Comsewogue is a small district on Long Island in New York. Its superintendent, Joseph Rella, is an outspoken critic of standardized testing and “one-size-fits-all” education.
His district developed and applied a problem-based curriculum to prepare students in high school.
“Teaching to the test” is a concept that no longer computes in Comsewogue School District.
Administration and faculty in Comsewogue, for the last two school years, have experimented with a problem-based learning curriculum for small groups of interested ninth- and 10th-graders, an alternative to the traditional educational strategy of focusing assignments and assessments toward the goal of performing well on state-mandated standardized tests at the end of the year. Now, Superintendent Joe Rella has data to back up his notorious aversion to one-size-fits-all education and assessment.
In all subjects, Comsewogue students in PBL classes passed 2018 Regents exams, scoring 65 or better, at a higher rate than those in traditional classrooms, according to data released by the district. On chemistry, geometry, algebra II, global history and English 11 exams, PBL students achieved mastery level, scoring 85 or better, at significantly higher rates than their non-PBL classmates.
“We played in your ballpark — we scored runs,” Rella said of how he interpreted the data, meaning students taught by alternative methods still displayed an aptitude on the state’s required tests.
Though Rella and the district have taken steps to try to have PBL assessments replace Regents exams, no avenue to do so has been greenlighted by the New York State Department of Education to this point for Comsewogue. Emails requesting comment on the significance of Comsewogue’s test results sent to the education department and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) press office were not returned.
During the 2017-18 school year, about half of Comsewogue’s ninth- and 10th-graders, roughly 300 students, took part voluntarily in PBL classes, which emphasize hands-on learning and real-world application of concepts as assessments — similar to a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation — as opposed to the traditional “Regents model.” The students were still required by the state to take the Regents exams as all students are, and their performance has inspired the district in year three of the pilot to expand its PBL curriculum offerings on a voluntary basis for 2018-19 to its entire student body — kindergarten through 12th grade.
The superintendent said the impetus for the district to experiment with PBL started three years ago, when he and about 20 Comsewogue teachers spent a day at the New York Performance Standards Consortium in Manhattan. The organization was founded on the belief that there was a better way to assess student learning than dependence upon standardized testing, according to its website.
Open the article to see the stunning results of the district’s problem-based curriculum.
Rella has proven that student learning is created by asking questions that stimulate curiosity, not by checking the “right” box or responding with a canned answer on a standardized test.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane This from a thread of cognitional theory: When children are engaged in real problem-solving, theories become tools to help them do that. Theories become means to their own concrete ends, and not abstractions or ends in themselves, and especially not for some test writer or off-site score analyzer.
The power of students’ own questions: the most overlooked feature of classroom curricula, EXCEPT when teachers know what they are doing. It’s so much easier just to talk AT them; much harder to know how to lay the groundwork so that THEY raise questions for themselves, and then to habituate that activity? WOW. CBK
Sorry, but this connection is nothing more than a correlation between a self-selected group of “interested” (read: self motivated and smart and privileged) 9th and 10th grade students. This type of student will score well on any test for reasons that have little to do with the use of debunked “discovery”, “constructivist” or “project based” learning programs.
New York Regents exams are far from challenging; given their repetitive nature, the ready access to exam archives, the availability of multiple re-takes, and the degree to which the five core exams have been “dumbed-down”, elite students typically crush them with little efort. Like most standardized tests, Regents exams are disguised IQ tests, favoring smart, well motivated students. I know a number of students who have challenged the Regents Global History exam after just one year; after a weekend of on-line review they were all able to score in the mid to upper 90s.
a key to understanding the invasive push for testing which favors ‘motivated’ students: a motivation well associated to middle-class/wealthy economic stability
Agree. If the students had been randomly assigned to pbl and non pbl I would be impressed. Without this, I am not.
“with a problem-based learning curriculum for small groups of interested ninth- and 10th-graders,”
I certainly applaud attempting to get away from the standards and testing malpractice regime. . . however. . . still playing the test score rank stacking game and supposedly doing better at it than the drill and kill test prep is still wrong.
As it is a small selected group of “interested” students, who more likely than not would do well on the tests to begin with does not prove that the difference in teaching and learning styles/practices are “better” (although damn near anything is better than test prep.)
Using the false and COMPLETELY INVALID indicators that are standardized test scores to say anything about a specific teaching and learning process is “vain and illusory”, in other words a bunch of horse manure and continues the emphasis and focus on malpractices that harm all the students in one fashion or another.
You are correct but notice the wording…..”We played in your ballpark-we scored runs”. That says it all. Yes, these were selected students (cherry picked) likely to pass the tests any way that they were taught. The good thing about it is that it was a test on a small portion of children and these children had less to lose if the experiment failed….. unlike the bad experiment of Common Core pushed on the whole country. Yes, it is wrong to go along with the focus of standardized test scores, but sometimes you just have to throw a little manure back at the people who have been piling that manure onto you for years. It’s a glimmer of hope and I applaud the man for going into the ring to do battle on behalf of children.
Stop beating up on one of the finest anti-testing superintendents in the nation.
The state of New York requires every student to pass Regents exams in order to graduate.
Supt. Rella showed that kids could ace the Regents exams without test prep.
EXCUSE ME!….but how am I beating up on this Superintendent?
Duane,
High school students cannot graduate in New York without taking and passing five Regents exams (a very small number of students in the Performance Standards Consortium won an exemption in the 1990s).
You are wrong to bash a great anti-testing superintendent who is trying to prove that students do better on the mandated exams without test prep.
It isn’t bashing to say that you can’t really read anything into the result and to be honest even the title of this post is something I’d expect to see more from a reform web site.
PBL is a good thing and certainly much better than test prep and by all counts should be lauded and supported but to say for years “testing results are invalid and in any event there are no miracles” and now “look, we have a miracle” seems a little disingenuous.
Did I use the word “miracle”?
I don’t believe in miracles.
I am pleased that some districts are willing to think outside the box and get away from deadly, dull test prep. In order to apply the same principles to more places, other districts with varying budgets and demographics would have to be willing to conduct the same type of action research.
I have always found that students respond and learn a great deal by doing rather than just sitting and receiving. Multi-modality learning tends to stay with students. I was always a student of the learning process. Long before TPR (total physical response) was found to be helpful to beginning ELLs, I taught some of my high school students to square dance in order to teach listening comprehension. In my elementary classes I often combined content with language instruction through hands-on projects, and we still spent a lot of time reading and writing. Learning to solve a problem or discover something new is highly motivating to students, and they will learn the underlying principles better, naturally.
We don’t need to be panning this PBL experiment just because we don’t like the headline.
Sure, the bar chart’s value is minimal, since it’s a good guess volunteers were solid students who would have aced the test anyway. But it’s good enough data to encourage staff & families to get onboard the expanded program – any mook knows this is a better approach than the rote test-prep encouraged by annual hi-stakes testing.
Sure, the sales is pitched to bureaucratic et al testing fans, making it [probably, given LI Opt-Out stats] hypocritical. I say good on them: throw the hypocrites some hypocrisy. Let this be the beginning of a wave of PBL curriculum which 86’s CCSS & its aligned texts & test-prep matls, and “personalized learning” programs too. A good place to start hammering away at the slender foundations supporting our corp-profit-purchased natl ed policy
Regents courses are not typically subjected to classic test-prep until the end of the school year. At some point in the fourth marking period, regents teachers start to “review” using past exams; this is especially effective due to the repetitive nature of these yearly subject area tests. Most Regents teachers also offer after school review sessions as the exam dates close in. Regents exams differ dramatically from the NCLB/CCSS?RTTT mandatory 3 to 8 tests because high school students have the motivation of “graduation requirements” – and the psychological support of multiple ( 2 – 5+ times) re-takes without penalty.
The biggest flaw in the Regents exam process regarding the use of “test-prep” is that it is rare for teachers to deviate from the de-facto exam-driven curriculum. I have had a number of high school teachers tell me that they do not teach it is it isn’t on the test.
Regents scores are now used by many districts for the 50% test score component of the state APPR teacher evaluation plan. Shared or distributed scores are being used to rate virtually all K to 12 teachers in may districts in NYS.
But next year…
“their performance has inspired the district in year three of the pilot to expand its PBL curriculum offerings on a voluntary basis for 2018-19 to its entire student body — kindergarten through 12th grade.”
That should mean they’re targeting NYS’ currect version of CCSS and its aligned assessments/ test-prep for 3rd-8th grades. The moratorium on using those scores for teacher evaluation sunsets in 2019. Regardless, they are hi-stakes in the sense that they’re used for admission to middle and high school.
In the small Long Island that is adopting PBL, there won’t be an issue about admission to middle or high school.
It is very annoying that so many people here are naysayers about others who are looking for practical alternatives to the hi-stakes testing regime. Ever eager to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Diane,
Having just re-read all the comments I have to disagree about “naysayers.” I’m just not reading the comments that way. Of course, we all read these things through our own lenses and we all have our own personal predilections and biases.
The only naysaying here is that we should be careful not to read too much into the results.
I’d be interested to see a further dig down into what they’re doing with math. In NYC, many schools barely teacher proof these days which is a shame because it’s the core concept of Geometry (which should really be called something like “logic and deductive reasoning using Euclidean Geometry as a platform”). Schools don’t teach it because teaching proof, and in fact, deductive reasoning and logic is HARD and it’s not worth a lot of points on the high stakes exam so in order to help the kids pass both for the kids sake and teachers they do it short shrift. I’d love to see if they’re doing anything interesting w/r to things like this.
I read a paper last year by a theoretical computer scientist who was developing tools to make learning CS theory more concrete and I felt it could be adapted to the high school level – in particular for geometry in a PBL setting. I haven’t had a chance to follow up on that but I’m curious to see if Rella’s schools are doing something similar.
Mike,
Whether it is Rella’s efforts to replace test-prep or anyone else trying a different approach to break free of the test-and-punish regime, there are readers who will pounce and call them frauds. This echoes the debate we had here in 2016, where some faithful readers pounced on every mis-step by Clinton while ignoring the clear and present danger of Trump.
PBL is just another “student-centered” fad, promising in-depth understanding and the development of 21st century, critical thinking skills, and puts students in control of their own learning.
PBL operates on the myth of “transference” perpetuated by non-educators.
It is one of those programs that sounds great on paper, but the reality is that most kids do not want to be in charge of their own learning – nor should they be. Proponents continue to conflate the ways that well educated, professional adults conduct research and solve problems. with what is best for educating children. Kids are not mini-adults and most do not fit the mold of self-motivated learners eager to research solutions to so-called (contrived) real world problems. And forcing this pedagogy onto young people without the requisite background knowledge and experience is a mistake. In small doses at the HS level, with the right kids, PBL probably provides some benefits. As a comprehensive K to 12 program for all, PBL will grow old and tiresome for the majority of kids ill-equipped to do more than copy and paste.
Rage – you’re right and you’re wrong.
You’re wrong to dismiss project based learning. PBL is a legit tool in a good teacher’s tool chest. It can be very effective if used correctly. It also requires a lot of time and patience to create each experience, to prepare any given class for the experience and to shepherd the students through the experience.
You’re correct in that it’s been overblown as the latest cure all and also an excuse for when teacher’s don’t know what they’re doing so they just let the kids “experiment on their own” and another reason why so many great teachers ignore the education “experts.”
“where some faithful readers pounced on every mis-step” Kind of like Ninotchka’s comment on the Stalin show trials:
Sample PBL activity.
The Periodic Table now displays 118 chemical elements. Scientists believe that element 120 might be immune to the nearly instantaneous decay that dooms nearly all of the other synthetic elements. If this is the case, element 120 could possibly exhibit some important new properties that could trigger new and important technologies.
Your team of particle physicists is being tasked to produce element 120. Complete a research document that explains how you will accomplish this. Describe the new properties of element 120 and its technological applications. You also get to name your newly created element 120 for future publication on the Periodic Table.
You and your friends are 8th graders with absolutely zero background knowledge in chemistry or physics . . . GO!
As a teacher, imagine you have six classes of 25+ students all tasked with is PBL activity; your students are mostly LIMs. GO!
“Regents scores are now used by many districts for the 50% test score component of the state APPR teacher evaluation plan. Shared or distributed scores are being used to rate virtually all K to 12 teachers in may districts in NYS.”
Well that sounds horrible – & you’ll have to explain how the last bit is any different from a music teacher sharing in her schools’ ELA scores for evaln purposes.
But Rage, judging from your moniker, I assume the thrust of your post is not to tell me how swell all this Regents testing/ evaln is, but rather to correct my impression that NYS is using a lot of Gates/ Pearson/ consortium matls [which PBL might disrupt] – nor, per your post, is test-prep a big factor [at least not in hisch]. So I did a little hw at the NYS ed sites.
Looks like Gates is still in catbird seat, as NYS stds are barely tweaked CCSS, & the push is on to computerize all districts.
Consortiums PARCC & SBAC definitely squeezed out by ‘original’-sounding math/ ela [& spreading to sci, soc stud] assessments. Tho surely they must have a testing co consulting. The bright spot there (if they’re not exaggerating): review & input on test Q’s from educators, & maybe even some field testing. That sounds more like the Regents I remember from my youth.
But when you say no test prep… Please. EngageNY is year-round scripted curriculum/ test-prep for every subject P-12. In their own words, e.g. “These grade 3-5 curriculum modules are designed to address CCSS ELA outcomes.” Just one quick glance at the 3rd-gr “Listening & Learning Curriculum Map” shows Gates-funded, Coleman-driven ed, in all its creativity-stomping, age-inappropriate glory, is its beating heart: “Becoming a Close Reader and Writing to Learn,” “Analyzing Narrative and Supporting Opinions,” “Researching to Build Knowledge and Teaching Others,” “Gathering Evidence and Speaking to Others.”
Z
I did not completely dismiss PLB. Yes it is a useful tool in the toolbox of elite teachers that have a rare combination of knowledge and skill along with a technical proficiency that is light years beyond any textbook. Also needed is the right type of student, as previously noted. In the hands of less effective teachers it is a disaster that starts with handing out Chromebooks and repeating endlessly: “You are in charge of your own learning, I am just the guide on the side.”
Rage – yes – I agree 100%. When you have the time and resources it can be effective (particularly if you have the time) but it can also be used to undermine the teaching profession (just take a look at the “lead learner” junk being pushed in CS Ed)
Hi, RageAgainstTestocracy,
I had another reply to yr 7/27 11:58 post, still in moderation after 12 hrs! Maybe it was too long. I’ll just re-post my fave part [deathless prose 😉 ] while waiting:
But when you say no test prep… Please. EngageNY is year-round scripted curriculum/ test-prep for every subject P-12. In their own words, e.g. “These grade 3-5 curriculum modules are designed to address CCSS ELA outcomes.” Just one quick glance at the 3rd-gr “Listening & Learning Curriculum Map” shows Gates-funded, Coleman-driven ed, in all its creativity-stomping, age-inappropriate glory, is its beating heart: “Becoming a Close Reader and Writing to Learn,” “Analyzing Narrative and Supporting Opinions,” “Researching to Build Knowledge and Teaching Others,” “Gathering Evidence and Speaking to Others.”
RageAgTest, re: PBL: as a layman, it strikes me that the framework could be adapted to any age/ level w/ student buy-in & success,no? Certainly it could be ruined, like any pedagogy, as a ‘silver-bullet’, PBL-Hammer-everything Nail, w/top-down formulaic approach– & quickly become as age-inappropriate, cumbersome & wrong-headed as, e.g., CCSS-ELA. But it sounded from the article as though the problems are designed in concert by the actual teachers at each grade-level (as is possible in a small district like Comsewegue). Perhaps the issues you have observed relate to admin/ expert-heavy large districts scripting things from on-high. It may be the sort of activity that needs to be done at school/ dept-level [horrors, not ‘scalable’!
Bethree5
The “no test-prep” comment was in reference to high school Regents courses. There is a huge distinction between these and CC math and ELA in grades 3 to 8. EnRageNY is a pure test-prep script and was widely implemented because elementary teachers had so little time to adapt to the quick switch to CC.
NYSDOE has re-branded the Common Core standards as the “Next Generation” standards. They tweaked the CCSS a bit, but essentially the same. Too much time and money spent to scrap them I guess. Don’t be surprised to see test score gains to support the re-branding.
NYS is one of 18 states that has adopted the NGSS. If you are a parent keep your ear to the track on this science disaster in the making. No timeline yet, but there will be state testing in grades 5 and 8 on the Next-Gen science standards – replacing the current 4 and 8 testing.
Starting a new reply to the replies to my comment @ 10:05 so the the discussion will not become Chiletized. Taking a break from making pickles-15 pints of bread & butter completed. Another 14 or so of dills to go-cukes been growing crazy on me. Anyway. . . .
Starting with Diane’s “I don’t believe in miracles.” Thoroughly concur! 🙂
Mike Zamansky pointed out that one really can’t make much of this study. I concur!
As it is I did not bash the superintendent but I will say that I can’t consider him a “great anti-testing superintendent at all. He’s still playing the abusive rank stacking game that harms so many students. What I see is the GAGA Good German attitude. It is the pragmatic attitude that is willing to allow day in day out “banalities of evil” (Arendt) to happen and to thrive because, oh I have to do my job or I’ll be out of work. Because everyone does something-being GAGA Good German worker bees doesn’t mean that the outcomes of the work are not harmful, au contraire, the outcomes of the standardized testing malpractice regime are well known. But hey, I can turn my gaze from the harm and continue my job. . . and be a “great anti-testing supe” at the same time.
Sorry but that doesn’t cut it in my book.
And as far as “. . . who is trying to prove that students do better on the mandated exams without test prep.” There is no need to “prove” that. Any teacher worth her/his own salt already knows that and so should every administrator (unfortunately they don’t know that.)
A “truly great anti-testing superintendent” would tell the state to shove the tests back to from where they came. She/he would have rallied the community around “NO TEST” by educating the community on the complete invalidities of the whole standards and testing malpractice regime. And then instruct the staff that the district will determine who will graduate, not by any standardized assessment but by helping individual students to better their own learning capabilities. But I’ve yet to see any administrator even think about doing such honorable things. . .
Hence one of the many reasons I call 99.9% of administrators adminimals-herd like behaving creatures who jump on the latest malpractice bandwagon proudly promoting their capabilities at being good at implementing practices that harm students all the while deceiving themselves that they are “helping the students”.
Now this is “bashing the great anti-testing supe”. So be it. Ain’t here to make friends and anyone who institutes educational malpractices that harm students, and then brags about the rank stacking is. . . well. . . an adminimal in my book.
Duane,
Sometimes you should know more before you attack. Joe Rella has been a leader in the Opt Out movement in New York. He is an inspiration to everyone who knows him.
Lay off.
I know my message is not well received by most. So be it. I stand by what I wrote.
The Regents testing referred to in this post is a non-negotiable for administrators in NYS. Regents testing has a history spanning many decades and was never a subject of controversy until NYSDOE commissioner Richard Mills made the decision in 1995 to mandate Regents testing for ALL students; this included Regents tests in biology, algebra, world history, US history, and ELA. Passing these five EOC tests became a graduation requirement for all gen-ed AND sped students; the only exceptions were the extremely disabled.
As a general rule Regents courses and follow up exams were based on reasonable standards and curricula. The move to all-Regents however resulted in noticeably easier (dumbed-down) tests combined with the lowering of passing cut scores, without which many districts would be battling widespread drop-out rates among struggling and marginal students.
yes. In the past, pre-Rick Mills, only those who wanted a “Regents’ diploma” took the exams. When he mandated the Regents as a requirement for high school graduation, the tests and the cut scores were dumbed down.
Yes, Rager, I understand the mandatory nature of these things!
Who will stand up for the innocent and be the first to refuse?
A couple of thoughts over the next posts:
1) Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management [education administration] consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all. [my additions]. I’m not sure of the providence of all of this, I believe I quoted someone somewhere about 6-7 years ago and added my own thoughts.
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher [my additions]
Finally a little Wilson to finish this out:
From a little less than valid:
To the extent that these categorisations are accurate or valid at an individual level, these decisions may be both ethically acceptable to the decision makers, and rationally and emotionally acceptable to the test takers and their advocates. They accept the judgments of their society regarding their mental or emotional capabilities. But to the extent that such categorisations are invalid, they must be deemed unacceptable to all concerned.
Further, to the extent that this invalidity is hidden or denied, they are all involved in a culture of symbolic violence. This is violence related to the meaning of the categorisation event where, firstly, the real source of violation, the state or educational institution that controls the meanings of the categorisations, are disguised, and the authority appears to come from another source, in this case from professional opinion backed by scientific research. If you do not believe this, then consider that no matter how high the status of an educator, his voice is unheard unless he belongs to the relevant institution.
And finally a symbolically violent event is one in which what is manifestly unjust is asserted to be fair and just. In the case of testing, where massive errors and thus miscategorisations are suppressed, scores and categorisations are given with no hint of their large invalidity components. It is significant that in the chapter on Rights and responsibilities of test users, considerable attention is given to the responsibility of the test taker not to cheat. Fair enough. But where is the balancing responsibility of the test user not to cheat, not to pretend that a test event has accuracy vastly exceeding technical or social reality? Indeed where is the indication to the test taker of any inaccuracy at all, except possibly arithmetic additions?
A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
“Chiletized,” heh, I like it.
This is such a timely post for me. I’m in a bit of a kerfuffle with my local school board in trying to find out exactly what financial and human resources are being drained to adhere to testing rules. They’ve given me enough ammo to start a public awareness campaign next month. This post fits into my narrative perfectly.
A word of caution when making such requests: many districts implement considerable resources that go above and beyond compliance with state/federal regulations. These include consultant fees, optional benchmark tests, scoring costs, teacher time, administrative time, among others. Glad to hear you are holding them accountable, but next time ask for all expenditures and resources related to testing; the cost to taxpayers is staggering, the cost to the children is immeasurable.
GregB – do you live in NY?
Thank you so much for this advice. Invaluable! I live in NE Ohio and no one here understands or cares much about this issue. I’m working on some initiatives and if they pan out, I’ll report on them later. At the June school board meeting I asked the following questions and asked that they be able to answer them by the August board meeting:
How much time do teachers spend preparing for teaching to standardized tests?
How many hours do teachers use in the classroom to teach to standardized tests? Students to prepare for tests?
How much time is taken for practice tests?
What is the cost for the schools to implement teaching to standardized test policies?
Are instructional materials chosen to teach to standardized tests?
Which outside vendors profit off of standardized tests of students?
Do those vendors have an interest in schools’ textbook purchases?
What is being sacrificed in order to teach to standardized tests?
What could we be doing if we had the funding available to adhere to standardized test policies?
What is the percentage of the total budget and amount of annual federal funding for [our s]chools?
I got back a non-answer from the attorney and superintendent that these are too difficult to answer and they are not legally required to answer them (I’m paraphrasing). But now I have enough to start me on educating the PTA, writing more letters, and lobby my state reps.
Here is one more question that they have to answer:
Has the considerable cost in money, time, energy, and lost opportunities “paid off” in significantly higher test scores?
That is assuming that state administered exams produce scores that are reliable and precise.
And if so, to what meaningful end?
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Did I mention, thank you?