “growth scores” to be calculated next year, and each subsequent year. States have various thresholds for “expected growth” within a year and across multiple years. If these expectations for school improvement are not met, school closure is likely.
The second and more complicated use of this first round of SBAC scores will be some form of reverse engineering to invent a link between the scores from tests given in prior years and the SBAC results. That requires heaving lifting, including access to statistics for alignment studies of items…difficult if the prior year tests are proprietary.
My information on the cut scores came from the SBAC website http://www.smarterbalanced.org/news/smarter-balanced-states-approve-achievement-level-recommendations/
I disagree with your statement: “If more test prep” means more work on the complex, multipart, real world problems and analytical essays in these new assessments, students can only benefit.”
The test prep happening in schools is pre-empting time for studies of content in social studies, the sciences, the arts and complex real-world problems that cannot be addressed by close readings of texts and by mathematical reasoning
The tests themselves are not high stakes. They only become high stakes when states misuse them which, it’s my sense, is a decreasing number (though I could be wrong about that…it kind of depends on year-to-year election and appointments). Which states mandate 50% to test scores?
In any case, high stakes isn’t a feature of the test itself.
Fwiw, it’s SBAC’s level 3 that indicates that “The student has met the achievement standard and demonstrates progress toward mastery of the knowledge and skills in (mathematics or English language arts/literacy) needed for likely success in entry – level credit-bearing college coursework after completing high school coursework.
In Grades 3-5, it’s Level 3 that indicates “The student has met the
achievement standard and demonstrates progress toward mastery of the knowledge and skills in (mathematics or English language arts/literacy) needed for likely success in future coursework.
Not Level 4.
Lucia, the majority of students will not reach level 3
Bill,
Rhetorically, who is influencing the “elections”? It wouldn’t be, as the Sunlight website, exposes, corporations and their self-serving managers and owners? Verbiage about job creation, from Wall Street, Wash. DC. or Silicon Valley is multinational corporate blather to enrich the 0.2%.
“Demanding jobs” …at low pay?
Self-appointed education saviors from the tech sector, use H-1B visas to thwart employment of U.S. STEM graduates and to lower pay for jobs in the industry. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? The latest example can be found in the Dayton Daily News, reporter Josh Swigart, “Wright State University being investigated for sponsoring foreign workers to staff local firms”. Quoting Hal Salzman, senior fellow, at Heldrich Center, Rutgers, “Evidence is quite clear that there is a more-than-ample supply of US workers to fill the needs of the IT industry.”
The SBAC scores, reported globally as states’ ELA or Math scores obscure the fact that a considerable majority of students at specific grades do reach level 3 in ELA. Here are some high school scores:
In California, 56% of 11th graders scored 3/4 on ELA; on math, just 29% scored 3/4.
In Idaho, 61% of 10th graders scored 3/4 on ELA; on math, just 30%.
In Oregon, 69% of 11th graders scored 3/4 on ELA; 31 percent in math.
In Washington, 62 % of 11th graders scored 3/4 on ELA; 29% on math.
In general, math scores are higher in the early grades than in middle school/HS.
Because SBAC leaves it to the states to release their data, it’s difficult to find a good summary and breakdown across states and grades. A very broad generalization is that based on what’s been released: ELA scores improve as the grades go up, and math scores decline as the grades go up.
Bill, You seem to think that… “The tests themselves are not high stakes. They only become high stakes when states misuse them which, it’s my sense, is a decreasing number (though I could be wrong about that…it kind of depends on year-to-year election and appointments).
You have no evidence to support your impressions, and you are wrong about flippy floppy policies about tests, year-to-year, based on political whims .
The use of tests scores for teacher evaluation, retention, dismissal are established by LAW in 37 states. Those STATUTES are sometimes, but not always, on the books in order to meet federal requirements for teacher evaluations based on test scores, including growth scores.
Which states mandate 50% to test scores? New York and Ohio for starters. Do your own research to find the others.
NY just increased its policy to 40% and OH changed its policy from 50% to 35%.
You have misstated the facts of the case in Ohio. Districts must decide whether to use plan A or B. The choice of A means 50% of the evaluation is based on raising test scores. In plan B, raising test scores counts for 35% with the remaining 15% decided at the district level among five options. Three of these require unbelieveable paperwork.
The NY Evaluation system is on tria . The trial was still in process with the Supreme Court of New York State as of early September. The evaluation plan for the coming year requires understanding and complying with details in a 152 page report by the end of October.
The 40% in NY would be an increase, not a decrease from 50%. And it remains true the 50% is not state policy in OH.
You continue to ignore the facts stated on the Ohio Department of Education website, and the facts in NY state where there is a pending Supreme Court case on the invalidity of the teacher evaluation system. End of conversation.
My spirits would lift if Laura Chapman was ever wrong. The accurate picture she portrays, is a national travesty for a country that sacrificed so much in the name of democracy.
Following the American Enterprise Institute advice, Illinois State Superintendent,Tony Smith, sent a letter to school administrators, reported today in the Chicago Tribune, that warned of low scores coming to them (in September for tests taken last spring) and not to worry, it’s only a baseline. It goes on to extoll the virtues of all the wonderful teachers in Illinois and that he didn’t want anyone to use the scores to “shame” teachers or schools. Not this year,anyway.
I can’t resist adding that whatever the assessment, I still can’t see how results you receive in the fall for last year’s students can inform instruction with a new set of students,as they still claim,